It is time for another new page for wildlife news. Please use “comment” at the bottom to post your news. Do not post entire articles unless you have our permission, or post copyrighted materials unless you own the copyright. Here is the link to the most recent (Dec. 19) “old” news.
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Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
Comments
20 years. Seems like just yesterday Ralph.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/07/why-the-governments-new-dietary-guidelines-could-be-a-nightmare-for-the-meat-industry/?tid=pm_business_pop
Wish they would have plotted fossil-fuel (and water, and land) use rather than CO2 emissions, like recent National Geographic magazines did. Also, per kilogram is not nearly as relevant as per calorie or, when just comparing animals, per calorie of protein (both are interesting). Might alter the ordering of the foods substantially though, which may be “inconvenient”. I’m in no way implying cow meat would look better, in case it sounds like I’m making a cowpology. I’d have dietary guidelines not use ecology to influence shoppers, but rather use taxes, which I suspect would be more effective (but I’m radical).
http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/u-s-enlarges-area-in-southwest-where-rare-wolves-can-roam/
Thanks these great articles!
Is the Government Destroying the Ecosystem of the American West by Favoring Cattle Over Wild Horses?
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/cattle-versus-wild-horses-in-the-american-west/
WM:
It could be that those anti-wolfers in Eastern Washington are actually the “clueless” ones, compared to their highly educated, more well-traveled neighbors to the West. I would surmise that, in general, the people of Western Washington are more schooled in the ecological science of wolves than those in Eastern Washington many of whom get their knowledge of wolves from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and by watching how the next door State of Idaho is “managing” (ie killing) wolves.
Ed,
I know you intended this comment to go on the other/older thread, but I will respond here anyway. I don’t know about who “are more schooled on the ecological science of wolves.” And, of course, not all those answers are conclusively in (Dr. Mech has published an article discussing this – and believes wolves will never be at densities that such ecological benefits will be realized). But, importantly, I do know the economic and recreation impacts will be more likely and pronounced WHERE THE WOLVES ARE, and will be for some time. That is Eastern WA (and not Western WA, unless some wolves get translocation tickets), where livestock owners will have more complicated lives, likely spend more money responding to wolf risks as the population grows, and where hunters will see real and perceived impacts on hunter opportunities and success rates. WDFW will also be spending more money in the wolf management arena and there will be fewer federal funds for this purpose each and every year, which means WA taxpayers will be on the hook.
I direct you to the link on the 2012 WDFW Position Statement on wolf management on the other thread, with my most recent comment to Louise.
WM:
Regarding Washington State wolves,I am afraid that I agree with you on one point you made to Louise and that point is, “I would not rule out a mid-stream Plan correction before the downlisting/delisting objectives are met.”
I say this because of the new Washington Fish & Wildlife Director, Jim Unsworth, who has been most effective in carrying out Idaho’s severe hunting/trapping wolf “management” program. Unsworth even supported the wiping out of all of the wolves deep into Idaho’s Franck Church – River of No Return Wilderness Area last winter. So far, I understand the Washington F&W has strengthened protections (not loosened them) since the 2012 Management Plan, so we will see if that pro-wolf direction continues now that Unsworth is on-board.
++So far, I understand the Washington F&W has strengthened protections (not loosened them)++
Could you be a little more precise with facts supporting your assertion?
It is my understanding that the Washington F&W have put in some adjustments since the 2012 wolf plan that requires ranchers to take certain non-lethal protection methods to deter wolf predation before lethal methods are performed.
A classic case where CO’s should work with ranchers to enter into a contract to purchase their federal grazing permits and perpetually remove the livestock so native wildlife do not have to be killed for the sake of cattle.
http://ravallirepublic.com/missoula/news/state-and-regional/article_8eb1d418-0559-59f8-8c79-8272a3507a53.html
http://www.conservationfund.org/places-we-work/montana/
I am submitting an article entitled “A Modest Proposal For A Solution to Idaho’s Wolf Problem.” This piece is in the great tradition of biting satire, as exemplified by Jonathon Swift, the author of “Gulliver’s Travels.” Dean Swift’s essay, “A Modest Proposal,” was a classic in this genre. It purported to solve Ireland’s population problem by selling babies to the English as food.
A Modest Proposal For A Solution to Idaho’s Wolf Problem
Ken Fischman, Ph.D.
Early next spring, Idaho Fish & Game (IDF&G) agents will recommence their program to remove wolf pups from dens, equip them with radio collars, and replace them in the dens. IDF&G officials state that this will enable them to track wolf movements throughout the life cycle of the pups and will give them valuable information on a vexing problem that has preoccupied the Idaho state government for several years.
Some wolf advocates however, believe that IDF&G has other, clandestine motives in continuing this program. They assume that radio-collaring pups will enable agents to more easily track and find wolves in order to kill enough of them to bring Idaho’s wolf population down to the minimum legal number of 100 wolves allowed by their agreement with the US Fish & Wildlife agency (FW). The collars can facilitate IDF&G’s doing this without inadvertently dropping the wolf population below that number. If wolf population were to decrease to below 100, it would trigger a mandated review by FW and possible relisting of these animals as an endangered species, again putting them under federal control.
Some people consider this conclusion to be a paranoid idea on the part of pro-wolf people. I suggest however that not only could the present program be continued, but that it might be expanded in a way to provide a final solution to Idaho’s perceived problems with wolves. In fact, the technology might already exist for enabling Idaho officials to accomplish this task in a more efficient and expedient manner.
The lowering of the Idaho wolf population to a relict, unimportant, and almost invisible number of animals could be accomplished by equipping, not just some, but all wolf pups, with permanent, expandable radio collars (so as not to choke them to death as they grow larger because that could be considered animal cruelty in some circles). These collars would be furnished with remote scent detectors and strychnine self-injection devices, which could be adjusted in such a manner that if wolves were to approach domestic livestock within a certain perimeter, (let us say for arguments sake that it would be fifty feet), the strychnine injector could be automatically activated to deliver a lethal dose to the wolf that would kill it within seconds. Thus these devices could prevent any possibility of wolves killing animals that ranchers value.
One of the problems with present wolf management in Idaho is that there is no sure way to know which of the many wolves that are now being killed in retaliation for livestock deaths are actually responsible for them or just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Equipping wolf collars in this manner would make it virtually certain that that only wolves that are likely to predate livestock would be killed, not in retribution for prior deaths as is the present practice, but in a preventive way. Such methodology would not only be more efficient than sending agents out with rifles or traps, or shooting the wolves from aircraft, but would make Idaho or federal agents of the Wildlife Services be less likely to be accused of unethical behavior toward these animals. It would “make the punishment fit the crime”.
Additional alteration of such scent detectors could make it possible for them to be used to prevent the killing of elk that hunters most value. It has been stated by pro-wolf people that only a fraction of Idaho’s wildlife areas are being impacted by wolves. Elk scent detectors could perhaps be turned on and off in such areas from a distance so that only wolves residing in or occasionally wandering through areas in which hunters success rates were below the historical 21% would be targeted. After all, such long distance killing is now being routinely done with drones by the CIA. Perhaps Idaho officials can persuade the Federal Government to share these techniques with our state for this important task. In one example, the devices could be activated on wolves found in the Clearwater National Forest where hunters have long claimed that they have reduced the elk there despite the fact that in some areas there where wolf numbers are high, elk populations have actually increased. Doing this, would enable Idaho to definitively prove for the first time that such wolf killing actually had a beneficial effect on elk population.
Despite wolves having never killed even a single sheep or cow in the Panhandle, there was no official limit on wolf killing during the 2013-14 hunting season. In accord with technological advances, cattle and sheep sensors could perhaps be used in southern Idaho, but turned off in the Idaho Panhandle. Doing so might persuade the rest of the country that Idahoans are not the bloodthirsty psychotics that many of them believe us to be.
I must admit however, that one drawback in this program may be that the initial cost of such collars is liable to be high. When that amount is added to the cost of sending personnel into remote areas to do the initial collaring and subsequent retrieval of collars from dead wolves, it is likely to considerably exceed the present estimated cost of wolf eradication which is well over $1,000 per animal. Although the program is not likely to be cost-effective in terms of the value of livestock and elk effected, the past few years have shown that this is not a major factor in the efforts of the Idaho Legislature and Governor Otter to rid Idaho of these animals. For example, the recent addition of the Wolf Depredation Control Board recommended by the governor and, which has a budget of $500,000, was passed by both state houses with almost the unanimous vote of Republican legislators. (most Democrats voted against the bill). That this was accomplished despite the present short-fall in educational funds for the state, (many school districts have had to fire teachers and/or cut back to a four day school week), This situation clearly shows where the priorities of our state legislators lie. Given their staunch support for wolf eradication, they will probably be quite willing to bankroll this final solution to Idaho’s problems with wolves.
This might be funny Ken were it not that some might actually think you are making a righteous proposal.
Thanks, Louise. At least you got it!
Bill would remove wolf protection in 4 states.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/bill-would-remove-federal-protections-for-wolves-in-4-states-b99425553z1-288451551.html
A bill to remove wolf protections because disgruntled extremists don’t want to play fair should be an outrage to all. The courts are fairly consistent in their support for wolves and maintaining protections based on interpretations of the ESA. If the courts are not suited to interpret the law and midwestern carnivore specialists are not to be heeded, then who is. Not these mob mentality creeps. These senators are a disgrace.
They are trying to pass a new law, not dispute interpretation of previous law (which is what courts are for – nobody said they aren’t suited to do that).
I thought it interesting that NWS did not appeal the WY decision, and not yet saying they will appeal in great lakes.
“The bill uses a strategy that succeeded in taking wolves in Idaho and Montana off the endangered list after court challenges by environmentalists blocked those efforts. Congress took matters into its own hands in 2011 and lifted the federal protections in those two states.”
I wouldn’t say that congress took matters into its own hands since it was an attachment to a must pass budget bill.
News about Oregon wolves – a new wolf has been sited in the south Cascades near the recently named Rogue Pack’s (OR7) territory! Perhaps they will migrate north along the Cascades and also find a foothold in the Coast range farther west and from there also move northward.
That’s where I live.
http://dfw.state.or.us/Wolves/wolf_livestock_updates.asp
Barb Rupers:
Thanks. Here is another link to this good news story from Oregon. I agree with Ida that the agencies seem to give out too much detailed location information on the wolves whereabouts. It makes me very nervous to think that some gun-toting killer could see this as a fun adventure to track down and “bag a wolf”.
http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2015/01/another_adult_wolf_has_been_sp.html#incart_river
Yes let’s make sure that a refresher on discerning the difference between a wolf and a coyote is made available and published at the F&W sites. 😉
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/13-animals-hunted-to-extinction/bubal-hartebeest
13 animals that went extinct, related to hunting
All of these species were eliminated by unregulated market hunting, not sportsmen in the modern era.
…..”unregulated market hunting”
You mean like the coyote calling contests that often include bobcats and foxes?
I’m not commenting on predator calling contests, I was replying to the article about extinct species and the fact that none were caused in the modern era of regulated take. Coyotes and foxes aren’t extinct, nor am I a fan of any killing contest, but hunters today aren’t the cause of anything going extinct to the contrary evidence would suggest.
We could extend the list to hundreds by including more species from Australia, New Zealand, various Polynesian islands, and Madagascar, just for starters (but those aren’t the hunters hoped to be made to look bad).
Faukland island wolf was interesting – it was the only mammal on those islands. Wikipedia provided theories (ice bridge) about how that is even conceivable.
rork, I’d be interested in knowing a few of the animals you’re thinking about and whether it was because of over hunting or if other factors contributed.
I find the story of the Falkland Island wolf to be especially sad. It was a tame wolf with no fear of humans. That wasn’t a problem until the Europeans found the island, and they did kill it for fun.
We are truly an arrogant, nauseating species.
And it doesn’t appear we have changed or evolved much either.
Yvette,
One of my favorite examples in the area rork is referring to would be the gigantic flightless Moa of New Zealand and it’s predator, the equally impressive Haast’s eagle. The Moa were wiped out by the arrival of the Māori people from Polynesia.
My curiosity got to me and I found this Science Daily article on the Moa. Pretty interesting, though I have doubts that this small of a population of people hunting them into extinction so quickly without other factors contributing. Maybe it’s true if the Moa were highly sensitive to change, or were slow reproduction rate. I don’t know.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141107091656.htm
I did a quick search on Madagascar. It looks like humans were attributed to the over hunting lemurs, but this article suggests there were other contributing factors.
http://www.wildmadagascar.org/conservation/historic_deforestation.html
It’s an interesting topic.
It truly is and I find it extremely unfortunate that the avian megafauna of New Zealand never really had a chance to be observed by contemporary biologists.
The Māori people did travel with dogs and were apparently responsible for quite a few bird species extinctions. Even though the human population density was low, maybe they were just incredibly efficient Moa hunters.
Mule Deer Foundation Magazine No.27, pages 22-27
I don’t really care for this type of hunting, but whatever works.
The link didn’t work but interesting if you can dig it up.
http://www.rexano.org/ConservationPages/Kenya_Frame.htm
Here is a link to the link.
Louise:
Thank you for this article – sad as it is. It is interesting to read that Africa’s Atlas bear was hunted to extinction almost entirely for the purpose of sport.
And, as for the extinctions of the Falkland Island wolf and the Tasmanian tiger, it is interesting to bring it into today’s context because they were both exterminated to protect exotic-domestic livestock, in their cases they were wiped out to protect domestic sheep.
It’s sad that it happened so recently too for most of these animals. One was even destroyed because it was thought to be associated with witchcraft! Not unlike how Europeans think/thought of wolves. Imagine – an entire species wiped out for no reason other than subjective superstition.
I don’t think it’s over yet either – tigers and rhinos are still subject to human superstition. I know we try to find support in that ‘other peoples did it too, even (gasp) indigenous peoples!’ But Europeans took extinction to an entirely new level, and didn’t even seem to care what happened to what are described as ‘beautiful, graceful’ animals in this article.
We are ugly and superficial – and until we quit looking for rationales and excuses to bolster our bad behavior, and just simply own up to it, no animal is safe from us in the future either.
I keep hoping we can use our advances in technology and how great we are to bring back some of these poor animals that we destroyed forever without so much as a thought, or to decorate hats, or whatever superficial, and overriding, reason we had.
I expect to hear the ‘wooly mammoth’ argument in response – but surely animals and birds that went extinct in 2008, or the passenger pigeon too, would be good candidates?
And whatever bill is being floated about relisting wolves again, I hope the Democrats steer clear of it and get rid of it, if they hope to regain any kind of respect or hopes in 2016. Doesn’t our government do anything but obsess about wolves? We truly haven’t evolved, have we.
It’s a national embarrassment now, with so many other problems facing us.
^^Sorry that should read ‘bill delisting wolves again in the Great Lakes and Wyoming’. I certainly do want to keep them listed and relisted and relisted and relisted…..
Ida:
Unfortunately, this is a bi-partisan effort to remove the Great Lakes Region wolves from the Endangered Species list. Collin Peterson, is a leading Democrat Congressman from Minnesota and a sponsor of the proposed law:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2054424-155/bill-would-remove-federal-protections-for
I mean if and when it comes up for a vote, if it gets that far.
where the combined wolf population is estimated at around 3,700.
Haven’t they done enough damage? This ‘combined population’ appears greatly reduced – wasn’t about 5-6000 at one time? How much lies and misinformation about wolves are we supposed to tolerate? There’s already a remedy in place for supposed livestock depredation.
Fish and Wildlife spokesman Gavin Shire said no decision has been made on appealing Howell’s December ruling but said the agency did not appeal the Wyoming decision within the 60-day limit. He said the service wasn’t aware of any proposed legislation to delist wolves and couldn’t comment on it.
I guess sneaking in another unethical rider is the preferred method if you can’t win on the merits.
I’m communicating with some about a plan of action to work against this. I’ll be looking for volunteers. More to come …..
A natural end to a long life—
“World’s oldest wild bear dies in Minnesota forest
The world’s oldest-known wild bear has died of old age in northern Minnesota, quietly coming to her final resting place in a shady spot that a bear would find as a good place for a nap, a leading state researcher said Tuesday.”
http://www.startribune.com/local/221344041.html
“Good luck and good habits
Researchers suspect that Bear No. 56’s longevity was a combination of factors, including a home range with few people or major roads, her predisposition to avoid people and general good luck”
It also helped that hunters respected her as a research bear.
http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/polar-bears-migrate-north-of-canada-seeking-longer-lasting-ice/
Good news for rhinos for a change!
Rhino Nearly Killed By Poachers Now the Mom of a Healthy Calf
I believe they are using shoot on sight orders over in that part of the world. Good for them. Poachers are scum that take wildlife away from the rest of us.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/rare-wolves-get-more-area-roam-southwest
USFWS new rule “allows” Mexican wolves to roam… The USFWS has their priorities screwed up. Less than 100 of a population in the world and the new rule allows for killing them to protect ungulates when hundreds of thousands of those animals exist across numerous states. The USFWS is supposed to be working for us the people not them the ranchers and trophy hunters.
How are they getting away with this? with all the NGOs working to protect wolves, this is the best they could do. Sad
I’m sending another comment to this agency I hope others will.
Ken, Ralph, Have any non lethal efforts been made by the Green River allotments to address grizzlies?
http://us3.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b6e4c9d4d764b707e5c720f28&id=2fa85f7c33&e=009adb6946
http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/crustacean-shells-rival-plastics-for-keeping-food-fresh-study/
New tools to catch poachers:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30802401
Are you interested in studying the various rationalizations of ethical Lilliputians, nopologizing for the guys using their hounds to attack the wounded coyote (and running one over with their car), that made news awhile back? Then witness Pure Michigan: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/01/charges_approved_against_hunte.html
(Yes, I just name-called, but not much, and notice how mild it was? )
+1 for the Swift reference. It’s good to see that justice may very well be served.
Good. So much for assurances that this kind of thing never happens. Thx rork.
Sorry, put this on the old thread. Repost.
Every once in a while, or perhaps a bit more frequently in his case, Jim Beers insists on inserting his foot into his mouth. This oldie, just keeps on giving and will serve as an introduction for this thread.
“Fish and Wildlife doesn’t want to manage the land or the wildlife,” said Beers. “Once they started hiring women and minorities, the service went from managing the land and wildlife to saving all the animals and habitats.”
The question is, was Beers quote referring to women and minorities contributing to the paradigm shift, or did the advent of hiring more women and minorities coincide with the Fish and Wildlife philosophical shift?
Regardless, the time for a shift is here. Historically, this won’t be the first “shift” as game animals and their associated predators were all but exterminated nation wide before saner minds took over. This led to saving the good, antlered and horned, animals, and continued extermination of those that depended on their livelihoods by tooth and claw. This leads to the question, was this attitude correct? We now find ourselves with a game farm mentality, where a hunter wants that guaranteed kill.
The hunting industry has been NASCARized. Sure there are still hunters out there in their Carhartts, but walking into any Cabelas, Gander Mountain or the outlets such as Sportsman’s Guide, one can observe the catering to the hunting industry. There’s a lot of money out there, entering the territory of “too big to fail”.
This is not meant as anti-hunting at all, but a time to adjust one’s sights toward what is healthy for our wild lands and our wildlife. Since the end of market hunting and the advent of regulated hunting we have an enormous ungulate population across the country. Is this healthy? At the same time, wolves were all but eliminated in the lower 48, and despite the undeclared war against coyotes, their numbers have exploded. Something is wrong. Now that those wolves are making a comeback we hear the “we got rid of them before for a reason”. True, they have competed with man for resources, but in the past we wiped out their prey base, which left wolves no alternatives than our defenseless livestock. There is now an overabundance of prey base.
Enter the Leopold quote provided earlier by JB.
“There are still those who shy at this prospect of a man-made game crop as at something artificial and therefore repugnant. This attitude shows good taste but poor insight. Every head of wild life still alive in this country is already artificialized in that its existence is conditioned by economic forces…The hope of the future lies not in curbing the influence of human occupancy–it is already too late for that–but in creating a better understanding of the extent of that influence and a new ethic for its governance.”
Aldo Leopold, 1933
Yes, Mr. Leopold took a long time developing his understanding for the “governance” of our wild life, but over 70 years ago he could see the light. The same light the likes of which Mr. Beers avoids, vectored by marriage to the past, a past that requires change in order to persist into the future.
REPLY
Immer
++This leads to the question, was this attitude correct? We now find ourselves with a game farm mentality, where a hunter wants that guaranteed kill.++
There are a minority of hunters who want a guaranteed kill, if that is the case then they should be directed to a game farm.
What hunters want is an opportunity to go hunting each year with a chance at success. What hunters do not want is the lack of opportunity. Lack of opportunity is the lack of being able to acquire a license (tag) and not have to apply for several years or several decades depending upon the species and area. opportunity is long seasons, either sex tags, and multiple tags
If there is an over abundance of prey then the seasons can be extended and multiple tags issued. Today is the 20th anniversary of the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction (http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/recreation/years-of-wolves-anniversary-of-reintroduction-time-to-reflect-on/article_4dec31e2-dc58-5697-a203-48b4a3169c9d.html) before the reintroduction there was 19,000 elk on the northern range, today there is 5,000 elk. Before reintroduction there were approximately 3000 late season either sex tags issued. Today there is no late season elk hunt. The wolves ate the surplus elk. Nineteen thousand elk is to many elk. That is a lack of hunter opportunity. I am not saying that wolves are bad.
Currently there are between 5000 to 7000 elk wintering on the floor of the Madison Valley 90% private property. The wolf kill in the Madison Valley is 21 as of today. Now if wolves were not hunted they would increase in numbers and lower the elk population. The wolves are self regulating and would not eliminate the elk but would create a wolf/elk balance but the hunting opportunities would be reduced. Either wolves can reduced the elk population or hunters can. The local populous likes a general either sex tag and an antlerless B tag.
This may not be a balanced eco system but it is not a game farm. Interesting are ranches that do not allow elk hunting but encourage wolf hunting.
Elk,
I’m not talking about just elk. I’m also talking about deer and moose in the GL states. It seems as though many hunters are myopic in regard to the “good times” of just a few years ago, forgetting that lean times preceded the good after the winters of 95/96 &96/97. We have the same phenomena going on now following the past two winters.
Sure, wolves will always take their share, but winter and habitat follows by hunting are the three big variables here. Plus, deer and moose (brain worm and liver flukes are vectored from Deer to moose) are not a good mix.
DNR says don’t feed deer, people feed deer, increasing the risk of CWD. Not a real big threat up here yet, but in other states that’s a big yup. Is CWD a growing concern in western elk populations?
Tie that in with the Leopold quote, along with the big bucks folks are paying for all the gear, and if they don’t get their buck then they are pissed off. The whole mindset has to change. I believe deer seasons were closed up here once during the 70’s. No wolves to speak of back then.
But this whole screed is not about wolves, but a different mindset about land, habitat, and all the wildlife within it. This the Beers/Leopold quotes bracketing the initial posting. Not looking for a scrum, but a different philosophical outlook for the future.
Immer, it is so sad the way things have changed in the last 20 years. I agree with you in excess and maybe higher.
Elk,
” Now if wolves were not hunted they would increase in numbers and lower the elk population. The wolves are self regulating and would not eliminate the elk but would create a wolf/elk balance but the hunting opportunities would be reduced.”
I agree. And way back when, prior to wolf numbers where they are in the West, at an Intl Wolf Symposia, wolf hunting was part of the ticket in the NRM states. All biologists participating at a round table discussion agreed.
The whole wolf issue should have been settled years ago. Back to the quotes, Beers would be tickled pink with no wolves with his perspective…Leopold not so.
“…wolf hunting was part of the ticket in the NRM states. All biologists participating at a round table discussion agreed…The whole wolf issue should have been settled years ago.”
Elk, Immer:
I think the issue is a bit more complex. Wolves’ ability to regulate their prey appears to be conditional–it is folly to assume that wolf increases would absolutely result in lower elk populations (and less surplus for hunting). Rather, the situation would vary from place to place and over time. The “balance” that wolves brings isn’t an evening out of their prey populations (human management is better equipped for that); rather, the balance is the natural tug-of-war between predator and prey, with populations changing over time. And therein lies the problem–SOME hunters refuse to accept any change that doesn’t result in more [insert species being harvested].
In my mind, it isn’t a question of whether wolves should be harvested, but where/when they should be harvested (i.e., under what conditions). And when/where should they be protected (sometimes absolutely). National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges and wilderness areas seem good candidates to answer the “where to protect” question; anywhere near human establishments seems reasonable to answer the “where to harvest” question.
I don’t buy the “biologists decided this long ago” assertion. For clarity, I don’t doubt that there was disagreement, but rather, I question why biologists should make the decision as to whether wolves are harvested–that is a values question that seems better answered by society. The question of “when to harvest” (i.e., under what conditions) seem to me better answered by biologists.
JB,
“In my mind, it isn’t a question of whether wolves should be harvested, but where/when they should be harvested (i.e., under what conditions).”
Bingo! And the horses have left the barn. The verdict is still out on the “number harvest” quota system to a pack/family unit animal. Was it the correct pathway. There are so many variables at play with population dynamics, when for the first time in this nation, other than the First Nations, we are experimenting with coexistence with wolves.
But it goes beyond predators. What philosophical corrections need be made for the benefit of all wildlife?
“But it goes beyond predators. What philosophical corrections need be made for the benefit of all wildlife?”
Perhaps a first step is a discussion on the commercialization of hunting. Like so many other things it seems that it has become too commercialized. Regardless of the words we choose to use, it is still killing. We call it a sport, and hunters, sportsmen. That is odd to me. I am not entirely against killing, whether it is an animal that must be removed or a death row inmate, but ending a life should not be taken lightly.
Immer, I so appreciate reading your posts. You too, JB. You guys have a true grasp of wildlife management and the evolving philosophy behind it.
Yvette,
Thank you. You have been a welcome addition to TWN.
On another matter, I’ve all but completed Coleman’s “Vicious”. Unfortunately my take is not as glowing as yours, and that’s ok. I understand what Coleman was trying to do, but he attempted to be a jack of all trades and in my opinion mastered none. I’m not saying he did not make his point(s), but I feel he just tried to do too much in his metaphor for who is really vicious. There are mistakes, and unnecessary repetition within a book that could use a good editing.
It makes me want to reread Barry Lopez “Of Wolves and Men”. Gosh, but it’s probably been thirty years. I wonder if a return trip through Lopez work would still contain the same appeal as the original journey.
“But it goes beyond predators. What philosophical corrections need be made for the benefit of all wildlife?”
Some define “coexistence” as an uneasy balance between people and predators, accepting that most of the time we will be acting in ways that negatively impact them. Others are more idealistic with the term, defining it as a mutually-beneficial relationship between people and predators.
It seems to me that we have likely succeeded in uneasy coexistence, but we’re a long ways off from mutually-beneficial coexistence. The philosophical correction, at least in my mind, is a shift in the burden of proof I mentioned.
—
Thank you, Yvette. I’ve come to appreciate your posts as well. 🙂
JB, you forgot another idealistic option – leaving them be. They don’t need to benefit us. We need to respect wolves and other wildlife and leave them and the places where they live alone.
we are experimenting with coexistence with wolves.
You can’t be serious. This is wishful thinking. One thing about your posts, while good most of the time, they tend to be a little unrealistic and overly optimistic about human behaviour.
