Wyoming is on the verge of passing two key pieces of gun rights legislation.

HB-95, The Wyoming Firearms Freedom Act, and HB-113 “Alaska-style” permit-less concealed carry, are facing an up-or-down vote before the Wyoming State House of Representatives.

On Tuesday, National Association for Gun Rights Director of Operations Luke O’Dell was on hand to testify before the Wyoming State House Judiciary Committee on behalf of both HB-95, the Wyoming Firearms Freedom Act, and the HB-113, “Alaska-style” permit less carry.

You may be asking yourself, “Why do I care, I don’t live in Wyoming?”

It’s simple: The higher the bar is set, the more pro-gun pieces of legislation pass across the country, the stronger the gun rights movement gets.

Passage of permit-less “Alaska-style” concealed carry in Wyoming would be a huge step forward toward true firearms freedom. Only in Alaska and Vermont can law-abiding citizens carry concealed firearms for their own protection without getting Big Brother’s approval. Should Wyoming join their ranks, the right-to-carry will have taken a major step forward.

Additionally, Wyoming’s Firearms Freedom Act was written with much stronger language than similar legislation in other states. Wyoming’s bill included penalties for state law enforcement enforcing Federal laws which contradict Wyoming state law.

I’m happy to say that Wyoming Gun Owners, a partner of ours, has been leading the charge for both pieces of legislation.

Now it’s our turn to help out.

If you live in Wyoming, or know someone who does, please have them contact their Wyoming legislator and tell them to vote “Yes” on HB-95 and HB-113.

You can find contact information for Wyoming State Legislators here.

If you’re not from Wyoming, go ahead and drop them a line anyways. Tell them that you support their efforts to advance freedom in Wyoming.

For Liberty,
Dudley Brown
Executive Director
National Association for Gun Rights

*Help fight gun control. Donate to the National Association for Gun Rights!

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The other night I went to the movie AVATAR with an open mind. However, I did not expect to be moved by the movie and its meaningful message and analogies that we sportsmen and woman can relate to with respect for wildlife and conservation. Aside from the obvious correlation to the movie Dances with Wolves or Titanic. For me, I walked away from AVATAR in awe after over two hours of the most visually stunning movie I have seen in some time if not ever. 3D in an IMAX theatre was a treat. Definitely an action packed event worth watching on the big screen. The dialogue and story might not live up to the visual effects for some and for others it won’t matter.

Avatar takes place on the alien world of Pandora where the Resources Development Administration (RDA) a quasi non-governmental corporation has been drilling and mining for unobtainium, a highly sought-after mineral found only on the planet. To Parker Selfridge (Giovanni Ribisi), the head of operations on the planet, the natives, called the Nav’vi, are interfering more and more with the highly lucrative mining efforts. Because of the hostilities, gung ho marines have been brought in to help quell the violence. Except they are not merely there to keep the peace, the armed forces stationed on Pandora are there to uproot the natives so that a large mineral deposit, located under the home of the Nav’vi, can be extracted. James Cameron’s message here is one you can conclude on your own.

Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine wounded in a battle on Earth, arrives on Pandora to replace his scientist brother who had been killed before he finished his avatar project on the planet. Avatars are basically test-tube Nav’vi fused with human DNA used for gathering specimens from the planet. The program is run by Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver). The avatars are mindless and are controlled via telekinesis from human operators at the RDA base camp. Jake was hired to control his brother’s avatar since they have similar DNA. However, thanks to Jake’s background as a one tough Marine, he is quickly recruited by the head of security, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) to relay information to him and his squad so they can exploit the tribe’s weaknesses if a war is engaged. Jake is on board.

Yet when Jake’s avatar is separated from the group during a routine science expedition, he is saved from a quick death by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), the daughter of the tribes’ rulers. After some initial skepticism, Jake is invited to learn the ways of the tribe. His increasing closeness and eventual love for Neytiri makes Jake go native just like Dances with Wolves and second guess, not only his personal intentions, but that of the corporation.

The Na’vi survive on this planet by knowing it well as did our own Native American Indians, living in harmony with nature, and being wise about the creatures they share with. Like them, they tame another species to carry them around–not horses, but flying dragon-like creatures.

The obvious left approach with liberal environmental issues, anti –militarism and corporate abuses will give the conservatives no problem in tearing this movie up but for us outdoor enthusiast and avid sportsman there is true meaning in many of James Camroon messages.

The opening scene when Jake is saved by Nevitri from the alien looking wolf pack was very powerful and the unnecessary loss of life message hit a chord with me. Don’t get me wrong, if I was confronted by a predator or a human intent on doing me harm I would have no problem pulling out my S&W 357 to save me or my family. The point in the movie was with Jake stepping into something without knowing the consequences of his actions that is where the problem lies. It is like going to a zoo, hoping the fence and ending up in the bear enclosure and someone has to shoot the bear to save your life.

The environmental issues come down to our efforts for all sportsman as it relates to conservation. The beauty of the movie was in the amazing special effects and one only needs to go to Yellowstone National park, Yosemite or the Grand Canyon to see the same beauty with our own eyes and the creatures that inhabit those areas. Our Pandora. The loss of habitat happens daily right here in our backyards and all over America and by donating to such groups as the RMEF or Ducks Unlimited or the Nature Conservancy we can truly make a difference. Sportsman are the first line of defense and by buying hunting and fishing license we play a huge part in protecting our wildlife and environment as well as protecting our national heritage and the right to bear arms. As an avid archer I took great pleasure in watching the skill of the Nav’yi as they were able to move through their forest, the respect for life after taking the life of an animal, the bond they had with there dragons and mutant horses and especially with the skill of the bow and arrow and the accuracy and lethality of this primal weapon. The predator and prey relationship has been around since the beginning of time and as we look into the future we can see it will always be apart of us. I can’t wait to go back and watch the movie again.

Bulls & Beaver LLC 2009 Copyright
Chris Burget

The call of the grey wolf reverberating off the canyon walls deep in the high country, adds a sense of wildness and majesty to one’s surroundings. For me, the mournful calls are reminiscent of an ancient time when long ago hunters walked the land, armed with primitive weaponry and survival skills which far surpassed our own. I still stalk the wild places armed with a stick bow and handmade arrows, but the call of the wolf holds a much different meaning for me than for the long ago hunter gatherers. In our modern world, the so-called wild Wyoming wolf is handled by humans in it’s lifetime, through study and scientific evaluation, more than my pet dog. My family and I made a pilgrimage into Yellowstone National Park this spring, in the hope of spotting a wolf pack in the early spring snow, and maybe getting some photographs. We were truly lucky to spot the pack feeding on a recent kill, an elk they took down the night before. We watched as these super predators surrounded a second elk and watched in anticipation as they moved in for the kill. For some reason they suddenly quit the attack and moved off in pursuit of some other prey. The reason I brought this up is I felt compelled to let people know what was happening on the sidelines concerning the so-called wild wolves of Yellowstone.

Several vehicles lined the roadway, various spotting scopes and long-range cameras follow every move of the pack across the frozen terrain. Among the watchers, conversation drifts between the raw beauty of wolf number eight and how well wolf number three is doing after last weeks encounter. Wolf number seven seems healthy despite the wound received on the tenth of September last fall, somehow wolf number eleven has hurt her foot and number one the alpha male of the druid pack looks sad… you get my point. These wolves are followed everywhere by animal rights activists who with a seemingly unlimited amount of resources at their disposal keep a constant vigil over the packs and document the lives of these WILD wolves religiously. Let us take this story to the other side of the mountains along the Absaroka front, a rancher and his daughter ride through the sagebrush-covered hills below a timbered slope. For over a hundred years, this honest and hard working family has raised cattle and pastured the cows and calves in these meadows. On the wind the stench of death permeates the summer morning, their horses are restless as they approach the now rotting carcass. “This is getting old.” the rancher replies to his daughter as they dismount and examine the kill, blowflies and summer heat have decomposed the calf’s carcass quickly. Wolf tracks are everywhere and the half-eaten carcass leaves no question to the trained eye as to the demise of the calf. Dozens of cattle have fallen prey to the wolves this summer, last winter near here his son lost a good cattle dog when the pack came down while he was cutting firewood and boldly killed the dog and went on their way. Countless man-hours have been spent riding, driving and walking the summer pastures in search of wolf kills, hoping to find them in time to allow the proper authorities to decide if wolves killed the cattle or if something else contributed to their demise. On the other end of the spectrum, if a wolf comes up missing the choppers are in the air immediately, the wildlife warriors are summoned and an unlimited amount of resources becomes available to determine the reason for the disappearance. The battle lines have been drawn and are perfectly clear, the wolf lovers want the wolf to be protected and unharmed, the ranchers want to be able to raise their herds unmolested, and the outdoorsmen and hunters want to ensure a future for their sport through proper game management. The wolf is such a good predator that their impact upon the elk herds has far surpassed the projected numbers, and their own numbers have increases at such a rate that without some sort of intervention the long term impact in Wyoming’s elk herds will be disastrous.

(B&B)- Mike “Hawk” Huston is contributing editor for Bulls & Beavers LLC
www.journeywithredhawk.blogspot.com/

Snow flies from under the pony’s unshod hooves. With each stride the warrior can feel the raw power of his favorite warhorse beneath him. Far behind the mustang and his rider, dozens of U.S. Cavalry are strung out in a ragged line. For hours the larger horses have pursued the pair over broken country. Hour after hour the smaller mustang has gained ground against the longer legged animals. At a glance, his shorter legs and powerful build do not announce speed, however ,decades of living in this country have hardened and refined the wild mustang to a razors edge concerning survival and stamina. Near the top of the Wind River pass Lame Eagle slows his horse to a slow walk, and finally to a stop. They are now several miles above the plateau and the desperately pursuing cavalry. Dismounting, he caresses his trusty steed and offers up a war song to the animal for his bravery and strength. The horse, sensing his master’s affection, nuzzles Lame Eagle and standing in this high place looks down upon the inferior horses who have tried once again in vain to catch him in his own country. After a short rest, the rider remounts, they disappear over the ridge and begin an easy trot toward the high country and home, confident that they will have no problem losing the soldiers in the timbered slopes ahead.

Captain Smith slows his tired gelding to a stop. Every man and horse in his regiment is either tired or nearly broken. For the life of him, he cannot figure how the savages and their wild horses can consistently outrun and outmaneuver his highly trained and conditioned men and military stock. For ten years, he has chased, tracked, and pursued the savages, and never once has he caught a lone warrior… even on open ground. Maybe instead of shooting the Indian ponies at every opportunity the army should consider commissioning the wild stock and using them for troop movement. Never! He and his regiment would be the laughing stock of the western army. Civilized men riding wild beasts. He shakes his head, looking through his looking glass, he watches the savage disappear over a far ridge. He decides that “this” chase has come to an end. Indian ponies must truly be the devils spawn, he thinks to himself. No mortal steed could possibly keep up such a pace.

    Today, the wild mustang is still wild and free upon the western plains and mountains; but who can say for how much longer. Their habitat is under attack by those wishing to use the land to graze cattle, sheep, as well as those hoping to open the wild horse habitat for oil exploration. Often times the majestic wild mustang is viewed as vermin by those wishing to profit from their home range. I do not begrudge the rancher for needing graze for their cattle, nor the oilfields for drilling American oil. The media would like everyone to believe that the horses are in need of a drastic decrease because of overpopulation. The truth is, their home range is being taken away so quickly and loss of food sources on crucial winter range to overgrazing is causing the wild mustang to have to fight for survival within their own designated habitat. Millions of acres are open to cattle grazing across the American west on federal, state and BLM lands, and now most of the wild Mustang habitat is being shared with grazing operations. This practice of “Give the wild horse whatever is left” is ridiculous. Just because the wild mustang cannot pay for grazing rights, they are facing destruction and have been slaughtered by the thousands to ensure their numbers stay down. We must not let the wild mustang fall prey to greed, we will lose them forever. The rancher is not to blame, he is just trying to make a living. The oil companies are not to blame, they are just creating jobs in a jobless market. The blame needs to be placed on the greed and irresponsible choices made by our Federal government. The BLM and state agencies who decide what gets left for the wild horses need to be vigilant of their position as stewards of the land and protectors of the wild mustang. Quit selling grazing rights on wild horse range!  This is just my opinion, I don’t believe any wild creature should be cast aside for the betterment of any type of industry. Save the wild mustang before it is too late.. Their habitat is being taken away, and nothing is being done to stop it, except killing the wild horses,(vermin) because they are too many. I hope we can find a way to live with the wild horses instead of trying to move them aside and pretending that the problem will just go away.. Voice your opinion, contact your local Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office and ask for info on adopting one of the many horses who are already in captivity.

(B&B)- Mike “Hawk” Huston is contributing editor for Bulls & Beavers LLC
www.journeywithredhawk.blogspot.com/

When I hear people criticize hunting and fishing, while at the same time watch them order a steak at a local restaurant or order fancy labeled meats at the local grocery store, my thoughts are confirmed.

Hunting and fishing means so much to so many people that it is hard to define. It is even harder to explain to people who have never hunted and fished or never really understand its importance. Hunting and fishing is both a lifestyle and a tradition. It’s more than the morning mist, the thrill of a pursuit, the use of one’s forest knowledge. It’s primal and modern. It is raw cunning passed down from wood-wise veterans steeped in skill and interpretation of smallest details.

Hunting and fishing is more than anything, an opportunity to bond, to teach and to share. In an age of disconnected families and divorce, who could argue then with the value of a father teaching his son or daughter the respectful ways to hunt and fish with integrity and purpose, as well as proper use and care of a firearm, fly rod and cleaning one’s own catch.

Idaho’s 259,000 hunters and anglers are among the most prominent and influential of all demographic groups, spending more than $598 million a year on hunting and fishing, according to a recent report. In Idaho, spending by hunters and anglers directly supports 11,500 jobs, which puts $324 million worth of paychecks into the pockets of working residents around the state. Spending by local sportsman in pursuit of these outdoor activities generates $70 million in state and local taxes. These latest figures show that season after season hunters and anglers are the driving force in the economy from big business to rural towns through both booms and recessions.

When spending by hunters and anglers is compared to that by other sectors, their impact on the state’s economy becomes more tangible. Sportsman support more jobs in Idaho than Micron Technology, one of the state’s largest employers: 11,500 jobs versus 10,000. Idaho sportsman outnumber the populations of Boise and Pocatello: 259,000 versus 246,533.

On a national level 34 million sportsmen age 16 and older spent more than 76 billion in 2006, supporting 1.6 million jobs. If a single corporation grossed as much as hunters and anglers spend. It would be among America’s 20 largest, ahead of Target, Costco and AT&T. The economic stimulus of hunting and fishing equals and astounding 1.6 million a day being pumped into the state’s economy.

Spending by sportsman benefits not only manufactures of hunting and fishing related products, but everything from local mom and pop businesses to wildlife conservation. Because most hunting and fishing takes place in rural areas, much of the spending benefits less affluent parts of the state. When sportsman spending is thought in business terms and compared to other sectors of the economy, it is quite remarkable. From small rural towns scattered across our country’s landscape to the bottom line of fortune 500 companies located in major cities, taking away hunting and fishing removes the equivalent of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

As I sit here and think about my personal life as a hunter, angler and entrepreneur, my thoughts revolve around both the passionate side of hunting, fishing and the business side. Socially, culturally, and economically, hunting and fishing is part of who we are and contains all the good ingredients of what we need to be in the future.

B&B copyright 2009

From www.nraila.org

Please Thank Attorney General Lawrence Wasden!

Two-thirds of the nation’s attorneys general have filed an amicus brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to grant certiorari in the case of NRA v. Chicago and hold that the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This bi-partisan group of 33 attorneys general, along with the Attorney General of California in a separate filing, agrees with the NRA’s position that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental individual right to keep and bear arms, disagreeing with the decision recently issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Attorney General Wasden was one of the many who agrees that the Second Amendment is a fundamental individual right and signed the amicus brief. Please call Attorney General Wasden at (208) 334-2400 and thank him for standing up in support of the Second Amendment. You may also e-mail him at webmaster@ag.idaho.gov.

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May 4, 2009 – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule delisting gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and Western Great Lakes became official.

• Wolf Delisting Rule Becomes Final

April 2, 2009 – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service rule delisting gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and Western Great Lakes published in the Federal Register. Rule would take effect May 4.

• Final Wolf Delisting Rule

March 6, 2009 – Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will send the delisting rule to the Federal Register for publication. The rule would take effect days after publication, and includes wolves in Idaho and Montana; wolves in Wyoming would remain on the endangered species list.

• Interior Secretary Announces Delisting
• Wolf Delisting Rule Announced

January 20, 2009 – Proposed delisting rule covering Idaho and Montana suspended pending review by the new Obama administration.

January 14, 2009 – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the pending publication of a delisting rule for gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains and Western Great Lakes. The Northern Rockies rule, however, does not include Wyoming, where wolves will remain on the endangered species list.

• USFWS Removes Wolves from Endangered Species List
• Federeal Register Text of Final Rule

October 24, 2008 – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reopened the public comment period on its proposal to delist the gray wolf in the northern Rocky Mountains. In a notice published in the Federal Register October 28, Fish and Wildlife asked the public to comment and provide any additional information on the February 2007 proposal to delist wolves by November 28.

• Federal Register Notice

October 14, 2008 – U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy granted the United States’ motion to remand the delisting rule to the Fish and Wildlife Service. He also dismissed the lawsuit that challenged the delisting.

• Remand Order

July 18, 2008 – Federal district judge issues a preliminary injunction that returns wolves in Idaho to endangered species protection and puts hunting seasons on hold.

• Wolf Delisting Court Case

May 22, 2008 – Idaho Fish and Game Commission adopts proposed wolf hunting seasons and rules for fall 2008.

• Proposed Hunting Seasons and Rules

April 28, 2008 – 12 conservation and animal rights groups file a lawsuit in federal court challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to remove the gray wolf in Idaho and the Northern Rocky Mountains from the endangered species list, and request a preliminary injunction staying the delisting until the lawsuit is settled.

• Wolf Delisting Court Case

March 28, 2008 – Delisting rule becomes final and Idaho assumes full responsibility for wolves, which will be managed as a big game animal. Fish and Wildlife would continue to monitor wolf recovery for five years.

March 6, 2008 – Idaho Fish and Game Commission adopts Idaho Wolf Population Management Plan, which includes a framework for future wolf hunting seasons.

• Idaho Wolf Population Management Plan

March 2008 – Idaho Legislature amends state code IC 36-1107 to allow livestock and domestic animal owners to kill a wolf that is molesting or attacking their animals, making wolf management more similar to black bears and mountain lions.

February 27, 2008 – U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisting rule posted in the Federal Register.

February 21, 2008 – February 21, 2008 – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service filed the rule that would remove gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains from the federal endangered species list. Delisting will proceed including Wyoming.

January 28, 2008 – Notice of amended 10j rule published in the Federal Register. Rule changes allow wolves to be killed that are in the act of attacking livestock, riding and packing stock or dogs legally present on public and private land, and provides allowances for killing wolves affecting ungulate populations.

February 8, 2007 – Notice of delisting process published in Federal Register. Delisting is proposed in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah. Delisting may proceed without Wyoming.

January 29, 2007 – Fish and Wildlife Service announced intention of starting the process to remove gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains from the endangered species list. Public hearings set and 60-day public comment period launched.

January 5, 2006 – Memorandum of Agreement between Idaho and the U.S. Department of Interior signed by Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and transferring authority for day-to-day wolf management to the state as agent for the Fish and Wildlife Service under the revised 10(j) rule.

May 2005 – Memorandum of Agreement between Idaho and the Nez Perce Tribe signed, giving the tribe a significant role in wolf conservation. Tribal officials will monitor wolves within the McCall Subregion and the Clearwater Region and participate with Idaho Fish and Game in other wolf conservation measures.

February 7, 2005 – Revised 10(j) rules take effect, easing wolf management rules, and giving states a role in wolf management under agreements to be negotiated with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

January 6, 2005 – The Fish and Wildlife Service publishes the final revised 10(j) rules in the Federal Register.

Summer 2004 – Fish and Game work with cooperators to transition into wolf management duties statewide.

March 2004 – Wolf management training of Idaho Fish and Game staff members across Idaho was conducted with assistance of cooperating agency wolf specialists. About 300 staff members were trained to understand their roles and responsibilities in monitoring and management of wolves, coordination protocol and outreach, and other management responsibilities.

March 9, 2004 – The Fish and Wildlife Service published in the Federal Register its proposal to revise wolf management rules under section 10(j) of the Endangered Species Act. The proposed rules would allow more flexibility in managing wolves and would allow states with accepted wolf managment plans to take over much of the wolf management roles and responsibilities. Fish and Wildlife will make a decision on the rule amendment following a 60-day public comment period.

February 2004 – Wyoming decides to sue the Fish and Wildlife Service to accept their plan. Fish and Wildlife delays delisting until Wyoming plan is accepted.

January 2004 – The Fish and Wildlife Service deems Montana and Idaho plans are adequate, but the Wyoming plan is inadequate for delisting.

November 2003 – The Fish and Wildlife Service requests 11 wolf experts to review the three state plans and determine whether they are adequate for preservation of wolves once delisted.

April 2003 – Legislature repealed law 36-715 and passed HB294 to allow Fish and Game to fully implement the Idaho Wolf Conservation and Management Plan and work with the Office of Species Conservation prior to delisting in wolf management.

2002 – Work with the Office of Species Conservation, the Fish and Wildlife Service, Montana and Wyoming to develop a wolf de-listing package that would turn over wolf management authority to the states following delisting.

• Increase efforts to record statewide wolf observation records and develop a procedure to document and monitor wolf recovery in conjunction with the Fish and Wildlife Service and Nez Perce Tribe.

April 2002 – Begin working with the Office of Species Conservation in developing a memorandum of understanding with the Nez Perce Tribe, identifying the tribe’s future involvement with wolves and developing a wolf harvest agreement following delisting.

March 2002 – Idaho Legislature passes a joint resolution to accept the Idaho Wolf Conservation and Management Plan as written; identifies Fish and Game as the primary entity responsible for wolf management following de-listing; identifies the Nez Perce Tribe as having a significant role in wolf management following delisting.

October 2001 – Gov. Dirk Kempthorne directs the Office of Species Conservation to work with the Fish and Wildlife Service, Idaho Fish and Game, Nez Perce Tribe, and others in the delisting of wolves in Idaho.

September 2001 – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service documents 30 pairs of wolves in the three-state area of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, triggering the three-year countdown to delisting.

August 2001 – Draft 16 of the Management Plan was sent out for professional review.

June 2001 – The Wolf Oversight Committee submitted draft 16 of the Management Plan to the USFWS which included recommended changes by the Fish and Wildlife Service.

December 2000 – The Northwest Natural Resource Group submitted a summary of the comments on the Idaho Wolf Conservation and Management Plan to the governor’s Office of Species Conservation and the Legislative Wolf Oversight Committee.

2000 – Idaho Legislature approves state statute §67-818, creating in the office of the governor, the “Office of Species Conservation” to coordinate all state-related activities involving federally listed threatened and endangered species.

December 1998 – 24 of the original 35 wolves were known to be alive and were still being monitored. The estimated population in Idaho was 115 wolves. This was the first year that one component of recovery (10 breeding pairs) was attained.

November 1998 – Idaho Wolf Oversight Committee begins working on a new Idaho Wolf Conservation and Management Plan.

1998 – Sen. Stan Hawkins ear-marked Fish and Game funds to study predator impacts on big game animals, focusing on wolves in the Salmon region.

1996 – Governor Phil Batt recommends the State become more involved in the wolf recovery process.

1996 – First pups produced in Idaho; 3 known packs identified.

January 1996 – 20 wolves released into central Idaho. Limited involvement by Fish and Game in accordance with Idaho statute.

1995 – Idaho Legislature rejected a Wolf Recovery and Management Plan produced by the Legislative Wolf Oversight Committee which would have allowed Fish and Game to assume the lead role in wolf recovery in Idaho. Nez Perce Tribe leads recovery effort.

January 1995 – 15 wolves released into central Idaho. Fish and Game participates in reintroductions and assumes lead management role if state plan is approved. Otherwise, the Fish and Wildlife Service will proceed with reintroductions on its own and retain full management authority.

Fall 1994 – Final Experimental Population Rules issued and published in the Federal Register.

• Litigation filed by Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, Farm Bureau, and others regarding the release of wolves and the use of the Experimental Population designation.
• Negotiations/ Fish and Wildlife Service policy decision regarding involvement of Nez Perce Tribe.
• Public meetings on State plan held to inform public.

October 17, 1994 – Public comment period on proposed Experimental Population Rules closes.

October 14, 1994 – Interagency meeting to develop and prioritize a list of potential release sites.

October 1994 – Idaho wolf management plan is nearing completion. But if the Fish and Wildlife Service does not change the Final Experimental Rules to further reduce protection of wolves and increase protection of livestock interests, several members of the Idaho Wolf Oversight Committee are pushing to go outside the parameters established by the Fish and Wildlife Service. This could jeopardize all state involvement in wolf recovery and management.

September 27-29, 1994 – Public hearings on Proposed Experimental Rule held in Boise, Helena, Cheyenne, Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C.

August 16, 1994 – Proposed Experimental Population Rules for Yellowstone and central Idaho published in the Federal Register and 60-day comment period began.

