wildlife
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The art of land and wildlife management has fallen into the hands of political actors who are beholden to powerful interests who only care about how much money they can squeeze out of our wildlife and public lands. When faced with making tough decisions, these professional bureaucrats have learned special skills to move up through…
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This is a short email that Brian Horejsi sent me on mountain biking and bears. It is a thoughtful review of how mountain biking can have substantial impacts on wildlife. The basic science solidly supports the general claim that bikers and bikes are displacing bears, can contribute to their habituation and are consequently adding negative…
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Readers of The Wildlife News might be interested in my new book, My Yellowstone Experience. Yellowstone is near and dear to many of our hearts here at The Wildlife News, as evidenced by the disproportionate amount of topics (and opinions) related to Yellowstone, compared to elsewhere, that are discussed on this website. My Yellowstone Experience,…
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Surprising growth in wildlife populations as land and water naturalizes, though there are some mutations- Twenty six years ago, on April 26, 1986 reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the now-defunct Soviet Union melted down and an explosion blew open the reactor. It released a cloud of radioactive materials that contaminated…
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by George Wuerthner Introduction Livestock production is a contributing factor in the decline of many western species, including birds (Wuerthner and Matteson 2002). This is not surprising given the amount of land utilized for animal agriculture, including public and private lands. Approximately 578 million out of 1.9 billion acres in the West are grassland pasture…
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Presence of wolves helps survival of pronghorn fawn, normally a major prey item for coyotes- Wolves have a complicated relationship to their prey and to competing carnivores and omnivores such as bears. Simple statements such as every animal a wolf kills is one less for a hunter are fantasy. In reality wolves can directly or…
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Understanding Montana’s Wolf Policy Decision George Wuerthner On July 12, 2012, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MDFWP) Commissioners voted 4-0 to increase wolf hunting in the state, expanding the hunting season and permitting the trapping of wolves for the first time as well. The goal is to reduce wolf numbers across the…
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Wildlife Services has high average non-lethal record for all animals, but not for large carnivores- Lately there has been a lot of media critical of USDA-Wildlife Services; often called by its critics something like “the federal government’s wildlife killers.” In an effort to mount a defense the Service has pointed out that 80% of its…