Leaving Black Bears to the side as the apex trophic carnivore roaming the New York State woodlands, farms and fields, the Bobcat and Coyote are the Empire States' two largest mesocarnivores..............The NY State Dept. of Conservation released its proposed 5 year Bobcat management plan and of course hunters and trappers got "first dibs" on establishing the protocols........The DEC did step up and acknowledge that there are other "users" of Bobcats, including wildlife enthusiasts and photographers (as examples of non-hunting "workers of the outdoors".............The problem that so many of us readers of this blog still see with this thinking goes back to "use",,,,,,,,,,,,We humans should be factored into any wildlife mgmt plan,,,,,but not only on how we "consume wildlife",,,,,, Also critical to incorporate into any plan is how wildlife works into the circle of land health.........Leopold's land ethic is never even given lip service from land managers when devising plans on wildlife populations.........If only they(and we) would start "thinking like the mountain" which knows far too well the negative impacts that come about when carnivore populations are either stripped from the land or reduced to so minute levels so as not to be able to fulfill ecosystem services(thanks to our friend Frank Carbone for sending me this article)

Bobcat

Scientific Name: Lynx rufus

New York State Bobcat Management Plan

The Management Plan for Bobcat in New York State, 2012-2017 (PDF) (2.0 MB) is available for public review and comment. The draft plan describes three primary goals for bobcat management:

1. Maintain viable population levels and monitor trends in bobcat distribution and relative abundance;
2. Provide for sustainable use and enjoyment of bobcat by the public; and
3. Minimize negative bobcat-human interactions.

DEC staff worked closely with trappers and small game hunters to gain preliminary input regarding the future management of the bobcat resource. Input obtained from these groups was used by DEC biologists and managers to develop the recommendations and management actions contained in the draft plan.
While hunters and trappers are the most common users of the bobcat resource, wildlife enthusiasts, nature photographers, and others also benefit from a healthy bobcat population. As evidenced by the number of observation reports fielded by Department staff, the public is very interested in bobcats and can play a role in their management by facilitating the collection of data on the species.
Comments may be submitted in writing through February 16, 2012 to NYSDEC, Bobcat Management Plan, 625 Broadway, Albany, NY 12233-4754 or by e-mail.

Description

Bobcat are about twice the size of a domestic cat and usually smaller than the Canada lynx. Their fur is dense, short, and soft and is generally shorter and more reddish in the summer and longer and more gray in the winter. Spotting occurs in some bobcats and is faded in others. The face has notable long hairs along the cheeks and black tufts at the tops of each ear.
Males are, on average, one-third larger than females. Both sexes can be greater than 30 pounds; however, averages for males and females are 21 and 14 pounds, respectively. Body length for males is 34 inches and 30 inches for females. Tail length is usually between 5 and 6 inches for both sexes.

Sometimes sightings of bobcat are confused with Canada lynx. Bobcat can be easily distinguished from lynx by the absence of the huge, seemingly oversized paws and a black-tipped tail that are characteristic of the lynx. Bobcats have paws that are proportional to their body size, and their tail is black spotted. Lynx tracks are roughly twice the size of that of a bobcat. DEC attempted a lynx restoration program in the Adirondacks in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but the animals released there dispersed far and wide and a resident breeding population was never established. Currently, the lynx is considered extirpated in New York because there is no evidence of any remnant population of resident animals.

Distribution and Habitat

Based on surveys from the late 1970s, bobcat occupied 13,500 square miles (a little more than one-quarter) of New York. There were three population centers: (1) Adirondack, (2) Catskill, and (3) Taconic regions. The Adirondack Study area had about 5 bobcats for every 100 square miles of area, while the Catskill area had about 16 bobcats for every 100 square miles of area. Bobcats also occur occasionally in many areas of western New York (and probably breed there).

The most critical features of bobcat habitat are places for refuge and protection, such as ledges. Bobcat often use rocky ledges and rock piles for shelter, breeding, and raising young. Brush piles, hollow trees, and logs are other good structures for resting and dens. Evergreen bogs and swamps, and other secluded places also fill the bobcat's requirement for refuge and protection.

Bobcat usually are not present where there are continuous human population centers; however, they can use patches of habitat if the patches are not completely isolated by urban development.

Food and Feeding

Research in the late 1970s found that white-tailed deer, rabbit, and hare are the most common items in the diet of bobcat in New York. They eat deer more often during the winter than other times of the year and will store or cache carcasses for future use. Deer can be a valuable prey item in areas of deep snow because one carcass can last for several weeks. Opportunistic prey items include birds, squirrels, meadow voles, and road kill.

Behavior

Bobcat are solitary animals and may be active at any time, day or night. Males have larger home ranges than females, and they travel greater distances on a daily basis. The average home range of a male in the Adirondacks is 136 square miles. The average female home range is 33 square miles. In the Catskills, the average male home range is 14 square miles, while the female average is 12 square miles. Home ranges are smaller in areas of good habitat than in areas of poor habitat.

Bobcat will use multiple strategies while hunting. They may approach stealthily, using any form of cover available between them and their prey, attempting to get close enough to pounce and strike. They may also use an ambush technique where they will sit and wait for prey to pass by, thereby affording them the opportunity to strike undetected. Smaller prey items such as mice and birds are consumed whole. Larger animals taken and stored are eaten in the position they lay, and can be identified as a bobcat cache by the upper parts being consumed, while the portion of the cache in contact with the ground may be untouched.
Scent marking using feces, urine, and scrapes of fluid from their anal glands have all been documented as ways they mark territory, and are commonly found on the underside of leaning trees, logs, shelter rocks, or stumps.

Reproduction

Bobcats begin to breed between mid-January and early February. Some researchers found breeding activities continuing into July. Females can reproduce in their first year, while males breed in their second year and likely mate with more than one female. Courtship activities may include chasing, ambushing, and what appears to be fighting.

The average gestation period for a litter is 62 days, but varies from 50 to 70 days. Most litters are born in April and May, ranging from March through July. Young are born in a dry, well hidden den, usually found within natural rocky areas and caves where available, and the female will likely have numerous auxiliary dens which they will use to aid in raising their young. Females raise one litter of 1-5 kittens alone. Kittens are able to accompany their mother away from the den by their third month, and disperse prior to the birth of the following year's litter.

Predators, Parasites and Disease

Bobcat kittens are killed by foxes, owls, and adult male bobcats. Adults may be injured or killed by their prey animals. The most common cause of death for kittens and juveniles is low food supply. It is not uncommon for an adult to die of starvation, especially during severe winters.

The importance of disease to wild bobcat populations is not well known. Some researchers have suggested that diseases carried by raccoons and feral cats may be an important mortality factor for bobcats. Twelve infectious diseases have been documented in wild bobcat. These diseases include rabies, feline distemper, and feline leukemia. They also carry a variety of parasites including tapeworms, roundworms, and others that are common in their prey species.

Management

A 1983 publication reports that 47 states in the U.S. had bobcat within their boundaries at that time. Thirteen states had a policy of total protection (no harvest). Thirty states had hunting seasons, while 32 had trapping seasons. Three states, Wyoming, Texas, and North Dakota, allowed year-round harvest.
Many northern New York counties paid bounties on bobcat before 1971. The New York State Legislature passed a law ending the payment of bounties in 1971.

In 1973, a group of 75 countries (including the U.S.) developed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) treaty. CITES made it illegal to export pelts of endangered spotted cats such as cheetah, leopard, and ocelot. The treaty also included a list of species that had the potential to be affected negatively by the export ban. Bobcat are on this list because they are a spotted cat, and possibly an alternative for the banned pelts.

Although the federal government, under CITES, controls export of bobcat pelts, the states are responsible for management. Bobcat were unprotected in New York until the Legislature gave DEC the authority to set open seasons in 1976. The Department closed a large portion of the state to bobcat harvest after 1976, and started a pelt tagging system to track bobcat harvested by hunters or trappers in some areas with open seasons beginning in 1977. Hunting has been the dominant harvest method since the 1988-89 season. This is likely due to declining pelt prices and the resultant decrease in licensed trappers.

Although the status of bobcat in New York is stable, the Bureau of Wildlife will continue monitoring bobcat populations to determine whether any important changes occur. Wildlife biologists are developing a "sighting index" based on observations of bobcats by volunteer bowhunters, or you can report bobcat sightings by filling out a Bobcat Observation Report (see "Important Links" above in the right-hand column). This information, along with harvest statistics, provides the primary tools for assessing bobcat population trends.

When it comes to wolves and pumas, th pundits are always quick to go negative and state that there is "virtually no chance" that they will ever recolonize a region that they formally called home.............Last seen in Illinois as the civil war broke out in 1860, forest and prairie conversion to farm and town seems to leave only "fragments" of wild lands remaining for C.lups.........There is a viable deer population for both wolves and pumas to prey on,,,,,,,,there is an attempt by the State to put aside more open space,,,,,,,,,and road densities in sections of Illinois are still modest in scope...............Additional forest preserve cover seems to be the key if Wolves and pumas are to once again make their home in prairie country

Gray wolves unlikely to make a comeback to Illinois

by Lorena Villa-Parkman

Illinois shouldn´t be crying wolf. At least not yet.