We are not, and never have since settlers arrived here, interested in coexistence with predators. If people who want to protect predators weren’t so ardent about it, they’d be gone, and never a second thought about it. There are those who are just as ardent about removing them entirely from the landscape, and the majority who don’t have any idea about predators (or much else in the modern world) and who could care less. A more apt description is a continual tug-of-war with coexistence with wolves, and other predators.
I don’t calling predator killing contests reflective of our experimenting with co-existence! Maybe more reflexive.
I’m still smh over Nancy’s post where this clueless administration is planning to downgrade protections for bats threatened by fungal disease and a myriad of other human threats, so that logging can continue. I cannot wait until 2016.
I don’t call attaching riders to must-past bills eliminating protections for wolves and other wildlife on down the line evidence of experimenting with coexistence either!
“But it goes beyond predators. What philosophical corrections need be made for the benefit of all wildlife?”
To me, this really isn’t accurate. You are not acknowledging by this statement that predators have a special place of mistreatment by humans. All are not created equal in our minds.
I must add that predators get hit the hardest in the conflict between humans and the stuff they want, so while other wildlife is affected, it is especially difficult for predators. We can’t seem to get the old ideas out of our heads regarding them – and studies are showing that they are in the most danger of extinction across the boards – as well as other wildlife, from our activities. But predators are in the most danger. I’m sure you saw the article about charges being filed against two in the UP for enjoying torturing a couple of coyotes. This behavior doesn’t seem to fit into your view of humanity.
It’s one faux pas after another with this administration. Couldn’t even send an emissary to Paris after the horrific tragedy. I am so ready for a new Administration.
You are assuming that a new admin. will be better…I don’t have that same optimism. The Who: “Won’t get fooled again” – “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” (This song includes the best scream in rock history, IMO!)
LOL – I honestly don’t see how it could be much worse than it is now. Obama’s environmental policies of caving to industry and recreation interests is akin to negotiating with terrorists.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the comment ‘an experiment in coexistence’ with wolves! How anthropocentric to think we can/should influence life on this planet.
Wolves are here; there’s no experiment about it. And then to mention Native American coexistence in the same sentence – we can’t hold a candle to that. Two entirely different approaches.
And no, I was never a stoner, ever. For some reason, it never did anything for me. 🙂
Ida – Yellow “stoners” get it?
Well there’s a double meaning there and I just wanted to set the record straight. It isn’t the first time that has been directed my way.
“we are experimenting with coexistence with wolves.
You can’t be serious. This is wishful thinking. One thing about your posts, while good most of the time, they tend to be a little unrealistic and overly optimistic about human behaviour.”
I’m dead serious. In 1973 we had ~ 500 wolves in the lower 48, all in a small area of NE MN. Now we have ~4,000 in the GL states. In the northern Rockies, counting Washington and Oregon, the numner is pushing 2,000. Empirical studies are consistently being made in regard to wolf impact on both prey and habitat. Folks like Jim Shivik are working on non lethal means of livestock depredation avoidance. Literature is ripe with material refuting age old wolf mythology. Private organizations exist that legally represent wolves in particular and wildlife in general, that extend beyond what was imagine able in the recent past.
By the very nature if wolves being wolves, they will come into conflict with man, as they are true competitors. We’ve come a long way with wolves, and still have a long way to go. But it must be stressed that it is about more than just wolves. It’s habitat, other wildlife, people making a living raising their stock, and the continual education of people.there are bound to be bumps along the way, but then again, it ain’t 1973.
See, we are getting over the game farm mentality, slowly. I think better educated folks have been there for some time. But the clients (hunters) still live in a world of wildlife thoughts that predate even St. Aldo’s writings. They have never imagined or heard of a land ethic or anything like it, and think that wildlife management is easy, cause it’s so simple – “common sense” suffices. Biologist-managers feel pressure about state economies – it’s not that they don’t know better and want to teach us better. MI and especially WI are places where managers have been trying to speak truth about too many deer but they mostly get backlash from hunters who want high prey densities, and politicians cause of the easy-to-see flow of money. Demonstrating that the real costs and benefits are different than most people think is very hard, since they are so dispersed (grandma’s garden, farmer’s losses) and hard to quantify (tree growth, effects on plant communities and other animal populations). You’ll get called a chicken little.
(Don’t think I’m imagining I’m saying anything new.)
Well, nobody seems to be getting with the program. No it isn’t 1973, it seems to be 1873 in the way we’ve reverted back. Bumps along the way? We’re running out of road.
I don’t think we’ve come a long way at all, as we can see by our current behavior towards wolves. We’ve made a tiny little bit of progress, maybe. And I don’t think coddling us or praising us to the heavens for a small step, like babies, is the way to go.
OK Ida, let’s kill all the damn wolves, and while were at it the coyotes. You make people like Rockholm possible.
When I was in school in the early 1950s the thought of wolves living in Idaho never crossed my mind – dead and long gone. Two years ago I got to see my first wolves in Idaho along the lower Clearwater River.
We’ve come a long way!
rork,
You pretty much pegged it, and what I mean in regard to game farming is game rules at the expense of all else. Concentrating on deer, even with low density up here, I’ve got to put paper flags on young white pine growth buds, or the deer crop them down. No regeneration of ash, due to deer.
I believe in Wisconsin, the biggest payout to farmers for agricultural damage is due to deer. Sure deer are pretty, nice to look at and taste good, but not at the expense of their destructiveness. It’s just not healthy, and I haven’t brought up auto collisions… I guess I just did.
If I can put in my two cents worth
I agree with Immer and Ida. We have come a long way in the general populace but what is lacking is the institutional change that is necessary for real progress in predator tolerance. Likewise politicians are beholden to too may special interest and lobbying groups. The general public seems to be very supportive of wolves, its the rural residents that are not as tolerant and that rely on hand me down myths of vicious predators and livestock producers that are unwilling to share their use of the land with predators. If you look at wolves as populations only you might surmise that it has gotten somewhat better for them. I can’t help but think of them as individuals within a society; their societies are constantly under attack. I don’t think that is right, just or in the long run ecologically defensible.
What impact does the subtle, chronic and unrelenting stress have on the health of a species. I am quoting from the recent study that looked at levels of cortisone in samples of wolf hair to determine stress of hunted vs. unhunted wolves.
+1
“Despite a steady drumbeat of grim warnings, food prices have declined the past four years, indicating that wild weather linked to climate change is not destroying harvests worldwide”
Read more at http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/humans-push-planet-beyond-boundaries-towards-danger-zone-study/#FgBPy47HJt4AHQhP.99
Food prices have declined where? Certainly not in this country and they ought to be with the cost of fuel so low.
Nancy I was in a local grocery store several days ago and a 12 oz. plastic honey bear bottle cost $4.99 with a .70 cents discount. I remember when that same bottle cost .79 cents, almost what the sales discount was. Sad.
On the long-term price of food…
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/08/over-100-years-food-prices-have-fallen.html
By the chart, food prices haven fallen but at what cost?
An interesting analogy in the comments:
“You speak of The Sausage Game:…so here’s what the sausage game is: You win yourself a market with a nice all-meat sausage, the best sausage you can make. People eat that sausage and they say ‘mmm-hmmm!’ So now you’ve established the product, right? Now you can afford to start slipping in a little sawdust. Add the sawdust by small enough increments and no one will even notice. People will still say ‘mmm-hmmm!’, because people are creatures of habit.
Of course, five or six increments down the road, you’ll end up with a product that bears little or no resemblance to what you started with, but you’ll get away with it, for a while, at least. Your market share will hold, your profit margin will increase, and everybody will think you’re smart”
Go into most grocery stores and one isle is dedicated to meats and one isle/small area is dedicated to fresh fruits & vegetables (and its questionable as to where they come from) the other 10-12 isles are dedicated to processed foods.
With mass production & handling of food, the risk of food borne illness has become a real issue. (Look at the egg recall a couple of years ago)
United States Centers for Disease Control and Preve…
“Jan 8, 2014 – CDC estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne”
And these numbers don’t include people that are sickened and not diagnosed.
http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/trends-in-foodborne-illness.html
Course the “jury” is still out what pesticides and fertilizing is doing to our bodies. And then the cost to the land and wildlife by these huge factory farms.
My grocery list gets shorter and shorter 🙂
“Several significant Earth System processes are now driven by human consumption and production.”
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-planetary-dashboard-great-human.html
JB
“over-100 years food prices have fallen”
What does your wife say or you think about when your family shops for food? Are you concerned about a 100 year trend are you more concerned about today’s total bill?
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there…our perception of ‘how things are’ is tempered by how we see an event (even long term) affecting us….with no bigger picture, we have no reason to see anything past ourselves. Perfect example for the elk brought up earlier too
Elk- My comment is about maintaining perspective. A new car today costs about 4 times as much as it did when I was a kid, but our grocery bill is only about twice the cost. People complain about short-term increases in price and lose sight of the fact that over the long-term they’re actually spending less (as a proportion of their total income) on food.
FYI: Here’s what a Republican-led House gets you — ideological opposition to any environmental regulation. They can’t even get a vote on an effort to determine safe standards for drinking water.
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/01/lake_erie_safe_drinking_water_bill_dies_mysterious_death_in_2014_congress_editorial.html
Regarding elk & wolves in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, although it takes us back to the “old days”, I think we should remember that, since wolves had been eliminated, in the 1940s, 1950s & 1960s there was heavy elk culling done by Park Rangers and professional shooters inside Yellowstone Nat Park to keep the elk numbers in check.
Then in the late 1960s the American public became aware and so outraged at the culling of elk within a National Park, that the Park Service finally stopped the culling. Then, with no wolves present and no-culling, elk numbers sky-rocketed to the 15,000 to 20,000 range by the 1990s. It is this no wolf, no-culling number that some of today’s hunters are dreaming about returning to. Enter wolves. Now elk numbers are closer to those back in the culling days and wolves are again performing their ecological role, and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is better balanced and in a more natural state. We all, including elk hunters, should applaud what has been accomplished, and if the opportunity for a hunter to kill an elk is less than in the no-culling, no wolf years, that is something all of us will just have to get accustomed to.
++Then in the late 1960s the American public became aware and so outraged at the culling of elk within a National Park, that the Park Service finally stopped the culling. Then, with no wolves present and no-culling, elk numbers sky-rocketed to the 15,000 to 20,000 range by the 1990s. ++
Bull pucky. Guess you conveniently forgot about the massive and multiple summer fires of 1987 in Yellowstone, Ed. That is what caused the elk population to soar a couple years later to the numbers you cite, as burned over areas increased in edible vegetation for elk, as post-fire forest succession began. That was one rationale for wolf reintroduction to YNP in 1995. Now some 27 years after the fires those areas are not so productive for elk food in YNP and the impact of wolves has tapered the elk population back, some, and it has contributed to tapering of the wolf population (though those wolves that roamed outside the Park boundaries were killed in the post-delisting hunting seasons.
WM:
I second the motion by Yvette that you should climb off you high horse.
The scientific facts are that following the release from artificial controls by culling within the Yellowstone Nat. Park in 1968 when there were 4,300 elk in the Northern Yellowstone elk herd, the Northern elk herd increased in size to 14,000-15,000 during the 1970s and through the mid-1980s and then 17,800 during 1985-1988 (Merrill and Boyce 1991).
Also, the adult elk sex ratio shifted from one highly skewed by intense culling activities within YNP of approximately 50 males:100 females during the 1960s to approximately 25 males:100 females by the late 1980s (Mark and Singer 1993). Elk were already near peak numbers by the time of the huge 1988 Yellowstone fires (not 1987 WM).
There was a short lived increase in elk population growth rate following the 1988 fires (Wiley 2002). During 1993 to 1994 elk numbers reached >19,000 (Lemke et al. 1998). Then enter wolves and a recovering grizzly population to bring Yellowstone back into a more ecological balance.
OK, so I was off a year on the fires, agreed, 1988. BFD as if that is some sort of material error. If you are going to cite authors it would be nice to have the article titles, so that people can actually check. It was not my understanding that elk were at peak prior to fires WITHIN the Park. Forgive my skepticism, Ed, not that you are wrong this time, but you have played fast and loose with the “facts” in the past, so why start trusting your partial sources, now. Please give full cites.
(not to anyone specifically)
I know y’all are sticking to the YNP area in this thread, but maybe we should be looking at the overall numbers of elk in the US, or say, all of North America before we discuss wolves vs. humans in hunting. To go back to Immer’s original post regarding Beers, we have SO many more places that have elk now than back then…I think some of you tend to have a ‘western fetish’ at times in these discussions, focusing on your own fiefdoms and not the whole kingdom.
Oh, and Immer:
“The hunting industry has been NASCARized. Sure there are still hunters out there in their Carhartts, but walking into any Cabelas, Gander Mountain or the outlets such as Sportsman’s Guide, one can observe the catering to the hunting industry. There’s a lot of money out there, entering the territory of “too big to fail”.
Well said.
Mark,
In fairness to a comment Elk 375 made when I put this comment on the earlier 12/19 thread, it’s not just hunting. Fishing has also been marginalized by economics. No longer is it simply going out on a lake to fish and enjoy the experience for many. The thousands that are spent on boats, trailers, motors, depth/fish finders, and we haven’t even gotten to fishing tackle… Gosh, but I remember my Dad catching a Muskie on a cane pole!
Tried my hand at fly fishing. Spent too much time in trees, and getting line out so as not to entangle birds… You can break the bank with fly gear, but that won’t help you catch trout… The scads of literature on fly fishing and the philosophy of fly fishing bear testament to that.
Yes, and I think that TV has had a HUGE amount of influence on this. I was watching National Geographic Channel (I think) and it occurred to me the new ‘River Kings (whatever)’ series is all about how crazy you have to be to make any money on the Mississippi river these days, like life is some daily dog eat dog desperate struggle when you fish. The struggle was to find an audience that will stay entertained, not to catch the fish. Same crap with the gator hunters…all about the people and shooting gators, not about the location other than occassional ‘money shots’ from camera and some guy with a cool coonass voice. Just not my style.
Immer,
Apparently you avoided the Zen part of fly-fishing experience, often marketed to urbanites. It is the mental preparation for the trip to the stream – comparing products in the fly shop or a catalog, or having a knowledgeable sales person explain to you the virtues of one over the other, and visualization of how you would feel in the gear, or using it. This experience is sort of an elaborate dance. I seriously doubt a $1,000 Sage rod, a $300 reel, and an expensive set of Simms waders and Chota wader boots, under a $200 vest stuffed with mostly pricey gear you don’t need, will catch more fish. To some degree advertising and retailers have created their own environment for demand, not unlike automobile manufacturers.
I’m still using an old beater pack fly rod I got when I was 12, a hand-me-down reel that is probably 70 years old (afterall you really don’t use the reel to play the fish, only to store the line), and a pair of 20 year old hip boots (you can hardly find good ones anymore because of all the high end neoprene or Gore-Tex waders that will let one get belly deep in a stream), and some hand tied flies from now-deceased mother, who even made her own fine bamboo fly rods years ago, with multiple tip sections of different flexibilities to accommodate the weight of a line or the type of fish one might expect.
…from MY now-deceased mother…
WM,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you not confirm, in much more elegant fashion, my assessment of gear cost as a barometer for success in fly fishing.
The zen of fly fishing… Is it marketed to urbanites, or a mental exercise for the likes of Tome McGuane, amongst many others, to express their love/fascination/patience for the discipline?
Immer,
Yes (though I can’t really acknowledge elegance in my writing), and yes. The latter is why I still enjoy the activity, even with old gear that now matches an aging body. There is some nostalgia as well as art in the effort.
For the actual catching of fish (especially steelhead), the fly rod is sometimes useless, though we see lots of dapper fisher dandies, many with the expensive fly gear, on the coastal rivers in winter, as passengers in their guided double end drift boats disturbing an otherwise pastoral stretch of river, bald eagle perched on the opposite bank just above patch of river fog. Sort of makes my day (sarcastically) when one of these pay-to-fish aluminum drift boats, from up-stream, loudly scrapes over a shallow spot or bounces off a rock (one has to hear the sound to understand its annoying properties), then noisily drops a lead anchor at the head of the hole I had previously been solitarily fishing, disturbed only by a mallard or harlequin duck floating by at rod’s length. Two or three neon colored fly lines are now stripped off and float over “my” hole. Then a little flailing of the water as the line is whipped overhead back and forth, temporarily adding neon color to the foreground of the aforementioned pastoral view (incidentally, in a boat that line with fly will go mostly to the same spot without all the ceremony). Cigar smoke wafts my direction, and somebody pulls out a flask for a quick pull to ward off the morning cold, and passes it on to the next guy who temporarily stops flailing the water. The libation exchange is accompanied by loud voices and laughter; I guess THEY are having a good time. This lasts for 10 to 15 minutes, and they move on, as they resume their down river journey, the guide accidentally (he says as he apologizes) clanks an oar against the aluminum boat, which chases out any fish in the hole downstream for their next stop. These guys are soon to be followed by a clone of the one that just left, as the bald eagle, above, and I enjoy the temporary solitude during the interlude. The fishing is great during the respite, the catching maybe not so good.
I’m very much a minimalist (no fishing vest, just tennis shoes if I can stand the temperatures), but the 6 and 10 weight rods (not poles) I own were expensive. They’ve worked well hundreds of times and will outlast me. I use fluorocarbon – are you Luddites still using horse-hair? If I’m gonna spend serious time to tie a fly, I’m not gonna use a cheap hook. In winter, the gods prefer me in neoprene. It’s not to be cool – it works good.
I do agree there are folks out there with thousands of dollars of gear who cast like my rear sphincter chews gum – I think they simply have lots of money and little experience. Prices for nice new camo make it hard to justify, so I’m still repairing 15-year-old hand-made stuff. Hundreds of dollars of trail cams – no thanks (it’s nearly cheating). I do use binoculars though, and yup, they’re Zeiss, painfully pricy (had them >20 years – they were worth it).
rork,
To be honest, I also have the sweaty neoprene waders for the heavy winter fishing too. I dislike them for a couple more reasons and one has has to do with access, if you get my meaning. The other is that waders give disrespectful fishers an excuse to walk thru redds in deeper water (whetehr they know the nests are there or not), which is not a good thing for fish reproduction.
At the time the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts in ~1620, there were maybe 12 million Elk in the continental USA area. Those Pilgrims would’ve seen some on the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts.
Thanks to market hunting, usurpation by domestic livestock, industry , railroads, etc etc etc the total number of Elk present in the same Lower 48 by 1900 was maybe 45,000 total. We immigrant Euro-colonials succeeded in exterminating 99.96 percent of the native Elk.
Today , there are roughly 750,000 Elk after a century of the much touted North American Big Game Model and other measures , about 6 percent of the pre-Colonial population.
Make of that what you will…
( Oh by the way , it wasn’t just Elk we nearly wiped out )
Cody,
And many farmers just don’t want elk, which “absorb” crops.
WM:
Like everyone knows except apparently you, when the elk culling stopped in 1968 in Yellowstone Nat. Park and with no wolves and few grizzlies, the elk population more than tripled in the Northern herd until wolves were returned to ecosystem and grizzly numbers increased. By the time of the 1988 Yellowstone fires elk numbers were already almost at their peak. The point is that, now the greater Yellowstone ecosystem is more in balance and wild predators in place (wolves & grizzlies), which negates the necessity of human hunters to fill that roll.
I used various references in my posts above, and here is another one from the Ecological Society of America
MIchael B. Coughenour and Francis J.Singer, Ecological Applications, Vol 6 No. 2 page 574:
https://www.fort.usgs.gov/sites/default/files/products/publications/441/441.pdf
http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/u-s-signals-it-may-downgrade-protections-for-vanishing-bat/
That is not a good idea. White-nose syndrome is not contained and is still spreading westward. I think it is a bad idea, both ecologically and economically to downgrade this species from endangered to threatened.
This USGS link has a long list of articles on WNS. http://www.nwhc.usgs.gov/disease_information/white-nose_syndrome/wns_news.jsp
Economically, bats save the agriculture industry is estimated to be 3.7 billion a year to as high as 53 billion a year. Because insectivorous bats eat so many insects it reduces the amount of pesticides needed, and reduces economic loss of crops damaged by insects.
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2743#.VLkmvUfF98E
I hope wise heads prevail on this decision.
To me this is huge. I know not all of us are religious – but to have one of the world’s major religions that reaches many many people have this kind of shift in view is a big deal:
“Francis has spoken out frequently about the “culture of waste” that has imperiled the environment and he elaborated en route to the Philippines.”
Pope Francis on Climate Change: ‘Man Has Slapped Nature in the Face’
“Thanks be to God that today there are voices, so many people who are speaking out about it.”
With over a billion Catholics in the world (women coming in at about oh half that population?) The Pope would do better to concentrate on population control (instead of putting the issue on the back burner) as a means to save nature.
Well that’s true – but for those who already are here (7 plus billion of us), it’s still progress. I think it’s too late for population control, anyway. Best to speak about using less resources, I would say, for right now. And picking up our trash.
“It is remarkable that, despite many new developments over the past 50 years, one fact looks very much the same: populations are growing most rapidly where such growth can be afforded the least — where pollution, resource shortages, and environmental damage create additional stresses on the ability of governments to meet the basic food, clothing, and shelter needs of their populations”
http://cgge.aag.org/PopulationandNaturalResources1e/CF_PopNatRes_Jan10/CF_PopNatRes_Jan10_print.html
“There are an estimated 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in the world, according to Vatican figures. More than 40% of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America – but Africa has seen the biggest growth in Catholic congregations in recent years)
It’s not all the fault of religion. It is a factor, but just like any other creature on earth, human beings are programmed to breed for the survival of the species. We don’t have any predators. There are cultural factors at work too, regardless of a nation’s peoples’ religion.
We may believe we can choose the size of our families by our ‘superior’ reasoning ability, but we are driven by instinct as much as any other animal for reproduction. Economics is about the only restraint on it, and even then it is questionable.
http://moreintelligentlife.com/story/faith-equals-fertility
Some interesting info compiled:
http://www.reddit.com/r/RenewableEnergy/comments/2qg5s9/mass_extinction_vs_green_energy/
I’m glad I’m of the age now when I won’t be around to see the results of our Pac-man mindset. I’ll continue to try to save the environment and the wildlife. But people generally are hopeless to change.
Oh Nancy don’t get me started. religion the great corrupter of life. Did you ever read J Diamond’s Gun Germs and Steel. A very good read.
I saw the pope once in Rome. My husband’s family and I took my very Catholic mother in law to Rome for her 90th. I have to admit it was a spectacle like no other, but I have such a deep loathing for most religions it was hard to get past that. The sea of people around the Pope made me think of the devastating consequences that adherence to Catholicism has had on our world.
80th birthday
When I posted the article it was because, paradoxically, it may be this man who makes people think about and care about environmental issues! He reaches a lot of people.
It wasn’t to promote any religion, although you can’t blame religion by itself, because people created it, and created the ways to rationalize their way around it. I think people would behave badly and corrupt no matter what kind of crutch was available.
Not that I am a non-believer, but I have my own beliefs (peyote notwithstanding.)
They’re obviously not listening to the scientists in great numbers.
Read it Louise and glad you brought it up for those that check in here and aren’t aware of the book.
“You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible folleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough”
Aldous Huxley
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another”
Jonathan Swift
“It is remarkable that, despite many new developments over the past 50 years, one fact looks very much the same: populations are growing most rapidly where such growth can be afforded the least”
I’m hard pressed to think of one place where human growth is desirable. In thinking in terms of carrying capacity and what a given environment should be capable of supporting, I think of other predators. Usually to be successful they need an abundance of natural resources, fresh water, and a lot of space between each other. If not, they starve, there are territorial turf wars, and in general disruptive life.
People have broken every biological rule. Our populations have exploded. We are in my mind living on borrowed time as we are exhausting all resources. The ones we are hoping to continue to produce are now produced using artificial chemicals and methods of crop and meat harvests that are unsustainable. I would like to see every spec of land bought up as public land, no matter where it is and an immediate ban on human births limiting them to one per family after a 10 year ban altogether.
When I am king that’s what I’ll do.
I think overpopulation has created some monsters.
Worldwide inequality
https://www.opendemocracy.net/graham-peebles/worldwide-inequality
almost half the world’s people (over 3.5 billion) live on less than $2.50 a day; and 80% live on less than $10 a day.
+
assuming the perpetuation of the current economic model, they estimate “that it would take more than 800 years for the bottom billion to achieve ten percent of global income under the current rate of change.”
+
over 20% of the world’s population (that’s 1.4 billion people) live on less than $1.25 a day, 75 cents below the official World Bank poverty threshold; UNICEF states that 22,000 children (under the age of five; if it was 6, or 7, the numbers would be even higher) die every day due to poverty related issues. They “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
Of the two billion children in the world, half are currently living their lives in extreme poverty, with limited or no access to clean water or sanitation, health care and education worth the name. The greatest concentrations of people living below the $2 a day poverty line are to be found in rural areas where three in every four are to be found. Life is little better in the cities where over half the world’s 7.2 billion population now live, one in three of whom live in a slum.
+
Flowing from wealth and income inequality (combining to create the powerful elite), is the inequitable use and distribution of natural resources; water and food, minerals, and we could add knowledge, information, technology and skills. The United States, for example, with a mere 5% of the world’s population, uses 30% of natural resources; the 25% of people living in developed countries use 80% of the world’s non-fuel minerals. Many of these are found in poor developing countries, which have little or no control over their resources and on the whole benefit little from their extraction and sale. Not only do the wealthy countries usurp and waste 80% of the world’s resources, but according to a United Nations (UN) report, their “voracious consumption of resources cannot be sustained.”
+
global warming will lead to a major food-crisis in the future. Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia are expected to be the worst-hit.” That is, the regions with the largest concentrations of people living in utter poverty.
sadly + 1
Nancy,
Think about the “old” Catholic ways which included no meat on Fridays. Sure the meat industry was glad that disappeared. Then again, whether your glass is half full or empty, think of the impact on the fishing/sea food industry.
New studies solve some mysteries about the plague that’s killing our bats
http://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2015/01/new-studies-solve-some-mysteries-about-plague-thats-killing-our-bats
Blooming algae may be changing lakes for the worse — and possibly forever
http://www.minnpost.com/earth-journal/2015/01/blooming-algae-may-be-changing-lakes-worse-and-possibly-forever
Here is an article from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle about the Big Horn Mountain Sheep in the Tendoy’s
http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/wildlife/fwp-considers-killing-wild-sheep-herd-to-start-again/article_748f9048-9d13-11e4-9ac5-672ce01bc425.html#disqus_thread
article: “Once the old bighorn herd is eliminated, new sheep would be brought into the Tendoy Mountains. But they might not do any better because there are domestic sheep in the area that carry the bacteria.”
Wildlife agencies just keep repeating the same mistakes they made before, without facing the real problem – domestic livestock.
For my fellow ‘Stoners:
(apologies if previously posted)
Nice pics Kathleen 🙂 I would of had a hard time picking the best!
Fantastic images. Thanks.
Yellowstone fever is chewing on my pant leg….. ^..^
Me too, Nancy (hard time picking the best)–though I’d have to say that the grand prize winner of Beehive Geyser erupting is flat-out spectacular.
http://www.ypf.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6823
The ermine in the snow blows me away, too…the shot of a lifetime. I hear you, skyrim. Yellowstone fever is chewing on my actual LEG.