• States and Tribe can enter cooperative agreements with the Fish and Wildlife Service to take lead if they develop suitable wolf management plans. State and tribal wolf management activities would be funded by the Fish and Wildlife Service until wolves are removed from the Endangered Species List.
• Experimental population areas would be established for the central Idaho and Yellowstone areas. In northern Idaho, north of I-90, wolves will retain full protection of the Endangered Species Act.
• 15 wolves to be reintroduced in central Idaho and 15 in Yellowstone National Park for three to five years or until at least two packs establish and reproduce successfully in two consecutive years.
• Wolves are expected to reach the recovery level of at least 10 breeding pairs that breed successfully for three consecutive years by 2002.

August 10, 1994 – Record of Decision was published in Federal Register.

July 13, 1994 – Secretary of Agriculture signed a letter concurring with the Record of Decision. This assured the full cooperation of the U.S. Forest Service.

June 15, 1994 – Secretary of Interior signed the EIS Record of Decision supporting the Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed action and directed that it be implemented as soon as possible.

May 4, 1994 – EIS is completed. The Fish and Wildlife Service proposed to reintroduce wolves into central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park as a non-essential experimental population. If states and tribes develop acceptable wolf management plans, they could enter into a cooperative agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service to take lead in managing wolves.

April 1994 – In anticipation that the EIS would recommend reintroduction of wolves into Idaho under a “non-essential, experimental” status and provide an opportunity for the state to take a lead role in wolf management, the state Legislature amended Idaho Code §36-715 to allow Fish and Game to work with the Wolf Oversight Committee to develop and implement an Idaho Wolf Management Plan.

July 1993 – Draft EIS was released and resulted in 160,284 comments from public, agencies, and interest groups. It contained a Fish and Wildlife Service proposal to reintroduce gray wolves into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho if two naturally occurring wolf packs are not found in either area before October 1994.

1992 – State Legislature amended Idaho Code §36-715 to allow Fish and Game to work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to prepare the environmental impact statement. The Legislature established a Wolf Oversight Committee “to guide and advise the department in all aspects of their involvement in the EIS process.”

1991 – Congress directed U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to prepare an environmental impact statement on the plan to reintroduce wolves into central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park.

1991 – The Wolf Management Committee submitted their Plan to Congress.

November 1990 – Congress established a national Wolf Management Committee, directing the Secretary of the Interior to appoint a 10-member committee to develop a gray wolf reintroduction and management plan for Yellowstone National Park and the Central Idaho wilderness area. Fish and Game Director Jerry Conley was appointed a member of the committee.

1988 – State Legislature restricted the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s involvement in wolf recovery activities unless expressly authorized by state statute §36-715.

1980s – Numerous field surveys conducted in Idaho to document the presence of wolves.

1978 – In 1978, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relisted the gray wolf as endangered at the species level throughout the conterminous 48 States and Mexico, except for Minnesota where it was reclassified as threatened.

1974 – Four subspecies of gray wolves (Canis lupus) were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act – the gray wolf in the Northern Rocky Mountains, the eastern timber wolf in the northern Great Lakes region, the Mexican wolf in Mexico and the southwestern United States, and the Texas gray wolf of Texas and Mexico.

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Conservationists filed suit against the federal government Tuesday in an effort to reverse a decision that removed Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains.

The 13 groups that filed the lawsuit charge that U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar failed to fully consider both scientific and legal inadequacies underlying the delisting rule—released in the waning days of the Bush administration—before adopting it on April 2. In a news release, the groups claim the rule will allow more than two-thirds of the region’s wolves to be killed before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would even consider stepping back in and restoring protections.

“We cannot ignore that this delisting plan fails to protect their future,” said Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies Representative for Defenders of Wildlife, one of the groups filing the lawsuit.

Stone said they had hoped to avoid the lawsuit, but Salazar’s decision to proceed with the delisting left them no choice. She said state management plans approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service could lead to a drop in wolf numbers in the northern Rockies from an estimated 1,650 animals to just 450.

“We are going to court in order to ensure that wolves are fully recovered and treated as key components of the northern Rockies ecosystem—not as token isolated subpopulations maintained at the most minimum levels in national parks and wilderness areas,” she said.

The federal government’s delisting of wolves in April did not include the state of Wyoming, whose wolf management plan the Fish and Wildlife Service has deemed inadequate. On Tuesday, according to news reports, Wyoming officials also filed suit against the federal government challenging their absence from the delisting.

Should conservationists fail to overturn the delisting, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game is prepared to open the state’s first wolf hunt later this fall. The state’s Fish and Game Commission will set wolf-hunting quotas later this summer.

Except for several spots in the state—including the Sawtooth Valley, where the hunt would run from September through March—Idaho’s wolf hunt will generally run from October through December.

Jason Kauffman: jkauffman@mtexpress.com

A quote I carry in my wallet:

Not all dogs are fit to hunt, nor in the same way are all men gratified by it. Nor, for those of us who share this dogs pleasure of hunting (if you will,) do I ask special tolerance or understanding. We are as we are and if we seem to you to act immorally it is certainly your right to feel so, but I say most seriously that you exceed your rights when you urge that laws be made in the shape of your conscience to block pleasures permitted by mine. When you prevail you commit a crime against freedom and that’s the greatest immorality I know. ~ Vance Vourgaily

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In a heated debate began in the 1960s and 1970s and grew to a national scope concerning the grizzly bears in the GYE. For decades, grizzly bears were allowed to rummage through garbage dumps searching for food. As early as the 1940s, some researchers suggested closing the open-pit dumps within Yellowstone National Park. In 1963, the Advisory Board on Wildlife Management in the National Parks released the “Leopold Report” which recommended that natural ecosystems should be recreated, including predator/prey relationships.

By 1967, Yellowstone National Park’s Superintendent Anderson began to implement recommendations of the Leopold Report. The Park began closing the open-pit dumps and bears were to be weaned off garbage. Some researchers suggested gradually phasing out the dumps, but the Park staff closed everything, rationalizing that there were enough backcountry bears that did not use dumps to sustain the mortality. The controversy continued because grizzly bear mortality increased substantially as dumps were closed. Between 1967 and 1972, a minimum of 229 Yellowstone ecosystem grizzlies died.

The IGBST was formed by the Department of Interior in 1973 as a direct result of this controversy. The high mortality that followed dump closure and concerns for the population’s future led to its listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975. Early research by the team indicated that following listing, the population continued to decline into the 1980s. This information was the foundation and impetus for the formation of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) in 1983. The IGBC, represented by administrators from federal and state agencies, implemented several regulations on federal lands designed to reduce human-caused grizzly bear mortality. These management policies, in concert with favorable environmental conditions, halted the population’s decline. Grizzly bear numbers have increased since the mid-1980s and today bears again occupy historical range well beyond Yellowstone National Park.

Today

Grizzly bears are being killed by hunters in record numbers around Yellowstone National Park and researchers say the once-endangered predator is expanding across the region.

Bears are being seen – and killed – in places where they were absent for decades. Researchers suspect climate change is wiping out one of the bear’s food sources and they worry the trend will continue as the animals roam farther in search of food.

Yellowstone’s 600 grizzlies were removed from the endangered species list in 2007, following a recovery program that cost more than $20 million. If the death rate stays high for a second consecutive year, that would trigger a review of the bear’s endangered status.

“Last year may have been one of those fluke years,” said Chuck Schwartz, a bear biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “Last year could be the beginning of a trend.”

Federal officials say 48 bears were killed by humans last year, out of 71 total deaths. At least 20 of the bears died at the hands of hunters who shot in self-defense or after mistaking them for other animals.

“It’s kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. All you see is a big bear coming at you full speed,” said Ron Leming, a Wyoming elk hunter who said he survived an attack from a 500-pound (225-kilogram) male grizzly after his father shot it dead with an arrow.

“If you play dead he might sit there and eat you,” Leming said.

Schwartz and other biologists who study grizzlies insist the population in the 15,000-square-mile (38,850-square-kilometer) Yellowstone region of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming remains strong for now, growing on average 4 to 5 percent a year.

Yet they acknowledge climate change could prove the wild card that puts that growth in check. An epidemic of beetles in Yellowstone’s high country has laid waste to tens of thousands of acres of whitebark pine trees, which have seeds that some grizzlies rely on as a dietary staple.

Beetle epidemics are cyclical in the Northern Rockies. The latest one has been prolonged by several consecutive winters in which subfreezing temperatures did not last long enough to knock back the infestation.

If a warming world leads to less whitebark pine,

environmentalists fear grizzlies will become more aggressive in

challenging hunters – contests that bears usually lose.

“The prospect is that every year is going to be a bad food year because of what’s happening to whitebark,” said Doug Honnold, an attorney for the group Earthjustice.

Citing dying pine forests as a major threat, Honnold’s group sued the federal government in an attempt to get Yellowstone grizzlies back on the endangered species list.

Christopher Servheen, bear recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said his agency is closely monitoring the population and already crafting a plan to stem the death rate.

Meanwhile, conservationists are trying to encourage hunters to use mace-like bear spray as a non-lethal alternative to keeping them at bay.

Other measures being considered are stepped-up public education efforts and restrictions on livestock grazing, to prevent bear attacks on sheep and cattle.

Gregg Losinski, an education specialist with Idaho Fish and Game, said promoting the possibility of future grizzly bear hunts might convince more people to buy into bear conservation.

Even with those measures, researchers say bear deaths are inevitable as the animals return to a different landscape than that occupied by their ancestors.

Before early European settlers drove bears to near extinction, there were an estimated 50,000 grizzlies in the western half of the United States.

Yellowstone’s bears are among about 1,500 that have since repopulated the Northern Rockies. They must compete for space with several million tourists, and property owners.

“Some people say, ‘This is terrible, there’s more bears killed now than in many years,” Servheen said. “Well, there’s more bears now.”

Montanans interested in the well being of grizzly bears have had good and bad news recently.

After 26 years, the Yellowstone grizzly bear population was declared recovered. The bears were removed from the federal list of endangered and threatened wildlife species in April 2007, though grizzlies in the Yellowstone Ecosystem still face challenges.

“Human caused grizzly mortalities continue to be scrutinized, especially for female grizzly bears that are critical to the survival of the bears in the Yellowstone Ecosystem,” said Chris Smith, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks deputy director and a long-time member of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee.

“A serious issue for grizzly bears is the unprecedented attack of mountain pine beetles on whitebark pines,” said Smith.

Whitebark pine seeds are a staple in grizzly bears’ diets in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide Ecosystems.

Smith said some bear biologists are concerned that the loss of the nutritional whitebark pine seeds could in turn reduce the grizzly bears’ reproductive success.

“Providing areas where grizzlies can expand their range and find new foods will be an important part of helping the bears cope with the loss of whitebark pine trees,” Smith said.

In another part of the state, the Northern Continental Divide Grizzly Bear Project concluded there were an estimated 765 grizzly bears in the Northern Divide ecosystem in 2004—well above what was expected. This project involved two years of fieldwork by more than 200 researchers and crew and three years of analysis of more than 34,000 bear DNA samples.

Researchers genetically analyzed the bear hair samples, identifying 563 individual grizzly bears, then used statistical models to estimate the total number of bears.

The Northern Continental Divide grizzly population is one of five grizzly bear recovery zones located in portions of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington. Grizzly bears also occur north of the border in Canada and in Alaska.

In the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem, in northwestern Montana, the grizzly population is the smallest in the state, about 40 bears. FWP’s work with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to boost this population by transplanting a limited number of young female bears has met with some success and a recent set back. The two female bears released into this ecosystem in 2008 died about two months after their release—one was struck by a train and the other shot and killed at a residence outside of Noxon The work to augment the grizzly population in the Cabinet Yaak Ecosystem will continue.

The ultimate good news would be that grizzly bears are finding ways to interbreed between some recovery zones. IGBC scientists and the U.S. Geological Survey recommended genetic testing to discover whether grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region have interbred with grizzlies from elsewhere.

“Interbreeding between grizzly bear recovery areas is important insurance for the future because it will maintain the genetic diversity they need to withstand diseases and other pressures on them,” said Smith.

In the meantime, Montana’s grizzly bears are experiencing significant reductions and changes in key habitat, fragmentation of travel corridors from one ecosystem to other, changes in foods available to them and increased contact with humans.

“The successful management of grizzly bear populations includes a commitment to address the challenges posed by the many environmental changes the bears face,” Smith said.

-fwp-

HISTORICAL NOTE:

Montanans’ early commitment to maintaining grizzly bear populations is apparent—the state contains all or portions of four of the six areas in the lower 48 states identified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for grizzly bear recovery.

Grizzlies were never eliminated from Montana as they were elsewhere. Their numbers probably bottomed in the 1920s. At that time, changes were made to secure the grizzly bear’s future, including designating grizzlies a “game animal” in 1923, the first such designation of the species in the lower 48 states. Early prohibitions on the use of dogs to hunt bears, outlawing baiting, closing seasons and other measures also allowed grizzly bears to survive in portions of western Montana.

MT.gov

USGS

Ledger- Enquirer

The countdown to delisting for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains has begun—again.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service took the final step before officially removing northern Rocky Mountain gray wolves from protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The agency’s delisting rule for the region’s wolves was published in the Federal Register on Wednesday morning. The move put in motion a 30-day countdown to the removal of wolves from the ESA.

Wolves will lose their ESA status in all of Idaho and Montana and in portions of eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and northern Utah. Because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has deemed Wyoming’s wolf management plan inadequate, the delisting rule will not extend to wolves in that state.

Federal officials say Wyoming’s classification of wolves as “predators” across the majority of the state threatens wolf recovery. That designation would allow wolves to be shot on sight at any time of the year in a designated predator zone covering all but the northwest part of the state. Wyoming officials drew fire last year when hunters began gunning down wolves throughout the predator zone within days of the delisting.

The states of Idaho and Montana classify wolves as big game animals subject to set seasons and harvest quotas.

The delisting effort is the second in a little more than a year. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s first try in February 2008 was rebuffed after environmentalists filed suit in an attempt to derail anticipated wolf hunts last fall in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Conservation groups have said they will once again challenge the delisting of wolves in federal court, though federal rules require them to wait 60 days after the delisting rule is published before seeking an injunction.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has established a statewide wolf hunt to begin this fall should the federal delisting stand.

According to Fish and Wildlife Service estimates, 1,639 wolves inhabit the northern Rockies region—846 in Idaho, 491 in Montana and 302 in Wyoming.

There are an estimated 95 breeding pairs—39 in Idaho, 34 in Montana and 22 in Wyoming.

Jason Kauffman: jkauffman@mtexpress.com

YAKIMA — Dick Strunk is buying bullets in bulk.

The gun enthusiast recently had to use both hands to heave a case of ammunition off the sales counter at Bestway Pawn Mart. It’s 10 times his usual amount.

He’s stocking up. These days, ammunition is expensive and sometimes hard to find.

“Our fear is, we’re not going to be able to come here and buy,” says Strunk, a 52-year-old agricultural equipment salesman from Yakima.

A sign taped to the glass display counter spells out the cause of his worry: GET YOUR GUN’S NOW BEFORE OBAMA DOES.

Fueled by fears that President Obama might tighten firearms regulations, gun and ammunition sales reportedly are shooting through the roof.

No single agency tracks all gun sales in individual counties. But local gun owners are having trouble finding bullets. Police clerks are struggling to keep up with applications to carry concealed weapons. And shops are selling stock faster than they can replace it.

“Especially assault weapons, they’re just flying out the door,” says Dianne Mabry, manager of Yakima’s Bestway, a pawnshop. Her gun and ammo sales have nearly doubled since November, and customers are buying bullets in bulk.

So far, the Obama administration has taken no action on guns. However, policy statements posted on the White House Web site say his administration supports reinstating and making permanent a ban on assault weapons, as well as releasing some currently confidential law-enforcement data tracking gun ownership.

A House resolution proposed by U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., would establish a federal system of licensing and sales records for certain firearms.

“They’re trying to get rid of the American public having arms, as far as I’m concerned,” Strunk says.

The reaction is being felt across the Yakima Valley and the country.

Time Magazine reports that firearms sales in large retail outlets are up 39 percent this year. The magazine also reports that FBI background checks, which are required every time a federally licensed dealer sells a gun, between November and March rose 29.3 percent over the same period a year earlier.

Over the last several months, the Selah Police Department has struggled at times to resupply its ammunition. At the same time, Chief Stacy Dwarshuis has signed nearly triple the number of concealed-pistol licenses in the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year.

Dwarshuis talked to one man who recently purchased three guns — an assault rifle and two pistols — which are the first firearms he’s ever owned.

“I thought that was kind of interesting,” Dwarshuis says.

The Yakima County Sheriff’s Office issued almost 1,000 concealed-pistol licenses to new license-holders in 2008, far and away the highest number in the past 10 years. This year is on pace to shatter that record.

Clerks at police departments and the Yakima County Sheriff’s Office run criminal background checks on anyone applying for a concealed-pistol license, formerly called a concealed-weapons permit.

They don’t ask why a person is applying, but many people tell them.

About nine out of 10 of the applicants who do give a reason at the sheriff’s office cite concerns over Obama’s gun policies, says Debbie Martin, records supervisor.

“They were frightened before the election and they were frightened after the election,” Martin says.

The trend by itself doesn’t worry police, says Capt. Greg Copeland of the Yakima Police Department, as long a people buy their guns legally.

“The people who buy guns legally and go through the proper steps … usually are not the ones doing drive-bys, doing homicides,” Copeland says.

By Ross A. Courtney

Yakima Herald-Republic

A great debate is afoot, generated from two sets of criminal acts — the pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia and the string of mass murders we have seen in the United States in the last year.

We are too familiar with what is happening off the Somali coast. The Maersk Alabama was hijacked by Somali pirates. Not a lot of pirates, mind you, but they were armed and the crew was not. The good news: all were rescued, unharmed. The bad news: pirates still ply the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

On April 11, an American-owned tugboat flying an Italian flag was hijacked with 16-crew members reported on-board. The Italian navy sent its warships to do what they could. Tuesday morning, ABC News reported four more hijackings by Somali pirates.

Then there are the mass murders reported across the nation; disgruntled workers killing co-workers, a man walking into nursing homes and murdering innocent patients, a father killing family members and then suicide.

What do these have in common? Guns. Do not get me wrong, I am not for a complete ban on firearms, but there has to be an understanding what is and is not “common sense.” No one has ever explained to me why someone must own an assault rifle if all you plan to do is hunt deer. Assault rifles are designed to kill people, the “enemy.” Deer are not the enemy, nor criminals, nor al-Qaida. Deer is either food or trophy.

The history surrounding gun control dates back to 14th-century England as a religious issue; Catholics were prohibited from owning guns after the Protestant English Reformation. The 1689 English Bill of Rights’ seventh provision, giving Protestants the right to own guns, is the foundation of the Second Amendment.

The argument concerning “gun control” is, in my mind at least, interpretation of life then and now. The Second Amendment says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In 1776, every able-bodied male (OK, free white male) was a member of the local militia. Farmers and merchants took up arms and stood shoulder to shoulder to fight along with free and slaved blacks.

So what does this have to do with crimes on the high seas and at home? The two incompatible arguments are simple: we need to arm our Merchant Marines to protect them from pirates, and we need to control the sale and ownership of guns at home. It is not hard to see the conflict presented or the emotion generated by these two opposing needs.

The problem is enhanced by the knowledge that many of the pirates are not old enough to shave and there is essentially no government or law in Somalia, and that the guns used in the sensationalized crimes at home were, for the most part, legally purchased.

So where do the liberals and conservatives go from here? Both sides are arguing from Maslow’s second level in his hierarchy: fear of crime, of uncontrolled violence, of civil uprisings. In a word, chaos.

The argument that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is true, but the weapon of choice is usually a firearm. Another argument is that anything can be used as a weapon and kitchen knives can be used to kill. True, but if Seung-Hui Cho had a 10-inch cooking knife, 32 would not have died at Virginia Tech. Yet hunting, sport and home protection are all legitimate reasons to own a weapon. So where is the balance?

The NRA need not worry; gun ownership will never be prohibited in this country. However, the lethality and technology incorporated in the modern handgun, shotgun or rifle could not have been imagined 300 years ago. And no one has ever answered my question — why own an assault rifle to hunt deer?

BY David Rosman

Forget the far left’s attempt to smear Palin and her family, a left extremism that Barack Obama and many others support, the democrats in general are attempting to make an issue about Governor Palin’s experience. It’s probably a bit objective as to whether Governor Palin has more or less “experience” than Senator Obama. The liberal media, in its support of Obama, is saying that Sarah Palin doesn’t measure up to Obama in experience and that Senator John McCain’s attack campaign against Obama’s inexperience will now backfire, as he has picked a running mate with little experience.

Isn’t it bizarre in some ways that we are even having this discussion? Those who follow Obama think he is their man. They do and say what they think is necessary to get their guy elected. McCain’s camp is doing the same thing but I see it just a bit differently.

I would give the experience nod to Palin for two reasons. One, I think her past in office has presented her with real executive decisions of which Obama has not had. Two, I personally more strongly approve of Palin’s past experience as one I would look for in a candidate. I want a real person, one that actually does remember what life is like, not just talk about it.

But let’s forget about this experience thing for a moment. Palin is fearless and I don’t think it much matters what color suit or dress the opponent is wearing. If you compare two candidates, both with equally little past experience, the kind some people seem to think is vitally important, don’t we then look at other aspects of that person in determining a winner – like character, morals, strengths and weaknesses?

I would trade you one experience card for one gutsy performer. I love a gutsy guy! I’m a sports fan and have been for years. I am always drawn to underachiever athletes who make up for perhaps some natural athletic ability by out hustling the opponent, and I mean out working them. These kinds of people are determined and fearless. It comes out in their performances.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has taken her share of grief over her position on wolf management. For those who may not know, her team of respected wildlife scientists and game commission, implemented a plan that involves the reduction of wolf populations in a very limited number of specific areas where it has been determined that wolf populations are too high and they are decimating the moose and caribou.

Alaska’s constitution demands that game animals must be managed to provide opportunities for its residents to hunt and fish. Allowing wolves in these isolated and limited areas to go unmanaged, is not only illegal but irresponsible as well. Many methods have been tried and due to the geography and other dynamics of the situation, it was decided to utilize aircraft as a tool to cull the wolf population. This has all been done within all the laws.

Palin has heard from just about every animal rights organization and has had to spend Alaskan resources fighting this decision in court but she believes that it has to be done according to law and that the majority of residents agree. A recent ballot measure proved that to be the case.

Palin has stood by her team of fish and wildlife experts and essentially told all newcomers she isn’t changing her mind. She has taken a similar stance on the recent announcement by her own republican party, that the polar bear would be listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. It takes guts to buck your own party but she has proven it doesn’t matter. I think she is a “We the People” person.

When Gov. Palin announced that the state of Alaska was going to file suit against the U.S. Department of Interior over the polar bear listing, it set off a firestorm of anger throughout the world of environmentalists. Back in May when I reported this story, Kassie Siegel from the Center for Biological Diversity, accused Gov. Palin as being either “misinformed” or “intentionally misleading”. Because Palin wasn’t interested in buying into global warming that some scientists think might create some problems for the polar bear, she did what she knew was the right thing to do even though Seigal blasted her position.

“The governor is aligning herself and the state of Alaska with the most discredited, fringe, extreme viewpoints by denying this.”

What is refreshing is that it appears the state of Alaska has a governor that holds environmental extremism in very low regard. There is nothing I would like more than to see a president and vice president, an administration and a Congress that did the same thing.

But in reality, I think Palin takes comments made about her by individuals and groups as nothing more than a pesky mosquito – a little DEET and they’ll go away.

But this all pales in comparison to how she handled California Congressman George Miller after he submitted a proposed bill that would put an end to the state of Alaska’s constitutional agreement to manage its own wildlife.

Back in September I told you what Miller was up to and how Governor Palin was handling it. One thing she did was send the honorable congressman a letter(pdf).

Here are a few choice excerpts from Gov. Palin’s letter to Rep. Miller dated September 27, 2007:

On behave of the state of Alaska, I am writing to express my displeasure with your introduction of a bill that proposes to end what you refer to as “airborne hunting” of wolves and bears in Alaska. You have misconstrued the reality of life in Alaska and the importance of wild game as food for the people of this state. You displayed a shocking lack of understanding wildlife management in the North and the true structure and function of Alaska’s predator control programs. You have threatened the very foundations of federalism and the state’s abilities to manage their own affairs as they see fit.

I am dismayed that you did not attempt to contact the state your bill affects most directly before announcing your legislation. At the very least, we could have helped you correct the many inaccuracies and misstatements of fact in both the written and the oral portions of your media presentation yesterday…………..

I am especially concerned your draft threatens the constitutionally guaranteed sovereignty not just of the state of Alaska, but all states.

In her letter, Palin quite adequately explains to Congressman Miller how much of the predator control program of Alaska works. She ends the letter this way.

With all due respect Congressman Miller, you failed to do your homework. I urge you to learn more about the realities of Alaska’s predator control program, and not to swallow the rhetoric of special interest advocacy groups trying to raise money for their inaccurate campaigns………

The wolves in this case that Governor Palin doesn’t fear are the “special interest advocacy groups” and their “inaccurate campaigns”, as well as one Congressman George Miller. In all honesty, I just can’t see her being intimidated with anyone who might be a threat to this country, whether they live in California or Tehran.

