Wolves Gone Wild

Another super predator on the loose kills and mauls people.  These super predators will act on instinct.  Yet in the southwest they are going to release Jaguars in and around our communities.  We all ready have habituated wolves in our yards threatening our children why do we need more super predators.  These super predators will terrorize human communities just as the wolves are doing today.

I am sorry for the victims and my heart goes out to them.  We need to stop believing the disneyesque view of these large predators and understand the dangers that wild wolves and large wild cats pose to humans.

A Siberian tiger escaped from her cage, killing a visitor and mauling two others Tuesday evening at the San Francisco Zoo, almost exactly a year after she attacked her keeper during a feeding, zoo officials said.

Police shot and killed the tiger, named Tatiana, outside the zoo’s Terrace Cafe shortly after 5 p.m. as the park readied to close after a quiet Christmas Day. The 350-pound tiger escaped from her fortified grotto by either jumping or climbing over a moat and a wall and immediately attacked and killed a man in his early 20s just steps away.

Then Tatiana headed for the Terrace Cafe, and attacked and seriously injured two other visitors, said Robert Jenkins, the zoo’s director of animal care and conservation. Jenkins said he was “astounded” by Tatiana’s escape and at a loss to explain how it happened.

The zoo will be closed Wednesday as investigators try to determine how Tatiana escaped her enclosure, which was reinforced after the cat’s first attack two days before Christmas last year.

Police encountered the tiger outside the cafe, as she was mauling a young man who was covered in blood, said San Francisco Police Department Sgt. Steve Mannina. When the four officers moved closer, the tiger turned toward them and they immediately shot and killed her.

Officials did not identify the victims, but said they all were in their early 20s.

KCBS radio reported that the tiger attacked two brothers, ages 18 and 19, and killed a 23-year-old man who was their friend, but that report could not be confirmed.

The surviving victims were taken to San Francisco General Hospital with serious injuries, where they underwent surgery late Tuesday night, said hospital administrator Ruby Martin. The two young men were expected to survive.

Some zoo employees locked themselves in the gift shop as they had been instructed in case of emergency, but would not comment further. Other zoo employees huddled near a zoo entrance hours after the attack also declined to talk to reporters.

The zoo, festooned with holiday decorations, was quickly evacuated after the attacks were reported, while police helicopters hovered overhead and officers swept the grounds to see if others were injured. By 9 p.m., police said all the animals were accounted for and no additional victims had been found. The tigers were moved into locked cages for the night.

According to the zoo’s Web site, the zoo’s two Siberian tigers, Tony and Tatiana, live in an outdoor enclosure near the Lion House. The zoo also has three Sumatran tigers at the west end of the Lion House. Both types of tigers are classified as endangered species.

The attack occurred about a year after Tatiana attacked and seriously injured keeper Lori Komejan’s arm during a regular afternoon feeding at the Lion House.

The California Division of Occupation Safety and Health later ruled the zoo was responsible for that incident, blaming poor training and the way the tiger enclosures were designed.

Zoo officials closed the Lion House for renovations and did not open it until September. Tatiana’s enclosure, which she shared with Tony, was fortified after the 2006 attack, Jenkins said.Safety measures can only help so much when dealing with predators such as tigers, said Chris Austria, an animal trainer who has worked with tigers at Marine World in Vallejo and with bears at the San Francisco Zoo. The attacks likely had little to do with hunger, he said.“San Francisco Zoo has always been very safety-conscious and well-trained,” he said. “But when they’re working with wild animals, they’re very hard to control. When they escape their habitats, they can be very aggressive.” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a statement saying that he was “deeply saddened” to hear about the attacks and that they would be thoroughly investigated.

Troubling wolf behavior reported
Fairbanks Daily News Miner
By Tim Mowry
Staff Writer
Published December 8, 2007

The furor caused by a bold, dog-eating pack of wolves in Two Rivers escalated on Friday when the Department of Fish and Game received an unconfirmed report of a wolf following a person near 15 Mile Chena Hot Springs Road.

“I got a phone call from someone who described a situation where a person was followed by a wolf,” said department spokeswoman Cathie Harms, reached by cell phone shortly after a press release about the incident was issued at 5 p.m. “If this is true, this is not a good sign.”

Officials hadn’t talked to the person who was allegedly followed and knew only that it was a “young person,” Harms said.

“All I know is it’s something we need to check on,” she said. “If it’s true, it’s the next level of habituation.”

