TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – Federal officials said Friday they would try again to remove Endangered Species Act protections from gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region, where they are thriving after being threatened with extinction decades ago.
Courts have overruled several attempts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to drop wolves from the endangered list, siding with environmentalists whose lawsuits contended the predator's status remains shaky even though about 4,200 wander forests and fields of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Agency officials said their new proposal addresses concerns raised by federal judges and should survive legal challenges. They will take public comment for 60 days before making a final decision.
"Wolves in the western Great Lakes have achieved recovery," said Rowan Gould, acting director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Its action came one day after Congress voted to strip wolves of federal protection in five Northern Rockies states: Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Utah — the first time lawmakers have exempted a particular species from coverage under the 1974 law. In both regions, officials report a rising tide of frustration as packs attack livestock, hunting dogs and big game while their endangered status prohibits even wildlife managers from killing them.
If removed from the federal list, wolves would be overseen by state natural resources agencies. Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin have plans meant to keep the populations at healthy levels while allowing government agents to kill animals that can't be driven away. None would allow hunting or trapping for at least five years as now written, although the states could revise them.
"We've gone too long without that ability to manage some of these problem wolves and curtail the populations in certain areas," said Brian Roell, a Michigan Department of Natural Resources wildlife specialist. "It erodes the public support that wolves do have. In some areas it's gone close to zero."
In Michigan's far north, where the latest count totaled 557, people are taking matters into their own hands, Roell said. Ten illegally killed wolves have been found in the Upper Peninsula this year.
The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the organizations whose lawsuits have preserved the wolves' legal shield, said removing it could unravel progress toward restoring them. Thanks in part to government bounties, they had mostly disappeared from Michigan and Wisconsin and plummeted in Minnesota before protection took effect.
Despite their rapid growth, Great Lakes wolves remain vulnerable to diseases such as parvovirus and mange as well as human attacks, said Collette Adkins Giese, an attorney and biologist with the center. She noted that Wisconsin's management plan calls for a population of 350 wolves, only half the current total.
"We still might get back to a situation where they are really struggling to survive," Adkins Giese said, adding that her group would study the Fish and Wildlife Service's plan before deciding whether to fight it in court.
Rebecca Schroeder, conservation chief in Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources, said the goal of 350 was set in 1999, when biologists thought the population would level off as suitable habitat became saturated.
"Wolves have proven to be more adaptable than we thought and are using areas we didn't expect them to use," Schroeder said. Even so, the plan doesn't require pushing the number down to 350, she said.
The federal agency's new proposal is the fourth in eight years to change the wolf's legal status in the region. A federal judge overturned the most recent attempt in 2009, questioning whether it was legal to designate Great Lakes wolves as a distinct segment of the species while also dropping them from the protected list.
The Fish and Wildlife Service's new proposal includes a defense of the procedure that the agency believes courts will accept, spokeswoman Georgia Parham said.
For the first time, the proposal recognizes the existence of two species of wolves in the region: the gray wolf, the type listed under the Endangered Species Act, and the eastern wolf, which historically ranged in eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S. The proposal to remove federal protections applies to both.
Scientists have long debated whether the Great Lakes population included one or two species. Genetic analysis has led the Fish and Wildlife Service to conclude there are two, said wildlife biologist Laura Ragan of the Minneapolis office. Some individuals are hybrids.
The agency plans to study the status of the eastern wolf throughout its historical range, including the northeastern U.S. — where none are known to live at present — and Canada, where they do exist, Ragan said.
Adkins Giese said the discovery of separate species underscores the importance of retaining legal protection. Any effort to significantly reduce numbers could endanger one or the other, especially as some are interbreeding, she said.
"Wolf conservation in the Great Lakes region is far more complex than previously understood," she said.
Source
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Wolves endangered by political predators
A provision in a federal budget bill signed
into law this month takes wolves in several Northwestern states off the
Endangered Species List. Guest columnist Brenda Peterson says that
returning management of wolves back to states could have dire
consequences for habitat and other wildlife.
Special to The Times
But when Leopold watched the "fierce green fire dying" in the eyes of a female wolf he had just killed, he had a revelation: "There was something new to me in those eyes," he wrote. "After seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."
In one moment of cross-species connection, Aldo Leopold's assumptions about wolf management changed. He realized he had too narrowly focused his sights on hunting — not habitat. His worldview had been limited to the needs of one human species dominating the whole ecosystem. The dying wolf taught Leopold what we teach our children: To share. Home. Habitat.
Leopold never killed another wolf. Instead, he devoted his life to conserving this much-maligned and scapegoated species. Leopold would have celebrated the successful wolf-reintroduction programs in this country that are a model for the whole world. Farsighted and wildly popular, the wolf-reintroduction programs in Yellowstone and the northern Rockies provide more than tourism income. These top predators also restore balance to elk and deer populations, which have long overgrazed grasslands.
Wolf biologist Cristina Eisenberg at Oregon State University and author of "The Wolf's Tooth" studies the wolves in Glacier National Park. She says that since wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone, scientists have documented "rapid recovery of over-browsed aspen, willows and cottonwoods, stream bank stabilization in eroded streams, and a dramatic increase in biodiversity of songbirds."
"Wolves are keystone predators who nurture the entire ecosystem," Eisenberg explains. "If we eradicate wolves or lower their numbers, the whole system will grow impoverished and collapse."
On April 15, President Obama signed a budget bill that included a rider that removes wolves from the federal endangered species list in Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon, Idaho, Montana and north Utah.
This move turns wolf management over to the states. Because Wyoming has no federally approved wolf-management plan, wolves are still protected there.
"But wolves provide the ultimate budget cuts," Eisenberg argues. "Wolves in an ecosystem naturally restore it, thereby saving the government billions of dollars in habitat and wildlife restoration."
Within days of the wolf delisting, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter signed a bill declaring the gray wolf a "disaster emergency," giving him more authority over his own state if wolves are re-listed as endangered. According to the Los Angeles Times, "the estimated 700-plus wolves in Idaho account for nearly half of the wolf population in the region." Those numbers could be lethally managed down to 150 wolves in each state.
This is not sustainable wolf management or farsighted habitat conservation. It is a return to the disastrous policies of the past that drove the wolves to extinction, the very same policies that Aldo Leopold repented of as he watched his last wolf die.
This is just the beginning of the gutting of the Endangered Species Act, without any public hearing, scientific consultation or debate. Never before has Congress acted alone to remove an animal from the Endangered Species list. Are we really going to cede our environmental protection to tea partyers drunk on power and political gain?
Why are there no tea-party advocates for conservation, for sustainable science and habitat preservation? The tea party is always talking about protecting our own children from massive debt. But what about protecting our children from environmental degradation? What does it matter how much money they can boast they have slashed from the budget if we don't also give our children a healthy home? A habitat shared with other predators who keep the world green and balanced?
"Everybody benefits when wolves take their place again in the food chain," explains wolf biologist and ranger Rick McIntyre, who has studied wolves for decades in Yellowstone.
Seeing wild wolves as allies in our work to keep our habitat healthy is a practical vision that should carry more weight than the nonscientific deal-making in budget-cutting backrooms. Science, not politics, should guide us as we plan for our futures.
In a recent National Wildlife Federation poll, 63 percent of Americans opposed a judge's decision to remove wolves from Yellowstone and central Idaho. It is time for all of us — not only hunters, ranchers and tea partyers — to raise our voices about the future.
Usually with ESA delisting, there is a 60-day period for public comment and litigation. But in this unprecedented political, not scientific, delisting of wolves, there is no option for litigation. In a time of climate change, what does this political overreaching into science mean for other species, like the polar bear? How cynical to replace sound and sustainable science by playing political poker with other species.
We can howl to Congress and our state governments to protest this unsustainable delisting of wolves and keep them protected under the Endangered Species Act. The tea party is a young and one-dimensional movement of budget-cutting hunters. Their trigger-itch against the environment has not yet learned the lessons of shared habitat and the "green fire" that other top predators teach us. Green is so much more than the color of money — it is the radiance of a healthy, green Earth.
