Rhonda Laner's call to President Obama to "grow a pair" as it relates to following sound science rather than succombing to political overeach as it relates to Endangered Species Act, rewilding and wildland restoration.........Rhonda, you have my support!

By Rhonda Lanier · WednesdayMay 25, 2011

 Dear President Obama,

 This is a very hard letter to write. I hope it is as equally hard for you to read. I have been getting a lot of mail from you lately, asking for my help in your reelection efforts and how much you need my help in order to win a second term. This is not surprising after all the support I gave to your campaign in 2008.  It is interesting President Obama. I have been writing to you for the last two years saying that I needed your help. No, not for me personally; you see I am very lucky in that I have a good job and good health, for which I am very, very grateful. That part of my life is just fine.

 What I have been begging and pleading for your help for over two years is to stop the slaughter of our wildlife by the very governmental agencies who are supposed to protect them (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services and the Bureau of Land Management springs to mind). As a very concerned citizen and wildlife and environmental advocate I have called the White House, and sent you emails and faxes many, many times. I never heard from you. I never even heard you respond to the issues and concerns I contacted you about. You see President Obama, wolves are one of my passions in life.

 Yes, that's right wolves. Wolves have been in the news a lot lately. Ever since you allowed Ken Salazar and Senators Baucus and Tester to cut a backroom deal to delist Wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act. As you are well aware, this is the very first time an endangered species was removed from protection in this manner.

On March 30, 2011 1,293 Scientists with Expertise in Biological Systems wrote to the entire Senate "to urge them to vote against any legislation that would undercut the best available science as the basis for adding or removing any particular species from the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Allowing Congress to remove or add protections for particular species would set a dangerous precedent, as the fate of every species on the endangered species list (or any candidate for that list) would then be subject to political interference."

 Mr. President this was not just a bunch of "wolf lovers" who "just don't have the same understanding of the wolf problem that we have" according to Max Baucus in an AP press release dated April 14, 2011. This was from almost 1,300 scientists with the expertise and education qualified to make such decisions. Your administration allowed this cowardly backroom deal to remain attached as a rider in a must pass spending bill in order to support Jon Tester's bid to hold on to his seat in Montana. Was one Democratic seat worth this? The words of Section 1713 are seared into the minds of every wolf advocate in this country:

 "SEC. 1713. Before the end of the 60-day period beginning on the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall reissue the final rule published on April 2, 2009 (74 Fed. Reg. 15123 et seq.) without regard to any other provision of statute or regulation that applies to issuance of such rule. Such reissuance (including this section) shall not be subject to judicial review and shall not abrogate or otherwise have any effect on the order and judgment issued by the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming in Case Numbers 09–CV–118J and 09–CV–138J on November 18, 2010."
 You allowed this Mr. President, after promising on the campaign trail in the 2008 election that you were going to bring back science based politics to the White House. Sir, you and your administration now have the dubious distinction of delisting wolves not once, but twice. The Republican Party was responsible for creating the Endangered Species Act, and now the Democratic Party has severely crippled and gutted the ESA for all endangered species. I simply do not see how this is something that you could be proud of.

 I have of course written to Senators Boxer and Feinstein, as they are my representatives. I have also written to Sheldon Whitehouse, John Kerry, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tom Udall, Mark Udall and Chuck Schumer, as they had the reputation of standing up for our wildlife and our environment, asking them to please be the one to draft an Amendment to reinstate the Wolf's protection under the Endangered Species Act. So far, no one has stepped up to the plate. I would urge you in the strongest manner possible President Obama to get together with these and other Democratic leaders in the Senate and  put forth a plan to restore wolves protection under the Endangered Species Act, and to make right what has so wrongfully been done here.

Until this is done Mr. President, you will not have my support or my vote.

 This issue is not going to just fade away as I am sure you all hoped it would. On May 5, 2011, a lawsuit was filed by three conservation groups challenging the delisting rider, stating in their complaint that it "violates the U.S. Constitution because it specifically repeals a judicial decision. While Congress has the right to make and amend laws, the wolf delisting rider (Section 1713 of the budget law, PL 112-10) does not amend the Endangered Species Act — it circumvents the judicial process by ordering the reinstatement of the 2009 rule that delisted wolves."

 There are approximately 72 million wildlife advocates Mr. President, most of whom vote. I and thousands of wolf advocates are committed to make sure this is a hot topic in the 2012 Election. Sir, we are waiting for someone to take the leadership in this so that we can all move forward and correct the sell out of the Gray Wolf, the Endangered Species Act and what we once thought the Democratic Party stood for.  As you know 2012 is just around the corner.
 Yours truly

 Rhonda Lanier

Endangered animal populations usually "show rapid declines as a result of human activities such as hunting and habitat conversion."..............New Studies demonstrate that if we humans eliminate hunting and habitat altering activities, even small remnant populations can stabilize and potentially bounce back..............Here is a case where SIZE DOES NOT MATTER..............What matters is the will to modify our habits to allow fellow creatures a viable place on this Planet to "bear fruit and mulitply"

There's No Magic Number for Saving Endangered Species

A new study offers hope for species such as the Siberian Tiger that might be considered 'too rare to save', so long as conservation efforts can target key threats. The findings have important implications for conserving some of the world's most charismatic endangered species, which often exist in populations far smaller than the many thousands of individuals that earlier studies had argued were necessary for viability.

Charismatic examples include the mountain gorilla, which likely now number 1,000 or less, the approximately 450 remaining Amur or Siberian tigers, the 180-500 remaining mature Philippine eagles, and the 70 wild Puerto Rican parrots.

The findings of a UK-US research team, the largest critical review of the use of minimum viable population (MVP) ^(*1) numbers in conservation, dispute the use of a universal MVP as a yardstick for conservation policies. According to the researchers there is no single population size that can be used as a catch-all guideline to save endangered species.

Co-author of the report, Dr. Philip Stephens, School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Durham University, said: "Populations usually show rapid declines as a result of human activities such as hunting and habitat conversion. The results of the study are encouraging and show that if we can remove the negative effects of human activities, even relatively small populations could be viable in the long term."

Dr. Greg Hayward, the U.S. Forest Service's (USFS) regional ecologist for Alaska said: "This is good news for biologists working to save species like the tiger. There's a lot of work to do to arrest the effects of poaching, prey loss and habitat  destruction. However, if that work is successful, the tiger might yet be able to recover, despite the relatively small size of most tiger populations."

The study, published in the journal, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, shows that population sizes required for long-term viability vary, both within and among species, and depend on the specific circumstances in which the population is found.  Estimates of viable population sizes were typically reduced to hundreds rather than thousands of individuals for populations that were relatively stable.

Previous Studies had suggested that for species which would require intense effort to raise numbers to 5,000 individuals, it might be too late to act and better to concentrate limited conservation resources elsewhere.

Researchers on the US-UK team argue that conservationists should not give up on saving an endangered species if its population is below an MVP figure, and they advise policy-makers to be cautious about setting guidelines for 'safe' population sizes. MVP refers to the size of a population that is thought to have a specified probability of persistence for a given period, for example, a population size that has a 99 per cent probability of avoiding extinction for the next forty generations

The researchers also warn against potential complacency and stress the need to look in detail at the specific threats that a species faces. They argue that no population size is likely to be safe from extinction when conservation activities fail to reduce the impact of the factors causing the population to decline. Dr. Curt Flather, a research ecologist with the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station in Colorado said: "The enormous variability in estimates shows that many populations also need to be highly abundant to be viable. The extinction of the passenger pigeon, which numbered 3 to 5 billion individuals in North America during the 1800s, is a reminder that population size alone is no guarantee against extinction."

Steve Beissinger, a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, emphasized the need to go beyond established guidelines in determining whether a species is endangered. "Viability depends on the idiosyncrasies of the factors causing a species to decline, and there is no single population size that guarantees safety for all species. There's more that matters than just size."
.

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Black Bears in Louisiana and Mississippi seem to be dealing effectively with the recent surge in floodwaters .........As we know, they are strong swimmers and tree climbers, both of these skills being employed as they have for millenia to escape Natures wrath along the banks of the Mississippi River............Some cubs might have been lost to the waters rising so quickly...........time will tell their fate

Flooding stressing wildlife, but bears appear to be OK

State wildlife officials say the flooding along the Mississippi River will continue to stress wildlife in affected areas for weeks to come.