This is the kind of “experience” that you can’t put a measure to. I want a leader who will stand up to whatever and whoever threatens the constitution of this nation, our sovereignty and freedom.

Tom Remington

http://ushuntingtoday.com/news/

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (B&B)
With glaring spotlights cast in the eyes of Sarah Palin, this national stage newcomer stood and delivered a speech that had the audience in the Xcel Center on its feet, and no doubt millions in TV land cheering along with them. Palin’s Wednesday night speech at the Republican National Convention attracted 37 million viewers, and the event should be regarded kindly by historians in years to come.

Regardless of your political leanings, you have to agree that this woman can deliver a speech in a way that makes you feel like she is talking directly to you as an individual.

Her diction was excellent, her delivery exceptional and she didn’t hesitate to take on her detractors with hard-hitting jabs interlaced with a little humor. This self-described “hockey mom” may try to give the impression that she is “ordinary”, but don’t let that ploy fool you. In her own words tonight, she served warning to her opponents, “You know what they say about the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”

Following a barrage of personal attacks against her family members and her own credentials for the office, from both the media and the Obama campaign, she took the offensive, electrifying the audience and giving the Republican Party a jolt that was exhilarating, if not to the political pundits. She also served notice to them as well, with this remark.

“Here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.”

Earlier in the day, she attended a meeting with Republican governors, commenting afterward that leading a state means you have to make decisions and not just vote “present,” a reference to Obama’s notorious record in the Illinois Senate where he voted “present” dozens of times to avoid taking a stand on controversial issues.

Palin has executive experience that far exceeds being “present”, and after this speech her opponents should have a newfound respect for her poise, her repartee and her pit bull bite.

2008 Copyright Bulls & Beavers LLC

ENNIS n The Madison River was unusually big and entirely empty of fishermen and floaters on Labor Day after a crucial structure that regulates water flow from Hebgen Dam broke Sunday.
DEIRDRE EITEL/CHRONICLE A hole in the underwater intake tower of the Hebgen Lake Dam, discovered Sunday, is allowing a four-fold increase in the flow of water, 3,400 cubic feet per second, to thunder from the dam’s outlet. The failure at the dam’s intake tower on Sunday afternoon sent water gushing from Hebgen Dam at spring runoff levels, forced evacuation of camping sites and closure of the river to recreation, and caused anxiety among Ennis residents.

Bits of information mixed with rumors spread by word of mouth Sunday around Ennis, which has no local radio or TV station or Internet site to centralize reliable information. That led some residents to fear that the dam had failed, there had been an earthquake or evacuation was imminent, which turned out not to be true.

“All I could envision was water coming down Main Street,” said Mary Van Pelt, a sales associate at The Blue Heron gift store in downtown Ennis, who moved the store’s books in case of flooding. “They kind of made us feel it was imminent…. It was a little nutty.”

Madison County Undersheriff Roger Thompson was reassuring Monday afternoon at a press conference held at the Madison Valley Rural Fire station.

“There has been no problem whatsoever with the dam,” Thompson said. “All the citizens of this county should feel very proud and happy” that the emergency response team members worked well together.

He thanked about 50 emergency workers from different agencies and volunteers for doing an excellent job of mobilizing on Sunday, and declared that the emergency team was being demobilized as of Monday afternoon.

County Commissioner Jim Hart thanked the emergency workers and volunteers for a “fantastic job,” but conceded there had been glitches in informing the public.

“This is a big deal in small town USA,” Hart said.

The river between Quake Lake and Ennis Lake was reopened Monday to fishing and other day uses, but not to overnight camping. Signs were to be posted warning recreationists of unusually high water. However, the river remained closed between Hebgen Lake and Quake Lake.

The river may well remain high today. A battle plan for repairing the dam’s intake structure was still being debated by civil engineers late Monday, said Carrie Harris, manager of hydro-engineering for PPL Montana LLC, which owns and operates 93-year-old earth-and-concrete Hebgen Dam.

Harris offered reassurances about PPL’s Hebgen Dam and the Quake Lake rock dam immediately down-river, which was created by a massive landslide in the 1959 earthquake that killed 28 people.

The Madison River, normally flowing around 850 cubic feet per second this time of year, jumped to 3,400 cfs on Sunday, which would be a normal spring high-water, fish-flushing flow, Harris said.

It’s still below the 3,500 cfs maximum which PPL agreed not to exceed in a “gentleman’s agreement” in its federal license, to avoid stressing Quake Lake, she said. And it’s far below the 5,000 cfs that occurred in the winter of 1997.

Thompson said it was a fisherman who first reported trouble at Hebgen Dam on Sunday afternoon, telling the sheriff’s office he heard a loud pop and “a strange sucking sound,” and saw a lot of water frothing at the headgates of the intake tower.

Thompson said he and Steve Covas, PPL supervisor of the Madison Dam at Ennis, drove to the dam and inspected the water intake tower. They found a manhole cover weighing about 175 pounds had popped off and was lying 6 feet away.

The intake tower is about 75 feet deep, most of it underwater. It has four gates that allow water to flow into four chambers, through the dam structure to a tunnel and out to the Madison River.

Normally, only two of the four gates would be letting in water. Instead, Thompson said, they could see water churning in both chambers that should have been empty. That indicated the timber and concrete intake structure must have a breach somewhere underwater.

“The flow was so high, we started evacuating from Hebgen Dam to Quake Lake, and all the way down to Ennis Dam,” Thompson said. The evacuation area only involved campers or people who might be affected if the river rose 3 feet.

“Ennis was never in any danger,” Thompson said. “At this river level, we’re not too worried about Quake Lake.”

However, as people who live along the river were told they might want to prepare for possible evacuation, residents became alarmed. “People started hearing rumors the dam was breaking,” Thompson said.

So volunteers were sent door to door in Ennis to quash the rumors, and a community meeting was called at 11 p.m., which drew about 100 people.

“The biggest impact we had was not panic but anxiety over exactly what was going on,” said Justin Gatewood, sales representative at Madison River Fishing Co. “The nightmare scenario being circulated was maybe the whole valley would be flooded out.”

Corinna Christensen, co-owner of the Ennis Pharmacy & Soda Fountain, said residents on Monday felt “relieved it’s not as serious a situation as it could have been.”

Hillary Block, owner of the West of the Madison clothing shop, said she raised merchandise up off the floor as best she could Sunday. At her home by the river, she gathered up photos and records and took her son to stay that night at a friend’s trailer.

“I feel somewhat relieved,” she said. “But I don’t feel we’re out of the woods yet. It’s not fixed yet.”

A federal inspector was expected at the dam Monday night, said Mark Lambrecht of Helena, PPL manager of regulatory affairs. Engineers from Washington Group of Missoula were debating whether a plan to install a 17-foot-wide steel bulkhead to plug the water’s outflow would work or tear up the bulkhead, according to PPL officials.

Ironically, Harris said, Hebgen Dam underwent its annual federal inspection last Thursday and everything seemed fine.

If there ever were a catastrophic dam failure, Lambrecht said, Ennis would have eight hours notice before the water could reach the town.

Gail Schontzler is at gails@dailychronicle.com or 582-2633.

Sportsmen and women who have been struggling with the choices in this year’s presidential race may have found a ticket they can vote for with enthusiasm, when Republican John McCain introduced Alaska’s Governor, Sarah Palin, as his choice for a running mate. Palin is a solid choice for conservative values, second amendment rights and the heartfelt family traditions of hunting and fishing.

Palin became a fast-rising star in Alaska politics, after winning the mayor’s seat in her hometown of Wasilla, in 1996, defeating a three-term incumbent. A short ten years later, she became the first female and youngest governor of the state. This remarkable achievement was not unexpected to her fellow state champion basketball teammates, who nicknamed Palin “Barracuda” for her aggressive play as point guard for Wasilla High School.

Alaska is a state where individualists are treasured and Palin and her family fill that bill. Following her success on the basketball court, she became Miss Wasilla, then runner-up as Miss Alaska, and then moved quickly from beauty queen to first lady of the frontier state. Her husband, Todd, whom she refers to as the “First Dude,” has worked as a commercial fisherman, production operator for BP on the North Slope when he’s not straddling his snowmobile. Todd has won the Tesoro Iron Dog, the world’s longest snowmobile race, four times.

Maintaining the difficult pace of a presidential campaign shouldn’t be an issue for Sarah “Barracuda” Palin. She comes from good outdoor stock, with an inclination toward the long run. Her parents, Chuck and Sally Heath, hunt and fish but both have also completed marathons.

As a mother of five children, Bristol, Willow, Piper, Track and Trig, who was born in April of this year with Down syndrome, she is very familiar with heavy demands on her time and the mandatory machinations of multi-tasking.

She’s a lifetime NRA member, which compares well to the gun controlling inclinations of the Obama ticket.

Now, the big question that remains is how her favorite meal, moose stew, will serve on the Whitehouse’ china?

Copyright 2008 Bulls & Beavers LLC. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

As of Tuesday morning, 386 sockeye salmon had arrived at one of two fish traps near the Sawtooth Fish Hatchery along the upper Salmon River northwest of Ketchum, fisheries officials reported yesterday afternoon. In all, a total of 42 sockeye arrived in the Sawtooth Valley on Tuesday.

This summer’s run is the now the highest run of sockeye since biologists started tracking those arriving in the Sawtooth Valley in 1985. The previous record holder in recent decades was in 2000 when 257 of the famous red fish made their way back.

According to fisheries biologists with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, the 2008 run is an indication that the agency’s captive broodstock program for Snake River sockeye salmon is beginning to reap benefits.

“The sockeye program is definitely going in the right direction,” said Travis Brown, assistant manager of the Eagle Fish Hatchery. Brown was at the Sawtooth hatchery to help out with the processing of captured sockeye, which are being sent to the Eagle hatchery, site of the state’s captive-breeding program.

In recent years, returns of sockeye have varied wildly in the upper Salmon River. Anadromous fish must cross eight major dams on the Columbia and lower Snake rivers before they reach Idaho.

Hundreds of miles downriver from the Sawtooth Valley on Tuesday, 881 adult sockeye salmon had passed by the Lower Granite Dam, the last barrier on the lower Snake River in southeast Washington that anadromous fish must pass before entering Idaho.

Though this summer’s run is indeed a remarkable improvement above mostly dismal single-digit or nonexistent sockeye returns to Redfish Lake during the past several decades, the Sawtooth Valley sockeye population is far from recovered, fisheries officials have said. In the mid-1950s, thousands of the fish returned to spawn in Redfish, Petit, Alturas and other lakes in the shadow of the Sawtooth Mountains.

From eggs produced by the state’s captive broodstock program, 355 hatchery-produced sockeye returned to the Sawtooth Valley during an eight-year period between 1999 and 2007. By comparison, just 77 natural-origin sockeye salmon returned to Idaho in the 14-year period between 1985 and 1998.

This year’s positive sockeye returns have been attributed to good smolt production four years ago, good out-migration conditions in the rivers and excellent ocean conditions.

Redfish Lake sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) were listed as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act in November 1991. They were the first Idaho salmon to be listed. Redfish Lake sockeye are unique in that they travel to the highest elevation, over 6,500 feet, run the longest distance, about 900 miles, and travel the farthest south of any North American sockeye population.

This year’s returns are the result of 180,000 smolts that were released and migrated to the ocean in 2006, Eagle hatchery Conservation Hatcheries Supervisor Jeff Heindel said last month.

by JASON KAUFFMAN

John McCain is the preferred Presidential candidate among sportsmen,
as well as the preferred sporting partner

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Sportsmen have a solid history of voting, with 9 in 10 currently registered to vote and of those 83 percent say they will vote in the November election, according to a new survey by the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation. Overall, there are an estimated 40 million sportsmen of voting age in the United States.

“Sportsmen are active voters and prefer candidates who align with them on hunting and fishing issues,” said Jeff Crane, president of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation. “The attention presidential candidates give to sportsmen’s issues is well-aimed.”

Among sportsmen, Republican John McCain holds a significant lead over White House opponent Barack Obama, with a 14-point margin according to the survey.

Asked who they planned to vote for in November, 45 percent said McCain and 31 percent said Obama.

Support for McCain among sportsmen extends from the voting booth to the field, the survey found.

Asked who they’d like to go hunting with, 49 percent said McCain and 27 percent said Obama. As a fishing buddy, 44 percent said they’d prefer McCain and 31 percent chose Obama.

“Sportsmen view John McCain as good company in the great outdoors,” said Steve Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which helped underwrite the survey. “They’re just not sure how much fun Barack Obama would be in a duck blind.”

By a 2 to 1 margin sportsman said McCain would be a better president on sportsmen’s issues than Obama.

“Politically engaged sportsmen see John McCain as a supporter of their concerns,” Sanetti said. “To sportsmen, I would say, don’t be fooled. Make it a point to know where the candidates you’re considering for office truly stand on hunting and firearms issues.”

A majority of sportsmen polled said that it is important for a candidate to share their views on hunting and fishing issues, although the survey indicated the economy, homeland security and the war in Iraq are the top concerns for all Americans this election season.

When it comes to sportsmen-related issues, sportsmen are most likely to say that it’s essential that a candidate support ensuring gun rights, clean water initiatives, and sustainable energy development.

“With an estimated $76 billion economic impact on the economy annually and direct support of 1.6 million jobs, the next president will need to pay attention to issues that impact hunting and fishing,” said Crane. “Sportsmen need to ask candidates where they stand on our outdoor issues and take this into account when they vote on November 4th.”

Other key findings of the survey include:

A significant portion of sportsmen say this November’s election is more important than past elections regarding their ability to hunt and fish.

On the specific topic of gun rights, sportsmen say firearm issues are more important now than in past elections.

Three-quarters (74%) say they would prefer to elect a president who personally owns firearms.

The telephone survey of 1,009 sportsmen was conducted July 10-24 by Braun Research on behalf of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation and Ketchum Global Research. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan group headquartered in Washington, D.C. A leader in promoting sportsmen’s issues with elected officials, CSF works with the bi-partisan Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus in the U.S. Congress, as well as sportsmen’s caucuses in state legislators around the country. The CSF does not endorse political candidates.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, based in Newtown, Conn., works to increase participation in and understanding of hunting and the shooting sports; to reaffirm and strengthen their members’ commitment to the safe and responsible use of their products, and to promote a political climate supportive of America’s traditional firearms rights.

The survey was also supported by National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers, Outdoor Channel, American Sportfishing Association and the National Marine Manufacturers Association.

For more information on the survey results go to www.sportsmenslink.org.

For information on the economic impact hunting and fishing has in your state go to

http://www.sportsmenslink.org/reports_and_data/Sportsmens-Economic-Impact.html.

It’s that time of the year when we all need to be reminded of the dangers of lighting especially when we are out pursuing our passions like hiking, hunting, fishing, golf and anything we do in the outdoors.

Lightning Injuries

1. History / Incidence
2000 thunderstorms occur worldwide at any moment
Lightning strikes the earth > 100 times/sec
1000 deaths worldwide/year
100 deaths US/year (range 50 ­ 300)
More lightning deaths is US per year than any other natural disaster
25-40% deaths are work related
Summer months
70% between noon and 6 pm
Non urban areas most affected

2. Prevention (Outdoors)
Be aware of whether conditions
Seek shelter in a substantial building, an automobile, or low areas with thick growth of trees
Remove wet clothing and shoes with metal cleats
Avoid power lines, steel structures, tall isolated trees, hilltops, clearings, standing water
If on/in the water seek shore
If in a large group separate
If in the open crouch down, kneel, or roll up in a ball

3. Prevention (Indoors)
If indoors avoid:
Open doors/windows
Fireplaces
Metal objects of any kind (pipes, sinks, radiators, “plugged-in”electrical appliances
Telephones
Computer with modem

4. Lightning Injuries
Lightning is dangerous for four reasons:
High Voltage
Extreme Heat
Electromagnetism
Explosive Force

5. Five Mechanisms of Lighting Injury
Direct Hit (person out in open)
Splash ­ jumps from object directly hit (most common)
Contact ­ conducted through an object
Step voltage ­ ground current
Blunt trauma ­ blast effect

6. Types of Lighting Injuries
Minor (last seconds to days with complete recovery)
Extremity numbness/tingling
Confusion
Amnesia
Temporary deafness or blindness
Muscle pain
Ear drum rupture
Skin/muscle bruising

7. Effects of Moderate Lighting Injury
(May last hours or become permanent)
Confusion
Paralysis/numbness/weakness of extremities
Seizures
1st and 2nd degree burns
Spinal injuries
Skull fractures
Extremity fractures
Sleep distrubances
Difficulty concentrating

8. Effects of Severe Lighting Injury
(severe disability or death)
Cardiac arrest
3rd degree burns
Brain damage
Severe blunt trauma (ruptured spleen, collapsed lungs, bleeding in brain)

9. Field Management of Lightning Injury
Diagnosis is often difficult or missed
May mimic stroke, seizure, heart attack
If unsure of severity seek medical attention
If severe injuries call 9-1-1
Begin CPR if necessary
Basic First Aid
Place patient on back
Once on back do not move if spine injury is suspected
Splint fractures
Dress burns
Control bleeding with direct pressure

10. Emergency Room Management
What to expect depends on severity
Minor/Moderate Injuries ­ IV, IV fluids, blood work, monitoring, x-rays
Severe injuries may require breathing tube, ventilator, surgical procedures, burn center care

12. Common Myths & Misconceptions
“All lightening strikes are fatal”
“The most common time to get struck is at the peak of a storm”
“Only those directly hit by lightning are injured”
“I am immune from lightning in a building”
“If you’re not killed by the lightning, you’ll be ok”
“If there are no outward signs of injury, you’ll be ok”
“Lightning victims are still electrified”
“Lightning never strikes twice in the same place”
(Lightning once struck the Empire State Building 47 times during one storm!)

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.

One minute, 8-year-old Evan Pala, of Boca Raton, Fla. was enjoying a beautiful day in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the next he was being mauled by a black bear. The bear attacked unexpectedly near a creek where Evan had been playing, knocking him to the ground, biting and clawing his arms and face. His father, John Pala, also received cuts while driving the bear away with rocks and sticks.

Shortly after the attack, park rangers tracked down a young male bear and shot it after it began acting aggressively. A necropsy will be performed on the 86-pound bear to ascertain if it was indeed the bear that attacked Evan.

A Boise resident and homeowner in East Fork’s Thunder Meadows had the scare of her life Sunday night. Kelly Beach’s miniature pinscher, Ella, was caught in the jaws of a cougar, and Beach wasn’t sure she would get her back.

About 10:45 p.m. Beach let her other dog, a Doberman pinscher, into the backyard. The Doberman began to bark wildly, prompting Beach to put Ella on a line before letting her out. The line was staked into the patio of Beach’s house.

Within less than a minute, Beach heard Ella barking as well.

“I saw the leash go taunt,” Beach said. “And I just started pulling and pulling, and suddenly the cougar came into the light with my dog in his mouth.”

Beach, along with her daughter and husband, screamed and pulled until the cougar dropped the dog and ran off into the dark.

“I wasn’t sure I would get my dog back,” Beach said. “I thought I’d get a piece of her back. But for some reason he let her go.”

In late July, a group of three cougars was spotted in east Hailey, and the recent sighting was not the first in East Fork. Sheila Liermann, also a resident of Thunder Meadows, which is about four miles east of state Highway 75, said one family reported seeing a cougar in their backyard in May or June. Liermann said she called the Idaho Department of Fish and Game but was told that unless the cougar was actively stalking a human or an animal, nothing could be done.

After the Beach incident, Liermann called  Idaho Fish and Game again. Randy Smith, Fish and Game regional wildlife manager, was dispatched to the scene, but according to Beach and Liermann, nothing has been done to track down the cougar.

“They told us that normally these cats just appear and move on,” Liermann said. “They are hoping this one will move on.”

Beach is not so sure.

“I felt like this cat was not afraid of us,” Beach said. “He did not run off from the floodlights or my Doberman. It took us all screaming our heads off to get it to let go.”

As of press deadline on Tuesday, Smith could not be reached for comment.

For now the Beach family has retreated to Boise where they plan to stay until something is done about the cougar.

“I’m just amazed that Ella is alive today,” Beach said. “We got very, very lucky. I just don’t want the cougar to move on to another yard with another dog or, even worse, a little kid.”

By DELLA SENTILLES
Express Staff Writer

Beyond the towering trees that have stood here for thousands of years, an intense drug war is being waged.
Authorities uncovered more than $1 billion worth of pot plants in Sequoia National Forest this week.
llegal immigrants connected to Mexico’s drug cartels are growing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of marijuana in the heart of one of America’s national treasures, authorities say. It’s a booming business that, federal officials say, feeds Mexico’s most violent drug traffickers.

“These aren’t Cheech and Chong plants,” said John Walters, director of the National Drug Control Policy. “People who farm now are not doing this for laughs, despite the fact Hollywood still thinks that. They’re doing it to make a lot of money.”

Walters spoke from a “marijuana garden” tucked deep into the Sequoia National Forest, a two- to four-hour hike from the nearest road, far removed from the giant sequoias the region is best known for.  Watch Hollywood needs to chill out, get serious about pot »

Ten thousand marijuana plants, some 5 feet tall, dotted the mountainside’s steep terrain amid thick brush, often near streams. This garden’s street value is an estimated $40 million, authorities said.

Walters clutched three plants he said were worth $12,000 on the streets.

“This is about serious criminal organizations,” Walters said. “They’re willing to kill anybody who gets in their way. They’re taking money back to those who kill prosecutors, judges and law enforcement.”  See photos of pot farm sweep in heart of U.S. national treasure »

Over the past eight days, a federal, state and county law enforcement initiative called Operation LOCCUST has eradicated 420,000 marijuana plants here worth more than $1 billion on the street. By comparison, authorities eradicated 330,000 plants over the six-month growing season last month, said Lt. Mike Boudreaux of the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department.

It was just five feet away and Clivia Feliz, crouched between fallen trees, was futilely trying to protect herself. Feliz, a 51-year-old massage therapist and regular Anchorage trail runner, watched it in that time-stopping moment, waiting for its next move.

But the bear’s hesitation didn’t last in the woods at Far North Bicentennial Park early Friday evening.

It pounced, breaking through the trees as if they were a pile of dead leaves.

What looked like a 400-pound bruin bit into Feliz’s arm. Then it tore into it again. Its jaws went for her head and neck, but broke no bone and ripped no flesh. It jostled her head between its teeth.

Then it stood over Feliz for another one of those long moments. Was it going for her stomach? How could she protect her vital organs? She tried to lift her legs. She turned her head in its direction just in time to hear the crunch of its teeth against her ribs.

By the end of the attack, Feliz would have a partially collapsed lung, a torn arm, and puncture marks on her head and neck, among other injuries.

She was the second person in six weeks to be mauled by what biologists believe to be the same brown bear with two cubs on the Rover’s Run trail, which parallels the salmon-rich Campbell Creek in southeast Anchorage.

“I’m lucky,” Feliz said from her hospital bed at Providence Alaska Medical Center on Saturday, less than 24 hours after the attack. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have been on that trail.”

Fish and Game biologist Rick Sinnott looked for the bear until sunset Saturday, intending to kill it, and possibly its cubs. The trail is now closed.

THE CUBS KEPT COMING

Feliz, a marathon runner, had been avoiding Far North Bicentennial Park for the last month because of the brown bear attack on a 15-year-old biker in late June. But after seeing two black bears on her usual running trails at Kincaid recently, she decided to head to the east side park.

She said that in the 12 years she’s lived here, she’s never seen so many bears around the city’s trails.

She parked her car just past Service High School, and she and her 6-year-old border collie, Sky, started their run on the multipurpose trail. She wanted to do six miles.

When she got to the beginning of Rover’s Run, she saw a sign warning of bears in the area. It said there had been a sighting on “7/25/08″ but in a quick read, she registered it as June 25, not July 25. She thought it was six weeks ago, not two.

Whatever hesitation she had from the sign dissipated when a bicyclist emerged from the trail. So she and Sky, who was running right next to her off leash, stepped onto the path.

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About 800 feet into it, she saw two cubs 50 feet away.

“As soon as I stopped, they looked up and started bolting for us,” she said. “At full speed.”

She turned around and began running as fast as she could back to the trail head. “I kept looking over my shoulder but they kept coming,” she said.

She knew she was in trouble. Their mother would be close behind. And she knew she couldn’t outrun a sow.

“I thought, if I get off the trail, maybe they’ll lose me.”

So she scrambled for the woods.

But the cubs kept coming.

She decided to look for a tree or something she could climb for safety. But there was nothing.

She turned around once more. Sky had run off in a different direction; the cubs took off after him. Behind her instead was a round, beautiful, healthy sow that looked like a 400-pound version of her cubs, coming through brush.

‘THIS MIGHT BE IT’

She crouched down next to a couple of fallen trees to create what barrier she could. Feliz hoped the bear would follow its cubs and keep going. But it didn’t.

“She just pounced right through those trees and was on top of me,” she said.

“I was like, ‘This might be it.’ ”

When the bear crunched into her rib cage, she could hear the bones separate. “She just chomped from front to back.”

None of what was happening to her was really registering, though. In that moment, her conscious thought was not that a bear was ripping her open. A primordial survival instinct took over.

Feliz doesn’t know how long the attack was. Time stopped and accelerated at once.

She screamed for help, but no one was around.

“She just stayed there for a moment, then took off real fast.”

When the bear retreated, she didn’t know what to do. Was it still nearby? Should she play dead?

