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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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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Instead of Science winning the argument about the role carnivores play in optimizing our natural world, biased non-factual messaging by the anti-wolf organizations continually try to shape the opinions of many uninformed Americans .................This time it is in the form of billboarding in and around Yellowstone Park in an attempt to defame PREDATOR DEFENSE'S billboarding that seeks to cause people to wake up to the fact that Wolves are not going to come and eat "LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD"........We all have to be "up on our toes" and bringing our "A-Game" if we intend to restore the spirit of the 1970's environmental awakening that brought about the bi-partisan Wilderness and Endangered Species Acts.......................We have to expose the "anti-carnivores" for what they really are--- frauds, charlatans and b.s. artists

Anti-Wolf Fanatics Scramble to Counter Pro-Wolf Message

Posted on May 30, 2013
First, here's a message from PredatorDefense.org:
Introducing Our Wolf Billboards
wolves_billboard_Yellowstone
This is an image of one of the five billboards we're having installed on highways approaching the entrances to Yellowstone National Park, starting in June. They will greet tourists visiting the park via Montana, Wyoming and Idaho and are designed to get them to wake up to the desperate plight of wolves in America.
We really need your help to sustain this billboard campaign throughout the summer and to expand it to even more locations. PLEASE DONATE TODAY!
Timing is critical. We've already lost 1,700 gray wolves to hunters and trappers in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Minnesota, and Wisconsin since wolves were removed from federal endangered species protection in 2011 and management was handed over to individual states. This slaughter has been largely unpublicized and has therefore been unnoticed by the greater public. The situation is dire, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service intends to remove protections for wolves across nearly the entire country. This would be disastrous for gray wolf recovery
No sooner did Predator Defense erect their billboards for the wolves than did the bogus pseudo "conservation"/anti-wolf group "Big Game Forever" begin fundraising for a Yellowstone area billboard campaign of their own. Theirs would of course carry their standard anti-wolf rhetoric, while feigning concern for trophy target species like moose and elk. Here's part of an intercepted "BGF" email alert meant to tug at the heart strings of self-serving trophy hunters across the west:
Folks, 
Once again, America's moose, elk and other wildlife need your help. There is a major highway billboard campaign aimed at stopping wolf management in the Northern Rockies. Big Game Forever needs your help to educate the public and the 3.4 million annual visitors to Yellowstone National Park of the importance of restoring balance through responsible wolf, moose and elk management.
Here is what is happening. Over Memorial Day weekend, a new series of billboards popped up on several major highways leading to Yellowstone Park. It appears that these billboards are aimed at influencing national sentiment against responsible wolf management.
Big Game Forever has been working over the past several weeks to respond to this misplaced advertising attack.
We have reserved a number of billboards around Idaho and Montana to educate the public about the very real moose crisis emerging in wolf states of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Minnesota. We are also working with a coalition of conservation-minded sportsmen to place billboards in Cody Wyoming.
Please go to http://biggameforever.org and click on the "Donate" button. A number of generous private donors have already stepped up to match your donation. Your $25 dollar donation becomes $50. Your $100 donation becomes $200. Please go to http://biggameforever.org and click on the "Donate" button.  100% of the donations received during this campaign will go to this important educational campaign.  Your generous donation makes all the difference.
Keep in mind that whenever "Big Game Forever" mentions "conservation" or "responsible wolf management" they are really talking about wolf eradication–by any means possible. Donations to that group come from wealthy trophy hunters.
Now more than ever pro-wolf groups like http://www.predatordefense.org/ need your donations to spread the word for wolves, through billboard campaigns and other selfless efforts. Already, pro-wolf proponents have stepped up with the offer to match donations made in support of their support. Don't let the pseudo conservationists dupe the public with their "it's all here for us" attitude.

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Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Mountain LLion Foundation (MLF) director Timothy Dunbar saids that “biologists’ studies have shown that if you’re killing anywhere from 14 to 15 percent of a (Puma) population, you’re going to cause it harm and going to change the dynamics of the population"...........The South Dakota hunting quota for Pumas is currently set at 100 mountain lions or 70 female mountain lions (whichever comes first),...........With an uncertain population count ranging from 100 to 300 animals, South Dakota could in theory wipe out it's Pumas this hunting season........With mountain lion attacks on humans so rare that South Dakota’s entire historical record shows only one “probable unverified” account, the question is whether mountain lions require a lethal response..............“Lions are self regulating,” Dunbar explains...... “If you allow them to establish their territories, they will maintain that territory and protect it from other lions".......... "So, they will become a resident lion, they will keep other lions out of there, and if they are not a lion that preys on livestock then pretty much all the human inhabitants are also protected from other lions by that lion:...... "Problems are introduced when hunting eliminates the resident lions because “all these lions that do not have territories move in there and try to grab a piece of it"............The Large Carnivore Lab up at Washington State has verified this paradigm......Why is South Dakota refusing to moderate it's killing policy accordingly?

South Dakota Authorities Kill Four Mountain Lions in Two Days. Is There a Better Solution?


We hear from a game official and conservationist on whether there's a better method of mountain lion control.

Sarah Fuss;takepart.com

Controlling the recently 'threatened' population of mountain lions is a controversial issue in the U.S.
Picture it. A 130-pound mountain lion with her two cubs feeding on a deer in the middle of your town. Kids are walking by. Homes are right there. Businesses. What would you do?