The good news is that for one of the most threatened species, the black bear, the rising waters haven't pushed too many from their habitat. Only a few reports of bears making public appearances have circulated. Flights conducted last week by Mississippi State University located 12 bears with radio collars in flooded portions of the Delta. All of the collared bears' locations were within their normal home ranges and all were in heavily flooded areas.
In fact, four radio-collared female bears in Bolivar County were actually located inside the Mississippi River levee. "Black bears are excellent swimmers, climbers and foragers," said Brad Young, black bear program leader for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries, and Parks. "Black bears thrived throughout the Delta long before the time of river gauges and levee systems. They are well suited for events such as this."
One concern for bears is the survival of cubs. Although they become able swimmers and climbers early in life, there is an uncertainty about the flooding."We know that several dens were flooded out and the females were forced to evacuate while the cubs were still very young," says Young. "We won't know until water levels recede enough for us to go in and check on them."
Concerns over deer and other animals driven from their habitat to levees and other dry areas continue.
Officials urge people to leave animals alone, except for one species considered a nuisance.flooding is providing an excellent opportunity to rid areas of some of the wild hogs that have spread throughout the Delta area. It is perfectly legal to shoot feral hogs but on private lands only.Shooters should be careful to clearly identify the target, since a few bears could be in the area.
The wildlife division of the MDWFP has established an FAQ - frequently asked questions page - on its website addressing many flood-related issues such as feeding deer. It can be found at mdwfp.com

Per Helen Mcginnis, Chris Spatz and Jay Tischendorf of COUGAR REWILDING, Ohio has some of the most lax laws pertaining to residents keeping Carnivores as pets...............While we root for the day when wild Cougars will once again call Ohio home, the animal that was spotted the other day in Salt fork, Ohio was most likely either an escaped pet Cougar or a large house cat

ALLEGED Cougar caught on camera near Salt Fork , OHIO(east central Ohio close to Pennsylvania State border is a State Park )

To: ctspatz@earthlink.net ; Rosatte, Rick (MNR) ; Jay Tischendorf ; Helen McGinnis ; John Laundre

Sent: Wednesday, May 25, 2011 5:01 PM

Subject: Cougar caught on camera near Salt Fork

Based on the size of the animal to the tree and height of grass, the thin body, tail not long enough, tail streaked and dark with no distinct black tip, no black behind long pointy ears, streaked on inside of rear legs, no black muzzle, and finally HBH and HBL of 1:1.8 and 1:4.6, I believe this is a house cat.


Cheers

Stuart
___________________________________________________________________________

BY: RICK STILLION

Local hunter Dale Lyons caught this image of a mountain lion on his field camera in the Salt Fork State Park area in mid-September.

Cambridge resident Dale Lyons looks over a printout showing a mountain lion taken with his field camera in the Salt Fork State Park area a few weeks ago. The cat was also spotted recently near Winterset.

A local hunter recently made a startling discovery when he captured a picture of a mountain lion on a field camera set out to capture the movements of white-tailed deer near Salt Fork State Park.

"I had the camera out prior to the start of deer season and when I went to look at it, I notice something had ran by (the camera) real fast," said Cambridge resident Dale Lyons."But, I couldn't see what it was by looking at it on the camera, so I took it home and viewed it on a large-screen television. That's when I saw what it was ... a mountain lion."

He said the camera also captured images of coyotes and fox in the area near a pear tree.
Lyons said he showed the picture to local Wildlife Officer Roby Williams, who confirmed it was a mountain lion (also known as a cougar or puma)."He said it was probably somebody's pet that got loose," said Lyons.

Officials estimate the cat is approximately 1 1/2 to 2-years-old.Lyons has learned that his picture taken about four weeks ago with a motion-activated, infrared camera on private property outside Salt Fork State Park is not the only time the cat has been seen locally.

"A man was talking to the staff at County Coins when he told them about seeing a large cat near U.S. 22," said Lyons. "He was driving on U.S. 22 when he saw a bunch of turkeys cross the road with what he believed was a dog loping along behind them. But when he stopped and took a closer look, he realized it was a large cat that was following the turkeys."

Lyons said he has not seen the cat since that night."I wish I could see it again," he said. "I have talked to people who ride horses at Salt Fork and they say they have seen cat tracks in the park."The mountain lion encounter was not the first such encounter for the seasoned hunter with an animal not typically seen in the local area.

"It was in the early spring when I was out calling coyotes at night that I encountered three bear cubs in that same area," said Lyons. "I have run into a lot of things at different times."Knowing their mother was in the area, Lyons said he gave the bear cubs their space and immediately left the area, opting for another spot to hunt coyotes.

"That was their location that night," quipped Lyons, a lieutenant with the Guernsey County Sheriff's Office. "I knew mom had to be in the area."said he saw two bear cubs back at the same property a couple weeks later."I have seen a lot of interesting things this year," he said. "Even if I don't do any good deer hunting, I will have the animals that I saw and the one captured on the camera, and that's makes a pretty good year."

The alternative theory on the origen of the Eastern/Red Wolf which states that the Eastern Wolf-C.lycaon/Red Wolf-C.rufus(likely one and the same creature) is a distinct species from the Gray Wolf(C.lupus) and is not the end-proudct of Gray Wolf(lupus) and Western Coyote(C.latrans) hybridization is adhered to by Brent Patterson(Ontario Ministry of Resources and Trent University Professor), his Geneticist and Biologist colleagues at Trent University--Linda Rutledge, Tyler Wheeldon--(and other noted Wolf/Coyote Biologists(Bradley White, Paul Wilson, Ron Nowak, Jon Way, etc, etc.)............This past Sunday(May 23), I posted Roland Kays and Wayne et al.position on this subject and their conclusions that all Wolf subspecies like the Eastern/Red wolf are the result of Gray Wolf/Western Coyote admixing.........Two smart, thoughtful and experienced teams of Wolf/Coyote experts(some of the top Professionals in their fields of endeavor) have a real and respectful divergence of opinion on this important topic and for what it means for rewilding and restoration of canid species throughout Eastern North America...............As I once told Linda Rutledge in an email exchange on this subject two years ago..............."I like my chicken soup with lots of veggies and noodles mixed in"...............That is what we have going in Eastern North America with Gray Wolves in far Northern Eastern Canada, Eastern Wolves in and around Algonquin Park, Great Lakes Wolves that have some Eastern Wolf genes but are predominately Western Wolves in makeup, Eastern Coyotes(Eastern Wolf/Western Coyote admix) South of Algonquin and down the Appalachian spine into New England and the Mid Atlantic States,,,,,,,,,,,,a remnant Red Wolf population on the North Carolina Barrier Islands,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Western Coyotes still pushing Southeastward.........Indeed, a very rich and aromatic "Canis Soup" broth ever changing............ As Brent states below, all of us are open to reaching definitive and defensible designations for our sundry canid species...............Seems like more work in the field and the lab before we are making the correct calls on how to correctly rewild the East with our most charismatic Wild Dog species-----STAY TUNED FOR MORE ON THIS MOST FASCINATING OF TOPICS!!!!

From: Patterson, Brent (MNR) <brent.patterson@ontario.ca>
To: Meril, Rick
Sent: Wed May 25 12:13:46 2011
Subject: RE: Fwd: FW: new canid genetics paper

Hi Rick,

Tyler, Linda & I first heard Roland present these results at the Midwest wolf Stewards meeting in Wisconsin about a month ago and were certainly both interested and intrigued.  While we remain open to rigorous testing of the ideas suggested by this work re the origins and taxonomy of eastern wolves (C. lycaon), we are not yet convinced and have concerns that impact the conclusions of vonHoldt et al. concerning the eastern wolf. 

One of our primary concerns is that the authors refer to eastern wolves and Great Lakes wolves interchangeably, and conduct their subsequent analyses based on this assumption.  We must assume some of the blame for this confusion given suggestions in earlier works from this lab of a broad range for eastern wolves (e.g. Grewal et al. 2004; J. Mammalogy 85: 625-632), but in recent papers (e.g. Rutledge et al. 2010: Heredity 105: 520-531;  Wheeldon et al. 2010: Molecular Ecology 19: 4428-4440) we tried to clarify that: 1) while there are likely no remaining unhybridized eastern wolves in the wild, the closest living relatives to the historic eastern wolf live in and immediately around Algonquin park in central Ontario.  These wolves are distinct from wolves in NE and NW Ontario, as well the Great Lakes States, and 2) Although wolves in the Great Lakes States and much of Ontario and Quebec contain some eastern wolf genetic material, they are not eastern wolves and both phenotypically and genetically (based on autosomal microsatellites) group more closely with Gray wolves, C. lupus than with C. lycaon (again, as typified by wolves in Algonquin).  Given this, the finding that Great Lakes wolves and Red wolves did not share a common evolutionary origin is not surprising.  We have suggested a common origin for Red wolves and Eastern wolves (again typified by, and largely restricted to wolves in Algonquin), NOT between Red wolves and the Great Lakes wolf which, as mentioned above, is a hybrid of C. lupus and C. lycaon. 

Given that VonHoldt et al. only analyzed DNA from 2 Algonquin wolves, and that we don't know when and exactly where these samples were collected (i.e. they could have been coyotes or hybrids collected somewhere in or around Algonquin), we don't believe that the hypothesis of eastern wolves as a distinct North American evolved species was adequately assessed by this work.  Note also that the Wilson et al. (2000) canid evolutionary model (CJZ 78: 2156-2166) of the eastern wolf suggests divergence from the western coyote only 150-300K years ago. This time is barely sufficient to see differences in the mtDNA control region resulting from mutation, so the finding that genomic SNPs did not differentiate eastern wolves from western coyotes is not surprising.  Another concern relates to the analyses conducted using the program Structure.   Anyone familiar with this program, used to assign membership to different genetic groups, knows that it would be highly unlikely for any "population" consisting of only 2 individuals to separate as a distinct group from other larger populations.  Nonetheless, it is interesting that the PCA conducted by VonHoldt et al. (see their Fig . 3) places the 2 Algonquin samples separate from all other groups although the authors arbitrarily grouped them with Great Lakes wolves. 

