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.
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A rather well kept secret (even within France) is, that France has a stable population of wolves in the “Haute Provence”, a lovely mountainous region to the north of the well known Provence of the high-society. I hope the wolves do not make it into the Pyrenaes, where hunting and poaching are more or less the same – the bears there know this very well.
I have been looking into the recolonization of wolves in france. thanks for the post.
For those of you brave enough to struggle with a rather complicated web-site and if you have some basic knowledge of the language, I recommend the web home of the French wolf friends: http://www.loup.org
(There is an english language version of the site available, exploiting the google translater tool – but that makes it even worse 🙂
Thanks Peter!
And a few short notes and news from the Wolf population in Germany: There are currently 5 established families (packs), means: 2 adults, each with pups. The total number of pubs – o better yearlings – is estimated around 20. There are always a few additional loners around, fresh over from Poland. Over the last three weeks, 3 pubs , all from the same pack, have been lost to traffic, 2 killed by cars, one by a train. The home territory of one of the packs is in danger of being eaten up by strip mining in the coming years, with adjacent territories already occupied by other packs. And, the trial against two hunters for illegal killing a wild wolf during a hunt (with a total of five gunshots!) in 2008 has been suspended. One of the culprits became seriously ill.
Thanks Peter
I just moved from the states to the UK and I have been reading up on gray wolves in Europe and other wildlife. Here is a site on the reintroduction of European Beaver to Scotland in spring 2009 http://www.scottishbeavers.org.uk
I tried http://www.loup.org with a translator called bablefish it worked well! thanks
I think that is a group who sent representatives to the Annual Wolf Conference that normally takes place each April, seems like it was 2003-?. The rep. gave a lively presentation on wolves in France and the livestick producer conflicts they deal with there. Apparently the laws favor the producers though there is a more open-minded seeming attitude for wildlife there. MAybe it was another group but I remember that Europeans have a different view; one that is less lethal than the American “let’s just kill it” model.
A few years ago Carter Niemeyer went to France as a guest of the government with the intent of training their wildlife ministry~whatever it’s called~in non-lethal management techniques. The ministry personnel then came to Idaho to see how it’s done over here. That was back when the management problems seemed to be less of a primal scream ~ like it is now. I believe that the visit was documented on film.
It’s good to know that heir message gets around.
When Carter was running things in Idaho as the representative of the USFWS, fewer livestock were killed, fewer wolves were killed and there was much less antagonism between wolf supporters and livestock interests.
It shows the difference a person can make and even more the difference moving decision making to the states made. Everything is worse now for all sides of the issue.
Salle,
I remember the presentation. If memory serves, the young woman who presented claimed that producers were reimbursed something like 6X market value for lost livestock, which created an incentive for ranchers to “lose” sheep to wolves.
JB,
I believe you’re right. She also made the point that the legislation provided payment for the “personal damage” (remorse of the producer for the loss of their animal)… She treated that issue like a silly notion, which it probably should be seen as in the eyes of the law.
Didn’t they also deal with preservation of bears?
I believe so, but don’t remember the specifics. I’ve been looking for the abstracts from that conference (I think it was 2004), but can’t seem to find them. Defenders needs to do a better job of making the information presented at the conference publicly available.
I may have the brochure from that org somewhere, but I’d have to look in my storage which isn’t a good idea right now. There’s a nasty snow storm going on and it’s all of 5F out there. I’ll see what I can find out.
Okay, my French is rusty but after looking over the site (URL provided by Peter K) is the same group who formerly went by FERUS. Browse the site and you will find what they have been up to… I didn’t see any translation options so I had to grovel about in the French version!
For those interested here a few links to European wolf organisations :
First link is to the site of the German wolf project (German language only)
http://www.wolfsregion-lausitz.de
The following links (all English language) point to wolf organisations in Poland,
http://www.wolf.most.org.pl
Portugal,
http://lobo.fc.ul.pt/
and Russia,
http://www.russianwolves.org/
All the sites are not updated very often because they are mostly maintained by students or biologists in their scarce spare time, but are nevertheless quite good to get a picture of the wolf scene here in Europe.
I always think carnivore conservation is not a local but a global issue! That´s why I sometimes cannot refrain from posting a comment on Ralph´s site :-))
Now let´s see if WordPress accepts so many links in a single post……
Ok, I think my last post with a few links to web sites of European Wolf Orgs went direct into the WordPress spam bin.
I halfway expected it. So, if anybody is indeed interested in such links please feel free to contact me by e-mail.
Peter,
It did go into spam, but I found it and pulled it out. So now your comments with the links can be read.
Thanks Ralph for even digging deep into digital garbage! Have a nice day!