05 December 2014
Have you Heard? Gray Wolf Confirmed in the Grand Canyon!
Before Thanksgiving, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) confirmed that the wolf-like animal seen near the entrance to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on the Kaibab plateau earlier this month is in fact a gray wolf! After conducting DNA analysis on samples of scat, wildlife biologists are definitive in their assessment that this is a female gray wolf from the Northern Rockies, who traveled over 450 miles to her new home. While gray wolves currently have federal protection under the Endangered Species Act along major dispersal routes between the northern and southern Rockies and the Grand Canyon ecoregion, this will change if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalizes its national delisting rule for gray wolves.
Idaho’s Predator Derby Permit Withdrawn on BLM Lands: After significant public opposition and in the face of legal challenges from Defenders of Wildlife and other conservation organizations, last week the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) withdrew its permit to allow an annual commercial “predator derby” to take place on millions of acres of public lands in Idaho, beginning this January. However, despite this victory, the vehement anti-wolf group behind this proposed predator derby will stop at nothing to get their killing contest approved.
Now, the group is planning to hold the predator derby on U.S. Forest Service land, specifically the Salmon-Challis National Forest just outside of Salmon, Idaho. So this week, we submitted a letter to the U.S. Forest Service (Forest Service) requesting the agency prohibit the derby from occurring on lands the agency manages. In stark contrast to BLM, the Forest Service has not sought public comment or evaluated the adverse impacts this proposed predator derby would cause. Instead, on August 19 the Forest Service notified the derby proponents by letter that no permit was needed to hold the proposed derby within Salmon-Challis National Forest! So far, we’ve received no response from the Forest Service, but well keep you informed here when we have any news.
Mexican Gray Wolves Get a Tough Break from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a final environmental impact statement for a new rule that will change the management of Mexican gray wolves. Although the new rule would allow wolves to be released in new areas of Arizona and New Mexico, and would give the wolves more room to roam, it would also make true recovery of these rare wolves impossible. Parts of the new rule would keep the wolves out of important habitats, cap the population at an artificially low level and allow more killing of the critically endangered animals. The USFWS has even said it may kill wolves that exceed the population cap. There are currently only 83 Mexican gray wolves in the wild in the southwest United States, and this rule threatens to prevent recovery for years to come.
In response, Eva Sargent, Director of Southwest Programs said: “The Service’s latest decision regarding the Mexican gray wolf takes one step forward and two steps back and will ultimately hinder the recovery of the imperiled lobos.” To move forward, this imperiled population of wolves not only needs more breeding pairs and more room, they desperately need an updated science-based recovery plan, and at least two additional core populations established in suitable habitat. This new rule drives us farther away from realizing these goals.
New Study Shows That Killing Wolves Doesn’t Reduce Wolf-Livestock Conflict, It Increases It: Even though more sustainable options exist for managing conflicts between wolves and livestock, in many places the prevailing strategy is still to kill wolves that get into trouble. But after a new analysis surfaced this week finding that lethal control doesn’t actually reduce wolf-livestock conflict, will we see a change?
A scientist out of Washington State University examined 25 years of data and found that when wolves are killed, the chance that livestock will be killed by wolves actually rises. This research further supports our longstanding argument that non- lethal tools — instead of lethal control — is a better way to manage wolves and livestock together to ensure peaceful coexistence.
source
RE: Mexican Gray Wolves Get a Tough Break . . .
ReplyDeleteBecause USFWS failure to designate either sufficient critical habitat, corridor and woefully insufficient recovery goal of 300-325 (when that # is reached, expect corrupt AZ/ NM mgmt to keep numbers at that deadly extinguishing level), YOU must comment during the open period (from the wording, it is clear that the FWS wants to do far better - BUT THEY NEED YOUR VOICE.
Below excerpt from my comments , to help you get your thinking cap on:
Although option 3, the most environmentally preferred, has a few laudable goals, the extremely minimal recovery goal of 300-325 is profoundly insufficient for a number of reasons:
1. All experience and information, along with indicators expressed by their respective wildlife agencies, suggest that NM and AZ will follow the lead of ID, MT, WY, WI, using lethal management to maintain the population total at or near that level, denying sufficient diversity through growth to develop greater heterozygosity, leading to species problems in reproduction and long-term persistence and survival.
2. Demographic stochasticity will certainly result in dangerous fluctuations of population, and decreases in individual fitness for survival and reproduction, and deadly increases in homozygosity. The necessary genetic rescue that must inevitably follow such benighted unscientific recovery goal setting, and worse, the actions of above & other states’ wildlife mgmt agencies, will at some relatively near point require fed. reestablishment of control, and costly greater attempts at further introduction, as well as stronger critical habitat corridors.
3. Also insufficient in Proposed ROD, is the failure to establish protected habitat corridors leading to Kaibab NF, and San Juan Mts/ NF. Without future gene flow through these most obvious wild areas, where the wolf can avoid deadly human activity, Allee effects will take down the population over time.
In short, extinction will result from this extremely poor choice of recovery numbers.
Repeated studies have made this clear.
1. D.H. Reed, et al.
“Estimates of minimum viable population sizes for vertebrates and factors influencing those estimates” Biol. Conserv., 113 (2003), pp. 23–34
. . . mean and median estimates of MVP were 7316 and 5816 adults, respectively. . . the lack of long-term studies for endangered species leads to widespread underestimation of extinction risk. . . conservation programs need to be designed to conserve habitat capable of supporting approximately 7000 adult vertebrates in order to ensure long-term persistence.”
2. L.W. Traill, et al.
Minimum viable population size: a meta-analysis of 30 years of published estimates; Biol. Conserv, 139 (2007), pp. 159–166
Authors: “we . . .derive . . . MVP with a median of 4169 individuals . . . We provide . . .findings . . . consistent with biological theory . . . that the MVP for most species will exceed a few thousand individuals.”
Science is in general agreement that monogamous species like Mexican Wolf, need larger populations than the norms expressed, in order to reach MVP sufficiency.
You will note in ROD, that they feel sufficiently worried about the "social carrying capacity" of AZ/N. Due, however, to the fact of AZ/NM having both over 66% support (some polling suggest higher) FOR Wolf reintro and survival, the rancher/ fantasizer clique is small.
Mexican wolf sanctuaries/captive breeders could form a reservoir for wolves involved in human property conflict:
We need to clamor for use of private/ngo capture of these, and sanctuary to protect the vital, although yet tiny, allelic variation inherent in EVERY conflict wolf.
A new study of "Effects of Wolf Mortality on Livestock Depredations" in PLOS One by
R.B. Wielgus, K.A. Peebles
December 03, 2014DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0113505
Shows that lethal control and management by hunting are wrongheaded scientifically.
Please use whatever information you can to affect the final decision - comments close December 27