Future research might yet reveal that there never was a North American evolved Red wolf or Eastern wolf, and that these animals are indeed merely hybrids between C. lupus and C. latrans, but if so we wonder how the following lines of evidence supporting a North American evolved wolf distinct from the Gray wolf will be rectified:

1)      Hybridization between eastern wolves/ red wolves and coyotes is pervasive where they are sympatric in eastern North America but hybridization between wolves and coyotes remains exceedingly rare or absent in the west.  Hybridization between wolves and coyotes is also very rare across the Western Great Lakes region (see Wheeldon et al. paper cited above), and in northern Ontario (east and west).  The range of ratios of abundance of wolves: coyotes vary widely in both eastern and western North America so saying the 2 species only hybridized in the east because of skewed species ratios requires quite a leap of faith.
2)      How does one explain the presence of mitochondrial haplotypes C3 and C13 (see Rutledge and Wheeldon refs cited above); both of which are common in eastern wolves and their associated hybrids, but neither of which are found in non-hybridizing wolves or coyotes (i.e. gray wolves and western coyotes). 
3)      Evidence of a separate Y-chromosome eastern wolf lineage (Wilson et al., manuscript in review).

In summary, while we agree that the approaches employed by VonHoldt et al. represent an important step forward re analysis of canid taxonomy; until a more representative and balanced sample containing eastern wolves (i.e. Algonquin wolves), historic pre-Columbian eastern wolf samples, and the appropriate out groups, is similarly analyzed we consider the hypothesis of a North American evolved wolf independent of the gray wolf still viable. 

Cheers,

Brent

Brent Patterson
Research Scientist – wolves and deer
Adjunct Professor, Trent University, Environmental and Life Sciences Graduate Program
President, Ontario Chapter of The Wildlife Society
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources
Wildlife Research and Development Section
Trent University, DNA Building
2140 East Bank Drive
Peterborough, ON
K9J 7B8, CANADA
Tel: (705) 755-1553
Fax: (705) 755-1559
http://people.trentu.ca/brentpatterson/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Bradley White <bradley.white@sympatico.ca>
To: Meril, Rick
Sent: Sun May 22 14:27:52 2011
Subject: RE: Fwd: FW: new canid genetics paper

Hi Rick:

                We still interpret the data such that the eastern/red wolf are distinct but closely related species  to the western coyote. Wayne et al are still making interpretations about coyote /gray wolf hybridization to support the original Wayne suggestion that the red wolf was formed a hybrid.

The Biology is clear; coyotes and gray wolves do not hybridise. The gray/eastern hybrids do not hybridize with either eastern or western coyotes. Coy wolves or eastern coyotes have little to no gray wolf material.

Brad

-___________________________________________________________

From: Ron Nowak <ron4nowak@cs.com>
To: Meril, Rick
Sent: Sun May 22 11:24:25 2011
Subject: Re: new canid genetics paper

Rick---it's just more of the same; the paper is filled with qustionable material and conclusions.  And as long as there is another major team of geneticists taking a diametrically opposite view, I cannot accept the validity of that whole approach---Ron 

Maine now joins every other New England State in harboring Bat killing WHITE-NOSE SYNDROME,,,,,,,,,,,,,As reported on continually, no cure yet in sight for this "punishing and unforgiving" killer of Bats

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Meril, Rick <Rick.Meril@warnerbros.com>
Date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 8:03 AM
Subject: Fw: White-nose Syndrome Update
To: "rick.meril@gmail.com" <rick.meril@gmail.com>

---

From: Bat Conservation International <info@batcon.org>
To: Meril, Rick
Sent: Wed May 25 07:59:26 2011
Subject: White-nose Syndrome Update

If you're having trouble viewing this email, you may see it online .

Dear BCI Member, I'm writing today with both good news and bad news about White-nose Syndrome (WNS), the disease that has been decimating North American bat populations for the past five years. We are saddened to report that the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife announced this week that WNS has been confirmed in Oxford County, Maine. This had been the only northeastern state still spared the heart-wrenching impact of this disease. White-nose Syndrome is now confirmed in 17 U.S. states and four Canadian provinces. The fungus that causes WNS is in an additional two states. But there is reason to be hopeful too. I attended the annual White-nose Syndrome Symposium in Little Rock, Arkansas, last week, along with three other BCI staff members. BCI worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to organize this gathering, which brought together more than 150 dedicated biologists, state and federal wildlife managers, and non-profit professionals to discuss the latest research and mitigation efforts on this disease. A variety of research results were reviewed, including some optimistic insights for the conservation and recovery of these battered bat populations. During the conference, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released its final National Plan for Assisting States, Federal Agencies, and Tribes in Managing White-Nose Syndrome in Bats, furthering dialogue among symposium delegates on implementation activities such as additional research, monitoring and conservation actions. BCI supporters can be proud that you made significant contributions to advancing our understanding of WNS. The first national WNS planning meeting in June 2008 was spearheaded by BCI and funded primarily by donations from our members. Your phone calls and letters to Congress have helped secure essential research dollars for the study of the disease. But there is still much work to be done and very limited funding for combating this dire threat to bats. Your donations to BCI's White-nose Syndrome program and other conservation efforts are critical to maintaining this positive momentum. We are so grateful for the endless support of our members. Warm regards, Nina Fascione Executive Director P.S. White-nose Syndrome continues to spread quickly across North America. Please donate to BCI's White-nose Syndrome program and to our other important conservation programs.

PO Box 162603 | Austin, TX 78716 US This email was sent to rick.meril@warnerbros.com. To ensure that you continue receiving our emails, please add us to your address book or safe list. manage your preferences | opt out using TrueRemove™ Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails. EmailNow powered by Emma

Brooks Fahy at Predator Defense confirmed today that the Oregon Senate let the HUNTING COUGARS WITH HOUNDS BILL die yesterday...............It would not target so-called problem animals...........and hardly "fair chase" .................

Cougar-hunting effort ends without Senate vote

By Mark Freeman

A bill seeking to reintroduce some sport-hunting of cougars with hounds has died a quiet death in the Oregon Senate after getting an easy nod in the House, ending the latest effort to return a practice banned by voters 17 years ago.

The deadline for scheduling hearings came and went Monday without House Bill 2337 receiving a scheduled debate in the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee, effectively killing a bill without discussing it. "Ding, dong, the witch is dead," said Sally Mackler, carnivore representative in Oregon for the Eugene-based group Predator Defense, which lobbied against the bill.

The bill was sent there by the House on April 20 when it passed by a 45-14 vote. It was the furthest that hound-hunting advocates have pushed a bill in the Oregon Legislature since voters twice shot down the practice for bears and cougars in the mid-1990s. The committee's chair, Democrat Jackie Dingfelder of Portland, did not return multiple telephone calls over the past three weeks to discuss her intentions for the bill. "What bothers us is that you have a Portland Democrat holding it up in committee after it passed the House overwhelmingly and bipartisanly," said Duane Dungannon, secretary of the Medford-based Oregon Hunters Association, which lobbied heavily for the bill.

"It's not a partisan issue," Dungannon said. "It's an urban-versus-rural issue."Modeled after a similar program in Washington state that has since ended, the bill sought to create a pilot program through the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife for public hound-hunting, but only within counties whose governing bodies request it. Using tracking hounds was the most popular method of hunting cougars before the practice was banned by the passing of Measure 18 in 1994. ODFW statistics show that most cougars now shot by hunters are targets of opportunity — killed while the hunters were pursuing other species, primarily deer or elk

The House bill was positioned by its supporters as a way to reduce cougar-human conflicts and livestock predation in areas where other existing tools have failed to manage cougars effectively. It was also written to sunset in 2020. Mackler said she and several senators lobbied heavily against the bill receiving a hearing, in part because the bill would not target damage-causing cougars or those posing human-safety problems."This bill would not accomplish what it said it will," Mackler said. "This was strictly for trophy and sport-hunting and the use of hounds would not impact damage issues or safety issues at all.
"You can't run through a housing development with a pack of dogs and guns," she said.
Bills seeking to reinstitute some form of hound-hunting have appeared in every session, and only HB 2337 made it through a single legislative chamber.

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 541-776-4470, or email at mfreeman@mailtribune.com.

Sally Mackler

Oregon Carnivore Representative
Predator Defense
PO Box 5446
Eugene, Oregon 97405
541-937-4261 Office
http://www.predatordefense.org/

Transient Mountain Lions continue to trek into Missouri without a breeding population accounted for

Photos of tracks convince the Mountain Lion Response Team

Mountain lion

The Missouri Department of Conservation has confirmed the presence of a mountain lion in northern Macon County, based on photos of tracks taken by a landowner. Rex Martensen, a member of the Conservation Department's Mountain Lion Response Team (MLRT), said the landowner found large, cat-like tracks in a muddy creek bed while hunting mushrooms. He was near the town of Economy, northeast of Long Branch Lake, on April 20. The man took photos of the tracks and sent them to Private Land Conservationist Ted Seiler.

