Big donations followed by big returns in policy and Utah government dollars- The Salt Lake Tribune has been following the Utah legislature’s big payout (or payback) to Don Peay and his hunting organizations. The stories presented by the Tribune are breathtaking in the showing close correspondence between him personally or his organizations giving a large contributions…
Decaying Management In America’s National Park System- Yellowstone Park is loved by millions of Americans and many more around the world. It is the original model for not just America’s National Park System, but for national parks in other countries. By “system,” it is meant the national parks are established and managed by a common…
State Agency Game Farming Is Not Compatible with Ecosystem Integrity With the delisting of wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act, management of wolves has been turned back to the individual states where wolves occur. In most of these states, we see state agencies adopting policies that treat wolves as persona no…
In their December 29th editorial in the Billings Gazette, Scott Talbott of the Wyoming Game and Fish and Harv Forsgren of the U.S. Forest Service wrote that hunting was another step towards grizzly bear recovery. To read their editorial, go to this link: Guest opinion: Hunting another step toward grizzly bear recovery. Specifically, the authors…
Current wolf hunt management by states may well end scientific study of wolf behavior in the wild- Scientists had about 17 years to study wolf behavior in the wild in the Northern Rocky mountains. Hopefully they got most of the data they wanted because the new heavy state wolf hunts coupled with lack of concern…
Washington Governor Christine Gregoire is rumored to be a front-runner for nomination as Secretary of the Interior, where she would oversee millions of acres of public land. But a livestock “pilot” program she instituted in Washington, which fast-tracked the introduction of livestock grazing on Washington Wildlife Areas free of charge to ranchers, while running roughshod…
The Wildlife News is trying something new. We read a number of interesting, wildlife related news stories each day that we don’t have time to comment on. Here is a list of those we found interesting. Some of them may come up as a separate post later. Misfires | News | Missoula Independent. An interesting story about…
The Wildlife News blog gets a disproportionate amount of comments when wolf related topics appear on a thread compared to other stories. Clearly, this illustrates society’s polarization with the wolf whereby some people love them, while others hate them – or at least seemingly so. However, for those that love them – and there are…
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.