Feliz was in pain but it wasn’t what she was thinking about. She wasn’t giving herself to it. She just couldn’t while she was out there, she later recalled. She would have to try to survive. The realization of pain would come later in the emergency room.

“I’ve got to get out. I don’t have time to lie here,” she thought.

She knew something was very wrong where the bear had bitten into her ribs. She thought it might be her spleen. She couldn’t yell out for help anymore, though. She couldn’t figure out why. Later at the hospital she would learn it was because of her injured lung.

She got up and started making her way back to the trail. She wouldn’t look at her arm. She didn’t want to see the details, she said. All that mattered was she knew she couldn’t use it. Sky, disturbed but uninjured, found her and licked blood off her arm.

She pushed her hand on her ribs to stop the bleeding, and started walking. One foot in front of the other.

Feliz took 45 minutes to walk out to the Buckner trail head at Campbell Airstrip Road — saying “Help” when she could.

When she got to the road, one car came and she made eye contact with the driver. She tried to signal for help but had one arm pressuring her torso and the other one couldn’t move. The driver kept going down the road.

The driver of a second car seemed to be distracted and didn’t even look at her, she said.

She waited until a third car drove up. “I thought I’m going to have to hurl myself into the road here,” she said.

She told the driver to call 911.

‘TAKE NOTICE’

Feliz says the attack was her own fault. She shouldn’t have been on the trail.

She doesn’t want to see the bear put down, but understands why Fish and Game would choose to. “If it wasn’t me, it could have been someone else,” she said.

“I hope people take notice. It’s not necessary to go to the extreme and kill every bear in the vicinity. But realize that when it is a year like this year, don’t take high risks either.

“I did and I shouldn’t have.”

Hunt for bear intensifies

Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Rick Sinnott searched for the bear at Far North Bicentenniel Park until 9:30 p.m. on Saturday. He said it is a top priority to kill it.

He, another biologist and an Alaska State Trooper walked Rover’s Run and nearby woods but saw no sign of the sow or cubs. Rain washed away many of the tracks they had seen Friday.

Sinnott said troopers will head out again today to hunt for the bear. He and other biologists will likely continue the search on Monday.

– Anchorage Daily News

After a relatively quiet July, the fire season in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness is heating up.

Three fires are burning in the vast wilderness area north of Stanley. The Cayuse Fire and the Roan Fire, both located approximately 10 miles northeast of the launch site for the Main Salmon River, are relatively small but are of concern to forest officials because they have potential to merge and grow significantly. The third blaze, near the Middle Fork of the Salmon River, has closed a popular hiking trail but has not yet forced any limitations on boat travel on the river.

The Cayuse Fire was reported Monday afternoon, burning in Cayuse Creek, a tributary of Horse Creek, about 18 air miles northwest of Shoup. Three helicopters dropped water on the fire Wednesday and seven rappelers were moved into the area. The rappelers were later moved out because of unsafe conditions. As of Thursday morning, the fire had burned about 20 acres.

The Roan Fire, reported Wednesday, has burned about 20 acres three miles south of the Cayuse Fire. Two helicopters dropped water on the fire Wednesday.

Kent Fuellenbach, public information officer for the Salmon-Challis National Forest, said land managers are concerned about the two fires because they are in “steep, nasty country” that makes them hard to fight. He said there is concern that they could merge into one fire that could then merge with the 1,000-acre Woodhump Fire in the Bitterroot National Forest, just a couple miles to the west.

Fuellenbach said a Type 3 fire-fighting team—including helicopters, hot-shot firefighters and hand crews—would continue fighting the two fires today.

The 200-acre Waterfall Fire continues to burn in the upper Waterfall Creek area about two miles east of the Middle Fork of the Salmon River. That fire is currently a low-intensity fire burning mostly in grass under a ponderosa pine stand. Forest officials are managing the fire as a “wildland” fire, meaning it is being allowed to burn but will be monitored. Crews could be sent in to protect bridges in the area, Fuellenbach said.

Waterfall Creek Trail No. 045 has been closed from the junction with Middle Fork Trail No. 044 near the Big Creek Bridge up to the downstream end of Lower Terrace Lake.

Fuellenbach said rangers are located at points along the Middle Fork to alert boaters of the situation. He said the fire does not currently pose a hazard for float-boat use of the Middle Fork but there may be some smoke in the area.

Fuellenbach said the fire season in the Salmon-Challis National Forest has been relatively calm this year, with only 14 fires—most of them small—in the region so far. However, the fire danger is likely to become more serious as the season goes on, he said.

By GREGORY FOLEY
Express Staff Writer

IDLEDALE — Sunday night was hot — so hot that Scout slept on the floor at the foot of Mack and Jacquie Anderson’s bed while Sam snoozed in a nearby chair.

Scout, a 12-year-old yellow Labrador retriever, and her close buddy, Sam, a 3-year-old chocolate Lab — enjoyed the cool air flowing through the screenless, open French doors.

Sometime between 4 and 4:30 a.m., Jacquie Anderson heard a scuffling and got up to see whether Scout was having a seizure.

“I was a foot from something that was more than Scout,” she said.

In the dark, she made out the shape and turned to Mack and said, “There’s an animal in here. It’s a mountain lion.”

Her voice may have startled the mountain lion, which picked up Scout and ran.

The lion — a 130-pound male — ran through the yard and jumped a 6-foot fence with the 72-pound dog in his mouth.

“It happened so fast they (the two dogs) didn’t make a peep,” Jacquie Anderson said.

On Tuesday, the Andersons noted the squished-down fence and scattered firewood pile in the lion’s escape route.

Mack Anderson said he managed to turn on the light, grab his shotgun and a flashlight and head out to find Scout, to no avail.

“It was pretty bizarre to wake up at 4 a.m. and find a mountain lion in your bedroom,” Mack Anderson said.

They called 911, and Jefferson County sheriff’s deputies and Colorado Division of Wildlife officers tracked the lion up a hill about 200 yards, where they found Scout’s body hidden under leaves.

Mountain lions will cache prey and return to eat it later. Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said the habit resulted in the mountain lion being trapped early Tuesday where it had left Scout’s body.

The Andersons agreed to use Scout’s body as bait.

“Scouty was already dead,” Mack Anderson said. They wanted to protect their neighbors by making sure a mountain lion that wasn’t afraid of people was captured.

“It was the best way of knowing we got the right animal,” Churchill said.

The lion was shot and taken to DOW’s wildlife lab for a necropsy to see whether there were health problems that led the 2 1/2- to 3-year-old animal to bypass its usual diet of elk and deer in favor of snatching a dog.

“Scout probably never woke up,” Jacquie Anderson said. “We think she was killed instantly” of a broken neck.

The Andersons have lived in their home for 32 years and have seen mountain lions in the area before.

“I love mountain lions and hate to see it had to be killed,” Mack Anderson said. “We’re pretty used to them, but not in our bedroom.”

Ann Schrader: 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A woman mauled by a bear in rural Kern County was recovering Wednesday in a Los Angeles hospital as game wardens sought to trap and kill the animal.

Allena Hansen, 56, was resting comfortably after undergoing extensive surgery to repair injuries suffered in Tuesday’s attack, Roxanne Moster, a spokeswoman for the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said in a statement.

Neighbor August Dunning said Hansen had 10 hours of surgery Tuesday on head and face cuts.

Hansen was “lucid, active and probably pretty sore,” said Dunning, who called her hospital room Tuesday night and spoke to her son. Dunning said he could hear his friend in the background.

“She’s fine. She’s talking,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Wildlife trackers using dogs hunted the bear Wednesday. One tracking hound was slightly injured after midnight in what might have been an attack by the animal, Kevin Brennan, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, said at a news conference in Ontario.

The attack took place in the Piute area, near the little community of Caliente, on scrubland south of Sequoia National Forest about 85 miles north of Los Angles.

The bear was believed to be still in the area because they are “creatures of habit,” Brennan said.

“Right now, there’s a trap set. And we’re just waiting,” Brennan said. “There’s a good chance he’ll come back.”

Capturing the animal could take anywhere from hours to a week, he speculated.

Clothing from the woman was taken for forensic testing to determine if there is fur or other DNA samples from the bear. Brennan said any bear caught in the trap will be killed and its DNA tested to determine if it was the attacker.

Hansen, who has a ranch in the tiny rural community of Twin Oaks, near Caliente, was walking in heavy underbrush on her property Tuesday morning with her dogs when she was attacked, Dunning said.

Her English mastiff may have tried to defend her, Dunning speculated, because it suffered some scratches. An Irish wolfhound was unhurt.

“She had to rely on her dogs and her wits,” Dunning said. “She’s one tough woman.”

Dunning said the attack took place very close to a recent wildfire and speculated that the vast burn area may have pushed the bear into new territory.

“We just had 30,000 acres burn out here and those animals are looking for habitat,” he said.

The bear may have attacked to defend that new territory, he said.

Brennan, the wildlife biologist, said there are about 30,000 California black bears and they are not uncommon in the region of the attack, especially at this time of year when young males are moving about.

State game wardens had not had a chance to interview Hansen about the attack and so it was unclear what provoked it, Brennan said.

However, “dogs have been known to agitate bears,” he said.

Brennan advised people never to approach a bear but not to give up if attacked. People have been known to drive off bears, he said.

“If attacked, fight back,” he said.

The attack was the 13th reported in California since 1980. Records indicate that the last attack in Kern County took place in August 1988 in the Piute Mountains when a female with two cubs attacked and injured a camping couple.LostHills

You cannot deny what’s taking place in Idaho concerning the overblown wolf population, or can you? Seems efforts are being exerted to do just that in hopes the wolf lovers and animal rights groups can continue their program of fleecing the public into believing that unmanaged gray wolves in the Idaho, Montana and Wyoming area are good for the ecosystem.

I was emailed an interesting bit of information today. Someone sent along to several people on a mailing list part of a weekly wolf report written by members of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. In 15 days, wolves in Idaho killed a minimum of 34 other animals, most of them private property.

Here is the report as it was sent to me. I am in the process of trying to confirm its accuracy. (I believe WS stands for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and referral to f/w indicates Idaho Department of Fish and Game.)

On Friday, 7/11, WS confirmed that wolves killed a calf on private land near Bear, ID. On 7/16, a WS f/w aircrew shot and killed a gray male wolf about a mile from the depredation site near Bear. Traps are being pulled and control efforts are concluded unless there is another depredation.

On 7/14, WS confirmed that wolf killed a lamb in Rainbow Creek in the Boise National Forest . On 7/23, WS shot and killed an adult, black female wolf near the rainbow creek depredation site.

On 7/14, WS confirmed that a wolf killed a lamb on the Boise National Forest , east of Smith’s Ferry. This is the same area where WS confirmed a depredation on 7/2.

On 7/15, WS confirmed that wolves attacked a cow on private land on Smiley Creek near Stanley .

On 7/15, WS confirmed that wolves killed one calf and probably killed another on a Targhee National Forest allotment on the west side of Bishop Mountain between Ashton and Kilgore. On 7/16, WS caught and killed an adult, gray female wolf.

On 7/18, WS confirmed that at least two wolves killed 3 bucks on private land near Leadore.

On 7/18, an IDFG employee found a carcass of a buck sheep on private land NE of Idaho City while he was looking for wolf killed deer and elk. He believed the sheep was a wolf kill. After consulting with WS, the depredation is being considered a “probable” wolf kill.

On 7/20, WS confirmed that wolves killed a calf and probably killed another calf on private land near Stanley .

On 7/22, WS examined three calves that had bite wounds to their flanks and hind quarters. WS confirmed that injuries were caused by wolves. All three calves should survive. The depredation took place on the same private ranch where WS confirmed another depredation on a calf last week and subsequently removed one male wolf. There are still three pairs of cows/calves missing on this ranch.

On 7/22, WS confirmed that wolves killed 5 Walker hounds and 1 blue tick hound near Bridge Creek in Unit 12 in the Clearwater National Forest . The dogs were owned by three brothers and the wolves killed every dog in the chase.

On 7/24, WS confirmed that wolves killed a calf on a Salmon – Challis National Forest allotment near Twin Bridges Creek.

On 7/24, WS confirmed that wolves killed 2 lambs on a Boise National Forest grazing allotment in Rainbow Creek. This is the same site where WS has confirmed 2 other depredations in the last several weeks.

On 7/25, WS investigated the report that wolves had killed a cow on private land near Stanley , The WS investigator witnessed 2 wolves chasing cattle. The carcass was consumed to the point where only a determination of “probable” wolf depredation could be made.

On 7/25, WS confirmed that wolves killed a 400 lb. calf on private land just south of the Pine turn-off from Highway 20.

On 7/26, WS confirmed that wolves killed 2 calves and probably killed another calf on private land near Mullen Basin over by Carey. There are 6 calves missing at this site.

On 7/26, WS confirmed that wolves killed 3 yearling ewes on a Boise National Forest allotment west of Pioneerville.

On 7/26, WS confirmed that wolves killed a calf on private land on Cottonwood Creek, SE of Horseshoe Bend . WS noted “probable” wolf depredations on this same property on 7/18 with an injured calf and on 7/23 with a cow that was killed.

On 7/26, WS confirmed 2 calves killed near Carlson Lake on a Salmon-Challis National Forest allotment.

On 7/26, WS confirmed that wolves killed a cow and a calf on private land near Salmon.

These are only confirmed kills mind you. For those who don’t know or have been told differently, the majority of kills are NOT confirmed as being that of wolves due to the strict guidelines used in making the determination. Regardless of that nonsense, to put this in a bit of perspective, over the course of one year, this amounts to a projected near 900 kills by this killing machine animal lovers call the gray wolf.

With the recent injunction granted wolf protection groups by Judge Donald Molloy, it appears that wolves will continue to grow unchecked and mismanaged, putting people and their private property in danger. Combine that with the much denied fact that wolves are destroying populations of mule deer and elk and Idaho has a serious problem of which it seems their hands are tied to do anything about. As long as special interest has the upper hand now, due to abuse of the Endangered Species Act and their infiltration into U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as state fish and game, science, facts and common sense get flushed down the drain.

Will this foolishness ever stop?

Tom Remington

Photo courtesy of Idaho Department of Fish and Game Jerry Chapman shows off his catch—a large white sturgeon—hooked on the Snake River near Hagerman. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game is seeking public comment on a new draft management plan that seeks to increase the range and numbers of the game fish in the Snake River.

Officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game are seeking public comment on a draft management plan for the conservation of Snake River white sturgeon in Idaho.

White sturgeon are the largest freshwater game fish in North America, historically reaching lengths of more than 15 feet and weights of more than 1,000 pounds. They can live to be 100 years old.

The species’ scientific name is Acipenser transmontanus. Acipenser is an old-world name meaning sturgeon and transmontanus meaning beyond the mountains, a Fish and Game news release states.

White sturgeon are highly sought after by anglers across their range in Idaho. The historical range of Snake River white sturgeon extended from Shoshone Falls, located in south-central Idaho, downstream into the Columbia River.

The draft Fish and Game management plan only considers white sturgeon found in the Snake River in Idaho, not the population in the Kootenai River, in northern Idaho.

Snake River white sturgeon have declined in abundance due to a variety of factors, including over-harvesting, dam construction, water management and water pollution, the Fish and Game news release states. The agency’s draft management plan describes actions that could increase the range and population abundance of white sturgeon in the Snake River.

Fish and Game will work with other agencies and stakeholders to accomplish actions identified in the plan. To view and comment on the Snake River white sturgeon management plan go to http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/apps/surveys/sturgeon/.

The white sturgeon is a primitive bottom-dwelling fish that has shown little change in thousands of years. Some of the oldest fossil records of sturgeon date back 70 million years, according to Fish and Game.

The fish is characterized by its large body, head and mouth and long cylindrical body. It has four “barbels” located in front of its large, wide and toothless mouth. Sturgeon have no scales, but instead have “scutes” along their body for protection. Scutes are actually large modified scales, which serve as a type of armor.

The white sturgeon is a slow-growing anadromous fish, meaning they migrate between fresh water and the ocean during their lifetime. Although today’s sturgeon living in the Snake River in the Magic Valley region are unable to migrate to the ocean anymore due to downstream dams, resident populations do exist in the stretches of river between dams.

People interested in fishing for sturgeon need to be prepared for a battle. Fish in the Magic Valley region can grow as large as nine feet long. Fish and Game recommends using heavy line, a good reel and a strong pole.

Fish and Game officials expect to conduct public open house meetings on the plan at the agency’s regional offices in Jerome, Nampa and Lewiston. Comments will be accepted until Sept. 5. For more information, contact Scott Grunder, native species coordinator, at (208) 287-2774.

By JASON KAUFFMAN
Express Staff Writer

CODY, WYOMING – An Oregon man is lucky to be alive after a bear apparently attacked him while he was sleeping in his tent near Cooke City.

59-year-old Steven Bartley says he fought the bear before it ran away. He spent two days in a Cody hospital for his injuries. Bartley said it felt like, “This shoulder was going to come out of its socket.”

Bartley came to Cody in an ambulance Thursday morning. He’s still recovering from the bear attack that happened as he slept in his tent near Cooke City. He says the bear bumped his head, then his back, and has he unzipped the tent, it bit his hand. He said, “Grabbed it and I’m screaming and yelling at that point, Bear! And this hand I’m trying to hit whatever it is trying to get into the tent. Still I’m going it’s gotta be a bear. I can’t see it. I’m going to do whatever I can to survive. And it grabbed my other hand, grabbed this hand that was hitting it. ”

Bartley suffered a bad break in his right hand, and multiple bites in both hands. It could have been worse. He explained, “The second time he grabbed this right hand, and I felt the crunching, there was a twisting and a pulling as if he was trying to get me out of the tent.”

Montana officials think the attacking bear was probably a grizzly. The man who developed a new museum exhibit on human grizzly conflicts says the attack on Bartley was probably predatory, and rare. So why did the bear come after Bartley in his tent?

Dr. Charles Preston says there’s a real possibility the bear had gotten a food reward from someone else and has learned to associate humans with food, and does not have a particular fear of human smell. Bartley has lived in bear country, and he put all of his gear in the camp food storage box. If he found out that he was attacked because someone else before him failed to store his or hers, he said, “That would make me really, really upset. I think that we’re in a bear’s habitat when we’re camping in a situation like that when we’re in a national forest or anywhere that there are bears and it’s incumbent upon campers to take every precaution they can not to attract bears to a campsite.”

In spite of the bear attack, Bartley said he loves Montana and will visit the Yellowstone region again.

Salmon outnumber people in the rugged backcountry outside McCall where Cris Bent and his wife, Nanci, bought a cabin 33 years ago to immerse themselves in the wild, green landscape.

Today, much of that terrain is black after several large wildfires swept through the area last summer.

Bent, the fire chief for the cabin community of Secesh, agrees with scientists and forest managers that the forest would be healthier if more fires were allowed to burn. But he shares his neighbors’ grief at the loss of the forest he loved.

“We’re here because we like trees,” he said. “If we didn’t, we’d move to the desert.”

More than 60 years of Smokey Bear still keeps federal agencies from letting more wildfires burn, despite scientific evidence that forests need fire – and that homes can be saved by cheaper, more effective means. Loggers don’t want to watch harvestable trees destroyed. Hunters don’t want to lose traditional hunting grounds. Hikers, cabin owners, mountain bikers, fishermen and anyone else with a favorite spot in the vast wildlands of the West don’t want that spot to change.

Smokey Bear, one of the world’s most recognizable icons, persuaded generations of Americans that fire is synonymous with unhealthy wildlands. But all along, the popular fire suppression program was allowing trees to age and die, insects to multiply and spread, and underbrush to build up in the forest, all of which have been fueling the mega-fires we see today.

Still, doing the right thing is not as simple as the science might suggest.

Wildfires come with human costs. They belch choking smoke for weeks at a time, close roads and squeeze businesses, destroy homes and blacken cherished landscapes.

John McCarthy, a wildfire expert with the conservation group the Wilderness Society, which advocates letting more fires burn in the forest, knows environmental concerns can’t trump all else.

“You can’t look at the ecological values of fire in isolation from the social and economic concerns,” he said.

THE APPEARANCE OF DOING SOMETHING

The chop of a propeller overhead gives Susan Matlock a flashback to the darker, smokier days of 2007.

“Every time you hear the helicopter fly low, you think, ‘Oh my God.’ ”

Buzzing propellers and roaring plane engines were a fixture last year above Matlock’s home in Yellow Pine, a tiny forest village east of McCall that had its skies and business blotted out for much of the summer by smoke from raging wildfires. Matlock watched the mountains explode in flames, as 1 million acres burned throughout Central Idaho.

Like many residents in fire-prone areas, Matlock thinks fire managers have abandoned their commitment to fighting fires, even though federal firefighters still extinguish about 98 percent of blazes that start on public lands.

“I still am very adamant that something (needs to change), where they don’t just let it burn when it’s coming towards towns and homes,” she said.

The Bush Administration for years has sought to slow the growth of suppression spending by forcing managers to choose between fighting fires or other spending priorities.

The decisions prompted fire managers to allow some remote fires to burn. But it also drained other resource programs, taking money – and people – needed to oversee timber sales, to help communities prepare for wildfires and to do the controlled burns needed to protect vital habitat.

Fire suppression today constitutes 48 percent of the U.S. Forest Service’s $4 billion budget.

Congress’ response, though, has been to focus on more money to fight fires. Just this month, the House passed the Forest Land Assistance, Management, and Enhancement Act – the FLAME Act – with wide support. The bill, sponsored by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, a West Virginia Democrat, would set up a dedicated fund for federal firefighting.

Rahall and other supporters of the bill say its intent is not to provide more money for fire suppression, though they expect fire costs to rise.

“With our warming climate, unhealthy forests, and homes built where fires occur, the cost of suppressing wildfires will escalate – even as we implement control measures,” said Diane Denenberg, communications director for the Council of Western State Foresters. “The question is how we keep those costs from eating up the entire Forest Service and (Department of Interior) budgets.”

But some of the debate in the House showed that the decades-long message that demonized forest fires still resonates.

“Real solutions to these deadly and growing wildfires must be found,” Sali said.

Even some of the bill’s critics said they want more logging and thinning instead of more fire to make forests more “resilient.”

“We will continue to see skyrocketing firefighting costs and more damage to our forests, watersheds, and communities unless we take steps to reduce fire risk in our federal forests,” said Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte.

And regardless of the intent, the dedicated fund could remove the incentives that encourage managers to let ecologically beneficial fires burn.

The heart of the problem, though, is that after decades of debates in the West and in Washington, D.C., the public can’t decide what it wants for much of the 600 million acres of public estate, said Stephen Pyne, one of the world’s top experts on wildfire and author of “Fire in America.”

Do we want natural and unfettered forests? A profitable source of timber and jobs? Something in between?

“In such circumstances, the default setting is suppression,” Pyne said. “You have to appear to be doing something.”

SAVE THE FOREST, SAVE THE HOMES

Americans can protect the health of forests while protecting houses from burning – and government can make that happen, Pyne and other experts say.

Raging “crown fires” that devastate trees in the forest don’t burn through communities. Even sparsely scattered homes have enough roads, power lines, driveways and yards to force fire out of the tops of trees to the ground. And ground fires can be fought far more easily.

Local governments can require fire-resistant construction, “firewise” landscaping that clears trees and brush from within 100 feet of houses and fire retardant roofs. Zoning laws could keep new homes out of fire-prone areas.

Mandatory evacuations could be replaced – Australia has a successful program that teaches people how to defend their property and to safely stay put during a fire.

The federal government could change liability laws and restore the burden to protect people’s homes to the homeowners themselves instead of the federal government, Pyne said.

In Featherville, a collection of cabins in the forested mountains north of Mountain Home, Kay Black watched last week as a two-man team trimmed and felled trees and uprooted underbrush around her two-story log cabin in an effort to give any future blazes less fuel.

Black said she was skeptical at first, but she was reassured by seeing that similar projects in town did not ruin the woodsy aesthetic to which she has become accustomed.

“When you see them finished, you can tell you’re not going to have this enormous mess,” she said.

ONE SURE THING: FIRE WILL EXIST (WELCOMED OR NOT)

For the past 20 years, the forest debate largely has focused on polarizing extremes of commercial logging and aggressive environmentalism.

But Idahoans seem to be coming to consensus on less extreme ways to manage the forest.

Sixty-five percent of Idahoans say they support “controlled burning,” compared to 27 percent who oppose it. That’s not too different from the 70 percent who support thinning and logging to reduce the threat of fire, according to a poll conducted by the pro-logging Idaho Forest Products Commission in November 2007.

Pyne thinks the solution will have to include many kinds of forest management techniques – including logging, controlled burns, wildfires and combinations of thinning and burning.

“The fire community has not had this kind of debate,” Pyne said. “Instead, the choice is presented as between fire’s suppression and fire’s restoration.”

But allowing fires to burn closer to communities is going to take a lot of trust from homeowners, said McCarthy, the Wilderness Society official.

“It’s going to be hard to convince people to accept big, hot fires if they’re worried their house is going to burn up,” he said.

Ultimately, though, the public won’t have a choice but to accept wildfire, said Jack Cohen, the Forest Service fire expert who helped develop the new understanding of how fires burn homes. It has always been a part of the West’s forests and it is unrealistic to think we can get rid of it.

“Anything we do we need to do with the idea there is going to be fire,” Cohen said.

