Thursday, August 25, 2011

450 acres of sub-alpine Forest surrounding the BRECKENRIDGE SKI RESORT in Colorado is targeted for further resort expansion.........Lynx love this type terrain and the Forest Service has acknowledged this but still has stated that they are in favor of proceeding with the development.............Contradictory statements by Forest Service Officials first stating that lynx can sustain the expansion impacts and then turning around and making other statements that suggest anxiety about Lynx ability to persist in mixed developement regions............Your head begins to spin when you read the article below............So much "used car salesmen" b.s. in these type discussion..........Talk about political mumbo jumbo and slide of hand and deception...........Nauseating it is and representative of the ANYTHING BUT SCIENCE BASED DECISION MAKING that should be at play in managing for long term persistance of the just recovering and restored Colorado Lynx population

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Ski Resort Expansion Threatens Lynx Habitat Plans for Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado could affect the elusive cat, among other environm...

Hamilton, Montana Protest Rally--Seeking to get Montana to mitigate their wolf management plan and set guidlines that are ecologically sound and not just focused on rancher/hunter bias

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On Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 1:17 AM, Toni Stark < iamironwoman@gmail.com > wrote: Rick, We are planning our protest rally in Hamilton...
Wednesday, August 24, 2011

First recorded picture of a cougar in Nebraska pursuing a white tail deer..........Location is the Niobrara Valley region in North-Central Nebraska, the 2nd most prolific area of the State where a breeding population exists

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A trail camera mounted on a wooden fence post in north-central Nebraska captured a rare image of a mountain lion in hot pursuit of a white...

The Washington State proposed Wolf management plan--Backround and July 2011 Update(click on links below for a full read of the updated plan)

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Washington State Gray Wolf Conservation and Management The gray wolf is an endangered species throughout Wash...

Vermont Black Bear Season to begin Sept 1.....State Biologists claim the population has doubled from 3000 to 6000 Bruins over the past 25 years and are now found throughout the State..........Limiting the season to two Months through mid November allows Bears to den up and females to have the chance to raise and teach their new borns through the Spring and Summer Months

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Vermont's bear hunting season opens Sept. 1 and runs through November 16 WATERBURY, Vt. — Vermont's bear hunting season opens next m...
Tuesday, August 23, 2011

"Reducing wildlife conflicts through a market approach is not a new idea". ........."In a few cases, environmental groups have paid ranchers to voluntarily retire federal permits, and the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife began a program -- now run by the federal government -- to compensate ranchers for confirmed livestock kills"...... "For state land trusts, open permit auctions are obligatory because the law requires them to reap the highest profits to support schools"......."Congress should make this happen on a wider scale, empowering land managers to fully appraise permits using the latest environmental and livestock science and by allowing ranchers to sell them at market rates".......... "The Endangered Species Act may be our best tool for keeping wolves from going extinct, but a fair market for grazing could help find the right balance when wolves roam free"--Brendan Borrell of the PROPERTY AND ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH CENTER

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by: Brendan Borrell visited Bozeman, Montana , as a media fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center.....his opinions on wolf/ra...

Nevada is underway with its first Black Bear hunt in modern times with a quota of 20 animals(maximum 6 females)...............The season will stretch until December or until the quota is reached............The "quota is reached" philosophy is a flawed one in my opinion..........Why with a small population of Bears is it necessary to allow killing until the quota is reached.............Instead, if December comes and goes and only 12 Bruins have been taken, SO BE IT! Give the bears some space and let them grow in number...........Quota till reached makes no sense if your goal is to expand the population across a wider area of the State................For you hunters, it ups the ante by putting a finite time limit................For the bears, a sporting chance(of sorts) to make it to the "finish line" of the hunt without being snared.............

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Fourth bear killed in Nevada black bear hunt Share The Associated Press Published: Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2011 - 4:21 pm Last Modified: Tues...

So why is it that almost every "hunting & fishing" news reporter has a near addiction need to tell everyone that some act of god will be necessary for cougars to once again roam the Eastern half of the USA?......Below is a Massachusetts reporter staying true to the "cougar imposible in the East" party line........... The equivalent mantra of a democratic or republican candidate adhering right down the line on his/her monotonous and likely untrue "talking points".............I realize that the odds are long of both a male and female cat wandering down from the Dakotas or Great Lakes to mate up in New England............I also know it would be best if State Wildlife Agencies grew some cajones and went about restoring Cougars because it was optimum for the landscape to have this trophic carnivore "doing its thing" as a "regulator of the watershed".............But we have had one occurrence(Connecticut cat from Dakotas)take place that no one felt was possible.......I choose not to swallow the party line of "cougar imposible"..............While simultaneously also working to get the States to restore our majestic Mountain Lion as part of their rewilding programs