Rain washed away the tracks before a member of the MLRT could visit the site. However, Martensen said the tracks in the photo closely match the characteristics of mountain lion tracks. He said the MLRT needed no further evidence to confirm the presence of a mountain lion.
Martensen said one thing that stood out in the photos was the lack of claw marks."Even if a dog has well-worn toenails, as deep as these tracks went into the mud, you would have seen those pretty clear."
Martensen said the conservation department is not trying to find the mountain lion that left the tracks. However, he said the MLRT wants to know when and where mountain lions appear in Missouri and is particularly interested in reports that involve photos, tracks, hair or other physical evidence.
Evidence from other confirmed mountain lion sightings in the past 20 years suggests that the big cats are coming to Missouri from other states where mountain lion populations have been growing. Martensen said mountain lions might show up in Missouri with increasing frequency as populations in northwest Nebraska and other western states continue to grow and expand.
Many unanswered questions remain about mountain lions in Missouri. In an attempt to answer these questions, the conservation department established the MLRT to review citizen reports thoroughly.
"We don't know what mountain lions do or where they go when they get here," said Martensen, "so pieces of the puzzle like this report are interesting and very helpful to us."

Instead of some minimum number of individuals thought to prevent a species from blinking out, it is time to factor ecological services into the equation, not just subjectively derived tolerance levels based on human economic considerations..............

Scientists debate 'magic number' of wolves needed for species' survival

Conservation groups and the federal government continue to disagree how many gray wolves are needed in the Northern Rockies to ensure the species' survival. One of the biggest arguments left unresolved by last year's wolf lawsuit was the most obvious: How many wolves are enough?

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took the gray wolf off the endangered species list in 2009, with the caveat that at least 150 wolves and 15 breeding pairs endure in each of the three states in the northern Rocky Mountain population (Montana, Idaho and Wyoming). Recent surveys found at least 1,700 wolves in that area - more than enough to justify delisting. But a coalition of environmental groups sued the government, claiming those numbers were wrong. To survive and thrive, they argued, the population needed at least 2,000 and preferably 5,000 wolves.

FWS biologists said they used the best available science to pick their number. Coalition members cited the well-established rules of conservation biology to justify their threshold. While the scientists dueled, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy decided the case on a technicality and Congress reversed him with a budget rider. Wolves in the Northern Rockies are now delisted, but almost nobody's happy.

Over the past decade, biologists have sought a "magic number" that would simplify endangered species debates. In 2010, an Australian team led by Lochran Traill of the University of Adelaide published a study declaring 5,000 was the population size required to prevent any species' extinction.We don't have the time and resources to attend to finding thresholds for all threatened species," Traill told Science Observer Magazine. "(T)hus the need for a generalization that can be implemented across taxa (classes of animals and plants) to prevent extinction."

But another group of U.S. Forest Service researchers along with American and British professors warn that a simple tool may be a flawed tool. While they agree that an easily understood standard helps persuade judges or members of Congress of the need for action, the 5,000 figure doesn't add up. Their paper will be published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution. "It's natural for any policy maker and practitioner to look for ways of simplifying the overwhelming process of endangered species management," said Greg Hayward of the Forest Service's Alaska Region Office. "If that worked, it would be a delightful world to live in. But if you're really going to do anything positive, in terms of turning around the situation for these species, going for that simple rule of thumb isn't going to help."

Both sides use a lot of math to make their points. Traill and company looked at 1,198 species with a computer model that calculated how many of each would be needed for the plant or animal to survive in the long term. In particular, the study looked at how many are needed to ensure a species doesn't in-breed itself into extinction. That's key because one requirement to getting off the endangered species list is a population big enough to guarantee genetic diversity. Earthjustice attorney Doug Honnold relied on that in his argument to Molloy, to show why the wolf should remain a listed species. "If you're talking about genetics, then there are some basic genetic principles that apply across all species," Honnold said. "It's been documented with every species that's been studied."

Honnold referred to what's called the "50-500 rule" which states you need at least 50 breeding-age females of a species for short-term survival or 500 for the long term. In the case of wolves, there's usually only one breeding female in a pack of four to 10 wolves, so the total population number balloons to 2,000-5,000.

The "magic number opponents" respond that genetics isn't everything. In the case of wolves, where might that 2,000-5,000 figure apply? Do we need a minimum viable population in the three states where wolves were reintroduced back in 1995? Or should the figure be spread across the six-state area now delisted by congressional fiat (adding Utah, Washington and Oregon to Montana, Idaho and Wyoming)? Does it count the Canadian wolves that have relations with American packs along the international border? "Under the Endangered Species Act, we sort of ignore other segments of populations that are outside the United States," said Hayward's colleague, Steven Beissinger of the University of California-Berkeley. "In the case of the paper we did, one thing we found was, the particular technique people used to come up with this minimum number was very context-specific."

In other words, each animal needs its own formula. Passenger pigeons had different lifespans and breeding rates than wolves. They could fly across continents at will, while wolves may be stymied by freeways. Passenger pigeons were, in fact, the most abundant land bird in the continental United States - 3 billion to 5 billion individuals - before the population crashed between 1870 and 1890.

Science rarely gets to be just science. Lots of scientific reasons justify the wolf's presence on the landscape: It reduces elk populations, which in turn improves the plant communities along streams, which brings back songbirds and beavers. But reduced elk numbers aggravate a hunting community that's invested millions of dollars to improve elk habitat. Wolves also have proved a poster target for politicians who want to leash the Endangered Species Act.

Natural Resources Defense Council staff scientist Sylvia Fallon said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service knew it would face public resistance if it proposed reintroducing lots of wolves, so it picked a deliberately low 150-per-state figure to get the reintroduction in play. "They (FWS biologists) say they came up with that number in consultation with scientists, but they never said who they were," Fallon said. "It was some guesswork factoring in social and political considerations at the time, what would be acceptable to the states and the public."

FWS attorneys rejected that claim in their court briefs, but they never got to have the argument in Molloy's courtroom. Without ever discussing what an appropriate number should be, the judge only said the federal government illegally used state boundaries to divide a natural population.

Beissinger suggested a better target in the search for the elusive magic number. Instead of a unified field theory of how many of a species is needed to survive, we humans should settle on what risk factor we're willing to work with, he said. "In my profession, we don't have a single standard that's been set for what degree of risk we're willing to accept for a species to go extinct," he said. "I could make a calculation for a species and say nine times out of 10, it would be viable there, for 50 years. Would that be good enough, or would you want a 95 percent chance, or an 80 percent chance? But it's too naive to use just measures of population size and come up with some rule of thumb whether a population is safe or not."
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

New Report Highlights Need for Changes in Predator Management Policies

View Report at http://tinyurl.com/predator-report
Contacts:
George Wuerthner, Report Author, (541) 255-3948 or gwuerthner@gmail.com
Spencer Lennard, Project Director, Big Wildlife, (541) 846-1352 or  bigwildlife@gmail.com
A new report, which provides a synthesis of the latest science and research concerning predator management, highlights the need for changes in predator management policies throughout the western U.S.  The report is available at: http://tinyurl.com/predator-report.

The report was written by George Wuerthner, a former Montana hunting guide who previously worked as a biologist and botanist for several wildlife and land management agencies.  Wuerthner is also the author of 35 books dealing with natural history, conservation and environmental issues.  The report was commissioned by Big Wildlife, a non-profit conservation group working to protect predators throughout the west. 

KEY FINDINGS INCLUDE:

• Current state wildlife policies often maintain predator populations above extinction levels, but well below maximum biological carrying capacity.

• Predator policy typically ignores the ecological influence of predators in terms of their critically important influence upon ecosystem heath and organization.

• Management of predator populations, without consideration of the social organization of top predators, can lead to great conflicts with humans and livestock. 
• Simple animal husbandry techniques have been shown to greatly reduce livestock losses from predators; unfortunately, many ranchers don't use these practices.

"A growing body of scientific research suggests that hunting disrupts the social ecology of predators, leading to more predation on livestock, thus exacerbating conflicts with humans," explained George Wuerthner.  "Hunting is an indiscriminate and crude way of managing predators. Surgical removal of individuals causing problems is the only sensible way of reducing human conflicts."

"Predator management has been degrading ecosystems, harming wildlife and hurting taxpayers for centuries; now we have a compilation of science to demonstrate why," stated Spencer Lennard, Project Director of Big Wildlife.  "In the same way that ocean ecosystems need the regulation of their top predator sharks, our terrestrial ecosystems are becoming impoverished by the systemic removal of species like cougars, wolves and bears that provide critical ecological services."

