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Coyotes-Wolves-Cougars.blogspot.com

Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions. This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization. Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick

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Saturday, November 13, 2010

While the Eastern Fisher is rebounding across it's historical range(New Jersey even has a re-established population), The Pacific Fisher is "going, going, gone"........Even knowing this to be the case, the California Fish and Game Authorities are refusing to listen to the proven science and not listing the species as Endangered

Lawsuit Seeks State Protection for Rare Forest Mammal
California Fish and Game Commission Ignored Studies Showing That Fishers Face Significant Threats
SAN FRANCISCO— The Center for Biological Diversity filed suit today challenging the California Fish and Game Commission's decision to deny state Endangered Species Act protection to the Pacific fisher, a rare, forest-dwelling carnivore. The Center is being assisted by lawyers at Earthjustice.
A close relative of the wolverine and mink, the fisher once thrived in old-growth forests along the West Coast. Today, because of logging, trapping and development among other factors, fishers are almost extinct in Washington and Oregon, and just two small populations remain in California: one in the Klamath Region and another in the southern Sierra Nevada. These isolated populations are at substantial risk from logging, habitat fragmentation, disease, traffic and development.
"Scientists have been very clear that the Pacific fisher is in trouble and yet the Fish and Game Commission ignored that information and refused to throw it a lifeline," said Justin Augustine, a Center attorney. "Now we're going to court to get the protections that fishers need and deserve."
The Center petitioned the Commission in January 2008 to list the fisher as a threatened or endangered species under the California Endangered Species Act. The Commission initially tried to reject the petition without conducting a full scientific review. Only after the Center exposed correspondence showing that many of the Department of Fish and Game's own scientists believed fishers may be at risk of extinction did the Commission reverse course and direct the Department to conduct a full review. At the conclusion of that review, Department managers again ignored their own scientists, as well as peer reviewers, and significantly altered a draft of the status review to downplay threats to the fisher.
The Department's official, final review of the fisher's status in California was heavily criticized by independent biologists. Only the timber industry supported the Department's decision to recommend against state protection. The Commission denied the petition September 15."The fact is that there are probably fewer than 150 breeding female fishers left in the entire Sierra Nevada," said Greg Loarie, an attorney at Earthjustice. "If ever there were an animal that desperately needs protection, this is it."

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