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Coyotes-Wolves-Cougars.blogspot.com

Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions. This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization. Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick

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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Range contraction of North American Carnivores and Ungulates

Even the most urban dweller instinctively knows that we humans have caused other animals and plants to go extinct as we have converted forest and prairie to farmland, housing units and industrial sites. What I found interesting in Andrea Laliberte's and William Ripple's attached analysis is the estimated extent of the range contraction(habitat no longer occupied) for our suite of native predators and hoofed herbivores..............Elk losing 74% of its pre European influenced habitat................Grizzly Bears down 53%..................................Wolves off 42%..........................Cougars decreasing 36%, etc, etc, etc(page 126 of attached document)
 
Low and behold the more generalist animals and least impacted by Mans activities have seen an increase of their range..............coyotes +40%................red foxes +13%...............raccoons up 18%.
 
Overall in the last 200 years, we have have eliminated the richness and wildness of our landscape. if we do not change our ways, will likely lose even more  wildlife diversity and cause the remaining animals  ranges to shrink even further.............
 
TIME TO EDUCATE.................TIME TO PUT INTO ACTION THE WILDLANDS VISION OF CORE RESERVES AND CONNECTIVE CORRIDORS........................PRONTO!
 

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