 There have been unverified sightings of wolves in northern Illinois over the years since the population was entirely wiped out in 1860. But it´s unlikely the gray wolf will make a comeback here, according to experts.



















"It is a very populous state and there are very few opportunities for wolves to thrive," said Pat Goodman, animal behaviorist and curator at Wolf Park, Ind. "There have been sightings from time to time, but the question is whether or not a wolf could establish a breeding population that could sustain itself. I doubt it." 



That´s because unpopulated areas and open forests are harder to find. Illinois is around 90 percent farmland. Ranchers and farmers are protective of their lands and stock and wolves are perceived as threats.

"They are not great animals to have living in your backyard," said Lawrence Heaney, curator of mammals at The Field Museum. "They´ll eat your dog and your cat, although they almost never bother people, but they are perfectly happy eating the animals we eat or live with."



Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota already have a healthy population of gray wolves. There were 687 wolves in Michigan, 782 in Wisconsin and 2921 in Minnesota, according to the Minnesota DNR Report: Distribution and Abundance of Wolves in Minnesota, 2007 – 2008.

The wolf population has recovered so successfully in the Great Lakes states that in 2011 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin from the list of endangered species Act.

"They need lower human population and good preying source at least," said Dan Stark, large carnivore program leader of the Division of Fish and Wildlife for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.



Packs originate when young wolves leave their family to find a mate and set a territory of their own. Sometimes they will travel hundreds of miles looking for a suitable area to populate.

"If they are in a situation where the density is high and where there aren't spaces available for them, they just keep looking," said Heaney.

Wolves are moving into other states as well.

A lone gray wolf crossed from Oregon to California in the border south of Klamath Falls on Dec. 28. The two and a half year male known as OR-7 is the first confirmed wild wolf in California since 1924. "Maybe this is not the first one lined to go to California," said Patrick Valentino, director of planning and development and coordinator for Northern California Wolf Center activities. "We don't know if they are more wolves on their way and maybe, at some point a male and female will meet here, have their pups and create a pack in California."

By looking for new territories, wolves are not only searching for food and a place to claim, but also they are probably protecting themselves from genetic inbreeding, Valentino said.

Through collars with radio transmitters, experts have found out that wolves travel around 50 to 200 miles in search for a new territory. Some of them have been known to travel 500 to 1000 miles. "If a wolf from Minnesota heads south and survives, if it´s not ran over by a car or shot, it might very well keep looking for a place where there are other wolves," Heaney said. "But if they find a place where there is food and space but no possible mates, they are not going to stay."

Studies in Minnesota and Wisconsin show there are some fluctuations in the number of wolves that live in the area, but it´s still a stable population. "The good habitats are occupied by them, so there aren´t any nice empty spots for new packs and they have to go looking somewhere else," Goodman said.

Minnesota wolves are known to have territories as large as 40 sq. miles. "But that ranges from 20 to 200 sq. miles," said Dan Stark, large carnivore program leader of the Division of Fish and Wildlife for the Minnesota department.



The state of Minnesota has a very healthy wolf population because they were more difficult to kill in it´s forest terrain. "There were extensive efforts to exterminate them in the neighboring states and they were effective," Stark said. "In Minnesota we have pretty expansive forest areas that hid wolves and when we eliminated aerial gunning or poisoning as killing techniques, the wolf population started to come back."



Minnesota wolf population is connected to the extensive wolf population in Canada. "Having that source helped local wolves thrive. Whereas Wisconsin and Michigan are disconnected from those packs because of the lakes. However, once Minnesota got occupied then their populations started to get a new influx of wolves," Stark said.



So, why are wolves shunning Illinois as their place of residence? 



"They need food," Heaney said. "In Illinois there is plenty of it, the deer population is dense, they have that."


The problem comes when wolves can´t find a place to get on with their lives without being disturbed. "They have to be able to go about their hunting and not be harassed, so if they end up in an area with lots of people or domestic dogs, it bothers them," Heaney said. "Lots of them are killed by hunters."



When the young wolves disperse from their original territory it´s a time of very high mortality for them. They expose themselves to all kind of unknown dangers. "Most of the dispersers are not going to survive," Heaney said.



"There is a lot of chance involved when they leave their pack," Goodman said. "They need a viable place to call home and Illinois is not it."



"I think it´s absolutely inevitable that we are going to have wolves coming back to Illinois," said Heaney. "But it won´t be common and it´s pretty unlikely for them to establish. There is not enough space where they wouldn´t feel threatened."

 
View Wolf distribution in a larger map

©2001 - 2010 Medill Reports - Chicago, Northwestern University.  A publication of the Medill School.

A new friend of this blog, independent wildlife and wilderness advocate, Robert Goldman, published a recent article setting the record straight on why Wolves should be restored to Maine........." Wolves in Maine would naturally strengthen moose and deer populations here"....." It is what they do as vital, natural predators in every ecosystem they inhabit"....... "Field biologists report that with wolves back on the land, the entire ecology is healthier"........"The same ecological principles at work in the Rockies apply here in Maine"..... "With the wolves' return to their native New England homeland, prey species and the land itself will be healthier".... "That is the way nature works, just as we were taught in grade school"...."In the vast forest lands of Maine and across the region, there is ample room and prey for wolves to live here again, as they did for thousands of years"

Robert Goldman: Of wolves, ecology and justice

By Robert Goldman
The Sun Journal of Maine

 
The paw print was almost the size of my hand. I knelt down to study it and with my fingertips traced the outline of the print, the pads, the subtle punctuation of its nails, and pondered the animal that left it.

I was on the fourth day of a six-day backpack in Northern Yellowstone and this was the territory of the Blacktail Pack. A gray wolf had passed this way not long before.

I was very happy to see this paw print. As a lifelong lover of canines, it's easy to love wolves, especially when you know the truth about them.

The truth about wolves was difficult to find in the anti-wolf "opinion" piece that appeared in this newspaper on Sept. 25, by V. Paul Reynolds (Outdoors in Maine: Keeping Wolves from Maine's door).
What needs to be kept from Maine's door is malicious and inaccurate information about wolves that, for centuries, has resulted in the unjust demonization and heartless massacre of this vital and beautiful animal.

If I knew little or nothing about wolves and, instead, relied on fairy tales and anti-wolf propaganda, upon seeing the wolf's paw print in Yellowstone, I would have immediately fled from the trail screaming hysterically, afraid of being mercilessly attacked by an other-worldly beast or infected with some strange wolf disease.

Instead, I've taken the time to learn the truth about wolves from world renowned ecologists, wolf experts and nature writers, such as Aldo Leopold, Adolph Murie, David Mech, Farley Mowat and Barry Lopez.
Mr. Lopez's "Of Wolves and Men" is truly enlightening. Young and old will enjoy learning about wolves from Mr. Mowat's wonderful book "Never Cry Wolf."

With knowledge and wisdom, it is possible to replace the completely false, demonic image of wolves with understanding, compassion and respect for the amazing beings wolves are, in reality.Wolves are intelligent, social, natural predators and are native to New England and almost every corner of North America.
They are instinctively wary of people and avoid contact with humans.

As natural predators, they provide a vital balance to the prey species that exist in the various ecosystems they inhabit. Wolves actually strengthen their prey by culling the weak, the old and the sick.Sport hunters do exactly the opposite, as they target the bigger, healthier animals, thereby removing those animals from the gene pool.

Wolves in Maine would naturally strengthen moose and deer populations here. It is what they do as vital, natural predators in every ecosystem they inhabit.

By the early the 20th century, wolves were missing from almost every part of the United States. A relentlessly cruel campaign of poisoning, trapping, shooting and massacre, brutalized this native animal.
The centuries-long wolf massacres were perpetrated at the local, state and federal levels. It was a horrific, unjust war on wolves and nature.The mass killing of America's wolves and other native wildlife was firmly rooted in human ignorance, intolerance and cruelty.

With time, much of the country learned from its mistakes.By the early 1970s, the federal government, reflecting the will of a far more enlightened American people, enacted the Endangered Species Act. Wolves were added to the list of protected species. In the mid-1980s, a small group of pioneer wolves, on their own, wandered south into the American Rockies from Canada.

Ten years later, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service re-introduced a mere 33 wolves back into Yellowstone National Park and parts of nearby Idaho, that only served to accelerate a natural process that was already under way.

As the federal government had previously played a central role in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of wolves from coast to coast, this small but remarkable action for ecological justice and atonement was a positive reflection of maturing American attitudes toward wildlife and the natural world.

Today, many ranchers and sport hunters unfortunately continue to spread false information about wolves. They greatly exaggerate wolf depredation on cattle.

Despite the anti-wolf whining of some sport hunters out West, the facts reveal that elk populations throughout the Rocky Mountains are strong and healthy. After more than 15 years with wolves back in the Rockies, state departments of wildlife in those states report that elk populations are at or above expected levels. Elk are there across the landscape and doing well. And field biologists report that with wolves back on the land, the entire ecology is healthier.