That's just what happened earlier this month in downtown Keystone, South Dakota, the closest town to Mount Rushmore. According to the Rapid City Journal, the animals had been sighted by concerned residents in the preceding weeks. When South Dakota Game Fish & Parks (SDGF&P) officers first located the lions with their kill, they removed the deer carcass, hoping the lions would retreat back into the woods of the Black Hills. But no such luck. About six days later the lions were found eating another deer in the middle of the road, adjacent to the post office, businesses, and homes.

“To me, that’s pretty cut and dry: a lion walking along a sidewalk in a municipality,” says John Kanta, Regional Wildlife Manager at SDGF&P. “That’s bold behavior.” On May 5 and 6, the lion and her cubs were killed by SDGF&P authorities. Kanta calls the situation “unfortunate,” and believes the cubs had to be killed, because without a guiding adult lion, they would have continued to prowl through town and eventually would have starved.

In a separate May 6 event, a male lion, allegedly watching walkers and bicyclists along a park trail in the Angostura State Recreation Area, just south of the Black Hills, was shot by SDGF&P.

Four mountain lion deaths by SDF&P in the Black Hills area in two days may sound like a lot for an animal that was listed as “threatened” as recently as 2003, and it is. But Kanta says the department is counting 12 depredation kills so far this year, which is a similar number to 2012. And Timothy Dunbar, Executive Director of the Mountain Lion Foundation (MLF), says that’s in line, proportionally, to numbers in California, where his conservation organization is based.

“Keep in mind,” says Dunbar, who just visited South Dakota a couple weeks ago, “biologists’ studies have shown that if you’re killing anywhere from 14 to 15 percent of a population, you’re going to cause it harm and going to change the dynamics of the population.”

Add the Black Hills depredation numbers to the hunting quota, currently set at 100 mountain lions or 70 female mountain lions (whichever comes first), and you’re talking about two to seven times the number of kills indicated by biologists as a dangerous quantity. (The range of “two to seven times” results from the disparity between SDGF&P's counting the lion population at 300, while MLF says that figure is not scientifically substantiated and the more realistic number comes closer to 100.)

Dunbar believes this could be the reason for the high number of lion deaths in South Dakota this month. He says the hunting is creating an orphan population of young lions, many of which wander into human areas while looking for a territory. This is particularly problematic, because South Dakota has a policy of “no tolerance” when a lion enters a developed area.

With mountain lion attacks on humans so rare that South Dakota’s entire historical record shows only one “probable unverified” account, the question is whether mountain lions require a lethal response.

Those are the ingredients for someone to make the wrong move or come around the corner and startle that lion, and that’s just a bad spot for it to be.“I’ve said I absolutely don’t think those lions were there to eat people,” Kanta says. “But they’re comfortable walking down the sidewalks of city streets and killing deer in the middle of the road. Those are the ingredients for someone to make the wrong move or come around the corner and startle that lion, and that’s just a bad spot for it to be.”

Kanta adds that relocation is not an option because of South Dakota’s limited lion habitat. “Our hands are kind of tied in a lot of these cases,” he says. “That’s why we’ve always said, any state that’s willing to take lions from us, we’d certainly look at that as an option.”

Unfortunately, there are a couple problems with that solution. First, no states have made themselves available for this offer. Second, Dunbar says, it wouldn’t work. If a lion is transported to another lion’s territory, one of those lions is going to kill the other.

“Lions are self regulating,” Dunbar explains. “If you allow them to establish their territories, they will maintain that territory and protect it from other lions. So, they will become a resident lion, they will keep other lions out of there, and if they are not a lion that preys on livestock then pretty much all the human inhabitants are also protected from other lions by that lion.” Problems are introduced when hunting eliminates the resident lions, because, he says, “all these lions that do not have territories move in there and try to grab a piece of it.”

When asked what he would do if he had been in Kanta’s situation, having to protect a town with a mountain lion and her cubs in the middle of it, Dunbar says, “I would recommend that they do pretty much what happened in California recently, in Glendale and in Santa Barbara, where they contained the situation, tranquilized the animal, and moved it out of the area a short distance.”

To make sure the lion stays away, there's an additional ingredient Dunbar would add to the release, a method developed in a pilot program by Washington Fish & Wildlife. “They’re driving them out of town and then what they’re doing is banging on the cage, yelling at it, scaring it, then they open up the cage, and as the lion jumps out, they shoot it in the butt with rubber bullets and have it chased into the hills by Karelian bear dogs.”

A handler at Washington’s Karelian Bear Dog Program, Bruce Richards, says, to his knowledge, only one lion has been released this way, as the program was developed for bears. He says bears have bigger brains than mountain lions, so he doesn’t know if the program would be as successful as it is if it was adapted.

People like Dunbar would love to give it a go, but he says implementing a program like that has a lot to do with public sentiment. In places like Washington and California, when a lion is killed, citizens want to know if it could have been prevented. But that’s not generally the case in South Dakota, where a large number of human settlements butt up against woods, so lions often kill livestock and hunters’ favorites, like elk. Lions there are seen as a threat, despite the fact that they’ve never killed anyone in the state.

Although the MLF works to educate small ranches around the U.S. about lion-proof livestock enclosures, there is a lot more work to do. Dunbar says, “They don’t yet understand or realize what peaceful coexistence could be.”