BY HEATH DRUZIN AND ROCKY BARKER - hdruzin@idahostatesman.com rbarker@idahostatesman.com

Edition Date: 07/27/08

GRAND JUNCTION — Ivan James is a bow hunter who happens to own stock in Exxon-Mobil Corporation.

Exxon-Mobil’s profit was $40.6 billion last year, so James in not concerned if he makes a few cents less on his stock this year, he said. He’s more concerned that the oil and gas industry invest in measures to preserve wildlife habitat.

“I’d like to see where we recreate, hunt and fish, our beautiful scenery, preserved,” said James, who lives in Genesee, Colo.

That’s why the Colorado Bowhunters Association, Colorado Trout Umlimited and the Colorado Wildlife Federation placed a billboard on Highway 6 & 50, east of 25 Road, asking the oil and gas industry to “protect our fish and wildlife.”

“The idea behind the billboard is to let people know the sportsmen of Colorado are interested in what comes out of the rule-making process,” James said. The billboard was paid for with a grant from Western Conservation Foundation of Denver.

The Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is holding a public hearing today on a set of new draft rules it prepared in response to state legislation approved last year. The new laws call for oil and gas operations to consider public health, wildlife impacts and the environment.

Retired Department of Wildlife biologist Gene Byrne of Grand Junction said while oil and gas are nonrenewable resources, wildlife is a renewable resource, as long as its habitat is cared for.

“Oil and gas diminishes the quality of habitat quite a bit,” Byrne said. “Gas wells fragment that habitat.”

Sportsmen want to see interim reclamation of oil and gas sites required at appropiate times. The current draft rules do not include that requirement.

“If (a company) develops for 20 years on a well, it allows a lot of time for invasive species to come in,” James said. “Interim reclamation could do a lot toward preventing invasion of noxious weeds and allow the restoration of habitat.”

Some oil and gas companies, like Williams Production, have already begun interim restoration.

“We stabalize the site after a rig is gone and plant whatever (seed) mix is required,” said Williams spokesperson Susan Alvillar.

Reach Sharon Sullivan at ssullivan@gjfreepress.com.

Rangers in Yellowstone National Park killed a 130-pound sub-adult male black bear because  they said it became conditioned to human food, posing a continuing threat to the safety of park visitors and employees.  This is the second conditioned black bear to be euthanized since July 10.

The bear had been getting food from hikers’ backpacks in the Hellroaring and Yellowstone River drainages in the north end of the park. There have been multiple incidents involving this bear damaging property and obtaining human foods in the Hellroaring and Yellowstone River drainages.  The bear could be identified by his distinct brown/black mixed coloring.

Repeated efforts to trap the bear were unsuccessful. Late yesterday afternoon, however, park staff caught this bear in the act of ripping into the packs of a large group of backcountry hikers. Based on his aggressive behavior, lack of fear of people, and its success at getting human food, the decision was made to immediately kill the bear.  The area was cleared of all visitors and the bear was shot.

Park regulations require you to stay 100 yards – the length of a football field – away from black and grizzly bears at all times.  The best defense is to stay a safe distance from bears and use your binoculars, telescope, or telephoto lens to get a closer look.

If approached by a bear in a picnic area or campsite, gather all your food, cooking utensils and garbage and get inside your vehicle or hard-sided pick-up camper, trailer or recreational vehicle. When not in use, food, garbage, barbecue grills and other attractants must be stored in hard-sided vehicles or bear-proof food storage boxes or hung at least 10 feet above the ground and 4 feet out from the trunk of the tree. These actions help keep bears from becoming conditioned to human foods and park visitors and their property safe.

Due to deep snows last winter, in combination with the very late spring we experienced this year, many bears are in poor shape making it more likely that they will seek human foods. Once bears become conditioned to human foods they are much more likely to damage property and injure people in their efforts to obtain human foods.

Anybody who follows the endlessly volatile wolf issue–and it’s hard not to follow it with all the news coverage–knows the greens won a big victory last week. Judge Donald Molloy of the U.S. District Court sided with Earthjustice and 12 conservation organizations and essentially relisted, albeit temporarily, the wolf as an endangered species.

So, what now? That’s the question I’ve been asking people on both sides of the debate this week, and I might have the answer, a way to quickly get the wolf debate behind us. Does that sound good?

Actually, everybody generally agrees on the current options before us, but nobody will say which option they’ll pursue. It’s complicated, of course, and we must keep in mind that Molloy’s ruling doesn’t overturn the proposed rule to delist the wolf. It more or less says the wolf is endangered while the courts decide if it is, or not, whereas over the last four months, the wolf has been off the endangered species list and under state control while the legal battle over delisting rages in the background. If agencies prevail in the main case, Molloy’s ruling would merely go down as an aggravating delay for agencies in implementing hunting seasons and state management.

This leaves agencies with three choices:

• Appeal Molloy’s decision to relist the wolf in addition to continuing to fight the main legal battle over delisting.
• Ignore Molloy’s ruling and concentrate trying to win the primary delisting case, forgetting about wolf hunting seasons for this year and perhaps next year, too.
• Suck it up, meet with the greens, and have a little “out-of-court settlement” to resolve the wolf issue right now.

I asked both the Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the federal agency in charge of endangered species programs, and Chris Smith, chief of staff for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, what their agencies plan to do. Both dodged that question but didn’t rule out any of the three options.

I called Suzanne Asha Stone, northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife, and Doug Honnold, managing attorney for Earthjustice, self-acclaimed as “the nation’s leading environmental law firm,” which is handling the case for the 12 conservation groups, to ask them what the agencies would have to do for them to accept delisting and withdraw the lawsuit. Keeping in mind that Stone only speaks for her organization, not the other groups, and that Honnold can only speculate on what his clients might decide, both gave me the same answer.

The two major sticking points are lack of what’s called “genetic connectivity” and Wyoming’s totally unacceptable wolf control plan. Neither Stone or Honnold would guarantee that fixing these two problems would make wolf delisting litigation-proof, but I strongly suspect resolving them would keep us out of court.

The first point, Wyoming’s dual-status plan that declares the wolf a “predator” (Wyomingish for vermin) in 90 percent of the state so, as Honnold says, “it can be killed by anybody anywhere” needs to go away. Radical pro-wolfers are probably loving Wyoming right now because if the state doesn’t give up on dual status, it may hold up delisting for decades allowing the wolf to reclaim its entire former range throughout the western United States. Already, we have indications of wolf packs forming in Washington and Oregon. Soon, Colorado greens will have their dream come true, wolves in Rocky Mountain National Park to control elk numbers. All thanks to Wyoming.

“It’s going to take the other two states (Idaho and Montana) and other interested parties to push Wyoming to develop a safety net instead of a free-firing zone,” Honnold speculates. Even though the FWS had earlier rejected Wyoming’s plan, “when (former Idaho Governor Dirk) Kempthorne came into office (as Secretary of the Interior), the Wyoming plan that had been unacceptable became magically acceptable.”

And, of course, gave Judge Molloy another good reason to enjoin delisting, giving Wyoming exactly what it did not want–more wolves and more federal control. Altogether now, can we all say “self-defeating insanity”?

The Nation of Wyoming has to be a team player and along with the other states give in to the greens, regardless of how much it hurts. Those bruised egos eventually heal.

Addressing the second point, genetic exchange, also seems easy enough. By definition “genetic exchange” means wolves moving back and forth between the three recovery zones (Yellowstone, central Idaho and northwestern Montana) without being whacked. Even though the Yellowstone wolves have prospered, they have done it in genetic isolation.

Like it or not, it’s a numbers game. As I write this commentary, we have somewhere between 1,500 and 2,200 wolves running around the northern Rockies, but not many of them making it from one recovery zone to the other without getting in trouble and being “controlled.”

Collectively, the three state management plans call for killing down the population to about 1,100 wolves. Based on the science he has read, that number minimizes the change of genetic exchange, says Honnold, and Judge Molloy agreed with him and his clients.

“At a population level of 2,000 wolves, we are likely to have genetic exchange if we can maintain it for two years or more,” Honnold says. “If there were a commitment to maintain a population of 2,000 wolves, I think these genetic issues would be solved.”

That’s the winter population, he adds, not the spring population, which includes the new crop of pups, many of which don’t make it to their first birthday.

The recovery plan and delisting documents call for a minimum of 30 packs or 300 wolves. But the greens believe–and again Judge Molloy agrees–this is not enough to facilitate genetic exchange.

So now, I’m scratching my head. How hard can this be?

We have roughly 2,000 wolves, a tolerable but probably not ideal level for agencies or the livestock industry. I say go with it and move on. It sure trumps any alternative we currently face, such as years of expensive litigation while wolves continue breeding and the real possibility of the greens prevailing in court and keeping the wolf an endangered species for a long time.

And, please, let’s not do the is-there-a-number-between-1,100-and-2,000-that-might-work approach. The greens have an ace in the hole, and Molloy flopped another ace for them, so right now, they have the winning hand. Let’s pick up on that and fold.

Stone tells me the decision must be based on science, but that’s exactly what Bangs says. They simply have different views of the available science, which will probably always be the case. And assuming judges keep agreeing with the green view of the science, wolves will be on the endangered species list.

The agencies have already said that having 1,100 wolves is enough, scientifically, to declare the wolf successfully recovered, so 2,000 wolves would only be more recovered, right?  It might be more wolves than agencies think we need, but less than we’ll have if we don’t get out of the courthouse soon.

“We need to bring the stakeholders to the table and develop an acceptable plan,” Stone proposes. “Montana did a great job in their plan in bringing all the stakeholders together, but this needs to be a region-wide effort. There are people on both sides who are willing to work together for a good outcome.”

Bangs, on the other hand, has little optimism of any such agreement ever happening, not now at least, because his experience tells him people can’t be rational about wolves. “Wolves will eventually wear everybody out, but right now, emotions are too high. It will work out eventually.”

But do we want “eventually”? How many wolves will we have by then? How many millions will be spent on wolf control that hunters would pay to do?

“Wolf management has nothing to do with reality,” Bangs reminds me. “A rational person could sit down and figure this out in a minute. If this were any another animal, this would already be a done deal, but people aren’t rational about wolves.”

“It’s a mess, “ he admits. “And it’s getting expensive. More wolves do more damage. If you want more wolves in more places, you keep the wolves on the endangered species list.”

Is anybody in Wyoming listening?

Bangs also accused me of being “too rational” (which hasn’t happened too often) in suggesting agencies and greens could settle their differences. Nonetheless, I persist in believing we could resolve the wolf issue by the end of next week. All it would take is the agencies collectively deciding to maintain a population of 2,000 wolves (the status quo) instead of 1,100 and pressuring Wyoming to commit to plan something similar to plans written by Idaho or Montana.

This is doable, folks. In fact, it looks easy.

By Bill Schneider, 7-24-08

Obama Regulatory Czar’s Confirmation Held Up by Hunting Rights Proponent
by: Fox News

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s nominee for “regulatory czar” has hit a new snag in his Senate confirmation process — a “hold” by Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who’s says he’s not convinced that Harvard professor Cass Sunstein won’t push a radical animal rights agenda, including new restrictions on agriculture and even hunting.

Senators are permitted “holds” to prevent a vote on a nominee from coming to the floor. They are often secretive and for very specific reasons.

“Sen. Cornyn finds numerous aspects of Mr. Sunstein’s record troubling, specifically the fact that he wants to establish legal ‘rights’ for livestock, wildlife and pets, which would enable animals to file lawsuits in American courts,” the Republican’s spokesman, Kevin McLaughlin, said in a statement to FOXNews.com.

Cornyn’s hold on Sunstein comes just as Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., last week lifted his own hold on the nominee, whom Obama tapped in April to become the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Budget and Management.

Chambliss said he was dropping his hold because Sunstein had convinced him that he “would not take any steps to promote litigation on behalf of animals,” and that he believes the “Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess guns for purposes of both hunting and self defense.”

Both statements were included in a letter Sunstein sent to Chambliss on July 14.

Chambliss added in a Senate floor speech last Wednesday that “Professor Sunstein comes highly recommended by a number of folks from the conservative side of the philosophical divide in this country.”

One of Sunstein’s top jobs would be to review and provide guidance for draft federal regulations at different federal agencies. It is a wide-ranging and largely unrestrained position in the executive branch.

That’s a large part of the reason Sunstein’s positions on animal rights have become worrisome to his critics. Despite his assurances to the contrary, Sunstein has spoken stridently in favor of allowing people the right to bring suit on behalf of animals in animal cruelty cases and to restrict what he calls the more horrific practices associated with industrial breeding and processing of animals for food.

In a 2007 speech at Harvard, Sunstein also advocated restricting animal testing for cosmetics, banning hunting and encouraging the general public to eat less meat.

The Center for Consumer Freedom’s David Martosko, a Sunstein critic, said those positions make the agricultural industry — major stakeholders in the states represented by both Chambliss and Cornyn — nervous.

Martosko said there are plenty of ways to pursue a “stealth campaign” on any one of these fronts — guns or animal rights — by putting pressure on the regulatory heads of the different agencies.

“He is the gatekeeper between the president and the secretaries,” he said, noting that “as a regulatory czar, he won’t be a judge or a legislator, so he cannot make laws. … What he can do is nudge the departments in the direction of his philosophy,” which is very much in line with “hard core animal rights zealots.” [Read the rest of the article]

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Bartley came to Cody in an ambulance Thursday morning. He’s still recovering from the bear attack that happened as he slept in his tent near Cooke City. He says the bear bumped his head, then his back, and has he unzipped the tent, it bit his hand. He said, “Grabbed it and I’m screaming and yelling at that point, Bear! And this hand I’m trying to hit whatever it is trying to get into the tent. Still I’m going it’s gotta be a bear. I can’t see it. I’m going to do whatever I can to survive. And it grabbed my other hand, grabbed this hand that was hitting it.”

Bartley suffered a bad break in his right hand, and multiple bites in both hands. It could have been worse. He explained, “The second time he grabbed this right hand, and I felt the crunching, there was a twisting and a pulling as if he was trying to get me out of the tent.”

Montana officials think the attacking bear was probably a grizzly. The man who developed a new museum exhibit on human grizzly conflicts says the attack on Bartley was probably predatory, and rare. So why did the bear come after Bartley in his tent?

Dr. Charles Preston says there’s a real possibility the bear had gotten a food reward from someone else and has learned to associate humans with food, and does not have a particular fear of human smell. Bartley has lived in bear country, and he put all of his gear in the camp food storage box. If he found out that he was attacked because someone else before him failed to store his or hers, he said,

“That would make me really, really upset. I think that we’re in a bear’s habitat when we’re camping in a situation like that when we’re in a national forest or anywhere that there are bears and it’s incumbent upon campers to take every precaution they can not to attract bears to a campsite.”

In spite of the bear attack, Bartley said he loves Montana and will visit the Yellowstone region again.

The region has an estimated 2,000 grey wolves. They were removed from the endangered species list in March, following a decade-long restoration effort.

Environmentalists sued to overturn that decision.

“There were fall hunts scheduled that would have called for as many as 500 wolves to be killed,” said Doug Honnold of Earthjustice, who had argued the case for 12 environmental groups.

Only 11 people showed at a public hearing Wednesday to gather comment on a proposed state rule that would designate the gray wolf as a species in need of management.

Only four of those that showed said a word, and none complained about the change from endangered to “in need of management” so much as small details of the rules.

“I was hoping for a little better turnout,” said FWP Gray Wolf Coordinator Carolyn Sime.

Billings Montana- Outfitters and hunters oppose the prospect of killing elk, fearing that too much culling could shrink herds and suggest vaccinating cattle or eradicating the disease in bison.

There is no effective brucellosis vaccine for wildlife, and cattle vaccines are only 60 to 70 percent effective.

Humans are susceptible to the disease, but cases are rare and usually limited to those who work with infected cattle.

An estimated 95,000 elk populate the greater Yellowstone area.  The Yellowstone region’s elk herds out number the herds of bison.

A prospect to reach a regional brucellosis plan may be uncertain since differenct states of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana have to deal with there own issues that pertain to both wildlife, region and predator issues.

Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA) crews were still cleaning up this week after a severe thunderstorm brought high winds, which wreaked havoc along three Sawtooth Valley lakes, injuring three campers.
The storm, described by some as a microburst, roared through the Redfish, Pettit and Stanley lake areas, dropping trees in campgrounds and access roads the night of Thursday, July 3. The Redfish Lake area suffered the most damage.

A tree fell on one woman, breaking her leg, said Kelly Jardine, the SNRA’s deputy ranger in Stanley. She was taken to an area hospital, while two other campers were treated and released for minor injuries at the Stanley clinic, Jardine said.

Storm winds in excess of 60 miles per hour came out of the southwest and sounded like a freight train as they crossed Redfish Lake and hit the north shore, dropping live green trees, Jardine said.

The timing was both good and bad. The campgrounds were full for the Independence Day holiday weekend, but most people were still awake when the storm hit and rushed to get to clearings away from the falling trees.

“It really hit hard,” Jardine said. In the aftermath of the blowdown, people with chainsaws set to work clearing trees along access roads so ambulance crews and emergency responders could get in to help.

“People were really helping each other out,” said Jardine, adding that Custer County deputies and local emergency crews were a big help. Forest Service crews helped clear Redfish Lake access roads so traffic could move. A Forest Service backhoe and Bobcat tractor, both with specialized gear for tree removal, responded to pull tree trunks off recreational vehicles, tents and roads.

Law enforcement officers patrolled the area all night, checking on people and offering help where needed.

“We were very lucky,” Jardine told The Challis Messenger, adding that if the storm had hit later in the night, with most people asleep, there could have been fatalities.

SNRA Area Ranger Sara Baldwin also expressed relief. “It was a very intense experience for campers at Redfish Lake, one few people who were there will ever forget,” she said in a news release. “I am extremely grateful for the efforts of our crews who worked through the night on Thursday, and long hours under very difficult conditions, to get us where we are.

“And I especially want to thank the people who were camped at Redfish for their understanding and cooperation; responding to this event could have been a lot more difficult without their help,” Baldwin said.

Closures

Forest Service firefighters and other crews spent their Independence Day holiday clearing downed trees from roadways and hazard trees from campgrounds. They still are at work this week.

Many campgrounds and the Redfish Lake Visitor Center were closed the first of this week, but by press time, crews had managed to re-open almost everything except two loops of the Glacier View Campground and beach and the beach near Redfish Lake Lodge.

The highest priority was on cutting down hazard trees that still may fall in campgrounds, both “leaners” and others with wind-weakened root systems, Jardine said.

The storm dropped mostly live green trees, not beetle-killed snags, because the greenery acted like sails to catch the wind, the ranger said. After crews finish the immediate work of clearing trees and slash, the Forest Service will look at a salvage timber sale for the downed lodgepole pine and Douglas fir tree trunks, Jardine said.

The storm was not a localized event, but hit the north shore of Redfish Lake harder than the other areas, probably because the winds lined up with the lake and picked up speed as they swept unimpeded across the larger lake. Thousands of trees fell in the Redfish area alone.

The Redfish Visitor Center was closed for a time, but by Tuesday of this week it had reopened for its usual schedule of evening presentations held Thursdays through Sundays.

Camping and picnic facilities at Pettit and Stanley lakes are open. The Redfish Inlet Campground is open, but crews still will be working on cleanup there.

Some of the beach between the North Shore Picnic Area and Redfish Lodge is open, but others will be marked closed for cleanup. Visitors are encouraged to obey signing and flagging to avoid danger and give crews room to work.

Anyone planning to visit Redfish Lake is urged to call the Stanley Ranger Station at (208) 774-3000 in advance to get up-to-date information on open and closed facilities.

Power off

A Salmon River Electric crew was out for 20 hours July 3-4 restoring power to about 500 members from Sunbeam to the Sawtooth Valley south of Stanley.

Numerous trees fell on the main power line and broke a power pole in the Pettit Lake area, said SREC Operations Manager Rick Leuzinger.

All of the trees were green and outside the power line’s right-of-way, Leuzinger said. Contract crews had removed trees within the right-of-way in an attempt to prevent such outages.

The tree damage south of Stanley caused a breaker to trip farther down the line in the Sunbeam area. It also tripped a breaker on the Spar Canyon line supplying the Thompson Creek Mine. The mine had to slowly bring its power back online after a two-second interruption caused by the breaker tripping.

BY TODD ADAMS

Challis Messenger

The recent death of 61-year-old Bill Studebaker, an Idaho poet and teacher, has raised questions about the wisdom of kayaking on the state’s dangerous whitewater, reports this morning’s Idaho Statesman.

Judy Studebaker has heard the talk: Her husband had a death wish.

How else to explain a 61-year-old poet and retired English professor jumping in his new kayak on one of the most challenging stretches of Idaho whitewater and winding up dead?

But Bill Studebaker’s July 4 drowning wasn’t prompted by self-destructiveness, said Judy Studebaker. Rather, he was on a Salmon River tributary to cherish nature, thrill at testing his skills and find calm in the challenge of running expert whitewater.

He was, like thousands of Idahoans who love adventure sports, focused on living well.

“Bill wasn’t out to kill himself,” said Judy Studebaker. “The river quieted his mind.”

Posted by Noelle Crombie, The Oregonian July 13, 2008 07:00AM

As few as 500 wolverines may still exist in the lower 48 states, conservationists say

Wildlife biologists operating in a remote area east of Salmon made an important discovery this spring when they found a “vortex of wolverine activity” in the roadless Beaverhead Mountains.

Basing on results from a winter hair-snaring survey on the west side of the range that forms the scenic backdrop for this east central Idaho community, the biologists took to the air, looking for wolverine sign. Near the headwaters of Carmen Creek on the Idaho side of the Continental Divide, they spotted the species’ distinctive tracks in the snow.

Back on the ground, they hiked into the area and made the rarest discovery of all: a maternal wolverine den complete with a nursing female and her two young kits. The largest member of the weasel family at about 30 pounds, wolverines are dark brown and have light stripes on their sides from head to tail.

The wolverine’s Latin name Gulo gulo means glutton. Their preference for remote forests and high-mountain cirques makes the Smoky, Sawtooth, Boulder and White Cloud mountains some of the species’ best habitat in the state.

Locating the den site for such an elusive and wide-ranging species of animal is rare, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Beth Waterbury said Thursday. Waterbury, Fish and Game’s regional nongame biologist for the Salmon Region, led the hair-snaring project that resulted in the rare discovery.

“That was kind of a career high for me,” she said.

Although the results of a DNA analysis of the wolverine hair is not yet complete, the amount of hair snagged in several locations in the Beaverheads suggests several wolverines may be occupying the area, Waterbury said.

The quest to find the wolverine den was funded by the nonprofit organization Wildlife Conservation Society, an international group dedicated to saving endangered wildlife and wildlands. Leading the project was Bob Inman, a wolverine expert in charge of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Greater Yellowstone Wolverine Program.

The wolverine den discovery comes at an especially crucial time in the management of the species. This week, 10 conservation groups announced that they will file a legal challenge against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in an attempt to have wolverines living in the lower 48 states listed as a threatened or endangered species under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Back in March, the Fish and Wildlife Service announced that listing the wolverine in the same region wasn’t warranted because a healthy population still persists in Canada.

The groups contend the agency’s decision is justification for denying long overdue protections to the animal, which they say is imperiled and may number as few as 500 south of Canada. Conservationists first petitioned to have the wolverine listed nearly a decade ago.

Protecting the last remaining habitat for the wolverine in the lower 48 states is crucial in light of the effects global warming, the conservationists argue. The species is vulnerable to global warming because it depends on deep snow for everything from travel corridors to the snow dens where they raise their young, they say.

Wolverines once roamed across the northern tier of the U.S. and as far south as New Mexico and southern California. Conservationists say the wolverine is now reduced to small, fragmented populations in Idaho, Montana, Washington and Wyoming.

According to the groups, wolverines in the lower 48 states represent a distinct population that is only tenuously linked to the Canadian population and are in need of habitat and other protections.

“The Bush administration is essentially outsourcing responsibility for our wildlife to other countries,” said David Gaillard, Rocky Mountain representative of Defenders of Wildlife, one of the groups involved in the lawsuit. “Wolverines are as American as the bald eagle, gray wolf and grizzly bear, all of which might have vanished from the lower 48 if the same reckless policy were applied to them.

“With global warming compounding the many threats facing snow-dependent wolverines, protections are needed more than ever to ensure that this magnificent animal continues to call the U.S. home.”

The groups claim a March statement by the Fish and Wildlife Service that says, “the population (in the lower 48 states) will be at risk of extinction,” is proof the agency was incorrect in its determination that ESA listing wasn’t warranted.

Bozeman-based Earthjustice filed the 60-day notice of intent to sue on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife and the nine other conservation groups, which also includes Boise-based Idaho Conservation League.

Back up in the Beaverheads, Waterbury, Inman and the other biologists who discovered the den site fitted the wolverine kits—a male and a female—with radio transmitters. They had to dig down two meters to access the tunnel.

“They looked like miniature adults,” she said.

Using radio telemetry equipment, Waterbury and the other biologists will now be able to track the young wolverines to determine how far they disperse from their birthplace to new home ranges.

Waterbury said knowing which mountain ranges act as linkage corridors for the far-ranging species will be especially crucial if wolverines are to be preserved in the northern Rocky Mountain region. Unlike contiguous wolverine habitat to the north in Canada and Alaska, Waterbury described the northern Rockies landscape as a sea of isolated and “discontiguous-type” habitat.

“It’s like a gauntlet getting between what they’re calling sky island habitat,” she said.