The same ecological principles at work in the Rockies apply here in Maine. With the wolves' return to their native New England homeland, prey species and the land itself will be healthier. That is the way nature works, just as we were taught in grade school.In the vast forest lands of Maine and across the region, there is ample room and prey for wolves to live here again, as they did for thousands of years.

It is time to cast ignorance, prejudice and misperceptions about this native species aside. Wolves are vital, fascinating and worthy beings. With honesty and respect, with knowledge and a more generous sense of stewardship toward the land and all creatures, great and small, wolves can live here again, where they belong.

Robert Goldman is an independent wildlife and wilderness advocate. He lives in South Portland.

Frequent blog contributor George Wuerthner(a good friend of ths publication) supplied us with this disheartening story on Montana ranchers blocking the State initiative, "BIGHORN SHEEP CONSERVATION STRATEGY,,,, by saying that the Dept of Fish& Wildlife has an obligation to consult with landowners abutting the planned release site, the Lewis & Clark Caverns area..........One of the statewide objectives in Montana's bighorn sheep strategy is to "establish five new viable and huntable populations over the course of the next 10 years and augment existing populations where appropriate." Relocations typically consist of 20 to 40 bighorns being released for two consecutive winters........ FWP has "struck out" with every attempt at sheep relocation during the past six years, and if that continues, Montanans will have to reconsider how to move forward...... Some large landowners fear bighorns interfere with ranching operations.......... Others worry that the public will disregard private property to view or hunt the sheep.........Bottom line that once again a narrow segment of the population(ranchers and hunters) determining the fate of wildlife populations.........THIS MUST CHANGE IF REWILDING IS TO TAKE PLACE AS GEORGE HAS SPOKEN ABOUT ELOQUENTLY IN HIS COLUMNS ON STATE GAME COMMISSIONS BEING CONSTANTLY "IN THE POCKETS" OF RANCHERS AND HUNTERS........ AND THOSE COMMISSIONS NOT SEEKING TO HEAR FROM ANY OTHER STATE RESIDENTS AS THEY MAKE THEIR LAND USE DECISIONS

Bighorn transplant called off; neighbors say state tried to ram plan past them

By EVE BYRON Independent Record The Billings Gazette

 This Aug. 9, 2007 file photo shows a flock of bighorn sheep grazing in a field west of Elmo, Mont.

 The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission has voted to reject a plan to reintroduce bighorn sheep to historic range in the Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park area in western Montana after neighboring landowners voiced opposition.

HELENA — A plan to relocate bighorn sheep to the Lewis and Clark Caverns area was shot down last week after landowners in the area said they weren't sufficiently notified of the proposal and opposed it.
It was the first attempt to transplant sheep under Montana's first-ever Bighorn Sheep Conservation Strategy, which was adopted in 2010. The discussion at Thursday's Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission meeting touched upon a key issue hotly debated during the strategy's creation: whether an adjacent landowner can have veto power over the move.

"This situation definitely calls to mind the extensive discussions we had when contemplating the bighorn sheep strategic plan over one word," said Commissioner Ron Moody, who on Friday explained that the word had to do whether FWP "should" or "will" consult neighboring landowners. The final adopted version says that before initiating a transplant, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks "will coordinate and cooperate with local landowners" before moving the wild sheep.

But Terry Murphy, a state senator from Cardwell who represents part of Lewis and Clark County and Jefferson County, also happens to own a large ranch near the caverns, and said he only found out about the proposed move at the last minute."I literally never heard of the proposal until Dec. 16 and found my land was listed as a passageway for sheep to move from one side of the highway to the other," Murphy told the FWP Commission at its meeting on Thursday. "The same kind of proposal came up 15 years ago. We opposed it and it wasn't done. We are there using the land and trying to make a living on it, not making it a tourist attraction. There is absolute opposition to it on my part."

FWP originally came to the commissioners in the spring of 2011 with a list of sites that possibly were good bighorn sheep habitat, and in November released a draft Environmental Assessment. The document looked at reintroducing the sheep on 139,373 acres in three adjacent areas in south-central Montana -- the Bull Mountains, Doherty Mountain and Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park.

One of the statewide objectives in Montana's bighorn sheep strategy is to "establish five new viable and huntable populations over the course of the next 10 years and augment existing populations where appropriate." Relocations typically consist of 20 to 40 bighorns being released for two consecutive winters.
In this case, the sheep possibly would either come from Flathead Lake's Wild Horse Island or the Upper Madison drainage, where populations have steadily increased. The EA noted that their presence in the area would have multiple benefits, including wildlife viewing and eventual hunting.

"Increased recreational opportunity, both consumptive and non-consumptive, would result in additional economic benefits to local merchants by hunters and wildlife watchers," the assessment said.
A meeting was held in the fall in Whitehall, and Kujala said there seemed to be tolerance for the sheep by areas residents.

Murphy didn't see it the same way. He said he never heard about the meeting, nor had some of hisneighbors, and they were angry to learn of the proposal."I'm here to plead with you," he said. "Please do not force this down our throats."

Based upon that opposition, Kujala recommended that the move not be made and the commission agreed.
"The (FWP) department is working hard to live up to this plan, which was the consensus of a lot of groups," said Commissioner Dan Vermillion. "But the department, in this case has — no question — there were some things they could have done better with public outreach. But I think the department did a good job making sure the plan was known to a broad swath of the community."

Vermillion added that FWP has "struck out" with every attempt at sheep relocation during the past six years, and if that continues, Montanans will have to reconsider how to move forward. Some large landowners fear bighorns interfere with ranching operations. Others worry that the public will disregard private property to view or hunt the sheep

"If the sheep plan doesn't allow us to translocate sheep, then that's a problem," Vermillion said. "We shouldn't find ourselves at the 12th hour stepping back from something we thought everyone supported."

Chris Spatz of COUGAR REWILDING clued me in on this MSNBC article on the proliferation of alleged Puma sightings taking place all across the Eastern half of the USA since this past Spring when a Dakota Puma wandered into Connectitcut and was killed in a vehicle collision.........Our friend Mark McCollough up at the USFW office in Maine once again reaffirming his belief that there is not a breeding population in the East outside of Florida.........Mark Dowling of THE COUGAR NETWORK reaffirms McCollough's findings stating "Cougars couldn't go undetected",,,, "They betray their presence readily by becoming road kill or chasing people's pets".............Spatz and Helen Mcginnis of COUGAR REWILDING have told me previously that they agree with this assessment,,,,,but Spatz and colleagues are in favor of rewilding our Eastern forests saying "Cougars' presence would change the way deer browse"........ "They would keep moving; you would see regeneration of your understory"....." Cougars are not a threat to people, pets and livestock".... "California, where there are an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 cougars and no hunting allowed, proves "we can coexist."........

Cougars extinct in East? No way, say those who claim sightings

Department of Energy and Environmental Protection

This June 2011 photo by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection shows a worker examining a dead mountain lion, or cougar, at the Sessions Woods Wildlife Center in Burlington, Conn. Tests determined that the cat, which was struck by a car, had traveled all the way from South Dakota.

By Jim Gold, msnbc.com

Cougar sightings persist in the East nearly a year after the big predators were declared extinct in the region, a determination that some don't believe. Others want to make cougars' presence a big reality.
Just this month Gary Sanderson, sports editor at the Greenfield, Mass.-based Recorder newspaper, reported cougar sightings on a farm near the Vermont border, by an Amtrak engineer who claimed his train's video captured images of the creatures near Leverett, and from readers in the region who claim to have pictures of cougars.

"I've been besieged" with sightings ever since writing a column 10 years ago about hunting with a trapper who became a believer in cougars' presence after finding a footprint way too large to be a bobcat in Conway, along the Deerfield River, Sanderson told msnbc.com. Sanderson said he has since written 50 columns devoted to cougar sightings and has been told by wildlife officials he was irresponsible to promote the notion of their presence.
With rare exception, there is no credible evidence of cougars living in the wild east of the Mississippi River, government and private researchers told msnbc.com.

In Connecticut this week, a CBS radio report and a Greenwich Time newspaper story both cited the growth of cougar sightings since last spring. That's when a cougar first spotted in Greenwich on June 5 was killed by a car six days later in nearby Milford. NBC Connecticut reported at the time that scientists studying the 140-pound animal's DNA concluded the cougar had wandered about 1,800 miles east, all the way from the Black Hills of South Dakota through Minnesota and Wisconsin before finding its way to Greenwich, about 70 miles outside New York City.

Even though he is a state away, Sanderson said, "I felt vindicated" when the news emerged about the cougar in Milford. "I didn't think they would admit that it was wild."

A Connecticut group called Cougars of the Valley has an online petition with about 250 signatures asking the state General Assembly to hold a hearing on cougars, also known as mountain lions, pumas and panthers. The group's website also hosts a map of Connecticut cougar sightings and comments from readers claiming authorities disparaged their reports about seeing cougars.

No evidence?
Mark McCollough, an endangered species specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Orono, Maine, field office, was the lead scientist in the agency's study declaring the Eastern cougar extinct. (See full study report here.)