We went to Missoula tonight for an art gallery opening of a Bitterroot artist we like–she works in pastels and YNP figures into a lot of her subject matter. Her stuff is amazing–almost photo realistic–with chalk!
http://drawnweststudio.com/index.html
If you click on “drawings” from the menu bar to the left, then look at numbers 3, 6, 8, & 11 (after that you’re on your own) you’ll see what I mean. 6 & 11 were hanging together–both very large–and amazing.
2014…Warmest Year on Record…..(to coincide with George’s piece on livestock and climate change)
http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2025477125_apxscihottestyear.html
“Earthjustice, on behalf of Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife, filed a lawsuit fighting provisions in the new rule that unjustifiably cap wolf population at 325, preclude recovery north of I-40, and loosen restrictions on killing wolves.)”
http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2015/conservationists-take-aim-at-flawed-new-rule-on-mexican-gray-wolf-management?utm_source=crm&utm_content=HTMLBodyLink1
I don’t believe the Mexican Wolf subspecies was particularly numerous in northern AZ historically, so I don’t think “recovery” is the right word. There is plenty of habitat and prey up there though. “Allowing” to roam there still seems like a no-brainer.
Now Immer, you’re the one who has continued dialogue with that bunch; and you keep making excuses for them too. Every time you sneak a pro-hunting comment in or try to put a positive spin on something that doesn’t deserve it, I’m going to call you out on it. Whose side are you on anyway? We’re the only other nation, besides First Nations, ‘experimenting’ with coexistence? Europe’s revaluing wolves also, and probably doing a better job of it than we are. I can’t believe you tried to ride on the coattails of First Nations. We’re not even in their league as far as valuing wildlife.
I made the remark about ‘stoner’, because Immer threw me a nasty remark about peyote, and someone else said something about a ‘generational’ thing, etc. etc. Future generations could only hope to have some of the idealism, bravery and values, and willingness to go out on a limb of the ’60s and ’70s – if they even have the capability of understanding what happened in those days, as we’re dumbed down more and more. We won’t see those days again, unfortunately.
You’ve probably guessed I’m not hear to make friends (maybe influence people) or have much of a sense of humor about what’s happening with our environment and wildlife – I have less and less of a sense of humor with each passing atrocity like the one that just came to light in the UP.
^^’here’ sorry. I doesn’t look like we’ve come a long way at all, esp. with attacks on the ESA, our President giving away the store, and continued wolf killing.
Ida, interesting article and comments (listed below) on the WWP site.
https://orionmagazine.org/article/edward-abbeys-fbi-file/
Good-Bye Ida,
Have a nice swim.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i9SSOWORzw4
Damn you Immer!
Had a nice evening planned, relaxing with a good book, till I looked at the MP link you posted and now, that’s going to lead to another clip and another clip because I do enjoy a good laugh on a cold, winter night 🙂
And now for something completely different.
Glad to be of service. 🙂
I never bothered to read it. Good night!
“Now Immer, you’re the one who has continued dialogue with that bunch; and you keep making excuses for them too.”
Nope, on both counts
“Every time you sneak a pro-hunting comment in or try to put a positive spin on something that doesn’t deserve it, I’m going to call you out on it.”
Go ahead. But remember, you’re the one who has the snit fits when someone calls you on a comment you make.
“Whose side are you on anyway? ”
If you have not been able to figure that out by now, with all the time you have spent on this blog, with all the measured, philosophical and patient responses that have been sent your way (and here, I don’t mean just me as others have had the patience of saints with you) you never will.
“We’re the only other nation, besides First Nations, ‘experimenting’ with coexistence? Europe’s revaluing wolves also, and probably doing a better job of it than we are. I can’t believe you tried to ride on the coattails of First Nations. We’re not even in their league as far as valuing wildlife.”
Not riding anyone’s coat tails, as my reference to First Nations was in context of prior to Europeans settling North America.
Europe: try the Scandinavian countries. Does that make you smile? I just attended a presentation on The Wolves of Belarus. 50% or more of wolves killed each year.
You only hear what you want to hear. SaveBears would continually admonish those on this site who are engaged in issues wolf, that we are such a small % of the population. We all attempt to make things better, in the ways available to us.
If you have a question about something I write, ask. You had a run in with rork in regard to some of your comments a while ago. It’s up to you how you want to interpret what I have written here. Some months ago you said you would no longer respond to my comments. What happened?
Oh, and the “nasty” peyote comment was a one word comment, an attempt at humor, in response to a general question you posed in regard to a bizarre dream you had.
Immer, please don’t take it personally – I’ll have a ‘run-in’ with anybody to protect our wildlife and environment.
As far as Europe and their wolves, I was thinking more of France, Germany, Italy and possibly even the UK. America isn’t the only country trying to reintroduce or rethink the value of wolves. I was thinking more of countries like France, Spain, Germany, Italy and possibly even the UK. I realize there are other countries who still think of them in the old ways. My point was that American isn’t the exception in trying to protect them. And we’re barely holding on, it appears.
I know a lot of people questioned SaveBears – but I kinda liked him! He had a way of making you see the bright side when it appears hopeless. He seemed like a nice guy in many ways.
He was very humorous; he said he’d go out for coffee but not if he couldn’t take his sidearm. I think Starbucks used to let people bring their sidearms. Ha! 🙂
Sorry for all the typos this morning. I don’t think my coffee has kicked in.
Europe: try the Scandinavian countries. Does that make you smile? I just attended a presentation on The Wolves of Belarus. 50% or more of wolves killed each year.
+++
Immer,
could you make it available publicly? or some sum-up about their killing pattern – is it widespread evenly throughout the country or is it just around cities?
I’m most interested about BY wolf killing around Latvia’s & Lithuania’s border area.
Thanks.
by the way, BY is not part of European Union so it is not bind to Bern Convention & Habitat Directive which list the wolf and lynx as the Protected Species.
the title of the No 1 wolf-killers in the world goes to Latvia in my opinion (hunting season lasts 9 months (one is allowed to kill 2 months old pups and pregnant females) and harvest equals to 43% take of population – for the last 15 consecutive years)
and the ‘rest period’ (from April till July) corresponds with highest pup mortality (~50% of the litter)
From 2 years ago, Belarus President attempts to take on 6 wolves, barehanded in an imitation of Putin, and apparently loses and is taken to the hospital.
http://dailycurrant.com/2013/02/19/belarus-president-mauled-wild-wolves/
Can’t blame this one on the wolves specifically, but it would appear they do attack people there, when provoked. Can’t blame them, either.
See, I inadvertently said it twice, so it must be true. 😉
🙂
“It was very stupid (of Lukashenko) to fight wolves like that. Why did he act so stupid?” the witness said.
+++
by that statement I guess that the witness was WM himself
Mareks,
Ever done a tally on how many countries or subdivisions of countries (like US states) have some sort of periodic population reduction of wolves within their jurisdictions (hunting/bounty/state employee or contractor killing)?
WM,
do you mean like the one in Montana? (about what Jay Mallonee had some beef
http://www.wolfandwildlifestudies.com/downloads/natureandscience.pdf
“Hunting Wolves In Montana – Where Are The Data?”)
yes, Estonia (adjacent to Latvia) had experienced a ‘tipping/breaking point’ in the first decade of 21st century – and they reduced wolf harvest accordingly (to look good in the eyes of EU officials).
Marked,
I’ll try to answer all your questions here. The person who have the presentation is an associate of David Mech,with whom I have periodic contact. I’ll see if I can get the presentation, at least to answer your questions more thoroughly.
Yes, Belarus. Is not in the EU, and that may have been the purpose of the meeting of wolf biologists in Belarus, a fact finding conference. Wolf pelts cannot be exported from Belarus to EU nations, if I remember correctly. For the benefit of those here, Belarus is a landlocked former member of the USSR with an area just a tad smaller than MN.
From what I recall, most of the wolf study area was in the northeast and northwest. Swampy forested area. Wolves prey upon red deer (very similar to our elk here, moose in Europe are called elk), and wild boars.
Wolf hunting is year round, but concentrated during winter months. Crops are actually grown for the red deer. An interesting aside, as the technology our wildlife biologists have is not available to those who study wolves in Belarus, to enable them to track wolves, they will enter wolf dens, sex the pups, then clip off one of the pups toes.
As wolf hunting there is so great, it is not uncommon for female wolves to breed after their first year. Litter sizes run from 2-10, but there seems to be a trend toward more pups, and a bit of hybridization, though rare, with dogs. The concept of dogs there is a bit, quite a bit different there than here.
Hope that helps answer some of your questions
Sorry Mareks, auto spell does not like your name.
Immer,
1)from where were participants of that fact finding conference – only the BY ones or it was an international one (was there Ozolins from Latvia)?
2) was the main speaker Vadim Sidorovich(BY)?
3)what about BY’s official wolf numbers – ain’t they exaggerated? because here in Latvia hunters are trying to count wolves at the end of hunting season when the last snow coverage is still available (in March) and they are producing wolf numbers 3-4 times bigger than acquired by wolf monitoring (because hunters are counting wolf tracks in their hunting districts which on average has 25 sq km size – so the same wolf pack is counted multiple times in different districts)
4) what about breeding pair numbers / breeding female % (of all adult females)?
5) do they have the data about incoming wolves from Russia?
I’ve read in LV hunting journal (Nov 2014)that in BY 50K hunters were allowed to kill 14K wild boars,3K roe deer, 1K moose, 0.1 elk, 3.5K beavers.
Not much to hunt, to say the least. So what about 1.5K wolves’ energy budgets?
I also have this presentation written by 3 Swedes (one can see the basic game species/habitat statistics on pages 4- 6):
Integrated management of trophic interactions: moose and forest in Sweden and Belarus
http://www.isa.utl.pt/def/fp0603forestmodels/FM/06-Gulca.pdf
Comment removed by request – Admin
thanks Immer,
publication about wolf-dog hybrids in Estonia & Latvia (recent phenomena because of intense wolf hunting, it seems)
Bucking the Trend in Wolf-Dog Hybridization: First Evidence from Europe of Hybridization between Female Dogs and Male Wolves
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0046465
+
recent photo of killed wolf + ginger bitch in LV
http://www.medniekiem.lv/trophy/11732//
http://www.medniekiem.lv/trophy/11731/vilks/
Mareks,
I thinks what is generally found is male wolf and female dog. Reason: male wolf will bring food to the bitch and litter, male dog will not; when does dog bitch come into season may not be conducive to litter survival.
I’ll look forward to reading your links.
most of the wolf study area was in the northeast and northwest. Swampy forested area. Wolves prey upon red deer (very similar to our elk here, moose in Europe are called elk), and wild boars.
+++
I’d be thankful for information about NW Belarus.
Moose in both Europe & N-America is Alces alces (don’t know – maybe the British call moose as elk)
Elk = red deer or Cervus elaphus
I’ve found this one:
The status of wolf population,
distribution and dynamic in Belarus.
National management plan of wolf
population.
http://ochronaprzyrody.gdos.gov.pl/files/artykuly/5490/Ruslan_Novitsky_Rumunia.pdf
http://www.thewesternnews.com/members/lincoln-county-bagging-fair-share-of-wolves/article_d74c06e6-8e02-11e4-a6cd-3f1f4fa1ec30.html?_dc=656890076119.4528#user-comment-area
nauseating
When I lived in region 1 of Montana there were no viable wolf packs in the area. These wolves are not the result of the reintroduction into Yellowstone and central Idaho but started migrating back into the US from BC Canada in the 1980s.
I second your nauseating.
Here’s a follow-up to that Las Cruces story:
Bill Would Ban Coyote-Killing Contests in New Mexico
Good news regarding a bad situation.
http://missoulian.com/news/local/charged-with-bitterroot-fire-that-orphaned-mountain-lions/article_24beee40-8573-5a65-9ea7-57b91416dbb2.html
Montana’s answer to Beavis and Butthead – ‘I started a forest fire – heh, heh, heh’. It’s truly hard to believe that there are actually people walking around (or allowed to) like this. I don’t believe in social media for myself, but there are times that I thank God for it. Like this.
Those poor kittens ‘donated’ to a zoo (like that’s a positive thing) like objects, it’s like a domino effect of carelessness and cluelessness.
This story seems to leave out some vital information, particularly about the mother mt. lion. Was she found burned up in the fire? Or, if they didn’t find her, then why would they “rescue” the twin lion cubs, instead of leaving them there (in a non-burned area) for their mother to reclaim after the humans depart the scene? For all we know, the mother mt. lion is still looking for her cubs. Such a shame.
That was the thing, all along. Or, return the cubs to the wild when they were old enough. That was never an option. “Donating” them to a zoo like we own them. It’s like we don’t know any better.
So, these two idiots set off a chain reaction that they probably are not even capable of understanding. That’s the biggest problem with humans vs. the environment.
From the comfort of a scientific bubble we can talk about ‘a mutually beneficial relationship with wildlife (whatever that means) and ‘experiments in coexistence’ (experiments imply the possibility of failure, and can we really afford failure with already diminishing wildlife?), but not everyone is capable of appreciating it. A lot more is going to be lost by continuing to cater to human needs.
And before I say goodnight tonight, its nice to see that probably before morning, another milestone – 5,000 people (or more) now “like” link, and relate to the Wildlife News via Facebook.
Kudos Ralph, Ken, Brian for providing a great site on wildlife, wild lands (and stuff in between) issues 🙂
And, I had to look around for this clip:
From FOX NEWS:
Man vs. Prairie Dog: Taming the Endangered Species Act
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/01/15/man-vs-dog-taming-endangered-species-act/
Utah prairie dog lives only in southwestern Utah and its diminution would not significantly alter the supply or quantity of animals for which there is a national market.
What is most significant about this case is that the purpose of the Endangered Species Act is to protect ecosystems and on this point the court found that just the protection of an ecosystem may not be sufficient impact on commerce to be constitutional under the commerce clause.
????
Not good at all. So commerce rules.
“Not good at all. So commerce rules”
yep, consider the author of the article:
“William Kovacs is senior vice president for the Environment, Technology and Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce”
nailed that one, Ida.
That Was Easy: In Just 60 Years, Neoliberal Capitalism Has Nearly Broken Planet Earth
Pair of new studies show how various forms of human activity, driven by a flawed economic system and vast consumption, is laying waste to Earth’s natural systems
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/16/was-easy-just-60-years-neoliberal-capitalism-has-nearly-broken-planet-earth
“It is difficult to overestimate the scale and speed of change. In a single lifetime humanity has become a geological force at the planetary-scale.” —Prof. Will Steffen
…when it comes to climate change, species extinction and biodiversity loss, deforestation and other land-system changes, and altered biogeochemical cycles (such as changes to how key organic compounds like phosphorus and nitrogen are operating in the environment), the degradation that has already take place is driving the Earth System, as a whole, into a new state of imbalance.
In addition to the four boundaries that have already been crossed, the study looked five other ways in which the planetary systems are under assault by human activity. They include: stratospheric ozone depletion; ocean acidification; freshwater use; atmospheric aerosol loading (microscopic particles in the atmosphere that affect climate and living organisms); and the introduction of novel entities into ecosystems (e.g. organic pollutants, radioactive materials, nanomaterials, and micro-plastics).
Using what it calls a “planetary dashboard,” the research charts the spread and speed of human activity from the start of the industrial revolution in 1750 to 2010, and the subsequent changes in the Earth System – e.g. greenhouse gas levels, ocean acidification, deforestation and biodiversity deterioration. The analysis found that increased human activity—and “predominantly the global economic system”—has unseated all other factors as the primary driver of change in the Earth System, which the report describes as “the sum of our planet’s interacting physical, chemical, biological and human processes.” The most striking, i.e. “accelerated,” changes to that system have occurred in the last sixty years.
This is a new phenomenon and indicates that humanity has a new responsibility at a global level for the planet.”
The paper makes a point to acknowledge that consumption patterns and the rise of what has become known as the Anthropocene Era does not fall equally on the human population and its examination of the economic system which is underpinning planetary destruction is one rife with inequality, in which certain populations consume at vastly higher levels than others.
According to the report, “The new study also concludes that the bulk of economic activity, and so too, for now, the lion’s share of consumption, remain largely within the OECD countries, which in 2010 accounted for about 74% of global GDP but only 18% of the global population. This points to the profound scale of global inequality, which distorts the distribution of the benefits of the Great Acceleration and confounds international efforts, for example climate agreements, to deal with its impacts on the Earth System.”
“It’s clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of my daughter’s generation will find it increasingly hard to survive. History has shown that civilisations have risen, stuck to their core values and then collapsed because they didn’t change. That’s where we are today.”
strong evidence shows.. there “tipping points” that the human race should simply not “want to cross.”
Mareks, your posts seem to be triggering my memory of other articles, LOL. You’ve done it again. This is another Orion Magazine article by Ginger Strand, and it is one of my all time favorites. I reread it from time to time, because her research and writing is simply masterful in this one. The pivital character is ‘the crying Indian’ that was used in an anti-pollution ad campaign in the 1970’s. She drives into the actions and how they were devised that has led us to our current predicament of a consumptive society. Americans were not always overly consumptive. We had to be sold that message.
Looking back from America’s current position as global missionary of free-market gospel, it’s easy to forget that enterprise American-style — dedicated to the proposition that consuming equals happiness — once needed the hard sell here, too. But the ad men knew it. In 1945, the Council issued a pamphlet outlining its new purpose. The war was over, but a new battle was on: the “battle for markets.” Europe, they declared, was in ruins. State socialism was creeping through the Old World. America, too, would move left, unless advertising could “resume its star role as a profitable seller of goods.” This meant recasting the American Dream as the endless pursuit of plenty.
I like this line: “How can we expect individual choice to right the wrongs of collective decisions?”
https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-crying-indian/
thanks Yvette, I will take a look at her other articles.
I can only respond with my very first post on TWN directed at SaveBears aka Colonel Donald Jackson:
Lou Reed – Last Great American Whale
They say he didn’t have an enemy
His was a greatness to behold
He was the last surviving progeny
The last one on this side of the world
He measured half a mile from tip to tail
silver and black with powerful fins
They say he could split a mountain in two
That’s how we got the Grand Canyon
Some say they saw him at the Great Lakes
Some say they saw him off the coast of Florida
My mother said she saw him in Chinatown
but you can’t always trust your mother.
Off the Carolinas the sun shines brightly in the day
The lighthouse glows ghostly there are night
The chief of a local tribe had killed a racist mayor’s son
and he’d been on death row since 1958
The mayor’s kid was a rowdy pig
spit on Indians and lots worse
The old chief buried a hatchet in his head
life compared to death for him seemed worse
The tribal brothers gathered in the lighthouse to sing
and tried to conjure up a storm or rain
The harbor parted and the great whale sprang full up
and caused a huge tidal wave
The wave crushed the jail and freed the chief
The tribe let out a roar
The whites were drowned
the browns and reds set free
but sadly one thing more
Some local yokel member of the NRA
kept a bazooka in his living room
and thinking he had the chief in his sights
blew the whale’s brains out with a lead harpoon
Well Americans don’t care for much of anything
land and water the least
And animal life is low on the totem pole
with human life not worth much more than infected yeast
Americans don’t care too much for beauty
They’ll shit in a river, dump battery acid in a stream
They’ll watch dead rats wash up on the beach
and complain if they can’t swim
They say things are done for the majority
Don’t believe half of what you see
and none of what you hear
It’s a lot like what my painter friend Donald said to me
“Stick a fork in their ass and turn them over, they’re done”
http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Lies-Anatomy-Anti-Environmental-Campaign/dp/1567511821/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421684528&sr=1-3
Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-Environmental PR Campaign
A based on hundreds of leaked public relations papers, the book shows how PR consultants think and act when they are being paid to try to influence politics. It shows the range of techniques used by PR companies to manufacture political support for their clients and dirty tricks they use to stop their client’s opponents being heard.
“One of the most important books ever written on PR.… Revelations about the secretive Shandwick, one of the dominant PR firms in the United States, provide one of the most eye-opening examinations of corporate propaganda and contempt for democracy that has ever been produced.”
–– Robert W. McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy.
“An invaluable study of how PR is used by corporations to manipulate public opinion and subvert democracy. It is about events in New Zealand, but the PR firm behind the dirty work is now US-based, illustrating the globalization of dirty tricks.”
–– Edward S. Herman, author of The Myth of the Liberal Media: An Edward Herman Reader.
“What Secrets and Lies describes is happening every day, in similar ways, on every controversial and political issue…. One of the most important political exposés you will ever read.”
–– John Stauber, editor of PR Watch
Yvette,
I would also suggest Sheila O’Donnell who investigates violence against environmentalists in the USA, and teaches activists in tactical research.
http://www.cybersociology.com/files/5_cyberstrategies.html
Powerful read, Yvette.
Yes!!
http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/farms-can-be-held-liable-for-pollution-from-manure-u-s-court/
http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/Dillon-couple-sentenced-for-fish-and-wildlife-violations/30757008
Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6219/1255641
“Fundamentally, we’re a terrestrial predator,” he [Dr. McCauley]said. “It’s hard for an ape to drive something in the ocean extinct.”
USFWS have reopened a comment period on the Northern Long-eared bat. They are proposing applying the 4(d) rule if the bat is listed as threatened. Previously, they had proposed listing this bat as endangered and that comment period ended mid-December, 2014. Now they are going for threatened and in some regions of the mid-west the population decline has been 98-99%.
I’d be interested in other’s opinions on this change of proposed listing from endangered to threatened with the 4(d) rule. Do you think the bat will get the protection needed? Can USFWS still list this bat as endangered rather than the now proposed threatened?
I’m interested in this one since this bat’s range extends into the region where I live.
http://www.fws.gov/midwest/news/765.html
http://www.fws.gov/midwest/endangered/mammals/nlba/index.html
I hope people comment on this one. This is an important little bat.
This is very concerning and very reckless. I’m going to follow this closely too.
The biggest thing lately is ‘unduly burdening human activities’ with endangered species, and other protections. They have no intention of monitoring ‘incidental take’ for bats of other species and those not affected by WNS (where are bats not threatened by WNS?). As human activities increase more and more, how can animals cope? There isn’t going to be a remedy for limiting human encroachment on animal habitat and exposure to human toxins, etc. This approach is bound to fail to protect our wildlife.
http://www.mass.gov/eea/agencies/dfg/dfw/natural-heritage/species-information-and-conservation/rare-mammals/bat-mortality-in-massachusetts.html
We have a different species of bats, but they are threatened by WNS and development, and those infernal wind farms. I am so happy that Cape Wind was dealth a coup de grace, I think I would have made a deal with the devil himself to save Nantucket Sound!
Sorry, I guess we do have the Northern Long-Eared Bat too, we have four species, all with precarious futures.
I love seeing them, they are adorable.
I had a little one in my attic (some might say belfry). 🙂
I think some of you tend to have a ‘western fetish’ at times in these discussions, focusing on your own fiefdoms and not the whole kingdom.
I meant to thank you, MarkL, for being right on target with this comment. Whether right whales or Rocky Mountain wolves, and what happens to our wild areas, esp. our national parks, is everybody’s business who cares about them, not regional.
The largest bison slaughter in seven years to begin in Yellowstone NP.
http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2015/01/bison-removal-yellowstone-national-park-draws-protests26162
Gary Humbard:
Thank you for this news (bad as it is).
This bison slaughter is one of the most wasteful, unethical, unscientific, and senseless actions our government could take. Their is room for over 6,000 bison within Yellowstone according to the experts, and anyway, these 1,000 doomed bison could be translocated to other bison habitat that is already waiting to receive bison.
Many of the comments to this article are very informative and important, especially those of Michael Kellett.
Urgent Y’stone bison action alert:
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/actnow/actionalert011515.html
Yellowstone Bison Capture Invokes Lawsuit
BFC, FOA FILE LAWSUIT IN RESPONSE TO YELLOWSTONE BISON CAPTURE AND SLAUGHTER
http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/media/press1415/pressreleases1415/011515.html
Want to support BFC *and* send some buffa-love to the recipient(s) of your choice? For a small donation, BFC will send a hand-crafted valentine to someone you’d like to honor. Details are in this week’s Update from the Field: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/media/update1415/011515.html
Thank you Kathleen for this urgent alert and the email contact for Yellowstone Nat. Park Superintendent, Dan Wenk: dan_wenk@nps.gov
It is truly disheartening to realize that the largest and richest national wildlife conservation organizations are no where to be found in helping to block the bison slaughter through the courts. Where are the National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, World Wildlife Fund-U.S.??
Yellowstone Nat. Park is in clear violation of the Organic Act of 1916 which states that the over-riding priority of the National Park Service to the preservation and protection of the Park’s natural resources (like bison).
Kudos go to the Buffalo Field Campaign and the Friends of Animals for TAKING ACTION, instead of just fund-raising and talking the talk.
I love it – buffa-love. Thanks for the links.
But, but world renowned wolf expert Don Peay has this to say about wolf effect on Yellowstone bison in The Real Wolf “… and now the bison are the final prey and they are declining as well”.
Hmmm.
“In Yellowstone, Smith said he thinks wolves and elk have reached an equilibrium. Wolf numbers will likely bounce around 100 animals annually, he said, with elk numbers seeming to have bottomed out at about 5,000 to 6,000.”
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/years-after-reintroduction-yellowstone-wolves-find-balance/article_c4137dd1-20da-52d5-8c37-4af22e503a74.html
Got to love the internet for all things important:
http://matadornetwork.com/life/57-worlds-interesting-maps/
And “trivial” depending on…
The comment on the “researchers of the world” map is priceless:
“Taken with the “Average age of devirgination” sex map from earlier, there seems to be a strange correlation between regions with younger kids having sex, and those with higher rates of researchers per capita.”
No wonder I didn’t become a researcher.
Funny. 🙂
At least the first one anyway. 🙂
Talk about a time sponge!
🙂
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/chris-genovali/wolf-cull_b_6494770.html
More on the barbaric ineffective cull planned for entire wolf packs in BC to “protect” caribou on land devastated by years of extractive industries.
Wasn’t that nortorious study with the same ‘control methods’ that proved wolf predation didn’t have much effect on caribou numbers enough to convince them? I guess they choose to ignore science.
This wolf cull makes sense to me. Under Ideal circumstances this action would not need to be taken but humans have altered the environment in that area to the point that the woodland caribou may completely disappear.
To leave the caribou to their fate would be to allow bad management and extractive practices of the past to finish the destruction they started. By killing the wolves we can enable the caribou to hang on hopefully long enough to make a comeback.
Like it or not, humans caused a problem and created an unnatural situation that will require a little unnatural predator control to repair.
Is cutting back on our activities out of the question? There’s no proof killing wolves will do anything but hurt both species:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/04/woodland-caribou-in-idaho_n_1254608.html
I fully supported the designation of critical caribou habitat that would have banned snowmobiling in the caribou wintering grounds along the selkirk crest in northern idaho. Logging has been reduced in the area but that doesn’t help much since the caribou primarily feed on lichens in old growth forest that will take decades longer to improve habitat.
So, we can’t make an old growth forest just appear with all the feed these animals need, One thing we can do is reduce predation on the few that are left. In the last couple years there has been a 37% reduction in the herd size and wolves have been identified as the primary cause of mortality.
The problem is that if we do not do something now in the short term, by the time long-term fixes begin to show fruit the caribou will already be gone.
Agreed, but in areas like that, it’s not a twenty/thirty year fix. For the areas needed, one is probably looking at a time frame of a century or more to really establish a fix. Will anthropogenic needs allow that?