Waterbury said the team was unable to place a radio collar on the adult female, especially not after she showed off a display of the ferocity for which wolverines are legendary.

“She busted out of the maternal den and hovered off in the distance,” she said.

Tracking the young wolverines could be a challenge if the past is any guide. Several years ago, Fish and Game biologists working along north central Idaho’s Lochsa River in April fitted an adult wolverine with a radio collar.

Within weeks, they had lost the animal’s signal. But several months later in July, the male wolverine turned up 160 air miles to the south deep in the Salmon River Mountains. His amazing journey would have taken him through the rugged Selway Bitterroot and Frank Church-River of No Return wilderness areas, she said.

“When they want to move, they move.”

By JASON KAUFFMAN
Express Staff Writer

www.mtexpress.com

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced plans to kill America’s wild horses rather than effectively manage our wild natural heritage.

BLM claims it can no longer afford to round up wild horses and confine them until it finds people to adopt them, and the agency wants to euthanize these majestic wild beauties or sell them to the highest bidder “without limitation” – meaning sell them to anyone, even if the bidder also plans to kill these horses.

Why does BLM need to round up wild horses and send them to slaughter? The BLM claims that the agency can’t “allow horses to multiply unchecked on the range without causing an environmental disaster.” But there are less than 30,000 wild horses on the range versus at least 3 million grazing cows. So rather than address the environmental damage caused by cattle overgrazing and expanding oil and gas exploration on our public lands, the BLM would rather placate corporate cattle ranchers who view mustangs as competition for forage, and drive wild horses – our country’s symbol of freedom and independent spirit – to extinction.

This plan is simply outrageous. Stand up for our wild horses and send a comment to BLM today. Urge our government to abide by the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burro Act of 1971 and effectively manage the land to preserve wild horses rather than kill them!

Sponsored by: Care2.com

It’s the time of year when animal-human encounters are on the rise. Bears are picnicking on hikers, moose are invading trailer parks, and muskrats are blamed for destroying entire towns. You could be next.

A teenage girl riding in an all-night mountain bike race was badly injured early Sunday morning when a bear attacked her on a trail in Far North Bicentennial Park.

Police officers with shotguns escorted medics into dark woods to retrieve the girl, who underwent surgery at Providence Alaska Medical Center. The girl is expected to survive, Anchorage Fire Department spokeswoman Cleo Hill said.

Authorities wouldn’t identify the girl and wouldn’t discuss the nature of her injuries except to say they were extensive.

“One of the EMS supervisors on the scene said that in his 24 years of doing this, these were the most extensively traumatic injuries he’d seen,” Hill said.

The bear is believed to be a grizzly, state biologist Rick Sinnott said. It’s possible it’s the same sow who charged a pair of joggers two weekends ago on a nearby trail, he said.

Peter Basinger, a cyclist competing in the race, encountered the injured girl on a trail called Rover’s Run shortly after the attack happened around 1:30 a.m.

The trail parallels the south fork of Campbell Creek, a stream stocked with salmon by the state and fished frequently by grizzlies.

The girl mumbled the word “bear” but was unable to say more, Basinger said.

Basinger waited with the girl for about 25 minutes until medics arrived.

Emergency responders had to hike about half a mile from the South Bivouac trailhead off Campbell Airstrip Road to reach the girl, Hill said. They carried her on a stretcher across the same route to reach an ambulance waiting on the road.

TICKING ‘TIME BOMB’

Matt Novakovich of Anchorage, who routinely rides and races bicycles in the park, thinks it was merely a matter of time before someone had a bear encounter in that part of the park.

“That area’s getting more and more dangerous with the bears,” he said. “It’s frustrating, because at what point are they going to thin them out? It’s like a hidden time bomb in the forest. It kind of scares me.”

The girl was among about 60 participants in a 24-hour race sponsored by the Arctic Bicycle Club. The race began at noon Saturday and was to end at noon Sunday, but organizers canceled it after the attack.

“We’re all shattered,” said race director Greg Matyas, a longtime Anchorage skier and bicyclist.

A prerace safety meeting specifically mentioned bears and moose, he said.

“The first rule was no headphones, and the reason for that was (to be able to listen for) the bear and the moose,” Matyas said.

The girl’s bike was equipped with bear bells, he said, and she had two lights — one on her helmet, another on her bike.

The 24-hour race is usually held at Kincaid Park but was moved to the Hillside this year because of construction at Kincaid, Matyas said. It was held on an 8.6-mile loop.

The victim had just come off the Gasline Trail north of Hilltop ski area and was entering Rover’s Run when the bear attacked.

The bear ripped off the girl’s helmet and flung it in the woods, Basinger said. Sinnott said it was pocked with the bear’s teeth marks. Hill said it probably saved the girl from further injury.

Bears frequently walk on Rover’s Run, Sinnott said. Most likely, Sinnott said, this bear was fishing for salmon in the creek and might not have heard the cyclist coming due to noise from the creek and from strong winds roaring through the forest.

Warning signs are posted in the area, although the city has not officially closed the trails. Sinnott said he’ll talk to city parks officials today about closing the trails, although a true closure is impractical.

“Any trail head will get you in there and there’s, what, 20-plus trail heads?” he said. “I would certainly recommend not riding a bike or running on those trails.”

RECREATION GOES ON

Signs posted at trail heads two weeks ago warned users of bear activity. On June 14, a sow with two cubs charged a pair of joggers on the Double Bubble trail, which is near Rover’s Run but doesn’t parallel the creek.

On Sunday, Sinnott updated those warnings with news of the mauling.

Even so, dozens of bikers and hikers used the trails, fully aware of the overnight attack.

“It’s not going to stop me from going out of the house and enjoying the short summer,” said Rada Nordstrand, who was out for a bike ride with a friend. “But I’m thinking we should buy some bear spray.”

Hendrik Van Hemert and Connor McCoy knew about the attack before they left the Hilltop parking lot for a bike ride up Prospect Heights.

“I thought a lot about the young woman as I was riding,” Van Hemert said. “When I was out there it was easy to see exactly the balance between risk and enjoyment anyone who (goes) outdoors must face. There is an artificial sense of safety when you are doing something you not only love but have done countless times before.

“There are hundreds of mountain bikers in Anchorage that could have found themselves in the exact same position.”

Sinnott said it’s not unheard of for a bear to charge someone moving by on a bicycle. In fact, the motion combined with surprise could trigger what was an “unintentionally provoked” attack, he said.

Sinnott said he didn’t arrive in time to see the victim before she was taken to the hospital, but he learned from emergency responders that the bear bit her on the head, torso and thigh. She also had a “sucking chest wound” caused by a puncture to the lung cavity, he said.

It was close to 3 a.m. when Sinnott and two police officers emerged from the spooky near-solstice night to the South Bivouac Trailhead parking lot on Campbell Airstrip Road. Sinnott carried a 12-gauge shotgun.

By BETH BRAGG and WESLEY LOY

Published: June 30th, 2008 12:11 AM
Last Modified: June 30th, 2008 06:09 PM

When it comes to Cougar attacks, people don’t really think of Issaquah, Washington. Or when concerns about marauding cougars rise, wildlife experts offer reassurances: The typical cougar is a shy creature that avoids people and prefers to eat deer rather than pets or children.

Tell that to Wes Collins’ dog, who was eaten by a cougar:

It emerged from the forest behind the Collins house one evening in May and zeroed in on Sandy, the family’s 50-pound Labrador mix. As two of Collins’ children watched from the doorway, the cougar chased Sandy around the house and cornered her by the back deck. The cat clamped its jaws around the dog’s neck, the cougar dragged Sandy 50 yards into the woods. There it gnawed on her head and shoulder, buried the rest for later, and stretched out for a long nap.

That was enough to shake up the family, but what happened the next day was what troubled state game warden Rocky Spencer. He and a hunter arrived with two hounds, pessimistic about their chances of tracking the cat. Collins’ house sits on 5 acres outside Issaquah, where Seattle’s suburban sprawl gives way to the forested Cascade foothills, so the cougar had plenty of escape routes to wilder country.

But this cat had no intention of fleeing. The hounds came across it just 100 yards into the woods, and the snarling cougar turned on the dogs with a fury that sent both back to the truck to lick their wounds.

Forty minutes later, hunter Ed Mahany returned with a friend and two fresh hounds. They figured that this time, surely, the cougar would have headed for the hills. Instead, the hounds found it just a few hundred feet away. Mahany’s partner shot it, and the cougar, a 145-pound male, crawled off to die in a hollow stump that the neighbor’s kids play in.

“I’ve had dealings with upwards of 100 mountain lions, and that was the most aggressive I’ve seen,” Spencer said.

“This cougar wasn’t sick or injured,” Mahany added. “It obviously didn’t concern him to be around people, and dogs were just lunch.”

Once hunted nearly to extinction, cougars are on the rebound around the West. It’s an ecological success story that’s causing both celebration and nervous glances over the shoulder. Worries are growing that the secretive cougar, a.k.a. mountain lion, puma and panther, is getting too comfortable around the booming human population that now shares its habitat.

“We have a lot more people, a lot more mountain lions — and a lot more encounters,” said cougar researcher Paul Beier, an associate professor at Northern Arizona University.

Of the 10 fatal cougar attacks on people recorded since 1890 in the United States, half were in the past 10 years. Nonfatal attacks also are on the rise, as are reports of cougars preying on pets and livestock.

Being chewed by a cougar, or even seeing one in the wild, is still rare. But a recent string of attacks and close calls has forced Westerners to reconsider what is “typical” cougar behavior:

–A 6-year-old boy was jumped by a cougar on July 31 while hiking with about three dozen other campers on Marshall Mountain near Missoula, Mont. The cat pinned Dante Swallow with its paws and bit into his neck, but was pulled away by a camp counselor. The boy survived with scratches and puncture wounds. The cat slunk away and was later tracked down and killed.

–In Colorado, cougars have attacked three hikers in the past year, including 10-year-old Mark Miedema, killed last July in Rocky Mountain National Park. He had hiked a few minutes ahead of his family on a well-traveled trail; they arrived to see the cougar dragging him away.

–In Olympia, Wash., a cougar prowled a residential neighborhood for a week in April, hiding under blackberry bushes and preying on pets until wildlife agents tracked it down and shot it a few blocks from City Hall.

The list goes on: Since February, cougars have been spotted lounging on a porch in Villa Park, Calif., munching house cats near Kalispell, Mont., and wandering near an elementary school near Reno, Nev. In each case, the cougar was shot by officials fearing further problems.

With every encounter that hits the evening news, the jitter factor rises among the general populace, until sometimes it seems as if there’s a predator behind every tree. Wildlife officials say they’ve received complaints of “cougars” that turned out to be deer, yellow Labrador retrievers or even house cats playing in the grass.

“There’s a little public hysteria about this,” Spencer said. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It gives us an increased chance to educate people about lions, so they can learn to live with them.”

But how, exactly, do you live with one of North America’s most adaptable predators? A cougar can sprint 40 mph and leap 20 feet into a tree. With its great yellow eyes and keen nose, it can see and smell people coming long before they know the cougar is there.

Westerners have argued for years, with no consensus yet, over how to coexist with an animal that occasionally displaces humans at the top of the food chain.

In Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico, recent complaints from ranchers and deer hunters about too many cougars prompted game officials to relax cougar-hunting rules.

The West’s more urban coastal states, meanwhile, have grown more protective of the big cats. Washington voters banned the use of hounds for recreational cougar-hunting in 1996, the same year that Oregon voters rejected a challenge to their state’s ban on hounds.

In California, a ban on all sport hunting of cougars has helped to double their numbers since 1972 to the present estimate of just over 5,000 animals. Even after cougars killed two California hikers, voters rejected a 1996 proposal to reinstate hunting.

“People have a more holistic approach to sharing the land, not just with cougars but with bears and other animals once considered varmints,” said Brooks Fahy, executive director of the Predator Defense Institute in Eugene, Ore. “I think people like knowing these animals are out there.”

Even in cougar-friendly California, however, there are limits to interspecies goodwill. Hunters note that an average of 100 “problem” cougars are killed each year in California — about twice the number killed annually by hunters before the 1972 ban.

Are cougars becoming bolder in the absence of hunting? Many hunters, and some game officials, believe that’s the case. But Fahy disputes that theory, saying the dramatic rise in both cougar and human populations explains the increase in encounters.

There’s also no evidence that hunting puts the fear of people in mountain lions, Fahy says. He points to British Columbia, which has the continent’s highest rate of cougar attacks despite heavy hunting.

Beier, the Arizona researcher, said he wouldn’t expect hunting to noticeably reduce the number of cougar attacks unless the killing reached a level not allowed since the early 1960s, when bounties were paid for dead cougars.

Even that drastic step, unlikely given today’s sympathy for predators, would not stop the march of homes into the West’s wild hills nor divert the flood of visitors into the region’s parks.

Three years have passed since Wes Collins moved his family into their house in the woods. Until the cougar attack in May, they enjoyed the parade of wildlife from their back door.

Now the four children, ages 8 to 14, are not allowed to play alone outside. Collins bought a can of pepper spray, and he cleared trails out back “to make our presence known,” he said.

Collins said he likes wildlife, but he values the safety of his children more. He’d like to see Washington rescind its new ban on hunting cougars with hounds.

“You either control the population of cougars or start killing humans,” Collins said. “There’s not enough room for both of us to survive.”

LAS CRUCES -A mountain lion that may have killed a Pinos Altos, New Mexico, man was captured in a snare and killed Wednesday morning, according to the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.

The lion was an average-sized adult male weighing roughly 125 pounds, according to the department. It had four bullet holes that appeared to be from buckshot.

The animal is suspected to have killed 55-year-old Robert Nawojski on June 17 or June 18 near his small mobile home in a wooded area of Pinos Altos north of Silver City. Nawojski’s partially eaten and buried body was found June 20 near a rock ledge about 60 yards from his home where he liked to bathe and shave.

A Department of Game and Fish officer had shot and wounded a lion with buckshot June 19.

The lion was caught in a U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services snare about a half-mile from the rock ledge where Nawojski was believed to have been attacked. The lion was killed. Its body will be taken to the New Mexico State Police Crime Lab for a necropsy.

USDA Wildlife services agents and department of game and fish officers with hounds were still searching for a second lion reported to be in the area.

“But we’re confident the lion we caught last night was the one wounded by our officer … ,” game and fish department Officer Leon Redman said.

Whether or not a well regulated militia remains necessary to the security of a free state, as the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution declares, it isn’t the compelling motive behind the constitutional right of the people to keep and bear arms.

That, in effect, is what a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, clearing up a constitutional ambiguity as old as the Bill of Rights and at the heart of more contemporary debates over how the U.S. should deal with the biggest epidemic of gun violence among the world’s industrial democracies. “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority. The upshot of that unambiguous assertion, and its immediate consequence, is that the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and requirement for trigger locks is unconstitutional, amounting, Justice Scalia said, “to a prohibition on an entire class of ‘arms’ that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense.” What is ambiguous is how the ruling will affect the spectrum of state and local restrictions on firearm ownership across the U.S.

Mr. Scalia said the court’s ruling “should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” But he didn’t provide guidance to lower courts and lawmakers on where the second amendment line should be drawn.

The winning legal team for the case at the high court, District of Columbia v. Heller, planned to quickly challenge local gun laws in Chicago, New York and Detroit, as the New York Times reports. Gun proponents in Texas hope the ruling will help them win the right of people with concealed-weapons licenses to carry guns where the state currently bans them, including government buildings and college campuses, the Dallas Morning News reports. In California, the National Rifle Association plans to file suit today against a San Francisco prohibition on guns in public housing, and NRA lobbyist Chris Cox tells the Los Angeles Times “there will be challenges to all sorts of statutes as we move forward.”

Many gun-control advocates yesterday voiced apprehension about the results. “More handguns will lead to more handgun violence,” Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty said, while his Chicago counterpart, Richard Daley, warned the ruling would bring a “return to the days of the Wild West,” as Legal Times reports. Among the dissenting justices, Stephen Breyer was equally pessimistic, saying “the decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States.” But one gun opponent, Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence, tells The Wall Street Journal there could be a silver lining: the possibility that gun-rights advocates will feel less threatened and be more open to compromise.

The decision drew a lot attention in fellow democracies overseas that take more restrictive views of gun rights. The Times of London asked the liberal American constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe if the U.S. should try to learn from England and Wales, where only 50 people were killed in gun crimes in 2005, compared with 12,352 in the U.S. He replied: “We come from a much more violent culture, one in which it would be much more difficult to enact and enforce a complete ban. Whatever the law, we’re not going to become England.”

By JOSEPH SCHUMAN

The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee celebrated a quarter century of grizzly bear recovery on June 21, 2008, with a public ceremony at the Blackfoot—Clearwater Wildlife Management Area in Montana. The event was open to the public, and included displays and demonstrations of bear-related educational and safety programs and a ceremony with key partners involved in grizzly bear recovery.

MISSOULA, Mont. — If a year’s accomplishments were scored like antlers, 2007 would be a trophy-class wallhanger for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

The conservation group last year helped to enhance more acres of elk habitat and complete more land protection projects than anytime in its history.

In all, the Elk Foundation impacted 366,206 acres — a monster conservation effort that will benefit hunters and wildlife enthusiasts for generations to come.

Habitat enhancement projects were completed in 20 states. Work included invasive and noxious plant control, water developments, prescribed burns, riparian restoration, various research projects and more.

In 13 states, elk habitat was permanently protected from urban development via conservation easements and acquisitions from willing sellers.

“Highlights of 2007 included a new aspen restoration project along the Wyoming front, our organization¹s first conservation easements in Arizona and Arkansas, our first easement on reclaimed mine lands, and a leading role in permanently protecting the largest remaining remnant of Theodore Roosevelt’s historic Elkhorn Ranch — a special place considered by many to be the birthplace of America¹s conservation movement,” said David Allen, president and CEO of the Elk Foundation.

The Elk Foundation also logged 190 conservation education projects last year.

Allen credited all of these successes to the Elk Foundation’s more than 150,000 members and 10,000 active volunteers, donors, partners and staff.

Since launching in 1984, the Elk Foundation has helped complete 5,740 conservation projects across 49 states and 8 provinces. The cumulative impact now tops 5.2 million acres, or 8,125 square milesa land area larger than Connecticut, Delaware and District of Columbia combined.

Additionally, more than 500,000 acres previously closed to public access are now open for hunting, fishing and other recreation.

Headquartered in Missoula, Mont., the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the future of elk, other wildlife and their habitat. For more information, visit www.elkfoundation.org or call 800-CALL-ELK.

In a widely circulated article titled, “What They Didn’t Tell You About Wolf Recovery,” in the Jan-Mar 2008 Outdoorsman, I documented the fact that Fish and Wildlife Service and state wolf biologists are knowingly underestimating wolf numbers in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. The article explained that only individual radio-collared wolves, and packs including at least one wolf that has been radio-collared (or otherwise documented as having survived in the wild) are considered in minimum wolf population estimates published by FWS and state agency biologists.

Hunters can shoot up to 75 wolves this fall under a tentative quota unanimously approved Thursday by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission, despite pleas from some that a wolf hunting season is premature.

The public has until July 18 to comment on the tentative quotas, as well as the commission’s decision to reclassify wolves under state law to a species in need of management, instead of an endangered species. A final quota adoption is slated for Aug. 5.

Lisa Upson with the National Resource Defense Council said they agree with the concept of a wolf hunting season as a management tool. But with the animals coming off of the endangered species list only last February, she’s concerned that the state doesn’t have enough long-term information on their viability to start a hunting season now.

She argued that the state needs to ensure that wolves are truly a recovered species, especially when it comes to genetics. She added that Montana is still learning about wolves’ existence in the Treasure State, including their breeding seasons and the effects of a harsh winter.

In addition, Upson and others noted that the state currently is party to a lawsuit brought by 11 environmental groups, who are seeking an injunction to halt the delisting of wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Bob Lane, an FWP attorney, said he expects U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy to rule on the lawsuit within the next week or so.

“I urge you to proceed cautiously, and don’t change the wolves’ status or implement a quota,” Upson said.

But Jim Anderson of Deer Lodge argued that a compromise was reached with ranchers, who didn’t want any wolves here, when the animals were reintroduced to the Rocky Mountains back in the mid 1990s, and that included the ability to manage their numbers. He called Thursday a “day of celebration” for the recovery of wolves in Montana.

“We owe it to the ranchers of Montana to make sure to honor that contract and agreement they came to at that time, and I’m wondering if we’re doing that today,” Anderson said. “Wolves are at the point where we’re near the capacity of wolves with the range in Montana, and we need to begin to manage wolves.”

Public hunting of wolves has been long been a part of Montana’s wolf conservation and management plan; the state took over management of the wolves from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after the animals’ delisting in February.

Earlier this year, the FWP Commission set the hunting season to run from Oct. 26 to Dec. 31, in three hunting management units. The season will be similar to that of mountain lions, in which the season ends when the quota is reached in each management unit.

Ken McDonald, FWP wildlife administrator, said the 75 wolves under the tentative quota that could be shot represent 18 percent of Montana’s 422 wolves. He said models show that without the hunt, wolf numbers would grow to 497 by the end of 2008, including 52 breeding pairs in 98 packs. Currently, Montana has 39 breeding pairs in eight packs. The minimum population for Montana to retain management of wolves and keep them off of the list of endangered species is 100 wolves with 15 breeding pairs.

McDonald added that their model showed anywhere from 115 to 160 wolves could be shot and still have a healthy population in the state, but FWP decided to go with a lower quota just to be on the safe side.

“We felt that it’s a new thing for us, having a wolf season, so we felt it was important to take a conservative approach,” McDonald said. “There are some uncertainties about what the effects of hunting will be, so a slow approach gives us the ability to learn as we go.”

One of those uncertainties is what impact hunting will have on livestock depredation. Carolyn Sime, Montana FWP statewide wolf coordinator, noted that last year about 75 wolves were shot for preying on livestock or otherwise died — like being hit by vehicles — and she’s not sure if that will change.

Commission Chairman Steve Doherty also voiced concerns over whether the population is robust enough to withstand both hunting and diseases, but FWP officials said they are comfortable they’ll be able to maintain the population at current levels.

“Another unknown is how effective the hunters will be, how quickly they’ll fill the quotas and things like that,” McDonald added. “This is just a one-year quota, so we’ll be able to step back, see how it goes and monitor the populations as well as the harvest effort.”

But Anne Carlson, a scientist with Defenders of Wildlife, said while she’s not anti-hunting regarding wolves and believes it can be an effective management tool in the future, she still thinks hunting is premature.

“How many animals do we hunt when statewide, their population is less than 500 animals? She asked rhetorically. “… It’s imperative to proceed with great caution.”

By EVE BYRON – Independent Record – 06/14/08

E-mail comments to fwpwld@mt.gov or mail comments to FWP n Wildlife Division, Attn: Public Comment, PO Box 200701, Helena, MT 59620-0701.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today opened a 30-day public comment period on a proposal to add one national wildlife refuge to the list of areas open for hunting during the 2008-09 season and increase hunting opportunities at six other refuges.

The Service today also published a final rule that opens Cape May National Wildlife Refuge (New Jersey) to fishing, makes minor administrative changes, and modifies existing regulations.

Initially proposed in July 2006, the hunt program changes were withdrawn because of a lawsuit and subsequent court decision requiring some refuges to revise Environmental Assessments to incorporate cumulative impact analyses. Refuges named in the lawsuit have completed the revised assessments, as have the seven refuges included in today’s proposed rule.

The proposed rule, published in the June 11, 2008 Federal Register, would open Hamden Slough National Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota to migratory bird and big-game hunting. In addition, the rule increases hunting opportunities to include migratory birds and upland game at Agassiz and Blackwater national wildlife refuges, in Minnesota and Maryland, respectively. At the Whittlesey Creek (Wisconsin) National Wildlife Refuge, big-game hunting would be permitted.

Hunting opportunities at three refuges in Louisiana (Bayou Cocodrie, Tensas River and Upper Ouachita) would be increased because land has been added to the refuges. No regulatory changes, however, are proposed for Bayou Cocodrie. The rule also adds a turkey hunt at Upper Ouachita.

The Service also proposes removing Stillwater Wildlife Management Area (Nevada) from the list of areas open for hunting. The land has reverted to U.S. Bureau of Reclamation management after expiration of a 50-year agreement under which the Service managed the land in partnership with two state agencies.

Some of the nation?s finest hunting can be found on national wildlife refuges, as well as excellent opportunities for fishing, wildlife photography, wildlife observation, environmental education and interpretive programs. More than 300 national wildlife refuges currently have hunting programs and more than 270 refuges have fishing programs.

To view the final rule, visit: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-12188.pdf

To view the proposed rule, visit: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-12193.pdf

The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. We are both a leader and trusted partner in fish and wildlife conservation, known for our scientific excellence, stewardship of lands and natural resources, dedicated professionals and commitment to public service. For more information on our work and the people who make it happen, visit www.fws.gov.

WASHINGTON — West Coast lawmakers are protesting a plan by the Bush administration to take $70 million from the $170 million approved in the farm bill as disaster relief for the Pacific Coast salmon-fishing industry.

Bush’s budget office says the money is needed to pay for higher-than-expected costs of the 2010 census.

After the reduction, which needs the approval of Congress, “$100 million would still be available for payments (to salmon fishermen), which is sufficient given the estimated economic impact of recent fisheries-disaster declarations for the area,” the budget office said in a memo.

