Sunday, November 23, 2014

More from the long running Chicago Urban Coyote Study headed up by our friend, Biologist Stan Gehrt...............The 2000 Coyotes living in Chicago are thriving,,,,,,,,,,,nocturnal, adaptable and largely staying clear of the residents in our third largest city

›
https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2845301/Meet-coyotes-roaming-downtown-Chicago-Pac...

HOW WOLVES CHANGE RIVERS is a great short video that you can open and watch by clicking on the link below...........The storyline follows the John Laundre and Bill Ripple LANDSCAPE OF FEAR paradigm which postulates convincingly that "fear and intimidation are far more common in nature than we realised, with surprising consequences not just for animals but for the entire landscape".............While this paradigm has been challenged in recent years by other biologists, if one reads closely all the competing literature, it seems to reveal that while predators like Wolves, Pumas and Grizzlies might not be solely responsible for promoting healthy landscapes from their top down trophic impacts, they are in fact significant contributors in keeping natural systems, "natura;", helping to optimize biodiversity via their coursing and ambushing of prey animals.............Enjoy the video.................and the Psychology Today article that reflects on THE LANDSCAPE OF FEAR

›
THE LANDSCAPE OF FEAR ON CAMERA IN THE YELLOWSTONE SYSTEM CLICK BELOW TO WATCH VIDEO http://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q ------------------...
Saturday, November 22, 2014

A new study of Grizzly Bears in the Greater Yellowstone reveals that yearlings can be successfully removed from their mothers and be successfully be relocated to other regions............."Yearlings can thrive when separated from sows translocated due to conflicts", said Mark Haroldson, supervisory wildlife biologist with the USGS Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. ......................Researchers log data on every grizzly handled in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem since the 1970s................. Haroldson is using data on sows with young relocations between 1981 and 2013 to track what happens to the offspring of bears......... .....Knowing yearlings can be moved separately from their mother and still survive to adulthood gives hope in cases where the mother is killed in an incident or due to repeat offenses, or needs to be moved elsewhere, Bjornlie said................ “The main issue is, we thought for a long time yearlings without mothers were basically lost to the population".................... “(We thought) their chances of survival are very, very low"......... "They aren’t going to make it"............ "They aren’t going to contribute"............ "What we’re finding is that is not necessarily the case"............. "We know now these yearlings have a decent chance of surviving on their own"............. Haroldson hopes to publish his findings in the spring and wants to explore other variables that could influence which bears survive, such as the weight of the bears when moved, the population density in the new areas and available food

›
http://wyofile.com/kelsey-dayton/offspring-conflict-bears-often-survive-relocation/#sthash.O6oIxNtm Offspring of conflict bears often s...

Shawn T. O′Neil, Kasey C. Rahn, Joseph K. Bump from the School of the Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University have just published a peer reviewed paper that prognosticates that Michigan and Wisconsin could sustain a Puma population of at least 500 based on white tail deer, human population and road densities................You can read the entire article by clicking on the link below............Thanks to Chris Spatz of COUGAR REWILDING for providing us with this article

›
Habitat Capacity for Cougar Recolonization in the Upper Great Lakes Region Shawn T. O′Neil,   Kasey C. Rahn,   Joseph ...

My friend Michael Harris has been hard at work producing a documentary film on the plight of the dozen or so Pumas still inhabiting the Santa Monica Mountains ringing Los Angeles....As many of you know, these "Cats" are penned in by multiple impassable freeways and the result of this is inbreeding and the beginnings of genetic malformities in the cubs that are being born to "cousin parents".......................Michael is in Post-Production on his insightful film,,,,,,,,,,He is seeking contributions for editing and finishing up this project................His email and phone number is below should you want to contact him about his work and interest in donating to his cause.

›
From: michael ; michaelharrisblue@hotmail.com Date: November 19, 2014 at 3:08:54 PM EST To: " rick.meril@gmail.com ...
Thursday, November 20, 2014

According to a recent U.S. Geological Survey, the Louisiana Black Bear that had been threatened with extinction now has less than a 1% chance of blinking out over the next 100 years........Historically, The bear once roamed eastern Texas, Louisiana, southern Arkansas and western Mississippi.............It was found that the estimated 350-500 Bears are intermingling among the four geographically separated populations in the state and this helped in researchers concluding that there was less than a 1% chance that all 4 groups of bears would simultaneously would face a calamity causing extinction..............Cannot help wonder if it is premature to come to this conclusion with at most 500 recovering Bears..............Tiny NJ has some 2000 Bruins..............Perhaps that is more the number researchers should be striving to see on the goround before calling for Delisting from the Federal Threatened list

›
USGS Study Looks at Louisiana Black Bear Population - MyArkLaMiss.com - KTVE NBC 10 - USGS Study Looks at Louisiana Black Bear Populatio...

The Civil War was a huge step forward to accelerating the environmental destruction of the USA..............The "snowball" of forest removal, habitat destruction and species extirpation mirrored the technology explosion that all Wars engender.................It also quickened the "here and there" siren calls from deep thinking transcendentalists who began lobbying for land protection and environmental consciousness

›
Sent by rick.meril@gmail.com: The ...
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Perhaps one of the least researched and "hey, let's publish this titillating story on how "hunting wolves might actually boost their population" appeared in the Oregonian Newspaper today......It is obvious that the reporter picking up on an University of Calgary research report that indicated that wolves respond to human hunting pressure by the remaining wolves pairing up and having twice the litters in a given region...............The Reporter failed to ask the question if this is a good thing............Would it be a good thing to start killing people so that the remaining human population would breed more to compensate for the losses incurred by the killing?..............Yes, Wolves and Coyotes(especially Coyotes) do tend to have larger litters and create smaller territories with additional breeders as hunting pressure mounts.............But that leads to younger and inexperienced wolves and coyotes running amuck and getting into more trouble with people................Same thing happens in persecuted puma populations.........Juvenile males move into vacant territories, breed with remaining females and simultaneously take risks in and around human settlements(adolescent risk taking)..............What we should be striving for is intact wolf and coyote units,,,,,,,,,intact puma spatial organization so that least conflict with us human animals occur while optimum top down trophic ecosytem services occur generating the greatest array of biodiversity possible

›
https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2014/11/post_41.html&ct=ga&cd=CAIy...
Monday, November 17, 2014

At what point will we all concede that we are dooming the Polar Bear to an extinction event?............ New research from the U.S. Geological Survey concludes that the Bears in northeast Alaska and Canada that abut the Beaufort Sea have declined from 1500 to 900 in the first decade of this new 21st century.................Disappearing ice has the Bears not reproducing as efficiently(see related posting below this one), not eating as well as they once did and therefore beginning to blink out from environmental stress................Similar stresses are also adversely impacting the Hudson Bay Polar Bear population

›
http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/11/17/study-polar-bear-population-plummets-has-plummeted-40-percent-alaska-and-canada Study: Po...