Sunday, November 25, 2012

The 2nd Ocelot confirmed to be living in Arizona since the mid 1960's has been spotted twice in the past two years and appears to robust and healthy...............Is there a mate for him/her out there in the Huachuca Mountains?

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Wildlife officials say ocelot in Huachuca Mountains appears to be same one spotted in 2011 TUCSON, Ariz. — State wildlife official...

Of the 100 Pumas that occupy southern Florida, about 25% get killed annually due to collisions with cars..............As we have constantly reported on, US Fish & Wildlife has to collaborate with the state of Florida and get additional critical habitat put in place to give the Cats further room to spread their wings...................Does anyone know if Florida transportation Officials are consdiering highway under/overpasses for the Pumas in addition to posting signs urging motorists to slow down----Us humans are not reading the sgins!!!!

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Florida Urges Motorists to Drive Slowly in Panther Country- laht.com MIAMI – Florida officials urged motorists to exercise cau...
Saturday, November 24, 2012

Isle Royale Wolf and Moose Researchers Rolf Peterson and John Vucetich have now declared their preferred solution to the dwindiling Wolf population on the island--REINTRODUCE MORE WOLVES IF THE CURRENT LOBOS GO EXTINCT!!!!!!!!

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What Should Be Done About the Wolves at Isle Royale National Park, U.S.? ScienceDaily — The number of wolves at Isle Royale National Par...

Researchers are seeking to learn about Wolverine migration patterns in and around Banff, Yoho and Kootenay National Parks in Canada this winter..........While pound for pound the strongest land mammal in North America, do Wolverines have the abililty to adapt their movements to the Trans-Canada Highway so as not to perish and become gene-bottlenecked?

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Wolverine-tracking project puts out call for volunteers Skiers to tote beaver carcasses long distances through deep snow cbc.com ...

The Center for Biological Diversity urging that additional Mexican Wolves be released into Arizona and New Mexico to diversify the gene pool of the 58 free roaming Mexican Wolves that exist in the wild..........To that end, there are now 3 Wolves being acclimated to desert living in a holding pen in New Mexico awaiting the necessary Federal and State permits allowing release

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Wolf from Brookfield Zoo sent to New Mexico to be prepared for release Only 58 Mexican gray wolves in the wild in the Southwest; ...

Yesterday, we focused on the historical Continent wide trek that British Seaman Samuel Hearne undertook during the three year period of 1769-1772,,,,,,, chronicling native life, fauna and flora from Hudson Bay(Canada) clear across to the Arctic Ocean........We continue today with his observation of the Bear and Fox species he encountered on this epic journey

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A JOURNEY TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN; THE ADVENTURES OF SAMUEL HEARNE-1769-1772 Black Bears -"Black Bears are not numerous to the north,...
Thursday, November 22, 2012

In 1769, Samuel Hearne, an Englishman in the British Navy, began a three year overland journey of exploration from the Hudson Bay(Canada)to the Arctic Ocean...........Many consider his accoutning of the fauna and flora of Northern Canada to be as descriptive as Audubon's detailing of the American outdoors...........I detail below Hearne's reporting of the wildlife he encountered along his 3500 mile trek

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A JOURNEY TO THE NORTHERN OCEAN BY SAMUEL HEARNE -"WOLVES ARE FREQUENTLY MET WITH IN THE COUNTRY'S WEST OF HUDSON BAY, BOTH ON...

Thomas Paine is smiling this morning as "COMMON SENSE" finally rules the day in North Carolina where the courts ruled to temporarilly stop nighttime "spotlight" kiling of Coyotes---effectively halting the killing of any more Red Wolves----4 of the endangered Wolves(mistaken for coyotes because of physical size similarities between the two species) have been killed during the spotlight hunting to date and unless a permanent ban on spotlighting is put into effect, the ongoing effort by biologists to keep the red wolf lineage alive will be severely crippled,,,,,,,,,,,,,and perhaps thwarted entirely!