Wolves can become habituated and lose their fear of humans when they approach people with no negative response, Harms said. Habituation can progress to the point where wolves show aggression toward people but so far that’s not the case, she said. In all of the previous accounts of wolf encounters with people in the area, the wolves ran away from people, Harms said.

“But if a wolf did follow someone, that indicates a higher level of habituation, which is grounds for concern,” she said.

The report came from almost the same place where the Department of Fish and Game is holding a public meeting on Sunday to discuss concerns over the wolves, which have been roaming back and forth between Two Rivers and North Pole for more than a month.

At least three dogs have been killed and eaten — two in Two Rivers and one in North Pole — and several residents living along Chena Hot Springs Road have reported seeing wolves in their yards or on trails in the area. State wildlife officials suspect it’s the same pack of five or six wolves that killed the dogs and have been seen by residents.

Department staff are following up on Friday’s report and hope to find out more before Sunday’s 5 p.m. meeting at the Two Rivers Church of the Nazarene, located at 14.9 Mile Chena Hot Springs Road. Biologists will share what information they have collected about the wolf pack at the meeting and will try to answer as many questions as possible, Harms said.

Several residents in the area have expressed concern about the safety of their children with wolves in the area and wildlife officials encourage parents to accompany their children to and from bus stops or while playing outside, Harms said.

If confronted by a wolf, a person should face the animal and either stand their ground or slowly back away, said Harms.

“Running from an aggressive dog increases the chance of a bite, and it’s similar for wolves,” she said.

If residents see wolves around their homes or on the trails, Harms said they should try to make the wolves uncomfortable by making loud noises, shooting at them or frightening them in a way that will encourage them to avoid humans.

Wolves can be shot in defense of life or property if they threaten people or domestic animals, Harms noted. She also said that hunting and trapping season for wolves is open as long as you have a hunting or trapping license. It should be noted, however, that it is illegal to shoot a wolf with a .22-caliber rifle because wolves are classified as big game in Alaska.

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.

Your tax dollars at work to protect hybrids

It should be noted that the majority of the people quoted in this article directly funded via wolf programs so their salaries are at risk if your tax payer support is removed for supporting the need to now protect wolf hybrids.  Just look at the red wolf hybrid news.

Note: that the Endangered Species Act does not protect animals like wolves that do not interbreed when mature.  The head of US Fish and Wildlife Service Southwestern Division even admited at a Wolf Meeting in Silver City, New Mexico 2007, that wolves breed with coyotes and dogs in a public meeting when asked.

From the ESA definition #16

(16) The term ‘‘species’’ includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species or vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature.

Wolves are noted to breed with other members of the dog family.  So based on the ESA the wolf is not a species or even a sub species
Do you really want to spend your tax dollars to support a wolf that is not even a wolf?  Read between the lines how they now want you to protect this hybrid as a distinct species, thus relisting the wolf hybrid and spending more of your tax dollars.

From the New York Times article

Amid much fanfare this year, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service declared the western Great Lakes gray wolf successfully recovered from an encounter with extinction and officially removed it from the endangered species list. Under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, the wolf boomed in population to 4,000 in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin today, up from just several hundred in northern Minnesota in 1974.

But the victory celebration was premature, according to two evolutionary biologists, Jennifer A. Leonard of Uppsala University in Sweden and Robert K. Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles. The historic Great Lakes wolf did not return intact from the edge of oblivion. Instead, the scientists report in the online edition of the journal Biology Letters, it hybridized with gray wolves moving in from Canada, coyotes from the south and west and the hybrids born of that mixing.

Wolf eradication programs and habitat destruction, followed by protection of the remaining wolves and habitat, created conditions for producing the hybrid animals, Dr. Leonard said. These animals should remain protected, she added, while researchers determine the full extent of hybridization with coyotes, whether it is continuing and whether it threatens to swamp the genetic heritage of the native wolf.

Rolf O. Peterson, a wolf ecologist at Michigan Technological University and the leader of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Eastern Gray Wolf Recovery Team, said it had been known for some time that hybridization between gray wolves and coyotes was happening in the region.

“What’s new in this paper,” he said, “is that they found no evidence of hybridization with coyotes in the historic samples — and no pure historic wolves in the current samples.”

“If the science committee had known about these findings,” he added, “we would have treated them seriously. We certainly would have liked to hold on to what was here 100 years ago. But I doubt that anything would have changed.”