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

What did the L.A. Basin look like before there was a Los Angeles?............... A common misconception—one that resonates with genuine concerns about the city's aridity and reliance on imported water—is that the city's natural state is desert................. But early accounts of the landscape painted a different picture, depicting a patchwork of grassy prairie, wetland, scrub, oak woodland, and dense willow thickets where freeways, office towers, and houses stand today.................The Los Angeles watershed was home to more than 14,000 acres of wetlands, ranging from freshwater ponds to alkali flats, from willow thickets to meadows, and home to a diversity of migratory and resident birds and animal life including Grizzlies, Pumas and Wolves............. Elsewhere, seasonal streams coursed through the Ballona Valley, fed by springs in the Hollywood Hills and in the flatter lands below........... Two perennial streams, Ballona and Centinela Creeks, flowed toward the Santa Monica Bay..................As with all of our major cities, Los Angeles teemed with life before we dammed, diverted, plowed, mowed, slashed, burned and cut the land into the urban jungles they are today

A man wades into Ballona Lagoon, circa 1902. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.
A man wades into Ballona Lagoon, circa 1902. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.

What did the L.A. Basin look like before there was a Los Angeles? A common misconception—one that resonates with genuine concerns about the city's aridity and reliance on imported water—is that the city's natural state is desert. But early accounts of the landscape painted a different picture, depicting a patchwork of grassy prairie, wetland, scrub, oak woodland, and dense willow thickets where freeways, office towers, and houses stand today.


Recently, a team of scientists, geographers, and other researchers released a report for the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project that reconstructs the historical landscape of the Ballona Creek watershed—a 130-square-mile swath of land home to more than 1.2 million people that includes much of western Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Inglewood, South Los Angeles, and the Baldwin Hills. Piecing together clues gleaned from survey reports, photographs, maps, and other archival documents, the researchers created adetailed map of the region's historical ecology, identifying lost habitats and the flora and fauna that once lived there.

What the researchers found might surprise most Angelenos: the watershed was home to more than 14,000 acres of wetlands, ranging from freshwater ponds to alkali flats, from willow thickets to meadows, and home to a diversity of migratory and resident birds. Elsewhere, seasonal streams coursed through the Ballona Valley, fed by springs in the Hollywood Hills and in the flatter lands below. Two perennial streams, Ballona and Centinela Creeks, flowed toward the Santa Monica Bay.
Map from the Ballona Creek Watershed Historical Ecology Project's report showing the locations of historical wetlands in the Ballona Creek watershed.
Map from the Ballona Creek Watershed Historical Ecology Project's report showing the locations of historical wetlands in the Ballona Creek watershed.

The project team divided the watershed into four regions: Ballona Lagoon, La Cienega, Ballona Valley, and the Santa Monica Mountain Foothills.
The project team divided the watershed into four regions: Ballona Lagoon, La Cienega, Ballona Valley, and the Santa Monica Mountain Foothills.

The Ballona Creek Watershed Historical Ecology Project report focuses on the years between 1850 and 1890, before European settlement had completely transformed the land. Watershedsare dynamic systems, and during this time the Ballona Creek watershed was in a state of flux. In 1825, some combination of torrential flooding and earthquakes shifted the course of the Los Angeles River: while it previously flowed west through what is today the channel of the Ballona Creek, in 1825 it jumped its banks and began flowing south to the San Pedro Bay. The entire Ballona Creek watershed, then, was still adjusting to the reduced water flow when California entered the Union in 1850.

One major wetland complex, which the researchers name La Cienega, occupied a depression in the basin. Fed by above-ground streams and subterranean water flow, this complex of meadows, ponds, marshes, and pools stretched from Mid-City Los Angeles to South L.A. A large pond was only a stone's throw away from the present-day intersection of Florence and Normandie. North of the complex, in present-day Beverly Hills, a network of streams flowed from the Hollywood Hills into a large area dominated by sedges and rushes. Part of the Spanish name for these meadows—Rodeo de las Aguas, or Round-up of the Waters—lives on in the name of Rodeo Drive.
Undated photo of Ballona Creek. Courtesy of the Herald-Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.
Undated photo of Ballona Creek. Courtesy of the Herald-Examiner Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.

La Cienega was connected to the region's other major wetland complex, Ballona Lagoon, by the roughly five-mile stretch of Ballona Creek. (Converted into a concrete storm channel in 1935, Ballona Creek now extends an additional four miles into what were once open wetlands.) Where sailboats dock today in Marina Del Rey was historically a vast system of tidal marshes and salt flats. Further inland, the meadows of the lagoon stretched into modern-day Culver City. A line of sand dunes abutted the sea, and a long, narrow strip of open water named Ballona Lake once welcomed boaters. Tidal influence on the lake was intermittent, the report explains:
The migration of the Los Angeles River away from the lagoon transitioned the system into a lower energy system where only on rare occasions was there enough freshwater flow from Ballona Creek to break through the buildup of sediment along the coast. As a result, gradual build up of sediment around the terminus of the previous estuary formed dunes and created this "trapped" lake-like feature.
In other places, remnants of the historical landscape remain. Kuruvungna (Serra) Springs, long a reliable water source for the region's native Tongva people, still gushes from the ground today on the campus of University High School. To the east, part of a freshwater pond dating from prehistoric times survives as MacArthur Park Lake.
Boats on Ballona Lake on November 12, 1902. Courtesy of the Photo Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.
Boats on Ballona Lake on November 12, 1902. Courtesy of the Photo Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.