Brenda Peterson lives in Seattle. She covered the first wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone for The Seattle Times
Source
Friday, April 29, 2011
Image of the Day (Yesterday & Today)
Lobo oculto, a photo by danihernanz on Flickr.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyweber/5541288528/" title="Wolf in Woods by doublejwebers, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5138/5541288528_74dfe14c52.jpg" width="500" height="291" alt="Wolf in Woods"></a>
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Animals: Kinship and killing, witness the wolf
Idaho’s GOP Gov. Butch Otter, flush with withdrawal of federal protection from wolves, has just signed legislation creating a gray wolf “disaster emergency” in his state. Why the visceral hatred for canis lupus in the land of “Famous Potatoes”? “We have a biological fear of snakes and spiders, and there is some of that with wolves. They are powerful animals and they are capable of things with which we are uncomfortable, although you cannot find evidence of an attack on a human,” said Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of America. “We want to control. Remember the old adage about ‘taming’ nature? That is why we destroyed the wolf and the grizzly bear.”
Pacelle has written a bestselling book titled, “The Bond: Our Kinship With Animals.” It explores humankind’s bond with animals, animal intelligence and animals’ cognizance of human feeling. He is due in Seattle on Wednesday.
He sees an “incredible contradiction” in treatment of animals. ”Exploitation and harm” are represented by factory farms raising chicken and cattle, and puppy farms that raise (in feces and hunger) family pets.
At the same time, there is kinship and protection: The United States is home to no less than 10,000 animal protection groups. The Humane Society of the United States has 11 million members.
Butch Otter wants to kill 550 of the 700 wolves that have repopulated Idaho, but the Natural Resources Defense Council has worked two decades to reintroduce and protect wolves. “Whale Wars,” on Animal Planet, has drawn millions of viewers and made heroes of Sea Shepherd Society volunteers who obstruct Japanese whalers in the South Ocean. (The hunt was aborted this past winter, and may be stopped altogether.)
Pacelle has the credentials of a crusader. He has shooed wild buffalo back into Yellowstone National Park, as hunters and game wardens readied a slaughter if they crossed outside its boundary. He visited, in prison, NFL quarterback Michael Vick, who was serving a sentence for dog fighting and the killing of animals.
He marvels, for instance, at how clearly some pets understand their “masters.”
“Dogs are great at reading people; it goes to the bond, the connection we have,” he said. “There is even some preliminary evidence of biochemistry to the bond.” Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, suffering post traumatic stress disorder, sleep better at night when they have a dog for company, Pacelle said to support his argument.
Pacelle sees a few negatives to the bond. People make “reckless decisions,” such kids wanting a rabbit at Easter and then discovering that the animal needs care. The Great Recession has caused tension and “behavioral problems” that have caused some – not many, but some – Americans to relinquish their house pets. Shelters are crowded. “It had an impact with horses as well,” said Pacelle.
The movement toward humane treatment of animals began in the late 19th century, with extermination of the buffalo and extinction of the passenger pigeon, and what Pacelle calls “the vast liquidation of wildlife and resources.” The movement’s triumphs range from return of seals to New York Harbor … to an unprecedented concentration of Right whales (once nearly extinct) off Cape Cod … to the Washington initiative that outlawed hound-hunting of cougars and bears.''
“We’ve had continuing struggles every year in Olympia over that initiative, but we keep fighting — and we have public support,” said Pacelle.
Source
Pacelle has written a bestselling book titled, “The Bond: Our Kinship With Animals.” It explores humankind’s bond with animals, animal intelligence and animals’ cognizance of human feeling. He is due in Seattle on Wednesday.
He sees an “incredible contradiction” in treatment of animals. ”Exploitation and harm” are represented by factory farms raising chicken and cattle, and puppy farms that raise (in feces and hunger) family pets.
At the same time, there is kinship and protection: The United States is home to no less than 10,000 animal protection groups. The Humane Society of the United States has 11 million members.
Butch Otter wants to kill 550 of the 700 wolves that have repopulated Idaho, but the Natural Resources Defense Council has worked two decades to reintroduce and protect wolves. “Whale Wars,” on Animal Planet, has drawn millions of viewers and made heroes of Sea Shepherd Society volunteers who obstruct Japanese whalers in the South Ocean. (The hunt was aborted this past winter, and may be stopped altogether.)
Pacelle has the credentials of a crusader. He has shooed wild buffalo back into Yellowstone National Park, as hunters and game wardens readied a slaughter if they crossed outside its boundary. He visited, in prison, NFL quarterback Michael Vick, who was serving a sentence for dog fighting and the killing of animals.
He marvels, for instance, at how clearly some pets understand their “masters.”
“Dogs are great at reading people; it goes to the bond, the connection we have,” he said. “There is even some preliminary evidence of biochemistry to the bond.” Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, suffering post traumatic stress disorder, sleep better at night when they have a dog for company, Pacelle said to support his argument.
Pacelle sees a few negatives to the bond. People make “reckless decisions,” such kids wanting a rabbit at Easter and then discovering that the animal needs care. The Great Recession has caused tension and “behavioral problems” that have caused some – not many, but some – Americans to relinquish their house pets. Shelters are crowded. “It had an impact with horses as well,” said Pacelle.
The movement toward humane treatment of animals began in the late 19th century, with extermination of the buffalo and extinction of the passenger pigeon, and what Pacelle calls “the vast liquidation of wildlife and resources.” The movement’s triumphs range from return of seals to New York Harbor … to an unprecedented concentration of Right whales (once nearly extinct) off Cape Cod … to the Washington initiative that outlawed hound-hunting of cougars and bears.''
“We’ve had continuing struggles every year in Olympia over that initiative, but we keep fighting — and we have public support,” said Pacelle.
Source
A Montana Perspective on the Wolf Situation
Eyes of the nation will be on Idaho, Montana wolf managers
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
A major new chapter is beginning in the Northern Rockies wolf saga.By summer, the gray wolf will again be taken off the Endangered Species list in Montana and Idaho, the result of Congress attaching a rider to budget legislation directing the Secretary of Interior to remove protections in these two states and parts of Utah, Oregon and Washington.
Since wolves were restored to Greater Yellowstone and central Idaho's wilds 16 years ago, Montana and Idaho have insisted they can manage them. Now both will have the opportunity to show the nation they can ensure healthy, enduring populations for the long term. Wyoming, where wolves remain protected under the ESA, will not be allowed to follow the examples of Montana and Idaho until it produces a viable management plan.
GYC will closely monitor state management. We will work with agencies and local stakeholders to make sure wolves are managed like other wildlife. This includes fair-chase, regulated hunting as an important management tool. Likely starting this fall, hunters will be able to legally harvest wolves in the two states. If fair-chase hunting is conducted with a full component of sound science and public involvement, we believe wolves will continue to fill their ecological niche on the landscape in both states.
What has often been lost in the heated controversy over state vs. federal management is the fact that wolf recovery in Greater Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies is an incredible success story - perhaps the most successful restoration of a species in America's 100-year effort to improve wildlife management.
Twenty years ago, no wolves existed in Greater Yellowstone. Today, almost 1,700 roam the Northern Rockies - 500 in Greater Yellowstone alone - and ecological balance is being restored to our wildest landscapes through the presence of wolves and their interactions with other animals.
Along the way, some communities near Yellowstone National Park have learned how to economically benefit. Studies show wolf-watchers add $35.5 million annually to their coffers from increased tourism.
At the same time, wolves have had a negative impact on some ranching and farming families due to predation of livestock and pets. In some valleys, wolves also have contributed to changes in distribution and populations of elk and deer. This, in turn, has angered hunters who treasure the presence of large herds for sport and food.
Addressing these conflicts - which are real and important - will require the entire wildlife-management toolbox, from research on populations, to monitoring for the presence of wolves, to reducing livestock conflicts using non-lethal techniques, to fair-chase hunting, and to lethal control by wildlife managers responding to cattle and sheep predation. We believe wolves will be resilient and adaptable, even in the face of intervention by agencies to reduce numbers through hunting or lethal-control methods.
We've encouraged managing for 1,200-1,500 wolves across the Northern Rockies, and with delisting the three states are committed to 1,100. We intend to hold them to that.
If the total population does drop drastically below these levels, the ESA will almost certainly be used to return numbers to a sustainable population. And most residents - GYC and its members included - don't want to see that happen again.
GYC has for years strived to find the middle ground on wolf management, to move beyond ongoing conflicts by using science-based management to monitor the impacts of wolves and to ensure public understanding of the vital role these animals have upon the regional landscape.
We are committed to working with state agencies, ranchers and the sporting community in the region to limit conflicts and ensure that future generations will have the opportunity to hear the magic of a wolf howl across the landscape.