Another perspective on this issue.
http://www.dailytownsman.com/breaking_news/288970911.html?mobile=true
Hmm…not sure what to make of this:
Logan says, “In the last couple years there has been a 37% reduction in the herd size and wolves have been identified as the primary cause of mortality.”
but this quote is in the article (from the article Immer quoted):
“Wolves are not the primary cause of the caribou population decline in the region and killing wolves at this scale will have to continue for many years to effectively reduce the risk of wolf predation.”
So what’s the primary cause of caribou population decline?
From what I have read it is habitat destruction by logging, mining, snow machines, and fossil fuel extraction that has caused the degradation of habitat and opened the woods with roads making easier access by wolves. Killing the wolves is a temporary fix but it takes a longtime to regrow the trees that support the lichens the caribou feed on in the winter.
Lots of information here:
http://mountaincaribou.ca/content/protecting-endangered-mountain-caribou
very good article
try these:
http://thechronicleherald.ca/canada/1263321-b.c.-launches-hunt-for-wolves-to-save-caribou
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/wolf-cull-will-see-animals-shot-from-helicopter-to-save-b-c-caribou-1.2904364
http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Wolf+cull+begins+government+green+lights+controversial+hunt+protect+caribou+herds/10732420/story.html
http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/outdoors/2015/jan/16/bc-kill-wolves-last-ditch-effort-save-caribou/
Primary cause of decline in Ontario also not clear. Here’s just a hint that it’s a problem:
http://www.ontario.ca/environment-and-energy/woodland-caribou
30 years ago they seemed (to me) ubiquitous but never abundant, even south of Lake Nipigon, but never seen them below White River. That’s no longer true. It says 5000 is all, threatened. Satellite images of northern Ontario are shocking – huge timber cuts in areas I never imagined. I’m used to thinking that in winter they might eat allot of the big lichens that grow on the ground (which is common from north MI on up – “caribou moss”, every mouthful might have taken 50 years to grow), but that’s guessing – first times I saw them I didn’t even know what they were, and I still know little . I can’t even understand how they can survive there.
Rork, When you see something like this posted by agencies (the minister of natural resources) on a website:
What you can do:
Report a Sighting
• Become involved, learn about recovery and conservation efforts, and report caribou sightings to your local Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry office.
• If you are camping or canoeing in caribou country, avoid setting up camp on islands or peninsulas that may serve as caribou calving sites. Such activities disturb this sensitive species and the smell of food may inadvertently attract predators to calving sites.
Be a good steward
• The Ontario Species at Risk Stewardship Fund supports public involvement in species at risk protection and recovery activities, including those that help caribou.
Report illegal activity
• Report any natural resource related violations such as the killing or harming of any species at risk or their habitat to the Ministry of Natural Resources TIPS line at 1-877-TIPS-MNR (847-7667).
I worry.
They obviously did survive, till our species came along.
Nancy:
Yes, and notice that the Minister did not say to report any clear cut logging, new roads being surveyed, bull-dozers clearing caribou habitat for drilling platforms, roads and pipelines, etc… These offenses are not to be part of the public’s review.
Yeah, humans caused this problem, so why are we killing wolves?
well Logan, the BC government does not attempt to make the changes necessary to help Woodland Caribou in the long run, instead they implement terribly inhumane policies against wolves that are largely ineffective and opposed by independent scientists. Not so smart or ethical.
Norway Badly Lagging Behind Sweden In Wolf Recovery
Wolf numbers are the highest since Norwegian-Swedish wolf registration began in 1978, reported newspaper Dagsavisen. Rovdata’s report (2011), however, shows considerable differences in the wolf population in Norway, where it’s very small by comparison, and declining. Rovdata registered only between 32 and 34 wolves in Norway last winter, compared to 33 to 39 the winter before. An estimated 22 to 25 were believed to live on both sides of the border, down from 33 to 37 in the winter of 2010.
“This is blamed on politics, not biology,” Petter Wabakken, wolf researcher at the College of Hedmark, told Dagsavisen. Norway has set a ceiling of three wolf litters annually, largely because of constant resistance to wolves from Norway’s powerful farmers’ lobby, and that goal will likely be reached this year.
“That’s within the framework approved by Parliament,” Wabakken told Dagsavisen, “but it’s not a sustainable population.” He said conservationists must rely on Swedish authorities to prevent wolves from dying out in Scandinavia.
NY TIMES Op-Ed by Lydia Millet – JAN. 18, 2015
“High Noon For Gray Wolves”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/high-noon-for-the-gray-wolf.html?mabReward=R3&module=WelcomeBackModal&contentCollection=Opinion®ion=FixedCenter&action=click&src=recg&pgtype=article&_r=0
After numerous generations of people dedicated to killing wolves on the North American continent, one generation devoted itself to letting wolves live.
A great sentence, among the many in this wonderful piece. Thanks for posting, Ed!
I’m going to post some non-wolf related news on South Dakota’s mountain lion hunt. I started following the SD kill/harvest report after reading information from the Mountain Lion Foundation. SD’s Mountain Lion five year management plan was not well received by mountain lion researchers. Read here what one researcher thought of their calculations in determining quotas. http://www.mountainlion.org/featurearticledoes225southdakota.asp .
The 2015 quota is the same as the 2014: 75 total lions or until 50 females are killed/harvested. In 2014 SD didn’t meet the quota. The kill/harvest numbers were 52 for 2014, which was lower than the previous year. A regional wildlife manager doesn’t think that is because the population is lower. (note the analysis of the SD calculations to determine harvest numbers in the link above).
I guess one has to be an adept and moral hunter to harvest spotted kittens. Five of them! Wow, what a man.
The 2015 kill/harvest quota is the same as 2014: 75 total lions, or until 50 females are killed/harvested. You can follow the kill/harvest updates here, http://gfp.sd.gov/hunting/big-game/mountain-lion-season-harvest-status.aspx . As of yesterday, there were a total of 16 lions killed/harvested: 8 males and 8 females.
A snippet from MLF on last year’s kill/harvest. http://www.mountainlion.org/opinionstory.asp?news_id=1508
Second, of the mountain lions killed as part of the Black Hill’s hunt, 60 percent (28) of the mortalities were females; 51 percent (24) were less than three-years old and probably hadn’t had a chance to establish a territory or breed before they were killed; 26 percent (12) were estimated as being 18-months or younger (basically young lions probably still dependent on their mothers for survival); and 11 percent (5) were spotted kittens six-months or younger. These numbers tell the story of a species under stress, and a population base whose next generation is being killed off before it has even had a chance to propagate.
In other mountain lion news, last week SD GFP decided to allow the use of hounds to hunt lions outside of the Black Hills district. Nebraska decided to forego a mountain lion hunt this season. Probably a sound decision since there is an estimated 22 resident lions and there were 16 mountain lion deaths in NE last year. A small blurb here, http://www.mountainlion.org/newsstory.asp?news_id=1592.
It becomes mind boggling to see how some states manage the wildlife they “own”. Some days I think the more I learn the more I wish I had of just remained blind and ignorant. I’ve looked for a draft mountain lion management plan since the SD plan will expire this year. Haven’t found it yet. I’m sure it will be forthcoming.
well, that’s one lousy way to estimate that SD does. WY asks hunters to supply them with a tooth. That tooth tells them the age of the killed lion. By those teeth they determine their quotas. I asked the Mountain Lion Foundation about this method. Bogus they said. Gives absolutely no data.
I guess it would look quite bad if they turned in milk teeth. 🙁
Can this be taken to court?
“Some days I think the more I learn the more I wish I had of just remained blind and ignorant. ”
I know exactly what you mean. i had a conversation with a biologist at a state wildlife management agency a day ago. She agreed with me that there was no valid management reason for harvesting carnivores so heavily. She was not familiar with some of the studies I quoted but was interested and sympathetic. When I asked if she agreed with department policy she was surprisingly candid and said no. I asked if she thought there might be an opportune time to raise the issue of reform and she hesitated and said she did not think so. I asked, even when faced with literature that supports a position you fee your department would not consider alternatives? She stated she did not believe they would. I felt sorry for her and really angry and disgruntled. No wildlife state agency should ignore their own biologists, nor should they be blind to new independent research.
I’ll never understand why, if these biologists are so against departmental policy, they just don’t quit. How can they go along with it? I really don’t feel sorry for these people. They put their career advancement, or ‘ohhhhhh, I’ve got a family to support’ ahead of their own self-respect.
“I’ll never understand why, if these biologists are so against departmental policy, they don’t just quit.”
Did you slow down enough to think that there might be good mixed in with her job?
As far as the rest of your comment, have you ever been poor? jobless? absolutely zero income and a kid to care for? In the real world some of us have to do things we don’t like even if it’s temporary while we set ourselves up for a different course. It’s called survival. Perfection does not exist; not in anything.
+1
+ 1
Plus, Plus, Plus +++++++++++++++
Yvette is a lady that inspires! I’ll add a few more ++s to those scores!
I’ll have to ask Yvette if she ever has been poor and jobless herself, firsthand experience, or is she just spouting off the liberal Democrat version of what they think being poor is?
Ida, the answer is yes…in all caps and to everything I stated. Surely you’ve read enough of my posts to ascertain that information. I wont’ get in a fish slapping battle with you to see who can out poor the other (note the MP video Immer posted because it is hilarious) and this blog is not the appropriate place to get into the details. It doesn’t matter anyway since I did what I felt was necessary (education) to not be forced to stay in a life situation with less opportunity. Today is what counts the most but an understanding of the past reminds me that life can be a precipice and things can change in a heartbeat.
I guess some of us have learned to weigh the pros and cons with every situation and make the best decisions we can from that information.
Yes, I agree with you. Everyone comes to a different conclusion about how to live their lives, as of course they should. I know there are lots of decent people, working very hard in the government agencies and putting up with a lot of crap in the process.
I’m sorry – I just cannot excuse it. And it’s about as far away from perfection as possible – not even close. I’m more careful about my behavior and the consequences of it; I think of how my actions will affect others. I plan ahead. I’m not wasteful and greedy. I grew up poor. Any other questions?
And furthermore, with all of the misery and shallowness of this world, I really don’t give a shit either.
Also, I was smart enough not to have kids, I should add that – so I’m not trapped in a job or in a situation that I can’t stand with no power over my own life. You don’t know how pleasurable it is to tell someone to take this job and shove it and leave them flat. 🙂
I grew up poor, worked and made a little money. I’ve had jobs and been jobless. I’ve always kept my principles and dignity. I’m not afraid of being poor because I grew up poor and know how to survive. I won’t crumble if I don’t have a cell phone or a new car.
I think the reason I didn’t is because I saw so many women having kids and stuck in the cycle of poverty, I wanted something different for myself. I used to wonder why young girls and women allowed it to happen, over and over. It wasn’t always happy ever after. So now at least my decisions only affect me.
This one demands a more thorough response.
Because in a good year, with several successful major projects, that biologist does a hell of a lot to conserve wildlife and habitat. And hopefully makes equal headway in education, mentorship, community service, and citizen science. In most agencies working in constant strife and stress, with endless political (and anymore, the inseparably linked corporate/industry) arm twisting, with absurd budgets (and very specifically ear-marked budgets, from very specific and demanding legislatures and constituents), and eating a lot of shit with the hopes that some good work will get done. They don’t quit because the good ones are gems and do make a real difference; because it’s the career they dreamed of having; because it’s what they trained years to do; because the jobs are inordinately competitive and difficult to land; because if they quit, they don’t make any difference in agency culture and some do hope to do just that; because they truly love what they do; and because they DO have families and lives and commitments, and student loans, and kids to feed and clothe, as well as passion and dedication. And they work for peanuts, not for career advancement. For most of them, they are terminal at hire – nowhere up to go; a very few will make biologist supervisor or administration – and salaries for biologists in many states (including most of the NRM region) are embarrassing. Changes are coming. As time passes more and more of them are women from university courses to entry-level jobs (still few minorities), and more and more of them are from nontraditional backgrounds, and more and more of them have a more holistic attitude towards conservation and ecology. It’s an awful tough profession to be in right now – personally, professionally, financially, and emotionally. And most of us (I’m not an agency biologist, but I work with them and think I can speak for them) believe that it’s better to keep the job, do good work, build credibility, and influence people through science, passion, and collegiality – slowly and painfully, often, rather than make a moral last stand to win some perceived battle only to lose our jobs and the war.
Now back to lurking and enjoying the informative posts some of you good people add.
The Monty Python thing killed me. You need a bigger fish Immer.
TC,
Great post !
Being outnumbered doesn’t bother me. Fire away!
“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
+ 1 TC.
Well, you do make a point, if this is the case. We don’t know that. What we do know and can see is that a lot of killing of wildlife, and a lot of selling out of our wildlands is being allowed. How someone can sit by and watch this stuff happen I just don’t understand. Doesn’t it tarnish your dream job just a little? I don’t know what else good in a job could outweigh it.
I did have understanding and compassion once (I’m not just directing this to wildlife biologists, but society in general). But when decades go by and nothing changes, in fact things are reverting back – then it’s time to throw up your hands in disgust and walk away. Now I devote my time and resources to wildlife and the environment, that just doesn’t ever seem to get any attention or ever catch a break.
“But when decades go by and nothing changes, in fact things are reverting back – then it’s time to throw up your hands in disgust and walk away.”
(sigh). Nope, not how I roll, never will be….wonder how things would be in the south if MLK,Jr. thought that way.
Sadly, there are very few MLK’s, Aldo Leopold’s, etc. in the world. I never said I would stop trying (in fact I said just the opposite in my many posts), just that I know when a dead end has been reached, and to try a different path.
TC, +++ post of the day. It is all of those things, yes!
TC and all
Perhaps the quote that got this whole thing rolling/roiling.
“Fish and Wildlife doesn’t want to manage the land or the wildlife,” said Beers. “Once they started hiring women and minorities, the service went from managing the land and wildlife to saving all the animals and habitats.”
The question is, was Beers quote referring to women and minorities contributing to the paradigm shift, or did the advent of hiring more women and minorities coincide with the Fish and Wildlife philosophical shift?
These things take time. It’s been too long where there were only the “good” animals. People are finally looking at the entire picture, case in point the Doug Smith question and answer session about wolves and Yellowstone. And I emphasize the entire question and answer session, even the parts some folks here didn’t like.
It’s time to move on, and nobody in any of the Fish and Wildlife Departments should have to risk their positions/careers at the expense of the backward thinkers such as Beers, who instead if adapting, and sharing his expertise with this “shift” in philosophy went into a snit and wet the bed.
Nobody should jeopardize their position because of the lashing out by the legions of those with the Stannous millinery. In the same breath, turning an unsympathetic eye towards those who have been adversely affected by this paradigm shift is equally egregious. These things take time, and the synthesis of effort by all those working on wildlife issues.
As has been said before, managing wildlife is easy, managing people is difficult.
TC +1
Well said, TC.
Thanks for reminding me why I keep “lurking” around.
Yvette,
I was following the Nebraska proposed hunt and glad to see it cancelled. For christsakes, a hunt of animals when there are an estimated 22! Its mind boggling the desire to kill for sport and that it is still legal in 2015.
You posted in regards to the number of juveniles harvested “These numbers tell the story of a species under stress, and a population base whose next generation is being killed off before it has even had a chance to propagate.”
back to wolves…
many of the animals killed in the hunts are juvenile pups.
The perpetual killing and maiming of predators is all so creepy and disturbing.
Yes, I was glad NE decided to not hold a lion hunt this year. SD will likely be forced to lower quotas if they keep going at the rate they are going. Keeping and eye on this one.
OMG, how awful.
I never, ever wish I had remained blind and ignorant. It’s very shocking to read, but it is important to uncover and expose it. That I am always glad about.
“Pope Says Birth Control Ban Doesn’t Mean Breed “Like Rabbits” – Reuters by Philip Pullella
http://news.yahoo.com/pope-says-birth-control-ban-doesnt-mean-breed-190535033.html
This is huge news, if the Pope keeps spreading this message and its not just a one-time comment.
The best Pope ever. I adore this Pope.
1961 – The Pacing Mustang/Seton (Wild Animals I Have Known)
http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=seton&book=wild&story=mustang
I love old books and ran across this book on my book shelf this evening. This short story gives some interesting insight on western attitudes and how wild life was “dealt with” in years past, and, presented to children as reading material/gospel?
From the same book/site:
http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=seton&book=wild&story=lobo
Nancy,
I had the book “Wild Animals I have Known” by Ernest Thompson Seton as a kid. The Pacing Mustang seemed very familiar but when I got to the last paragraph it was obviously the same story I read 70 or so years ago. One of my favorite marbles was named Lobo – I still have him with my other wolves, dogs, and horses – there were no cows or sheep in my pastures as a kid.
Barb, do you recall the short story in Seton’s book titled Wully?
A dedicated sheep dog by day, protecting his owner’s flock but at night… wreaking havoc on neighboring flocks of sheep. Some interesting lessons here when it comes to our own species 🙂
http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=seton&book=wild&story=wully
Nancy
I don’t remember that one but a similar story out of Scotland – Bob, Son of Battle. I have always had an appreciation for collies – Albert Payson Terhune, and sled dogs – Silver Chief – Dog of the North, a series by Jack Obrien. These books are probably what sparked my interested in wolves as a 6th grader. I should add “Wilderness Champion” by Joseph Lippincott about a hound lost in Canada and tended to by his finder a black wolf for the early month’s of his life. The black wolf was the center of the story for me.
When I was a child, I read the books my father had read when he was a boy. They included several books by Ernest Thompson Seton. The stories had a powerful effect on me. I would often sit and cry after reading them. (Now I find them a bit maudlin.) But few people mention Seton today.
Seton’s books (among others) brought me to the environmentalist table. A very early copy of Biography of a Grizzly is one of my most cherished possessions.
Also the wolf that changed a man’s life:
PBS The Wolf That Changed America
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-wolf-that-changed-america-introduction/4260/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiIM2xNbUt8
Hitler reflects on wolves
I wish I could take credit for finding this but it was posted on the western carnivore conservation list by Brooks. I so rarely find anything to laugh at because I feel tormented by wolf trapping ad killing, killing contests, penning, hounding, aerial gunning, creepy people that hate animals and all other bad voodoo whomped down on wild animals by humans. This made me crack up. I hope it does you too.
Oh my, that is hilarious, Louise.
I sure hope Larry watches this one.
Louise:
You made my day and I passed this video around.
“Unfu____g believable! I had thought to retire to my 1/4 acre ranch, and look out on the 10,000 acres I controlled for $1.39 monthly.”
So creative!
http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/crews-truck-in-water-after-eastern-montana-oil-spill/30803628
“Wyoming-based Bridger Pipeline Co. accepted responsibility for the spill and has pledged to clean it up”
Oh yeah, so bring on Keystone so even more of the country can have a piece of the action/spill/excuses/clean up, etc.
Nanc,
That is what I was thinking as I read this. And this happened in 2011 under the Yellostone River too.
An article worth revisiting:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/02/140214-animals-and-habitats-in-keystone-xl-path/
http://missoulian.com/news/local/wolf-trapped-during-sanders-county-hunt/article_a9cbb55f-b894-56eb-baff-dfae40161085.html
Good Q & A w/ Doug Smith
http://missoulian.com/q-a-wolves-doug-smith/youtube_69a76506-9cd3-11e4-b3fd-13485c776c25.html
Nancy:
Do you think that Doug Smith would admit that he mis-spoke when he said in the video, “There are lots of wolves throughout North America.”?
Ed – Given where wolves were in the lower 48, say 70 years ago, I don’t think Doug mis-spoke. There are wolves now in the southwest, in the southeast, larger numbers in the Upper Lakes region, on the west coast (Oregon & Washington) and of course here, in at least 3 western states.
Its all relative.
He said throughout NA. The are many wolves in Alaska and Canada.
Nancy & Elk:
Great news, thanks. Because “there are lots of wolves in North America”, I guess we can all stop working to expand wolf numbers and expand wolves into former historic states and former habitat. States can take over and we can just sit back and congratulate ourselves, taking no notice that the states given this responsibility are embarking on a mission to keep wolves to the bare minimum levels possible. Success!!
Guess you missed my point Ed that there were virtually NO WOLVES in the lower 48, 70 years ago.
I’d like to see an end to all war, dependency on fossil fuels and better education with regard to wildlife, what’s left of their habitat and wild lands but fact is you and I live in a world where our species is far more concerned about their own welfare.
I often send articles to a long time friend who finally admitted recently that while the articles were always good and insightful, she was more concerned about how safe her own little “bubble” was.
Spoke to another friend this morning that loves to hunt, hunted all his life. Mentioned the elk feeding grounds in Wyoming and the worry about CWD and he laughed and said ” that’s a disease of fish, not elk or deer” Duh?
He also mentioned taking one of the “wagon rides” thru the elk refuge in Wyoming, (not long after hunting season there) and was sickened by the elk showing up “with legs blown off and guts hanging out”
When he asked why these animals were not put out of their misery he was told “they like to keep things as natural as possible, predators would be taking care of the casualties”
Anybody else aware of this mentality in elk refuges in Wyoming?
What your friend sees on the elk refuges, I see on the beaches after hunting season. Hundreds of birds bead on the beach with the unmistakable holes created by gunshots. Sometimes I see them languishing. I think bird hunting is a terrible largely uncontrolled practice. Birds that migrate are hit at every stop they make with a new round of hunters waiting in blinds, behind marsh grasses and anywhere they can take a shot. To hear the birds in terror and exhaustion as they try and escape the gunshot is almost to much to bear. The image of those elk is like that, almost too much to bear. There is an incalculable amount of waste in hunting or fishing that can not possible be tracked. How many fish die after being hooked and released or when the line parts, how many birds are shot down and die flying away, how many wild animals are shot and don’t die right away. What is the percentage and who accounts for this in management strategies?
Wisconsin study, small sample size 13% of deer shot are never found.
A badly wounded buck was exactly what I saw the one time in my life when I went with a boyfriend, his dad and brothers to deer hunt. My long ago ex-boyfriend was the only one to tag a deer on that excursion. I was with him when he shot the buck. When the buck fell we walked up to him but he was not yet dead. It turned out the buck had already been badly wounded. With the first shot from the rifle we didn’t know the buck was already wounded. From the look of the wound we figured it was about 3 days old. The panic, the pain, the fear and inability to get up and escape showed in that poor buck’s eyes. I saw it when we walked up to him and the ex-bf(thank gawd he’s an ex) used his pistol to kill him.
In that instance, the poor buck needed to be put out of his pain and misery since he had been wondering around the woods wounded. I did not like that experience.
Louise
Thank you for this poignant reminder.
“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight”
Albert Schweitzer.
Great interview on all levels, including management of wolves outside the park (Smith did good job explaining this).
Did anybody notice a date associated with this video?
Immer:
I noticed in the video, how comfortable Doug Smith was in accepting Montana, Idaho and Wyoming taking over “management” of wolves from the federal government outside the “wolf preservation” border of Yellowstone National Park. Personally, I am not at all comfortable with this political move that is proving so deadly to wolves.
Smith was in charge of a recovery effort. To deny that wolves were not recovered under “any premise” was to admit his failure. Not a common practice among government agents.
To my knowledge, Doug Smith’s responsibilities ended at YNP boundaries (well maybe including Teton). So, to say he was “in charge” might be an overstatement. His role was/is more one of monitoring what is happening as wolf population grows and ebbs with policy outside the Park(s).
I like Smith, and think he has done a great job – long term. This latest interview, looks to be canned questions with corresponding canned answers, designed not to be too offensive to anyone on either side of NRM wolf recovery. Of course the ESA does allow for state management (it is in the law) for any species that meets ESA delisting criteria (whatever that is in these days of what seem is judicial activism, that is likely to result in changes in the law or passing of riders to incrementally change the law for individual species recoveries).
Looks like the video was published the 12th of this month Immer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tXplYRCUpk
A NYT interview with Doug back in 2003:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/science/a-conversation-with-douglas-smith-following-the-wolves-number-by-number.html
Q. Why is there such a loathing of wolves in our culture?
A. Doug Smith: “The aboriginal people of North America did not have the mindset to eradicate every wolf. So the loathing came with the arrival of Europeans and their ideas of manifest destiny and ”civilizing” the continent. The Europeans wanted to rid the area of wolves to civilize it. Wolves are the antithesis of civilization.” +1
Yeah, those evil Europeans and their ideas of “civilization.” Answers like Smith’s on this one deserve another layer of the onion peeled back. Give the quick emotional answer and move on.
Fewer wolves meant less risk to livestock and less capital outlay or labory (a cause-effect relationship learned in every culture, regardless of continent, that had/has wolves).
I suppose that “blame it on civilization” is the same mentality that allows Ed Loosi to live in CA, and get to his property in ID in just a few hours by road or by plane (maybe a combination), or to have air conditioning, electricity, computers, internet and cell phones, along with medical technology.
Of course the noble Native Americans could be living on the Great Plains this time of year, freezing in a teepee, burning buffalo chips for warmth and cooking, while satisfying hunger with a few dried berries blended with some rancid animal fat, or in a smokey, drafty and damp cedar longhouse in the NW.
I suppose that technology also benefits Doug Smith personally and professionally, from the communications systems, to clothing and equipment utilized when in the field studying wolves.
Damn civilization!
Well not entirely, but with some kind of limits. 🙂
“Of course the noble Native Americans could be living on the Great Plains this time of year, freezing in a teepee, burning buffalo chips for warmth and cooking, while satisfying hunger with a few dried berries blended with some rancid animal fat, or in a smokey, drafty and damp cedar longhouse in the NW.”
Are you still traveling in wagons and living in sod houses? What makes you think things with Indians would never have changed without our saviors, the Europeans?
At least the Plains Indians had enough sense to know the Great Plains weren’t well adapted for farming. Most of the poor sod busters with land claims during manifest destiny went belly up.
Odd how people tend to lump Indigenous people of this continent under one big Hollywood tee-pee with nothing more than a campfire and buffalo chips to burn. How about a common sense moment? How do you think they survived before the holy Europeans arrived to Christianize and rescue us from freezing and starving?
Additionally, not all tribes were nomadic and not all tribes lived in tee-pees. You’ve apparently watched too many hollywood movies.
My own tribe, was referred to as the Great Creek Confederacy. We are Mvskoke, or Muscogee in English spelling. Going back to the Mississippian geological era, we came from the mound builders, who yes, had permanent towns, homes. Following that era, we still had permanent towns throughout what is now Alabama, Georgia and parts of FL. We had a representative style of government with representatives from each of those towns/tribes that were an ethnic part of the entire Creek Confederacy. We had districts within the confederacy. Does anything about that sound familiar? All of the tribes I can think of that came from the South, the Southeast, the Northeast, the upper Mid-West, and the Ohio Valley regions of the current US lived in permanent or mostly permanent towns and government style and culture between the different tribes in a region were, and still are, quite similar.
We lived that way for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived to rescue and Christianize us.
We had civilization long before the arrival of Europeans. Oh, and guess what? We were farmers! Who knew! Who knew an Indigenous group of people could farm before the Europeans arrived to civilize and christianize us? Whatever would we have done without you?
You might want to stop using hollywood stereotypes for your historical references. It’s not doing you any favors.
Yvette,
I am well aware of the concept of ancient farming practices among native peoples. An example, the Anasazi of the what is now the 4 Corners area of the Southwest used irrigation, until apparently a changing climate moved them south to Navajo/Hopi country, if I understand correctly. Many tribes throughout North and South America were great architects and engineers, as well. I am not discounting the fact that native cultures would not become “civilized” in their own right, given enough time and the proper catalysts for change (individuals with inquisitive minds and innovative thought).