A boater on Ballona Lake, circa 1903. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.
A boater on Ballona Lake, circa 1903. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.

Sand dunes in the Ballona Lagoon wetlands. Left of the dunes is Ballona Lake, which is separated from the Pacific Ocean by a narrow sandbar. Courtesy of the Photo Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.
Sand dunes in the Ballona Lagoon wetlands. Left of the dunes is Ballona Lake, which is separated from the Pacific Ocean by a narrow sandbar. Courtesy of the Photo Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.

Aerial view of the Ballona Lagoon wetlands shortly before they were transformed into Marina Del Rey. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Examiner Collection, USC Libraries.
Aerial view of the Ballona Lagoon wetlands shortly before they were transformed into Marina Del Rey. Courtesy of the Los Angeles Examiner Collection, USC Libraries.

Artist's rendering of Port Ballona, a harbor that the Santa Fe Railroad planned to build at Ballona Lagoon in the 1880s. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.
Artist's rendering of Port Ballona, a harbor that the Santa Fe Railroad planned to build at Ballona Lagoon in the 1880s. Courtesy of the Title Insurance and Trust / C.C. Pierce Photography Collection, USC Libraries.

In the early 20th century, the partially constructed Port Ballona was converted into the seaside resort of Playa del Rey, shown here in this circa 1907 postcard. Courtesy of the Werner Von Boltenstern Postcard Collection, Department of Archives and Special Collections, Loyola Marymount University Library.
In the early 20th century, the partially constructed Port Ballona was converted into the seaside resort of Playa del Rey, shown here in this circa 1907 postcard. Courtesy of the Werner Von Boltenstern Postcard Collection, Department of Archives and Special Collections, Loyola Marymount University Library.

Reconstructing the watershed's lost landscapes was only possible through meticulous historical detective work. The researchers consulted 84 source institutions—many of them members ofL.A. as Subject—in search of maps, photographs, and written accounts that provided clues about the region's historical ecology.

"The use of multiple archives, including specialized repositories such as those housing ornithological collections, aerial photographs, or maps, was central to our approach to the historical ecology of the Ballona watershed," said Travis Longcore, one of the report's co-authors and the science director of the Urban Wildlands Group.

For example, the researchers found evidence of a vernal pool (filled only intermittently with water) in an 1893 note by surveyor Alfred Solano, found in the Huntington Library's Solano Reeves Collection: "In the Northwest corner of the parcel secondly described in said order of partition, I found a depression cover about sixteen acres, which was filled up by the rains in winter so as to render it unfit for either cultivation or pasture."

Similarly, detailed irrigation maps by William Hammond Hall—preserved in the California State Archives—pointed to historical features of the landscape, while a photo from the Los Angeles Public Library's collections showed a boater enjoying the open water of Ballona Lake.
The team then georeferenced its clues, entered them into GIS software, and estimated their confidence in each feature on the resulting map.
Circa 1840s map of Rancho Ballona, showing the course of Ballona Creek and a willow thicket where Centinela Creek emptied into the Ballona Lagoon wetlands. Courtesy of the Maps of private land grant cases of California, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.
Circa 1840s map of Rancho Ballona, showing the course of Ballona Creek and a willow thicket where Centinela Creek emptied into the Ballona Lagoon wetlands. Courtesy of the Maps of private land grant cases of California, Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

A card describing a bird's nest in Los Angeles. Courtesy of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology.
A card describing a bird's nest in Los Angeles. Courtesy of the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology.

Now, the researchers' work will inform not only projects to restore lost habitats, but also, as Southern California increasingly focuses on local versus imported water sources, efforts to manage local watersheds in a sustainable and ecologically responsible way.

"Ecological reconstructions do not provide a direct template for the future, but they can help explain the types of habitats that would be found with natural precipitation and drainage patterns or identify habitats that are no longer found on the landscape," said Longcore, who is also an associate research professor at USC's Spacial Sciences Institute and an associate adjunct professor at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

"In the case of the Ballona wetlands it can help decision makers to understand that the current proposals are not 'restorations' in the sense that they are not returning the system to a condition prior to disturbance," he explained. "The current proposal would create a tidal connection similar to that found found one to two thousand years ago when the wetland area was completely open to the ocean all year—when the L.A. River flowed out through Ballona—instead of the conditions in the 1800s (and which would be supported by the smaller watershed today) in which the tidal connection to the ocean was much more limited and seasonal. Whether this influences the current plans or not remains to be seen."

Many of the archives who contributed the above images are members ofL.A. as Subject, an association of more than 230 libraries, museums, official archives, personal collections, and other institutions. Hosted by the USC Libraries, L.A. as Subject is dedicated to preserving and telling the sometimes-hidden stories and histories of the Los Angeles region. Our posts here provide a view into the archives of individuals and cultural institutions whose collections inform the great narrative—in all its complex facets—of Southern California.

.Why are the Moose in New England and Colorado seemingly able to withstand warming temperatures, winter tick infestations and deer transmitted brain disease when the Great Lakes Moose herd and those in Montana and Wyoming are in a free fall due to these variables?