West Coast lawmakers from both parties called the request a slap in the face of fishermen hurting from the collapse of the salmon-fishing industry in California, Oregon and Washington.

The collapse led to the largest salmon closure in West Coast history and caused losses the states estimate will total about $290 million. California is seeking $208 million in federal disaster aid, Oregon, $45 million, and Washington, $36 million.

A letter signed by 14 Democratic House members from the three states called the request unconscionable and a sign that the Bush administration is not committed to helping Pacific Coast fishing communities.

“This funding is desperately needed by the communities and families who rely on salmon fishing, many of whom face losing their businesses and homes due to two years of no fishing,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., who drafted the letter, which is signed by six House members from California and four each from Oregon and Washington. All are Democrats.

The proposed funding cut is especially egregious, the letter said, because Bush administration policies on major salmon rivers on the West Coast may have contributed to the current disaster, which stems from the sudden collapse of the chinook salmon run in California’s Sacramento River, where the salmon return to spawn. Scientists are studying the causes of the collapse, with possible factors ranging from ocean conditions and habitat destruction to dam operations and agricultural pollution.

Salmon runs have also failed in recent years on the Klamath River in Oregon and California, and the Columbia-Snake River system in the Pacific Northwest — failures that Thompson and other Democrats blame in part on administration policies that they say did not ensure enough water reached the fish.

Scientists expect low returns on the Sacramento River again next year and another closed season for most of the West Coast, the letter said.

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., said Wednesday that he will join with Democrats to prevent the cuts.

“Rest assured there will be a strong bipartisan effort to ensure that these cuts don’t go through,” Smith said in a statement.

By MATTHEW DALY

The Associated Press

KALISPELL – Foresters looking to fight fire with fire have started looking beyond the boundaries of designated wilderness areas, and this summer will apply a sort of “let it burn” policy to public lands throughout northwest Montana.

They call it “wildland fire use” and this summer it could be used in the North Fork Flathead drainage above Columbia Falls, the Swan Range near Bigfork and the Mission Mountains.

While many wildfires will be fought, others can provide “a valuable tool for land managers,” said Steve Brady, Swan Lake district ranger for the Flathead National Forest. “Decisions to use naturally ignited fire as a tool for resource management objectives are made incident by incident, and only under certain conditions,” he said.

It all began back in 1983, when lightning struck deep in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, a tree burst into flame, and firefighters did absolutely nothing. Instead, they watched as the flames crept slowly up-mountain, eventually burning across 230 acres.

It was, by forest officials’ own admission, a “huge moment,” coming as it did on the heels of seven decades of aggressive fire suppression.

Following the big burns of 1910 – when more than

3 million acres burned in Montana and Idaho – forest policy was to quench every flame by midmorning the day after a lightning storm.

But by the early 1980s, foresters had realized a whole host of problems with that policy. For instance, all that timber they saved from burning was piling up, creating a huge fuel stockpile.

In addition, a change to hotter, drier, longer summers was making it harder and harder to snuff the big blazes. And Western forest ecosystems, it seemed, needed that fire, had evolved with that fire, were missing that fire.

Far from being biological deserts, scientists were learning that burned-over forestland was home to tremendous life.

Western tanagers thrived in low-severity burns. Juncos nested in somewhat hotter burns, and birds such as the black-backed woodpecker, mountain bluebird and olive-sided flycatcher actually liked their forest well-done.

They came to feast on beetles, some of which have evolved infrared detectors

in their thorax, and some with smoke sniffers in their antennae.

Lodgepole pine relied on fire’s heat to open their serotinous cones and release tree seed. Western larch hate the shade, and grew faster once the overstory was burned away. Seeds from red-stemmed ceanothus – dormant for centuries – germinated only after a good fire.

Spirea, fireweed, arnica, pine grass, Bicknell’s geranium, even certain toads, all boomed in the burn.

It was time, forest managers concluded, to make a distinction between fire that ate homes and private property, and fire that had for millennia been a part of Western woods. The one was certainly foe, but the other, it seems, was friend.

Since that first 230 acres burned in the Bob back in 1983, tens of thousands of acres have been monitored rather than attacked after the lightning struck. But most all of those acres have been within designated wilderness areas, places where nature is left to her own devices.

Now, however, wildland fire use is spreading onto other forestlands.

If the time is right, and the place is right, the long-term climate and short-term weather forecasts are right, and the terrain is right, then wildland fire use can be a tool for forest lands well beyond the Bob.

Last year, Flathead National Forest officials expanded the program outside the Bob Marshall and Great Bear Wilderness areas, to include forestlands around Hungry Horse Reservoir. Now, they’re looking to more lands as possible wildland fire use sites, hoping not only to restore forest health but also to eat up fuel and reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in the future.

“Not all fires started by lightning will be managed as wildland fire use,” said Jimmy DeHerrera, The Flathead’s district ranger on the Hungry Horse-Glacier View District. “But, when fire can benefit the forest and wildlife, and there are no values at risk, we will consider utilizing fire use.”

Fighting fire with fire allows managers to better pick the time and the place of the blaze, officials said, and to steer resources to other, more high-priority burns.

To hear more about the Flathead’s expanded wildland fire use program, drop by any of several public meetings scheduled in coming weeks.

For fire’s future in the North Fork, an open house is set for Thursday, from 7 to 8 p.m. at Sondreson Hall, north of Polebridge. The Swan Lake District is holding two meetings, one to discuss wildland fire use in the Swan Range, and one to talk about fire in the Missions.

The first open house will be Wednesday, June 18, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Condon Community Center. The second is Thursday, June 19, from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Swan Lake Ranger Station in Bigfork.

Flathead forest fire management specialists will be on hand at all meetings, available to discuss firefighting policy past, present and future. For more information, call the Hungry Horse-Glacier View District at 387-3800, or the Swan Lake District at 837-7500.

By MICHAEL JAMISON of the Missoulian

BOISE, Idaho — Thousands of vacationers in the West will likely see a wolf in the wild for the first time this summer, often from the road but sometimes while camping or hiking.

The federal government and state agencies that manage wolves have concise rules on what is legal in these encounters, and experts who study wolf behavior offer advice on how to handle what is likely to be an unforgettable experience.

“Wolves don’t turn and run away immediately like we’re used to with other animals,” said Carolyn Sime, gray wolf program coordinator with the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department. “The other thing that kind of makes it unnerving is the intensity of their eyes. It’s partly the color, and partly the intensity of the way they’re looking at you.”

Wolves nearly always blink first, experts say, but yelling will drive off a wolf, as will pepper spray.

About 1,000 wolves in 140 packs live in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, steadily increasing since being reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996.

“Even though they’re fairly rare in nature, wolves are relatively visible compared to a lot of animals,” said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “There are never many of them because these are big, large carnivores. But they seem abundant because they travel the same areas people do.”

Bangs said one study found that more than 100,000 people see a wolf in Yellowstone National Park each year. For comparison, few people ever see one of the 31,000 cougars that inhabit the western United States.

Gray wolves have also been reintroduced along the Arizona-New Mexico border, beginning in 1998, but that population had fewer than 50 individuals at the end of 2005.

About 3,000 gray wolves inhabit northern Minnesota, and another 500 in Michigan and 500 in Wisconsin.

Male wolves average about 100 pounds and females slightly less. They often travel on roads, trails, creek bottoms and ridge tops. When resting, wolves like the same types of areas that draw humans.

“Because meadows are attractive to campers, you’re likely to run into wolf activity,” said Steve Nadeau, statewide large carnivore coordinator with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. “Particularly if the meadow has game nearby — elk and deer.”

Wolf experts say that centuries of mythology taints present day wolf-human meetings, and that wolves tend to avoid humans.

“If you’re walking on a dark trail at midnight and you turn a corner and come across a pack of 20 wolves, enjoy them,” said Bangs. “Because they’ll be gone in a few seconds.”

But wolves might not vanish so quickly if a hiker has a dog along. Northern Rockies gray wolves have killed at least 83 dogs since 1987, and last year killed 30 of their own number in territorial disputes.

“Wolves consider dogs as strange wolves,” said Bangs. “A dog may think that a wolf barking or howling is a dog that wants to play. Trust me, that is not the case.”

Other instances where wolves might act aggressively is near a den or a kill site.

“If you come into an area where you see a kill, particularly if it’s kind of fresh, back out of there and go someplace else,” said Sime.

Meeting wolves can have legal ramifications. Under the Endangered Species Act, wolves in Minnesota are listed as threatened, while wolves in Michigan, Wisconsin, northern Idaho and northwest Montana are endangered.

Wolf populations that resulted from reintroductions are listed as “experimental, nonessential.” They include wolves south of Interstate 90 in Idaho, Montana outside the northwest corner, Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico.

“Our regulations allow anyone at anytime to scare a wolf away,” said Bangs. “Just run at it and yell at it and it will run off. That’s legal to do. Just don’t hurt it.”

Pepper spray — often carried by hikers in grizzly bear country – - can be used on wolves.

It’s legal to kill a wolf in self-defense.

“Expect an investigation because that is almost nonexistent,” said Bangs. “The physical evidence better back up your story.”

The penalty for illegally killing a listed wolf can range up to $100,000 and a year in jail. Bangs said that about 10 percent of Northern Rockies wolf deaths are the result of illegal kills.

Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies met the criteria for delisting in 2002.

Male wolves average about 100 pounds and females slightly less. They often travel on roads, trails, creek bottoms and ridge tops. When resting, wolves like the same types of areas that draw humans.

Deseret News (Salt Lake City),  Jun 1, 2006  by Keith Ridler Associated Press

This means that mule deer numbers are expected to remain the same, or maybe drop a little this coming fall.  But yearling buck numbers will drop significantly in most of southern idaho.  This means a lower buck harvest for hunters. 

“That’s not surprising, given the weather we’ve had,” big game manager Brad Compton told Fish and Game commissioners during their meeting May 22. But with the good female survival, and expected good forage this summer, biologists expect mule deer numbers to rebound quickly, he said.

To see the rest of the article and the percentages from 2005-06 click here for the original article.

Agency personnel shot a lone wolf near West Yellowstone on Tuesday, May 27. The wolf had been frequenting several campgrounds and residential areas north of West Yellowstone in the Horse Butte area over the last two weeks.

The animal was exhibiting aggressive behavior towards people and domestic dogs and showed no fear of people.

Montana is home to roughly 420 wolves, which mostly inhabit the western portion of the state. Wolves use a variety of habitats and pass through areas that may bring them in and around places where people live, work, and recreate.

“Most wolves pose no threat to people or domestic animals, although occasionally an incident occurs and a wolf or wolves must be removed from the population,” said Kurt Alt, FWP Regional Wildlife Manager. “We evaluate these incidents and decide what to do on a case-by-case basis.”

The Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf population was removed from the federal Endangered Species list in late March. Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is now the lead agency for wolf conservation and management in Montana on non-tribal lands.

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks came to the same determination to authorize lethal control in this incident as it would have prior to the delisting of wolves.

Under Montana statutes and the depredation guidelines adopted by the Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission, wolves depredating on livestock can only be killed if authorized by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks following the guidelines, or if the wolf is killing or threatening to kill pets or livestock, or to protect human life.

To learn more about Montana’s recovered wolf population, visit FWP online at www.fwp.mt.gov/wildthings/wolf <http://www.fwp.mt.gov/wildthings/wolf> , where visitors can also tell FWP when they see wolves or wolf sign. The information helps to verify the activity, distribution, and pack size of Montana’s recovered wolf population.

BY TODD ADAMS

Proposed changes announced last week to Rep. Mike Simpson’s Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act (CIEDRA) preserve economic development for Custer County and motorized access, contrary to claims by an anti-CIEDRA group, Simpson staff say.Lindsay Slater, Simpson’s chief of staff, was responding to claims recently made in ads by the Idaho Recreation Council.

Custer County commissioners Lin Hintze and Wayne Butts say they still support CIEDRA for its economic development provisions. The Challis Messenger was unable to contact Commissioner Cliff Hansen by press time.

The commissioners are on record opposing the designation of more than 300,000 acres of new wilderness, but supporting the bill’s release of 131,670 acres of wilderness study areas back into multiple use.

Simpson proposed the changes to make the bill more acceptable to the Democrats who now control Congress, Slater said. So far, he said, there has been no reaction from Democrats on the House Committee on Natural Resources chaired by Rep. Nick J. Rahall II. Simpson’s bill is still waiting for a committee hearing.

“The number one priority I have relayed to the committee is that Custer County must be compensated with guaranteed economic development money if they plan to take any lands off the table,” Simpson said in a statement last week. “I believe the guaranteed funding mechanism I have proposed will meet the needs of the citizens of Custer County and uphold the promises I have made to the Commissioners.”

Key changes

Simpson removed two controversial Sawtooth National Recreation Area land transfers to the City of Stanley and Custer County totaling 94 acres.

Parcel A, the so-called Benner Street parcel, would have transferred eight acres to Stanley that could have been sold for four homesites. Parcel B would have transferred 86 acres for 10 homesites to Custer County in the Nip and Tuck Creek area above Lower Stanley.

Stanley Parcel C, 73 acres along Valley Creek, remains in the bill and would be used for public purposes, Slater said, such as affordable housing. The transfer of 4,990 acres of BLM lands to Custer County and its municipalities also stays in the bill, he said.

The idea was to stimulate the county’s economy by increasing its tax base. In exchange for removing the two SNRA parcels, Simpson has put in a provision to transfer $3 million to Custer County.

That money would be guaranteed upon passage of CIEDRA and the money would come from diverting 25 percent of federal mineral leasing payments in Idaho to the county until the $3 million total is reached, Slater said.

A separate $5 million appropriation to Custer County remains in the bill, but is not guaranteed upon CIEDRA’s passage. Congress would have to pass a separate appropriations bill for Custer County to see that money.

The county commissioners have said they want to set up an economic development trust fund and use the interest to fund economic development projects.

Voluntary buyouts of federal grazing allotments held by East Fork ranchers are back in the bill. A national conservation group that wishes to remain anonymous has offered to put up $2 million to retire livestock grazing, Slater said.

CIEDRA originally proposed a federal appropriation of $7 million for the buyouts, but Simpson eliminated that provision after the Idaho Cattle Association opposed it.

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An IRC ad in last week’s issue of The Challis Messenger stated, “CIEDRA?No land and money guaranteed! Simpson backs out on CIEDRA deal with Custer County. Simpson’s promises of land transfers are removed from the bill.”

“They’re lying,” Commissioner Hintze told The Messenger. He said Simpson backed off on the SNRA parcels because groups opposed CIEDRA for selling off public lands for the development of trophy homes.

“They’re happy because there are no houses,” Hintze said. “We’re happy because we get the money, the $3 million.”

An Idaho Recreation Council commercial running on KSRA radio urges listeners to contact the commissioners and tell Simpson to “kill this bill before it kills our way of life.”

Sandra Mitchell, director of public lands for the Idaho State Snowmobile Association, a member group of IRC, admitted the ad was misleading. It didn’t specify that only two of the three Stanley parcels were removed, she said, or mention the 4,990 acres of BLM land transfers still in the bill.

The group’s latest statement specifies that just the two parcels totaling 94 acres have been dropped, Mitchell said. “Gone also is the ?Boulder White Clouds Management Area’ which would have protected some degree of motorized recreation access,” she wrote in a May 28 guest opinion to the Idaho Falls Post Register.

Slater said that’s not true ? removal of the management area does not change motorized access. Motorized trails stay the same and are detailed in Map 9, “CIEDRA Travel Plan” on Simpson’s website.

“The term and reference to the Boulder White Clouds Management Area is eliminated,” Slater wrote in a summary of changes, because it was controversial and confusing. CIEDRA opponents were concerned it would weaken land management in the SNRA.

The former management area perimeter included the 318,765 acres of wilderness that CIEDRA proposes to designate, plus surrounding non-wilderness lands that would maintain current management by the Salmon-Challis and Sawtooth national forests, the SNRA and the Challis district of the Bureau of Land Management.

Hintze challenged Mitchell; the IRC and others opposed to CIEDRA to come up with a development alternative for Custer County. “If IRC can come up with an alternative, I don’t want more wilderness, either,” Hintze said.

Mitchell told The Messenger the alternative is long-term growth in the form of a recreation economy that preserves current levels of motorized and mechanized (mountain bikes) access to the Boulder and White Cloud mountains.

The money, whether it’s $3 million or more, is tempting to take, but is only temporary and won’t last, as will recreation, Mitchell said.

“The money provisions of CIEDRA are payoffs to the locals to support CIEDRA; once the bill is passed that support is no longer needed,” Mitchell wrote in her opinion piece.

Studies have shown that snowmobiling, mountain biking and such recreation keep rural economies going.

Snowmobilers spend up to $319 each per day, Mitchell said, adding there’s a lot of snowmobiling in the Boulder and White Cloud mountains from which Stanley benefits.

As a compromise, IRC has said it’s willing to support about 40,000 acres of wilderness, versus the 300,000-plus acres now proposed.

INDEX, Snohomish County — After years cajoling fellow lawmakers, strategizing with environmentalists and attending countless community meetings, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray stood on the bank of the Skykomish River Friday and looked into the newly created Wild Sky Wilderness.

“Rick,” she declared, pointing to a forested mountain and then gleefully slapping the arm of U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, a fellow Democrat, “we did it!”

Murray, Larsen and several dozen wilderness advocates, congressional aides and Forest Service officials, many seasoned veterans of the Wild Sky campaign, gathered near the tiny mountain town of Index Friday to celebrate the creation of Washington’s first wilderness area in more than two decades.

Wild Sky boosters said their success heralds future campaigns for creating still more protected wilderness in Washington.

“We broke the logjam,” said Murray, who helped lead the effort in Congress. “I think now people are saying, ‘Well, this is a doable process.’ ”

But it wasn’t easy.

Environmentalists first conceived it in 1999, hoping to protect a slice of lowland forest near Seattle, and introduce a new generation of citizens and politicians to the idea of creating wilderness areas.

In the ensuing nine years, it weathered opposition from a powerful House committee chair, threats of a Senate filibuster and hours of careful negotiation with snowmobilers, campers and other interest groups afraid they would be shut out of their favorite places. Along the way, it shrank from a proposed 126,000 acres to the final 106,000 acres of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

The effort made the victory celebration that much sweeter for Mike Town, founder of Friends of Wild Sky and an environmental-sciences teacher at Redmond High School.

“I can’t wipe the smile off my face,” Town told the crowd. “My jaw muscles are getting fatigued.”

The land includes low-lying forests, some logged decades ago, some with centuries-old Douglas firs. There are high alpine ridges, sheer granite cliffs and the North Fork of the Skykomish River, where steelhead leap upstream. Town takes students to a stream flowing out of the wilderness where pink salmon still spawn so plentifully they fill the creek from bank to bank. All of it lies a few hours drive from Seattle, near Highway 2.

The wilderness designation bars virtually all mechanized activity there — no logging, motorcycles, cars or new mining claims. You can’t even legally fire up a chain saw. Wild Sky advocates carefully drew the boundaries to avoid opposition from snowmobilers and the heavily used Barclay Lake.

Mark Rey, a Bush appointee who oversees the Forest Service, spoke at the event, praising the Wild Sky proponents for taking a moderate approach that built broad support for the wilderness. He also announced plans to name a trailhead leading into the wilderness after the late Jennifer Dunn, the longtime Republican congresswoman from Bellevue who supported Wild Sky, and who died last September.

Still, today the wilderness faces obstacles of a more practical sort. One of the main roads leading to it was cut off by flooding several years ago and has yet to be repaired.

That, combined with lingering snow on the ground, meant Larsen and Murray never set foot inside the wilderness Friday. But the weather cooperated, giving the revelers a clear view of craggy Gunn Peak and Merchant Peak, both now protected as wilderness.

Warren Cornwall: 206-464-2311 or wcornwall@seattletimes.com

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced today the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will award state and territorial wildlife agencies more than $60 million to help conserve and recover imperiled wildlife through the State Wildlife Grant Program. The grant program is designed to provide annual funding to all state and territorial fish and wildlife agencies with established comprehensive conservation plans, also known as wildlife action plans.

“Taken together, the state and territorial wildlife action plans represent the most comprehensive national assessment of fish and wildlife resources and the steps needed to ensure healthy populations,” said Secretary Kempthorne. “The State Wildlife Grant Program provides crucial funding to implement these action plans and support conservation partnerships with state, tribal and territorial wildlife agencies, as well as private partners.”

All 56 state and territorial agencies have approved plans, which collectively provide a nationwide blueprint for actions to conserve imperiled species. The plans were created through the collaborative efforts of state and federal agencies, biologists, conservationists, landowners, sportsmen and the general public. The plans were then reviewed by a national team that included the Fish and Wildlife Service and directors from state wildlife agencies. Approved plans have begun to produce numerous conservation successes.

To take just one example, ospreys are once again flying in Indiana. A group of nearly 200 partners led by the Indiana Wildlife Federation and Indiana Department of Natural Resources is using state wildlife grant money to restore the osprey, once common throughout the state. No osprey nests were seen from the late 1970s until 1990. Starting in 2003, ospreys have been released every year into areas with suitable habitat outfitted with newly built nesting boxes. Some of these ospreys have returned to the same areas during subsequent breeding seasons, demonstrating this reintroduction program is an effective way to conserve the osprey before they become even more rare and costly to protect.

“The plans determine what species and habitats are declining but not yet endangered,” continued Kempthorne. “By using this information, we can act before it’s too late. We are excited about this historic milestone because it represents our best chance for large scale cost-effective conservation. This sentiment is shared widely by others in the conservation community.”

The grant apportionment is based on a formula that is calculated using the state’s land area and population. A state may receive no more than 5 percent and no less than 1 percent of the available funds. The District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico each receive 0.5 percent and Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands each receive 0.25 percent.

Under legislation signed by President Bush in 2001, states and territories have received a total of $441 million in grants for conservation efforts to date. The Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Number for the State Wildlife Grants is 15.634.

To learn more about particular state plans, please see http://www.teaming.com/states/. To see a state-by-state funding table, please see http://wsfrprograms.fws.gov.
The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is working with others to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. We are both a leader and trusted partner in fish and wildlife conservation, known for our scientific excellence, stewardship of lands and natural resources, dedicated professionals and commitment to public service. For more information on our work and the people who make it happen, visit www.fws.gov.

By Diane Tipton, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Statewide Information Officer

Friday, April 18, 2008

Headlines

Safety in mountain lion country is a matter of education more than anything else, said Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks biologist Rich DeSimone who studies mountain lions.

Though catching a glimpse of a mountain lion, or cougar, is a rare, if heart-pumping experience, fewer than 12 human fatalities due to lions have been recorded in the past 100 years in the U.S.

“Most people in Montana have never seen a mountain lion and those who have say their biggest fear was the unknown,” said Rich DeSimone, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks mountain lion researcher. “Ironically, many people may know more about lions than they realize.”

How’s that?

Though the differences shouldn’t be underplayed—the lion is a large, powerful, wild animal—DeSimone said that mountain lions and housecats share many behaviors and physical features.

“Predatory behavior is remarkably similar in all species of wild and domestic cats. Cats share many physical features including remarkably sophisticated, retractable claws and rear teeth designed for tearing and shearing meat before swallowing,” DeSimone said. “All cats are also ’pure’ carnivores with a digestive system set up to subsist on fresh meat only.”

Though owning a house cat doesn’t make you a mountain lion expert by any means, the real experts—including Steve Torres, nationally known mountain lion biologist and author of the book “Lion Sense” and Toni Ruth, mountain lion research scientist at the Selway Institute in Idaho—say domestic cat owners are likely to have seen and interpreted many feline behaviors also demonstrated by mountain lions.

Most cat owners interpret their cat’s behavior and moods by practicing what biologists call ’interspecific communication’—communication by means other than words—such as observing body language. The experts say these observations could help when it comes to dealing with a mountain lion encounter.

To appreciate this principle, check out these behaviors shared by domestic and wild cats.

A house cat introduced to a new toy intensely stares at it, ears up and forward, it may follow the toy as it moves across the room then hide suddenly.

What You Know About Lions: Cats are curious, they like to check things out and often take their time determining if something is prey or just for play. A curious mountain lion is not necessarily a risk to humans.

A house cat stalking a bird suddenly straightens up, looks around and appears indifferent after being found out. Later it is back, pursuing its prey.

What You Know About Lions: Cat’s prefer to stalk undetected. If they are detected and get direct eye contact, they are likely to break off the activity, but may return to it later.

A house cat will crouch low with tail twitching to check out a tiny dog, for example. If the dog doesn’t run but makes eye contact with the cat, emphasized by a few assertive barks, most cats realize the dog is not prey.

What You Know About Lions : Potential prey’s size, vulnerability and

“positioning” influence a cat’s response. Direct eye contact and an assertive

attitude, doing what you can to look big, and making a lot of noise are

likely to help a lion decide that you are not prey.

House cats crouch low to the ground when the game is really on, tail twitching, eyes narrowed and staring, with flattened ears— ready to pounce. When the rear legs start pumping an attack on that toy is imminent.

What You Know About Lions: A mountain lion crouched with its tail twitching and pumping its rear legs is ready to pounce. Be assertive, make a lot of noise—and fight back if attacked. Try to remain standing and face the attacking animal.