The historic Great Lakes wolf is an enigma, with scientists debating whether it is a subspecies of gray wolf or a distinct species. The Fish and Wildlife Service officially considers the western Great Lakes wolf a “distinct population segment” of the gray wolf, found in a discrete geographic area.

That population today is made up largely of hybrids between the gray wolf and coyote, but some 31 percent of the animals carry genetic material from the native wolf, which appears to no longer exist in pure form. The researchers analyzed mitochondrial DNA, inherited through the mother and often used to distinguish lineages in humans and animals, from 17 early-20th century wolves and 68 contemporary wolves.

Responding to questions, several scientists saw no need to revisit the delisting in light of the new information.

“It is not clear what would be gained by keeping the Midwestern wolf population on the endangered species list,” said L. David Mech, a senior research scientist with the United States Geological Survey who has studied wolves for 50 years. “Whatever their genetic identity, there are over 4,000 wolves in the population, they are increasing rapidly, and are legally protected by the states.”

To answer the question genetically this hybrid is not a species.  It is a breed!  Just like specific breeds of dogs.

Great Story from SOSForests.com called “And it is not over yet” shows how tax payer money is being used to put yet another band aid on the fires in California but no plans for fuel management.  Reduce the fuels and reduce the fires in the future.  

Maybe a few cows or goats might be useful to reduce these fuels and improve the soils at the same time.

Another posting from WolfCrossing.org showing how dangerious these habituated Mexican gray wolves are.  The environMental extreme claim the wolves are not dangerous and will run away.   Another unsafe wolf encounter.  When will the public be told the truth instead of the Disney G rated version of wolves.  Wolves are dangerous predators.  Habituated wolves are even more dangerous.  

This is the same Luna wolf pack noted for encircling a boy a little less than a year ago.

On Monday night November 5th at 10:00 PM our deer hunting camp on the West Fork of the Gila River, was terrorized by a pack of wolves estimated to be 4 to 6 in number. They came right into our camp howling right between our hunters tent and the cook tent and then just on the other side of the guide’s tent. We had our horses and mules high lined at the camp and when we started hearing the wolves growl right next to the horses, we got up and tried to run them out. We walked down to the end of the highlines, with several thousands of dollars worth of horse and mule fllesh tied up and it probably looked like a smorgage board or shish kabob to the wolves, and it became quiet for a little while. We went back to the tent, and then the wolves moved back in and started howling again.

My son Brian went back down to protect the animals by getting between them and the wolves, and then the wolves really set up a racket of a combination of howling, yap barking, growling and snapping their teeth. They were really intimidated by him being there. It sounded like 4 to 6 wolves and my son held his ground in the pitch black of night and had to stay there for probably 30 minutes before he was satisfied they had maybe left. Needless to say we didn’t get much sleep the rest of the night. Brian said it litterally scared the hell out of him!

Our three hunters from the San Antonio, TX area were really scared, so much so they stayed real quiet through the whole ordeal in fear that the wolves might hear them and come to their tent, which is where the first howls came from. They literally can not believe what the Government is doing to the people here by putting the wolves back. The old timers got rid of them for good reason.
Over the last several years we have had wolves howling out side of our camp but never had them come right through camp and absolutely have no fear of humans or human scent. They acted very aggressive and especially so when my son confronted them the last time. They really became excited. These wolves are absolutely a danger to humans and livestock as they seemed to not even care about human scent like most wild animals.

We think Nick Smith used to camp where we were camped, when he was packing elk meat and dog food in a few years ago to feed the wolves. We had heard the wolfer airplane circling in the TurkeyFeather Mountain area earlier that day and the tracks confirmed they had come up out of Cooper Canyon and Iron Creek on the trail and over Turkey Feather Pass and down to the West Fork of the Gila and returned out the same way. There were wolf tracks on the trail for about 5 miles.

When we came out yesterday on Thursday November 8th, we met a group of male back packers who were camped on the confluence of Cooper Canyon and Iron Creek and they related a story to my hunters who were on the back of our packstring, and I didn’t get to talk to, as I had passed by them, or I would have gotten a name and info from them. They said that on Wednesday evening that they were above camp gathering firewood when they noticed movement and the saw the wolves and evidently the wolves made a move toward them and they ran back to camp and one of them climbed up in a tree and waited until the wolves left. They were terrified!

full posting from WolfCrossing.org

CALIFORNIA BURNIN’

It was all over the newspapers and on the radio and television news as I traveled around the 4-Corners area of CO, NM, AZ, & UT. “Two-hundred thousand”, a “million” evacuated; “800” homes, “2,000” residences destroyed; 7 dead; suspected arsonist shot dead; looters arrested; “governments cooperate”; “not like Katrina”; interviews with those who lost “everything”; pet and horse stories; and tales of heroic firefighters and ordinary people: all the while blaming the wind and dry conditions.