Brighter news from Oregon on not allowing Hounds to chase and tree Cougars............On the opposite end of the spectrum is that the 24 Wolves occupying Oregon are in the crosshair of every Rancher and State Game Mgr

Dear Friends of Predator Defense,

It appears HB2337, the bill to reinstate cougar hounding in requesting Oregon counties, is dead.  Similarly HB3562, the bill to allow killing wolves in self defense (which is already allowed), is apparently dead.  Yesterday, May 23rd, was the deadline for bills to have a hearing scheduled on the committee's agenda to be heard by June 1.  If this requirement is not met, the bills are dead.  Neither of these bills appeared on the agenda.  Keep in mind that there are always ways to revive bills in Salem, but we will keep you posted.

Thank you for responding to yesterday's alert asking that the cougar bill not be heard.  Senator Dingfelder has always been a supporter of wildlife and we very much appreciate her.

Bad News:  State kills 2 Wolves in NE Oregon's Wallowa county

Last week the state killed two young wolves, a male and a female, on private property in a remote area of NE Oregon.  Authorities confirmed that 2 recent cattle depredations were due to wolves and immediately killed the two juvenile wolves indiscriminately, without knowing they were responsible for the attacks.  

Consider the following information carefully, and ask yourself what's wrong with this picture: Out of 40 thousand cows in Wallowa county, only 4 or 5 have been confirmed wolf kills.  Ranchers have been fully compensated for their 5 losses.   95% of cattle losses are due to neglect/poor husbandry, wolf predation accounts for a tiny fraction of the remaining 5% mortality.  While Oregon law prohibits ranchers from killing wolves unless 1). they have a permit (24 have been issued including for use on public lands where their livestock graze at taxpayer's expense) and 2). unless the wolf is caught in the act of predation; state authorities have no such prohibitions and are doing ranchers' killing for them.  There are only 24 wolves in Oregon.

Please contact Governor Kitzhaber and let him know how you feel about the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife's killing of these two young wolves.  

Governor John Kitzhaber, representative.citizen@state.or.us, 503-378-3111.  

Sally Mackler

Oregon Carnivore Representative
Predator Defense
PO Box 5446
Eugene, Oregon 97405
541-937-4261 Office
http://www.predatordefense.org/

Good News! first:  Ding Dong the Cougar/Wolf killing bills are dead!!  so far anyway, but remember nothing is for sure in Salem...

What if the Bears ruled the Planet and said that 7 billion humans were just "too many to tolerate"..........And that "THE HUNTING OF HUMANS WOULD HELP EASE CONFLICTS WITH BEARS".............We are so quick to kill and destroy Natures Creation.........Will we ever come to realize that we were not meant to be the only species on the Planet and that in fact without all the "cogs and wheels" in place(wild creatures and landscapes), we are in a sprint to lessen our ability to fight off disease, propagate new and better food and deaden our senses to beauty, wonder and amazement????????

NY seeks changes to bear hunting season, regions

• ALBANY, N.Y. — The state Department of Environmental Conservation wants to open new areas east of the Hudson River to bear hunting and establish uniform bear hunting season dates across the Southern Zone starting this year. DEC Commissioner Joe Martens says black bears are thriving in New York and have expanded their range considerably in recent years. He said expanding bear hunting will help ease homeowner and farm conflicts with bears.

The proposed changes would open bear hunting in all of Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Columbia, Rensselaer, and Washington counties, and the portion of Rockland that was not already open for black bear hunting.--Rockland, Dutchess and Putnam are all within 2 hours drive of NYC--blogger Rick
Public comments on the changes will be accepted by DEC through July 5.
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N.J. officials plan black bear hunt in December

New Jersey will hold another bear hunt this year, much to the chagrin of environmental groups and animal-rights activists. Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Larry Ragonese said Wednesday the hunt was planned for Dec. 5-10. Because the hunt is a component of the state black bear management plan adopted last year, it doesn't need to go through a separate approval process.
Nearly 600 bears were killed during last year's six-day hunt, New Jersey's first since 2005.
Wildlife officials have said the hunts are needed to reduce a black bear population now thought to number about 3,400. Opponents contend the management policy was improperly developed and say nonlethal population-control measures should be used.

Are we as North and South American citizens able to find it within ourselves to create a "CULTURE OF TOLERANCE FOR OTHER LIFE FORMS AND THEIR WAYS-OF-LIFE"?...............I found this blog entry while surfing the web and thought it quite reinforcing for those of us who want to see restoration of our wild lands and carnivores

From Wolves A Cosmopolitan World View:

"Wolves (have) persisted quite well alongside humanity for over a hundred thousand years, all without the "benefit" of wildlife management. It should be clear, then, that humanity's troubled relationship with wolves has little to do with sound science in the sense of empirical data, quantitative models, or management techniques. Instead, our trouble with wolves is a deeply rooted ethical conflict over whether to coexist with wolves and other large predators. Resolving this conflict is a question of values, not facts and wolf recovery depends on a culture of tolerance for other life forms and their ways-of-life, not a science of wildlife management."

Minnesota and Great Lakes ranchers are able to live reasonably amicably with almost 4000 wolves because most practice responsible animal husbandry. They have also  lived with wolves a very long time.  Please watch Lords of Nature to glimpse how predator and rancher can live side by side with reduced conflicts.

As for elk and deer, wolves have been coexisting with their prey for thousands of years without the need to be managed.  The elk owes it's fleetness of foot to the wolf.  It wasn't until Europeans set foot on this continent that the wolf suddenly became the enemy. 

 Europe had purged itself of most large carnivores. European farmers and ranchers transplanted that idea to America and the war against the wolf began, almost four hundred years ago. The last hundred years included an aggressive poisoning, trapping and shooting campaign led by the federal government.  Not only were wolves mercilessly killed but other predators and animals were targeted. It's believed more than two million wolves were eradicated from the lower forty-eight, that's a grim figure.  To learn more about the extermination of wolves in the West and to understand the mindset that believed any wildlife that couldn't be controlled should be eliminated, I recommend reading Predatory Bureaucracy: The Extermination of Wolves and The Transformation of the West, by Michael Robinson.

In a Nova Online interview, given ten years ago, Ed Bangs (Wolf Recovery Coordinator, US Fish and Wildlife Service) put it this way:
"Well, we deliberately got rid of them, as a society. A hundred years ago, our society placed very low value on all wildlife. We got rid of all the deer, the elk, the bison, the turkeys, you know, everything, in deference to other social objectives, primarily agriculture and settlement. And you can imagine being a grizzly bear or a black bear or a wolf or a coyote—when there was nothing else to eat but livestock, that's what you ate.  As a consequence settlers really hated wolves, grizzly bears and other predatory animals and they deliberately tried to get rid of them all. The federal government actually sent out trappers who spent years hunting down the last wolf and killing it. The last wolves were actually killed by the U.S. Biological Survey, which is the agency that transformed itself into the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that is now responsible for wolf restoration!"

He goes on to describe how wolves were killed:
Poison, and a lot of them were shot. The dens were found, the pups were hit over the head. And then the adults were shot around the den. But poison is probably what did away with most of the wolves. The old stories go that there wasn't a cowboy in the west worth his salt that wouldn't see a carcass and lace it with strychnine in the attempt to kill everything, I mean the foxes, the coyotes, the eagles, the wolves, the bears, everything. And this poisoning campaign, surprisingly, went on until the '70s. There were poison baits placed throughout the western United States—even on public lands by federal agencies."

This mindset is still prevalent today, especially in the West.  Many people holding these views occupy political office, populate state game agencies and have the power to make life and death decisions concerning wolves and other predators.  Even though wildlife belongs to all Americans, elected officials and bureaucrats who are grounded in outdated, arcane thinking,  exert tremendous control over wildlife "management".  Think of  Wildlife Services and the damage they do every year. Yet they continue to operate with abandon.

Did you ever wonder if wolves are blamed for livestock kills committed by another predator, their very close cousins, the dog?  There was a recent study done in Basque that addressed this issue: "Two researchers of the Euskadi Wolf Group at the Doñana Biological Station" examined the feces of wild wolves and dogs, which were identified by their DNA and examined the contents of their scat.  Their findings: When compared the remains of prey identified in both wolf and dog feces, they saw each feces contained only a single prey item. Among the prey items identified in 30 wolf feces (the remains in one wolf fecal sample were unknown), 22 contained wild prey (17 roe deer, three wild boar, one Eurasian badger and one European hare) and eight contained domestic animals (four horses, three cattle and one sheep). Wild species represented 73% of all prey identified in wolf feces and sheep only 3%.

Of the 39 prey items they be able to identify in dog feces, 14 (36%) contained remains of sheep and seven (18%) contained remains of either horses or cattle. Domestic animals represented 54% of all prey identified in dog feces.

