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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, February 8, 2014

Like many of you blog readers, I am glad that the new US Fish & Wildlife "Panel of 7" scientists who have been asked to make recommendations on Gray Wolf Delisting or NOT Delisting has concluded that the first USFW Wolf Panel that had been assigned this task had focused too narrowly on only one scientific theory(the proposition that Gray Wolves never existed in Eastern North America----and that only Eastern Wolves resided there)..............To my way of thinking, the key to not delisting Gray Wolves across all of the USA is for this "NEW PANEL OF 7" to bring into the debate the long standing historical evidence pointing to the fact that Bison ranged as far east as the Carolina's, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York State-----It seems to me that where there were Bison, you had "BISON EATERS---GRAY WOLVES(C.lupus)--larger than the deer eating Eastern Wolf(C.lycaon and/or C.rufus),,,,,,,There are many Researchers and historicial diary accounts contending that both the Gray Wolf and the Eastern(or Red) Wolf co-existed in parts of the East prior to European colonization(.See the book entitled--- NEW ENGLAND RARITIES-- where the early explorer John Josselyn writes; "Of Wolves, there are two")....Below your will read first hand the evidence that The Smithsonian Museum in D.C. has archived regarding the documentation of Bison in Eastern North America-------The earliest discovery of the bison in Eastern North America, or indeed anywhere north of Coronado’s route, was made somewhere near Washington, District of Columbia, in 1612, by an English navigator named Samuel Argoll,[3] and narrated as follows: “As soon as I had unladen this corne, I set my men to the felling of Timber, for the building of a Frigat, which I had left half finished at Point Comfort, the 19. of March: and returned myself with the ship into Pembrook [Potomac] River, and so discovered to the head of it, which is about 65 leagues into the Land, and navigable for any ship".................. "And then marching into the Countrie, I found great store of Cattle as big as Kine, of which the Indians that were my guides killed a couple, which we found to be very good and wholesome meate, and are very easie to be killed, in regard they are heavy, slow, and not so wild as other beasts of the wildernesse".......... It is to be regretted that the narrative of the explorer affords no clew to the precise locality of this interesting discovery, but since it is doubtful that the mariner journeyed very far on foot from the head of navigation of the Potomac, it seems highly probable that the first American bison seen by Europeans, other than the Spaniards, was found within 15 miles, or even less, of the capital of the United States, and possibly within the District of Columbia itself.....................All the way up into Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York were Bison as seen by early explorers and frontiersmen...............As a result, there should not be delisting of the Gray Wolf across the USA because in fact the Gray Wolf had to have roamed these same regions to keep the Bison in check.................Instead of delisting the Gray Wolf, both it and the Eastern Wolf should be re-wilded back into the East!

Unsettled Science Behind Proposal to Lift Gray
 Wolf Protections, Panel Says

Unsettled Science

 Behind Proposal

 to Lift Gray Wolf

 Protections, Panel 

Says

2 comments:

Dave Messineo said...

The name buffalo derives from the hide which was called buffe after it's color when tanned. The thick hides were important for shields and armor in Europe, a critical military resource in that period. Supplies in Africa and Asia were insecure and vulnerable so the North American source was sought aggressively, being the chief reason for French, Portuguese, Spanish, and English interest in North America.

According to accounts I have read, the Portuguese on the St Lawrence River first traded with the Indians for buffalo hides from about 1500. The French on the St Lawrence then took over a monopoly in the trade for buffalo hides after about mid century and expanded the trade southward.
The Spaniard Pedro Menendez complained of the southern infringements by the French to King Phillip ll. He angrily reported, " In 1565 and for some years previous, buffalo-skins were brought down the Potomac River and there carried along shore in canoes to the French about the Gulf of St Lawrence. During two years 6000 skins were thus obtained. "

Coyotes, Wolves and Cougars forever said...

Dave..............I too have read this quote from Menendez in Farley Mowat's SEA OF SLAUGHTER book..........The Bison were indeed in the East,,,,,,,,,,as was the Gray Wolf,,,,,,,,,,,,and the Eastern Wolf