As I followed the story for days I thought of Katrina and of New Jersey black bears and of California mountain lions. I was bemused by the coverage of tearful animal rights advocates and the twaddle of environmental activists as they spoke of the need for more government control of animals and the “fact” that people were living where they shouldn’t be (i.e. the animals habitat). I say “bemused” not out of any animosity for Southern Californians (I served on a Navy ship “home-ported” out of San Diego) or out of any desire to be sarcastic about the terrible misfortune of thousands of fellow Americans: rather I say “bemused” because so many of the environmental and animal rights harms of the past four decades (from Nixon’s environmental/animal rights laws and the morphing of Federal and state agencies and Universities from public benefactors to environmental and animal rights behemoths, etc.) are the products of urban constituencies just like the Los Angeles/San Diego metropolitan area. I was “bemused” because they were reaping a whirlwind that they have imposed on their rural cousins for decades: “bemused” because I knew that if I waited to see it all played out that NO ONE, not the media or the bureaucrats (state of federal or UN) or the professors or the politicians or the conservation NGO’s or the radical’s NGO’s or anyone responsible for this situation, would even mention the “cause” of the problem or the “solution” that should be pursued. Well “pat yourself on the back James” because you were right.

I am back in Virginia now and the news coverage is subsiding to be replaced by coverage of the World Series’ “sweep” and Halloween costumes to make female children appear to be prostitutes. In case it crosses your mind to take umbrage at what I am about to say please remember that MY insurance premiums will go up just like after Katrina because of all the fully justified claims: MY taxes will go up because of all the federal “assistance: and most important, unless we all wake up to all this internal rot being caused by these environmental/animal rights radical agendas, OUR nation and society will deteriorate right before our eyes.

Southern California fire analogies are visible all around us.
- Take black bears in New Jersey. Black bears are breaking into homes, killing pets, attacking children, and generally endangering selected residents of the Garden State. There is only “room” for 1200 to 1600 black bears in New Jersey: today there are more than 6,000 and increasing. Their numbers should be dramatically reduced AND KEPT BELOW 1500. So what does New Jersey do? The Governor cancels bear hunting and appoints an animal rights zealot in charge of New Jersey’s wildlife. The result? A very bad problem gets worse and worse.
- Take California mountain lions. Naïve and emotional Californians swallowed the animal rights lies about the benevolence of mountain lions and the “need” to protect them. In the late ‘70’s lions were “protected” in California and human attacks began increasing resulting in deaths and serious injuries; pets were killed at increased rates; bighorn sheep were almost annihilated (until federal trappers quietly killed the lions in the spring in the mountains at great cost to ALL AMERICANS). Animal rights/environmental advocates everywhere used this last situation to justify wolves and grizzly bears that are killing and maiming people as well as destroying western rural economies, and to incrementally shut down lion hunting as was done in “California-North” otherwise called Oregon.
- Take Katrina. MY federal income taxes are going by the billions to rebuild lowlands that are sinking and are increasingly vulnerable to some guy in an Arabian nights costume with a stick of dynamite at 2 AM. MY federal excise taxes collected for sport fishing programs have given an EXTRA $1Billion + to Louisiana for “wetlands” that disappear anyway and none of this money has ever even been audited since it was just passed out to County governments as “walking around money”. These Billions that we all have and are sending to Louisiana are also reinforcing very unsound and harmful public policies such as re-citing a city where it is increasingly vulnerable to the sea and the use of taxes as graft.

All of these examples are worthy lessons to remember as we watch the “rebuilding of Southern California” unfold.

How so, you ask? Well consider the use of FEMA and other such Federal assistance to restore a Southern California situation that everyone says will recur in 4 or 5 years (shades of Katrina). Consider all the twaddle about us (you and me) living in “their” habitat (shades of New Jersey bears and California lions, and unmanaged wolves and grizzly bears and even coyotes). Consider all the silence from the professors and bureaucrats and politicians that convinced us to establish these deadly situations and who have grown rich and fat warbling about “Nay-churr” and “Native Ecosystems” and “Biological Controls” and “Too Many People” and other government/NGO propaganda like “Invasive Species” (not harmful but only “non-native”) and “Wildlands” and public land closures, etc. intended to grow government and shrink our rights and freedoms.