Moose on move, multiplying in Colorado as herds decline elsewhere

















A moose drinks from a stream in Rocky Mountain National Park. Colorado's moose population is booming, creating opportunities for hunters but potential dangers for humans who come in contact with the large animals. (Helen H. Richardson, Denver Post file)


ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK — A dozen moose transplanted in 1978 found an ideal safe harbor in Colorado's high country, multiplying rapidly and migrating across mountains into South Park and the foothills west of Denver.
Colorado's moose population now tops 2,300, up 35 percent over the past two years, beyond the state's latest target maximum number.
The surge here — at a time when moose herds are dwindling dramatically in Minnesota, Montana and Wyoming — is bewildering wildlife managers. It is creating opportunities for hunters, but also raising concerns that moose in large numbers may lead to increased conflicts with people.
"Moose are essentially pioneering on their own," Colorado Parks and
Wildlife big-game manager Andy Holland said. "Available habitat, and unbrowsed habitat, is probably the main factor in why they are able to expand."
Other species, too, are finding a last best refuge in the state. Moose here join cold-weather species, including lynx and wolverines, that need cool temperatures and have shown an ability to survive in the high-elevation southern Rockies.
Demand for licenses to hunt bull moose — $251 for residents, $1,951 for out-of-staters — is higher than for any other big-game animal in Colorado.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, state game managers canceled the 2013 moose hunting season because of herd declines of as much as 35 percent. Losses were heaviest in the northlands, where warmer winters have favored blood-sucking ticks that attack moose and leave them more vulnerable to sickness and predators.
Once-robust moose herds in Montana and Wyoming also are shrinking. Montana has launched a 10-year study, planning to put radio collars on 90 moose, to try to find out what's happening. In Wyoming, a brain-attacking worm is suspected as a factor as a population that once topped 2,000 has declined to several hundred.
Another factor may be the relative lack of natural predators in Colorado's high country. Colorado wildlife biologists say they've documented only a few cases of black bears and mountain lions killing small moose.
Now, Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials are making moose a research priority, launching a study to determine how many moose is too many and the extent to which people can co-exist with moose as they migrate close to communities.
A team led by biologist Janet George, working near South Park, caught and collared one female moose. They'd hoped to track at least five, and George says they'll try again next fall.
The fatal chronic wasting disease has been detected. As a result, all moose killed by hunters in Colorado are tested for the prions associated with CWD, which causes weight loss leading to death. There's no evidence that meat of infected animals can spread CWD to humans, but tests are done as a precaution and to give wildlife managers data on the prevalence of the disease.
Before 1980, moose were seldom seen. Now, wildlife managers are talking about carrying capacity. A target population range of 1,700 to 2,200 was surpassed this year.
State biologists are studying the extent to which moose can find enough food amid drought conditions that can affect the willow, spruce, fir, aspen and grasses that moose need.
Moose often roam alone and, with dark fur, practically disappear in pine forests. A moose can weigh up to 1,500 pounds. They are velvety-horned ungulates lacking upper front teeth, relying on lower incisors to munch up to 70 pounds a day of vegetation. They swim well and run at speeds up to 50 mph.
While their vision is blurry, they have keen ears and heavy, bulbous noses that precisely pick up smells. Long, coarse fur keeps moose warm at timberline and above.
For example, young bulls from the west side of the Continental Divide led an eastward migration across the top of Rocky Mountain National Park — above timberline. Today, female moose with calves now graze in park meadows within a couple miles of Estes Park, near a recent wildfire burn zone that revitalized vegetation.
Hunters see wide opportunities. A record 16,500 applied for the 219 licenses issued last year to hunt moose. The number of moose killed increased to 185 last year from 152 in 2011.
The number of state licenses will increase to 228 this year, and more females can be hunted in Western Slope herds, Holland said. "The idea is to keep those herds in check so that we don't end up with so many that they overbrowse the habitat."
Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials say they're worried that moose moving closer to people on foothills hiking trails could result in more conflicts.
A moose charging from the forest in Grand County in 2010 trampled a toddler.
Four years before that, former Grand Lake Mayor Louis Heckert was attacked by an 800-pound bull moose as he walked to church. Heckert died of severe head injuries after the moose repeatedly butted him.
In several other cases, hikers have been stomped and injured severely, requiring hospitalization, state wildlife officials said.
Dogs can incite moose because moose may see them as predators.
A woman whose unleashed dog bothered a moose, which chased the dog, soon faced the moose and was trampled, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said.
"As the moose population increases, we need to make people aware there are limited predators for these animals. They aren't really afraid of many things because of their size," Churchill said.
"They really don't tolerate dogs. And you need to get out of their way."

Moose by the numbers
2,300
The estimated population of moose in Colorado
1,700 to 2,200
The target moose population for the state
Up to 70
Pounds of vegetation that a moose can eat in a day
50 mph
The top speed of a moose
219
The number of licenses to hunt moose issued last year
16,500
The number of hunters who applied for a license to hunt moose last year


Monday, May 27, 2013

Burt's Bees founder Roxanne Quimby has a son Lucas St. Clair who never left Maine and grew up fishing and hiking the lan99d that his mom is looking to donate to the Federal Government (so it can create a National Park in the north woods of Maine)...............While his mom has had mixed success convincing local residents that a Park can simultaneously give the local economy a shot of adrenalin while simultaneously enriching the biodiversity of the region, Lucas is beginning to make some headway with locals who will insist that traditional usage of the land(snowmobiling, logging and outfitting) must be factored into any equation that brings the "Feds" into a Parkland equation............While independent consulting studies continue to reinforce the fact the a Park weighs significantly heavier in terms of economic gains than does paper mills and logging, "Down Easterners"(Maine residents) are fearful and suspicious of this type Federal takeover of land.................Consultng salesmanship by St. Clair(solid facts, written guarantees, legal covenants) and not used car hystrionics and puffery is the key to making the National Park vision a reality for the largest remaining swath of open space in the East--Maine