McCollough told msnbc.com that there is no scientific evidence that Eastern cougars have somehow survived 150 years after being driven from the region. The last known real Eastern cougar was shot dead in 1938 in Maine, he said.

....

"That's not to say they don't show up from time to time," McCollough said of cougars, but most reports of sightings are misidentfications, such as coyotes or bobcats, which are about one-fourth the size of cougars.
Officials have documented 110 cougars loose in the Eastern United States and Canada since 1900, he said. They come from two main sources:

• Escaped pets: At least 1,000 cougars are known to be held in captivity in the East, he said, and many that have turned up loose have been genetically traced to South American ancestry, indicating they were part of the exotic pet trade. "They didn't walk here," McCollough said.
• Dispersers: Like the wandering cougar killed in Connecticut, some head east from the West and north from Florida, home to about 150 panthers. Cougars regularly show up on trail cameras set up privately across the country, McCollough said, but they're not on cameras in the East.

One cougar from Florida, where about 150 panthers live in the wild, was killed in Georgia in 2008. That same year, police shot a cougar that wandered into Chicago's North Side.

But there is no scientific evidence, no scat (droppings), no confirmed sightings that cougars are establishing homes and breeding east of the Mississippi and north of Florida, McCollough said.

Courtesy of The Cougar Network

Green: established populations
Blue = Class I Confirmation
Red = Class II Confirmation

A map by The Cougar Network, a non-profit research group, shows only a few confirmed sightings of cougars in the East since 1990.

"We just don't take those kinds of sightings seriously anymore," said Mark Dowling, a leader of the network. Pictures turn out to be house cats or even golden retrievers. Cougars couldn't go undetected, he said. "They betray their presence readily," he said, by becoming road kill or chasing people's pets.

The Midwest is seeing a resurgence, he said, including new populations in South Dakota, North Dakota and Nebraska. Individual dispersing animals have been seen in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan and Louisiana.

Christopher Spatz, a southern New York resident who is president of the Cougar Rewilding Foundation, told msnbc.com that wandering cougars are young males looking for females and needing to get away from their fathers' territories before their fathers kill them."Young cats out on their own are troublemakers," said Spatz, an advocate for reintroducing cougars into the wilds of the East.

"We need them everywhere. Big predators help regulate ecosystems,"Spatz said.After wolves were reintroduced at Yellowstone National Park in 1995, elk stopped eating cottonwoods and aspens, Spatz said. Vegetation came back, and biodiversity, including beavers, birds and fish, expanded. Without cougars and other predators, there is an overabundance of whitetail deer in the East, resulting in lack of understory.

Should Pumas be restroed to the East-MSNBC poll

• 77% YES
• 173859
• 18% NO
• 173860
  Not sure.
  5% not sure

"Cougars' presence would change the way deer browse," Spatz said. "They would keep moving; you would see regeneration of your understory." Cougars are not a threat to people, pets and livestock, he said. California, where there are an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 cougars and no hunting allowed, proves "we can coexist."

McCollough, the wildlife biologist, and Dowling, from the Cougar Network, which doesn't take a stand on repopulation, said chances of recolonization efforts in the East are remote, as people likely won't want large predators living near them.

Cougars, which can leap 30 feet and reach speeds of 50 mph, are carnivores whose usual diet consists mainly of deer, elk, turkey rabbits porcupine, coyote and other small mammals, according to The Cougar Fund, a non-profit trying to protect cougars. But the animals do prey on people, pets and livestock. Since 1890, "only 20 people" have been killed by cougar attacks, says the group, which also offers tips on how to fight off cougars and guidelines to keep children and pets safe. Several non-fatal mauling attacks on people are reported yearly.

'They are here'
But one cougar advocate, Bill Betty of Matunuck, R.I., said people in the Northeast already coexist with cougars, because, he said, they are present and breeding. "Every state in the East will eventually acknowledge they are here," Betty told msnbc.com. He said he has had 14 daytime encounters as close as 10 feet with cougars -- and nine family members have had 30 encounters."I've chased mountain lions away from kids," he said.

Betty lectures all over the country about mountain lions and has a 90-minute slideshow and other show-and-tell items such as a skull, scat samples and photos. He said he knows what a cougar looks like.
At a lecture in Somers, Conn., he said, 37 people raised their hands when asked if they'd seen a cougar.
"They are here," he said. "Those who say they are not are lying.""Mature, responsible adults and schoolchildren can tell the difference between a cougar and a big yellow dog," he said.
Officials say they still don't believe Betty and that he does not use scientific data in his presentations.

So few Political leaders and Clergy are willing to speak out about our massive and unsutainable 7 billion human population that is headed to 10 billion by 2050....... As the utlimate trophic predator, we humans are at the heart of every environmental problem we face from animal extinction to pollution.....There are only a handful of notable folks like Thomas Friedman(NY Times columnist) and Dave Foreman(Rewilding Institute) who are willing to take on our archaic age old concepts about procreation and "growth",,,,, telling l it like it is and letting the chips fall where they might....... Friedman titled one of his recent books HOT FLAT AND CROWDED where he discussed how impossible it is for all 7 to 10 billion humans to carve out a USA middle class existance..............It would take 3 planet earths worth of resources for this to happen and that just "ain't" in the cards...........As Harvard University biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson said, "The worst thing that will probably happen—in fact is already well underway—is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us".............Dave Foreman writes, "We have come on like a swarm of locusts: a wide, thick, darkling cloud settling down like living snowflakes, smothering every stalk, every leaf, eating away every scrap of green down to raw, bare wasting earth. It's painfully straightforward. There are too many men for Earth to harbor…we are crippling Earth's life support system by such a flood of upright apes is bad news for us"

By Frosty Wooldridge
The Rewilding News


A book review: Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife by Dave Foreman


The Bible said, "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it and take dominion over all living things on land and in the seas."At the time of the Bible's inception by a desert tribe known as the Jews in the Middle East, less than 100 million human beings walked the planet, give or take a few.  Humans used nets and spears to subdue fish, fowl and beasts.

In 40 more years, we grow to 10 billion humans on Planet Earth

 In 2012, as the human race thunders toward adding another three billion of its already prolific numbers to reach 10 billion by mid century—38 scant years from now, thousands of scientists have warned of our impending predicament. Nonetheless, we human earthlings plunder oceans, seas, air, land and water.
At the same time, starvation stalks humans in Somalia, Bangladesh, Mexico, Congo, Sudan and India.  Over 18 million human beings die of starvation annually around the globe. (Source:  World Health Organization, UN Population stats)

But what about the other "earthlings" numbering perhaps 30 million separate species around the globe?   What about their plight as humans maraud this planet by mercilessly killing habitat and poisoning the oceans? How many species suffer extinction daily around the planet?  Dr. Norman Myers, Oxford University, United Kingdom, substantiates 80 to 100 species end their time on this planet every day via human habitat encroachment.  Humans kill species at such a prolific rate that it is deemed the "Sixth Extinction Session."  The first five sessions arrived as ice ages, meteors and other deadly events.
Harvard University biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson said, "The worst thing that will probably happen—in fact is already well underway—is not energy depletion, economic collapse, conventional war, or the expansion of totalitarian governments. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired in a few generations. The one process now going on that will take millions of years to correct is loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us."

Long time conservationist Dave Foreman wrote a penetrating and compelling book: Man Swarm and the Killing of Wildlife. This book cannot be dismissed.  It cannot be ignored.  It cannot be put down once started.  Foreman shows the unraveling the wild world at the hands of humanity.  For anyone that thinks unlimited human growth can continue, this book knocks out all the myths perpetrated by economists, religious leaders and pro-growth advocates.

Foreman dedicates his book to his friend Hugh Iltis, "Whose stout heart and sharp mind has always seen that the population explosion leads to the death of wild things and the loss of wilderness."

In my own media battles on the population/immigration/environmental front, I have had to contend with big time radio talk show hosts who support unlimited growth, i.e., Ernest Hancock of http://www.freedomphoenix.com/ .  Top television news personalities such as Diane Sawyer and Charlie Rose will not touch the subject, but report about the consequences—never making the connection.  Newspapers like the Denver Post's Vince Carroll remain convinced that unlimited growth is beneficial. The Los Angeles Times encourages as much growth as possible even as California chokes on its toxic air, gridlocked highways and crumbling infrastructure. It adds 1,700 people daily and 400 vehicles.


Humans are causing the 6th extinction of species that the world has known

 Even small town newspaper editors like Jonathan Thompson of the High Country News advocate for unlimited growth. Bob Shieffer of "Face the Nation" and David Gregory of "Meet the Press" scamper away from the topic like gazelles. Every National Public Radio host avoids the topic at all costs. Only last year did Thomas Friedman finally write, "The Earth is full."

Friedman's commentary didn't make a dent.  I've written 100 similar commentaries.  The USA adds 8,100 people net gain daily while the planet hosts another 240,000 new babies 24/7. Result: an added 78 million humans annually on an already environmentally devastated planet in 2012.

From my own work, I unequivocally state that human overpopulation in America and around the world is the most evaded, avoided, ignored and suppressed issue of our time.  It's also the most dangerous predicament of our time, but don't let that stop us from increasing our numbers at breakneck speed.