Well, before you just dismiss this old wildlife biologist as a “black helicopter” crank I should address the heart of this matter. What is the “problem” and what is the “answer”.

THE PROBLEM

Pull out your Southern California maps and follow along. Per my map, all of those fires started in and spread from the green areas butting up against the urban areas. These lands are identified as “Santa Monica Mountains Natural Recreation Area”, “Angeles National Forest”, “San Gabriel Wilderness”, “Angeles National Forest”, “Sheep Mountain Wilderness”, “Cucamonga Wilderness” (so help me I am NOT making this one up), “San Bernardino National Forest”, “Cleveland National Forest”, “San Mateo Canyon Wilderness”, “San Dimas Experimental Forest”, “Santa Rosa” and “Santa Margarita” “Ecological Reserves”, and a host of smaller “green” areas identified as “Wilderness Parks” and “Regional Parks” and “State Parks” and “Sanctuaries”. The problem isn’t dryness or winds or “too many” people or “people living where they shouldn’t”: THE PROBLEM is lots of people living surrounded by and infiltrated by fire tinder and enormous supplies of fire fuel.

If I lived on a rural home site amidst lumber piles interspersed with cans filled with gasoline; would local government allow it, much less pay me to replace it if it burns up? Would national and state government acknowledge an obligation to “help me rebuild”? Would anyone accept my rationale for living thus or listen to some professor I gave money to for helping me justify it? We are doing all these things when we maintain certain sections of New Orleans at government expense or continue the Southern California “ecosystem” as currently constituted.

THE ANSWER

Note: I am basing this on the perfectly legitimate desire of Southern Californians to live near and in sight of mountains and canyons as well as to enjoy such areas for recreation. I am further basing it on the advantages of living in such areas and my thirty-plus years of studying and working with wildlife and wildlife habitats for all manner of “needs”.

1. Reclassify ALL the public lands in the LA/San Diego corridor. Bring them all under State or preferably Local authority. Having federal lands transferred from unresponsive and unanswerable federal bureaucracies that are infested with environmental/animal rights zealots with no management training or proclivities to State or Local authority that are vulnerable to the wrath of local citizens when such a disaster strikes is first and foremost what is needed.
2. Cleanse the staffs of State Universities and either replace or add to them in order to begin a State effort to scour the world (N. Chile, W. Australia, W. So. Africa, etc.) for plants that would (coexist with?, replace?, minimize?, reduce the fire hazard of?) the current public plant communities on the edge of or interspersed with urban spaces. A similar effort in the 1950’s to bring game birds from foreign lands to US habitats for hunting brought us, much to our delight, chukars and snow partridge and capercaille to add to other introduced game birds like pheasants and Hungarian Partridge and the native game birds like bobwhites and sharptails and prairie chickens. Transplanting between states other birds like certain races of turkeys has likewise resulted in a wide variety of birds in a wide variety of habitats across the nation. I said “cleanse” or “replace” State University staffs because the kind of scientists that would honestly look for and bring back suitable fire-resistant plants have been marginalized (like the author of this piece) and denigrated in the rush for justifying-propaganda paid for by government and NGO’s that control politicians. Restoring such studies and scientists will be only slightly less daunting than step #1.
3. Zone new construction and landscaping and plant communities on private property to minimize fire fuel. Duh!
4. Produce management plans for all public lands that include firebreaks and roads. Replace plants on the edges of public lands with fire-resistant species as they become known. Construct firebreaks (grasses?, gravel?, etc.) that are sufficiently wide (1/4 mile?, ½ mile?, etc.) at right angles to threatening winds and sculpted to ridges and contours regarding their fire capacity. Establish a system of roads (yes even through those precious “Wilderness” et al sacred lands) that anticipate fire-fighting use of equipment and personnel in safe and effective ways. Trails should also be vehicle-accessible where needed.
5. Develop ways to finance management. This means considering grazing (sheep?, goats?, cattle?, etc.), mowing for hay or straw, logging, harvesting plants for fuel creation, hunting, camping, hiking, etc. wherein permits and licenses and use taxes help to finance the maintenance and use of an enjoyable and fire-resistant urban environment.
6. Eliminate and keep out as much as possible large predators such as cougars and wolves that harm wild and domestic animal resources; endanger recreationists; and threaten urban residents and their property like their pets. Regularly control coyotes (they are not susceptible to complete elimination) to minimize the harm they likewise create. This maintains the uses of public lands that finances the management of plant communities THAT WOULD OTHERWISE THREATEN A REGULAR FIRE RECURRENCE EVERY FEW YEARS.

