Do you have some interesting wildlife news? Feb. 14, 2019 edition

Reader generated wildlife news-

It is time to create a new page of “Reader Generated Wildlife News.” Do not post copyrighted material.

Here is the link to the “old” wildlife news page that began on Nov. 25, 2018. From there you can access links to the many older pages of wildlife news readers created.

Please post your wildlife news in the comments below

551 thoughts on “Do you have some interesting wildlife news? Feb. 14, 2019 edition

  1. I would like to see someone write an article on grazing on federal lands…specifically – please note, articulate, emphasize, and make it clear to all that there is no such thing as grazing “rights.” It is a privilege to graze your livestock on public lands, and if you do not adhere to the specifications of your lease agreement, you can be removed. What landlord would allow a tenant to trash his rental unit and not suffer some consequences?

  2. Protect The Wolves™ Seeks Native Americans as well as Tribes, Native American Founded Organizations to Join Us Please.

    Protect The Wolves™ will be filing an intervention in support of WWP argument against the USDA.

    Our Phone conference yesterday with Erik Molvar of Western Watersheds Project and our Attorney Adam Carlesco who will be writing our Intervention in support of Western Watersheds Project, instead of an Amicus Brief, that way any tribes that sign on will additionally become full-fledged plaintiffs, as well all can raise claims independent of CBD, WWP, and WEG.

    It was a great call. Erik is always thankful for having research and tools offered that they do not have available to them.

    We owe Erik a Huge Thank you for his help in submitting our Regulation Change Petition, as well as Our Proposed “Sacred Resource Protection Zone” to Wyoming Game and Fish Meetings.

    Protect The Wolves™ is seeking Tribes from any location, Native Americans as well as Native American Founded Organizations from all over Turtle Island to sign on to Our Intervention .

    The USDA in their 1998 FONSI did not mention consulting with tribes or Native Americans period. It is past time that the Government begins to protect the Religious beliefs of all Native Americans which includes things like Wolves and Grizzly’s and Bison to name a few that Traditional Native Americans hold as Sacred.

    Please Share this article along with our phone number (530) 377-3031 to any and all that would like to sign on to Our Intervention.

    We thank you for your spreading the Word 😉

    ~Patricia and Roger

    Protect The Wolves™

    530-377-3031
    https://protectthewolves.com/protect-the-wolves-seeks-native-americans-as-well-as-tribes-to-join-us/

  3. As Wolf Depredation on Domestic Livestock escalates, throughout the World with the Wolves successful re-introduction populations spread, the contentious anger between Livestock Producers and Conservationists does also grow. My published research Blog at http://WWW.FENCEFLAGWOLFTRAINING.COM is a tangible suggestion, with minimal cost, to mitigate the anger on both sides of the fence!
    Donald J. Kaleta

  4. A different view of the border than what you’ll hear from the orange alien.

    It’s nine years old but still informative and worth the watch.

    1. Very informative, and a gorgeous area worth saving. Sad about the ocelot and tortoise and other wildlife, and a shame to see the entire country continue on to becoming more urbanized, agriculturalized, with dull and boring sameness everywhere – and more and more fragmented – when there is such vibrant biodiversity.

    1. So much of what Doug Smith says rings true out here in the west.

      The human species is so self absorbed anymore, they can no longer see the trees, let alone the wildlife and wilderness areas (still out there) for the need (or greed)

      The norm is to sustain/adhere to a world that has become more and more demanding and less and less aware of our impact on other species who share the planet.

    1. It probably is the best thing to do – but I’m leery and expect some retaliation from ranchers. They retaliate now, so to prohibit them from public lands could result in something really ugly.

    2. Source article for Ed’s post:

      https://www.capitalpress.com/ag_sectors/livestock/wolves-may-keep-cows-off-washington-fish-and-wildlife-land/article_69e7fa84-2fd8-11e9-a44b-a7109aaaa488.html

      Query, as Immer suggests, this might be a chess move. My recollection from the WA Wolf Plan and the EIS, this sort of thing was not contemplated as needing to happen. What will the WDFW Commission do when reminded of this?