When suspected wolf livestock kills are reported, do you believe after reading the Basque study, that "wildlife managers"  sometimes get it wrong? That wolves may be blamed for more than they actually kill?  Or wolves may show up after a kill is made by another predator and be blamed for it?  This happened to the Mexican gray wolves that were under death warrants if they killed more than three livestock per year, even though cattle made up just 4% of their diet.  The three strikes rule was rescinded last year but before SOP 13 (Standard Operating procedure) was rejected, endangered Mexican gray wolves were eliminated for feeding on dead cows even if the cows died of natural causes.  The ranchers were not removing dead carcasses, even though it's their responsiblity to do so as tenants on public land. The outrageous fact is the Mexican gray wolves Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area is all public land. The wolves should have dominion here, not ranchers, who are leasing the land.  That land belongs to the American people, yet we have zero input on what happens to the animals that inhabit it.

The Mexican wolves now number just 42 animals, down from 52 wolves counted at the end of 2008. Two Mexican wolves were conclusively shot and the remainder of the deaths are being investigated but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the dead wolves, including four pups, were probably killed by poachers.

The reason I bring up the Basque study and Mexican wolvesis because they provide two examples of wolves being blamed for livestock deaths they may not have committed.  It's akin to the half-truths and outright lies that are repeated about wolves decimating elk.  The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation declared elk numbers not only stable but rising in 23 states, in their 2009 Spring press release. The elk population grew 44% from 1984 to 2009 yet  I've actually had hunters write to me asking where I get my numbers on elk, when it's their own RMEF stats.  Unbelievable but it shows what happens when people want to believe myths about wolves.

  Which brings me back to taking the offense when it comes to wolves. Don't be sucked into endless discussions about ranching and elk.  Wolves need our help. If we waste our time engaging in counter productive arguments defending wolves against rumor and myth,  then the anti wolf crowd has won.  They want to change the subject.  They want to talk about anything but wolves.

Our goal,  as I see it, is to emphasize the positives. Wolves and all apex predators improve the health of our ecosystems.  We can point out the admirable qualities wolves possess,  that we can all aspire to.  To quote Ed Bangs once more:
"A wolf's territory represents the place where their family lives and where they're safe. If you're in your pack's territory, you have a family to help defend you, to care for you, to share food with you. Wolves are the parents, the mothers, the fathers, the brothers and sisters that we always hoped we could be. I mean there's extreme loyalty among family members, it's everything to them."

This is what the world needs to know about wolves.
You won't see negative comments or arguments about wolves on this blog. I'm not going to perpetuate the same tired dogma that's been ingrained in the thinking of so many people who should know better. If we can stand against the rumors, myths and prejudice that haunt wolves to this day, we can truly make a difference for them and other top line predators.

Let's stop playing defense by allowing wolf haters to control the tone and content of the conversation. It  doesn't mean we shouldn't work to dispel rumors but more of our time could be wisely spent devoted to helping wolves achieve the peace they deserve by spreading the word about the good qualities they possess.

It's a tough job battling hundreds of years of persecution.  Even our language is rife with "bad wolf karma"  that we may not be aware of.  Phrases such as "Thrown to the wolves",  "Wolves at the door" or "The Big, Bad Wolf", imparts the idea that wolves are menacing and bad.  Or the way in which wolves are portrayed  in movies and literature.  Werewolves are almost always evil,  the idea of a human (usually a man) transformed into a wolf,  that kills humans with abandon, conveys the belief wolves are inherently evil, which is so far from the truth.

Wolf advocates it's time for us to play offense and keep the conversation centered on wolf issues and their welfare. Education is the key, especially for young people,  so they don't grow up believing the same lies and half-truths many seem to hold so dearly.  Maybe it's time to write new fairy tales about wolves, instead of the "The Big Bad Wolf" eating grandma.  How about the wolves that saved the aspen and willow trees?  Or having wolves on the landscape helps the Pronghorn antelope fawns?
We are their voice, wolves can't speak for themselves, so it's our job to speak for them.   Speak out for wolves and you control the conversation.

Remember:
"Perhaps it was the eyes of the wolf, measured, calm, knowing.
Perhaps it was the intense sense of family.
After all, wolves mate for life, are loyal partners, create hunting communities
and demonstrate affectionate patience in pup rearing.
Perhaps it was the rigid hierarchy of the packs.
Each wolf had a place in the whole and yet retained his individual personality.
Perhaps it was their great, romping, ridiculous sense of fun.
Perhaps it was some celestial link with the winter night skies
that prompted the wolf to lay his song on the icy air.
For the native people who lived with the wolves,
and the wolves once ranged from the Arctic to the sub-tropics,
there was much to learn from them.
Is it any wonder that the myths of many tribes characterise the wolves
not as killers but as teachers?"
~ Unknown

Eastern Fishers do not seem to be preying on Cats in and around Albany NY..............Gray squirrels are their entree of choice........Even Coyotes who do kill cats for food typically reveal only 1 to 2% of their stomach contents containing cat remains...........Roland Kays blogging for the NY Times on his on-going Fisher Study in NY

Do Fishers Really Eat Cats?

By ROLAND KAYS

Scott LaPoint A missing cat poster near a forest preserve in Albany.

Roland Kays, curator of mammals at the New York State Museum, writes from Albany, where he is comparing the behavior of fishers in urban and wild settings.
Monday, April 4
I hear a lot of people say that fishers — six-to-13-pound members of the weasel family — eat house cats, but I'm not yet 100 percent convinced. As a professional zoologist I have to be careful about accepting animal stories as facts without seeing the evidence myself. I hear stories of mountain lions in the hill towns and even a population of Bigfoots in the Adirondacks. Tell me you saw a deer today and I have no reason to doubt you, but if you make a claim that has never been verified, I want to see the data. Since cats fight each other all the time, and a black cat would look an awful lot like a fisher, witnesses' accounts take us only so far.
Let's review the evidence on this one.
Our research in Albany has shown that fishers certainly have the opportunity to eat cats. They are hunting the woods between subdivisions at night, which is prime cat time. I have followed their tracks through the snow crossing dozens of cat tracks, sometimes even smelling the cat latrines nearby.

Previous Posts

• Albany's Urban Weasels
• Predators Get Snowed in Too
• Following in the Footsteps of a Suburban Fisher
• More Animals Found in Urban Forests
• Tracking Urban Fishers Through Forest and Culvert
• The Silence of the Fishers
• When a Fisher Goes Missing
• Fisher Tracks Through Suburbia

Do fishers have the means to kill a cat? Fishers regularly prey on small and medium-size mammals. Cats are medium-size mammals, so cats fit within fishers' potential prey. Fishers are also excellent tree climbers, effectively cutting off the cat's typical escape route. However, with their claws and canines, cats are better armed than the average woodchuck, and would be a risky foe for a fisher. Killing for a living is dangerous business, and I expect even the toughest fisher would back down from a mean, nasty tomcat. However, I've also met plenty of declawed, cuddly pussycats out there that would seem to be easy prey.
On first thought, a hungry fisher would seem to have the motive to go after a cat. But carnivores don't often make a habit of eating other carnivores. Large predators sometimes kill smaller ones to eliminate the competition, but rarely consume them. One thought is that they don't want to risk contracting diseases from a closely related species. This isn't a rule, but a general trend.
Furthermore, there is another known cat killer on the loose in these same woods, a larger predator with a record of killing cats — the coyote. Most studies of the coyote diet find cats to be an unimportant food item, typically 1 percent to 2 percent of their diet — so they aren't exactly making a living as a serial cat killer. However, cats and cat owners both know that coyotes (not to mention speeding cars) are a risk, and many suggest this is enough reason to keep your cat indoors.
A few years ago a cat owner in nearby Wilton, N.Y., was worried about his missing cat and walked into the woods to find its half-eaten carcass. He had seen a fisher in his neighborhood a few days before, and naturally blamed it for his grief. It doesn't take long for stories like these to take on a life of their own, and before too long I was hearing all about the cat-eating fishers in Wilton. But how do we know it wasn't a coyote? We don't.

Roland Kays Scott LaPoint holding a tranquilized male fisher with a tracking collar.

After my experience in Wilton I started noticing that fishers were taking the blame for cats disappearing all over the Northeast — especially in New Hampshire, for some reason, where they are rumored to claw through screen windows in their cat-chase. I decided to collect some data on the subject. With an undergrad student from SUNY Albany named Paul Gallery, I collected 24 diet samples from suburban fishers. These included scats from Albany and stomachs from fishers caught by a fur trapper who works the areas around Wilton and Saratoga. We washed the samples and compared the remaining fur, feathers, and bones with our museum collections to identify the remains. We found a little bit of everything — except cat. Comparing our results with published studies showed that the suburban fishers ate more gray squirrels than most (20 percent of their diet). There is one study on fisher diet from Massachusetts that recorded two observations of a fisher eating a cat, but found no cat hair or bones in 226 physical diet samples.
Scott LaPoint and I didn't start tracking suburban fishers just to see if they ate cats, but we were certainly curious what we would find. By following fisher tracks in the snow, and investigating their G.P.S. tracking points in person, we have found about 25 kill sites. As with our earlier data, these included a little bit of everything — except cats. We still have a big collection of new scats from this winter that we haven't picked through. Maybe those samples will have the first physical evidence of a fisher eating a cat, and I can finally believe all these frightening tales about cat-eating fishers. Until then, I'll remain a skeptic, and keep blaming the coyote.