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The brouhaha over local mountain lion reports quieted considerably, with most authorities having speculated that we're likely seeing sin...
Monday, August 22, 2011

British Columbia residents are inadvertantly bringing on the destruction of their Grizzlies and Black Bears through their errant garbage disposal habits.....The simple act of putting your garbage out the day of pick-up rather than the night before would do so much to minimize the habituation of bears to human refuse..........Bear sightings(not population increases) are up nearly 20% because of our lax and innappropriate behavior which causes bears to lose their fear of human settlement, ultimately reinforcing the known fact that a FED BEAR IS A DEAD BEAR,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.It is up to us to reduce the conflicts and subsequent mortalities by making a simple change in our weekly disposal routine

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167th bear killed at B.C. trailer park A black bear that was trapped at a Cultus Lake trailer park was the 167th bear to be killed by conse...

Tennessee has declared that Exotic Wild Boars to be eradicated from the landscape(In my opinion, unlikely to occur unless a combination of extreme trapping of hogs and restoration of wolves and cougars take place).........The hogs reproduce like rats.........rip up landscapes and in general throw the system into disrepair and ill-health............Hogs began going feral 400-500 years ago as explorers and farmers let their pigs forage the woods for food.............Many did not return to the "farm", forming wild communites of their own...........Add to that hunting groups setting feral hogs loose in different regions for hunters and you have an "introduced exotic" animal that is one tough customer to eliminate from the system

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Tenessee's new wild hog management now in effect New regulations regarding wild hog management in Tennessee are now in effect. Changes ...

The Santa Monica Mountains that ring Los Angeles continue to be a "safehouse" for Cougars, Coyotes and Black Bears............Every City in America should look to imitate the extensive, contiguous greenspace that Los Angeles has purposefully saved into perpetuity........Californians, while nervous and even sometimes hostile to" wildlife in their midst" have nonetheless over the past 40 years voted to protect their keystone Cougars and Coyotes and to make it unlawful to randomly shoot, poison or trap them simply because they appear in and around our towns............Wildlife officals continually remind folks of the steps they need to take to co-exist with our Carnivores.........California is screwed up in many ways.........This is not one of them.........Kudos to the forward thinking of the residents who reside there!

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Mountain lions have residents on edge in Burbank, Glendale hills With multiple confirmed sightings of mountain lions and coyotes in the regi...
Sunday, August 21, 2011

One of the first Postings on this blog(Feb 24, 2010) featured an article by Cheryl Lyn Dybas entitled: "MINNESOTA MOOSE,,GHOSTS OF THE NORTHERN FOREST"(at end of the article below, click on link to read her article) .........As I stated in that blogpost, "We have a conundrum as it relates to our Great Lakes Moose population, once so vibrant and now in severe decline. Simultaneous to this decline is the acceleration of the Moose population in New England and New York State.........Moose have recolonized this region in ever growing numbers seemingly facing the same limiting variables that Great Lakes Moose face..........warming temperatures, debilitating Winter ticks, other ticks that spread brain disease from whitetail deer, changing habitat brought on by human sprawl, fawn predation from coyotes and black bears"..............It is true that wolves are not in New England(and of course are 3000 strong in Minn.,,,,,,,, but Minn. Dept of Ntl Resources is on record stating that while wolves do take moose fawns, the downward spiral in the Great Lakes Moose population is due to adult females not living long enough to breed consecutive generations of youngsters(Wolves not taking large numbers of adult females)............They do feel that artifical feeding of deer has to stop so as to minimize congregations of these animals, which encourage the spread of brain parasites to Moose............

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Can Minnesota's moose be saved? By Dave Orrick Minnesota's iconic moose population - now down to about 5,000 - stands in the bala...

Louisa Wilcox of the NRDC writing on the "3 sisters of death" that are obliterating Whitebark Pine Trees(a key foodstuff for Grizzlies).........(1)White Pine blisterrust, (2)climate change and (3) Mountain Pine beetles teaming up to bring a Shakespere-like tradgedy to this keystone tree........... "There is one significant difference between watching the play Macbeth at your local theater, and watching the current whitebark tragedy playing out in the real world. The blood is not on Macbeth's or Lady Macbeth's hands, it's on ours. Because blisterrust would not be a problem, except that we humans accidently imported it to North America. And climate change and the related mountain pine beetle epidemic are the direct result of our use of fossil fuels. We may not be able to wash the blood off our hands—as Lady Macbeth could not, in her famous sleepwalking scene. But we should be able to make a commitment to turn the thermostat down, so that what's left of these beleaguered forests have a fighting chance—along with the rest of us on this fragile planet"--Louisa Wilcox

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Twisted Sisters: of Whitebark Pine and Macbeth Upon reading last week's finding by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) that whiteba...