      WDFW lands are to be distinguished from WA Department of Natural Resources lands (both owned by the state). DNR has a pretty conservative base and I expect if their lands would be implicated in a no grazing because of potential wolf conflict the wolf poop will hit the fan big time. They may even view the WDFW thinking out loud concept, if it reaches a formal proposal stage, as a pending attack on DNR lands too. Stay tuned. This is bound to get pretty noisy if a proposal makes it out of WDFW.

  5. “A new, highly complex and destabilized ‘domain of risk’ is emerging – which includes the risk of the collapse of key social and economic systems, at local and potentially even global levels,” warns the paper from the Institute for Public Policy Research. “This new risk domain affects virtually all areas of policy and politics, and it is doubtful that societies around the world are adequately prepared to manage this risk.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/12/climate-and-economic-risks-threaten-2008-style-systemic-collapse?fbclid=IwAR38F3ipeduQF4rkIBEjAgDtWp_3KRhuVYtKHIDwvw8AcsZWs0p7ff6mc8o

  6. Dave Mattson penned a most prosaic evisceration of the paradigm that allows grizzlies (indeed, all wildlife)to be cast as errant moral actors. He uses the incident involving the death of outfitter Mark Uptain in September 2018 in the Teton Wilderness as a contemporary example of the twisted logic humans impose on other species. Definitely a read worth saving for later reference.

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/18/when-grizzly-bears-go-bad-constructions-of-victimhood-and-blame/

    1. Yes. We should take more responsibility for our own safety, because only we have every means at our own hands. To dismiss carrying bear spray because it was inconvenient, or to not be proficient with a weapon is certainly not wise. (not that I do either, but hey, I know my limitations.)

      Nor is leaving a carcass overnight when the temp was 73 degrees – I guarantee that every carnivore and scavenger was aware of it – and to have F&W say that it was not the motivator for the bears is not very honest.

      A terrible tragedy for all involved, and one that should not continue to be perpetuated by authorities, it does not help people.

      1. Agree 100%. Also, outfitters, if they don’t want more problems, should send out more people in these situations.

  7. Nearly 40 years ago, I was a hunting guide in Montana and Alaska. I do not want to Monday morning quarterback but this incident would have had a different outcome if I would have been the guide — MAYBE.

    They tied the horses up and went to looking for the elk. After finding the elk the guide started to field dress the animal. I would have not tied my horses up but lead them behind me while searching for the wounded or dead elk. Upon finding the elk I would have tied the horses around the carcass. The horses/mules would have smelled the bear and started fussing. The guide would/should have realized that something was wrong and been able to either use pepper spray or started shooting. The outcome would have been different if the horses were tied up around the elk.

    Due to the nature of their defensive instincts mules would have been a better choice. Mules fight with their hoofs where as horses flee. When I was guiding in Alaska I always tied my four horses in four direction around the camp.

    Here are my questions that I have not read about.

    On the day they shot the elk did they have pack animals and how many. The guide has been criticized for allowing the hunter to shot an elk late in the afternoon. If they had pack animals, I see nothing wrong with shooting an elk late in the afternoon. It takes me about an hour to open an elk up, quarter it and load it on horses if the client stays out of the way and helping when requested. Some years ago I was the client in British Columbia and shot a bull moose late in the afternoon. It took the guide and myself about one and half hours to field dress the moose, load it on the horses and be on our way.

    After the guide was killed, the client returned to the horses and rode until he could find cell service and call. In order to do that he would have had to put the bridle on, mount the horse and ride away. Very few hunting clients can bridle a horse, mount it and ride off. Then if there was other horses was he able to ride off with out taking the other horses.

    Upon returning the following day the guide had bear spray and a 10MM Glock. The guide should have had a rifle. Marlin makes a perfect guide’s rifle, a 1895 Marlin 45-70 which is used by most guides in the north county. I have one and if I was to guide again that is what I would use.

    This was a sad and tragic incident for both the guide and the bears but it is time to move on.

    1. Thank you for your input. Guiding is dangerous, especially in griz. country. Take EVERY precaution, don’t make assumptions, safety first. It seems obvious.