Another example of large scale management of the environment was setting fire to prairies to improve ungulate habitat. Evidence of this is still present in wet Western WA where large areas of coastal timber were burned periodically to improve elk habitat, and make it easier to hunt them.
But, I will give odds, untouched, North American Indians would not have developed steel as quickly as Europeans, a big game changer. I am sure you have read Jared Diamond’s books on the topic and related environmental factors that allows for “civilization” to develop more rapidly in some places than others.
Let’s not forget “slavery” and barbaric/inhumane treatment of lesser tribes which has been a part of social development of stronger native tribes dominating others throughout North America. That, of course, predated, arrival of those nasty Europeans for hundreds/thousands of years.
No Hollywood crap, Yvette,and I certainly don’t condone the Christianity aspect. Aferall, religion is just another way to control behavior of people.
WM, have you ever read Diamond’s earlier work, entitled “Third Chimpanzee”? To me, it’s far more significant to the conversation you and Yvette are having than “Guns Germs and Steel” (imho).
I’m fairly sure you are well aware, WM. I just think you’re too smart of a fellow to perpetuate a stereotype.
You are basically correct on the slavery prior to colonization. When there were inter-tribal wars often some of the losing side became slaves to the winners. Some of those slaves eventually became accepted into the tribe. I’d have to verify, but I don’t think the chattel slavery practiced by christian colonizers existed within the tribes. I would have to take the time to verify because I’m not sure.
The question is what the European Settlers would have done without the indigenous people. Many did not survive. I always love hearing about teaching about growing corn (I saw something interesting about South American corn recently too) – which is a reason I’m so against GMOs obliterating traditional farming for other nations which magnificent agricultural histories.
I’ve recently been reading the book “1491” By Charles Mann which has been very enlightening in terms of the level of developement achieved by American Indians prior to European colonization. Indians all across both north and south america had significant impacts on their environment through farming, irrigation, hunting, mining, burning and architexture.
Metalurgy was highly advanced among many central and south american cultures but they persisted in using stone tools and using the metal only for decarative and ceremonial purposes.
Permanent towns and structured societies existing throughout both continents but much of that was lost hundreds of years before many of the tribes met their first european. Diseases travelled faster than the europeans and destroyed native populations and cultures to the point that much of contemporary opinion is based on first impressions of broken societies that were more nomadic than their ancestors because the civilizations collapsed due to disease.
I wonder how much further native technology would have advanced given a few hundred years more, the result may have been more deadly for the european side of the conflict.
Logan,
I tend to agree with you regarding South American cultures and their metallurgy advances. However, and this is a big however, it is a long way from crushing rock, melting down and extracting gold, silver and copper for artistic use or personal adornment to developing steel and hardened alloys for tools and arms. But, may had the right minds of the time appeared and experimented with innovation that could have happened.
So, for how long did Europeans (and Chinese or other Eurasians) have steel to make into tools, spears and swords, and make subsequent quality refinements, maybe 3,000 years before venturing on to the North or South American continents? The making of steel (from iron filings and carbon) thing didn’t catch on in Africa or other continents either.
Nancy,
Thanks!
Thank you for the Doug Smith Q&A – I’m always amazed at how persistent these myths about wolves really are – the fact that other predators are more dangerous than wolves and that very few attacks on humans have occurred over centuries makes absolutely no difference.
I noticed that the same toxic names keep appearing regarding wolf killing. The US Selkirk woodland caribou article I posted? Voila! Scott Rockholm.
Immer, you just reminded me that I hadn’t responded completely to your post of yesterday, the part about your attempt at humor.
I don’t have a sense of humor about these things because it is a way of not taking people’s comments seriously. My dream was not ‘bizarre’. I think too much prosperity has caused Americans to not take anything seriously and there is too much comedy.
“Peyote”, “stoners” and a “it’s a generational thing” is a way of dismissing environmentalists and wildlife advocates as stereotypical ‘hippies’ and of course it must follow that their comments as not to be taken seriously.
I read an interesting opinion piece yesterday entitled ‘Distancing ourselves from the hippie’ so that environmentalists and wildlife advocates can be taken seriously. That may be right. It’s too bad it happens within our own environmentalist ranks too and not just those opposed to conservation.
Without a sense of humour, even about these “things”,you might as well be dead. With one fell stroke of your keyboard, you probably dismissed half the people who had anything to do with wolf reintroduction.
You still haven’t addressed your prevarication.
“Hitler Reflects Upon Learning Wolves Were Reintroduced”
LOL @ the source being Bunny Huggers Near Boise!
Idaho’s legislature does it again – turned down the Idaho salamander as being the state’s amphibian – it might give the feds a bigger foot in the door. Do check out the comments which add a touch of humor along with the absurd reality of the situation. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2015/jan/19/north-idaho-lawmakers-help-kill-state-salamander-b/
Rep. Ken Andrus, R-Lava Hot Springs, said, “Ilah, I’m sorry, and I commend you for what you have done and the due diligence you’ve done to bring this to our attention. When I grew up (in Utah), and I was a young boy, in our swimming hole there were salamanders, we called them water dogs. … I learned to despise them. … They were ugly, they were slimy, and they were creepy. And I’ve not gotten over that. So to elevate them to the status of being the state amphibian, I’m not there yet.”
Kill a young girl’s dreams because you think salamanders are “slimy” and “creepy.” And this is a grown man speaking. I would laugh if I wasn’t so deeply disturbed for the future state of Idaho’s wildlife in the hands of these legislators.
Interesting and somewhat related read to wild life.
http://bangordailynews.com/2015/01/19/living/york-professor-explores-potential-ties-between-salem-witch-trials-early-raid-on-maine-town/
someone posted to one of my sites
“Anyone near Boise tomorrow? Are you free to speak up for wolves? Bring some friends? Heads up Idaho wolf supporters. IDFG Commission is holding a public hearing on Wednesday, January 21 at 7 pm at the IDFG headquarters in Boise.
Fish and Game Headquarters
600 South Walnut St., Boise, ID 83712
(208) 334-3700 Here’s a chance for you to speak out for wolves in just three minutes or less. https://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/about/commission/2015/01_January/Agenda.html“
If I were still an Idaho resident I would certainly want to be at that hearing!
http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/hundreds-of-birds-covered-in-mystery-goop/30830234
More & pics on mystery goop:
http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/mystery-goop-coats-hundreds-of-san-francisco-bay-sea-birds/
1/21/15 news release: Yellowstone bison sent to slaughter
“[YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, GARDINER BASIN, MT] An estimated one hundred and one of America’s last wild, migratory buffalo were crammed onto tribal stock trailers at Yellowstone National Park’s Stephens Creek bison trap this morning. The bison were taken by tribal entities affiliated with the Interagency Bison Management Plan (IBMP) to tribal slaughter facilities. The two tribal affiliates shipping bison to slaughter for the second year in a row are the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the federally chartered InterTribal Buffalo Council.”
Continued: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/media/press1415/pressreleases1415/012115.html
The Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes…Another good reason to boycott Idaho.
sorry, I meant to write; The Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes who are partners with the Park Service are another reason to boycott Montana.
Who do you suppose gets the revenue from the sale of these “excess” bison? I notice BFC avoids any discussion of that aspect while they pee on tribal involvement and evil complicity in the culling, which may actually give some needed revenue for tribal members or their respective tribal business operations. So, alternatively, do the tribes sit in the sidelines and maybe protest for the “good fight,” while forgoing economic opportunity for their people?
WM:
Please spare us your spin on where the bison “blood money” goes. Dozens of tribes are opposed to the bison slaughter of the Yellowstone bison and they are embarrassed and feel shame at the actions the Confederated Salish and Kootenai and other tribes are taking. One of the many negatives of this latest bison slaughter manufactured by the U.S. Government is that it has purposely split the Native American tribes — which is just what the Park Service, the State of Montana and their rancher allies wanted.
http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/montana-oil-spill-renews-worries-over-pipeline-safety/30839914
Keystone?
IDIOMS
be banging, etc. your head against a (brick) wall (informal) to keep trying to do something that will never be successful
Trying to reason with them was like banging my head against a (brick) wall
http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/national-view/3660405-response-we-can-live-wolves-wild
Great oped
Immer I thought of you and was glad to see this knowing there are at least two strong advocates for wolves. Ok make that three, my loon calling friend counts too!
advocates in MN
http://www.nature.com/news/challenge-the-abuse-of-science-in-setting-policy-1.16580
Guillame is a brave scientist! it takes a lot of courage to write this.
Sounds familiar…
“Realizing that scientific evidence will be a constant obstacle, the government has changed the law to effectively make large-carnivore-hunting decisions exempt from legal challenge. “
yes, that statement is sadly all too familiar. He is right, time to take a stand.
That was a good read, thanks. I was particularly interested in ideas about genetic diversity reducing risks to the population, and just how much we should assist (and how). Just one example: I expect that to be a serious concern when wolves come to lower MI, and maybe it’s a concern now out west in some places with somewhat isolated populations. A small lower peninsula population might be quite isolated, cause crossing the straights there ain’t easy, and that would be the only likely corridor. Even if we started (by moving animals) with a fairly diverse set of founders, effective population size may not get very big unless the humans become very accepting. They may be doomed long-term. We know examples of wolves being good travelers into less occupied territory (so it seems like “no problems”), but how fast genes really move in occupied areas with intervening barriers I’m less educated about. (I’m not thinking about Isle Royale – it is trivia wrt wolf populations, except as a learning device.)
Well, I like to hope in the long run we ma see genetic exchange occur. I was very excited to read the ruling in HSUS VS Jewell because thats what the judge was getting at. The populations of wolves are not separate and need to be able to migrate and repopulate in order to reestablish in their former ranges. If the Lummis/ Ribble bill happens chances of meaningful recovery, outmigration and its benefits for genetic health are slim.
Yes, wonderful and I’m thankful to read it.
Even if it damages their careers, and makes their names toxic, academics must be prepared to identify the unethical use of scientific knowledge and expose such abuse by politicians.
^^JB, and John Vucetich, and others (the video JB provided us) have done this. It’s a lot to ask of them, and it’s very brave for sure. 🙂
But then again, TC, Yvette and others made a terrific points too in that there is still much good to be done within the system. Arrgggghhh!!!! It’s very difficult.
http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/lake-tahoes-tiny-creatures-dying-off-at-dramatic-rate-scientist/
Wow!
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/watch-old-arctic-ice-disappear-18563
Appears as if a pulsating heart,eh?
Does. Really kicked up a few notches from about 2007 on. When did air pollution become a factor with China?
An awful lot of everything went to China in preparation for the 2008 Olympics.
Yes it does.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/wolf-01-21-2015.html
Very bad news for Idaho wolves.
“Very bad news….” – only if the CBD assertions are proven as true. CBD often does not operate within the realm of truth and accuracy, and when it does NOT, it should be called to task.
Key is the truth and veracity, as well as the source (which scientists?) of this assertion:
++With scientists now predicting there are as few as 15 breeding pairs of wolves left in Idaho, the population may be in grave danger.++
We won’t know the ID wolf population until the December 2014 count report is made.
Remember, these idiots told you the Salmon predator derby was cancelled on all federal lands as a result of a narrow legal ruling, in its press release. And, in point of fact, it was not; the event occurred unfettered on FS lands (and likely on some BLM lands absent a special use permit)
Wm
“Idiots” ?????
I am personally offended by this assertion and I suspect others here are as well.
Well, CBD is one of the NGO groups that will likely be responsible for gutting the ESA in the coming sessions of Congress (due to their long string of litigation on highly technical arguments), and some of their “the sky is falling” assertions. I’m being proactive here, and think the term “idiots” is most appropriate.
What would you call CBD and some of their ridiculous positions in this circus that is playing out?
And, sorry if that offends you personally, unless, of course, you work for CBD or financially support their poorly thought out conservation strategy in this political environment.
skyrim,
Here is a little more information on the composition of the Senate and House Committees that deal with natural resource issues. Look carefully at who chairs them (R’s), and which Western states are represented regardless of party:
http://www.energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/members
http://naturalresources.house.gov/about/members.htm
Though the House Natural Resources Committee chairman is still reported as Doc Hastings (R-WA) in one spot on the website, the 214th Congress new chair is Rob Bishop (R-UT). He is no friend of the ESA, or wolves specifically (or CBD).
I think there is likely to be a bloodbath starting on major legislation affecting the West in coming months – especially the ESA. Hope I am wrong on that, but there are some pretty good indications already that fairly major changes are in the works (I even expect Maria Cantwell (D-WA), senior Minority leader on the Senate Natural Resources Committee will be advocating some changes on legislation that affects Washington (which has had ESA issues in the past, and wants to manage its own wolves as a specific instance). I fully expect the Western Governor’s Conference list of issues will get a pretty good airing before a mostly sympathetic Congress, and a President who won’t have the cojones to veto much given the D Party’s desire to hold on to the White House another 4 years (and urbanite Obama’s apparent lack of interest in the environment and natural resource conservation issues).
You have singled out CBD (and others presumably to include WWP), and any other NGO that has filed lawsuits on technicality matters. I agree, given the makeup of those entities you make reference to, that there is little good to come, but I strongly doubt it can be directly or indirectly tied to any of the groups suggested. I would offer that Bishop’s bias is as old as his fat ass is. Republican voters in Utah would vote for the guy simply because they liked his perfect wavy hair. He shares Barbers and tanning booths with another worthless member of Congress.
WWP, in my view, has mostly, until fairly recently, picked its battles carefully. Is this perceived strategy adjustment a result of changes in the board, staffing or lack of patience?
Maybe it is my imagination, but I thought for some time that WWP had subtly distanced itself from some of the horseshit spin CBD pulls(or maybe I am just in denial). WWP has done a great job in the grazing area, keeping BLM “honest” under FLPMA, winning suits, low hanging fruit, that should be won to a large degree.
And, I would hate to see all advocacy go away with changes in federal law. But some of this has already happened with the recent passage of the BLM “Grazing Improvement Act,” as a recent rider.
And, I think, there have been a bunch of suits filed that have kind of a “Huh, what were they thinking?” quality that a number of NGO’s have advanced, which are data points for the far right to justify scorched earth wholesale changes to some important environmental laws. I fear once these changes are made they will not be reversed.
My pet peeve is the challenge to state authority/responsibility to manage wildlife in designated Wilderness, including the methods by which they do so (helicopters which have been used in Wilderness for over 40 years, and the hiring of contractors to perform predator/wolf removals). Maybe the rationale was to call attention to the issue, but I believe there was substantial risk here, that will result in legislation to clear up ambiguities in cooperative federalism in that area; it is doubtful they will be resolved in favor of “federal trumps state on federal lands,” wildlife management for species not otherwise protected under federal law, IMHO.
WM:
I hope you aren’t saying that the one million activists involved with the Center For Biological Diversity should be silenced?? That somehow, if the Center For Biological Diversity disappeared, then the Republicans and anti-wolf Democrats would suddenly reverse course and support wolf recovery throughout their range??
Without the Center For Biological Diversity, hundreds of species, including the wolf (gray, red and Mexican) would be in even deeper trouble than they are in now. If the Center For Biological Diversity goes silent, as you seem to wish, wolf opponents will not suddenly start liking wolves and stop their attacks on the Endangered Species Act… The ESA has been targeted by development interests and their political allies since it was written. The American public strongly supports the ESA, so this is no time to back-off on that support.
+1
I don’t agree sometimes with the policies or excessive fundraising that the big NGOs do but they get the word out. Not everyone has the time to write or be as engaged as they might but they can express their opinions about what they see as valuable through memberships. Environmental pillage would be far worse without watchdogs.
Ed,
I didn’t say anybody should be silenced. If you read my posts above, as well as cautionary statements I have been making here for, well, years, there is a need to pick battles carefully. CBD does not, and it lies/spins stuff that gives the anti’s ammunition to go to their friends in Congress.
Here is the R agenda (with likely more in the pipeline), launched late last year as a parting blow by Doc Hastings – an all out assault on the ESA before an R dominated Congress:
https://www.votetocracy.com/blog/proposals-to-limit-and-reform-the-endangered-species-act
WM:
In the article, Erin Carson writes; “The ESA, which aims to conserve threatened and endangered species and recover the habitats where they are found, is largely supported by congressional Democrats and environmental groups, but the law has been criticized by many Republicans and by industry…”. What the author failed to point out is that the Endangered Species Act is also supported by a large majority of the American public.
Wm; Since you want the Center For Biological Diversity to “pick and choose” their battles more carefully, I am curious; Which of the Republican bills outlined in the article that the Republicans proposed to gut the ESA would you advise the Center For Biological Diversity not fight and just let them pass, so the Republicans will not be too upset??
WM can’t comprehend your positions sometimes
you ranting about CBD and their legal arguments based on technicalities, what???
isn’t that how law suits are won, on merit and technicalities? ok sprinkle in some judicial bias, and chess like strategies having to do with venue, jury selection and evidentiary rules.
Really would you have everyone stand down while state plans become worse and worse and make a mockery of the intent of drafters of the ESA?
Can’t you save some indignation against environmental monsters like Lummis and Ribble that don’t want to play fair and abide by a well reasoned judicial finding played out in a court of law as directed by our system of democracy.
Anyone legislator sponsoring or supporting this bill is doing grave damage to the ESA and tipping their hat to sleazy politics. The precedent set by the Tester rider was bad. If you don’t like a judicial finding change the law so it can’t be reviewed.
Creating laws that prevent judicial review is an outrage, not the people (any of them or the NGOs that represent then) that challenge those laws or the piss poor state regs like Idaho’s new wolf board or the Montana reg now allowing export of wolf pelts and killing 5 wolves or Wisconsin hunting wolves with dogs.
I am disgusted by these wildlife terrorists and pillagers and their sleazy and their slimy politics that mock the Constitution and the right of the people to air an issue in a court of law.
Louise,
The point is that a lawsuit can be won on a technical legal argument, but it may be subsequently seen as a flaw that gets corrected. That happens with laws all the time. It is what legislatures and Congress lives for – changing and making new laws.
I can think of no better example than the underlying basis for the Congressional rider delisting NRM wolves in MT and ID, while keeping them listed in WY – the “you can’t break up a DPS” decision of Judge Molloy was a technical flaw in the ESA. Nobody has ever given me a good answer how it would have been bad to allow control of delisting of wolves in MT and ID by regulation, and under supervision of Judge Molloy whereby he could have taken time to factually evaluate genetic diversity, numbers/range etc., while KEEPING WY WOLVES LISTED AND PROTECTED.
The plaintiffs in that suit screwed the pooch, so to speak, and the other claims of the suit were not decided on their merits (the technical DPS issue was despositive and fatal under rules of judicial economy not to review the other claims). And that is what brought about the rider, codifying the FWS ID and MT delisting regulation as written, making it a Congress made law. I am going to say this twice, in hopes it sticks. When Congress makes a law there is NO JUDICIAL REVIEW UNLESS IT VIOLATES THE CONSTITUTION.
And, some of you just don’t get the part where the regulation (which is subject to judicial review) is now not subject to review because it is a statute (and of course the only way a statute gets reviewed is whether it is Constitutional).
So, if you are pissed about the rider not being judicially reviewable you ought to be pissed that the ESA itself (or any other federal law for that matter) can’t be reviewed unless it is unconstitutional.
Come on Louise, you are smarter than that.
WM:
I agree with you completely (as I’ve noted before) about the DPS “flaw”. Clearly, the FWS saw state boundaries as relevant when it listed wolves in MN as threatened, and there is no doubt that the greatest potential threat to wolf populations is state policy. Thus, state borders should be relevant when drawing the lines around populations that should be protected.
I’m not so sure I agree with your all caps assessment, however. My understanding is that the 9th Circuit has a relatively unique precedent that was invoked in the case in question. Other circuits are bound by different precedent, which may not be so favorable for those who want wolves delisted in the Midwest.
I confess that this is beyond my area of expertise; but it comes from conversations with folks with more legal expertise than me.
The effect of the Tester rider was to prevent judicial review of the USFWS rule (2009. The rule removed protections for wolves in Idaho and Montana and parts of Washington and 2 other states and wolves became wards of the state at that point. The rule was challenged in court and overturned. The effect of the rider was amending the law. That’s the part I have a real problem with. if Congress wants to amend a piece of legislation that took years to develop and went through rigorous review then do it with scientists on board and a team of specialists to assist in revising areas of the plan such as “recovery” with proper debate and input, don’t stick it onto a rider or write a one paragraph law that abrogates the intent of the original law and avoids the ability to review a regulation that was found to be arbitrary and capricious. Its sleazy WM and you know it.
Interesting that you call Molloy’s decision a “technical flaw”. The newest HSUS vs Jewell basically argues the same that the MN, MI, WI wolf populations should not have been carved out as a separate DPS.
after great deliberation of wolf plans and USFWS rules why do the courts alms consistently rule that the USFWS and the states are derelict in one way or another in their duty to protect wolves.
One of the areas where the ESA is vague is in defining “recovery”. The better path would be for Congress to work on a definition of recovery with independent scientists and lawmakers who care about protecting the original intent of the ACT.
++Interesting that you call Molloy’s decision a “technical flaw”. ++
I didn’t say that. I believe he ruled as he believed he felt he had to under the law. I blame the plaintiffs for bringing that up that legal issue, which summarily disposed of the case before other issues related to the science of recovery for delisting could be heard. It is the law, which apparently has no flexibility in regard to breaking up a DPS.
I have raised this issue before – what happens when one state because of its poor behavior keeps other states which are part of the same DPS and which may be doing their recovery efforts well from having their portion of the DPS delisted, while those states which don’t do their jobs well remain in an ESA listed status. It makes sense to give flexibility. Also, see JB’s comment above.
Frankly there is a lot about the DPS concept, and how it is applied in a regulatory context, that is unsettling. States, IMHO, have every right to be indignant about regulatory promises and judicial decisions involving this concept.
I don’t think the courts are so much pointing criticism at states, as FWS in its rulemaking. Afterall, FWS is the defendant, not the states, which is being accused of “arbitrary and capricious” behavior in making rules under the law. FWS is the one making the scientific determinations (albeit under intense political pressure from states and their Congressional delegations who threaten to change the law).
I also wonder about the sanctity of protecting the intent of the act after so many years of operating under it. I have to believe even the original drafters might see room for mid-course corrections.
Some good points WM and many I agree with. I have more to say on this as I have been having discussions on it lately with Rance from here and Guy Dicharry. The case law is mind boggling. I did find something I wanted to comment on related to JBs post and will do so after dinner!
I very much agree that even the drafters would see room for mid course corrections. I don’t agree that it would be the way its being proposed by the Lummis Ribble bill and the new one coming out of MN.
Thanks WM.
I actually won’t mind much if congress makes great lakes wolf delisting rule to be law. ESA trying to have one law that works well for every species in every situation might be asking for too much. Recent relisting in great lakes may have quite a few area citizens (but not true believers on either side – their ideas may be immutable) thinking ESA is a rather blunt instrument. Fine tuning for wolves, rather than fine tuning the whole thing, seems simpler and perhaps more prudent (cause it’s more limited).
Rork, would you really want to see the wolf delisting rule become law. Now another senator is pushing for a Great Lakes wolves law that would prevent wolves form ever being listed. These are knee jerk responses.
If Congress makes the wolf delisting rule law there is no going back. The better way to deal with the inconsistencies or ambiguities in the law (ESA) is to revise the initial recovery plans and define recovery under the ESA so its less vague.
The states are not doing a good job at managing wolves, they are too heavily influenced by special interests and ingrained bias against predators. They don’t listen to public opinion, they implement wildlife management strategies with little consideration for health of ecosystems, or greater biodiversity goals. There are no considerations by the states of the effect on wolves and whether public hunting is a good or effective management method. The states should be using adaptive management practices and they don’t. if they did they would looking at the literature that illustrates that public hunting may create more depredation and potential for conflict. I think it time states start looking at how they manage large carnivores and how devastating it is for the animal’s packs to be randomly picked apart by hunters. There is also a new study recently discussed here that illustrated that the effects of stress on wolves that were hunted were chronic, and possibly lasting for decades.
If the states want to manage wolves then they should do so responsibly and humanely. Nothing about wolf trapping, snaring and randomly breaking apart wolf families that aren’t impacting cattle or ungulates is responsible or humane. Furthermore treating wolves as if they are terrorists is very troubling. Managing species so that they hover just above listing is very troubling. Shouldn’t we expect more from Fish and Game departments in 2015?
The wolf recovery plans are very outdated after 40 years. The uSFWS is obligated to use best available science and they routinely ignore it.
Is it really the best way to revise a law by inserting one paragraph that reverts back to a rule that was reviewed by courts and rejected as arbitrary and capricious? I think the American public has the right to expect our members of congress to do better than provide a knee jerk reaction when changing a law as important as the ESA. The ESA is the only barrier between greedy resource extractors, developers, and politicians who don’t care about preserving wildlife and some species survival. By design the ESA makes it inconvenient for special interests or politicians to continue to perform activities that place economic or political interests above species health. That was the intent of the law.
I believe that our system of democracy and its checks and balances by the judiciary is the best method for challenging rules or laws.
When the courts found the rules or provisions within them pertaining to the Great Lakes and RM arbitrary and capricious you can bet they heard a great deal of evidence on both sides and came to their decisions after great deliberation. Justices don’t want their decisions overturned on appeal so they are pretty careful on their rendering of decisions.
I feel more comfortable with a court making a decision on an agency action and in interpreting complex law than Cynthia Lummis or politicians like her that have a grudge against wolves based on their disdain for federal agencies, environmentalists, and a real ignorance about wildlife.
I don’t think its too much to ask Congress to take the time to review the law, looks at its ambiguities, engage the nation’s top scientists and amend the law properly. A one paragraph rider is a lazy and vindictive measure for tyrants to get their way regardless of the long lasting and almost impossible to change repercussions.
I guess if you think a national recovery plan that allows 150 wolves in states with tens if not hundreds of millions of acres of public land constitutes a good recovery plan then the logic exists to continue delisting. I don’t. You have to be awful trusting of state’s intentions to manage wolves responsibly to want the same for the Great Lakes as the NRM wolves now have. That looks more like slaughter to me than management.
Your comments are so long that it would take me 1000 words to contradict them properly (and you know that), so I’ll touch on just a few.
I’m not saying the courts were wrong. I do think wolves should be delisted in MI, MN, WI – yes, “really”. Democracy can make that happen – you seem confused about that. That there’d be “no going back” is false – our recovery plans would just be reinstated (I believe). You say fixing ESA is better but you forgot to say why – I said why it’s worse. Why deal in generalities when the issue is so specific? Hunting may create more problems on average, but that doesn’t show that’s what is happening in MN (and certainly not in MI). Long term, it’s the citizens of these states that have got to step up, the only question is when, and I say now.
Rork,
the citizens have been speaking up
it did not take long for MI citizens to get two initiatives together and the signatures to hold a vote on hunting wolves. When the vote was held they voted not to hunt wolves…they are speaking up but the agencies and lawmakers ignore their wishes. The institutional bias creates bad policy. The agencies also ignore the mot recent science and refuse to look treat predators as valuable ecological beings. I think you know this too. why hunt wolves when there are mechanisms in place to deal with depredations? wolf hunting is proving to lessen tolerance, creates intolerable stress in the species, is likely to create more problems than not, and is terribly inhumane as these animals are social structures that are harmed by random killing of the members.