"We must alert and organize the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Over-consumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today."   Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer While you may hear a lot about "carrying capacity", you never hear about carrying capacity for all the other creatures on our planet.  It's like they don't exist or are unimportant.  Foreman loves wild things and I love them, too.

Dave Foreman's book will rock your senses. It will affect your children. It will change all life on this planet if humans continue their endless onslaught around the globe.

Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents "The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it" to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at http://www.frostywooldridge.com/ He is the author of: America on the Brink: The Next Added 100 Million Americans. Copies available: 1 888 280 7715

The Catalina Fox that inhabits the Catalina Islands off the Coast of California has stepped back from extinction and now stand strong at over 1500 animals.........Great steps have been taken to keep the Foxes free from rabies, a key killing agent of this tiny carnivore.........Innoculating the foxes as well as educational programs alerting people to get their dogs rabies and distemper shots have led the foxes to the point where they one day soon might be removed from the Endangererd Species List

Catalina Island fox makes astounding comeback

Los Angeles Times

Since falling to a low of 100 in 1999, the Catalina Island fox has rebounded to a number — 1,542 — above its previous level, thanks to conservationists' efforts.

A Catalina Island fox awaits the attentions of biologists who trap the animals in order to inspect them for illnesses, vaccinate them, outfit them with telemetry collars and monitor their behavior. (B

The Catalina Island fox has made one of the most remarkable recoveries known for an endangered species, rebounding in just 13 years from near extinction brought on by a distemper epidemic, wildlife biologists announced Wednesday.

The number of foxes has reached 1,542, surpassing the population of about 1,300 seen before the animals were ravaged by the disease that scientists believe was introduced by a pet dog or a raccoon from the mainland that hitched a ride on a boat or a barge.

"We're beyond proud," said Ann Muscat, president and chief executive of the Santa Catalina Island Conservancy. "It's a testament to what hard work, passion, money and the resiliency of nature can accomplish."

The animals' growing presence is evident across the island in "scent advertisements" — clumps of telltale scat — left on boulders, retainer walls, barbecues and picnic tables. But despite their growing number, Muscat said, "we can't relax. These furry treasures are still just one infected dog or raccoon away from extinction."

The fox — a subspecies found only on the 76-square-mile island — has become this resort destination's emblematic endangered species in part because of its fierce appeal.

The omnivorous 5-pound animals are gray with pointed noses, reddish ears and feet and black-tipped tails. They live about 10 years, pair for life and, with no natural predators on the island, generally enjoy a relatively laid-back existence.

But the population crashed to roughly 100 in 1999, prompting the conservancy and the Institute for Wildlife Studies to launch a $2-million recovery program that included vaccinations and a captive breeding facility. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the fox as endangered in 2004.

The rebound has federal wildlife authorities elated. "It is one of the great recovery efforts — up to this point," said Stephanie Weagley, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We still have a lot of management and fieldwork to do."

The agency is conducting a five-year status review of the fox, an effort that could lead to eventual removal from the endangered species list. The review takes into account factors such as fluctuations in population and continuing threats.

On an island shared by 3,200 humans, and visited by more than 1 million tourists a year, the leading causes of death for foxes include pet dogs, feral cats and "road kill." The cat-sized foxes are fearless and frequently wander out to sniff at passing vehicles.

Managing the animals now includes trapping foxes, inspecting them for illnesses, vaccinating them against distemper and rabies, outfitting them with telemetry collars and monitoring their behavior.

At daybreak Wednesday, conservancy senior wildlife biologist Julie King and wildlife technician Tyler Dvorak strode through waist-high brush, inspecting the contents of 12 wire box traps baited the night before with kibble and cat food to attract customers. They found four tenants, which growled nervously as King and Dvorak lifted them out to record their vital statistics in a log that chronicles more than a decade of fox research on the island.

Wearing leather gloves, King cradled one of the foxes in her lap and injected a microchip the size of a grain of rice just under the skin between its shoulder blades. Fox No. 57410 was about a year old and somewhat pudgy.

"These are not lean, mean killing machines like wolves," King said. "There's plenty here for them to eat — cactus pears, Catalina cherries, mice — and they can get downright obese."

News of the robust fox population was a main topic of conversation on the island. At the conservancy's nature center a mile south of town, school and youth program specialist Rich Zanelli said, "I'm going to put up a big sign that says, 'Ask me about 1,542.'"

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times

January 19, 2012

While rabies outbreaks among foxes is a cyclical and reoccurring phenomena, Coyotes are much less prone to harbor the disease..............Interesting that Southwestern Texas seems to have experienced periodic epidemics in both canine groups over the past 20 years............Airplane drops of bait laden rabies vaccine have been successful in breaking the cycle and reducing new outbreaks to virtually zero............

Texas nearly ends rabies with aerial vaccine drops

Reuters

Three King Air planes are lined up on a small runway in the town of Del Rio preparing to bomb south Texas—not with explosives, but with hundreds of thousands of packets of rabies vaccine.
The packets, each about the size of fast food ketchup, contain enough vaccine to inoculate the coyotes that roam the southwest Texas brush country against rabies, which until the last two decades was threatening livestock and humans alike.

"We had two outbreaks of rabies in coyotes and in foxes," recalls Dr. Ernest Oertli, a veterinarian who works with ranchers in this area. "There were a couple of human deaths from rabies, and it was spreading northward and eastward into the populated parts of the state, and was on the outskirts of San Antonio, Austin, Waco and Ft. Worth."

Oertli said that at the time, animal and human health experts were worried about an urban rabies epidemic, and were urgently telling residents to vaccinate their pets against rabies. Rabies in humans is almost always fatal unless the patient receives immediate and lengthy treatment.


gray fox

A handful of human rabies cases are reported in the United States every year. A woman in South Carolina died from the disease in December and a case was recently reported in Massachusetts, both believed to be infected from bats.

Researchers with the Texas Department of State Health Services learned of an aerial vaccination program underway in Canada, and decided to try it in the equally vast south and west regions of Texas. The results over the past 18 years have been dramatic, according to department spokesman Chris Van Deusen.
"Animal cases of the canine strain of rabies in southern Texas fell from 122 the year before the program began, to zero in 2000," Van Deusen said. "There have only been two cases since then, and both of them were within a mile of the Rio Grande."

He said the program is also concentrated against the fox strain of rabies, and those cases have been reduced from 244 animal cases in 1995, to zero cases in the past two years."We have effectively eliminated these two strains of rabies from Texas," Van Deusen said, adding that there have been no human cases of rabies in the region since the airdrop began.


"This is the same idea of the airborne attack against the Mediterranean Fruit Fly in California," Oertli said as he supervised the launch of the planes on one of the 12 flights they will make each day. Flying at 500 to 1,000 feet elevation, they will drop a total of 1.8 million packets over about 7,700 square miles of rural south and west Texas before the program comes to an end later this month. The packets are dipped in fish oil and coated with fish meal to make them attractive to coyotes and foxes, which eat them and are automatically vaccinated. "Now our goal is to put into place and maintain a barrier zone to prevent rabies from being reintroduced from Mexico," he said.

Over the 18 years of the program, a total of 36.7 million bait packets have been dropped. In the early years of the program, local media were asked to urge people in urban areas to watch out for falling bait and asked them not to touch the packets on the ground because animals could smell humans on the bait and would not eat it. Van Deusen said, as the rabies has been pushed back toward the Rio Grande and the operations now are taking place over largely rural stretches of west Texas, those warnings are less necessary.

Oertli said the idea of an aerial assault on rabies is spreading across the country. Health officials in several northeastern states are now using the same practice to fight against the spread of rabies in raccoons.
He noted that January is the best time to drop the bait in Texas for several reasons. Coyotes and foxes are short of food this time of year and are more likely to eat the bait, and spreading the baits makes them less susceptible to the roaming fire ants which crawl over everything in their path during hot weather.
"As a citizen, I am thrilled at what we have been able to accomplish with this program," Oertli said.
Now that fox and coyote rabies are nearly eradicated, crews are now planning a similar aerial assault against skunk rabies. He said a special bait packet has been developed for skunks.

western coyote

Van Deusen stressed that the program is only successful because of laws requiring people who live in cities to vaccinate their pets against rabies. "Vaccinating domestic animals is essential to stopping the spread of rabies," he said

Black bear harvests in Tennessee have increased on average by 21% annually since 1977. Prior to 1980, the annual harvest in the state was usually less than 20 bears. Today the picture could not be more astounding. Since 2004, Tennessee’s annual bear harvest has exceeded 300 animals! In 2009, a harvest of 571 bears in Tennessee set a new state record. These harvests are indicative of a growing bear population that is possibly higher today than it has been in the last 150 years........2011 hunter numbers just coming in with a new record of 581 Black bears taken.............Let me reiterate that the number of animals killed in a hunting season is just one barometer of the population status of that particular animal.........Does not take into account age classifications or the disruption of social bonds of the animals..........does not take into account that many biologists feel that there should be no hunting of carnivores based on their trophic funtction in keeping the land healthy............At least, Tennessee Wildlife Officials have moved the hunting season to December allowing prenant females to den,,,,however in this mideastern State, warming temps might begin to disrupt historical denning dates and it might be necessary to push hunting back into January to ensure least disruption to the female bear population

New Era in Black Bear Management in Tennessee


By David M. Brandenburg, Wildlife Biologist, Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

.The growth of Tennessee’s bear population has certainly surpassed TWRA expectations and owes much of its success to the long-term vision and foresight of state and federal managers, scientists, and administrators. A key step was to establish national forests and parks that would shelter and protect the sparse bear population, and continue to provide quality bear habitat as the population grew and spread. Bear sanctuaries were established and laws against illegal harvests and the hunting of adult females were strictly enforced. In addition to these important management steps, bear populations benefited from the maturation and increased productivity of key oak forest species in protected areas. Black bears are intrinsically a tough, resilient, and adaptable species. With careful management and ecological conditions in their favor, their populations have responded dramatically.