  8. Aren’t things like this awful? I’m sure it’s the same all over the country. Apparently, the roads have been flooding like this for at least a decade – so why can’t the road be fixed or culverts put in or another non-lethal solution, especially after a decade? Probably the towns can’t afford anything but cheap killing and nobody wants taxes raised!

    Why is killing always the only go-to option? Apparently the city has sent out a letter of apology, which is adding insult to injury :(:

    https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/20181210/framingham-to-cull-beaver-population-to-stop-flooding

  9. If you search “south carolina coyote bounty” there are many articles to choose from about proposed $75 coyote bounties. As usual, you will not find any reporters asking any biologists if that would have any significant effect. You will see politicians and others saying bad things yotes do and saying there is a simple solution (even if it has never worked).
    “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem – neat, plausible, and wrong” Mencken, 1920.

  10. I know this isn’t the West (just west of Boston), but it is just too typical.

    “McArthur said the city plans to draft a long-term plan to fix the culvert underneath Singletary Lane, which could avert problems caused by beaver dams.”

    Taking ten years to fix it is long-term. It’s illegal to relocate wildlife in MA, in case they are killed trying to return, but you can kill them outright. Perhaps if the problem had been addressed earlier, the beavers would not have chosen the location?

    Kill first, fix later I guess. It’s all just a little “Who’s On First” for me. 🙁

    https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/20181214/animal-rights-group-opposes-beaver-trapping-in-framingham

    1. And further, would anyone simply call the ASPCA/SPCA ‘an animal rights group’? It’s the oldest of animal welfare groups in the US, started in England in 1824. Advocating humane treatment of other creatures is something of value.

  11. Why haven’t I read anything about the birth defects on wild grazing animals, with some of the same on birds and other vertebrates? Don’t hunters who harvest big game animals, like white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk and moose ever look at their mouth for underbite or overbite. Or on male animals, don’t they see on some male there is no scrotum or on many the left half of the scrotum is directly forward of the right half, rather than being bilateral (side by side). Since a large number of hunters and guides are male, it would seem to me that such birth defects on the harvested animals would be obvious. Also, if underbite, overbite or male reproductive malformations or malformations of the hooves or legs are observed, are those things ever reported to the game department in the state where the animal is harvested?

    1. Don’t hunters who harvest big game animals, like white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk and moose ever look at their mouth for underbite or overbite.

      Hmmm. Pretty tough to determine underbite or overbite in ruminants, since they don’t have any upper incisors.

      1. Actually it is easy to see an underbite on a ruminant. If the lower incisors are in front of the dental pad, the animal has an underbite. Hunters who shoot white-tailed deer with overbite post their photos on the Internet calling the deer “Dork Deer” so don’t seem to have any trouble telling the deer has overbite. The deer are not the dorks in my humble opinion and should be made fun of for what human use of pesticides has caused. See the study at the following link. Wild deer that were tested had higher levels than the pen study deer. Even the lower levels caused birth defects in the young and death in both the young and the adult females. Here is the link to the South Dakota study that shows this https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40994-9

        Does anyone have any comments about the consequences of multiple birth defects and high mortality on most of our wild big game animals? I didn’t see a single comment when I posted this study several days ago. Don’t you think that you all should be calling your governors and asking them to ban Neonicotinoids, since those insecticides are killing beneficial insects, insects in the fresh water habitats so far fewer fish, amphibians because of far fewer insects to eat, millions of songbirds because of direct poisoning and because of far fewer insects to eat and to feed their young, small mammals because of poisoning and fewer insects to eat and many large mammals because of direct poisoning. That doesn’t leave much. So much for Silent Spring – more like Silent Earth.

        1. “Does anyone have any comments about the consequences of multiple birth defects and high mortality on most of our wild big game animals? I didn’t see a single comment when I posted this study several days ago”

          Judy, I’d be willing to bet that most of us who post here on TWN (and those that check in on the articles posted here) don’t hunt and care a great deal about wildlife, perhaps aren’t aware of the findings you’ve come across over the decades in your research.