Jeff Welsch is communications director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in Bozeman.
Source
Bears butting in on Yellowstone wolf kills
Battle of carnivores ultimately has little effect on population.
By Cory Hatch, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
April 27, 2011
Wolves and bears in Yellowstone National Park squabble over elk carcasses, but the two species have little impact on each other’s overall population, a park biologist said last week. Park wolf biologist Doug Smith outlined research and observation regarding the interaction of the two species in front of a group of bear managers who met at Spring Creek Ranch last week. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee and the Yellowstone Ecosystem Subcommittee of federal and state land and wildlife officials provide oversight for grizzly bear management in the ecosystem.
“When you see wolves and bears next to each other, 95 percent of the time there’s something dead that they’re both feeding on,” Smith said. “Typically what happens is wolves kill it, and bears take it.”
“Bears generally will find and take a carcass,” Smith said. “It’s not a matter of if, but when.”
During confrontations between wolves and bears, especially over food, bears in Yellowstone win roughly 80 percent of the time, Smith said. In other places such as Banff National Park in Canada, bears win a carcass about 50 percent of the time. The reason for the discrepancy is unclear, Smith said.
That doesn’t mean wolves give up on what’s often their own hard-earned kill.
Opportunistic grizzlies
“Wolves will harass bears because they’re much quicker,” Smith said. “Bears are more powerful.”It’s usually male grizzly bears that will claim a carcass from wolves. Researchers have documented up to 12, and perhaps as many as 20, grizzly bears on a single kill, with wolves typically hanging around the periphery as “bystanders,” Smith said.
Grizzlies tend to take advantage of wolf-killed carcasses and other carcasses during poor whitebark pine seed crop years, according to data. Bears are found on wolf kills during August, September and October more often on bad whitebark years than during good years.
More work is needed to discern whether those data are significant, Smith said. Whitebark pine nuts are an important fall grizzly food, and the high-elevation tree is under threat from global warming, beetles and blister rust.
Smith’s report on wolf-grizzly interactions comes as the wolf population has taken a 60 percent plunge in the park’s northern range, echoing a similar decline in the region’s elk herd, Smith said. “We peaked ... and now we’re going down,” he said. “Wolves are adjusting to their food base.”
When wolves were first brought back to Yellowstone starting in 1995, pack sizes were generally large and wolves had plenty to eat. More recently, wolf packs have been documented fighting and even killing each other for the best territories.
Behavior varies with habitat
Smith showed one photo of a wolf that appeared to have starved to death. Back in the early days of the wolf recovery, “it was unheard of to have a wolf that died of starvation,” Smith said. Researchers have found some wolf carcasses have had low fat content in their bone marrow, which can be a sign malnutrition, Smith said. Diseases such as mange and distemper also have impacted the park’s wolf population.On the other hand, grizzly bears appear to have little impact on the wolf population, and vice versa, Smith said. “There’s no relationship at all,” he said. “These species have coexisted for a long time.” Researchers have documented four grizzly cubs that were killed by wolves, Smith said. Unlike in the Yukon, where grizzlies have been know to dig out wolf dens, in Yellowstone that behavior is thus far unrecorded.
“We’ve never seen a bear dig a den out,” Smith said.
“Wolves have very different behavior around a kill compared to a den,” he said. “They kind of act like a mosquito on the bear. I’ve seen wolves biting bears on the butt ... harassing them away from the den.”
As for the decline in Yellowstone’s northern range elk herd, Smith said the answer is complicated. Drought has likely caused some of the decline, and predators certainly play a role. “When you have this many carnivores, you probably can’t expect to have as many prey as you did in a carnivore-free system,” he said.
Still, this regulation of the elk population by grizzly bears and wolves could be a good thing. Instead of a boom-and-bust cycle, where the elk population increases then declines dramatically in the absence of predators, wolves and grizzlies might cause a smoothing effect on elk fluctuations. “Wolves could be a buffer against climate change because of that smoothing effect,” Smith said.
Source
Monday, April 25, 2011
Idaho and Montana prepare for wolf hunts
A congressional budget bill rider takes wolves off the endangered species list in the two states. Hunters are happy, but wildlife advocates are outraged.
 A wolf howls in Idaho's White Cloud Mountains. A week after Congress quietly passed a budget rider requiring wolves to be removed from the endangered species list in Idaho and Montana, state officials are preparing to draw up plans for new wolf hunts. (Issac Babcock / For The Times) |
Reporting from Stanley, Idaho—
It got so that Gillett couldn't stand to see the spindly elk calves fall into the wolves' hungry embrace — not when hunting elk has been part of his livelihood for much of his life. He'd get screaming mad at wolf advocates who came to watch in wonder as the packs executed their skillful and deadly dances around their prey.
"When I see a cow elk with her guts hanging out, and a little calf that's been hamstrung — I know I'm on the right side. No question about it," Gillett said. "These Canadian wolves are the most cruel, vicious predators in North America."
Now the days of talking compromise are over, he said. "We're killing 'em."
A week after Congress quietly passed a budget rider requiring wolves to be removed from the endangered species list in Idaho and Montana, state officials are preparing to draw up plans for new wolf hunts.
Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter, a Republican, just signed an emergency law authorizing him to declare a wolf "disaster." Gillett and others hope that is a prelude to county sheriffs setting up posses to take out wolf packs that have fed on dwindling elk herds.
There has perhaps been no more contentious issue in the modern West than the federal government's reintroduction of wolves 16 years ago into the northern Rockies. Their number has grown to at least 1,700 and sparked fiercely competing narratives of the relationship between ranchers, hunters, wildlife and wilderness.
This month, years of litigation and tense political standoffs concluded in a flash, with a little-discussed rider attached to the must-pass federal budget bill by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho).
The law requires the Interior Department within 60 days to remove northern Rockies wolves from the endangered species list everywhere but Wyoming, where negotiations continue, and specifically prevents the courts from intervening.
Though conservation groups launched a desperate battle to defeat the measure, "it took everybody a while to realize just how little support wolves had in Congress," said Louisa Willcox, a Natural Resources Defense Council wildlife advocate in Montana.
Idaho officials said they had no immediate plans to exercise the emergency declaration. They said they would probably wait for an organized hunting season similar to one in 2010, when the federal Endangered Species Act designation was briefly lifted and 188 wolves in Idaho were shot by hunters.
But wolf advocates fear that the congressional green light will result in a virtual open season on wolves in Idaho that could kill so many that the animals — whose population in the state declined 19% last year to 700 even under federal protection — may ultimately be thrown back into danger of extinction.
"It's going to be ugly. They're talking about trapping, baiting, snaring, electronic calls," said Lynne Stone, a representative of the Boulder-White Clouds Council, a wilderness advocacy group in Ketchum. "I'm trying to steel myself for it, figure out how I'm going to handle it. But I'm sitting here feeling like I'm living in a nightmare."
Stone has spent years documenting the movements of wolves in the nearby Sawtooth Wilderness and the mountains around Sun Valley. But these days, there isn't much to see. The Idaho hunt in 2010, combined with road kill and a shooting by federal Wildlife Services agents, wiped out most of the Phantom Hill pack near Ketchum.
Conflicts with ranchers near Stanley had prompted federal agents to take out many of the 13 wolves in the Soda Butte pack there the previous fall, and after hunters shot three more, only one Soda Butte wolf remained. "He's still up there," Stone said.
She has become much more wary about driving out to Stanley, where she once lived. Gillett, who leads a group popularly known as the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition, was charged with assault in 2008 when he was accused of shoving Stone and grabbing her camera. The case ended in a hung jury.
"We're hoping people can see what kind of circus is going on here," said Garrick Dutcher, spokesman for Living With Wolves, a documentary film project that captured the rituals and habits of a pack of wolves in the Sawtooth Wilderness. "I'm not aware of any time when an animal was a cause for a state emergency disaster declaration. I mean, that's when the National Guard gets called in, right? It's really just a call to arms, a rallying cry, for wolf haters."
Yet many Idaho residents say elk in Idaho — a mainstay of the hunting economy — are down 20%. Hunters booking at Gillett's cabins are a fraction of what they once were. Many say it's easier to admire wolves when they aren't stealing through your pastures and driveways at night.