National Wolfwatcher Coalition focusing in on how to perpetuate and expand our wolf populations across North America............Please click on the links in the note below for more information on how you can get involved

---

From: Dave Hornoff <wolf101@ymail.com>
To: Meril, Rick
Sent: Sun May 22 11:29:16 2011
Subject: National Wolfwatcher Coalition

 

Hi Rick,
ESA Day allowed us to learn about the actions we can take to protect our nation's wildlife. The Board and officers of the National Wolfwatcher Coalition (501(c)(3) announced its new organization at this critical time to call attention to the serious plight of the wolf and to kick off our mission on behalf of all wolves in the wild. Please "like" our new facebook page. Your participation will be gratefully appreciated. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wolfwatcher/143706368999121

Our new website can be found at http://wolfwatcher.org/ for more information. Thank you for your consideration and interest.
Thanks Rick, and your site will remain on this new website as well.
Dave

---

Dave Hornoff
http://www.wolfwatcher.com/http://www.yellowstonereports.com/

Yesterday I read and re-read Roland Kays and Robert Wayne's(et,al) --GENOME-WIDE PERSPECTIVE ON EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF ENIGMATIC WOLF-LIKE CANIDS--------I summarize below their findings and beliefs on the genetic makeup and origens of Wolves and Coyotes in North America.......................As I pointed out in yesterdays Posting, there is a 2nd competing and opposing viewpoint to Kays/Wayne's hypothesis that all the Groupings of Wolves in North America emanated from the Gray Wolf C.lupus through various hybridization events with Western Coyotes.........This other Group of Geneticists, Biologists and Taxonomists believe strongly that our Eastern/Red Wolf(C. lycaon/C.rufus) are its own species and while closely related to Coyotes, are distinctive unto themselves as a wolf species.............I find it fascinating and stimulating to evaluate both sides of this debate(It is what jump started this blog over a year ago)...........Analagous to the point/counterpoint debate on wolves is the debate about what caused the demise of our enigmatic mega-fauna(sabertooth cats, dire wolves, short face bears, etc, etc) where one faction of researcher feels that prehistoric hunters went on a genocide mission killing all of the giant mammoths and mastadons..........thus eventually sending all of the giant carnivores into extinction.............Other researchers feel that a changing climate did in the mega fauna..............and a third group of Scientists feel that introduced human pathogens and domestic dog diseases spread to wildlife and sent them "going, going, gone!!!!!!!!!!............We will continue to follow and publish both sides of the wolf/coyote origen and species debate as the data reveals itself to us

-The Old World and the New World Gray Wolf (C.lupus) are genetically distinctive from each other

-The New World Gray Wolf(C.lupus) is the founder Wolf for all wolves in North America

-There are 7 gene structure profiles and regional habitat groupings of of Wolves in North America(all emanating from the Gray Wolf(C.lupus)---all of the 7 are subspecies of the Gray Wolf and not distinct and separate species:
     a.Eastern Atlantic Forest

     b.Northern Canada taiga and tundra

     c. Rocky Mountain Forest

     d. Alaska and Canadian Boreal woods

     e. Western Coastal and British Columbia Coast

     f.Mexico Aridlands(2 lineages)

-There are 3 groupings of Coyotes in North America

     a. Western

     b. Midwestern and Southern

     c. Northeastern

-Great Lakes Wolves and Red Wolves are genetically differentiated and do not share a common origen

-Red Wolves are genetically similar to Coyotes

-Great Lakes and Mexican Wolves are most similar genetically to Gray Wolves

-Great Lakes Wolves are 50 to as much as 100% shared ancestry with Gray Wolves;some have no coyote ancestry especially those living in Western and Northern locations

-Algonquin Park Wolves in Canada which were thought to be similar to Great Lakes Wolves do not genetically bear out this way. In fact, Algonquin Wolves have the

largest % of their genome assigned to coyotes

-Red Wolves, Great Lakes Wolves and Mexican Wolves each have distinctive genetic signatures

-On average, Great Lakes Wolves have 15% of their genome assigned to coyotes

-On average, Red Wolves have 76% of their genome assigned to coyotes

- On average, Algonquin Wolves have 42% of their genome assigned to coyotes

-On average, Northeastern Coyotes(Coywolves) have 9% Gray Wolf ancestry

-On average Southeastern Coyotes have 4% Gray Wolf ancestry

-On average, Midwestern Coyotes have 1.4% Gray Wolf ancestry

-On average, Northeastern Coyotes have 9% dog ancestry

-On average Midwest and Southeastern Coytes have 4% dog ancestry

-Gray Wolves and Coyotes first admixed 546 to 963 years ago--prior to the recent invasion of coyotes over the last 100 years)

-Wolves in the Southeast(now called Red Wolves) admixed with Coyotes 287 to 430 years ago as European colonization changed land use in this region

-Northeastern Coyotes and Wolves in the Northeast admixed 100 years ago...........Dogs admixed with Northeastern Coyotes 30 years ago

-habitat related structural differences in the different regions of North America are not responsible for the differences among the the 7 gene structure Wolf groupings

-In highly mobile carnivores(like wolves and Coyotes), ecologic functions of the carivores(what they prey on) has a key role in restructuring gene flow among different regional population(epigenetics)

-Coyotes are not as highly genetically structured as Wolves ....but still are clustered by regional groupings

-Great Lakes Wolves and Western Coyotes(emanating from the Midwest) hybridization event spawns the Eastern Coyotes

-The "canis soup" admixed Eastern Wolves and Eastern Coyotes may provide better top down trophic ecological function(preying on deer) than Gray Wolves--implications for future rewilding efforts

in Eastern States

-The bottom line is that ecological function rather than taxonomic considerations should be integral in deciding which species of Wolf should be protected and restored to specific regions of North America

White Nose Syndrome has reached the attention of USFW Service..........They have now outlined a National Plan to fund research to find a cure.........develop methods of containment and control as well as decontamination protocols to reduce the transmission of the disease.............WE need the "Cavalry" "to come over the hill" and win this battle pronto!!!!!!

Fish and Wildlife Service Unveils National Plan to Combat Deadly White-Nose Syndrome in Bats

Contacts:
Hugh Vickery, DOI (202) 208-6416
Ann Froschauer, FWS (413) 658-4493

---

WASHINGTON -- The Department of the Interior's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today unveiled a national management plan to address the threat posed by white-nose syndrome, which has killed more than a million hibernating bats in eastern North America since it was discovered near Albany, New York in 2006.
"Having spread to 18 states and four Canadian provinces, white-nose syndrome threatens far-reaching ecological and economic impacts," said Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. "We've learned a lot in the past few years about the disease, but there is much more work to be done to contain it. This national plan provides a road map for federal, state, and tribal agencies and scientific researchers to follow and will facilitate sharing of resources and information to more efficiently address the threat."
The National Plan for Assisting States, Tribes and Federal Agencies in Managing White-Nose Syndrome in Bats provides a coordinated national management strategy for investigating the cause of the syndrome and finding a means to prevent the spread of the disease. The service considered approximately 17,000 comments received on the draft plan made available to the public in October 2010. Since the syndrome was first documented, the service has been leading a national response that now includes more than 100 state and federal agencies, tribes, organizations and individuals.
 Interior Department agencies have invested more than $10.8 million in this effort since 2007. This includes more than $3 million in research funding that is supporting ongoing research projects looking for methods to control or cure the disease. For example, researchers working with the U.S. Geological Survey have identified Geomyces destructans, a fungus new to science, as the presumed causative agent. In addition to research, the national response has also developed decontamination protocols to reduce the transmission of the fungus, surveillance strategies, and technical white-nose syndrome diagnostic procedures.
Bat populations are at risk in some areas of the country as a result of white-nose syndrome. Ecologists and natural resource managers are concerned because of the critical role that bats play in maintaining healthy ecosystems and in agricultural systems. A recent analysis published in Science magazine's Policy Forum showed that pest-control services provided by insect-eating bats save the U.S. agricultural industry at least $3 billion a year. The national plan's release coincides with the fourth annual WNS Symposium to be held in Little Rock, Arkansas, May 17-19. More than 170 of the world's top scientific experts on bats, wildlife disease, and the WNS fungus will present the latest research and information on how to contain the spread, determine the cause, and hopefully find a cure for WNS. State, federal and tribal land managers will also discuss the national response to WNS and implementation teams will formalize work plans as part of a more detailed implementation strategy.
The final document and additional information about WNS are available online at http://www.fws.gov/WhiteNoseSyndrome/.

 # # #

Livestock "bone yards"(disposal burial pits for dead cattle, sheep and other livestock) are the equivalent of Suburban dumps and Urban Garbage bins.........They are all of the ways we humans dispose of "organic food waste"...........All of these disposal habits gets our Carnivores in trouble with us and leads to their demise.............The Ophactory glands of Coyotes, Bears, Wolves, Cougars, etc, etc are so well developed that they can detect our "garbage" miles away................the expression "a fed bear is a dead bear" applies to all of our Carnivores............George Wuerthner provides us with "detail" below of studies revealing that we must change the way that we dispose of "eatable waste" if we are to minimize Carnivore habituation to human occupied dwellings and landscapes

From: George Wuerthner <gwuerthner@gmail.com>
To: Scott and Adelina Kronberg 
Sent: Sat May 21 11:19:19 2011
Subject: Carcasses and predator FYI

Failure to remove dead animals and/or creation of "bone yards" is one the poor livestock husbandry practices that increases livestock/predator conflicts.