Lucas St. Clair eyes a North Woods national park

PHOTo / Courtesy Elliotsville Plantation Inc.
PHOTO / COURTESY ELLIOTSVILLE PLANTATION INC.
Lucas St. Clair, son of entrepreneur Roxanne Quimby, flyfishes on his land in northern Maine. St. Clair, a Dover-Foxcroft native, is using home-grown values to land support for a new version of a national park in Maine.

Northern Maine: A hot tourist destination?

"Moose, white water rafting, epic hiking. No, not the Rockies — we're talking about Maine."
That's how Robert Reid, the U.S. travel editor for the popular Lonely Planet travel guide, described northern Maine when it was named a Top 10 U.S. travel destination for 2013. He wrote, "To the north in remote Aroostook County, miles of old rail beds have been transformed into bike trails, and multi-day canoe trips can paddle you right up to the Canadian border."
But that recognition by the popular guide last December hasn't exactly brought a stampede of tourists to the sparsely populated region.
"The economy is still not good. People are still careful with their money, and they're not traveling or are taking shorter trips," says Bob Myers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association in Augusta.
"Northern Maine needs better branding and marketing," says George Smith, former executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine and now an outdoor writer. "That fellow [Robert Reid] recognized the potential of it. He picked fiddleheads and was interested in the French culture. We [Mainers] take those things for granted."
Along with the effort to get a new national park started in the region, Smith lauds efforts by the Appalachian Mountain Club, which has bought three sporting camps, set up snowmobile trails and purchased 96,000 acres of land east of Greenville. "They're doing an incredible job," he says.
The AMC recently was awarded a $25,000 grant by The Conservation Alliance of Bend, Ore., for its work to protect Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness region. The club's Maine Woods Initiative supports local forest products jobs and recreation. AMC says it has created multi-day trips for visitors and attracted new, nature-based tourism to the region.
Over the past nine years AMC has conserved 66,500 acres, which its Maine Policy Manager Bryan Wentzell attributed partly to Conservation Alliance support.
"This grant will allow us to continue our work in conserving the region's land for outdoor recreation, ecological protection and sustainable forestry," he said in a statement.
Bob Myers remembers an exhilarating snowmobile ride last winter with Lucas St. Clair through a tract of land in northern Maine east of a proposed national park near the east branch of the Penobscot River. It was a terrific year for snowmobiling, with a long season and lots of snow, and the two men had a good time traversing the land, which is owned by St. Clair, recalls Myers, executive director of the Maine Snowmobile Association in Augusta. But when talk turns to a northern national park, his and St. Clair's paths diverge.
"I just don't buy it," explains Myers, who says he's had many conversations about finding middle ground on the project with both St. Clair and his mother, Burt's Bees co-founder Roxanne Quimby, who initially proposed the national park. "I don't see how adding the federal brand [of a national park] will improve things up there. It's a great place to fish and hunt, but there's nothing special up there. It's nothing like going to the top of Cadillac Mountain [in Acadia National Park] and having jaw-dropping views. It doesn't lend itself to a national park."
But St. Clair, who is president of the board of directors of Elliotsville Plantation Inc., the foundation that owns the land near Baxter State Park, is once again trying to earn support for the controversial park. It could be as large as 75,000 acres of national park and an equal amount for a related recreation area. Since Elliotsville Plantation is a little less than 130,000 acres, the foundation will continue to buy land, St. Clair says. There are no specifics on the exact size nor the boundaries as of yet, he says, as a firm plan still is not in place. There's also no timing on moving ahead with the park. But St. Clair is clearly in motion.