The Kennebec Journal(Maine) newspaper taking a strong stance in favor of the U.S. Interior Dept doing a feasibility study on the pros and cons of a Maine Woods National Park........As the Editors state: "why be afraid of a study"..........."The Study would give both sides of the debate a common set of facts to argue over"

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From : Michael Kellett < kellett@restore.org > Sent : Sun Aug 21 11:22:15 2011 Subject : OPINION: Maine Woods National Park study w...
Saturday, August 20, 2011

Helen Mcginnis at COUGAR RE-WILDING bringing more clarity to yesterdays Post regarding alleged Cougar attacks of horses in Quebec..............Helen rightly reminds that Cougars do not seek to risk life and limb attacking full grown horses ..............While we all hope that Quebec still harbors F. Concolor, the odds are that the horses that were hurt in this Canadian Province likely sustained their injuries in some way other than through an attack by a Cougar

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From : Helen McGinnis < HelenMcGinnis@frontiernet.net To : Meril, Rick Sent : Sat Aug 20 05:24:27 2011 Subject : Alleged cougar attacks...

The continued growth of the CANADIAN WOLF COALITION is causing this great grassroots organization to be absorbed by the NORTHERN LIGHTS WILDLIFE WOLF CENTRE................CWC founder Sadie Paar is handing over the reigns to the folks at Northern Lights and is confident that they will continue to push for best Wolf conservation in Canada.............Sadie, we wish you luck in your next chapter of life and know that you will continue to be on the front lines of ALL THINGS WOLF!!!!!

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From : sadie parr < canadianwolfco@gmail.com > To : writeus@caribooadvisor.com < sadester@hotmail.com > Sent : Sat Aug 20 1...

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar makes a purposeful trip to Millinocket/Medway, Maine to listen to residents voice their pros and cons regarding the Roxanne Quimby/Restore the North Woods National Park proposal...........He assures folks that the Federal Government would look to work in partnership with the people of Maine on any Park initiative that might evolve out of the on-going discussions going on around the State.............There are many "die-hards" who do not want the Feds messing with their lives in any way regardless of the unemployment situation in this part of the World...........There are others who would like to see both the Park and the Millinocket paper mill spring to life simultaneously........Stay tuned for more on this issue...........Could a new day be dawning in Maine?

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By Nick Sambides Jr MILLINOCKET, Maine — Federal feasibility studies recommend against 50 percent of the proposed parks they study, and th...
Friday, August 19, 2011

Just like in the Eastern USA, there have been hundreds of unconfirmed Cougar sightings in Quebec and Ontario over the past 100 years..........Could two recent attacks on horses in South Stukely and Asbetos, Canada been caused by the Big Cats as evidence there suggests? Like in Connecticut where a South Dakota Cougar was found, might our majestic "Catamounts" be on the verge of a comeback back into our Eastern Forests?

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Big cat behind Quebec horse attack could be rare cougar (click on "THE MYSTERIOUS EASTERN COUGAR link below to watch a 5 minute/30 sec...

Wood Bison were part of the native fauna of Alaska well into the 1800's prior to going extinct due to overhunting and habitat alteration.............The USFW Service has been seeking to restore the Bison to Alaska have over the past 3 years and acquired pure animals from Canada(there are no Woods Bison alive in the USA) waiting, waiting , waiting for the proper "political" moment to put them back into the wild.............Release dates have come and gone and are now stalled while the state waits for the Fish and Wildlife Service to approve a special rule, called a 10j rule, that would not prohibit resource development, i.e. oil and gas drilling, in areas where the bison may be released. The snag at this point is over a provision in the 10j rule that will allow future hunting of wood bison after they are released, assuming the population increases to allow for that. Bottom line is that the Bison cannot impede resource extraction and must also be available to hunters................Guys, lets get several hundred of the Buffalo breeding and reproducing and then allow the hunt...........And let the biologists determine if drilling will impede the bison recovery,,,,,,,,,,not allow the oil and gas folks to run amuck in Bison terrain if it will crater their population..................Lets us employ the Fox News expression of "FAIR AND BALANCED" in getting the Bison back on the ground rather than giving in to the "my way or the highway" mantra that the Energy and Hunting folks are demanding be the basis to determine if restoration is to occur

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Release of bison into Alaska wilderness put on hold again by Tim Mowry FAIRBANKS — The re-introduction of wood bison in Alaska...