Monday, April 25, 2011

Wolverine prospector or permanent resident in the Wallowas Mountains in Oregon? Tough as nails are our Wolverines but so, so, so sensitive to the human footprint..................Colorado, Oregon, California again with Bearcats..................Can we get them back in Maine, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan where they also once roamed?

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Wolverine's presence in Wallowas confirmed Elusive animal's tracks found on trail The wolverine, described as a 30-pound ball of ...

Like in every debate with opposing viewpoints, the articles below show how wolf supporters and wolf would-be shooters see the World through very different sets of eyeglasses.............Conservationists feel that the Montana West Fork Bitteroot Wolves are bringing about a healthier forest through Elk predation whereas the Ravalli County Fish and Wildlife Association feel that Elk have been hammered by the Wolves to the point that sportsman will find it impossible to kill an elk for themselves..........I root for the Wolves despite the delisting that occurred last week and hope that on Federal land the USFW does not allow a slaughter of our "top Dawg"

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Conservation Groups Set for Showdown Over West Fork Wolves Small Group of Wolves Living in Remote Area Is in the Crosshairs Contact: Nicol...

While I brought up the point the other day that the Great Lake State residents have existed in much better harmony with their wolf population than those folks out West, the results back from recent DNR meetings in Wisconsin demonstrate that people have short memories on causing extinctions of fellow species and if laws are not in place to control selfish interests, we could end up a Planet comprised of just us humans and rats.......Thank you Helen Mcginnis at Cougar Rewilding for keeping me focused on this issue

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wolves, deer and bears discussed at Wisconsin Statewide Dept. of Ntural Resources hearings By: Jim Bell A...
Sunday, April 24, 2011

COUGAR REWILDING'S Helen Mcginnis sent me this article on REWILDING INSTITUTE chief Dave Foreman's talk at the Catawba College campus in North Carolina which focused on saving our remaining wild habitats and full complement of our native species...........Dave is in the company of Aldo Leopold, Gifford Pinchot, John Muir and George Bird Grinnell (see Post just below this one for details on these men) as it relates to being a spot-on Prophet of how everything on our Planet, including man, is interwined and connected. ...Dave hits hard on the fact that it is our job to keep all the cogs in the environment functioning and healthy...............Dave feels strongly that we can in fact re-wild the oldest part of our Nation,,,,,,the East,,,,,,,,,,,,and that Cougars and Wolves are key ingredients to reviving the health and diversity of Maine to Georgia..............Virginia to Missouri

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Speaker warns about habitat loss By Kathy Chaffin Renowned wilderness conservationist Dave Foreman delivered a passionate message at the C...

Most of us associate Gifford Pinchot, Aldo Leopold, John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt as the big 4 names of the early 20th Century Environment renaissance in the USA..............In fact, George Bird Grinnell, Publisher of Forest and Stream(later Field and Stream) Magazine was a 5th "engine of instrumentation" in establishing the first Audubon-type clubs for wildlife preservation and having a profound influence on Teddy Roosevelt............Getting Roosevelt to buy in to his earnest belief that "Americans must take responsibility for the natural world upon which they depend, not only in a practical, economic sense, but in a spiritual one as well. Once that sense of responsibility took root in the public's collective mind, the only sure way to have conservation succeed was to have the state and federal governments adopt a program of continuous, apolitical, scientific management"...............We need a few more Grinnell's around today to get our Congressmen to understand the a strong and prosperous America starts with a optimum biological diversity and clean air and water

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http://www.foresthistory.org/publications/fht/fhtspringfall2005/fht05_grinnell.pdf   Pathbreaking Conservationist (by John Reiger) GEORGE...

In my opinion, President Obama probably has a intellectual's warm spot in his heart as it relates to biological diversity and open space preservation,,,,,,However, his management style of delegating policy writing to Congress and other Federal Offices has not proven optimum and results-oriented.......In fact, in the two years Obama has held office, Endangered Species designations are just slightly up on an annual basis over the anemic record that former President George Bush generated.........Whether it be Endangered Species and Critical Habitat designation, balancing the budget or putting forth a plan for private sector job creation, the President(in my opinion) is too "Professorial" and not Action-oriented enough(selling his ideas with intensity to the electorate) in his leading the Country........... When you leave things in the hands of "fringe fanatics" like Nancy Pelosi............When you do not clean out the Bush era middle bureaucrats in the the Dept.'s of Interior and Agriculture, you get either narrow partisan suggestions or inaction/stall-mode execution of policy-------Both are bad for our wildlife and People

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Wildlife at Risk Face Long Line at U.S. Agency By TODD WOODY In February, the Obama administration declared the Pacific walrus to be at ris...
Saturday, April 23, 2011

"Talk,Talk, Talk" is what the 5 Nations that ring the Arctic are doing and will continue to do regarding the shrinking Polar Ice that threatens the long term survival of the Polar Bear.............Unfortuantely, a concrete Action Plan to slow Global Warming is the answer and not one Country is ready to stand up and be counted on this......The Bears are indeed on a slippery slope to blinking out

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Canada will discuss polar bear conservation with governments and scientists from four other Arctic nations at a meeting this fall in Iqaluit...

Center For Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club, The Conservancy of Southwest Florida and others are seeking to overturn a Federal District Judge ruling in early April that refused to provide cougars with expanded critical habitat protections due to the technicality that the Cats were put on the Endangered Species roster prior to Critical habitat law being part and parcel of Endangered Species designation................Talk about a "penny wise/pound poor" ruling by that Judge.............Do you think he lacks ethics and empathy?

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Conservationists seek reversal of court ruling on Florida panther habitat Conservation groups have appealed a federal judge's junking o...