Karen Calisterio told a state Senate committee considering the wolf emergency law this month that she was approached in November in her driveway in the northern town of Tensed by four large wolves. "For 18 long, horrifying minutes, I was trapped," she said. "They had plenty of open space to run into in all directions, and yet they kept advancing on me as I was screaming into my cellphone."
That Idaho and Montana will kill wolves later this year appears beyond doubt. The question is how many. That will be determined by state wildlife managers in the coming months.
Conservationists have said there are barely enough wolves now to ensure their survival.
Gillett makes no bones about how many he wants here. "Zero," he said.
Source
Dogs Prove Evolution
Dogs provide an interesting proof of evolution. Consider the astonishing variety of different dog breeds. There is the tiny Chihuahua, about six inches tall and weighing under six pounds. And other dogs are enormous, with the Irish wolfhound rising above a person when on his hind legs, and the Saint Bernard weighing over two hundred pounds. Some dogs are extremely intelligent, including the border collie, retriever, poodle and German shepherd. These dogs learn new commands with ease, and can perform complicated tasks.
Other dogs, however, seems very dimwitted, often requiring hundreds of repetitions to learn, and even then usually failing to obey a command. There is such an incredible assortment of different dogs that it is easy to forget that they are all the same species, Canis lupus familiaris. This means that even a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard (assuming that the obvious physical challenges could be overcome) could mate and produce live and fertile offspring.
So where did dogs come from? Darwin thought they might come from multiple sources, including the wolf, jackal and coyote, thereby in part explaining their diversity. The DNA evidence, however, shows that they are all derived from the wolf. DNA from all dogs is over 99% identical to that of a wolf, while the wolf and coyote DNAs, for example, are over 4% different from each other. This means, surprisingly, that all of the diversity of dog types in the world today came from a single source, the wolf.
How did the wolf get transformed into a woof? The precise order of events is a matter of conjecture, but it probably began when an abandoned litter was taken in and nursed by people. The DNA evidence, which shows a strong similarity for all dogs, suggests that there might have only been only a few such domestication events. These early wolf dogs would be subjected to what is called artificial selection.
In the wild natural selection is at work with the strongest, fastest and smartest wolves surviving better to make more wolves. But once under the care of people survival depends on a new set of rules. For example, animals that liked to bite people probably did not fare well. But dogs are natural hunters and could help in the search for food. They also could provide an early warning system, barking when unwelcome visitors approach. So people friendly watchdogs, with their heightened senses of hearing and smell, would be very useful to early humans.
People have selected dogs for a variety of features, including hunting ability, companionship, intelligence, herding ability, and looks. Interestingly, there are over four hundred dog breeds today, and most of them were developed in just the last 150 years. This shows a remarkably rapid evolution of a great number of different dog breeds. Most of these breeds were made by first taking two very different existing dog breeds and crossing them. This maximizes genetic diversity in the offspring.
Then there is a systematic selection, choosing the pick of the litter, those animals with the desired characteristics, and interbreeding them to make the next generation. The continued brother-sister matings coupled with continued selection rapidly results in a new breed of dog with a new set of characteristics. The new breed is genetically pure, because the repeated inbreeding removes genetic diversity. And the new dog can have a very distinctive set of features because of the artificial systematic selection for those very features. The Doberman pinscher, the Australian cattle dog, and the whippet were all developed in this manner.
It is remarkable to consider that the wolf had enough genetic diversity in its DNA to give rise to all of the dog breeds we see today. Wolves all look pretty much alike, and you’d think that if you keep breeding wolves you’d just get more wolves. Yet there are actually millions of base differences in the DNAs of different wolves, among the billions of bases total. This is clearly sufficient diversity to produce progeny with quite distinct traits when the power of artificial selection is applied over many generations.
The dog story is an interesting demonstration of evolution at work. In an extremely short period of time, in evolutionary terms, the wolf evolved into the dog, including all of the great variety of dog types we have today. This is one evolutionary event that was not only watched by man, but indeed was driven by man. It is but one example of the many domestic animals and plants that illustrate the incredible power of artificial selection.
Darwin proposed that given enough time the forces of natural selection could change the traits of species. The neck of the giraffe would get longer, to reach more vegetation, the gazelle could get faster, to better escape, and the cheetah could get faster, to better catch the gazelle.
The artificial selection that drove the evolution of dogs is simply natural selection on steroids. It proves the principle, and shows without a doubt that evolution is true.
About the author. Steven Potter, PhD, is a Professor of Pediatrics, in the Division of Developmental Biology, at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati. He has authored Designer Genes: A New Era in the Evolution of Man, published by Random House and available on Amazon.com. He has also written over one hundred science papers and co-authored the third edition of the medical school textbook, Larsen’s Human Embryology.
Source
Other dogs, however, seems very dimwitted, often requiring hundreds of repetitions to learn, and even then usually failing to obey a command. There is such an incredible assortment of different dogs that it is easy to forget that they are all the same species, Canis lupus familiaris. This means that even a Chihuahua and a Saint Bernard (assuming that the obvious physical challenges could be overcome) could mate and produce live and fertile offspring.
So where did dogs come from? Darwin thought they might come from multiple sources, including the wolf, jackal and coyote, thereby in part explaining their diversity. The DNA evidence, however, shows that they are all derived from the wolf. DNA from all dogs is over 99% identical to that of a wolf, while the wolf and coyote DNAs, for example, are over 4% different from each other. This means, surprisingly, that all of the diversity of dog types in the world today came from a single source, the wolf.
How did the wolf get transformed into a woof? The precise order of events is a matter of conjecture, but it probably began when an abandoned litter was taken in and nursed by people. The DNA evidence, which shows a strong similarity for all dogs, suggests that there might have only been only a few such domestication events. These early wolf dogs would be subjected to what is called artificial selection.
In the wild natural selection is at work with the strongest, fastest and smartest wolves surviving better to make more wolves. But once under the care of people survival depends on a new set of rules. For example, animals that liked to bite people probably did not fare well. But dogs are natural hunters and could help in the search for food. They also could provide an early warning system, barking when unwelcome visitors approach. So people friendly watchdogs, with their heightened senses of hearing and smell, would be very useful to early humans.
People have selected dogs for a variety of features, including hunting ability, companionship, intelligence, herding ability, and looks. Interestingly, there are over four hundred dog breeds today, and most of them were developed in just the last 150 years. This shows a remarkably rapid evolution of a great number of different dog breeds. Most of these breeds were made by first taking two very different existing dog breeds and crossing them. This maximizes genetic diversity in the offspring.
Then there is a systematic selection, choosing the pick of the litter, those animals with the desired characteristics, and interbreeding them to make the next generation. The continued brother-sister matings coupled with continued selection rapidly results in a new breed of dog with a new set of characteristics. The new breed is genetically pure, because the repeated inbreeding removes genetic diversity. And the new dog can have a very distinctive set of features because of the artificial systematic selection for those very features. The Doberman pinscher, the Australian cattle dog, and the whippet were all developed in this manner.
It is remarkable to consider that the wolf had enough genetic diversity in its DNA to give rise to all of the dog breeds we see today. Wolves all look pretty much alike, and you’d think that if you keep breeding wolves you’d just get more wolves. Yet there are actually millions of base differences in the DNAs of different wolves, among the billions of bases total. This is clearly sufficient diversity to produce progeny with quite distinct traits when the power of artificial selection is applied over many generations.
The dog story is an interesting demonstration of evolution at work. In an extremely short period of time, in evolutionary terms, the wolf evolved into the dog, including all of the great variety of dog types we have today. This is one evolutionary event that was not only watched by man, but indeed was driven by man. It is but one example of the many domestic animals and plants that illustrate the incredible power of artificial selection.
Darwin proposed that given enough time the forces of natural selection could change the traits of species. The neck of the giraffe would get longer, to reach more vegetation, the gazelle could get faster, to better escape, and the cheetah could get faster, to better catch the gazelle.
The artificial selection that drove the evolution of dogs is simply natural selection on steroids. It proves the principle, and shows without a doubt that evolution is true.
About the author. Steven Potter, PhD, is a Professor of Pediatrics, in the Division of Developmental Biology, at Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati. He has authored Designer Genes: A New Era in the Evolution of Man, published by Random House and available on Amazon.com. He has also written over one hundred science papers and co-authored the third edition of the medical school textbook, Larsen’s Human Embryology.