Now of course this means that all the ladies and some gents can’t go into a swoon when some radical professor and graduate student yell, “INVASIVE SPECIES!” It also means standing up to federal bureaucrats and politicians that our state and local politicians and bureaucrats have made a habit of cohabiting with more and more frequently recently. It means common folks like you and me taking back control of our surroundings and our welfare from the “authorities” and “scientists” like University professors and bureaucrats that make careers out of swindling us out of our rights. It means recognizing that the primary goal of environmental management is to guarantee each of us and our descendants the BEST possible world in which to work, worship, and raise our families in the freedoms and traditions we were given: PERIOD.

Southern Californians can have lots of interspersed spaces AND a relative freedom from the threat of “losing everything”. They can maintain historic vistas and nearby recreation with sensible natural resource management that pays for itself. If they are reluctant to solve this problem, largely of their own making, I recommend that I not have to pay higher taxes and insurance premiums to maintain someone else’s imaginings as I have done by paying for federal control (killing) of cougars that Californians are so “proud to protect”. They, just like you and me, should not be permitted to have it “both ways”.

So there you have it: the problem and the solution (nothing to it).

Jim Beers
29 October 2007
- If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.

- This article and other recent articles by Jim Beers can be found at
http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)

- Jim Beers is available for consulting or to speak. Contact:
jimbeers7@verizon.net

- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.

Another post by One Still Free shows the author, unlike the environMental extreme, understands balance.  This is why letting the wolves hang around and harass us is not only unsafe but bad for the wolf recovery.  Every predator needs a predator to keep them in balance.

One issue with looking at environmental issues is that people use selective vision. For instance, humans are actually the highest order in the food chain of all known life on earth, yet humans are  routinely not included as part of the natural environment, as if humans were somehow unnatural, had been introduced here by aliens  from another galaxy. I personally can’t go with such things as “seeding” by aliens (to that I say, show me the science); humans are necessarily a species which has survived and evolved on this planet *just like every other species*.

To consider the wolf program without consideration of *all* other species is faulty. Wolves have evolved in areas with humans in them, humans have evolved in areas with wolves. Wolves have had, probably as long as they have existed, one major natural enemy: mankind. Humans have always been a factor in most wolves lives - consider how true wild wolves (as opposed to habituated ones) are shy of humans. This is a sign of a wolf’s understanding of the risk humans present, a healthy, natural thing for all predators and potential prey.

Read the full blog post

Soils do need to be disturbed for proper germination to take place.  Cattle grazing and providing manure and the soil disruption needed would go far to helping this program.  Fires would have also been smaller as they have been in historical past if cattle were allowed to properly graze. 

Reduce grazing and fires will increase.  You must remove the fuels or nature will and the carbon will be released one way or another.   I do think it is wonderful that people are out collecting seeds and helping to replant.

By Patrick O’Driscoll, USA TODAY - orginal story 

MOUNTAIN HOME, Idaho — Months after huge rangeland wildfires scorched millions of acres of the interior West, the recovery of its vast sagebrush may depend on volunteers such as Rachel Morgan and Angie Robles.

The friends from Caldwell, Idaho, taking a “moms’ day out” Saturday, joined more than 70 other unpaid helpers to pluck and bag the ripe brown stems off waist-high sagebrush in the foothills 50 miles southeast of Boise. Hundreds more volunteers from the Idaho Fish and Game Department will follow in the coming weeks, including Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, who issued an unusual plea last month for help gathering seeds to restore fire-damaged areas.

“One day, hopefully, my kids will be able to go wherever these are planted and do the same thing,” says Morgan, 31, who likens the task to Halloween trick-or-treating. “You just wait for your bag to get fuller and fuller and fuller.”

Regional campaign

She has a bit part in a regionwide, multimillion-dollar campaign this fall and winter to replant as much sagebrush and other native plants as possible. Parts of Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Oregon suffered extreme wildfires this summer over large expanses of the coarse, silver-gray shrub. Sagebrush anchors the natural ecosystem of the Great Basin, an arid, 200,000-square-mile area between the Sierra and the Rockies.