Why refine the existing law through a traditional legislative process. Deliberation, integration of new science and literature, time for public comment, and because the intent of the law and its effect has been good and necessary. explain to me what good you see in reverting to a rule that was judged arbitrary and capricious after going through the proper channels. The courts protect the right to review and to challenge bad policy. I feel more secure with a time honored process than a few disgruntled politicians taking a tantrum and using riders that have nothing to do with the bill to remove a species from the ESA.
Science did not cause the relisting, just interpretation of law by courts. At the state level, I am more able to argue using science. New law will hopefully not be by “a few”, involve tantrums, or be a rider, but that is trying to predict the future.
The Feds can step in at any time now…. but will they.
http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/about/commission/2015/01_January/15_Wolf_Update.pdf
is perhaps the initial source of the information. It didn’t say how many of the wolves killed in any year were pups (or whatever young-of-the-year should be called), which would have been interesting numbers. Words about “decades of active management” were a bit creepy. I wasn’t pleased with Center for Biological Diversity’s writings either.
Search “Coupling unstable agents in biological control” – it’s making some news. The authors model pairs of species both of which compete for the same prey (they are mostly thinking one is a parasite, the other a predator, but it doesn’t have to be), and find situations where this makes for more stable population sizes of the prey (and predators). Most obvious applications are in agriculture (where the prey is a pest you want controlled), but some articles mention wolves/coyote/ungulate as a possible example trio (but don’t start saying that is a real example yet, please, unless you can demonstrate it).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25601561 gets to the paper (maybe not available to public), but it’s a very tough read (systems of differential equations).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150120085617.htm is nearly the U’s press release without alteration, so beware of bias. Perhaps no real journalist has tried to tackle it yet. Actual applications to integrated pest management will be the proof that it’s not just theoretically possible.
A simple column of common soil can reverse the toxic effects of urban runoff that otherwise quickly kills young coho salmon and their insect prey, according to new research by NOAA Fisheries, Washington State University and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653514014805
http://puyallup.wsu.edu/
http://www.troymedia.com/2015/01/19/british-columbia-crying-wolf/
The latest update (1/22) is here–including a news release from yesterday announcing that 100+ wild native bison were sent to slaughter yesterday from capture pens *INSIDE* the national park: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/media/update1415/012215.html
Dear God Kathleen what a disgrace
I wonder who are the people that lead the animals into slaughter and do this day after day
its disgraceful for the bison and humans. another terrible image to replay in my head. This and the BC aerial wolf cull should ruin tonight’s sleep. I was reading a book about the break up of the 6 republics of the former Yugoslavia and Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing, this is equally disturbing. What a world.
I know. I cried thinking about this during my commute home today.
BC government just killed the first pack of wolves yesterday. Pacific Wild reported that the government had been planning it for a year. They had been collaring the wolves to use as “Judas” wolves. Talk about sickening and heartbreaking. I’ve seen video of wolves shot from helicopters it will never stop haunting me.
Talk about cowardly. Putting collars on animals just so you can find and kill them in the near future. Sickening to kill one animal species just because it eats another for survival. These caribou cannot be saved simply because of human overpopulation.
I don’t know what to say. This stuff keeps happening, with bison, wild horses, wolves, coyotes, on and on.
And yet all over the news ad nauseam is whether or not the NE Patriots’ footballs are inflated to regulations. Haven’t these people ever checked their tire pressure????? Or taken high school science?????
And no doubt, the excuse this bison slaughter will be ‘we’ve got kids to support’ or ‘it’s my livelihood at stake. So anything goes. 🙁
I sent a heated email to Yellowstone superintendent Dan Wenk. Honestly, it was only mildly cathartic.
I really wish I had the home phone #’s for the motherf*ckers at the Montana Department of Livestock.
Yes, I’ve cried too, and also have lain awake at night. It’s insane. Just posted this at my website — “Yellowstone wildlife sent to slaughter; calling all buffalo warriors” http://www.othernationsjustice.org/?p=13311
and the site where I guest blog, which accepts comments
https://animalblawg.wordpress.com/2015/01/23/6982/
Yes, I broke down and cried when that worthless POS and slaughterhouse employee of the year Tim Sappington shot a sweet trusting horse point blank on video posted on YouTube just for the sake of ‘animal rights activists’. So cruel. I’ve been up late too. Now I just am pissed off.
Kathleen, “Bloodlust” minus the warfare factor.
I believe in Karmic consequences. Not as punishment, but as simple reality. This man (can’t bring myself to write his name) has a tortured soul and an empty space where others such as ourselves have hearts.
But on the other hand…………..
I once had a sign in my office that read:
“Some people are alive today simply because it’s against the law to kill them”. Pretty much true.
Sorry, to Ida as well.
Thanks, skyrim.
I haven’t/can’t watch this – the blood, fear in the eyes, and (what looks like) a chain through nostrils which must be terribly painful – I don’t think I could watch it. I don’t understand why we have such a clampdown on wildlife, and why we think we are the only creature on earth worth caring about.
http://www.dailyastorian.com/idaho-has-22-breeding-wolf-pairs-an-estimated-1000-wolves-da-ap-webfeeds-news-northwest6587c76d344e410aa6246ede32b2b3a9
Idaho fish and game lying about wolf numbers. That’s how you get away with killing a ton of wolves. Lie about how many wolves there are.
Jon:
How right you are. Even the State of Idaho admits that wolf numbers have DECREASED every year since Idaho took over wolf “management” (killing) from the feds. Both Idaho F&W and the pro-wolf groups agree that wolves are in decline in the State of Idaho.
http://www.elements.nb.ca/theme/endangeredspecies/caribou/sclayden.htm
given the BC wolf cull this is very timely
“Although caribou numbers in northeastern North America were already much reduced by the late 1800s from those of previous centuries, the ultimate extinction of the species in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and adjoining mainland regions appears to have coincided with the influx and explosive population growth of white-tailed deer. Deer were rare in the Maritimes in the early 1600s, and remained so for most of the next three hundred years. A scarcity of immature forest cover and clearings, their principal habitat, was probably the main factor limiting expansion of the white-tail’s range. But as deer spread northward in the wake of European settlement, both caribou and moose populations were affected. In areas with a high density of deer, many moose succumbed to a mysterious sickness. However, while moose and deer established a somewhat precarious coexistence, caribou perished.”
Eerily similar to what has and is happening in NE MN. Used to have caribou here, and it wasn’t the wolves that killed them all. White tail deer are weeds one can eat.
yes, I was thinking back to some of the posts you have made about moose and wondered about this document and if there were correlations.
Death By Chocolate for New Hampshire bears
http://news.yahoo.com/death-chocolate-problem-bears-hampshire-195728873.html
Bear bating should be banned in New Hampshire like it has been in many other states. period.
Sad. I had just read this too. Can we afford these kinds of mistakes with wildlife? I don’t think so nowadays. This kind of loss never enters into ‘management’, and we think we can control and account for everything that could go wrong. We can’t, and I’m sick of it.
I agree, bear baiting should be banned.
Nat Geo article says baiting is legal in 23 of 32 states with bear hunting. Citizens in Maine decided not to ban it last year. There’s work to be done, but I doubt chocolate will be the winning argument.
The chemical in chocolate is harmful to animals generally? I know it is for dogs and cats. I didn’t want to say to much because you never know what will set off the Toby Bridges types on another poisoning campaign.
But there doesn’t seem to be a cure for stupid people setting out this stuff without realizing. How does F&W account for that?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theobromine_poisoning
Comments Sought by Montana On Tendoy Mts. Bighorn Proposals
http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/recreation/comments-sought-on-tendoy-bighorn-proposals/article_5a27f3fa-76ac-576a-8e15-bb9632edd64e.html#utm_source=billingsgazette&utm_campaign=index-list-2&utm_medium=direct&utm_label=article-more
N.H.: Chocolate Bait Killed Four Bears
http://www.vnews.com/news/15350620-95/nh-chocolate-bait-killed-four-bears
Sorry folks, just saw it´s a double post.
Too early in the morning 🙂
If any of you can help with these questions I am much indebted
Can anyone answer the following:
1) How many comments were received by the USFWS in this last solicitation to delist wolves nationally. How many for and how many against, or a percentage? I need a citation
2) How many wolves have been killed in Wyoming and in the Rocky Mountains since delisting (by hunters as one number)and by lethal control whether by USFWS or not. Citations are necessary
3) How many wolves killed in the Great Lakes since delisting by hunters as one number)and by lethal control whether by USFWS or not. Citations would help
4) A list of proposed or passed regulations, by state, that are especially burdensome or that might be challenged as reasons to relist wolves. For example the Idaho wolf board
5) What was the population of wolves in Wyoming before delisting and what is it now? Same for Montana and Idaho, same for Great Lakes. And citations
6) What are populations in Washingon and Oregon now and has wolf hunting affected migration in and out?
7) What was the population of wolves in Yellowstone before and after delisting and how has hunting impacted those populations, data and citations
8) Need any cases /examples of wolves migrating to suitable habitat in other states and being shot, like Echo in Az
9) Number of livestock deaths in US related to wolves in the year prior to delisting and in 2014, and citations if by state even better especially looking for Great Lakes data
10) Number of livestock deaths attributed to other causes in the year prior to delisting and in last year, and citations
11) Does anyone have any examples of strong public support for wolves by polls or other social science data that can be used to illustrate that politicians ignore constituents or that they favor ranching and trophy hunting interests.
I am looking for short answers with citations that can be used
Other data that you may deem helpful for a one- two page document to provide information that refutes the claims in the latest round of legislation aimed to delist wolves and or to prevent them from being listed (new MN proposed legislation announce last night)
Any help is appreciated
Louise
if anyone has extensive data and wants to e mail me you can send to Ralph and he will send to me.
“In FY 2012, and USDA Wildlife Services killed 503 gray wolves”
http://www.wildearthguardians.org/site/PageServer?pagename=priorities_wildlife_war_wildlife_killed_table#.VMPrb2fTkn8
I am not sure if wolf states even add Wildlife Service’s wolf kills to their yearly data (?)
Louise:
2nd Wolf Killed going from Oregon to Suitable Habitat in Idaho” Jan. 2013
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/01/second_oregon_wolf_killed_in_i.html
“Another Oregon wolf, OR-9, crossed the Snake River about a year ago and was illegally shot by a hunter who was issued a poaching warning.”
A warning? WTF?
Louise:
OREGON
“Jan. 2007 field investigations have not confirmed wild wolves in Oregon. However, based on evidence collected and the number of incoming reports it appears likely that wolves are present in low numbers in NE Oregon.”
Jan. 2013 minimum Oregon wolf population is 64 wolves (Table 1), a 33% increase from the previous year.
http://www.dfw.state.or.us/Wolves/annual_reports.asp
Louise:
Just a note that the dna analysis has not come back yet to determine whether it was Echo who was shot and killed in Utah or whether it was a different poor wolf victim.
Louise:
I wish we could “edit” on this site:
I am re-sending my OREGON Report which should have read Jan.2014 instead of Jan. 2013.
OREGON
“Jan. 2007 field investigations have not confirmed wild wolves in Oregon. However, based on evidence collected and the number of incoming reports it appears likely that wolves are present in low numbers in NE Oregon.”
Jan 1. 2014 minimum Oregon wolf population is 64 wolves (Table 1), a 33% increase from the previous year.
http://www.dfw.state.or.us/Wolves/annual_reports.asp
This blog is getting really slow, it takes me 3 minutes to get to a new message?
W Hong – have you cleaned out temporary internet files lately that have a way of stacking up?
Running out of memory? (older computer?) Or could it be your internet connection?
Been there 🙂
Nancy, I have done all of what you talk about, this is a newer computer with 16 gigabytes of memory, quad core I7, so pretty good computer, it is what I use to edit video and design graphics on.
Could it be your internet connection or server problems, W Hong?
Louise:
“Poll shows support for wolves in Washington, Oregon and California”
Sept. 2013
http://archives.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2007148198#.VML7GWfTkn8
Ed very useful thank you so much
Thank you again, please everyone if you have the data I requested keep it coming.
I read somewhere recently that they (?) were pretty certain it was a different animal. Their reasoning was moderately convincing but forgot what it was. Meant to put it up here but some sort of glitch prevented me from doing so.
Louise,
Here is one site for one stop shopping:
http://www.predatordefense.org/wolves.htm#Rockies
MN wolf mortalities
2012 Wolf hunting/trapping 413
2012 livestock/pet depredation 321
2012 Total 734
2013 Wolf hunting/trapping 238
2013 livestock/pet depredation 153
2013 Total (401)
2014 Wolf hunting/trapping 272
2014 livestock/pet depredation > 200
2014 Total > 472
Wolf Management: Minnesota DNR
… Annual Known Wolf Mortality. The table below lists known wolf mortality for the
indicated year. … 2013, 238, 95, 27, 8, 23, 401. 2012, 413, 215, 63, 16, 27, 734. …
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mammals/wolves/mgmt.html – 36k – Cached
Totals do not include poaching estimates of annually averaging 10% of population
Wisconsin: 3 year wolf hunting/trapping total: 528
Michigan: 2013 hunting 23 wolves
Immer greatly appreciated, indebted actually.
do you happen to know exactly how many wolves existed prior to removal of federal protections and citations?
again many thanks
Louise,
In MN, it fluctuated around the 3,000 number, increasing with pups, then slowly decreasing through the year. Population held pretty consistent for~ 10 years.
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mammals/wolves/mgmt.html
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mammals/wolves/mgmt.html
2nd link gives better support to MN mortalities that I gave in prior comment.
I believe Wisconsin population peaked at ~ 850 +/- and Michigan was around 700 +/-.
In regard to NRM I could not begin to tell you other than the 1700 number that was bandied about.
I believe Mech said numbers could have been as high as 3,000.
Thank you so much Immer. Am working on a project I hope to have done in 2 weeks and will post here when completed.
OK Immer a few more questions since you are the fount of information thus far
what are the population estimates now for MN, MI and WI? and do you know the depredation estimates for the year before delisting and now?
many thanks!
Louise, there is a lot of information to shift through, but here is a fairly simple table on populations in the Great Lake States.
http://www.fws.gov/midwest/wolf/aboutwolves/WolfPopUS.htm
On the NRM populations:
USFWS 2013 Report.
There are both tables and maps of populations. They are categorized into regions for MT,
http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/wolf/annualrpt13/index.html
The end of 2014 reports should be available in nearly all states, as they do their “counts” in December.
Of course, there is always the temptation to look at a 2013 report and subtract out the mortality without considering survivors from the 2014 pup crop. That, as we know, distorts downward the actual number of living wolves at a given point in time.
Then, Louise, do remember there are about 20% more wolves actually out there than are counted, if Dr. Mech and the folks who actually do the reports are to be believed. But then, there are those who subscribe to the horseshit math publications(and no peer review) of private citizen Jay Mallonee as some sort of authoritative source.
The problem I have with the 20% more is who is actually counting actual wolves…..and how do they account for poaching
Thank you very much Yvette, Rork, and WM
Data: This article holds population and depredation counts for the last 12 years, but it’s not directly pointing at specific DNR documents (and may not be summarized in a single document there – they seem to have gotten “lazy” since wolf numbers flattened out, but graphs up til 2010 are abundant, data after that divulged piecemeal).
http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2015/01/wolf_attacks_on_livestock_and.html
Opinion:
I think I didn’t put that up as news here when it came out, but to me the biggest disappointment was that there’s not going to be a wolf count this winter here (I want that data point, wolves likely to decrease in my inexpert opinion, but DNR experts have said that publicly too, at least twice I think). As many commenter note, the headline to the article is horrible misrepresentation of the data. Summary should be that for the last 5 years wolf and depredation numbers are essentially flat. We can learn little about hunting, since we only had the one near-placebo hunt with 23 wolves dead in 2013 (no traps, no dogs). Don’t have numbers of wolves killed in other actions. We await dispersal to lower peninsula and states further south, despite coyotes being the only available prey left in Ohio.
Yes, it’s a terribly misleading headline and amounts to propaganda. Your eye jumps to ‘highest level in a decade’ but it really says ‘one of’ the highest levels in a decade.
In 2010, it was 49 (they combine livestock attacks to inflate the number); in 2011, 44; in 2012, 41. The ‘fourth highest in a decade’ doesn’t really mean much, especially when there’s an agenda.
All of the dogs killed were in the act of hunting or training at the time; no yard dogs were involved, said Debbie Munson Badini, DNR spokeswoman in Marquette.
Putting your dog in harm’s way deliberately, and as a hunting dog seeking out prey, shouldn’t count.
Utah Insists Wolf/Coyote Confusion Won’t Be A Problem
Sure it won’t. What’s the holdup anyway on the DNA analysis – do they not want to release the information?
http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/u-s-supreme-court-agrees-to-review-oklahoma-execution-procedure/
Don’t mean to wander off on “stuff” other than wildlife news but it is interesting to note how our species addresses the violence “within” our own species.
Maybe trying to cope is why there’s little attention paid to violence outside of our own little world, with regard to other species.
Unintended Consequences. This sad story shows how little we humans really know about the earth’s complex ecosystems,and the great complexity of human psychology. I have no answer to this particular dilemma except to be a bit more humble when we think we have an answer to big problems.
Who would have anticipated that insecticide-treated mosquito nets would be used by poor African fishermen as fishing nets and would deplete their fisheries?
http://fwp.mt.gov/news/newsReleases/fishAndWildlife/nr_0722.html
And from there to who knows where.
An older article – but interesting. Like any more incentive is needed for killing wolves?:
Trappers joke that the fur trade is Canada’s second-oldest land-based profession.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/25/canadas-fur-trade-is-booming-again-thanks-to-demand-from-chinas-new-capitalists/
http://www.thegreenwolf.com/animal-parts-laws/
http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2014/apr/19/fur-trade-mink-peta-china-bubble
Scary:
http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/politics/palin-seriously-interested-in-2016/30900174
“Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so” Gore Vidal
No way! I remember being very dismayed at the media being more interested in Sarah’s eyeglasses fashion than her qualifications.
Much like throwing Tom Brady to the media piranhas!
Ruling about killing deer in Rock Creek Park (D.C.):
http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/dc-circuit-rejects-psychological-harm-03048/
Looks like environmentallawstrategy site has about the same.
I’m off to decrease folk’s ability to observe glossy buckthorn – no lawsuits expected.
Ha! 🙂
Pres. Obama Recommends WILDERNESS Designation for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain
https://us-mg205.mail.yahoo.com/neo/launch?.partner=sbc&.rand=bgpn7d8dm9rhd#
This is an important step in ANWRs full protection. When Congress fails to act, Pres. Obama can then designate the entire ANWR as the new “Arctic National Wildlife Monument” under the Antiquities Act.
Wow, yay!!!! Thank you Mr. President!!!!!
WILDERNESS Protection Proposed By Pres. Obama for the Arctic Nat. Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain
Try this link:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/01/25/president-obama-calls-congress-protect-arctic-refuge-wilderness
http://virunga.org/news/academy-awards-oscar-nomination-given-virunga-documentary/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dogs-best-friend/201501/roots-dogs-found-in-wolf-cooperation
http://fwp.mt.gov/news/newsReleases/fishAndWildlife/nr_0722.html
wtf
usfws really stands for united states Fck the wolves service
excuse my language.
Oh, I don’t know, Louise. My impression is that this system limits (tries to eliminate black market sales) export of illegal wolf pelts. That means if somebody is trafficking in illegally killed wolf pelts there are limited places where they may be processed and/or sold.
And, of course, the hunting of wolves as wild game when ESA management objectives were exeeded was always contemplated in MT, as it is and will be in the future elsewhere, and importantly to control population and range.
Would you rather harvested wolf pelts were handled in some other manner internationally, without provinence?
…provenance..
I can only hope so, WM. At first glance, yes. But to me, any new level of bureaucracy means another opportunity for corruption and obfuscation. I hope I am wrong. We could hope that there wasn’t another incentive for MT trappers to kill wolves. We don’t even know that they will sell the pelts.
Ida, I doubt that a hunter is going to sell his/her wolf pelt. It takes about 10 days to hunt and shoot a wolf and95% of the hunters are going to have the hide tanned or a wolf mount.
WM,
“Oh, I don’t know, Louise. My impression is that this system limits (tries to eliminate black market sales) export of illegal wolf pelts. That means if somebody is trafficking in illegally killed wolf pelts there are limited places where they may be processed and/or sold.”
I believe you are absolutely correct on this.
You may be correct, the effect is however to elevate the value of wolf pelts by providing an avenue for commercialized trading. No I don’t condone that.
Louise,
The avenue for commercialized trading has always been there. The ones who will most probably use it are trappers. Wolves will be just one of the types of fur they can then “move”. Commercial/recreational trappers will sell their fur bearers to commercial licensed buyers. As Elk said, shooting a wolf, and moving through the stages of hide preparation to sell, is almost cost prohibitive.
but for wolves it has not always been there, at least since they were endangered species. Lets not forget they are still classified as endangered in many states. The USFWS is way too comfortable allowing import and export of endangered species, like rhino (still be ing considered i think) and lion (about to be changing) and other wildlife. Wildlife trade of large mammals is a corrupt business.
I would rather that wolf pelts that belong on wolves were not traded like some kind of market commodity. I’m disgusted and saddened by it to no end.
“And, of course, the hunting of wolves as wild game when ESA management objectives were exeeded was always contemplated in MT, as it is and will be in the future elsewhere, and importantly to control population and range.”
I’m working along with thousands of other grass roots activists to make the status quo an embarrassing thing of the past.
http://summitcountyvoice.com/2015/01/24/50-foot-section-of-failed-montana-oil-pipeline-was-exposed-on-bed-of-yellowstone-river-near-site-of-spill/
very sad
If you live in Montana, especially please read the following to oppose efforts to expand and enshrine trapping in Montana.
FROM FOOTLOOSE MONTANA: IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED ON HB 212
WHAT’S HAPPENING:
The FWP committee of the Montana State Legislature are currently deciding whether or not to move forward with HB 212, a bill that “Reaffirms that trapping is a form of hunting protected under the Montana constitution.” Not only is this bill dangerous to our efforts to end trapping on Montana’s public lands, but it also seeks to undermine the processes of constitutional law and to manipulate the definition of wild game in Montana by broadening the definition of the word “harvest”. It is imperative that everyone opposes this bill. Allowing this bill to enshrine trapping as a protected right through deceptive turns of phrase would be a massive blow to our cause.
Footloose Montana, Trap Free Montana Public Lands, Wolves of the Rockies and more were present for the first hearing and all gave excellent testimony, but the bill had supporters in the room as well and the committee has limited time to research.
SO:
Contact your legislature and oppose this bill!
Contact:
CLICK HERE TO CONTACT THE LEGISLATURE
Enter your contact info, the bill number HB 212 and select Against. Be sure to explicitly state HB 212, there is another bill will a similar number in action right now as well.
Some Points to help you in your objection:
It is wrong to conclude that because the term “harvesting” or “harvest” is used to define trapping, the term “harvest …wild game animals” in Article IX, Sec. 7 would automatically include trapping. The bill does not clarify on the meaning of “harvest,” it turns on the meaning of “wild game animals”; a clearly defined list of animals that does not include furbearers.
The original amendment (C-41) that this bill seeks to “clarify” explicitly protects hunting and fishing, and it is unfair to add trapping to that list as it was clearly omitted when the citizens of Montana voted on the amendment.
The idea that changing the definition of words in statutes can effectively amend the state constitution is a dangerous precedent.
To read HB 212: http://leg.mt.gov/bills/2015/billpdf/HB0212.pdf
IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU ACT QUICKLY, OUR LATEST UPDATE SUGGESTS THAT ACTION ON THIS BILL WILL OCCUR IN THE NEXT 7 DAYS!
THANK YOU FOR DEFENDING MONTANA’S PEOPLE, PETS, WILDLIFE, AND PUBLIC LANDS…
Best Regards,
Christopher Justice
Executive Director
406.282.1482
From 1/21…this may have been posted already; I just stumbled upon it. A scheme to make wolf killing in Montana more lucrative…
Excerpt: “With the recent approval from the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Montana wolf hunters and trappers who harvest wolves will now obtain internationally recognized pelt tags to allow for the export of wolf pelts directly out of country, usually to Canadian fur auction houses.
“Montana’s CITES wolf-pelt tags were obtained under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, an international agreement between governments. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of CITES-listed wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.”
Continued here: http://fwp.mt.gov/news/newsReleases/fishAndWildlife/nr_0722.html
Yes. We can see where this is going – a way to legitimize coyote killing contests, because, after all, if a few $$ can be made, then that makes it all ok in the eyes of Americans:
http://www.grandviewoutdoors.com/articles/fur-prices-are-on-the-rise-predator-hunters#sthash.kRIVu7L5.dpbs
How can such a seemingly small minority group (trappers) wield such power in todays world?
I don’t get it…………
Is a pro slavery amendment next from the deep south?
Let’s make advertising cigarettes ok so the poor desperate tobacco growers can feed their starving children.
Good Gawd, what’s happening to our world???????? At the count of 5, let’s all turn our clocks back 2 centuries.
Skyrim & Ida: +1
“How can such a seemingly small minority group (trappers) wield such power in todays world?”
Time to take them down somehow
outrage, hard work, make them the villains they are with public campaigns.
its not just trapping the worlds of predator calling, baiting, hounding, penning are man made hell for wildlife. The more you scratch the more unreal, twisted, perverted and heinous it all is. I’m posting this link because this is the real world of predator calling. To see the loyalty of the coyotes between themselves and how they work to protect one another is heartbreaking. The animals are called out using a pup pin distress call, the mother will then go to investigate and is wounded then the male goes out. The “hunters” kill them all with no remorse. The sickest part is that they use the coyotes naturally social and loving character to lure them out. In this video the monster is “training” his dogs. I can’t help but feel a level of disgust toward people like this. I wish my instincts were not so base or I could be better than to feel hate, anger, sadness, and dismay. In the end it all seems so hopeless. How can this be legal? Can anyone defend this? worst coyote video ever. Must make this illegal.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=761437967229052&set=vb.100000885670936&type=2&theater
“Gunner and Onyx
Throwback Thursday. My best friend, Brandon, and I took Gunner and Onyx out for a little calling o…”
Louise in your disgust you did not see a “BIG NO NO”. The first two shots were fired towards the buildings and farmstead.
Elk there is so much of this shit all over the internet, it is scarcely believable. Yet there it is. I don’t seek it out either. I belong to several very active wildlife groups working to end contests, or working in some way to encourage others to manage predators with more humanity. less ferocity, and with some substantive reason for lethal control. The people I have been working with like myself, don’t get paid, we are do the work on our own time and are all of us disturbed and disgusted by the culture of violent, what should be criminal serial abuse directed toward predators. if the only big NO NO you saw in that video was shooting toward the buildings and farmstead we are on totally different pages. But I’m betting you don’t condone that kind of sick bullshit either, so why not just come out and condemn it?
Sierra Club and Western Watersheds Project Give Notice To Sue On Behalf of Grizzly Bears in Upper Green River Area of northwest Wyoming – Earth Justice is their attorney
http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/Final%2060%20Day%20Notice%20Upper%20Green.pdf
“Political Pressures Outweigh Need In Battle For Gunnison Sage Grouse”
http://www.examiner.com/article/political-pressures-outweigh-need-battle-for-gunnison-sage-grouse
“The necessity of saving Nature only makes sense in the midst of a period of ecological destruction that threatens not the natural world, which will continue in some form regardless of what we do, but rather our ideas about what the natural world should be. Nor can our ideas about nature be separated from our ideas about human nature. Any time a desire to save the earth, or save the animals, is asserted…..
