Monday, February 20, 2017

"About one third of the Swiss landscape offers suitable wolf habitat".................... "Nonetheless, there is only a small fraction thereof where the wolf is tolerated by local communities"................ "Those regions – characterized by both favorable environmental conditions and a positive attitude towards the wolf – are identified as candidate regions for the successful short to medium-term wolf expansion, according to a study by U. of Zurich biologists".....................This is all well and good if we can tilt enough folks opinions positive about Wolf, Puma and Grizzly Bear reintroduction in the USA, ................But realistically, there would not be a wolf population of some size in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho had the Endangered Species Act not existed...........And the same in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, Oregon and Washington State if Wolves had not had some protections early on.........................There is always going to be opposition to large carnivore rewilding(e.g. New Mexico, Arizona with Mexican Wolves and North Carolina with Red Wolves) even though our judeo/christian philosophy pointedly has the Creator instructing Noah to keep every single species of animal alive, regardless of whether potentially harmful to us human animals..........................So, only introduce carnivores where folks say "OK"?????...........Since they called North America home long before any of us occupied this great land, I vote to bring em in where continuous open space, prey densities are sound and road densities are at a minimum.....................I go with the adage that our elite armed forces, sports and business teams have always played by----"ADAPT AND OVERCOME",,,,,,,We should all adapt and overcome our ignorance and fear of carnivores living amongst us and in the process we will become stronger, more alert and more in touch with our primal selves, relegating the machines and tech toys that forever occupy us to their best roles as tools rather than the essence of our being

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170217012752.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+scienceda...
Sunday, February 19, 2017

For me, the finest magazine that I have ever subscribed to is the quarterly, NORTHERN WOODLANDS...................While I have not lived in the northeast for the past 18 years, the wisdom, breath, scope and depth of this conservation/working woodlands publication is without peer.................I daresay without reservation that I literally curl up on the sofa and read this scribe cover to cover when it arrives at the house....................It's Chief Editor, Dave Mance, is a "New England Son", born and raised and now writing about his "homeland" with heart, soul and aplomb...................Today, he discusses our society and it's evolution from a humility oriented character to a more individualistic focused character and how these two very different outlooks and way of thinking are impacting how we as a society approach our land use decisions.................In Dave's own words----"The point is not that we’re wrong when we follow our inner voices; it’s just to remember that we’re not always right"................... "The sweet spot is when the old moral traditions and the new individualistic ones exist in creative tension and conversation".......................... "This conversation needs to happen in most realms of life, but especially where it comes to forest conservation"........................... "What those of us who care about the woods and rural culture are trying to do is get people to cultivate a land ethic – to consider the land and strengthen their relationship with it and commitment to it"..................... "To see their individual holding as part of a larger matrix".................... "To see how their management affects, and ideally might compliment, the forest as a whole"........................ "To see how complicated nature is – forestry is – and to have the mental flexibility that’s required for good stewardship"..................... "To be a grateful inheritor of rural traditions and wisdom; to understand that wisdom is not knowledge; that experience is a better teacher than pure reason"................................. "To have the awareness, as we’re managing on the scale of centuries, to know that no matter how smart we think we are, a lot of what we know is distorted and wrong"........................... "If we’re going to strengthen the land ethic and encourage the next generation to coexist productively with nature, we first need to get people to coexist with their own bifurcated human nature"............................ "If we want woods with character, we need its stewards to have character".................. "And, of course, if we’re going to encourage this in others, we must first encourage it in ourselves"

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Read Full Article Woods With Character by Dave Mance III Editor's Blog February 17, 2017 0 Comments ...

In a new peer reviewed article researched and wrtitten by Trent University(Canada) scientists John Benson, Karen Loveless, Linda Rutledge and Brent Patterson, it is revealed that "Eastern Coyotes and various admixes of the two kill less total ungulate(deer and moose combined and moose alone than do Eastern Wolves"................."Furthermore, canids in packs dominated by eastern coyote ancestry consumed significantly less ungulate biomass and more anthropogenic food than packs dominated by wolf ancestry"......................"Similar to gray wolves in previous studies, eastern wolves preyed on deer where they were available"............ "However, in areas where deer were scarce, eastern wolves killed moose at rates similar to those previously documented for gray wolves at comparable moose densities across North America".........."Therefore, (while) Eastern coyotes are effective deer predators, their dietary flexibility and low kill rates on moose suggest they have not replaced the ecological role of wolves in eastern North America"..................Restoration of Eastern Wolves and Pumas in Eastern North America is needed if we are in fact going to restore ecological integrity to our woodlands

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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiO06a31pzSAhXLyV...
Thursday, February 16, 2017