          And then there are those who don’t give a shit about defects as long as they’ve bagged their “big game or meals” for the season?

          Not trying to make excuses, just throwing out thoughts here but it seems as long as the “premiere” government agencies, in charge (like FW&P and F&G, etc.) rely on hunting dollars and just aren’t brought to task about their lack of concern, by the general public, its going to be an uphill climb for those of us who do care about wildlife. Make sense?

          I live in southwest Montana, where the cattle ranches around me have expanded (re: cattle) since I moved here 25+ years ago. And some of these ranches are now “chemically fertilizing” their hay fields, hoping to garnish an even bigger hay crop before a lot of their cattle come off subsidized pastures (public lands) in the fall.

          Some are also mowing down sagebrush areas on their ranches (that also brought in government subsidies when left alone) that attracted wildlife, like deer, elk and sage grouse.

          Good Stewards of the land? I’m thinking not so much anymore. Greed seems to be the driving force these days.

          1. The South Dakota study was concerning a game animal, however Imidacloprid has very serious and deadly effects on many other animals. Neonicotinoids are applied to seeds prior to planting and sprayed on soil and foliage to control sucking insects such as rice hoppers, aphids, thrips, whiteflies, turf insects, soil insects and some beetles. Unfortunately, neonicotinoids such as Imidacloprid also kill beneficial insects, especially honey bees and native pollinators and many of the insects needed by birds for food. Imidacloprid kills insects by debilitating their central nervous system. “It mimics nicotine and binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, blocking the receptor and thereby preventing nerve cell transmission, leading to paralysis and death in insects. In humans and other mammals these receptors are found in neuromuscular junctions and the central nervous system.” According to Wikipedia, “in 2018, the European Union banned the three main neonicotinoids (Clothanidin, Imidacoprid and Thiamethoxam) for all outdoor uses. Several states in the United States have also restricted usage of neonicotinoids because of concern for pollinators and bees.” Also of great concern is the loss of birds and likely fish, due to the extreme declines in land and fresh water insect populations. Neonicotinoids, especially Imidacloprid, are so toxic to aquatic invertebrates, an important food source for many larger aquatic species, that some experts call it a second Silent Spring. Apparently, none of the people who post on wildlife news are bird watchers or like to fish. Speaking of Silent Spring, a single corn kernel coated with neonicotinoids can kill a songbird, and even a tiny grain of wheat or canola coated in Imidacloprid can fatally poison a bird. The new South Dakota white-tailed deer study (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-40994-9) showing the severe effects of even small exposures to Imidacloprid in the mothers and young of a large mammal should be especially alarming, since humans are also mammals and newborn babies have the same birth defects as the deer fawns in the SD study. I guess no one is more concerned about children than about making piles of money. I keep forgetting that. Thanks for reminding me, Nancy.

  12. ^^Having driven across Nevada to California myself, I love Nevada. But I hope this little one keeps on movin’, because someone will try to shoot her. 🙁

    1. No scientists are buying Bastian’s research. But journalists cover it – they are selling advertisements. Some folks who don’t follow science much are thinking it might be real. There are some truly terrible articles about Bastian’s work. The one you point at is just in the pretty bad range. Most hunters can’t judge science very well. There’s been a flurry of PA articles recently that prove that, where the hunters are against culling in counties with CWD and are quoted. The politicians are not exactly epidemiologists either and will grandstand and fight the biologists. Example:
      https://www.mcheraldonline.com/story/2019/02/21/news/hunters-game-commission-at-odds-over-cwd-management/703.html

      There are some interesting experiments lately about pieces of DNA binding to Prnp proteins though, that are fairly controversial.
      There’s also been news about work on vaccines, some positive, but some papers where it’s been tried in ungulates and not worked. I have some hope though.

      1. I’m glad you said that, all of it – the article did seem to be more concerned about the hunting perspective than environmental.

        I’d like to see more preventive measures beforehand, more than catch-up after the disease(s) takes hold.