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Fourth red wolf killing prompts hunting change Spotlight hunting for coyotes banned By Brian North;wcti12.com CHAPEL HILL - ...
Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Conservationists consider road kill such a threat to species survival that they have begun looking for solutions through an emerging discipline known as road ecology.......Roads present more than just the potential for dangerous interactions between vehicles and wildlife; they fragment habitat and restrict the movement of wildlife species............. Although, many wildlife management and transportation agencies have worked to mitigate vehicle-associated incidents with wildlife on our roadways, there is still much to learn about the ways in which wildlife interact with roads.......Joe Northrup and his colleagues at the University of Alberta, Edmonton and the University of Calgary documented the response of grizzlies to vehicular traffic noting that roads themselves are not so detrimental to wildlife, and grizzly bears in particular, but that the human use of roads is what needs to be examined............What they found was that bears avoided roads with high and medium traffic volumes and instead used low traffic volume roads and crossed these low volume roads with greater frequency............ They also found that bears utilized private agricultural land over multi-use public land............ The agricultural land was typically higher in road density, but lower in traffic volume.......In fact, traffic had a greater impact on bear behavior than road density........... .Typically management plans focus on limiting road density, but with increasing industrial development in bear habitat, this is becoming difficult.............. Incorporating measures aimed at reducing traffic, such as access management, into these plans will be an important step for bear conservation

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Contributing Editor Dr. Jordan Schaul reports on the first study to examine grizzly bear behavior in response to spatial and temporal variat...
Tuesday, November 20, 2012

So as of 2008, did Wisconsin have 13,000, 26,000 or 40,000 Black Bears roaming its woodlands?..............If the scientific study that was conducted in 2008 by the U. of Wisconsin was accurate, 13,000 Bruins was the best estimate, not 26,000 or 40,000 as some wild ass hypotheses suggest...........With the 2012 Bear huting season just concluded with 4400 Bears killed, that means that 34% of the population was destroyed,,,,,,,,,a potential tipping point that could lead to a reduced population...........Note that the Dept. of Ntl. Resources states in their press release below that: "We are likely now to the point where we will need to consider backing off on permit levels in some areas this year."--------Like most State Game Commissions, Wisconsin DNR seems to be in the pockets of the hunters and farmers and not utilizing sound scientific management practices until population freefalls or inbalances force their hand

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Hunters register 4,400 black bear in 2012 seas MADISON (Press Release) –wisconsin.gov   Hunters registered more than 4,400 black bears...
Monday, November 19, 2012

U. of Wisconsin Wildlife Professor Tim Van Deelen says the Wisconsin deer population is doing quite nicely, even as wolf numbers have grown.............. "The impact of 900 wolves in a state with 30,000 square miles of wolf range and several hundred thousand deer is likely to be minimal".............."I'm a population ecologist, and it's a difficult question whether wolves are real competition for hunters"................. "There is the potential for competition, but everything about the evolution and life history of the white tail deer is designed to offset losses to predation"........"As near as I can tell from DNR harvest and monitoring data, wolves are not causing a dramatic decrease in the growth rate of the deer population, and whatever level of competition is occurring must be trivial"............. "There are hunters who are unlucky to have a bad experience at the local level, but at the statewide level, I am not seeing significant wolf impacts"......"It's always the same arguments"........... "People argue that there are not as many deer as there should be, or as many as the DNR says, yet since Aldo Leopold's time, the deer population has increased"

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Deer, wolf and hunting: Professor shines spotlight of data on a durable debate    by David Tenenbaum ;wisc.com As the Wisconsin ...

Pine Martens are starting their march back to inhabiting larger swaths of Newfoundland, moving from the western end of the island as far east as the Avalon Peninsula........

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Bay St. George a hotspot for pine marten on west coast A pine marten is seen in a tree in a Newfoundland forest.   Paul Hutch...
Sunday, November 18, 2012

"Widespread development in the booming oil-and-gas area(British Columbia) has opened up the forest habitat, boosting moose and deer populations by providing rich browsing range"............ "In the past, wolf numbers rose and fell in synchronicity with the caribou population"............ "But with more moose and deer around, wolf numbers have stayed high, disrupting the natural predator-prey symbiosis"........ "Put simply, the caribou are literally taking it in the neck, with wolves causing 40 per cent of all mortalities"--Elena Jones, B.C. Biologist..........So what should be done to save the Caribou???............"That really is quite a political decision," Ms. Jones said. "My job is basically to say these are the ways that will increase caribou populations, and then the public really decides how they want to do it"........... Do they want to kill wolves and maintain development?"............ "Or do they want to decrease development?" ........"Those are really the public's choices"..........And of course the B.C. Provincial Government has come right out favoring development,,,,,,,,, putting forth a draconian year round, no bag limits Wolf hunting proposal---Can it be stopped from being implemented?---See Sadie Paar's plea on this subject in the 2nd blog entry today, below

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Caribou, Wolves or Development Mark Hume;globeandmail.com Caribou populations are declining so quickly along the proposed Enbridge Nort...

