Wednesday, August 28, 2013

While the headline of the article below on Wolves migrating from Mexico into Arizona is confusing and unclear, the article itself reveals some of the most positive news about the potential for expanded rewilding of Wolves that I have heard in some time.............The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service will stop relocating Mexican Wolves that wander into Arizona back into the current reintroduction boundaries in the Apache and Gila National Forests .........The bottom line is that any Wolves that make it across the border into the USA from Mexico will have a chance to naturally recolonize as much of Arizona as they can............Hopefully there is enough unwalled habitat for those Wolves to make it up North...........FANTASTIC!

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Agreement limits relocation of wild wolves azstarnet.com 0 PHOENIX — Federal officials have agreed not to try to capture an...
Tuesday, August 27, 2013

I'm the first one to talk about how man-made CO2 and methane from all types of fossil fuel extraction(including Natural Gas Fracking) is causing Global Warming................Yet, in the same breath I will tell you that putting windmills on every mountaintop and farmers field along with fuel cells across our deserts is not the answer to our problems...............Industrializing our remaining open spaces and somehow being told that we are being environmentally responsible is pure B.S........................And the fact is that all the windmills in the world are not going to provide us with the power we need to keep our economy strong and our houses warmed and cooled............Three separate studies have now documented that industrial wind does not reduce greenhouse gas emissions..................... It is a simple concept to understand.................. Since wind energy is intermittent and unreliable, it cannot be counted on, and thus requires backup fossil fuel power availability................. When the wind blows, a fossil fuel plant has to be turned down or off........................ When the wind stops blowing (which can vary on a minute-to-minute basis), the power source has to be ramped up again...................... It is analogous to driving in stop-and-go traffic -- more fuel is consumed and greater amounts of carbon are emitted................Thus far, every so-called solution to Global warming involves desecrating the land with ugliness and destruction..........................What is the alternative that can power us up and keep our open spaces OPEN AND GREEN????????

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Critics and Supporters Agree – Giant Wind Turbines Are Ugly northeastwindmills.com Paul Crowe West Virginia wind turbines destroy ...
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Monday, August 26, 2013

A thank you to biologist Roland Kays for posting Too Many Deer: A Bigger Threat to Eastern Forests than Climate Change? on his Facebook page..................This Nature Conservancy article adds to the story that our great American Naturalist(Aldo Leopold) first brought to our attention over 60 years ago when he stated: “I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer.” —Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949 ....................Findings similar to Leopold have been documented with increasing frequency across the country..................... U.S. Forest Service researchers have noted that even if areas with high deer densities were managed to reduce the impact of deer, there may be long-lasting legacy effects (Royo 2010).................. Webster (2005) found severe and lasting impacts at Smoky Mountain National Park to be so complete that some plants such as trilliums were unlikely to recolonize local areas on their own....................... Deer are also well-documented vectors for the dispersal of non-native exotic plants (Knight et al. 2009, Baiser et al. 2008, Williams and Ward 2006)..............In northern Minnesota, TNC staff demonstrated that decades of over browsing has led to recruitment failure for many tree species, a shift in sub-canopy and canopy dominance towards non-preferred white spruce, and significantly lower forest productivity (White 2012)................ In New York, TNC scientists report that one-third of New York’s forests are currently compromised as a result of excessive herbivory (see New York Forest Regeneration Study)......................No amount of human hunting is going to bring our forests back to biological health without the return of the Deer's "dancing partners", the Wolf and the Puma.......................Their age old dance has been interrupted by our myopic and narcistic outlook on the natural world that holds that everything is on the planet for our use and plunder and that the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" applies only to the human animal rather than all of life's creation........................Time to wake up boys and girls and fight long and hard for full rewilding of our natural areas, not a piecemeal approach with a species here and a species there----our long term health merits that we find a way to minimize the naysayers and create private and public partnerships that make rewilding a reality in our lifetime

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Too Many Deer: A Bigger Threat to  Eastern Forests than Climate Change? A beautiful animal that also happens to arguably be the ...

Stripped of it's carnivores(Grizzlies, Wolves, Pumas) by the mid 1800's, Iowa, with only Foxes, Coyotes and Bobcats(10-25 pound animals) remaining,, still find themselves concerned with a declining deer population............The dramatic loss of Conservation Reserve land due to rising commodity prices and demand for biofuels, has shrunk habitat for all wild creatures ...... There used to be some deer because of old groves and CRP acres, now these areas have basically become deer-free...................Combine this key factor with Global Warming induced drought and you have a far larger problem than if you had significant open spaces that allowed for Deer,.Bison, Wolves and Pumas to exist side by side as they did pre "sod-busting"

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The state of deer(Iowa) spencerdailyreporter.com By  Dana Larsen Decreasing amounts conservation land and last year's  d...
Sunday, August 25, 2013

When our native trees start to succumb to the synergistic scourge of global warming, chemical pollution and imported pests/ disease, one has to be far-sighted and empathetic enough to realize that all of animal life including Man becomes threatened with existence....................Our Chestnuts, Elms, Oaks, Maples, Dogwoods, Hemlocks, Pines, Ash and a myriad of other forest trees are "dying in plain sight" in front of our eyes through our insistence on "good living through the use of chemistry" and sloppy safeguarding of what comes in and out of our Country on airplanes and container ships..................When alien parasites, insects and pathogens enter North American ecosystems,,,,,,,,,,,,,,When so-called "exhale" by-products of industry"(Co2, methane, pesticides, etc, etc) enter our North American ecosystems,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,THE RESULT IS DEATH AND DESTRUCTION--SOMETIMES QUICKLY, SOMETIMES SLOWLY, BUT ALWAYS INEVITABLY.....Such is the case as the Asian Emerald Ash Borer bears down on our iconic Ash trees, aka the "baseball bat tree"..................Yes we are attempting to fight this "DESTROYER" through the use of biological control agents such as parasitic wasps and native birds,,,,,,,,,,,,,,but what will be the ultimate impact to all the citizens of our woodlands where the Ash tree is an integral member?................Just how many tree genocides can our forests absorb before our animal, bird and insect life blinks out for good?

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Native Species Step Up  to Fight Ash Parasite Scientists Make Headway in  Curbing Scourge With Some  Woodpeckers, Wasps Caroli...
Friday, August 23, 2013

Unlike in the East where the Fisher is making it's way back as a denizen of the forest, the Pacific Fisher is still struggling to get a toe-hold............Now Washington State is considering rewilding this weasel back into Mt. Ranier and Cascades National Parks where it has been absent since the 1990's...............This is the one native species not to be found within the Cascade Range................Fishers are associated with forests having moderate to dense forest canopy and complex structure (for example, large amounts of coarse down wood, moderate shrub cover, dead trees and trees with decay elements, and a component of hardwood trees)...................The Species has become at risk mainly because of loss and fragmentation of this type of habitat due to timber harvest, roads, urban development, recreation, and wildfires

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Input sought on return of weasel-like fishers to Mount Rainier National Park yelmonline.com Photo provided by the Washin...