Here's a study on coyotes that found that livestock carcasses promotes predator conflicts in two ways--habituating predators to livestock and of course by drawing in and concentrating predators in or near livestock. Although the focus of this study was coyotes, the same basic principles apply to wolves and bears.

"Our results also have implications for live-
stock producers because large amounts of car-
rion can increase livestock losses in 2 ways: by
habituating coyotes to feed on livestock flesh
and by increasing and concentrating local coy-
ote densities around livestock (Green et al.
1994).

Habituating coyotes to feed on livestock
carrion can lead to coyotes' developing a taste
for livestock and could consequently lead to
actual predation instead of scavenging (Fichter
et al. 1955, Gier 1968, Phillips and Hubert
1980).

Green et al. (1994) indicated that where
carrion is generally not available, livestock
losses are lower , and they concluded that car-
rion removal is an important method of dam-
age prevention to reduce livestock losses to
coyotes. Our results support those of Green et. al

Western North American Naturalist 64(1), ©2004, pp. 53–58
COYOTE (CANIS LATRANS) MOVEMENTS RELATIVE TO
CATTLE (BOS TAURUS) CARCASS AREASJan F. Kamler1,2, Warren B. Ballard1,3, Rickey L. Gilliland4, and Kevin Mote5

ABSTRACT.—Use of 2 cattle carcass areas was determined for radio-collared coyotes (Canis latrans) in northwest
Texas from January 1999 to January 2000. When 0–3 dead cattle were located at the carcass areas, resident and transient
coyotes visited the carcass areas 4% and 8% of the time, respectively. However, when 30–35 dead cattle were located at
1 carcass area due to a disease epizootic, resident and transient coyotes had increased visitation rates of 19% and 63%,
respectively. Resident coyotes traveled as far as 12.2 km from the center of their home ranges, suggesting that carcass areas
influenced residents over a 468-km2 area. Transient coyotes traveled from as far as 20.5 km away, suggesting that carcass
areas influenced transients over a 1320-km2 area. Our results indicate that carcass areas can influence coyotes over large
areas and may concentrate both resident and transient coyotes in relatively small areas, at least for short periods.
.

Our friend Roland Kays who heads up the Museum of New York has co-authored(with UCLA's Robert Wayne; et, all) the "most thorough Genetic Survey ever conducted on the "canis soup" of Wolves and Coyotes that currently inhabit Eastern North America...............Their origens, the fact that the Gray Wolf(C.lupus) that emanated from the Old World to the New World is the historical "Grandfather" of all the North American Wolves............That there was not an evolutionary distinct species of Eastern Wolf(e.g. C.rufus and/or C.lycaon)........That Gray Wolves being highly mobile carnivores did hybridize at various times over the past 1000 years with native North American Coyotes in the Southwest, Midwest, Southeast and North East(both pre and post European contact)...............That the Gray Wolf/Coyote hybridizations occurred with higher frequencies in the Southeast and Northeast and were accelerated by human persecution of Gray Wolves, human extirpation of wolf prey(deer, Moose, Elk, Caribou, Beaver) and by human manipulation of the landscape through forest clearing and agricultural and domestic husbandry pursuits....................Roland, thank you for this truly in-depth and fascinating revelation................Will all of the Wolf/Coyote Geneticists and Biologists who have published papers of their own on the origens of Eastern and Red Wolves/Eastern Coyotes concur with your findings or will their be further "point/counterpoint" stemming from your research and findings that will impact the eventual conservation status of Great Lakes Wolves/Eastern Wolves/Red Wolves and Eastern Coyotes(Coywolves)??????

From: Roland Kays [RKAYS@MAIL.NYSED.GOV]
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 10:37 AM
To: Meril, Rick
Subject: new canid genetics paper

Hi Rick,

I thought you would like this new paper.

Most thorough genetic survey of any vertebrate shows all eastern Canis are hybrids, and that there's no signal of an ancient evolutionary 'species' of eastern wolf (i.e. C. rufus and C.lycaon are both hybrids between lupus and latrans).

cheers
Roland

Roland Kays, Ph.D.
Curator of Mammals, New York State Museum, 3140 CEC, Albany, NY 12230, USA, 518-486-3205

State Education Department/University of the State of New

York/

Office of Cultural education

New York State Museum

NEWS

MADISON AVENUE, ALBANY, NY  12230

      FAX:  518/486-3696

For Immediate Release                                                 Contact:

                                                                                                Joanne Guilmette

                                                                                                Jguilmet@mail.nysed.gov

                                                                                                518/474-8730

NYS MUSEUM SCIENTIST CO-AUTHORS STUDY ON WOLVES, COYOTES

ALBANY, NY – A State Museum scientist has co-authored a new research article, representing the most detailed genomic study of its kind, which shows that wolves and coyotes in the eastern United States are hybrids between gray wolves, coyotes and domestic dogs.

            Dr. Roland Kays, the Museum's curator of mammals, was one of 15 other national and international scientists who collaborated on the study that used unprecedented genetic technology, developed from the dog genome, to survey the global genetic diversity in dogs, wolves and coyotes. The study used over 48,000 genetic markers, making it the most detailed genomic study of any wild vertebrate species.

The research results are especially relevant to wolves and coyotes in the Northeast. The study shows a gradient of hybridization in wolves, with pure wolves in western states and increasing hybridization as you move east.  Wolves in the western Great Lakes area averaged a genetic makeup of 85 percent wolf and 15 percent coyote, while wolves in Algonquin Park in eastern Ontario averaged 58 percent wolf, and the 'red wolf' in North Carolina was only 24 percent wolf and 76 percent coyote.

 Populations of eastern coyotes, which only colonized the region in the last 60 years, were also minor hybrids, with some introgression of genetic material from wolves and domestic dogs.  For example, Northeastern coyotes, including those in New York State, had genetic material primarily from coyotes (82 percent), with a minor contribution from dogs (9 percent) and wolves (9 percent). Midwestern and southeastern coyotes were genetically 90 percent coyote, with an average of 7.5 percent dog and 2.5 percent wolf.

The advanced genetic techniques used in this study also allowed the scientists to estimate when the hybridization initially occurred.  Kays said "In most cases this breeding across species lines seems to have happened at times when humans were hunting eastern wolves to extinction, and the few remaining

animals could find no proper mates, so took the best option they could get."

Kays continues, "The exceptions were an older hybridization between coyotes and wolves in the western Great Lakes dating from 600-900 years ago, and a coyote-dog hybridization in the eastern U.S. about 50 years ago, when coyote were first colonizing eastern forests

This study also provides fresh data on the controversy over the species status of the Red Wolf in North Carolina, and the Eastern Canadian Wolf in Ontario.  Both are medium-sized wolves that some have argued represent unique species.  However, this new detailed genetic data shows both are the result of hybridizations between coyotes and wolves over the last few hundred years, and do not share a common origin in a unique eastern wolf species.

This research is also relevant to a recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife proposal to remove the western Great Lakes wolves from the Endangered Species Act by showing that those wolves are only marginally hybridized with coyotes, should be considered a subspecies of the Gray Wolf, and have no genetic ties to a more endangered form of eastern wolf.

The research is published online in Genome Research, an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes outstanding original research that provides novel insights into the genome biology of all organisms, including advances in genomic medicine.

This study follows another research paper co-authored by Kays last year in the journal Biology Letters, which used museum specimens and genetic samples to show that eastern coyotes hybridized with wolves to rapidly evolve into a larger form over the last 90 years, dramatically expanding their geographic range and becoming the top predator in the Northeast. This hybridization contributed to the evolution of coyotes from mousers of western grasslands to deer hunters of eastern forests. The resulting coy-wolf hybrids are larger, with wider skulls that are better adapted for hunting deer.

In the past, Kays has also studied coyote diet and distribution in Albany's Pine Bush and in the Adirondack Mountains.  His research indicated that deer accounted for approximately one-third of the coyote's diet and that they made extensive use of forested areas. Kays also writes a blog about his research for the New York Times "Scientist at Work" feature. This blog is the modern version of a field journal, a place for reports on the daily progress of scientific expeditions — adventures, misadventures and discoveries. Kays' posts can be found at http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/author/roland-kays/

          The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department's Office of Cultural Education. Started in 1836, the Museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the United States. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, it is open Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/.

THIS IS A MUST READ

ARTICLE FOR ALL OF YOU INTERESTED IN THE CANIS SOUP

OF WOLVES AND COYOTES THAT INHABIT EASTERN NORTH AMERICA AT THIS POINT IN TIME--BLOGGER RICK

CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE PEER REVIEWED ARTICLE