Coffee klatch campaigning

St. Clair may only be in his mid-30s, but he's using old-style campaigning to earn the trust and support of local constituents for the park. Sleeping in a van, knocking on doors and stopping fishermen and hikers in the forest, he's gone back to basics for the past year-and-a half to establish common ground with people in the Mt. Katahdin and Baxter State Park area. For St. Clair, establishing the national park is a mission to save the region's natural resources and expand economic growth. He says he thought about a state park, but Baxter State Park already is there, and he wants the "gold standard" brand of a national park that can bring in people from all over the world.
"I grew up in rural Piscataquis County, where I fished for trout and hunted birds," says St. Clair, who was born in Dover-Foxcroft and grew up in Guilford. "So I am trying to build a relationship with a connection over shared values, and then talk. There's a trust-building that has to occur." St. Clair says he takes every meeting he can get, especially with the most extreme opposition.
His consensus-building approach stands in stark contrast to the confrontational exchanges his mother had with opponents to her earlier proposal for a 70,000-acre park. It was taken off the table by St. Clair last fall after it ran into opposition from Maine's two U.S. senators, Gov. Paul LePage, and U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, as well as various forest products and recreational groups. Opposition revolved around giving the federal government power in the area, harming local manufacturers and preventing sports enthusiasts from accessing long-used areas.
Naysayer Myers describes St. Clair as a good guy who is very sincere.
"He's trying to reach out to people and make this palatable," he says.
But so far, St. Clair has not changed the mind of Myers, who worries about losing access to the land, which he says could happen if the federal government imposes its regulations for the parks and emissions for nearby businesses. He adds that when the federal government is involved in a project, it tends to get larger than originally planned, and environmental groups will step in to limit public access.
"Look to what happened at Yellowstone," he says. "The battle for snowmobile access to Yellowstone has been going on for 20 years. And now they're letting [a miniscule] 400 snowmobiles a day into the park. That's what we see in Greenville on an average weekend."
Myers says he's suggested to St. Clair and Quimby that they set up a public-private partnership for the land or simply give it to Baxter State Park, but that they seem focused on getting the "national park" branding.
"Both sides have pretty hardened positions," he says. "This will drag on forever probably. It's too bad."
But St. Clair has managed to change some minds.
"Roxanne [Quimby] immediately banned recreational vehicles and hunting, so she got off to a bad start. I was initially strongly opposed to it," says George Smith, former executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine and now an outdoor writer. "Then I met with her. As she continued to buy land, she continued to leave open land for hunting. I'm for it now. It's in a much bigger context."
He adds that the proposal now is not just for the national park, but other lands, most of them open to hunting and other traditional activities.
He says St. Clair hunts and has a feel for the sensibilities of the area.
"Lucas has had a very positive impact. I think it's a much more collaborative approach. If it had started out in this direction, it probably would have been done by now," says Smith, who acknowledges St. Clair still faces two big hurdles. One is the negative messages about the national park, including limited access to recreate. The second is the involvement of the federal government, which he says has not been a good experience for Maine.
"They're autocratic and dictatorial," he says. "Very few people want the federal government in the middle of the north woods."
But St. Clair has people thinking about the national park in greater numbers, he says, which is a start.
"It will take leadership from the state level. You can't have a whole congressional delegation against it," Smith says. "And you need to get the locals to change."

Homegrown values

"I relate to the land and the region in a different way than my mom," says St. Clair, who adds that his mother has stepped away from day-to-day operations of Elliotsville Plantation. "I don't think she would have driven from town-to-town and sat in as many living rooms."
He says his mother was perceived as a woman from "away" who had the resources to buy the land and then tried to tell the townspeople what to do. What also figured in, he says, were the then-recent memories of the 3.2 million-acre park proposal by the group Restore, which he also opposed.
But for St. Clair, the issue is more about changing a mindset in a region that has experienced only negative results from change.
"In the last 40 years in the Katahdin region, every bit of change has represented something negative, mills downsized, layoffs, benefits taken away, schools closed, children moving away," he says. "What we're proposing is another change of the use of the landscape, and people who lived through [those other changes] don't want to change."
He says that because he grew up in the area, he understands the issues, citing a recent afternoon he spent with former classmates.
"Everyone we went to school with has moved away," he says adding the current resistance is a fear of the unknown in addition to a fear of change.
St. Clair says he's explaining to stakeholders that the park could bring new jobs in the tourism industry, and the recreational area would be open to fishing and hunting as well as provide permanent snowmobile paths.
"I care deeply about Maine and its natural resources," he says. "I've gone back to streams I fished and seen development and areas where access is denied."
He says the landscape for the park is the most impressive, intact forest on the East Coast.
"It's a sea of trees with rolling hills, an unbelievable watershed, crystal clear streams, ponds and rivers filled with wild brook trout and salmon," he says.?He envisions the park as offering special landscapes like the Grand Canyon, Everglades or the Great Sand Dunes. The Elliotsville Plantation has three water flows, the Wassataquiok Stream, the east branch of the Penobscot and the Seboeis River. He calls his current efforts to get local municipalities to recognize the benefits of tourism, "a lot of heavy lifting now. It's a viable industry, as viable as health care or forest products manufacturing."
He adds that the Bangor area, which is only 65 miles away, has a lot to gain from a new national park, and can "multiply the park experience in Acadia and the north woods. It's a real benefit to Maine."

New beginnings

Outdoor writer Smith pointed to the benefit of diversifying the economy in northern Maine.
"There are 3 million acres in the northern Maine woods. All recreational user groups over the last 14 years have declined," he says. "We've lost the deer herd, the paper company jobs are long gone and bear hunting is down because of the economy. I ask, 'When do you start looking at alternatives?'"
He adds that people do recognize that a national park draws people to an area, and that the plan St. Clair has in mind has much broader appeal. Elliotsville Plantation commissioned two economic studies on the potential impact of the park from Headwaters Economics, an independent research group in Bozeman, Mont. One study analyzed the Penobscot and Piscataquis county economies. The other compared the economies of 16 peer communities in the United States that are either near national parks or recreation areas or both. The studies found that the suggested national park and recreation area by Baxter State Park would increase low- and high-income jobs, pull in more visitors and businesses and generate more taxes for Penobscot County than leaving it in its current state.
While the new private-sector jobs projected to be created by the park's presence likely wouldn't transform the region, they could help give it a leg up. The study projected as many as 1,000 jobs, including national park service jobs, and more than 450 jobs based on capturing a share of Acadia National Park visitors and excluding the park service jobs. In 2010, Acadia had 2.5 million visitors, which resulted in more than $192 million in spending on hotels, restaurants, transportation, guides and other local businesses. Those expenditures supported 3,331 jobs directly associated with Acadia Park, 3,147 of them local jobs and 184 National Park Service jobs. Penobscot County could potentially collect $326,126 more in taxes yearly, about 2% of its budget, according to the studies.
Ben Alexander, associate director of Headwaters Economics, noted in a summary of the reports on his company's website that the park's effect on the forest products industry would likely be negligible. The report noted that if 150,000 acres of private land east of Baxter State Park were harvested for timber, few jobs would be created, because 80% of that land could produce at most 120,000 tons of green fiber annually. That translates into 21 jobs to bring the wood to the mills. Including indirect jobs, annual overall timber operations could potentially produce a total of 50 local jobs, according to the reports.
But snowmobiler Myers disagrees. He says jobs will come long term from projects like New England's first torrefied wood facility in Millinocket, which will convert wood waste into biocoal pellets for energy.
"There will be a multiplier effect of forest product jobs down the road," Myers says. "And timber will pay more than national park concession stand vendors."
St. Clair intends to keep pressing on.
"I'll keep taking in comments until we have overwhelming support and that washes over to our state congressional delegation, and until they sponsor legislation."