A crucial management decision was made in 1981 to protect female bears from excessive hunting mortality by moving the hunting season to December, after reproductive females had moved into dens. This simple change in hunting schedule reduced the percentage of females in the harvest from nearly 60% before 1981 to about 35-40% today.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A record black bear harvest was established during the 2011 hunting seasons, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency reports

by: The Elizabethan Star paper


Hunters harvested a total of 581 bears, surpassing the previous record of 573 set in 2009. The third all-time high for a year was 446 in 2008.

This year's record harvest is up from the 301 bears harvested in 2010. Hunters have harvested at least 300 bears in the state for the past seven years.

Black bears were harvested in 12 East Tennessee counties in 2011. There were 49 harvested bears in Carter County. Sevier County was the top county for harvest with 126, after having 41 harvested in 2010. Monroe County was second with 90, followed by Cocke 87, Polk 58, Carter, Sullivan 26, Johnson 24, Greene 21, Unicoi 20, Washington 16 and one in Jefferson County.

Tennessee black bear harvest reports started in 1951. That year, there were a total of 29 bears harvested.

Tennessee's black bear population has been steadily increasing over the past 40 years due to several management practices put in place by TWRA. These practices include establishment of a series of bear reserves throughout the bear habitat, protection of females and cubs, and setting the majority of the bear hunting season later in the year when most females have gone to the den.

Our friend Norm Bishop shedding a spotlight on how wrong it is to artificially feed wild animals like deer and elk..........Feeding Stations like the kind at play on The National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming congregate Elk in finite areas............Like in crowded human cities where illnesses can spread rapidly because of proximity of people, so does chronic wasting disease(CWD) and Brucellosis explode exponentially in Bison, Deer, Elk and other browsers in artificial feeding areas............Norm shares portions of biologist Bruce L. Smith's excellent peer reviewed paper, WHERE ELK ROAM-CONSERVATION AND BIOPOLITICS OF OUR NATIONAL ELK HERD which reinforces how aberrant and harmful artificial feeding stations are to both wild and domestic animals and uses it as a "point/counterpoint" to suggest how off-base Idaho Senator Monty Pearce is in calling for perpetual winter feeding of Elk in Jackson Hole

From: Norman Bishop <nabishop@q.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: Urgent Idaho Legislative update! Feeding elk - a recipe for disaster
To: Jim & Barb Hagedorn <jhag1@frontier.com>

Where Elk Roam - Conservation and Biopolitics of our National Elk Herd. 
In his Where Elk Roam, biologist Bruce L. Smith, PhD, shares a labor of love and discovery (not to mention a sense of urgency) after 22 years of field research on the  National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.    

Since its establishment in 1912, the National Elk Refuge has increasingly concentrated wild elk, excluded by human activities from their 200-mile historic migration southward to winter on Wyoming's Red Desert.  Smith documents the effects of that concentration, that, with twenty-two Wyoming State feedgrounds feeding 23,000 elk, adds up to 31,000 elk in five western states - about 3 percent of North America's million elk.

 And what are the effects of this concentration of elk?  Brucellosis, a bacterial disease brought from Britain with cattle, was identified in bison in neighboring Yellowstone National Park in 1917, and in Jackson Hole elk in 1930.   Both bison and elk have a higher seroprevalence of Brucella when concentrated than when they are free-ranging (In Jackson Hole, 80 percent of adult female bison were seropositive, as were 39 percent of female elk).  The disease has minor population effects on wild elk and bison, but when brucellosis infects domestic livestock, it causes unacceptable abortions of calves.  In recent years, livestock in northwest Wyoming and southeast Idaho have been infected with brucellosis from elk.  Vaccination of elk doesn't work. The obvious solution to lowering the risk of transmission is to quit concentrating elk and bison on feedgrounds.  But habit and tradition die hard, so winter feeding continues, in spite of its devastating effect on the vegetation and biodiversity of the area.

Now, if brucellosis sounds like a ticking time bomb, read Smith's Chapter 7, Train Wreck.  Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is caused by a prion, a protein that attacks brain tissue, as does mad cow disease.  There is no known way to prevent it or cure it, and it persists in soil for decades.  CWD has been marching inexorably northward across Wyoming for 30 years, and was found in a moose near Bedford, Wyoming, in 2008.  Like brucellosis, CWD thrives among concentrated members of the deer family - deer, elk, and moose.  On an elk farm in South Dakota, 59 percent tested positive for CWD.  Wyoming's 2005 draft CWD plan stated that prevalence of CWD in free-ranging elk is only 2 to 3 percent (1/10 that of deer), the prevalence of CWD in captive elk can exceed 50 percent.  This level... suggests the possibility of much higher prevalence in feedground elk...

 A report from a CWD workshop in Wisconsin noted that animals debilitated by CWD would quickly be culled by large carnivores.  Recent modeling suggests wolf predation may suppress CWD emergence in deer, but on the feedgrounds, there may be too few wolves to keep pace with disease epizootics.  Ironically, although wolves so far are taking about 0.3 percent of refuge elk, the State of Wyoming is looking to greatly reduce their numbers the moment their wolf management plan is accepted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

But, "ranchers seem to prefer feed grounds with brucellosis [not to mention CWD] to no feedgrounds at all as a means of reducing elk competition with livestock on both private and public lands."  Finally Smith writes, "better a smaller elk herd than an overgrazed range riddled with disease."
Lions Press, 2012. 266 pages, 37 photographs, 2 appendices, 226 references cited.



Norman A. Bishop
On Jan 19, 2012, at 1:55 PM, Jim & Barb Hagedorn wrote:

  Idaho Senator Monty Pearce is requesting a special hearing with both the house and the senate regarding the administration of Idaho's winter feeding program for our ailing big game herds. He is proposing legislation that will ensure winter feeding dollars are solely used for preserving our big game and cannot be funneled back to the general fund.·        

The hearing date has been set for Friday, February 3rd at 1:00 PM in Boise. We need every Idaho concerned Sportsman, hunter, huntress, rancher, Outfitter and concerned citizens to attend this hearing.
More details to follow but please make every attempt to attend this hearing!

Joe Carnahan, Director of the new movie, THE GREY claims he was not intending to show Wolves as man eaters,,,,,,,,I have to shout out to Joe: "WAKE UP MAN,,,,,,,YOU AND YOUR EDITORS ARE NOT NAIVE CHILDREN,,,,,,YOU HAD TO KNOW THAT THE DEPICTION OF WOLVES SEEKING TO KILL PEOPLE WOULD ENGENDER AGE OLD "LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD" FEARS IN THE AVERAGE FILM VIEWER",,,,,,,,,,,,SO DISAPPOINTING THAT YOU ACT NAIVE AND ACTUALLY EXPECT US TO BELIEVE THAT YOUR FILM IS ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY AND POSITIVELY PORTRAYING WOLVES IN THE WILD........JEEZ LOUISE, THIS IS AN EXPLOITATION MOVIE PLAIN AND SIMPLE..........JUST OWN UP TO IT AND SAY YOU WANTED TO PROVOKE PRIMAL FEAR IN PEOPLE,,,,,,,DON'T BE A COWARD AND ACT ALL INNOCENT

'The Grey' director Joe Carnahan: wolves win

The alpha wolf challenges the Liam Neeson character, Ottway, and other plane crash survivors in the Joe Carnahan thriller "The Grey." (Kimberley French/Open Road Films)

Los Angeles Times

Dean Kuipers

Just as California gets its first wild wolf in almost 80 years, along comes "The Grey," the new thriller opening Jan. 27 in which Liam Neeson leads a bunch of very out-of-place oilfield dudes in Alaska who are hunted and killed by wolves.

Upside: Nature wins. Downside: Wild wolves are portrayed as cunning man-eaters. Maybe bad timing for our new wolf, known by the designation OR-7.

"It's fictional. That kind of movie is completely designed for thrill and does not reflect reality," says Kim Delfino, California program director at Defenders of Wildlife, whose group has taken a keen interest in OR-7. "It's highly, highly unusual for wolves to ever attack people."

Carnahan himself wants the wolves to be seen in the right light. Talking by phone and email from Toronto, he says: "I never intended [the wolves] to be the aggressor; I look at them as the defenders. I think these guys are in a very territorially sensitive place. [The humans] were trespassing and intruders."