Using canvas hoppers, work gloves and even tennis rackets, volunteer and paid gatherers comb unburned zones from Duchesne, Utah, to Spring Valley, Nev., to gather more than 2 million pounds of sagebrush seeds that are smaller than cracked pepper. Land managers also will spread millions of pounds of seeds of other grasses, wildflowers and plants.

“Even though people think it’s vast and widespread, it’s one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America,” says Scott Lambert, national seed coordinator for the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees much of the burned landscape. “If we don’t do anything, the weeds will just become worse, and that’s all we’ll have in a few years.”

Sagebrush has dominated the region for eons in varieties ranging from the cushion-like pygmy to “big sagebrush” that sprouts up to 10 feet. A fast-growing intruder called cheatgrass began to disrupt it in the late 19th century. Cheatgrass, which dries quickly and becomes highly flammable, fuels frequent wildfires. That prevents sagebrush from re-establishing on its own and threatens the landscape, agriculture and 130 species of wildlife that depend on sagebrush for food, shelter and cover. Today, cheatgrass dominates more than 25 million acres formerly filled with sagebrush.

Last summer, more than 4,240 square miles of the Great Basin — an area about half the size of New Jersey — burned in the worst fires in nearly a decade in the region. One Utah blaze, the 344,000-acre Milford Flat fire, was the largest in state history and burned for more than two months. The 1,020-square-mile Murphy Complex fires, centered about 115 miles southeast of here, were Idaho’s biggest in 97 years.

“There’s so much sagebrush steppe country that has burned, it is very distressing, frankly,” says Mary Dudley, coordinator of volunteers for Idaho Fish and Game. “We’re losing a lot of the seed source. So we’re making a bigger effort this year because of the scope of the fires.”

In central Utah, state and federal agencies reseed areas damaged by the Milford Flat fire with grasses and plants such as Indian rice grass, mountain bromme, blue flax and crested wheatgrass. Native shrubs — sagebrush, fourwing saltbush and bitterbrush — will follow. Total cost: at least $17 million.

Expanded efforts

“This is probably the biggest challenge we’ve ever had,” says Jason Vernon, habitat development coordinator for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. “Our biggest previous year, we planted 700,000 pounds of seed. This year, it’s 2 million pounds.”

The need is so great that the agency plans to double the size of its 20,000-square-foot seed warehouse next spring.

The sagebrush fires were part of the USA’s second-worst wildfire season in more than a half-century. Almost 9.4 million acres have burned this year, a little less than the 9.8 million acres in 2006.

Restoration this year is not limited to sagebrush plains. Land agencies also reseed parts of the Mohave Desert in California and southern Nevada that burned in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

In Southern California, emergency stabilization teams try to help nature restore itself where last month’s fierce brushfires charred a half-million acres around San Diego and metropolitan Los Angeles. Native plants that fed the California blazes, such as chaparral and manzanita, should return on their own if the ground is undisturbed, U.S. Forest Service soil scientist Todd Ellsworth says.

Reseeding here remains a year-to-year fight because invasive weeds threaten to overtake the Great Basin ecosystem. Commercial seed collectors are so numerous this fall after the fires that poaching is becoming a problem. Gatherers must have permits on public land and usually sign contracts with private landowners.

“It’s almost like prospecting in a way — and you get the same kind of lawlessness,” says Zachary Sherman, 29, a seed collector from Orem, Utah. He recently had to chase intruders off ranches near Elko, Nev., where he pays owners 5-10 cents a pound for the right to harvest three varieties. The seed fetches $1-$3 a pound from processors, who can make up to $16 a pound for “clean” seed — a mix of 16% seed in fine chaff that is spread via helicopter or airplane.

“Demand is at nearly an all-time high,” says Kyle Wagstaff of Native Seed in Park City, Utah, which supplies 250,000 pounds of sagebrush seed a year to the government and private customers. “Sagebrush is in decline all over its range.”

Prolonged heat and dryness have stressed sagebrush “so it’s not producing as much seed as it would in a normal year,” says BLM range ecologist Mike Pellant, coordinator of the Great Basin Restoration Initiative, a research effort to repair the ecosystem.

Sherman, one of Wagstaff’s suppliers, evokes stares and police calls when neighbors notice the tool of his trade: a tennis racket.