Across the eastern seaboard and east to the Mississippi River, White Tail Deer were all but extirpated by the turn of the 20th century.......Pennsylvania began a rewilding program in 1906 that from that point on saw a doubling of the population every two years.........With their natural predators(Wolves and Pumas) also long gone from Penn woodlands, farmers were experiencing punishing destruction from "Bambi's" eating habits...............This caused the state legislature to begin a doe hunting season in 1923..............As we have discussed on this blog several times, despite Coyotes and Black Bears prominently crisscrossing the paths of Deer in 2013, the density of whitetails in Pennsylvania is at a habitat destructive estimate of 22-23 per square mile(Game Officials cite a 1,000,000 deer population that in the Fall of each year is reduced by 300,000 during the hunting season----note that Pennsylvania has roughly 44,000 square miles of land, this so after Phily, Pitt, W-Barre, Erie and Allentown metro acreage are deducted from the total land mass).........................Remember that pre-colonial per square mile density of Whitetails in Eastern North America was 6 to 12 and as you hit 15 or more per sq. mile, biodiversity falls off dramatically due to deer dietary consumption of plant matter................All true scientific prognosis points to the fact that Pumas and Wolves need to re-wild Pennsylvania once again!

LOOKING BACK 1916: Trapping deer, not hunting them

By JAMES RADA JR.
publicopiniononline..com

Pennsylvania's state mammal is the white-tailed deer. That doesn't mean that it's the favorite mammal in the state, though. Farmers tend to hate them, since they can ruin a crop with heavy grazing.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission was created in 1895 and given the responsibility of managing the state's deer population. This was not an easy task. Though the deer population is large, it can be highly localized, so that what is an excess population in one county may be a dearth of animals in the neighboring county.
Pennsylvania's deer population seemed so small in the early 20th century that the Pennsylvania Game Commission began stocking deer in 1906. The following year a new law was passed that protected does and young deer. With that, the herd began doubling in size about every other year, according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission's web site.














"So plentiful have deer become in some sections of Pennsylvania that it is necessary to take some action to save the crops. Not even the state game commission itself can kill the does, under the law, so the only thing to do is to trap the deer and ship them to counties which don't have such animals," the Public Opinion reported in 1916.
At the time, Franklin County was one of the places where farmers were having to deal with the destruction that deer herds caused.
However, no practical traps existed to capture the deer without injuring them until Joseph Kalbfus, the state's chief game inspector, invented a new deer trap.He didn't even bother to patent it because he wanted people to build them to us By profession, Kalbfus was a dentist, but he was also a nature lover who wanted to help conserve Pennsylvania's natural resources. His new trap would capture deer without harming them.
"Doctor Kalbfus' plan calls for a five-pointed star, covering about half an acre, with ten gates, one at each point and one at each angle between the points. Gates at the points are to be closed by hand; gates in the angles will be weighted to close and lock automatically when released by a trigger after the deer get inside," according to the Public Opinion.
The traps were estimated to cost around $200 to build (about $4,300 today). Each one required 125 rods of woven wire mesh, 100 pounds of smooth fence wire, 20 posts, 2,100 board feet of lumber, hinges, nails and spikes. Once built, the traps were baited with sugar beets, alfalfa or clover to attract the deer.
"The beauty of the star-shaped deer trap is that the deer can enter from any and all directions and so long as the gates are open can come and go at pleasure," Kalbfus said.
The traps were completed in October and deployed around Franklin County. It is not noted how many deer were trapped, but it wasn't enough to deal with the problem.
By 1923, the state Legislature removed the protection on does and allowed a controlled antlerless deer hunting season.
"A hundred permits were issued for a three-day hunt in two Franklin County townships and eight antlerless deer were taken. Also that year, laws were passed to provide deer-proof fencing and allow farmers to shoot deer for crop damage," according to the Pennsylvania Game Commission web site.
Kalbfus was not around to give his opinion about this hunt. He and Field Superintendent Wood Kelly were killed when their car was struck by a train on Aug. 10, 1919, as they were inspecting a proposed game refuge in Warren County.

Looking Back is published every other Monday. James Rada Jr. is an award-winning writer living in Gettysburg. He is the author of four historical novels and has written historical articles for a number of regional and national magazines.