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Sunday, April 24, 2011
What the federal delisting for wolves means for Oregon's packs, ranchers
Saturday, April 23, 2011
The move, the first time Congress has taken a species off the endangered list by legislative fiat, could lead to regulated hunts for the predators this fall in Idaho and Montana.
But the wolf populations are too small in Oregon, eastern Washington and northcentral Utah for a wolf hunting season, wildlife officials and environmentalists say.
Wolves in Oregon will remain under the protective umbrella of the state's Endangered Species Act and the Oregon Wolf Plan, which prohibit hunting and carry stiff penalties for shooting a wolf.
Federal officials say 1,651 wolves in 244 packs with 111 breeding pairs are scattered across the five states.
In the Legislature
The Oregon Legislature is entering the fray with a series of wolf bills:
-- State representatives approved a measure Thursday, House Bill 3562, to allow people to kill wolves if they threaten the lives of humans. It now goes to the Senate.
-- The Legislature also is pondering other bills proposing a variety of new wolf management options: a process to pay ranchers for cattle killed by wolves; ratcheting back the Oregon Wolf Plan's restoration goal of four breeding pairs for three consecutive years; and, perhaps most controversial, authority for people to shoot wolves that stray within 500 feet of a home or attack dogs and livestock.
-- The bills were proposed before the federal delisting, and whether they would supersede the Oregon Wolf Plan and state Endangered Species Act might end up in court.
But people also have reported tracking three wolves along the Walla Walla River near Pendleton, said Russ Morgan, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife wolf specialist. Others have reported spotting wolves in the Cascade Range, northern Grant County, near La Grande and Elgin in Union County, and close to Jordan Valley in Malheur County.
Wolf numbers in Oregon aren't expected to grow as swiftly as in Idaho, where the population ballooned in 10 years from 35 wolves to 750 by 2006, said John Stephenson, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman in La Grande.
Montana's wolf population, in contrast, grew from two wolves in 1981 to a mere 74 in 1999. That slow growth happened, in part, because federal predator control programs killed many Montana wolves that preyed on livestock, Stephenson said.
"Generally, we think of eastern Oregon as more like Montana than Idaho" in habitat and wolf growth, Stephenson said.
Last year, federal hunters removed 141 Montana wolves and 78 Idaho wolves, and Idaho sport hunters killed 48. Federal hunters removed only a single wolf in Utah for killing livestock, and none in either Oregon or Washington.
Environmentalists have decried what Congress did: tacking on the wolf provision to a federal budget bill that had to pass to avert a government shutdown this month.
It opens the door for hunting seasons on wolves in states with big populations of the animals, said Josh Laughlin, spokesman for Cascadia Wildlands in Eugene. "Hundreds of wolves will be killed, I can all but guarantee it," he said.
Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter, for example, just signed a bill into law that will allow him to declare a wolf disaster emergency and recruit law enforcement to reduce his state's wolf population.
"Really, this is Pandora's box," said Suzanne Stone, spokeswoman for the 530,000-member Defenders of Wildlife in Boise. She said the congressional action bodes ill for other species.
"Regardless of how people feel about wolves, Americans at large are losing," she said.
And though many cattle producers fear the wolf's taste for their livestock, not all are hailing the switch to state regulation.
Scott Shear runs an 800-cow spread near Joseph in the middle of what local ranchers call Oregon's "wolf highway." Wolves and ranching aren't compatible, he said, but he has more confidence that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will act decisively when livestock-killing wolves need removal than in the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Wallowa County rancher Scott Shear talks about the gray wolves that have moved into northeastern Oregon. He sometimes wakes to their mournful howls and sees them watching his Black Angus herd. The red flags behind him are "fladry", and their flapping, combined with a mild electric shock, is designed to discourage wolves from entering his pasture during the calving season. Ranchers are bracing for a springtime upswing in wolf attacks as the calving season ends and they release their herds onto remote pastures. Attacks escalated sharply last May, costing ranchers near Joseph at least nine calves.
"Everybody is pretty nervous about it," said cattleman Rod Childers of Enterprise. "Wolves are hunting in one group right here east of the valley."
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Montana's 'wolf man'
Photo courtesy of Ed Bangs- Ed Bangs and his daughters Tara, 6, and Erin, 3, trapped and radio-collared a wolf for research on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska in 1988, a month before he came to Montana.They caught two wolves that day.
Photo courtesy of Ed Bangs- Ed Bangs is pictured with a wolf he darted for immobilization in Yellowstone Park in 2002 that he shot from out of the helicopter door. Once the animals were sedated he would put radio collars on them for research.
Eliza Wiley Independent Record - U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services wolf recovery coordinator, Ed Bangs, will be retiring from his post after 23 years. Bangs has been at the fore front of the wolf discusssions writing the original Environmental Impact Study and putting together multi-agency teams in an effort to protect the wolf.
Montana's 'wolf man'
Independent Record
Ed Bangs, who for 23 years led the effort to reintroduce and recover healthy wolf populations in the northern Rocky Mountains, is retiring from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in June.
As the federal agency’s wolf recovery coordinator, Bangs was the face of the polarizing wolf reintroduction, conducting thousands of international, national, state and local interviews and holding hundreds of highly charged meetings, all to explain the effort as part of a massive public outreach effort. At various times, depending on the stage of the reintroduction, he was heralded as a hero while simultaneously being denounced as a wolf lover or hater, depending on people’s perspective.
Yet somehow he managed to charm many on both sides of the wolf wars, with a mix of humor tinged with a reputation for fairness.
“He would get in front of a group trying to ridicule and criticize him, and Ed would beat them to the punch,” recalled Carter Niemeyer, a former Wildlife Services supervisor who worked closely with Bangs for decades. “One time, we were in Grangeville, Idaho, in front of a hostile crowd, with one guy leading the charge. He said ‘Tell me what the hell good the blankedly-blank wolves ever did.’ Ed chimed up and said ‘They gave me this cushy job’ and the whole audience cracked up. The man got up and left because he was so angry.
“He would win the crowd over, because they thought he was kind of funny, and that would get things going.”
Suzanne Stone with the environmental group Defenders of Wildlife also worked with Bangs on the wolf reintroduction, and said he had a huge impact on the effort, writing the environmental impact statement — which drew more than 180,000 comments from throughout the world — and fighting for federal funding.
“He set the course,” Stone said. “He was willing to work with us, but not much would deter him from the course he had in mind.”
Jay Bodner with the Montana Stockgrowers Association noted that Bangs always brought a lot of professionalism to the wolf reintroduction debate and never shied away from controversial issues.
“He didn’t take things personally, and when he provided his point of view he was all right when folks disagreed with him,” Bodner said. “You might not agree with everything he said, but he knew how to move discussions forward.
“He was able to reach a standpoint where people respected him. He would make the call and make it fairly quickly to either remove problem packs or to do nothing.”
Bangs laughs at people’s impression of him, noting that “wilderness groups loved me” when he was reintroducing the wolves, and the ranchers hated him. That flipped once he decided the science showed that wolf populations had recovered enough to take them off the list of animals protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.
“Now (environmentalists) say I’m in the ranchers’ pocket and the ranchers say I’m not such a bad guy,” he joked.
He came to head the gray wolf reintroduction in a roundabout way. Bangs grew up in Ventura, Calif., and worked through high school and college as a chemical plant laborer, a cattle ranch/feedlot hand and an oil field roughneck. He also loved to hunt and fish.
“I was going to be a welder, but my dad said that by god, I was going to be a college-educated welder,” Bangs said. “So I went to a junior college to be a welder, took some biology classes and said, ‘You mean you’ll pay me to walk in the woods and hunt and fish?’”
After earning a degree in game management from Utah State University, he got a job at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge as a seasonal biological technician in 1975.
“The reason they hired me was they had a new garbage truck with hydraulics, and I was the only guy who applied for the job who knew how to work those,” Bangs said. “So they said I was going to do biological studies, but my first job was picking up garbage in the campground. The refuge was a Quonset hut where we’d get snowed in some days and have to take a snowmobile to work. It was a great life.”
He helped reintroduce caribou in Alaska, studied the effects of oil and gas development on wintering moose and worked on lynx conservation and management, and recalls jumping from helicopters in the morning to tag brown bears, and return to town in time for breakfast. It was a dream job, but when he heard about a new position being created to help states, the federal government, tribes, ranchers and others figure out how to deal with what seemed to be a growing population of gray wolves in northwestern Montana, he was intrigued.
