Learn about Grizzly Bears, Black Bears, Polar Bears, gray wolves/eastern wolves/red wolves,timber wolves,
cougars/mountain lions/panthers/painters/pumas, bobcats, lynx, red and gray foxes, wolverines, martens, fishers, coyotes/eastern
coyotes/coywolves with pictures, videos, photos, facts, info and news.
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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
Two Kansas teens got a big surprise, and video, when the hound they were using to hunt raccoons
treed a mountain lion last month in Wabaunsee County.
The Wichita Eagle (http://bit.ly/2gViyyg) reports that the
Thanksgiving night sighting was one of three documented
within 15 days in a 60-mile area.
Pumas spotted just west of Topeka, the capitol city of Kansas
Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism biologist
Matt Peek doesn’t know whether that part of Kansas has
multiple animals or one that has been getting around.
A motion-activated trail camera on Fort Riley got a good
image of a mountain lion on Nov. 9, though the authenticity
of the image has not yet been officially confirmed. A similar
camera got a photo in Shawnee County on Nov. 20.
Sometimes a single animal is photographed multiple times
in different locations.
‘It literally stopped me in my tracks, no pun intended.
Trail cameras have revolutionized the way deer
hunters approach their hunting tactics, particularly
bowhunters. As a result of their skyrocketing
popularity there are literally thousands of the
cameras perched on posts and trees all over
the state keeping an eye on things when nobody’s
watching.
So it should come as little surprise these
remotely-triggered cameras have been
responsible for catching some incredibly
cool, unique and ground-breaking images
not even related to deer. Many of the nearly
dozen-and-a-half confirmed mountain lion
sightings were a result of trail camera photos.
The most recent one might surprise you as
not one, but three images of a no-doubt
mountain lion were captured within a
stone’s throw of Kansas’ capital city by Rene
Tinajero.
Tinajero, 43, a lifelong Topekan just started deer
hunting this year and put his first trail cameras up
on family ground in southwest Shawnee County in
early August.
“I’m a novice hunter and this is my first year to hunt and put
out trail cameras,” Tinajero said. “We were getting the
usual photos of does and some bucks and the only
surprises up until then were some coyotes and turkeys.”
Los Angeles is the second largest metropolitan
area in the US, but it's retained some of its natural
wild side. In the mountains surrounding the
metropolis, mountain lions — the last large
carnivore in southern California — live, hunt,
and try to repopulate. A team made up of scientists
from UCLA and the National Park Service recently set out to see exactly how they're doing
that hunting, given the increased encroachment of
humans.
The researchers looked at pieces of land in the
Santa Monica Mountains and Santa Susana
Mountains, bounded on every side by freeways,
farms, and urban or suburban communities.
They found that male mountain lions tended to
choose wooded areas near water for their
hunting
grounds, and generally avoided human
development. Researchers tracked over 400
kills and found that only two took place in
developed areas. Females, on the other
hand, surprised researchers by hunting much
farther from these wooded areas and closer
to development.
The researchers' best guess as to why
females would be willing to hunt so near
to people — on average, a little less than
a mile away — was that they were trying
to avoid aggressive males. Female
mountain lions travel with their kittens,
and would want to avoid having them
hurt or killed by their very close relatives.
Previous research suggested that the
mountain lion's main prey, the mule deer,
had been moving into developed areas
during the last few years as a result of
severe drought. Human-maintained water
sources such as swimming pools,
decorative ponds, and accompanying
vegetation have lured the deer further
into civilization, which has helped their
own numbers grow. As urbanization
has helped its prey, female mountain
lions appear to have relocated closer
to people as a result.
MOUNTAIN LIONS ARE TRYING TO FIND A BALANCE WITH HUMANS
For the most part, "mountain lions in and around LA appear to be doing a good job of finding places to hunt for deer while generally staying out of the way of humans," John Benson, a wildlife biologist at UCLA and one of the authors of the study, told The Verge. At the moment, this relationshipis delicately balanced, and the mountainlion population is stable.
However, Colleen St. Clair, a biologist
who worked on a similar study at the
University of Alberta (but who did not
contribute to this study), noted that \
the findings should serve as a
cautionary message: "[The study]
suggests that mountain lions are trying
to find a balance between using the
resources that occur near people
without actually encountering them...
but we're going to have to find new
ways to manage conflict. In other words,
don't combine attractants for deer and
hiding cover for mountain lions near
places where humans live and recreate!"
While they are also plentiful in most of
the western United States, mountain
lions face unique habitat challenges in
the greater Los Angeles area. They aren't
considered an endangered species in
California, but they are large carnivores
that need uninterrupted swathes of land
for hunting and for roaming between
groups to spread genetic diversity
and repopulate.
Right now, groups of mountain lions are cut off
from each other by highways — they have the
lowest genetic diversity of any animal besides
the Florida panther, which nearly went extinct.
Jeff Sikich, a biologist with the National Park
Service and another of the study's authors,
toldThe Verge that this is the greatest immediate
threat to the mountain lion populations in
California, noting that biologists have
recorded male lions mating with their daughters,
and even grand-daughters, further dwindling
the genetic pool.
THE GREATEST THREAT TO MOUNTAIN LIONS IS A LACK OF GENETIC DIVERSITY
An oft-proposed solution to this problem is a wildlife bridge connecting two of the largest mountain lion habitats — it would run directly over 10 lanes of the 101 freeway. It would not be the first time such a measure was taken in the US, though it would certainly be the most ambitious effort. And while the idea may sound far-fetched, there
Sikich expressed his enthusiasm for the
project: "There's a lot of momentum, and
the public seems to be behind it. Most
people love knowing that there is a large
carnivore that remains in the Santa Monica
Mountains, and the mountain lion is the
last one we have left."
Northern Ontario, Canad Wolfpack caught on trailcamera
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A New Jersey Eastern Coyote unable to take a fawn
Blogger Rick
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Making a Pitch at the WB
Two Massachusetts Eastern Coyotes at their den site
Eastern Wolf in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada
Gray Foxes(unlike Red Foxes) can climb trees--an advantage when pursued by Coyotes
Aldo Leopold--3 quotes from his SAN COUNTY ALMANAC
"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."
Aldo Leopold
"A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise."
Aldo Leopold
''To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering."
Wildlife Rendezvous
Like so many conscientious hunters and anglers come to realize, good habitat with our full suite of predators and prey make for healthy and productive living............Teddy Roosevelt depicted at a "WILDLIFE RENDEZVOUS"
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(National Park Service)
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