    2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28193766
      That is the newest review I can find that the public can download. It’s a pretty tough read for me, and I’d need to reread certain section or the primary references (of which there are a zillion) to really know what’s going on in some paragraphs. It discusses IND24, and drug that slows missfolding of CWD type PrP protein, giving hope that a better drug can be constructed. It only reviews a narrow part of the field, about how prions replicate – no vaccine discussion. All of the experimental results from studies of PrP strains would not make a lick of sense under Bastian’s theory I think. Prusiner himself was the editor, but that doesn’t alarm me (nobel prize winner along with others, 1997, for their prion work).

    1. Interesting article. These are the things that worry me about ‘overmanaging’ wildlife. Of course, where I’m no expert my opinion means crap, but here, the experts did not anticipate the rapid advance of climate change and explosion of ticks – just were concerned about moose population expanding too much. And gotta keep those hunters happy, I suppose.

      Some of the pictures I have seen are shockingly bad, of moose laden with ticks. Can’t something like a tick collar or treatment be given when research collaring these poor animals? I also wonder if the decreasing ranges and confinement to smaller and smaller habitat area that they cannot really escape from contributes.

      1. The fluctuations seen in Maine with regards to ticks are unequivocally NORMAL! What is seen in places like Idaho and Yellowstone (GYA) where wolves have wiped out the moose and in MN where a population of moose were also whipped out and another halved are a result of mis-management of predators.

        https://www.outdoornews.com/2017/05/19/moose-healthy-maine-despite-struggles-recent-years/

        https://www.grandviewoutdoors.com/predator-hunting/wolf/wolves-leading-cause-death-minnesota-moose

        1. Like an insane monkey beating his drum incessantly. On and on about the moose in Yellowstone wiped out by wolves. What lies! The moose population dropped BEFORE wolves were there! How many times do we need to say this?

          Just when we think matters (not anymore)is gone he posts more idiocy.

          1. Hiker, I totally agree with you regarding the moose in YNP. The wolves were also blamed for causing a 13 calf per 100 cow ratio for elk in YNP in those born in spring of 1995, prior to when the wolves were even released. A very interesting study, (Smith, B.L., E.S. Williams, K.C. McFarland, T.L. McDonald, G. Wang, and T.D. Moore. 2006. Neonatal mortality of elk in Wyoming: environmental, population, and predator effects. U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Biological Technical Publication, BTP-R6007-2006, Washington, D.C.)indicated that something very bad happened to the elk calves that caused them to be unhealthy and easy for predators to eat after 1995. There were no wolves where the study was done. Most importantly, it took only 12 days for elk calves to join the nurse herd, where they were protected, in the three year time period of the study prior to 1995. It took 4 times that, 49 days, for the elk calves that survived their health issues and the predators to join the protection of the nurse herd in the three year time period after 1995. Check it out. Whatever happened to the elk calves likely happened to the moose calves. I know from observation that the bighorn sheep and bison in YNP after 1995 had obvious birth defects and still do. I helped with three studies on the same birth defects on deer in western Montana that began in spring of 1995. The wolves here in Montana and in YNP had birth defects too. The declines in ruminant survival were far more likely to be due to the adverse health effects the newborns had at birth beginning in 1995. Do any of you who blame wolves for everything, like Mat-ters, and who falsely accuse other animals of killing off the wild ruminants, even know how a wild ruminant should look? They definitely should not have an underbite. That is not a good adaptation for biting off sufficient foliage to maintain weight and health and reproduce viable young.

            1. Judy, As I challenged hiker to come up with a biologist that says wolves weren’t the major cause of the annihilation of moose in the GYA…. I’m challenging you. There is nothing I would like more than to get them on record saying so! The vague reference to a minor fluctuating variable in a park propaganda web page does not constitute someone going on the record saying so!

              https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/michipicoten-caribou-relocation-1.4487408

              1. BTW, a 13 calf per 100 cows after a bad winter is certainly NORMAL. BUT, a 6 calf per 100 cows ratio after a GOOD winter is not! Those that pamper predators for reasons OUTSIDE being good for all wildlife need to be held accountable! Why do you hate game animals?