At that time, gray wolves were listed as an endangered species, and only about 10 wolves were known to live in the Glacier National Park area in the Northern Rockies. Then wolves started killing livestock in 1987, and no one knew how to handle it. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was looking for someone to figure out how to deal with depredations and to do research, outreach and education, which was right up Bangs’ alley. He applied, two days before the application deadline, and changed the course of his life.
Around that time, Carolyn Sime was in Kalispell, doing a study on radio-collared deer for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. Bangs, the USFWS service project leader for wolf recovery, approached the department and proposed a swap: he would help find federal funding if they would help monitor radio-collared wolves.
“So I started flying to check out the Murphy Pack and any other collared wolves in the mid- to late-1990s,” Sime said. “What struck me then, and it’s been that way throughout Ed’s tenure, is his amazing ability to engage other people, both professionally and personally.”
She eventually became Montana’s wolf management coordinator until the position recently was discontinued.
“He always pushed us to really make data and science the basis of the state plan, and that set us up to succeed,” Sime said. “It was a real privilege and honor to work with him. I’ve learned so much and it’s been a priceless experience.”
Mike Jimenez, who is now in charge of Wyoming’s wolf recovery program, also worked with Bangs in the early years, and said he created the blueprint for bringing together people with a wide range of interests to work out the issues.
“He set the template for what came later on, creating a tightly knit organization, with a general policy for interaction on the ground with everybody,” Jimenez said.
Bangs led the team that captured wolves in Canada and released them, in the mid-1990s, in Yellowstone National Park. Niemeyer recalls how Bangs would fend off the bureaucrats and deal with all the “unpleasantries” in the pre-introduction arena.
“I consider him to be the guy who made it happen,” said Niemeyer, who recently released a book called “Wolfer” about his experiences. “I admired Ed for his tenacity in dealing with bureaucrats and politics. I don’t think anybody wanted that part of the job.”
Bangs said he felt a personal responsibility to reduce conflict and damage caused by wolves, but believes that their reintroduction to the landscape was the correct route to take. He jokes that wolves are actually kind of boring — calling them “just big dogs” that have been studied to death — but that people are fascinating, which is one reason he didn’t hesitate when walking into rooms filled with angry people.
“I’m a big believer in interaction with the public, so I made a special effort to reach out to hunting groups, livestock groups, environmental groups; I’ve probably given 500 presentations myself,” Bangs said. “I’ve met some really interesting people. You have to face people and hear their concerns firsthand to help resolve the conflicts.”
He notes that one of the biggest issues he initially faced was the sense from the public that the wolf reintroduction in the Rockies was forced on people here by bureaucrats back East. So he empowered his people to make decisions on the spot regarding how to handle problem wolves, and had few reservations about shooting those that preyed on livestock repeatedly. Those same practices continue today.
“The first thing we did was try to make it a local person with faces that they could call, and the field person had full authority to deal with the problem right here and right now,” Bangs said. “I think that helped recover wolves while it minimized the damage.”
Bangs said another important part of his job was to keep science at the forefront of the emotionally charged political debate and keep the reintroduction and recovery effort moving forward. With the removal of wolves from the list of endangered species in Montana and Wyoming this week by an act of Congress, Bangs said he feels he’s successfully completed his job.
“The bottom line is science is being followed,” Bangs said recently, sitting behind his desk still covered with scientific journals, studies and reports, many of which he’s authored, and walls dotted with awards and art. “The heavy lifting is over, and that’s cool. My upbringing was to complete your job; when we started there were 10 wolves near Glacier. Now there’s 1,700 in six states and they’re being delisted. That’s pretty rewarding.”
As he prepares to walk away from his life’s work, Bangs knows that he’ll always carry it with him, in a sense. In an e-mail, he explained a statement posted on his office wall from someone saying how wolf scars are sexy — which, in his classic self-deprecating manner, the bachelor noted that apparently they aren’t.
Bangs said the statement was given to him as a joke after he was bitten on the wrist by a wolf in Wyoming. One canine tooth went through his wrist and he had a few crush marks, but luckily it didn’t break his arm. He finished the day’s work before getting it checked out in the emergency room.
“I did learn a valuable lesson (that) next time someone asks you to hold a wolf down for them ask if it is immobilized,” Bangs wrote. “But I am an especially fun date during full moons!”
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Latest Studies On Yellowstone National Park's Wolf Packs Shows Stable Population
Latest research on Yellowstone National Park's wolf packs shows that the largest packs, and some of the largest wolves, roam the interior of the 2.2-million park. Photos courtesy of Doug Smith, Yellowstone Wolf Project director.
You are the middle of your annual winter research—what are you finding initially?
The wolf population is pretty stable compared to last year. We had 94 wolves in the northern range in 2007, but now we have 38. We saw a big drop for the two consecutive years prior, but essentially no change in the population this year.
Do you think the population has stabilized?
To a degree, and I guess the message from this trend is “less is more.” The wolves for many years overshot the capacity of the ecosystem, and now we are seeing a balance—a balance of all parts not just wolves. When wolves weren’t in Yellowstone the system was out of whack because there were tons of elk and tons of coyotes and other things suffered as a result. Now there’s greater balance among both plant and animal species.
I imagine this is more what Yellowstone was like before it got changed because of European humans. From research we know when you have a full suite of carnivores, you have lower densities of the main prey species, but you also have really resplendent and luxurious vegetation. Because without predators the herbivores are mowing it all down. In the lower 48 we eradicated wolves before we knew what they did, so we have these erupting game populations that exceed what a healthy ecosystem can sustain.
Many have been critical of the wolves for reducing the elk population and don’t see a decrease in elk as a positive development.
It’s incredibly painful dealing with people who don’t like wolves and say they have devastated the elk herd. And it’s difficult to talk to people who just want Yellowstone to be an elk farm. Yes, with carnivores you have fewer animals to hunt. But this is the way it was in Yellowstone before we interfered and we need to know what it was really like and be honest about it. I’m not saying I am in favor of predators being everywhere, but what’s happening here is a system being restored to balance.
When we start killing predators because we want more animals to hunt, it becomes agriculture. It’s like spraying weeds. Is that what we want the forests and the landscapes of the West to be, a big farming operation? An author I read recently said when wolves go, wilderness goes and I agree. I don’t want the world to be so highly manipulated that we have no place where wild nature can just be.
I hunted elk for four days this year and I didn’t get one and I am not disappointed. So I had four great days in the wilderness hunting and I did not take a shot. And I will do it again next year and if I don’t get one I am okay with that. I don’t live on elk. It’s a recreational pursuit. I don’t need to kill an elk to feed my family and I would say there are very few people who do.
Do you think wolves are the only reason the elk herd in Yellowstone has decreased?
Elk have come down for many reasons, wolves being just one of them. Yellowstone is a multi-carnivore system, one of the most beautiful and rich in North America. You go to Alaska and northern Canada you don’t have the carnivore richness you have here in the park with cougars and bears. Cougars have a higher per capita kill rate than wolves, and bears take a ton of calves. Also contributing toward the decline is that the state was managing for fewer elk. They were shooting cows like there was no tomorrow.
The third reason for the decrease that’s a harder thing to put our finger on is climate change. I think climate change makes elk more vulnerable to wolf attack.
Can you expand on this—the connection between climate change and elk predation by wolves?
The best answer to this question—it’s all changing here because of climate. The landscape is changing and it’s affecting elk and wolves are responding.
This is evolving research, but there is an interesting study going on east of the park by a graduate student at the University of Wyoming. We’re looking at the same trends, but we’re a little bit behind him. What we are both finding is that the annual “green-up” [when snowmelt gives way to vegetation] is starting earlier and it’s also burning up the mountainside a lot quicker.
The link to elk is this—when new vegetation is growing it’s the most nutritious for elk. At the start of spring elk are existing on fumes. To restore their fat they need quality vegetation for a sustained period. In the past the green-up would extend until August and the elk had a lengthy period to restore their condition. Now that time period is being reduced by up to 40 percent.
Winter is just tough for an elk. I sometimes wonder why evolution made it so tough—it’s bizarre. Elk head into winter with a fat content that will vary from 10 to 20 percent. If it’s less than 10 percent they can’t even conceive a pregnancy and they probably are not going to make it through the winter. If they are at 20 percent they will probably burn through all of that fat during a long winter like this one. They are eating, but it’s maintenance eating—to survive they are really relying on reduced activity and fat reserves. And if they have a calf on top of that, their energy reserves really get depleted, and it takes a long time to build back up.