The 23 or so Oregon Wolves that will be under the jurisdiction of the State FWS in a couple of months will continue to have protection under Oregon law...........Too tiny a population to institute a wolf hunting season at this time

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What the federal delisting for wolves means for Oregon's packs, ranchers   By Richard Cockle View full size Wolves in Oregon will contin...
Friday, April 22, 2011

Ed Bangs who has headed up the Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Program since 1988 is retiring in June from the USFW.........A collaborator of the first order.....................Utilized a down home sense of humor to win converts on both side of the wolf divide......... He showed tenacity in dealing with bureaucrats and politics.............and perhaps most importantly, Ed always kept science at the forefront of the emotionally charged political debate........Let it be known that Bangs was always for restoring Wolves to the Rockies, was always empathetic about dealing with local resident concerns first hand and quick to resolve any depredations of livestock that wolves caused..........In his mind, with the removal of wolves from the list of endangered species this past week by an act of Congress, he feels he's successfully completed his job. "When we started there were 10 wolves near Glacier. Now there's 1,700 in six states and they're being delisted. That's pretty rewarding." ..........Agree completely with Ed or not, this blog tips our hat to him for his Professional efforts on behalf of wolves and people.............We wish Ed Bangs all good things as he starts the next chapter of his life and hope that he stays connected in some fashion to Wildlife Restoration

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Man who led federal wolf recovery effort retiring By Eve Byron HELENA, Mont. — Ed Bangs, who for 23 years led the effort to reintroduce and...

The University of Mississippi conducted research over the 4 year period 1993-97 to determine how the sympatric mesocarnivores....... The Bobcat, Coyote and Gray Fox interact in our Southeast..............."Bobs" and Coyotes do in fact share core home ranges whereas Coyotes and Gray Foxes while having overlapping home ranges, do not share proximate core ranges...................The literature suggests that Coyotes come out on top in encounters with both Bobcats and Foxes.............Gray Foxes can climb trees(Red Foxes cannot climb) and evidence in Southeastern Canada that we have discussed previously suggests that Gray Foxes are displacing Red Foxes in high density Coyote habitat due to their ability to use the tree canopy as a sanctuary

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Research Findings Interactions Between Bobcats and Coyotes We radiomarked and simultaneously monitored 61 adult bobcats and...

45 Black Bears in Nevada are to be harvested in the States first sanctioned hunt this coming Falll...............There are betweeen 200 and 300 Black Bears in Nevada....A planned take of 45 animals(16 to 25% of the Bruin population) is not a plan that seems to encourage sustainability, especialy in light of the fact that the bears are principally located around Lake Tahoe and not yet expansive enought in size to have pioneered the full expanse of Nevada......As reported on weeks back, NOBEARHUNTNV.ORG is challenging this hunt based on FWS not having employed proper Science in determining Bear population levels

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Opponents appealing Nevada's black bear hunting regs Written by Jeff DeLong At a glance: Nevada bear hunt plan calls for: » Tag quota ...
Thursday, April 21, 2011

The hysteria that has volcanoed up from the Northern Rockies delisting of Wolves is providing USFW with impetus to go for a 4th try at delisting the Wolves living in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan............They are approaching this attempt with a "carrot" stating that these Great Lakes Wolves are primarily Gray wolves(c.lupus) and that they are differentiated from Eastern Wolves(c.lupus x lycaon) that historically roamed our Eastern woodlands from Algonquin Park in Canada on down through the USA Appalachians .............The Feds hold out the wistful "promise" that these Eastern wolves would still have Endangered Species Act protections and could be restored to their former East Coast haunts one day...................I say great to the lycaon restoration..............but realistically our top Wolf biologists feel that there is a canid soup mixture of Gray and Eastern Wolves in the Great Lakes region and that they are not pure Gray's....................If this is the case, then a faulty premise for delisting..................On the other hand, our three MIdwestern States have shown a much higher co-existance tolerance for the wolves of their region and perhaps the States can indeed provide a humane and positive management plan that all stakeholders could sign off.....and in the process create a shining template for delisting that our Western and Eastern States could emulate and adopt

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Another wolf push is on The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has made formal its pledge to remove federal protections for wolves in Minnesota,...

Tapping into our friend Cristina Eisenberg twice today...........first, she reminisces about her Earth Day visit three years ago to Aldo Leopold's Wisconsin Sand County farm where she studied Aspen regeneration in a high deer desnsity region.......Cristina's findings are the same whether they be from Yellowstone, Glacier or Sand County............Where you do not have wolves, deer lose their fear of predation and get to browse hard and often on their favorite foods, with Aspens taking a pounding and not being able to grow up and reach canopy height status(and resulting adverse cascading impacts on bird and small mammal life)

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Cristina Eisenberg cristina.eisenberg@oregonstate.edu     Earth Day at the Shack April 22, 2011 Three springs ago I visited the Leopold Mem...

Commentary from Oregon about the 23 new wolf residents of that State and conjecture on what their future holds based on last weeks Congressional Wolf delisting in the Northern Rockies.......Our friend and contributor Ms. Cristina Eisenberg provides reinforcing commentary on the wolves ability to be a keystone and positive impactful species in Oregon..........Andy Stahl who heads up Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics giving us a history lesson on the fact that this is not the first time Congress has used a rider to overturn environmental laws.... Back in 1991, they did the same with the Spotted Owl and again in Tennessee with the Snail Darter(fish).............On each of these occasions, when Politics trumps sound Science, the result is always: "more dead owls, more dead wolves, more dead snail darters"

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Not So Big, Not So Bad Wolves return to Oregon, cause a ruckus in Congress By Camilla Mortensen To follow a certain Tea-Partyesque line of...