Aggressors or defenders, these wolves are taking no shorts. A few minutes into the movie we see why Neeson's character, Ottway, is there: As men work on a pipeline in a rugged snowy landscape, a big gray wolf comes streaking in out of the storm at astonishing speed to attack the men, and Ottway guns it down. The threat is established: These wolves are on the offensive.

"I am absolutely an animal activist and have a dog and three horses, and this was never in any way to suggest that wolves are vicious animals," said Carnahan. "But they are part of nature, but they're not different in the movie from the blizzard, from the river, from the cliffside. For all its beauty, it's also very hostile and unforgiving."

Indeed, from the very first scene, the Alaskan sky is always dark, the snow is howling, a river half-frozen and opaque. Carnahan, who also co-wrote the movie with Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, makes the environment into a character ruthlessly hostile to humans.

On a flight home, the snow takes down a plane full of the oilfield roughnecks. All but seven are killed. The very first night, the wolves appear, and, one by one, the men are picked off. Ottway, who is a wildlife biologist stationed with the men for their protection, has a special relationship with the pack, especially the alpha, and the ensuing hunt is clearly personal for both man and wolf.

Carnahan says he learned a lot about wolves from the books of Shaun Ellis, who lived as a low-ranking member of a Rocky Mountain wolf pack for 18 months, eating off their kills and studying their behavior. He also spent a considerable amount of the time with the real wolves used in the film, which were trained by legendary animal wrangler Gerry Therrien. That pack was dominated by an alpha female who, Carnahan says, was fierce about keeping the others in line.

These oilfield characters are not men we like. That was deliberate, Carnahan says, as he meant to point out that industries like petroleum extraction are often interlopers in pristine — if hostile — environments. Very quickly, the behavior of the survivors devolves into a snarling pack, with the men fighting for dominance. The wolves are imbued with more dignity.

In one key scene, the men manage to kill a wolf, and one of the least-likable characters, Diaz, mutilates it and throws out a challenge to the wolves, saying, "You're not the animals, we're the animals!" This elicits a chilling response from the wolves, who send up a rising howl from the dark in which all we see is their breath illuminated by moonlight.

Which is an indication of how it's going to go. The wolves are better adapted. Carnahan says to anyone who thinks he has demonized the wolves: "Look, the wolves do OK in the movie. If it was a football game it would be like 41 to 3! [laughs] They do all right."

Defenders of Wildlife and many other animal advocates hope that California will celebrate having a wild wolf. Carnahan feels his film also has an environmental message.

"I don't think the film will make people fear wolves, but I'd like to make them respect wolves and by extension, nature itself more," he says. "I'd like the movie to remind people that we're just visitors here, and the defiling and destruction of the natural world puts us at odds with our environment and we're ultimately provoking a power that is supreme, overwhelming and merciless. Look no further than the tsunami that struck Japan for an example of exactly how ferocious nature can be."

Look for an interview with Carnahan and Neeson in the Los Angeles Times Calendar section next week.

Yes, you can temporarily increase Moose numbers in the Kenai Peninsula section of Alaska by shooting Wolves from airplanes,,,,,,,,,,, but it is not the long term solution to Moose sustainability...........Habitat protection as discussed weekly on this blog is always the key to optimum predator and prey occupancy on the land.............The Moose in what is known as Units 15A and 15C have been on the decline for 30 years and Alaska Fish & Game acknowledge that "the main problem in 15A has been identified as a lack of quality habitat for moose"......... "Nutritious moose browse is most effectively produced by fire, and 15A hasn't seen a big wildfire in 40 years"......... "The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, which covers about 80 percent of the land in 15A, hasn't conducted any large-scale controlled burns"........ "Doing so is challenging, what with oil and gas development, a busy airspace, expanding human development and a lack of a defensible firebreak between civilization and wilderness".............."To add another wrinkle, the refuge has said it does not support aerial wolf control and will not allow it on the refuge, leaving Fish and Game only a small chunk of state and privately owned land in 15A to possibly conduct an aerial wolf-control program on if private landowners give their approval now that the board has".......With the limitation of available land on which to conduct aerial wolf kills, and the evidence that poor habitat is the biggest hindrance to a robust moose population in 15A, Fish and Game has been reluctant to pursue wolf predator control in the past............. But declining moose harvest numbers has prompted the department to proceed, with the idea that killing wolves will free up moose for human hunters..........Talk about hypocrisy, polititical "b.s" and utter wildlife mismanagement policy that is resulting once again with wolves wrongly in the crosshairs

Aerial wolf killing set for March

• Kenai Peninsula units unanimously approved for game management units 15A and 15C

By Jenny Neyman
Redoubt Reporter

Starting as early as March of this year, wolves theKenai Peninsula will be subject to extermination from above, as the Alaska Board of Game on Monday voted unanimously to approve predator control measures authorizing the aerial killing of wolves in Game Management Units 15A and 15C.
The measures are presented to help boost declining numbers, low bull-to-cow ratios and calf survivability rates in a moose population that has seen better days.

"To me, this is a very clear-cut case. We can either sit, wait and hope, or we can be proactive and try to do something for our moose population," said Ted Spraker, vice chair of the Board of Game and a retired Kenai-area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
On Monday, Gino Del Frate, Fish and Game management coordinator for Region 2, gave a presentation to the board outlining the proposals and the department's reasons for recommending their passage — a change in position for Fish and Game, which didn't used to support aerial wolf control on the peninsula.
Evidence of a struggling moose population has been predicted and noted for decades, particularly in 15A where the population is estimated at about half what it was 30 years ago. The board enacted intensive management plans for both 15A and 15C in 2000. Since then, 15A hasn't once met the population target, and only one year met the harvest target.

The main problem in 15A has been identified as a lack of quality habitat for moose. Nutritious moose browse is most effectively produced by fire, and 15A hasn't seen a big wildfire in 40 years.............. The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, which covers about 80 percent of the land in 15A, hasn't conducted any large-scale controlled burns. Doing so is challenging, what with oil and gas development, a busy airspace, expanding human development and a lack of a defensible firebreak between civilization and wilderness.
To add another wrinkle, the refuge has said it does not support aerial wolf control and will not allow it on the refuge, leaving Fish and Game only a small chunk of state- and privately owned land in 15A to possibly conduct an aerial wolf-control program on, if private landowners give their approval now that the board has.
With the limitation of available land on which to conduct aerial wolf kills, and the evidence that poor habitat is the biggest hindrance to a robust moose population in 15A, Fish and Game has been reluctant to pursue wolf predator control in the past. But declining moose harvest numbers has prompted the department to proceed, with the idea that killing wolves will free up moose for human hunters.

"In the past we have elected not to go ahead with an intensive management program up until about four years ago, and four years ago we started saying, 'Well, let's put it on the books, let's talk about habitat, let's talk about intensive management. That's kind of where we are today. Successful wolf control alone is not going to increase the moose populations to objective levels. There's going to need to be some habitat enhancement, and we are hopeful that that will happen," Del Frate said. "However, wolf removal may allow for the reallocation of some moose to harvest by humans."

In the three days of public comment preceding Monday's deliberations, speakers argued against aerial wolf control, using much the same information pointed out in Fish and Game's own feasibility reports on the proposed programs — that habitat, not wolves, is the primary problem of the peninsula moose population, and that killing wolves, especially in the limited area available to aerial shooting, wasn't going to solve what most ails the moose population.

Board members didn't disagree, exactly, but came to a different conclusion — that addressing predation is doing something, which is better than nothing."There are certainly habitat issues and predation issues happening simultaneously. There's only one of them that we can really deal with through this board. However, our measure of success would be limited by our ability to access land, but I think we have responsibility to do what we can, where we can," said board member Nate Turner.

Predation may not be the biggest hurdle facing the Kenai's moose population, but it is a contributing factor that should be addressed, Spraker said."You have this combination. You have a couple really bad winters, you have a population that's declining because of habitat quality, you have restricted trapping (on the refuge), and then when you have these really bad winters, I think that was the final straw. Around 2000, 2001 the population was low enough where the predator impact really became important. And that's what helped this population go down, and that's why calf survival and so forth was poor during those years," Spraker said.
"We have very little land that's state land or private land that we could possibly impact the number of wolves (though aerial wolf kills), but I think it's well worth the try because if we're able to adopt a plan that removes at least some of the impact that's caused by wolves on our moose population, I think what it will do is buy us some time. That's what's important at this stage of the game — we need to buy ourselves some time and not let this moose population decline any further," he said.

Spraker referenced research done in the early 1980s to assess moose calf mortality. Of the 46 percent calf mortality noted in the study, 34 percent was attributed to black bears, 6 percent to brown bears, 6 percent to wolves and 2 percent to undetermined predation. And that was within the first six or so weeks of the calves' lives. Spraker said that, to his knowledge, wolves kill a more significant amount of calves in the winter, while bears are denned up, and can kill older moose and occasionally prime adults, as well.
The board already increased the harvest limit of black bears from two to three. Fish and Game regularly hears assessments from peninsula residents and hunters that the brown bear population has increased, but until the results of a brown bear census conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is released, expected later this year, it is difficult for Fish and Game to substantially increase the allowable hunt of brown bears. The board also enacted moose hunting restrictions in 2011 to boost bull-to-cow ratios, which had a dramatic effect of reducing the peninsula's moose hunting harvest from recent years' average of 400 a year to 35.