So global warming is altering this green up, and they can’t recharge as well. Now this is all in the hazy phase of research, but what they are finding east of the park is the elk are adapting by not reproducing annually. Typically older elk would switch off, but 90 to 95 percent of younger elk in the past reproduced every year. Now we are seeing rates of only 60 percent of young migratory elk being pregnant.
Is there a difference in the findings with migratory versus non-migratory elk?
Non-migratory elk, which years ago did not exist, stay all year in alfalfa fields at low elevations. And they are doing great--they are booming. They can’t kill enough of them.
The elk that migrate into Yellowstone are not doing well at all. One reason is that they are exposed to a lot more predators in the summer, but the other factor is this relationship to changing vegetation. So you have to ask the ultimate question—why do elk migrate then? These elk migrated decades ago because it was a good thing to do and the green-up was working. But what used to work for elk and essentially was a really good strategy, isn’t anymore. And that to me is really disturbing. This strategy is hardwired in elk and they are still doing it and it’s failing them.
They may get a break this summer, as I think this is not going to be a year like I just described in the research, unless it turns hot soon. In 1996 and 1997 we had big snow years, but it turned hot and there was not a gradual letting out of the snow. Instead the Yellowstone River overnight was a chocolate, frothing mess, which isn’t normal either.
If it lets out slowly this spring and summer, it will resemble the pattern we had decades ago. But the problem is next year is anyone’s guess -- we can’t rely on normal cycles anymore. This winter was the snowiest in decades, while last winter was anemic, all the snow came in April and May. It’s the unpredictability that’s the problem. We used to have an average with little blips here and there. Now it’s all across the board and animals can’t adapt.
What’s your opinion on listing the wolf as an endangered species?
I have this idea that being able to hunt wolves increases tolerance of them and lowers resentment. At the end of the day for me, that’s better than keeping wolves on the list when animosity towards them is high.
I think it’s fair to say we want to vigorously protect wolves in some places. But I’m very much in favor—for a lack of a better way to talk about it— of zonal management. We can designate areas where we are not going to harvest wolves. And in other areas where wolves are clearly hard to live with because people are trying to make a living, you have some harvesting. This idea of social tolerance increasing by a regulated hunting season is where I think we need to go. It’s a very modern position, but I think we really need to be modern.
Any surprises in your research this year?
A really cool finding that we’ve discovered is that black wolves have longer survival times than grey wolves. For female wolves it’s double the life span. For a black female wolf the average age of death is 8, while for a grey female wolf the average age of death is 4. And we don’t have an explanation. When the results first came through I didn’t believe it and I made the guys who ran the survival analysis run it again. We’ve rerun it like three or four times now and with the same results.
What we think is happening is the gene is for black is tied to an immune function, so somehow black wolves have a higher survivability because they have a better immune system. Now the complicating factor is all of our black wolves except two—and we’ve genotyped over a hundred—are heterozygous black, not homozygous. Homozygous black—these guys are dying young. Heterozygous black have a survival advantage. Dan Steel is heading this work up as part of his doctorate study.
Is mange still a problem in the park?
It’s declined—it peaked two years ago. It may be something that just never goes away. We’ve handled a few wolves this year that don’t have bad mange but they have annoying cases of it.
Now that the Druids (wolf pack) are gone, who do you predict will be the next “rock star” pack?
The pack that is filling behind them is Lamar Canyon, but the biggest pack in the northern range now is Blacktail with 14 members at year-end. One trend with the wolf population decline is that pack sizes have dropped across the board, except Blacktail and Mollie’s, and Mollie’s probably hasn’t dropped because they are bison killers.
Blacktail will probably be the dominate pack in terms of size, but what gets you stardom and fame is visibility and that happens in Lamar Valley and Slough Creek—and the pack in that area is Lamar Canyon. And what also gets you stardom and fame is having charismatic individuals. And Lamar Canyon does have one with their alpha female—06 is her nickname, but she’s not collared. She’s a very smart wolf, very atypical, and a big hunter. Males usually have a lot to do with the hunt—she does it all. To the wolf-watching community she is starting to be their rock star.
What are some other trends you have found in your observations this year?
I talked about the population decline, but it’s been mainly with the northern range packs. In the interior of Yellowstone, the number of packs have been largely stable. I think that’s because for the northern packs it’s primarily a wolf-elk system, while in the interior, it’s a wolf-elk-bison system. They subsidize their diet with bison, which I think is pretty important as that population has not declined as precipitously as the northern range.
Last year we spoke about 495M—the alpha male of Mollie’s pack—a pack that regularly takes down bison. Is he still the largest wolf ever recorded in Yellowstone?
495M is a pro. He’s doing great. We think he’ll turn 7/8 in April, so he’s past his prime, but he’s still hunting bison. That is what is interesting about wolves—there is no such thing as a generic wolf. They are best at killing between 2-4, but if you have to keep killing and there’s no-one to help you, you just do it. I am skiing into Pelican Valley later this month and we’ll watch him for several days.
But there is a new big guy--760M in the Delta Pack. The last time we caught 495 he had meat in his stomach and weighed 143 pounds. When we weighed 760, he had a truly empty stomach, which I know because the effects of the drug cause them to vomit sometimes, and he was puking bile. So he weighed 147 pounds with nothing in his stomach.
I’ve been studying wolves for 32 years, and 760 was a sight to behold. I’ve handled hundreds of wolves, yet I thought he was a wonder of nature. And then I just started thinking in my head as I looked at him, he lives in the most remote area of the lower 48, and this is the kind of wolf that remoteness produces.
As a scientist you take the viewpoint that you can find answers. And for the first time I thought this is a wolf that truly has secrets. This is the Lower 48, it’s not northern Canada, it’s not Alaska, and we have a modicum of wildness here. He was something—not just another wolf. And it sort of reinvigorated my fight and restored that mystique of the wilderness for me. We have to redouble our efforts to save wildness.
Source
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Fish and Wildlife: Report eastern Wyo. black wolf
Associated Press | Friday, April 22, 2011
Courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
A wolf roams Campbell County near the Belle Ayr Mine in the Powder River Basin on Saturday. The wolf wandered hundreds of miles east of Yellowstone National Park.
CHEYENNE — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants people to report any more sightings of a black wolf that appears to have wandered a couple hundred miles east of Yellowstone National Park.
An officer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services agency photographed the wolf Saturday not far from the Belle Ayre coal mine about 10 miles southeast of Gillette.
The wolf wore a radio collar but its gender is unknown.
Mike Jimenez, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wyoming wolf recovery coordinator, said anybody who sees the wolf should call him at 307-733-7096. If the wolf is causing problems, such as attacking livestock, calls should go to USDA Wildlife Services at 307-261-5336, he said.
Male and female wolves tend to disperse far from their home packs between 1 and 3 years of age. That’s probably what this wolf is doing, Jimenez said Wednesday.
“It’s difficult to say whether this wolf will stick around, or whether it’s dispersing, and it could be miles away a week from now and nobody ever sees it again. We don’t know,” he said.
Many Yellowstone wolves wearing radio collars have dispersed over the years, so it’s difficult to even guess the particular history of this wolf. The Yellowstone states — Idaho, Montana and Wyoming — share radio frequencies of wolf collars and could track the wolf if it got in range and its collar still was working.
Whether Fish and Wildlife attempts to track the wolf remains to be seen.
“For a single, dispersing wolf, we probably won’t make a special flight just to look for that one. If it hangs around the area, we definitely will,” Jimenez said.
Yellowstone wolves seldom roam so far east, although a vehicle killed one on Interstate 90 in western South Dakota in 2006. Other Yellowstone wolves have made it as far south as central Colorado and Utah.
A typical dispersing wolf covers 60 to 70 miles but they’ve been tracked more than 500 miles as a crow flies and as much as 4,000 miles over the ground, Jimenez said.
“We’ll kind of just play it by ear,” he said. “When they show up in a new area, as you can imagine, that gets a lot of attention.”
Source
Courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
A wolf roams Campbell County near the Belle Ayr Mine in the Powder River Basin on Saturday. The wolf wandered hundreds of miles east of Yellowstone National Park.
CHEYENNE — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants people to report any more sightings of a black wolf that appears to have wandered a couple hundred miles east of Yellowstone National Park.