A long but fascinating read about our species and the natural world – “in a nutshell”
http://www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/the-political-animal
Do we want the natural world to hobble forward in some kind of wounded, damaged state? What the natural world should be? Whatever it was before we wrecked it is ok by me. Humans actively bringing about the extinction of elephants and other animals has nothing to do with me or how I see myself, but that they belong here and it is wrong to kill them for our selfish needs. The world does not revolve around me and my needs.
Environmentalists and animal rights activists are not Marxists (although I have no problem with Marxists; some of my best friend are socialists). lol
These movements go back further than just mere decades, but centuries. They are cross-political and social class.
Nor can our ideas about nature be separated from our ideas about human nature.
Yes they can be, thank God, and are. I’ll see if I can choke through the rest of this.
Did you manage to “choke through” the rest of it, Ida?
Some pretty heavy thoughts in Hudson’s essay:
“It seems we are at an impasse; there appears no way to escape from the logic of domination. Yet in Negative Dialectics Adorno suggests the possibility of a new categorical imperative based neither in reason nor in nature but somewhere in between. The (non)concept of the addendum he introduces seems to stem from the very suspension between human and animal that Agamben calls bare life. The addendum is beyond conceptual, identitarian thinking: it occupies the space of the nonidentity of conceptual thought. The addendum is both a somatic impulse and a reflective moment that acts as “a flash of light between the poles of something long past, something grown all but unrecognizable, and that which some day might come to be” and which offers “the phantasm of reconciling nature and the mind.”41 Neither instinct nor concept, the addendum bridges the gap between mind and nature, refusing to be laid open to the probings of reason alone. This nonconceptual concept appears as a flash of an almost forgotten alternative to the dominating drive of instrumental reason, based not in logic but in the bodily experience of compassion”
“Problematic as the rhetoric employed by ecology and animal rights may be, the questions posed are thus not peripheral but central to coming to a new understanding of the relationship between humanity and nature, and thus coming to understand humanity itself. In seeking to save what appears outside human society, both ecology and animal rights enter into that zone of indistinction that may, once fully revealed, provide a means to fundamentally alter socioeconomic relations. Rather than seeing ecological and animal rights movements as misanthropic distractions from the real need for human liberation, we might begin to see them as fruitful places to begin to shape a resistance to a capitalist order that denies us our ability to be what we have never yet been: human”
Yes I did. It’s very intellectually hopeful (maybe unrealistically so), and does make a connection between oppressed voiceless humans and other living things. There’s an intellectual distance or something. I can never understand why people who have been oppressed turn around and oppress another group, in this case, animals. The ‘shit flows downhill’ theory. You’d think having known oppression would give people extra compassion and concern for others. Maybe for some it does, I don’t know.
It doesn’t take into account fundamental human qualities that are negative. Whether captitalist or Marxist, the riches stay with the few. Always have. I don’t know about ‘being more human’ being unreached yet. This is it, I’m afraid.
Maybe I haven’t given it a fair read. I read it quickly in an overview (distracted by our big snowstorm), and there was something that bugs me about it. Maybe I’m tired of everything being filtered through a human lens, when we have all of the resources already and still worry about ourselves first. That there still has to be a benefit to humans in order to consider the welfare of animals and protecting wildlands and habitat. Maybe I’m leery of the of “Constant Gardener” view of wildlife and wildlands that some are proposing for the future, such as Emma Marris. Maybe I’m tired of people and their never-ending problems taking away from nature and wildlife, their noise and clumsy, careless disturbances.
PBS is having a program called “The New Wild” that I think will touch upon these things:
http://www.pbs.org/earth-a-new-wild/home/
I came across this the other day too which was interesting and fun:
http://www.bbc.com/travel/feature/20150110-the-quietest-place-in-the-us
“I can never understand why people who have been oppressed turn around and oppress another group, in this case, animals.”
In a word, speciesism. It’s an -ism not even recognized by most. No matter how low one’s caste, class, position in life, we’ve always got human exceptionalism to fall back on.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201107/animal-minds-and-the-foible-human-exceptionalism
Then marry speciesism to capitalism and you’ve got an evil and unholy alliance… factory farms. fur farms. puppy mills. animal racing, animal fighting. UGG boots.
Thank you. Not only animals, but other ethnic groups who’ve been oppressed and discriminated against seem to turn around and do the same thing to the next group.
But I do think it’s not realistic to blame capitalism for our greed – it’s the result of it. It’s not very introspective of us. Materialism is who we are in many cases. We like things. We all (mostly) want more, more, and more of them. We like money, which gets us things, and we don’t like to see people who are poor because we think we know what kind of life is better for them.
I’m glad I grew up poor because I feel it has taught me valuable lessons, and I grew up virtually rich compared to poverty in other nations. Kids who are given everything they want, and want for nothing, I wonder if that does them a disservice in the long run. Marxism to me has always been a utopian ideal; great in theory, but not reproducible in real life, as we can see throughout history. I don’t know that animals benefit from either system. Fighting and racing aren’t really capitalist IMO, but expressions of human violence and competitiveness.
I agree that we need to change the idea that animal rights activists and environmentalists are misanthropes, but whose interpretation is that? I suppose it doesn’t matter if we want to protect wildlife and habitats, and wildlands.
I think that it’s capitalism filtered through speciesism that makes the hideous excesses of exploitation possible–sure, it’s human greed, but this goes beyond individual wants and needs. The capitalist/corporate machinery is in place to exploit on such a grand scale that it influences economies and economies depend on it. It’s the idea of the animal-industrial complex; like the military-industrial complex, “…both types of complex are mechanisms for the extraction of enormous amounts of capital via the killing of bodies.”
http://harmonist.us/2011/01/the-animal-industrial-complex/
Hope you are keeping your head above the snow!
We are doing ok with the snow, thank you! It’s really pretty out this morning.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-and-environment/choosing-voluntary-poverty-zbcz1501.aspx#comments
An interesting article:
Counter Capitalism.
“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less”
Socrates
Thanks, Nancy.
“Rather than seeing ecological and animal rights movements as misanthropic distractions from the real need for human liberation, we might begin to see them as fruitful places to begin to shape a resistance to a capitalist order that denies us our ability to be what we have never yet been: human”
Never yet been: human +1!
I can’t read the essay until later, but for the last several years, I’ve had very similar thoughts to the following excerpt.
Rather than seeing ecological and animal rights movements as misanthropic distractions from the real need for human liberation, we might begin to see them as fruitful places to begin to shape a resistance to a capitalist order that denies us our ability to be what we have never yet been: human”
The entirety of environmental/conservation is not as simple as ‘this issue’ and ‘that issue’ (as if any of the environmental, conservation, animal protection/rights issues are ever simple), but it is our global economic and political system, post colonialism, that has wrecked havoc on this planet.
I’ve been called a socialist, which I’m not, at least, not in the sense from what I’ve read about in socialistic systems formed post WWII, or even post the Bolshevik revolution. I am definitely for private business enterprises and people having the power to succeed and earn a great income. I am not for the type of economic system that employs a philosophy of profit at the expense of everything and everyone. I am not for externalizing the costs associated with destruction of natural systems. Whatever that is called, politically, is what I am. Democratic socialism? I don’t know, but what we are now starting to physically experience in our natural world is the true costs of the economic system that globalized over the last five centuries.
We are that seventh generation of which some of our enlightened forefathers spoke.
I need to read the entire essay tonight. Interesting.
+1 all of it Yvette
Nancy,
I’ve not read the article yet, but from snippets provided by you and others, it scratches that proverbial itch, that one day in the near future, ethologists will begin to untangle things about animals that will begin to make “thinking” humans very uncomfortable.
Might be worth a thread here on TWN and looking forward to your thoughts when you’ve had a chance to read the essay, Immer and Yvette, and others.
Got a feeling other nations/ species might really appreciate an awakening of “fruitful places” 🙂
Because they are quite obvious when we (humans) take the time to see them:
End Bobcat Trapping In California – petition
http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=17029
California Fish & Game Commission has put a ban on the trapping of bobcats on its agenda for 2015.
Here’s How You Can Help:
1- Sign the Center For Biological Diversity’s petition
2- Write to the CA Fish & Game Commission and express your support for a complete ban on commercial and recreational trapping of bobcats in California (see talking points below):
Contact:
California Fish and Game Commission
P.O. Box 944209
Sacramento, CA 94244-2090
fgc@fgc.ca.gov
3- Join Project Coyote, CBD and allies at two upcoming Fish and Game Commission meetings where this issue will be considered. More information here; (public testimony is limited to 3 min.):
What: California Fish and Game Commission mtg.
When: Thursday, Feb. 12th (meeting starts @ 8am- agenda here)
Where: Resources Building Auditorium/ 1416 Ninth Street/ Sacramento, CA
What: California Fish and Game Commission mtg.
When: Thursday, April 9th (meeting starts @ 8am- agenda to be posted here)
Where: Flamingo Conference Resort & Spa/ 2777 Fourth Street/ Santa Rosa, CA
Four Florida panthers killed by vehicles this month
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-panthers-killed-20150126-story.html
Bison Are Not Cattle’s Top Competitor On Utah Range – It’s Rabbits
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-bison-cattle-competitor-range-forage.html
It’s wonderful that someone is studying these relationships. Coyote killing is affecting the rabbit population, and bison having not as much to do with rangeland degradation. And that it is possible for everything to coexist.
Forgive me if I’ve already mentioned this on this site. Today is the LAST DAY to comment on listing the African lion under the Endangered Species Act…you have until 11:59 EST on Tues., 1/27. USFWS is proposing to list African lions as threatened–instead of endangered–and to continue allowing importation of trophies. Add your voice to the 387,402 comments already received.
http://www.othernationsjustice.org/?p=12740
How goes the snowstorm in New England? I saw on the CoCoRaHS site report from this AM that there was over 13 inches depth recorded on Cape Cod with greater amounts inland. The largest I noted was north of Boston – 22 inches.
http://data.cocorahs.org/cocorahs/maps/?country=usa&state=ma
Barb, heard from a friend in Marlboro, MA this morning that he had 2 feet come down since yesterday but it was letting up, Meanwhile, here in Southwest Montana, mega meltdown – temps around 50 degrees for the past few days and what’s left of the the snow in my yard is slush.
The Oregon coast had 70 degrees and Mount Hood 60 two days ago – I never got out of the fog.
Not too bad – the last time we measured it was 18 inches, could be 20 now. Some places had 30 inches! We’re getting another storm on Friday too. Actually, we’re lucky that most people heeded the warnings and stayed off the roads, stocked up on groceries and necessities, and kept warm at home. It’s actually quite pretty out there!
That’s good! I’ve been wondering how you and Louise have fared in the big storm.
For the last two weeks it’s mostly been in the mid 60’s, but the last few days it’s hit 72-73 degrees. It’s supposed to hit 77 tomorrow!! I don’t like it. It’s weird. Sure, it feels okay, but it’s weird. The cats are loving it. I’m a winter person and we’ve only had one tiny dusting of snow. Oklahoma has 9 months of hell season and 3 months of reprieve, so when it gets too hot for long sleeves in January I get a little freaked. I absolutely loath summer in Oklahoma.
I guess some of us will complain about anything. 😉
Wow – we’ve certainly been having some interesting weather around the country. I think everyone welcomed some snow because we haven’t had any this year, and people seem cheerful about it, rather than complaining. Although I’m sure it was inconvenient for some – but no major disasters. Shutting down airports, and moving planes is always a bit scary! 🙂
We measure close to 20 inches but we have drifts that are 5 and 6 feet deep. My husband is over at my sister’s house as she has 5 feet of snow up against the doors and can’t get out. Amazingly we have heat and electricity save for short bursts. I walked about a 1/2 mile yesterday but it was such a blizzard I cold not see and my dog and my neighbor’s dog started getting freaked out. They normally love to play and run in deep snow but the drifts were so deep they could not get purchase on the ground to propel themselves up and over and at one point my neighbor’s dog a lab just laid on the snow drift and would not move, whining. I felt stupid and a bit frightened. I could not get her to move and it was a good way back to the house. The worst seems to be over. The bay is frozen over, the winds have dropped way off, and there are just sprinkles. I am worried about the fox, coyote and raccoon that live nearby. It’s very deep snow and really cold.
if I can figure out how to make a link outside Facebook I’ll try and post some images
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150125-arctic-wilderness-conservation-environment-energy/
Louise:
Thanks for this update on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)…I think this 12 million acre proposal for Wilderness designation within ANWR including its vital coastal plain is fantastic and long overdue.
Now, when the Republicans in Congress (and a few oil-Dems) reject this Wilderness proposal, Pres. Obama will have set the stage to finally declare the entire ANWR a new National Monument under the Antiquities Act.
My fear is that any environmental “win” that is made for ANWAR will impact wolves, in that wolves will become a battle chip concession for other gains. I think the potential for our Congress and some of the rabid anti wolf crazies like Lummis and Ribble and others that want the ESA dismantled could against wolves in a perverted trade off.
After what happened with the 2011 rider, I don’t doubt that something like this could happen again.
I’m reading and think about the ‘threatened’ designation. I believe that wolves still do need/deserve protection in areas that still could support them. This also settles the livestock depredation issue. I don’t love this idea – but it might be the best thing?
Found this on CNN News today:
‘Too precious’ to drill, baby drill?
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/01/27/opinion/sutter-arctic-drilling/index.html
Instead of “Drill baby, drill,” it’s “protect, baby, protect.”
Good article Peter and he’d like feedback, if anyone has the time.
The HSUS and others have created a petition to list wolves as threatened throughout their range. In some places the listing would be a “downgrade” in others it would provide sorely needed protections. It’s a compromise position that I subscribe to.
Please take a moment and ask Congress to continue protecting wolves. A petition is within the link
Tell Congress to Keep Wolves Protected – The Humane Society of the United States
Members of Congress are considering a misguided attempt to remove wolves from the Endangered Species Act. Wolves need our help now more than ever. Ask…
http://WWW.HUMANESOCIETY.ORG
Has this been posted? I didn’t see it if it has been posted.
http://www.kxly.com/news/north-idaho-news/idaho-tickets-rathdrum-man-after-defensive-wolf-kill/30711924
“A Rathdrum man who shot and killed a wolf on December 30 has been cited by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game for unlawful possession of an untagged animal.”
“Just in case of porcupines and coyotes and bobcats and so on,” Mize said.
“Mize said it looked like the animal was getting ready to make a move, so he didn’t take any chances and brought the rifle up to his face.”
Yeah, whatever. It was probably going to try and get away from him. These people drive me insane.
We do have bobcats, coyotes and porcupines in OK, and I’ve seen a bobcat twice in my life; I’ve seen coyotes a few times and have never seen a porcupine. I disrupted a river otter a few years back; he was really cute and curious. I see beavers once in a while, but not often and I’m in creeks quite a lot. I don’t even see snakes often and when I do it’s usually in the spring when they are emerging. I see a lot of deer depending on the time of the year. Bobcats and coyotes? Nope. They are there, but I don’t see them.
I’ve come to the conclusion that wildlife sees us but we rarely are lucky enough to see them. I don’t feel the need to carry a gun to protect myself. I honestly believe wildlife would rather not expend the energy on a stinky human if they don’t have to.
Maybe a skunk will find this yahoo and teach him a stinky lesson. Better yet, maybe a porcupine will get him.
Man ordered to pay $30,000 restitution for shooting three grizzly bears
http://abc13.com/news/man-fined-$30000-for-shooting-grizzlies/492800/
http://www.vancouverobserver.com/special-reports/trophy-hunting-reporting-project
90% of BC residents against trophy hunting yet BC government forges ahead with new preferential hunting regulations, allowing non BC residents to act as guides, and allows trophy hunting Grizzlies (a species of special concern ) in BC. Sound familiar 90% or more of Americans against delisting wolves in last comment solicitation by USFWS (1.5 million comments I believe ) and USFWS has not proposed one other alternative or looked at redefining the piss poor recovery plan that is allowing states like Idaho to come up with wolf boards receiving local, state and federal funds to hunt down all but 150 wolves in its state with tens of millions of public lands. Disgusting
http://www.onthewingphotography.com/wings/2015/01/28/ranching-trophic-cascades-and-predator-control/
Arent’t they beautiful. 🙂
This notice came today to my mailbox. The Endangered Species Coalition is asking for now that only Montana residents write. Please forward to Montana residents.
Kudos to Mike Phillips!
Wildlife biologist and Montana State Senator Mike Phillips from Bozeman has introduced SB 189 to allow the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to spend some of the money dedicated for collaring and killing wolves that attack livestock to conduct wolf outreach and educational activities instead. This will help teach livestock producers how to protect their cattle and sheep in a nonlethal way, while reducing the number of wolves killed in response to livestock depredation. Please attend and request that legislators support SB 189.
WHEN: Thursday, January 29, 3:00pm
WHERE: Senate Fish & Game Committee, Room 422, State Capitol, Helena, Montana
Suggested talking points in support of SB 189:
· Providing funds for education will allow Montana FWP greater opportunities to work with landowners to reduce wolf-livestock depredation.
· It is important to allow wildlife officials to reach out proactively to livestock producers before conflict has occurred, in order to better prevent livestock loss.
· Non-lethal tools, including fencing, guard dogs, night-penning of sheep, fladry and increased human presence in the form of herders, range-riders, have been demonstrated to help protect livestock.
· Education on the biology and ecology of wolves can help reduce conflict over wolf management issues in Montana.
· Please support SB 189.
To let us know you will attend the hearing or for more information, please contact Derek Goldman, dgoldman@endangered.org.
Thanks for speaking up for wolves and wildlife!
Derek Goldman
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201501/wolf-murder-canadian-style-continues-if-its-conservation
http://wxpr.org/post/animal-welfare-groups-push-lesser-threatened-status-gray-wolf
Forest Supervisor Says CWD Worse In Wyoming Feedgrounds
http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/business/corpus_callosum/supervisor-says-cwd-worse-in-feedgrounds/article_e06db21d-efbf-57e3-99f3-8be0fbdf4ef9.html
This years featured Budweiser Super Bowl ad features a puppy being rescued from a wolf by the Clydesdales.
Can be seen now on youtube.
And they are not even American owned Clydesdales any more. Anheuser-Busch, brewers of “Bud, the king of beers,” is now owned by a Belgian-Brazilian company. Also can easily guess who they are targeting their low-end product advertising to,…eh?
But then A-B is just finalizing their purchase of yet another high end craft brewer from the Seattle area, Elysian Brewing. Maybe that brand will have a wolf rescuing a puppy.
Both should have the following disclaimer: “No wolves, horses or puppies (or humans) were harmed during the filming of this commercial.”
Old news, was sold to the Belgians in 2008.
The horses are born here so just like the children of illegals they are considered Americans.
Awwww, that’s too bad. Usually their Clydesdale commercial is one of the highlights of the Super Bowl commercials. Not this year I guess.
Apparently one was pulled by that sleazy GoDaddy of a woman abandoning a puppy. That’s probably the more realistic scenario.
She did not abandon it, she sold it on a web site she created using godaddy. It was actually meant to be spoof on the Bud puppy commercials and it’s kind of funny.
Well, it was rather unfeeling and coldhearted.
Now this is comical. Their CEO is a ‘big game’ hunter too.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/godaddy-still-violates-icann-policy-and-still-sleazy/#!
Looks like the wolf poop is starting to hit the fan, as a result of the DC District Court ruling on WGL wolves, with WY tagging along (because they weren’t included in the NRM wolf Congressional rider).
http://www.mlive.com/lansing-news/index.ssf/2015/01/delist_or_downlist_michigan_wo.html
One has to wonder if CO and UT might be sympathetic for what could come their way when wolf range expands. And, importantly, whether WA and OR just might want to join in for the remaining 2/3 of their states where wolves are not delisted, and where their respective plans might call for hunting in the not too distant future (say 4-8 years).
just because the population reaches the point that wolves can be delisted automatically means that the plans should “call” for public hunting?
A bizarre assumption
perhaps in the next few years some of the more progressive states might call for looking at the newest literature that 1) speaks to potential increased depredations where wolf populations are hunted 2) chronic, long term and detrimental dress in wolf populations that are hunted 3) hunting creates intolerance, 4) and remember that wolves are highly social creatures with families and that “hunting them” means destroying bonded relationships that are critical for their survive and part of their emotionally rich lives.
No I don’t believe delisting “calls” for public hunts and some enlightened places like Michigan don’t want public hunts.
dress should bd stress if you haven’t already assumed that
Louise:
You are so correct that wolf hunting shouldn’t automatically mean wolf hunting follows after delisting. Oregon and California have no plans for hunting if and when wolves are delisted. The Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife plans hunting after delisting, however, I would not be surprised if the voters of Washington State eventually prohibit wolf hunts, like the citizens of Michigan have done.
A good read on delisting the grizzly.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacy-bare/delisting-the-grizzly-bea_b_6317580.html
That is a good read – thanks!
Well I’m not so sure yours is an accurate statement, Ed.
from the OR Wolf Management Plan:
++Re-classify the legal status of the gray wolf to “special-status mammal” within the “game mammal” category in ORS 496.004(9). Oregon Wolf Conservation and Management Plan /Chapter II – Wolf Conservation Page 36
The status would not preclude the use of controlled take through hunting and trapping in response to management concerns. Controlled take of wolves would be permitted as a management response tool to assist ODFW in its wildlife management efforts only after the wolf population objectives in the region to be affected have been exceeded and other biological considerations indicate the use of these management tools would not result in the impairment of wolf viability in the region. Controlled take would be authorized as a response to:
1 chronic livestock depredation problems in a localized region where wolf population levels have grown to beyond stable levels; or
2 any wild ungulate population is experiencing population or recruitment declines ++
It looks to me all options in OR are open for future consideration. Timeframe as suggested in my earlier post (4-8 years from now). The process and thinking are similar in WA and OR. CA, well, they don’t really have any wolves, except the occasional disburser. I bet in the not to distant future there will be offers to give them some if they want them – Oh, wait, Governor Butch from ID already offered some to every state a couple years back, but got no takers.
Sorry, link to the Oregon wolf management plan: http://www.dfw.state.or.us/Wolves/docs/Oregon_Wolf_Conservation_and_Management_Plan_2010.pdf
well I hope so ED
just so you know though the voters of MI did vote against the wolf hunt but the issue is not settled yet. The law passed by Casperson may prevail although it will be hard to cram a hunt down the voter’s throats after two referendums and no vote.
Study: Livestock Grazing on Public Lands Cost Taxpayers $1 Billion Over Past Decade
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2015/grazing-01-28-2015.html
Oregon may consider state delisting of wolves in eastern OR where population objectives are being achieved (and where they are currently already federally delisted under the Congressional rider/FWS rule).
http://www.thedalleschronicle.com/news/2015/jan/28/state-eyes-wolf-delisting/
WM:
Yes, all options might be on the Fish & Wildlife Depts. table in Washington, Oregon and California. HOWEVER, in my opinion, a majority of the citizens of all three Pacific states will try and stop any attempt to approve sport/recreational hunting of wolves. It would be a major political battle, that’s for sure.
Ed, I think you might be right. I bet there will be a battle in both WA and OR. Eastside vs. Westside.
Alright this is not about wildlife BUT about society and wolves, went on line tday and saw about Godaddy and the contervisal with the Super Bowl commerical, didn’t see it bout lotta orgnaztiona against it and it got pulled, was making fun of BUD commericals, watch Bud’s Superbowl commerical, showing a wolf ready to pounce on the little yellow lab pup, not cool Bud and where are the organizations to argue against this ?? Maybe cause Bud is too big of a company, not cool and really bad timing, sorry for mis spell of words !
It’s very unusual, isn’t it? Usually the Clydesdales commercial is one of the great ones of the Super Bowl. Their outstanding one was their tribute to 9/11. All I can think of is that their CEO is connected with Safari Club International or another hunting organization (as GoDaddy appears to be) and is upset with the wolf situation. (sarcasm). It’s puzzling why this kind of mythology persists.
I was mistaken about the GoDaddy commercial. It’s about heartless breeders making money and treating puppies like commodities.
It’s not funny; and it’s actually creepy, because you never know where these poor animals end up. Craig’s list and that poor puppy sold and resold until he ended up in the hands of an abuser. I wonder what else they plan for the Super Bowl – I hope it is’t a sleazy take on Little Red Riding Hood!!! lol
I saw the godaddy commercial and hated it. Truly insensitive. Whoever created it was clueless to the massive problem we have with homeless dogs, dumped dogs and cats (and dogs are often the culprits of livestock depredation), abandoned pets, severely abused dogs and cats, and the high number that are not spayed and neutered. They were also clueless to the high number of people that work their arse off at rescuing and improving the lives of abandoned, abused, or homeless animals. I hated that commercial so much that even if I ever need a website I won’t use godaddy, especially after reading your comment that the CEO is a trophy hunter. If I know about it, I never spend a dime in a trophy hunter’s business whether it be godaddy or Jimmie John sandwiches.
I’ve not watched the budweiser commercial and don’t intend to watch it. When I read how they have displayed the wolf it ticked me off. Football is so annoying. I never watch the super bowel and don’t understand the attraction. This country would do itself well by giving a fraction of the money and attention thrown at football to more important issues; like homeless kids, animals and idiotic environmental/conservation/wildlife policy. It will never happen. Grunt on. Enjoy the game.
….I hope the seahawks win, but have no idea who they are playing against.
I love both teams – but I want to watch Seattle too. Too much testosterone, but sometimes the commercials are fun. I’m kinda disappointed with Budweiser now. Bud Lite had one awhile ago that I thought was hilarious – a parody of football fans based on ‘a few of my favorite thing’. 🙂
+1 for your Wisconsin post too.
I like the half time shows at superbowl and at the college games. Love watching the marching bands. But, the ‘football’ noise for televised games gets on my last nerve. I usually miss the half time shows because I forget about it.
Was just thinking that next year I think I’ll have an anti-Superbowl party.
I also volunteer at the shelter here in Jackson, it is hard work, BUT very rewarding, I did post my opinion on the Bud FB page, by the way we sell more PBR then Bud in Wolf country !
They can end up in the hands of psychos, dog fighting rings, and research labs:
http://www.dogheirs.com/dogheirs/posts/3664-dog-flipping-and-animal-abuse-tied-to-dogs-listed-on-craigslist
It’s too bad GoDaddy doesn’t air this ad at the Super Bowl. It’s something people need to be made more aware of – Cruella De Ville type breeders, or just the innocent unknowing person who would be horrified to know about this stuff.
Looks like this is one of those “be careful what you wish for” moments, as HSUS tries to undo its win in the DC District Court on the WGL wolf relisting. So, they seek “compromise,” as the Congressional wheels are beginning to turn. I expect MN Senator Al Franken (and quite a few other Congressional types from the Upper Midwest), especially with MN’s 2,500-3000 wolves, and a reasonable hunting season in neighboring MI has had enough of this bullshit from HSUS, and who can blame him (them)?
http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/290141961.html
“Complex conservation problems require sophisticated solutions,” said Adam M. Roberts, CEO of Born Free USA. “The history of wolf protection in America is riddled with vitriolic conflict and shortsightedness and it is time for a coordinated, forward-thinking approach that removes the most barbaric treatment of this iconic species and focuses on the long-term viability of wolf populations throughout the country.”