His 10 crewmembers use the rackets to knock seed-bearing blossoms into sacks. Wagstaff says he buys 200-300 rackets a year for his contractors.

Volunteers here stripped the plants by hand this past weekend. They dropped the fuzzy brown clumps, sticky with resin, into the wide-mouthed hoppers.

Retired social worker Carolyn Kershaw, 66, drove more than 100 miles from eastern Oregon to join the effort.

“I like sagebrush,” she whispers. “Being out here, touching it, smelling it. People that aren’t from the West don’t think so much of sagebrush. But it holds us together.”

The orginal wolf recovery plan called for 300 wolves between Wyoming, Idaho and Montana but today more than 1500 roam and continue to cause problems for communities.   

Why is the environmental extreme still complaining they have currently 5 times the amount of wolves than the recovery plan recomended and the experts felt the prey base could support. 

How is this an environmenal sound program with the population of wolves it out of control?

By The Associated Press

CHEYENNE - Most of the 352 individual comments the Wyoming Game and Fish Department received on the state’s plan for managing gray wolves oppose the proposal.

The public comment period on the wolf plan expired Oct. 10. The department received comments from people in 15 states and Canada.

The plan drew negative comments from both livestock producers and conservationists. Ranchers expressed fear the plan would subject their livestock to wolf predation, while environmentalists argued the plan would lead to too many wolves being killed.

The agency posted the comments on its Web site at http://gf.state.wy.us.

“We hope that by posting all of the individual comments on our Web site, people will have the opportunity to understand the tremendous variety of opinions that exist concerning wolf management in Wyoming,” Game and Fish Director Terry Cleveland said in a statement.

Wyoming, Montana and Idaho are seeking to end federal oversight of wolves by each state taking over management of the animals within its borders.

Wyoming for the past several years has been the only one of the three states without a federally approved wolf management plan in place.

Wyoming’s draft plan commits the state to maintaining at least 15 breeding pairs of wolves, or about 100. That would include seven breeding pairs located primarily outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway and another eight within the two parks and parkway.

The state has about 300 wolves now, and conservation groups have assailed Wyoming’s plan because it could mean killing up to 200 wolves.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission will review the public comments before it adopts a final wolf management plan at its next meeting, Nov. 15-16 in Thermopolis.

Cleveland said if the plan is approved by the state commission it will likely be accepted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which rejected the state’s first proposed plan in 2004.

Of the comments submitted, 307 respondents answered two questions posed by the agency seeking their opinion on the plan and the number of breeding pairs of wolves in Wyoming.

On the plan, 248, or 80.8 percent, either strongly or moderately opposed the Wyoming wolf plan. Of the 248, 225 were strongly opposed.

Nonresidents were against the plan more so than Wyoming residents. Nearly 91 percent of nonresidents strongly or moderately opposed the plan, while 72 percent of residents had similar views.

Among Wyoming residents, those from Teton County expressed the highest degree of opposition with 96.2 percent either strongly or moderately opposed to the plan. Respondents from surrounding counties of Fremont, Hot Springs, Lincoln, Park and Sublette were much less opposed to the plan, with 59.3 percent strongly or moderately against it.

The federal government’s original criteria for a recovered population of wolves in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana included 300 individual wolves distributed among the three states. There are now an estimated 1,545 in the three states.

Orginal Story

I guess the third time is a charm and bears have more rights to our parks than we do.  The stay in your car and do not get out policy is in full force.  I want things to be safe but managers have continued to allow protected fearless predators behavior towards humans to excalate.

Where is the public outrage at park managment that has allowed these bears to continue mauling people?  This method of closing the park and the problem will go away is silly.  Take care of the bears that are habituated and are dangerious to human safety.

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Temporary Park Closure
By Kathleen de Onis

BILLINGS - Another bear attack over the weekend has prompted national park officials to take action and close a section of Yellowstone National Park.

The grisly attacks by bears in the past month include three grizzly maulings. A section of West Yellowstone Park is temporarily closed west of Gardiner. Park officials hope the decision will ensure there are no more human and bear encounters.

The decision to close the area comes after a grizzly mauled a man on Saturday while bow hunting, just north of the Yellowstone boundary. Al Nash, Chief of Public Affairs for Yellowstone National Park, said the closure should not last long.

“We expect that section of the park to be closed for just a few days. We did close this area earlier in the fall due to a similar incident, and it was closed for less than a week, said Nash.”

Orginal Story with Video