An officer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services agency photographed the wolf Saturday not far from the Belle Ayre coal mine about 10 miles southeast of Gillette.
The wolf wore a radio collar but its gender is unknown.
Mike Jimenez, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wyoming wolf recovery coordinator, said anybody who sees the wolf should call him at 307-733-7096. If the wolf is causing problems, such as attacking livestock, calls should go to USDA Wildlife Services at 307-261-5336, he said.
Male and female wolves tend to disperse far from their home packs between 1 and 3 years of age. That’s probably what this wolf is doing, Jimenez said Wednesday.
“It’s difficult to say whether this wolf will stick around, or whether it’s dispersing, and it could be miles away a week from now and nobody ever sees it again. We don’t know,” he said.
Many Yellowstone wolves wearing radio collars have dispersed over the years, so it’s difficult to even guess the particular history of this wolf. The Yellowstone states — Idaho, Montana and Wyoming — share radio frequencies of wolf collars and could track the wolf if it got in range and its collar still was working.
Whether Fish and Wildlife attempts to track the wolf remains to be seen.
“For a single, dispersing wolf, we probably won’t make a special flight just to look for that one. If it hangs around the area, we definitely will,” Jimenez said.
Yellowstone wolves seldom roam so far east, although a vehicle killed one on Interstate 90 in western South Dakota in 2006. Other Yellowstone wolves have made it as far south as central Colorado and Utah.
A typical dispersing wolf covers 60 to 70 miles but they’ve been tracked more than 500 miles as a crow flies and as much as 4,000 miles over the ground, Jimenez said.
“We’ll kind of just play it by ear,” he said. “When they show up in a new area, as you can imagine, that gets a lot of attention.”
Source
Friday, April 22, 2011
A Hole in the Endangered Species Act
Editorial
A Hole in the Endangered Species Act
Published: April 21, 2011
As part of its budget bill, Congress approved a brief rider, 11 lines long, that removes gray wolves in Idaho and Montana from the protections of the Endangered Species Act. The rider overturns a recent court ruling, prohibits further judicial review and cannot be good for the wolf. But the worst part is that it sets a terrible precedent — allowing Congress to decide the fate of animals on the list.
The rider’s sponsors, Senator Jon Tester of Montana and Representative Mike Simpson of Idaho, were responding to the demands of ranchers, who sometimes lose livestock to wolves, and hunters, who complain that wolves reduce deer and elk populations.
Sadly and surprisingly, they were abetted by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who declared last month that he would accept what he called a “legislative solution” to the status of the wolf in the Rocky Mountains. One Interior Department official has argued that without this concession, the rider might well have been far more radical — possibly removing wolves everywhere from protection.
The wolf has been a subject of litigation ever since it was reintroduced in the mid-1990s. One of Mr. Salazar’s first acts as secretary was to de-list the animal in Idaho and Montana, arguing that populations had recovered and that the states could now manage them. A federal judge overturned his ruling, as well as a compromise plan that Mr. Salazar worked out with environmental groups.
Idaho and Montana plan to allow controlled hunts. The best hope for the wolves is that the states adhere to their management plans and not let the hunts get out of control. The courts can only stand by, but the Interior Department must hold the states to the terms of a five-year review process required by their management plans.
As for Mr. Salazar, he has made it harder to uphold the integrity of a law that has withstood attacks from industry, ranchers, real estate developers and their political allies. Other protected species like the grizzly bear could now face their own “legislative solution.” For the sake of his own reputation as a conservationist, Mr. Salazar has to hope that Congress’s meddling stops with the wolves.
Source
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Fish and Wildlife seeks any more reports of wandering wolf in eastern Wyo.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants people to report any more sightings of a black wolf that appears to have wandered hundreds of miles east of Yellowstone National Park.
An officer with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services agency photographed the wolf not far from the Belle Ayre coal mine about 10 miles southeast of Gillette on Saturday.
The wolf wore a radio collar but whether the wolf is male or female is unknown.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wyoming wolf recovery coordinator Mike Jimenez says anybody who sees the wolf should call him. He says if the wolf is causing problems, they should call Wildlife Services.
Yellowstone wolves seldom roam so far east, although a vehicle killed one in western South Dakota in 2006
Source.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Gov. Otter signs Idaho wolf disaster declaration into law despite federal delisting
BOISE, Idaho — Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter has signed a bill into law that will allow him to declare a wolf disaster emergency in Idaho.
The governor signed the bill Tuesday, even though Congress already took action this month to strip federal protections from wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains. Otter says he also has concerns about undermining his own statutory authority to declare such disasters, with the new state law.
The measure allows the governor to enlist local law enforcement agents to reduce Idaho's wolf population, which at 800 animals makes up about half of the wolves in the region.
Otter says despite the federal delisting and his concerns, portions of the new law could prove useful if the predators are ever relisted under the under the Endangered Species Act.
Source
The Wolves Within
A Cherokee Legend
"The Wolves Within"
An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, "Let me tell you a story.
I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.
But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times." He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.
But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger,for his anger will change nothing.
Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."
The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"
The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States (principally Georgia, the Carolinas and Eastern Tennessee). Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian-language family.
Source
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Don't You Believe This Crap!
Want to know what defeated us defenders of wolves in last week's debacle? Stories like the following that were/are purportedly issuing from the office of Idaho's State Representative, Phil Hart and that included a VERY OBVIOUSLY PHOTOSHOPPED IMAGE OF A MAN WITH A SLAIN WOLF:
Giant Idaho Wolves Hunt,destroy In Packs Of Up To 20 - Photo
The Canadian Gray Wolf runs in packs of up to twenty wolves. For every one animal theydestroy to eat, these Canadian wolvesdestroy about three more just for the fun of it. The biologists call it "sport-reflexdestroying" or "lustfuldestroying". The Canadian Gray Wolf is adestroying machine.
The Canadian Gray Wolf runs in packs of up to twenty wolves. For every one animal theydestroy to eat, these Canadian wolvesdestroy about three more just for the fun of it. The biologists call it "sport-reflexdestroying" or "lustfuldestroying". The Canadian Gray Wolf is adestroying machine.
These are federal wolves, as it was the federal government who introduced them into Idaho over our objections. They told the state of Idaho that the wolves would be considered recovered when we had a total of 100 wolves in Idaho. Now we have between 800 and 2,000 wolves and the situation is out of control.
Idaho's wolf emergency is a state issue. And in this situation, the state of Idaho has both a duty and the authority to protect its people and their property. House Bill 343 lays out the facts, the argument and the authority to do so. - Idaho Rep Phil Hart
Source
&
Source
Be sure and send this one to all your redneck relatives so that they can have another urban myth to believe. Personally, though, if I wanted to believe a fairy tale, I think I'd prefer something more sophisticated like Pinocchio where a wooden head and body is transformed into a human. And you don't have to photoshop that concept to know what I mean.
Giant Idaho Wolves Hunt,destroy In Packs Of Up To 20 - Photo
The Canadian Gray Wolf runs in packs of up to twenty wolves. For every one animal theydestroy to eat, these Canadian wolvesdestroy about three more just for the fun of it. The biologists call it "sport-reflexdestroying" or "lustfuldestroying". The Canadian Gray Wolf is adestroying machine.
The Canadian Gray Wolf runs in packs of up to twenty wolves. For every one animal theydestroy to eat, these Canadian wolvesdestroy about three more just for the fun of it. The biologists call it "sport-reflexdestroying" or "lustfuldestroying". The Canadian Gray Wolf is adestroying machine.
These are federal wolves, as it was the federal government who introduced them into Idaho over our objections. They told the state of Idaho that the wolves would be considered recovered when we had a total of 100 wolves in Idaho. Now we have between 800 and 2,000 wolves and the situation is out of control.
Idaho's wolf emergency is a state issue. And in this situation, the state of Idaho has both a duty and the authority to protect its people and their property. House Bill 343 lays out the facts, the argument and the authority to do so. - Idaho Rep Phil Hart
Source
&
Source
Be sure and send this one to all your redneck relatives so that they can have another urban myth to believe. Personally, though, if I wanted to believe a fairy tale, I think I'd prefer something more sophisticated like Pinocchio where a wooden head and body is transformed into a human. And you don't have to photoshop that concept to know what I mean.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Great Lakes wolves could come off endangered list
AP – FILE - This 2004 file photo provided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service shows a gray wolf at rest
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