Seeing a mountain lion in the wild is sure to get your heart-pumping, but you will be more likely to relish this rare experience without incident if you take time now to study feline behavior, including that of housecats, and learn all you can about the habits of Montana’s mountain lions. Formatting for below seems backward…so I reversed indent

• Archive | Bush proposes changes to way forests are zoned (2002)

GRANTS PASS, Ore. — The U.S. Forest Service on Wednesday adopted a new version of the basic planning rules that made it possible for conservation groups in the 1990s to win court orders drastically cutting back logging to protect the northern spotted owl and salmon.

Associate Chief Sally Collins said from Washington, D.C., that she hopes the rule will lead to less conflict and better planning to meet the challenges of global warming and wildfire while providing resources such as clean water and timber on the 192 million acres of national forest.

“We have the most transparent, inclusive (forest planning) process anywhere in the planet,” Collins said.

Conservation groups said they will be back in federal court to again challenge the rule, which was tossed out by a federal judge last year on procedural grounds. They argue that the Forest Service refuses to analyze the potential for causing harm to the environment after taking out a long-standing system of protections for fish and wildlife habitat.

“This is the same clown in different shoes,” said Pete Frost, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center in Eugene, which represents some of the plaintiffs in the case.

A 1982 forest planning rule laid out how the Forest Service would implement the National Forest Management Act, the 1976 law that governs management of the national forests. Under that rule, each national forest must adopt a new long-term management plan every 10 to 15 years.

That rule set up a system of protecting so-called indicator species for various habitats. The most famous of those is the northern spotted owl and old growth forest. That led to court-ordered cutbacks in logging in the Northwest by more than 80 percent in 1994 to protect habitat for the spotted owl and salmon. Similar logging cutbacks rippled across the nation.

This latest revision gets rid of that system, replacing it with provisions for a variety of types of fish and wildlife habitats across the landscape.

Collins said it gives forest supervisors more latitude, while freeing up personnel to do on-the-ground projects rather than preparing planning documents, but still holds them to standards that protect fish and wildlife while giving the public a say in decisions.

The timber industry agrees.

“The good news is these new planning regs will require less bureaucracy and that is so important in today’s situation the Forest Service finds itself in, where half the budget is going to (fighting) fire,” said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council in Portland.

By JEFF BARNARD

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

Commissioners say that’s still more than five times the minimum that would trigger an ‘endangered’ listing.

BY ROGER PHILLIPS – rphillips@idahostatesman.com

Edition Date: 05/23/08

JEROME — Idaho’s wolf population could be cut in half under wolf hunting rules approved Thursday by the Idaho Fish and Game commission. But the final word rests with a federal judge.

In setting wolf seasons and rules, commissioners set a wolf “mortality limit” at the 2005 wolf population, which was 515 wolves. That would keep wolves within F&G’s management goals, which call for between 500 and 700 wolves.

“That’s the maximum, and I’m not sure we’re going to get there,” F&G director Cal Groen said.

F&G wildlife bureau chief Jim Unsworth said the success rate for wolf hunters would probably be lower than black bear hunting, which is around 5 percent. There are about 20,000 bears in Idaho. Bears can be hunted with hounds and baited, both of which will be illegal for wolf hunting.

F&G estimates there are 738 wolves, which could grow to 1,063 after the spring breeding season. That number is derived from annual wolf population growth based on the current population estimate, which commissioners described as “very conservative.”

F&G commissioners unanimously approved wolf hunts to run from Sept. 15 through Dec. 31. They said they don’t expect their decision will provide ammunition for groups wanting to return wolves to federal protection because Idaho has about seven times more wolves than required to keep them off the endangered species list.

A lawsuit filed in Montana by environmental and animal-rights groups is expected to go to court next week. They want a federal judge to stop Idaho and other states from managing gray wolves immediately, and to restore federal protection for the predators under the Endangered Species Act.

The mortality limit differs from a hunting quota, which allows hunters to take a specific number of animals. Unsworth pointed out that 515 is the lowest F&G would allow the wolf population to drop from all mortality, including hunting, poaching, accidents, natural death and wolves killed due to livestock depredation.

Biologists had recommended maintaining about 600 wolves after the 2008 hunting season, but commissioners said they set the minimum lower to protect elk herds, reduce predation on livestock and increase hunting opportunity.

Commissioners said if the wolf population drops to 515, there would still be more than five times the minimum of 100 wolves that would trigger relisting under the Endangered Species Act.

“This is very conservative, and we are well within our rights,” commission chair Cam Wheeler of Ririe said. “I think the state has done everything right on this wolf issue, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with protecting our hunters and our elk herds.”

Wheeler said a federal order to stop the hunt could have “tremendous impacts” on big-game herds because the wolf population would grow unchecked. “We think we have a responsibility to speak for our hunters,” he said.

Ralph Maughn of Pocatello, president of the Wolf Recovery Foundation, said the decision will make Idaho more likely to lose in court. His group is not part of the lawsuit.

“Their comments all along have generally been hostile toward wolves,” Maughn said. “The commission judges things politically, and I think they know they’re going to lose the lawsuit, so they’re playing to the crowd.”

Mark Bell of Boise, president of the Idaho Sportsmen’s Caucus Advisory Council, said hunters will be pleased that the commission is allowing them to kill more wolves.

“I think wolves need to be managed just like any other predator, and I think Idaho manages bears and cats pretty well,” Bell said.

Commissioners said that even with the lower number, they doubt hunting would significantly reduce wolf populations, particularly in the backcountry and wilderness areas.

The state is divided into 12 wolf management zones, and each zone will have a quota that would end hunting if it was reached. Wolves that preyed on livestock or pets could still be killed. F&G also would adjust the quotas in each zone prior to the hunts to account for other mortality.

“It’s going to be very adaptive, and we’re going to learn a whole bunch in the first year,” Unsworth said.

Wolf populations have increased about 20 percent per year since the animals were transplanted to Idaho from Canada in the mid-90s. Idaho now has about 82 packs between North Idaho and Interstate 84.

Despite a growing wolf population, statewide elk harvests have remained stable in the last five years with hunters killing about 20,000 elk annually.

But F&G officials said wolves are affecting elk herds in some areas, and big-game managers have had to reduce elk hunting in those areas to adjust for increased wolf predation.

Steve Nadeau, F&G’s large-carnivore biologist, said each wolf kills 14 to 18 elk annually, based on research done in Idaho.

The debate between how many wolves should be allowed to exist in Idaho has been hotly debated since the mid-90s. Wheeler called wolves the “toughest issue F&G has ever dealt with.” Groen added that setting a season is “great history in the management of wolves.”

Commissioners stuck to hunting seasons and rules and did not follow the suggestion of several groups to set aside wolf viewing areas where hunting wouldn’t be allowed.

“The bulk of the year is exclusive for viewing,” commissioner Randy Budge of Pocatello said. He added that establishing a viewing area could set a precedent, and other groups could pressure the department to add nonhunting viewing areas for other species as well.

Roger Phillips: 373-6615

Wyoming argues in its court filing that the request to reinstate federal protections for wolves is based on unproven beliefs and conjecture and not on sound science.

The state argues the environmentalists are attempting, “to convince this Court that the wolf population (in the Northern Rockies) might be in peril at some unspecified time in the future.” Wyoming Deputy Attorney General Jay Jerde stated that, “nothing could be further from the truth.”

Wyoming stated that it’s irrefutable that “a moderate amount of human-caused mortality in any given year will not cause a decrease in the wolf population in Wyoming or the (Northern Rockies).”

Wyoming’s wolf management plan specifies that wolves may be shot on sight as predators in most of the state while licensed hunters could kill them as trophy game in the northeastern corner of the state. No hunting is allowed in national parks.

At least 40 wolves have been killed in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana since the animals lost federal protections in March. According to Wyoming’s court documents, 19 wolves have been killed in that state since protections were listed in March.

Wyoming noted that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2007 killed 63 wolves in response to livestock depredations. Nonetheless, it stated that the wolf population still increased from 311 to 359 wolves that year.

And Wyoming stated that while 23 percent of the total population of wolves in the Northern Rockies has died on average over the last 14 years, the wolf population has increased by 24 percent per year over that same period.

In Friday’s filing, Wyoming also challenged the environmentalists’ assertion that the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to consider “the best science available” when it decided to delist wolves. The injunction request argues that studies indicate that at least 2,000 to 3,000 wolves in genetically interconnected populations would be required in order to protect against inbreeding in the long term.

Wyoming argues that the federal agency did consider the main scientific study cited by the conservation organizations. It states that the lawsuit is merely offering “a conflicting interpretation of the study.”

Franz Camenzind is a biologist and head of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance – one of the organizations challenging the delisting decision. He said Wyoming’s arguments were anticipated by all the parties in the case.

“We have to remember that this (lawsuit) isn’t just targeting Wyoming. We’re just as concerned about what’s happening in Idaho,” Camenzind said. “At the end of the day, this will be decided in the courts, not in the press.”

As for the state’s claims that the wolf population is in no danger of declining, Camenzind said there are no assurances built into Wyoming’s wolf management plan that there won’t be a drastic falloff in the coming years.

Camenzind also said that the scientific claims made by the conservation groups should not be dismissed as the state suggests.

“In the long term, we do believe the peer-reviewed genetic studies make a clear case for having as many or more wolves than we have now,” Camenzind said. “And not only more animals, but genetic connectivity between them, which up until now there is no evidence of it having occurred.”

Copyright © 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Published on Monday, May 19, 2008.
Last modified on 5/19/2008 at 12:44 am

Updated Sat. May. 17 2008 12:10 AM ET

A Vancouver Island man who survived an attack by a grizzly bear said he was working in the bush when a sixth sense told him he wasn’t alone.”I have a really keen sense. I had a feeling somebody or something was watching me,” said Brent Case, 53, whose encounter with a grizzly occurred last week while he was taking photos near Bella Coola, about 300 kilometres north of Vancouver.

Prowling nearby was one of Canada’s biggest predators, waiting for the right moment to pounce.

“I said, ‘this is not happening, this is not happening,’” Case said when he saw the bear coming.

Being mauled by a grizzly bear and living to tell the tale does not happen very often either.

“I put my head down because he was coming at me. I had my axe, but I couldn’t hit him ’cause he was too close and he has an agenda,” he said. “I threw my axe down and I said, ‘the best thing I can do is play dead.’”

And that’s probably what saved his life, although that didn’t stop the grizzly from biting him numerous times and gnawing the scalp on the back of his head.

“I thought, ‘he’s eating my brains.’ I knew it was happening,” Case recalled.

“I just thought, ‘God, I hope he gets it over with.’ I was down there shaking so bad. I was bleeding — and the sound and everything, and I just thought, ‘I’m too young to die.’”

Luckily for bear savvy Case, playing dead caused the beast to lose interest and the giant predator eventually lumbered away. So did Case.

Despite deep gashes, bites and being blinded by blood, Case managed to run away with a crouch, make his way to his truck and drive 25 kilmetres to the nearest gas station.

B.C. Ambulance came to the rescue at the station, which Case said was one bumpy ride.

“If Gordon Campbell is gonna fix roads, one he should fix is the Bella Coola Road,” he said. “I thought I was gonna die a few times.”

It will be a slow recovery for Case as he heals, but the seasoned outdoorsman isn’t afraid of going back to the bush. He can hardly wait.

He says if ever meets another hungry grizzly, he’s prepared to play dead again.

Case is from Saanich, Vancouver Island and thanks his love for his family and his will to live for surviving the attack.

With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Peter Grainger

MULLAN, Idaho — A Shoshone County man says a pack of gray wolves is getting within yards of his home, and just Tuesday, he shot and killed one, while it was attacking his pet dog near Mullan. The wolf’s body is still where it was shot, a black mark in the snow. It is the first wolf shot in North Idaho that’s been caught attacking a domestic pet. “This morning they were out again,” says Barry Sadler. Tucked in the woods of Shoshone County, Sadler’s property is a playground for wildlife. Barry Sadler: “We’ve seen grizzly here,” he says, “and we’ve seen black bear and stuff.” While many wild animals are considered dangerous by most, he’s never had to use a weapon to protect his numerous pets or family. “I’ve never shot an animal,” Sadler says. “Never.” That all changed Tuesday. Sadler says up to five gray wolves had been circling his home, coming within yards of his front door, and was now attacking his dogs. “Three of them stayed on the dog that’s tore up,” says Sadler. “They kept biting her from the back.” Sadler fired his gun once, saving his dog, but killing one wolf. Idaho’s Fish and Game Department says it was likely the first of what could be many, legal killings. “Definitely, wolf activity is on the increase,” says Josh Stanley with Fish and Game. Stanley says the gray wolf population in North Idaho is up roughly 30 percent since last year. And this time of year, they can be particularly aggressive, as the females are about to deliver their pups. “They’re very territorial, wolves are,” Stanley says. “Guard dogs are territorial. If there are canines in the area, the likelyhood there will be a problem is very high.” Sadler fears that with several dogs at his home, as well as other livestock, he’s only asking for more problems unless the wolves are removed. In the meantime, while Fish and Game looks for a solution, adler says his opinion in the debate over hunting gray wolves has changed. ” I was always the one that liked gray wolves,” he says. “I said they just kill to eat. But they don’t kill to eat, they’re glutten killers. They kill to kill.” Of course, Sadler would like these wolves trapped, and shipped out of the area. Fish and Game, though, says it hopes to put radio collars on these wolves so it can track their movement.

Erika Bolstad - ebolstad@adn.com

WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced today that the agency will list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. But there are strings attached: an administrative letter that will have conditions to “keep from harming the economy.”

Kempthorne’s decision is his first Endangered Species Act listing since taking office in 2006. Conservation groups petitioned the agency for the designation, which would be the first for an animal that is losing its habitat to global warming.

Kempthorne said the Endangered Species Act should not be used to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and that the listing will not “set back-door climate policy.”

“That would be a wholly inapproriate use of the ESA,” Kempthorne said. “This listing will not stop global climate change or prevent sea ice from melting.”

Government scientists predicted in September that shrinking sea ice will leave only a remnant surviving population of the world’s polar bears in the islands of the Canadian Arctic by midcentury. The U.S. Geological Survey study, done as part of the assessment for listing the bears, found that two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will have disappeared. That includes those along the coasts of Alaska and Russia.

Last week, a Canadian scientific panel recommended that the polar bear remain a “special concern species” rather than elevate it to the more drastic designations of threatened or endangered.

The committee chose not to consider climate change effects in its population projections, though it expressed “considerable concern” about the bears’ future. U.S. law does not provide for the lesser “special concern” option.

Prodded by courts, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began studying a possible listing in December 2006. But the Interior Department failed to make a decision by a January 2008 deadline, and two weeks ago, a federal court in California ordered the Interior Department to issue its decision by Thursday.

Scientists think there are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in the world. One-fifth or so live in Alaska and nearby on the coasts of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas.

The bears are considered marine mammals because they depend on sea ice for hunting their prey: seals breathing through holes or along the edges of the ice.

Polar bears have been known to live as long as 30 years, which means that today’s young bears may be part of the last generation in Alaska.

While older bears will probably survive — if not thrive — scientists expect to see cubs and young adults die off and reproduction rates decline. Already, studies have reported shrinking weight and rising mortality of cubs. There have also been reports of polar bears drowning.

A federal judge this past week told the Department of Interior it had until May 15, 2008 to make a decision on whether to list the polar bear as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. And the environmentalists went wild!!!

If you follow the link category to the right under “Endangered Species“, you’ll find plenty of articles and links to the ongoing debate about whether the polar bear is in danger, whether the world is in danger and if it’s all caused by anthropogenic (man-made) global warming from carbon dioxide.

I laughed out loud a few days ago, when Al Gore, during an interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes said that those of us who won’t jump on his flim-flam bandwagon, were like the Flat Earth Society people and that we believe the lunar landing was staged on a lot in Hollywood. What was hilarious about it was that the Flat Earth Society was made up of people like Al Gore, who refused to listen to any kind of reasoning whether logical or scientific, that showed the earth wasn’t flat. I know of hundreds of people personally that are not sold on Al Gore’s theory of man-made global warming but are open to listening to debate on both sides of the issue. So who’s a Flat Earther?

Without debate, media, politicians and American citizens are blindly plowing ahead, often times willy-nilly, to save the planet – in this case the polar bear. Yesterday, the Houston Chronicle provided readers with an editorial about the plight of the polar bear. 100% of the piece (and yes I realize it’s an editorial) was presented as fact that ice is melting everywhere in the arctic, that this is caused by man and that the polar bear is dying off. They even repeated projections from recently discovered to be faulty models that said the bears would be extinct by the year 2050. There is just as much scientific evidence, particularly the newest data, to refute everything the Chronicle repeats as climate change facts.

But what I find as the most disturbing part of the editorial is their position on what they deem to be more important to the American people; affordable energy and a healthy economy or swallowing a politician’s theory on global warming.

It’s unlikely that in its final year in office, the administration will reverse its policy of protecting business interests instead of the environment and endangered species. The courts should not have to tell the administration to enforce environmental statutes rather than undermine or ignore them.

Protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act isn’t a simple matter of adding it to a list and then we hope it gets better. There has to be intelligent discourse among sane people in order to realistically determine the all-encompassing affects of making such a move.

I have worked some in my past articles that I hoped would, if nothing else, get readers to ask questions and think more about this issue other than how it is going to affect next Christmas’ Coke commercials. Huge Hewitt of Townhall has also covered more in depth as to what actually can happen to our economy, through the federal permitting process for growth and development. He offers more thoughts on that today.

The short version: If the polar bear is listed, every activity that emits a greenhouse gas of any sort in the lower 48 AND which receives a federal permit or requires federal agency action of any sort –even if that permit or action is unrelated to the emission of the gases– those activities will be subject to new review by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and the approval may not be forthcoming, will certainly at least be delayed, and will almost certainly come with massive new costs attached.

Thus coastal building programs that require federal flood insurance or Army Corps of Engineers permits, highway construction that gets FHA funding, or joint NASA-private industry initiatives that result in launchings, all these and hundreds of thousands of additional federal permits and actions get gathered in under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act.

Hewitt practiced Endangered Species Act law for two decades and should have a pretty good understanding on how administering the Act works. In several of his articles about the polar bear listing, he refers to Section 7 of the ESA(pdf – scroll down to find Section 7) often. The first part of Section 7 I believe spells out quite clearly, even to those of us without a law degree.

SEC. 7. ø16 U.S.C. 1536¿ (a) FEDERAL AGENCY ACTIONS AND CONSULTATIONS.—(1) The Secretary shall review other programs administered by him and utilize such programs in furtherance of the purposes of this Act. All other Federal agencies shall, in consultation with and with the assistance of the Secretary, utilize their authorities in furtherance of the purposes of this Act by carrying out programs for the conservation of endangered species and threatened species listed pursuant to section 4 of this Act.
(2) Each Federal agency shall, in consultation with and with the assistance of the Secretary, insure that any action authorized,
funded, or carried out by such agency (hereinafter in this section referred to as an ‘‘agency action’’) is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered species or threatened species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of habitat of such species which is determined by the Secretary, after consultation as appropriate with affected States, to be critical, unless such agency has been granted an exemption for such action by the Committee pursuant to subsection (h) of this section. In fulfilling the requirements of this paragraph each agency shall use the best scientific and commercial data available.
(3) Subject to such guidelines as the Secretary may establish, a Federal agency shall consult with the Secretary on any prospective agency action at the request of, and in cooperation with, the prospective permit or license applicant if the applicant has reason to believe that an endangered species or a threatened species may be present in the area affected by his project and that implementationof such action will likely affect such species.
(4) Each Federal agency shall confer with the Secretary on any agency action which is likely to jeopardize the continued existence
of any species proposed to be listed under section 4 or result in the destruction or adverse modification of critical habitat proposed to be designated for such species. This paragraph does not require a limitation on the commitment of resources as described in subsection (d).

The two biggest remaining questions which may never get answered are; Is the polar bear really threatened and to what degree should we as a society carry out the protection of an animal species while putting our own well being at risk?

I know of nobody who wants to see the polar bear disappear. Many scientists don’t believe it will nor that it is threatened. What the Houston Chronicle failed to reveal, as has many other media sources, is that only two areas of polar bear populations are decreasing somewhat in size. The remainder are holding steady or growing. It is my opinion that we have as yet to scientifically determine whether the bear is in danger.

Remember that should the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decide to list the bear, it will be because they think man-made climate change will destroy the bear down the road somewhere. This has never been done before. Hewitt, from a perspective of having been there and done that, clearly points out that we don’t know what we are in for. The courts can only make rulings that are based on the content of the Endangered Species Act.

Do we really know what we are doing?

Tom Remington

Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Police Department officers and California Fish and Game wardens in search of what is believed to be a mountain lion that was seen in the neighborhood. The search was suspended at 2:30 p.m., but officers were staying in the area in case it reappeared.

Police and animal control officers call off an hourslong search that started with a report of a mountain lion in backyard. The animal, which might have been a bobcat, gets away.

By Francisco Vara-Orta, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
3:19 PM PDT, May 2, 2008

Authorities have called off a search for what they believed was a mountain lion that made its way into the backyards of homes in Eagle Rock this morning.

Los Angeles police received a call about 8:45 a.m. that a mountain lion had been seen in the backyard of a house on the 5000 block of College View Avenue, said Officer Norma Eisenman of the LAPD. But when en route to that location, authorities on the scene saw the animal flee to a nearby residence at 2479 Niagara Way.

• Map: Mountain lion sighting
• Mountain lions in California

In addition to officers from the LAPD, officials with the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services and California Department of Fish and Game agencies were on the scene until the search ended around 2 p.m. after the animal couldn’t be found, said Capt. Wendell Bowers of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services.

“We’ve done everything we could do,” Bowers said.

Bowers said it was possible that the sighting involved a bobcat, a tailless animal that can weigh as much as 35 pounds. A mountain lion has a long tail and can weigh as much as 90 pounds, Bowers said.

“We have reports of bobcats more frequently there, but not any of mountain lions,” he said.

The animal, which also had been seen from a Los Angeles County sheriff’s helicopter, may have been in a tree at some point, neighbors said. Officers had not seen the animal by early afternoon, but remained at the scene to monitor the area, said Steve Martarano, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game.

Before the search was called off, authorities were trying to close in on the animal to tranquilize it.

“So far it poses no threat to the public and hasn’t attacked any humans, pets, or other animals in the area,” Martarano said.

Occasional mountain lion sightings are a fact of life for foothill residents, whose backyards are within miles of the creatures’ habitat, Martarano said. Still, he said it was “very unlikely” for mountain lions to be roaming deep in a residential neighborhood like Eagle Rock.

Police were urging people to keep children and pets inside during this morning’s search, Martarano said.

“This is the first time I’ve ever heard about a mountain lion in the area,” said Suzzanne Wylie, an Eagle Rock resident who lives a block away from the scene this morning.

Wylie, who was out shopping this morning with her two grandchildren when she noticed helicopters circling over her neighborhood, took a back route home because some roads were barricaded near the scene at Niagara Way. Once there, she rushed to get her grandkids inside and quickly brought in her two cats and dog.

“It’s a very scary thought of one [a mountain lion] so close,” she said. “It could easily climb up my fence and get in my yard.”

In February 2006, a mountain lion made national news when it wandered into an Altadena neighborhood and caused a daylong standoff, Martarano recalled. During that incident, authorities locked down nearby Edison Elementary School for four hours before the cat was tranquilized and taken away.

Last year, two fatal mountain lion attacks on dogs, including a 60-pound Labrador mix, occurred in August in La Crescenta and Altadena. It remains unclear whether the same animal killed both dogs, authorities said; the attacks occurred about six miles apart.

Animal experts advise foothill-area homeowners to keep their pets indoors, especially at night, and to avoid leaving pet food or water bowls outside. Birdbaths, kiddie pools and other standing water sources could also attract mountain lions or animals that they prey on, such as deer.

The Department of Fish and Game estimates that California has between 4,000 and 6,000 mountain lions. Adult male mountain lions can weigh 120 to 150 pounds and females 65 to 80 pounds.

Deer are mountain lions’ favorite prey, but they will also attack goats, sheep, cats, dogs, raccoons and, less often, horses.

Anthony Guarino, a seismic analyst at Caltech who lives on the same block as today’s sighting, said that in the three years he’s lived in the hilly neighborhood he’s seen a number of animals that mountain lions prey on, but not the predator itself.

“I do a lot of camping and spend a lot of time in the Sierras, so I know mountain lions tend to be very docile when you see them, and tend to run away,” Guarino said. “I think my wife and I are more concerned about being attacked by a human in the area.”

Mountain lion attacks on people are rare in California, according to state records. Since 1890, 14 verified mountain lion attacks on 16 humans have occurred in the state, resulting in six deaths.

According to state records, the most recent mountain lion attack on a human in California was in January 2007 in Humboldt County. The victim, a hiker, survived.

francisco.varaorta@latimes.com

In Montana, where officials have already approved the state’s first-ever wolf-hunting season for 2008, it was announced last month that the population of canine predators increased a full third during the past year. The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks reported last week that the state’s wolf numbers leapt 34 in the past 12 months, to an estimated 422 wolves in 73 packs.

The wolves are nearly equally distributed between northern and southern Montana, according to the agency’s annual wolf report, although the bulk of the population growth was in northwestern and far western Montana, where it increased by about 92 wolves, to 213.

The federal delisting of gray wolves from the endangered species list in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming is on track become official at the end of March—though lawsuit filed by anti-hunting and animal protection groups may stall its implementation.