The threatened listing proposed by the petition would promote continued recovery of the species at a national level so that it is not left perpetually at the doorstep of extinction. A threatened listing would also permit the Fish and Wildlife Service some regulatory flexibility to work with state and local wildlife managers to appropriately address wolf conflicts, including depredation of livestock.
Groups filing the petition include national organizations and those based in wolf range states:
Born Free USA
Center for Biological Diversity
Detroit Audubon Society
Detroit Zoological Society
The Fund for Animals
Friends of Animals and Their Environment
Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf
Help Our Wolves Live
Howling for Wolves
The Humane Society of the United States
Justice for Wolves
Midwestern Environmental Advocates
Minnesota Humane Society
Minnesota Voters for Animal Protection
National Wolfwatcher Coalition
Northwoods Alliance
Predator Defense
Sault Sainte Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians
Wildlife Public Trust and Coexistence
Wildwoods (Minnesota)
Wisconsin Federated Humane Societies
Wolves of Douglas County Wisconsin
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2015/01/27/groups-petition-reclassify-gray-wolves-threatened-status-under-endangered
Wasn’t it MI voters that voted against the hunting on two ballot issues? The politicos in MI added an additional law after they realized two ballot issues would win for what MI voters wanted but did it when it would be too late to get that law on the November 2014 election. Is that reasonable?
As for reasonable, maybe a little in MN and MI, but WI is a different scenario. The only way to describe WI’s actions on wolf ‘management’ is to say they are savages salivating in the woods waiting for an attack. Additionally, all six of the Ojibwe tribes (neither did any of the other tribes but most of the information I’ve found is on the six Ojibwe bands) wanted no wolf hunting and the Red Lake Band (maybe all six tribes) have hunting and fishing rights to half of all take in the ceded territories though they refuse to hunt wolves. They still have the right to half the wolf tags and did get those tags. They did not use them and the tags numbers were lower the following year. The Great Lakes Indian Fish and Game complained that the states were not conducting government to government consultation as mandated in the U.S. constitution. The Red Lake Band requested a six mile buffer around their reservation land, of which falls under tribal law, and abuts with the ceded territories. The buffer is in the Red Lake Band’s Wolf Management Plan, but WI has refused even a buffer.
About half of the wolf depredation events in WI have been on dogs used to hound wolves. Unfortunately, those dogs ended up with two legged savages. They have also lumped all confirmed depredations in with ‘non-confirmed, but likely’ depredations. that is the way WI DNR has their report set up so if they are reporting depredation numbers without distinguishing the difference they are not showing a real outcome on depredations. It’s either confirmed or it isn’t. I’m not sure how they are counting ‘unconfirmed but probable’ since they do have it in the same category with confirmed depredations.
Wisconsin is out of control. Reasonable is not in their vocabulary.
“Wasn’t it MI voters that voted against the hunting on two ballot issues? The politicos in MI added an additional law after they realized two ballot issues would win for what MI voters wanted but did it when it would be too late to get that law on the November 2014 election. Is that reasonable?
As for reasonable, maybe a little in MN and MI, but WI is a different scenario. ”
The MI wolf debate is amazing to me because it seems the residents have a great deal of resistance to wolf hunting but their legislators don’t listen. The Keep Michigan Wolves Protected Campaign collected enough signatures for two citizen’s referendums to vote on the issue. And you are right Casperson passed a law close to week after the first signatures were verified by the state. I spoke with every legislator or their aide when the legislation was being considered and a big majority of them told me that the issue got more calls and e mails than any other issue the legislators were dealing with including economics, education and crime! In an unofficial poll I was also told that the majority of calls were against the law and a hunt. Then when the issue did go to vote citizens voted against a hunt! During the year and half or so that this took place the DNR also solicited comments and received 7000+- with all but 15+- against a wolf hunt. During the count of the comments which I did with volunteers we also discovered that the DNR directed their staff to trash comments. The dedication by the legislature to ignore their constituents is mind boggling and a gross dereliction of their jobs. They work for us not us for them. It really pisses me off. I believe Michigan is like other states – ok they are pretty damn dedicated – but its the legislators tied to special interest money or fearful of breaking the status quo that are the problems.
Is creation of a distinct population segment for the purpose of down-listing to threatened status problematic? Can you do it anyway and just hope nobody bothers to contest it?
With endangered plants and animals I fight for in MI, we have never imagined there could be so many locally (someplace), that it would be considered a problem worthy of action (e.g. Mitchell’s satyr, a butterfly, or our snuffbox mussel). It’d only be smiling happy people, ya know. Maybe ESA lacks enough provision for that situation, and maybe I can see how that could happen.
Jesus WM what do you mean enough from HSUS. The issue was litigated in court and the courts agreed that the rule delisting wolves was arbitrary and capricious. Would you have everyone just stand back and watch the slaughter without a peep. Is there any time you think a lawsuit is justified? The recovery plan sucks and the state management plans are unreasonable as Yvette pointed out and they are not supported by the general public. Without groups like PETA, HSUS, Animal Defense League etc things would even be worse for most animals, and as they already are. I guess the courts, the 1.5 million people commenting against delisting, and a good number of carnivore scientists are all wrong about these abysmal state management plans? Its 2015 not 1800
Nancy just posted the tens of millions of acres of public lands in the western states where wolves roam – and these states are using rules and regulations to bring the populations of wolves to the minimum numbers of 150 wolves as provided for by the recovery plan. That is a gross injustice, bad policy and needs revision.
++++++ Louise. And let’s not forget Mr. Koski who continually complained of wolf depredations while refusing to instill any of the practices that the DNR financed and provided him. It was apparently so embarrassing to the state that they refused the first FOIA that you friend requested. The man was so egregious that they didn’t want that information public.
I need to go read that blog again. It was jaw dropping.
Two avenues, Louise. Appeal the DC District Court ruling and/or watch a rider or its equivalent go thru for MN, MI, WI (and likely WY).
HSUS never wanted MN wolves delisted and put every obstacle in its way for the last 10 or more years after the delisting objectives were met under their approved plan (MN wolves have their own special ESA listing). I tend to believe this is the last straw for MN. They are tired of the HSUS bullshit, and there is a good possibility we will see the result within the year (my prediction), most likely thru Congress.
who is tired the politicians or the people
the polls regularly show a great deal of support for wolves
its the politicians and their bullshit that I am tired of. Tired of reading poll after poll of regular non livestock owning or trophy hunting constituents show support for wolf recovery while the politicians make gross exaggerations and thump their chests about wolves. Don’t they have better issues to be grandstanding about like the state of their educational systems or homelessness, or economic recovery. Its bizarre and frightening to think that these ass backward politicians continue to scapegoat wolves for their state’s problems. Its gross.
There are more than two avenues here. Look at JB’s and J Vucetich Framework for Recovery or read the HSUS petition. They are both good alternatives. If the states are really worried about livestock then the HSUS petition would allow the states the right to manage wolves to protect livestock, the threatened status as you well know would just prevent public hunts. With all the literature and “science” on wolves why should they be hunted. Its invalid management. I don’t believe that wolves should be hunted and their families torn apart and social structures dismantled so some yeehaws can shoot a “woof” for kicks.
http://newsdaily.com/2015/01/record-sea-lion-pup-strandings-reported-in-southern-california/
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/rare-sierra-nevada-red-fox-spotted-in-yosemite-park/ar-AA8Hprb?ocid=ansnewsap11
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/28/382168407/florida-health-officials-hope-to-test-gmo-mosquitoes-this-spring
There are dozens of other versions of the same story, but I thought this one good cause of some of the comments (and quotes) are so bad that they are funny.
Oregon Wolf Population Meets Level to Consider Delisting:
http://magicvalley.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/update-oregon-wolf-population-meets-level-to-consider-delisting/article_a1e55bc2-a682-11e4-b46c-8b64768b453c.html
Oregon State:
Total Land Base: 68,018,240 acres
Forest Service (NFS) Acres: 15.7 million
BLM Acres: 15.73 million
Population: 3,700,758
Montana:
Total Land Base: 94,185,600 acres
Forest Service (NFS) Acres: 17 million
BLM Acres: 8 million
Population: 944,632
Idaho:
Total Land Base: 53,530,880 acres
Forest Service (NFS) Acres: 20.5 million
BLM Acres: 11.9 million
Population: 1,466,465
Wyoming:
Total Land Base: 62,603,520 acres
Forest Service (NFS) Acres: 9.2 million
BLM Acres: 18.4 million
Population: 515,004
Washington State:
Total Land Base: 42,612,480 acres
Forest Service (NFS) Acres: 9.3 million
BLM Acres: 364,600
Population: 6,395,798
Roughly 124 million acres of public lands/wilderness areas etc. between these western states (that all interlock – good for diversity for about 3,000 wolves and other wildlife) but it has “panties bunched up” in a fraction of our species, who actually hunt and ranch these areas. Very sad.
And honestly? How can some of us be so worried about little things like loss of habitat & wildlife when you look at the BIGGER picture – offending those of our own species, that have no problem offending others when it comes to really stupid, mundane sh*t:)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/michelle-obama/11373787/Michelle-Obama-causes-outrage-in-Saudi-Arabia-by-not-wearing-headscarf.html
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=854992681190366
Well, she technically hasn’t done anything wrong and isn’t required to wear a headcovering – but in this case I would. It’s a condolence visit for the death of a king, and acknowledgement of the new king.
Saudi Arabia has been a strong ally of the US in the Middle East. Plus, I think it can be pretty, it’s cultural dress too, not necessarily always a subjugation of women. It’s protective too.
I always think it looks like an (unintentional) challenge for women reporters and others not to, you’re not going to change thousands of years of a culture ‘overnight’, and we shouldn’t push our way of life and values on everyone. A burqa is a different thing altogether.
Nancy do you have a citation for this? I could use it in a document I am working on
Thanks
Louise, here is the link to western states public lands:
http://www.wildlandfire.com/docs/2007/western-states-data-public-land.htm
From a 2012 thread on the Wildlife News:
“The recently released Department of Interior Fiscal Year 2012 Economic Report shows that Grazing on BLM Public Lands Accounts for only 0.41% of the nation’s livestock receipts and only 17,000 jobs. In contrast, recreation accounts for 372,000 jobs and contributes $45 billion to the economy”
http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2013/08/15/blm-public-lands-grazing-accounts-for-only-0-41-of-nations-livestock-receipts/
wonderful Nancy thank you!
Nancy
Thanks for this information!
Besides domestic pets, you never know what else will turn up on Craigslist:
“Some large scale undercover investigations have been able to give us insight into how many fraudulent licenses are allocated, making the number of wildlife taken illegally exponentially higher than what is disclosed to the public.”
U.S. Poachers contribute to the Illegal Wildlife Trade
No surprise here:
http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/politics/senate-to-vote-on-passage-of-keystone-xl-plan/30990346
Should Fla. panthers be removed from the endangered list?
http://www.nbc-2.com/story/27830308/why-so-many-panther-deaths#.VMs0ahF0xHg
Of course should they be delisted. A species having recoverd to a point where dozens of them are run over annually on I75 needs to be properly managed! 🙂
From the article:
“”I saw my first panther in 1955 in Wachula, Hardee County, where I’m fifth generation – he ran across the road in front of the car – we almost hit it – it was tall, really lanky, skinny, small head and now a days they’re just the opposite. They have a head twice the size almost – they’re large and they’re different color and they’re more aggressive,”
Odd, heard this about another animal somewhere before…(haha)
“Odd, heard this about another animal somewhere before”
These panthers came down from Canada also?
LOL – Probably. They’re already describing a larger animal. It’s worked out west, so it’s a tried and true formula. 🙂
No, I guess technically they all came from South America, but in the eyes of the people interviewed (most in their 70’s and with a certain ‘slant’) they are just as foreign as Canadians…at least to fifth generation Floridians. We (southerners) sometimes use states like some others use countries to say how ‘despicable’ another group is….just modern tribalism.
That was one of the first things that jumped out at me, too.
“I think their paws are almost twice the size as the Florida panther from what I’ve seen and I’ve seen quite a bit,” said “Bubba” Whidden.
It’s those huge Texas panthers! They are bigger than the native Florida panther. They are not the same animal!
“They were – and still are for some – seen as a nuisance, competing with hunters for deer and taking calves and other livestock, which causes monetary losses for ranchers.”
“The panther has gotten so numerous that it has decimated the deer population,” said Townsend.”
I think everyone sees the pattern. It’s the same ole, same ole ca-ca.
LOL, when I got my first home PC and got internet hooked up at home (dial-up, LOL) the first internet search I did was on panthers. That had to of been about 1999. The Florida panther came through on the search. I distinctly remember reading about their dire situation and how they had genetically bottlenecked. I would occasionally check in on the Fl panther just to check the status of their situation. A couple years after that first home internet search I read that wildlife managers had chosen the Texas panther to introduce into the Fl panther population because that particular sub-species was the one most genetically like the Fl panther.
With the FL panther it’s more than just increasing population. They were so inbred that they must also increase genetic variability to a point where they are free of inbreeding risks. One researcher said that would be a ten fold increase, but they can’t do that since they are habitat limited.
On a different note, what should be done about the ESA? Right now it’s politically unpopular. It does work, but are we at a point where the ESA should be amended to afford protection for certain species. If the species has met the requirements to be removed from ESA but are also species that humans tend to love or hate to extremes, and also, persecute unmercifully, have some other protection that is not afforded when they are removed from the ESA?
We people are always the biggest part of the problem; we’re also the biggest part of resolving the problem.
At least it seems the wildlife pros know the FL panther is not ready to come off the ESA.
…”should we have some other protection afforded….”
I left out a word.
I’m not sold on the ESA being unpopular with the public, just politicians that find it politically expedient to oppose it. After all, what’s a politician’s job? Stay in office! How? Find a ‘boogieman’ to oppose and ride it as long as possible. If they run out of ‘boogiemen’, people may actually demand more of them than just saying what they don’t like.
Same with the EPA…who REALLY wants to see it go away? Along with some of the rather assinine things they’ve done, there’s some real good. Argue all we want about some of the CO2 stuff, but behind that there’s some real health issues cropping up if we ignore the environment (yeah, I know….duh!)
Heck, look how nervous some of y’all in Oklahoma are about all the recent earthquakes in the north. Can blame anyone BUT not the drilling…
Good points on the ESA. I think you’re right.
Hey, we had a 4.0 quake this morning. I get push notifications from a news station and the earthquakes are a daily thing now.
Now on a completely non related wildlife topic…..did you say you are in Alabama? I’m perusing different places to road trip to this summer. If it works out I’ve pretty much decided on AL. My mom grew up there and has talked about ‘all the beautiful waterfalls’. Is De Soto State Park worth it? I’m also going to go to Horseshoe Bend National Military Park. Hope I can handle it. That is a difficult part of our history but I want to see it. Is Talledega National Forest nice? I’ll probably explore Birmingham, too.
If you think of any cool places to see let me know. I’m ready for Southern scenery. The South is beautiful.
Yvette,
In the fall of 2013 I packed my bags and moved to a land famed for earthquakes, Southern California. To this date, the only quake I’ve felt since my departure from IL was during my one night stay in OKC while en-route to my new desert home. What has been the public response to the frequent quakes nowadays?
There is definitely a buzz about the quakes. Most of the epicenters are at least 100 miles west of me, so those folks are probably more concerned. A few people have suffered significant damage to their homes and insurance doesn’t cover. I’ve only had a couple of them that rattled my windows. One of those I definitely felt and that one freaked out my cats.
Thanks, Mark L. I’ll definitely go to Horseshoe Bend. It’s been on my radar for a while. I’m not familiar with the vernacular of ‘grandmother towns’. What is it?
Yep, lots of awesome waterfalls, no doubt. I’m in north Alabama currently, so mostly see places north of the Tennessee river. Try the Walls of Jericho, Dismals, Desoto, etc. Definately do the forts: Mims, Jackson, Mitchell (Mitchell is ironically not far from where the Florida panther was shot by a jacksass several years ago), also Horseshoe Bend, Holy Ground, etc. Local Muscogee history may be rough stuff for you, I know, due to ties in area…interesting red sticks ties for me too…I could help you find some ‘grandmother’ towns too. Ralph can give you my email if you want.
+1!
+1 on the ESA Mark it snot the public that doesn’t tolerate wolves, want old growth forest cut down or to see the EPA gutted, its politicians that now move so far out of the orbit of accountability once they are voted in, it suspends belief. They care about what lobbies and companies have the money
🙂
I hope all of this is rattling sabers. If not, they can expect a battle royale.
Those people have the same exact mentality as wolf haters.
Oh. My. God.
A species having recovered to a point where dozens of them are run over annually on I75.
Yep, that’s the criteria for recovery all right. 🙁
http://www.nbcmontana.com/news/snowmobilers-cited-for-riding-in-wilderness-area/30997302
Is this part of the woodland caribou habitat?
The response is so incredibly selfish, I can’t believe it. They already have the majority of land for these awful things, don’t they, with a very small amount begrudgingly given for wildlife habitat. Sounds like the mountain bikers’ mentality too. Many people do not pay any attention at all to signs – I’ve seen remnants of campfires near “No Fires” signs, people letting dogs run unleashed in bird sanctuaries, and being highly offended by “Keep Out of the Nesting Areas”.
No Ida but it is critical to the wildlife that has to try and get by in the winter without humans, loudly ripping around” their habitat.
The Thing About Hunting
or
Why The Hunting Conversation Hurts Conservation
http://magazine.africageographic.com/weekly/hunting-canned-hunting-trophy-hunting-debate/
Peter thanks for posting this. “There are so many types of hunting, such as subsistence hunting by communities on their own land; hunting on fenced private farms that choose wildlife over sheep; trophy hunting in unfenced areas near national parks; canned hunting and so on, and each has it’s own set of implications.” As you know I don’t condone or like hunting but I have a tolerance for hunting to eat that I don’t for trophy hunting, trapping, snaring, hounding, penning, or baiting. I spent my life around fisher people and my Dad’s closest friends, many of whom were food hunters. In all the time they retained their close friendships I never heard them quarrel about it. Two of his 3 closest friends were hunters. What they had in common was a respect for life, and each other. These men often did go to the woods just to observe. They were not obsessed with killing. Not a one of his friends or the men I knew were the ruthless, committed, slaughterers that we see grinning over dead bodies, or piling slaughtered animals on top of one another in killing contests. I admit that there are hunters like Elk and others here who are conservationists, and that respect wildlife. Elk recently posted that he gives thanks to the animals he eats and I am quite sure from reading the posts most hunters posting here would never target an animal they might only injure and are insulted and disgusted by some of today’s “hunters”. While I still can’t abide by killing readily I understand these kinds of men. Having said that, where is the honorable hunter when faced with curtailing laws and regulations that allow the hate, thrill and kill and irresponsible hunters to dominate so much of the hunting world?
http://www.wildcalifornia.org/blog/publiclands/massive-timber-sale-proposed-for-klamath-national-forest/
This is a link to the Klamath National Forest Plan. Perhaps Gary Humbard could give some insight into this project.
http://a123.g.akamai.net/7/123/11558/abc123/forestservic.download.akamai.com/11558/www/nepa/100078_FSPLT3_2356541.pdf
Looks like ID Fish and Game has grown tired of the “facts” of ALLEGED precipitous wolf population decline as represented by some wolf advocacy groups (and apparently specifically the Center for Biological Diversity). IDFG Director responds:
http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/outdoors/2015/jan/30/idaho-director-weary-wolf-facts-distortion/
I don’t know about you, but I (in particularly) like the part where Virgil contends that the idea that “Wolf predation continues to have unacceptable impacts to some elk populations” is a “fact”.
That some people find the perceived impact of wolves on elk to be unacceptable is undisputed, but he is as guilty as anyone else at distorting information to suite is agenda.
Addendum:
I should add that its a shame that an advocacy group will say anything to promote its agenda, but its worse when someone appointed to represent all citizens of their state does the same (as Virgil, Tony, and many many others have done).
JB +1
The big question I continue to have is that some of these representatives seem to have such a personal stake in continuing with institutional bias against predators when they graduate with degrees in science or policy and the department is under direction to use “best available” science to develop policy protocols.
Idaho Fish & Game records a 2013/2014 wolf hunting/trapping “harvest” of 487 wolves, and this does not even take in any poaching numbers. Frankly, I believe the Gov. of Idaho and the Idaho Legislature when they promise to reduce wolf numbers to 10 breeding pairs and 150 total wolves in the entire state.
https://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/hunt/?getPage=121
I made a mistake in the Idaho Dept. of Fish & Game 2013/2014 wolf “harvest” numbers. Hunters/trappers killed 302 wolves and this does not even take in wolf poaching numbers. Frankly, I believe the Gov. of Idaho and the Idaho Legislature when they promise to reduce wolf numbers to 10 breeding pairs and 150 total wolves in the entire state.
So, Ed, even after all the dead wolves are counted from hunting/trapping, problem wolf removals and poaching, how many wolves do you suppose still remain in ID after the surviving pups from near 100 documented breeding pairs are counted? Do you suppose, conservatively at least 150-200 new were added to the net base population after the reductions?
WM:
I hope you are correct that the State of Idaho is as wolf friendly as you seem to be implying. Frankly, as I repeat, I believe the Gov. of Idaho and the Idaho Legislature when they promise to reduce wolf numbers to 10 breeding pairs and 150 total wolves in the entire state.
Oh, I don’t think ID is “wolf friendly.” The policy speaks for itself. I just think it will take considerable and sustained effort to work their way down to whatever number they decide is adequate to keep wolves from being relisted. It will be considerably above the minimums, despite the political posturing and bravado.
100 documented breeding pairs? Don’t you mean 100 new pups?
Poor choice of (technical) language on my part. Virgil says “100 documented packs,” (not breeding pairs), so how many breeding pairs are there? I still think from a base population of around 600 documented wolves (plus the undercount factor) would produce at least 150-200 pups at the time of the December 2014 count. They should have a report out in the next few weeks, one would think.
Holy Cow, Batman!! Over 30 million acres of public lands alone and a population of less than 2 million humans and the state of Idaho can’t seem to find room for 600 + wolves?
I can drive 10 miles and see over a 1,000 head of cattle, right up close to the road.
Idaho:
Total Land Base: 53,530,880 acres
Forest Service (NFS) Acres: 20.5 million
BLM Acres: 11.9 million
Population: 1,466,465
Nancy:
Yes, you are so right about cattle dominating the Idaho landscape. Idaho has about 2 million cattle, which is more than it has people and since the cattle owners rule Idaho politics and since the ranchers have not yet learned that killing wolves indiscriminately can lead to more livestock depredations – Idaho Fish & Game is still living in the 1800s.
http://www.cattlerange.com/cattle-graphs/all-cattle-numbers.html
I think the report is out and IFG said 22 breeding pairs this year. I counted 19 on their report from last year.
I’m going from memory and am too lazy to verify this Friday night. Are you sure about the 100 documented packs in Idaho? Are there that many packs in ID?
WM, you refer to this ‘overcount’ a lot. Where did you get that information. When I’m not tired I’m going to look for a resource on the 20% more wolves than what are counted. I’m sure it’s in the research somewhere, but I’m skeptical.
The 100 packs comes from Virgil Moore’s statement referenced above. It seemed high to me. I do not believe their 2014 report is done yet. That stuff gets released in the next couple months, if past practice is followed.
Dr. Mech’s sworn deposition in the NRM delisting cases before Judge Molloy in MT, was the source for the under-estimation. Recall that these states do actual counts, during winter/December. Paraphrasing, if I recall correctly, Dr. Mech says the percentage of undercount increases with expanding range and over time. I think I have used quotes from it in past posts here several years ago. I no longer have a link to the document.
Thanks WM. I was curious about the 20% greater than counted/verified.
“From the ID 2013 report there are over 100 packs. This is form the Executive Summary portion of the report.
The State of Idaho and Nez Perce Tribe monitored wolves cooperatively in 2013 through a Memorandum of Agreement signed in 2005. Biologists documented 107 packs within the state at the end of 2013. In addition, there were 28 documented border packs counted by Montana, Wyoming, and Washington that had established territories overlapping the Idaho state boundary. Additional packs are presumed but not included due to lack of documentation. Reproduction was confirmed for 49 of the 107 documented Idaho packs. Of these, 20 qualified as breeding pairs at the end of the year. Known reproductive packs produced a minimum of 166 pups. The year-end population for documented packs, other documented groups not qualifying as packs, and lone wolves was estimated at 659 wolves (Appendix A).”
It was late last night when I responded to your query, Yvette, and I was tired. Correction: It was Dr. Mech’s sworn DECLARATION, which is a statement of qualifications and professional opinion submitted to the Court (not Deposition, though Dr. Mech would cover the same ground and give the same answers if plaintiff advocacy groups had actually asked him about it).
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission has petioned the USFWS to end the red wolf recovery program:
http://www.wral.com/nc-board-asks-feds-to-end-red-wolf-reintroduction-program/14408194/
Good grief.
petitioned
What a mind, gone before his time, putting it into perspective:
If you have read this article already, it is well worth a second read:
“John Muir’s Last Stand” by Tom Butler & Eileen Crist
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-12-24/john-muir-s-last-stand
“John Muir said that if it came to a war between humans and bears, he’d side with the bears.”
I bought a t-shirt in northern BC in 1980 that said “Defend the Right to Arm Bears”.
I love that saying now. 🙂
Jim Unsworth has recently been hired as the new director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. I was always a bit uncertain about his position on several issues as a wildlife biologist for Idaho. After reading the recent post by Tom Remington I feel better about his selection for this new position.
There is a lot of interesting background information regarding Jim Unsworth in the following post. Note it is called Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, not Fish and Game.
http://tomremington.com/2015/01/30/in-washington-some-mourn-the-arrival-of-new-fish-and-game-director/
http://spot.humaneresearch.org/content/why-do-right-wing-adherents-engage-more-animal-exploitation-and-meat-consumption
Really fascinating
From the Wild Earth Guardians
Good news about USFS and rules related to snowmobile use.
Be nice to see them banned everywhere
“We’re excited to announce that a new Forest Service plan regulating winter motorized recreation reigns in rampant snowmobile use that threatens iconic winter wildlife such as lynx, wolverines, and grizzlies. Snowmobiles also wreak havoc on those of us who enjoy the quiet and solitude of a beautiful winter landscape.
Our sustained pressure, including your emails, achieved a huge victory when the Forest Service released its final over-snow vehicle management rule last week. Once implemented in a few months, the rule sets the stage to explicitly close all areas to snowmobiles unless specifically designated open. In the past, it has been the opposite: generally, unless the Forest Service took specific measures to close an area to winter motorized recreation, it was considered open to any and all uses.
This translates to 80 million acres of national forests in the west that could be closed to snowmobiles after each forest adopts the rule. That would add to the 35 million acres already protected from snowmobile use—most of that in wilderness, where no mechanized uses are allowed.
The rule still has its loopholes. One is that the areas designated for snowmobile use can be huge: hundreds of thousands of acres. Another is that old Forest Service decisions on snowmobile use can get grandfathered into the rule. We’ll be watching closely to ensure these loopholes aren’t abused.
Getting this rule in place is a big achievement for us, but now the work really begins. It will take several years for every national forest across the west to implement the rule, and our Rewilding Campaign team will be right there to make sure they do it right!”
Good eagle Samaritans!
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/article/20150130/NEWS/150139927/101203/SCBULLETIN