Short of habitat enhancement, which is largely up to federal refuge managers, since the state owns little land with potential for a controlled burn in 15A, wolf control is the only cog left to tweak in the moose population puzzle, according to Spraker."This board has absolutely no choice. We have a clear mandate that when we reduce the (hunting) season — and we have reduced the season until we practically closed the moose season — we have to make some sort of effort to correct things or at least authorize the department to try to correct things," he said. "I'm very hopeful that the refuge will do habitat enhancement, but we haven't seen it for 40 years. … When it comes to that option of just waiting until the habitat improves, which is the long-term fix, it's really not an option for this board at all. We have no choice in that matter."

Fish and Game commissioned a study on the peninsula's wolf population in November. It estimated 60 to 62 wolves in eight packs in 15A and 44 to 52 wolves in six packs in 15C. Hunting and trapping is currently allowed on both state-managed land and the refuge, which covers about 30 percent of 15C, compared to 80 percent of 15A, and has averaged a harvest of about 40 wolves a year peninsulawide in recent years.
Wolf harvest used to be higher, but several factors have lessened trapper interest, including an outbreak of a wolf lice infestation in the 1980s, and the enactment of regulations on the refuge that make trapping more difficult than on state land — including that traps must be checked every four days and be set at least a mile away from roads.
While the aerial kill program is not expected to result in a huge impact to the wolf population — and the proposals include population thresholds that say the program will be curtailed if wolf numbers get too low — board members said they expect it to be successful enough to be worth doing.
Even in 15A, where only two packs were tracked as being outside the refuge boundary —thus available for aerial hunting — Spraker said he still thinks it will be a boon for moose."Removal of at least these two packs will be huge as far as benefiting the moose population because that's part of the old 1969 burn. That's where the majority of the moose are distributed across 15A, so although the department's efforts may not seem like a lot … the department will have an opportunity to make the most impact by removing wolves in the most-dense area of moose," he said.
In this case, what benefits moose will benefit hunters, since Fish and Game doesn't want to dramatically grow the moose population without habitat enhancement, since moose in areas of 15A are already showing signs of nutritional stress, and moose in the intensive management area of 15C are already at a fairly robust, 2.5-moose-per-square-mile estimated density. Increasing the population without increasing available browse could just further exacerbate nutritional problems.

So Fish and Game is proposing to monitor the progress of the wolf kill program, and if extra moose result from fewer wolves, Del Frate said the department intends to pursue more hunting opportunities. Since a concurrent goal is to increase bull-to-cow ratios, increased hunting opportunities may initially be for cow moose, rather than bulls, as the bull harvest was already restricted in 2011.
"We're operating under the premise that we're really going to do no harm to the moose population. We want to be able to see that there is a detectible difference to the calf-cow ratios, that we're seeing some response from our intensive management program," Del Frate said. "… We're trying to make it very clear that we don't want the moose population to grow outside of its habitat, and the initial intent of this program is to reallocate those animals from wolves to harvest directly, and that may include antlerless harvests (in permit hunts)."

That may be good news to peninsula hunters, many of whom didn't even attempt to moose hunt on the peninsula this year. Ultimately, that's for whom these predator control measures are meant, Turner said.
"I know there's been a lot of discussion around the state and especially the Anchorage area about whether we should be doing it, considering other factors, and we have considered them. We listened. We've had a lot of public testimony and, personally, when it comes to the rubber meets the road, it's the local people that are immediately affected that I really feel the need to pay special attention to in this situation," Turner said.
"I think we've put it very clear on the record that we don't believe that we're going to solve the problem all the way across the Kenai refuge by doing this. We're making the attempt to fix what we believe based on the data that we have that we can affect the areas that are within our reach. And I think we'll be affective in those areas. I have little doubt of that," he said.


Southern area looking up

In the southern Kenai Peninsula's Game Management Unit 15C, moose numbers have fared better than in 15A. The most-recent population estimate pegged the moose population there at about 2,900 animals, at a density of about 2.5 moose per square mile, which is within the area's intensive management objective.
Habitat in 15C is in better shape, considering that more than 170,000 acres have burned in wildfires in 15C in recent decades. Of more concern to Fish and Game than moose numbers in 15C is calf survivability and declining bull-to-cow ratios in the intensive management area — north of Kachemak Bay, the Fox River Flats and west of the flats.
Similar to 15A, black bears, brown bears and wolves are active predators on moose in 15C, and hunters have had limited success in controlling predator populations in the intensive management area of 15C. The hunting restrictions put in place by the board in 2011 have had a quick impact in boosting the slipping bull-to-cow ratio, though it plunged moose harvest numbers below the range laid out in the intensive management plan for the area.

"We do believe that part of our bull-cow ratio issues is that the previous bull harvest of the last few years has been unsustainable, which has caused the bull-cow ratio to decline. With the new harvest numbers we may or may not be within our harvest objectives for intensive management," Del Frate said.The refuge only covers about 30 percent of the land in 15C, leaving open a much larger area to conduct aerial wolf kills. That, coupled with the generally healthier state of moose in 15C than 15A, should mean that a wolf kill program will be more effective, more quickly, than in 15A, Spraker said.

"It is very different from 15A in that I think in a very short period of time, permittees can be very successful given the land status, and I think that 15C can be turned around in a short period of time," he said.
Spraker noted his intention to suggest stopping the permit hunts for cow moose in 15C when the hunt comes up for re-authorization at a future Board of Game meeting.

"We've already adjusted the hunting season for residents, eliminated nonresident hunting for 15A and C. We've taken those steps and I think it would be prudent for this board to eliminate the cow hunt in 15C if we adopt aerial shooting of wolves in 15C," he said.

Del Frate cautioned against doing so, suggesting that the 2012 permits already issued for the 15C antlerless hunt continue, and that the board consider leaving Fish and Game the option to issue more permits in 2013 if it finds that aerial wolf kills do result in extra moose.

"We might need to harvest more antlerless moose in future years because we're taking away from the wolves," he said. "… Considering the high moose densities (in 15C), we're not necessarily interested in increasing the moose population at this time. However, the goal is to reallocate moose from wolves to human harvest."

Who will shoot?

A significant difference between the aerial wolf kill proposals is who will be allowed to do the shooting. The wording before the board started out the same for the proposals in 15A and 15C, but the final intention is that only Fish and Game personnel conduct aerial wolf kills in 15A, while permits will be given to the public to do work in 15C.
The difference is the land ownership. Since there is so little area outside the refuge that's available for aerial wolf kills in 15A, the board said it didn't want the public trying to decipher where those boundaries were.
"I would not like to see this open to the general public for the fear of just the difficulty of individuals knowing where these land boundaries are," Spraker said, in proposing an amendment to that effect.
In 15C, however, only about 30 percent of the land is covered by the refuge.

"It's different from 15A that the intent of the board is that the department issue aerial wolf-shooting permits to the public and that the department may get involved if the public is not successful, but the primary operations should be conducted by the public," Spraker said.
Spraker requested that both programs be expedited in processing to get started as early as March 1, while snowcover lasts, with 15C being the priority to get started first.The proposals in both 15A and 15C are written to last five years, but with required re-evaluation after three years to suspend or curtail the wolf kills if certain factors are met — such as the wolf population getting down to 15 animals, or the moose population showing increased nutritional stress.

"The threshold that we described is if after three consecutive years we could see issues, we'll either come back to the board or we'll suspend the program," Del Frate said. "…  What we didn't want to do is have a knee-jerk reaction to a one-year change in population parameters and be sure that it's more than just some environmental factor that one year."

An extensive two-year moose research program is slated to begin in the spring, and will help track the impact of the wolf-kill program, producing information to help Fish and Game evaluate whether it should continue the full five-year duration.

The program will involve collaring, tracking and testing 50 moose in 15A and 50 in 15C, which could result in a wide range of information, including rump fat (which indicates health), moose movements, bull-to-cow and cow-to-calf ratios, age structures, pregnancy and twinning rates, calf numbers and calf mortalities. There isn't enough money and resources to find out everything Fish and Game would like to know, and Del Frate said that the final details and priorities of the research will be left for the not-yet-hired biologist who will be in charge of the research. Determining predation rates of calf mortalities, for example, likely won't be feasible. Wolf population numbers will also be estimated during the research period.

"We do want to stop and evaluate whether or not we're doing any harm to our moose population, so we would plan to suspend (aerial wolf kills) and look at our nutritional indices, and see what our moose population is doing. If it warrants different objects from here on out we'll come back to the board with new numbers. If we see any signs of nutritional stress we will want to re-evaluate the program to make sure we have a highly productive population of moose. And if (the wolf population falls below 15 in 15A or 15C), we will immediately suspend the program and ensure we have a sustainable wolf population," Del Frate said.