Sadie Paar is a relentless warrior on behalf of Wolves in Canada...............She forwarded the letter below that rebuts the inane rationale that the Province of British Columbia is putting forth for the institution of a nearly year long Wolf hunting season that is open ended without bag limits......The way this draft plan is structured, unless significant public opposition is mobilized in the coming weeks, the B.C. government will further relax and liberalize wolf hunting, trapping and other kill programs for years to come.......... Several concerned groups will be following this issue and speaking out for wolves as what is clearly shaping up to be a renewed government-sanctioned assault on B.C.'s wolves............These groups include: Pacific Wild, Valhalla Wilderness Society, Furbearers Defenders, the LifeForce Foundation, the Northern Lights Wolf Centre, World Temperate Rainforest Network, Peter A. Dettling Wilderness Education Centre, and likely more to come.

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Please contact Honourable Terry Lake, BC MInister of the Environment to oppose this plan; env.minister@gov.bc.ca Groups Pack Together to Vo...

Our friend, Coyote Biologist Jon Way our of Massachusetts, recently penned an article for INTERNATIONAL WOLF magazine that seeks to explain why Coyotes do not seem to engender the same type of empathy by the general public that Wolves do

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Love wolves, hate coyotes   Click below to read a new publication I wrote that just came out! Way, J. G. 2012. Love wolves and hate co...

Our very good friends at COUGAR REWILDING, Chris Spatz and John Laundre have penned an outstanding treatise on why a National Cougar Recovery Plan should be implemented by the US Fish & Wildlife Agency-----Read their most excellent and comprehensive rationale for why the Puma merits restroration back into our midwest and eastern woodlands(click on link below)

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From: Christopher Spatz spatzcat61@gmail.com ; Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 07:57:29 -0500 To: Rick Meril< rick.meril@gmail.com ...

Writing in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, which laid down the foundations of evolution as a science, Darwin reported, "There are two varieties of the wolf inhabiting the Catskill Mountains, in the United States, one with a light greyhound-like form, which pursues deer, and the other more bulky, with shorter legs, which more frequently attacks the shepherd's flocks."..........The debate continues as to whether the Eastern Wolf is a distinct species(same as the Red Wolf now relegated to the barrier islands in North Carolina) or is a subspecies of the Gray Wolf(a wolf/coyote hybrid)..............Very smart scientists come out on both sides of this equation with the US Fish & Wildlife folks beginning to side with the "distinct species" classification,,,,,,,This could lead to gray wolves being delisted in the Eastern USA,,,,,,,,,,,, In my opinion, this would be a bad thing unless this same Agency gave Endangered Species Protection to the Eastern Wolf .............I say this because under the endangered species classification, the USFW folks have a mandate to restore the endangered animal to regions of its former habitat deemed still suitable to support their existance...........There have been peer reviewed studies done that state that suitable gray wolf habitat exists in New England and NY State to support several thousand gray wolves..................If the USFW delists the gray wolf in the East, there is no chance for wolves being restored to this geographic region unless this same Agency designates Eastern Wolves as endangered..............A complex and urgent issue this is and near and dear to my heart as it is one of the initial reasons why I began this blog two years ago--We will continue to monitor this issue closely and provide you with updates as to what-happens-next for Wolves east of the Mississippi

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Eastern wolves howl for recognition Dan Vergano, USA TODAY   Eastern wolves, once thought a gray wolf subspecies, qualify as a di...

Whether it be over females or food, male Grizzlies often duke it out to establish dominance and territory rights---outstanding pictures of two male bears in the Katmai National Park in Alaska battling over food below

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Japanese photographer Shogo Asao captures two grizzly bears fighting in Alaska's Katmai National Park theaustralian.com       ...