As so many expert contributors to this blog have postulated in the past(Ecologist George Wuerthner, Biologist John Laundre, Brooks Fahy, Head of PREDATOR DEFENSE), there is no reason for us humans to target carnivores with hunting seasons in the same way that we do with hoofed browsers like deer and Elk.........Carnivores are self-limiting based on prey and space dynamics that have been at play in nature for millenia..............If we were to somehow fund State Game Commissions with a broader array of dollars other than those currently secured via hunting tags and get a wider swath of the adult population involved in wildlife management decision making, it is likely that the sport hunting of carnivores would be greatly curtailed.............And as a 2015 study let by Trent University's Dennis Murray revealed, "current harvest levels for the recently de-listed population of gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains of the United States have led to decreased survival and reproduction, smaller packs, social disruption and a reversal from population growth to decline"................. “A population’s growth rate is the sum of individual rates of survival and reproduction, and data show that current policies regulating wolf hunting have caused both to decline substantially"................"In addition, human harvest can dramatically alter the social fabric of wolf populations, as was previously observed among wolves in Algonquin Provincial Park(Ontario, Canada) studied by Prof. Murray and colleagues at Trent University and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry"......... "Combined, the demographic and social consequences of human harvest can be substantive and thereby challenge simple models of population sustainability"

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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiI-uThxZXSAhUL8W...
Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Yesterday, we reported on the "canis-soup" Wolf/coyote admix taking place in Newfoundland, Canada............Today, we take a look at the 2014 Eastern Wolf(algonquin wolf)research done by Trent University researchers John Benson, Kenneth Mills and Brent Patterson .................Found almost entirely within the Algonquin Provncial Park in Ontariio, Canada and thought to be the same Wolf species as the one that is hanging on for dear life on the barrier Islands of North Carolina, the Eastern Wolf is the wolf species that can and does mate with Western Coyotes(as well as the resutlting offspring of that mating-----the Eastern Coyote)................This Eastern Wolf/Coyote hybridization is largely the result of the Eastern Wolf population being so badly decimated since European colonization began in AD 1500..............Eastern Wolves often find it hard to find available mates of their own kind and will choose Coyotes as bed "partners" if the choice is not to mate at all during the one annual heat/gestation period that occurs in Jan-feb of each year.................Eastern Wolves and Western Coyotes are both thought to share an ancient Coyote-like animal as their origen species and this is why researchers feel that the two modern day species can choose to hybridize under duress....................Conversely, Gray Wolves whose ancient wolf ancestor was American in origen, migrated to Europe and Eruasia and subsequently came back to North America as the Gray Wolf...........It wants nothing to do with Coyotes and will in fact kill and limit coyote populations(e.g in Yellowstone Park) where the two species are sympatric...............Interesting to learn from our Trent Research friends that the Eastern Wolf in Algonquin Park has the most success raising young and keeping them alive if in fact a sizeable Beaver population is present in their territory................Easier to hunt than the Moose found in the Park, Beavers provide ample protein for least effort as the 4 to 12 Wolf pups come onto the planet in April/May of each season...............The Wolf/Coyote/Moose studies coming out of the Trent Research Lab are some of the most insightful to be found..............Click onto the link below to read this entire article at your leisure

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http://people.trentu.ca/~brentpatterson/index_files/Benson%20et%20al.%202015%20WolfDenRVResourceSelection.pdf Resource selection by wo...
Tuesday, February 14, 2017

There is evidence of 4 Gray Wolves having made their way to the island of Newfoundland, Canada since 2008..............Eastern Coyotes have been on the island since the 1980's................With so few Wolves afoot and Eastern Coyotes aplenty, there have been 11 confirmed Wolf/Coyote offspring born on the island since 2013................Eastern Coyotes have 10-25% Eastern(Algonquin) Wolf genes and as they continue to mate with Gray Wolves, their offspring will exhibit greater degrees of wolf heritage.............. "While they all fall into the 60-pound range, they don’t all look the same"......... “As with hybridization, it doesn’t come out as one feature".......... "So you can have one animal that will take on more of a facial appearance of a wolf than a coyote and another animal could take on a different morphology characteristic"............. "Maybe it’ll have larger paws than an Eastern coyote would, but smaller than a wolf".........."Other features, such as coloration, can come out in different ways".......As in the Great Lakes region, Newfoundland experiencing Gray Wolves, Eastern Coyotes and Eastern(Algonquin Wolves) "shaken and stirred"................ A "canid soup" experiment playing out at lightning speed in front of our eyes----One of the most fascinating wildlife stories of our time!

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https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=http://www.thetelegram.com/news/2017/2/13/eleven-wolf-coyote-hybrids-confirmed-in-newfoun...