                1. What is normal? Is normal life without predators? I think not.

                  Somehow these animals survived thousands (millions?) of years WITH predators before we came along. Then hunters almost wiped them out!

                  The only hate I see is for the truth.

                2. What is normal? Is normal life where wolves are protected to no end? I think NOT!

                  Somehow predators, man and prey survived thousands of years with the killing of predators! Then predator chulo’s abused poorly written laws creating abnormal predator pits and wasting huge amounts of tax dollars.

                  The haters I see are trying to hide the truth.

                3. Long before humans were on this planet (200,000 YA), predators and prey were coexisting. What you describe as humans killing predators has really only existed for a short time on this continent.
                  What you call poorly written laws, I call one of the most important acts we have.
                  Try, just once, to take a step back from your negative stance and see it from a different perspective. Let’s protect what’s left for the future instead of taking just for ourselves right now.

                4. Give it up Hiker! You have no place in history long or short to point to where MAN lived around wolves and does or did not need to kill them! NONE!

                  “killing predators has really only existed for a short time on this continent” as has killing of predators WHERE-EVER man has lived…. to this day!

              2. Already answered this one. Check out the Yellowstone site and reference at the bottom of the moose info.

                As long as you post your lies, mad matters, I will answer.

                It is well known that moose declined in YNP before wolves were on the ground. The dates and studies don’t lie.

                1. https://www.ontario.ca/page/moose-population-management
                  can be very interesting but is nearly overwhelming. You can compare places where I fish and have not noticed any decline (Unit 19) and there are about as many moose as they think the land can support, to other places father west (Unit 6) where there’s been decline, in an area that full of moose when I was young. Way, Way up north they have more moose than they want – gotta take care of the caribou.

                2. That is correct, Hiker, the moose and the elk declined in YNP before the wolves were released. For some reason that is always ignored.

                  Mat-ters, If you can go onto my website, there are a lot of photos of wild and domestic grazing animals, other mammals and of birds, all with the same common birth defects, underbite and to a lesser extent, overbite. Rodents, ungulates and other mammals have a high prevalence of male reproductive malformations (astronomically high now on some species of wild ruminant). Canines, like dogs and wolves have the same birth defects, but because they don’t eat thousands of pounds of foliage a year, the prevalence of those birth defects on canines are not as high as on mammals and birds that eat plants. Since humans eat both meat and plants the prevalence of the same facial malformations, underbite and overbite and similar male reproductive malformations are quite high, but those birth defects are not well documented on human newborns in most states.

                  What I don’t understand is why everyone argues about what is or is not responsible for moose or other wild ruminant declines, but no one seems to be concerned about the same birth defects happening on multiple newborn vertebrate species, including human newborns. I doubt if it is because you can’t see an underbite or an overbite on a human child or on a wild or domestic ruminant or a bird for that matter. So why ignore the giant monster in the room, the birth defects and adverse health issues at birth that cause the young ones to die and actually cause the declines in the populations, except for humans, of course. Most of the newborn humans with birth defects or health issues like premature birth or heart defects that cause mortality in wild animals, are saved at an extremely high cost to their parents and taxpayers, so the mortality is not high enough to cause population declines.

              3. Mat-ters, as I said, we studied the birth defects and health issues that correlated in timing with declines in those wild ruminants. We did not have accident-killed moose to study. However, hunter-killed moose that were examined had a significant prevalence of the same birth defects as the other ruminants. Almost no biologist that I have talked to that works for a state or federal agency will admit that wild ruminants have the birth defects we reported in our peer reviewed studies. In Montana, I believe there were three different reasons for the moose declines, depending on the area of the state in which the moose lived. None of the reasons were birth defects and mortality causing health issues before or just after birth.

                1. Astronomically. Can we get some links to published studies?

                  I can see you saying you think homeopathic salts work on animals, so your credibility is approximately zero with me right now.

                2. Rork, after I accidentally found that the underdeveloped facial bones grew to normal when a newborn deer fawn was given the homeopathic cell salt, Calc. Phos., I gave other wild and domestic ungulates with underbite or overbite the same cell salt with the same result. I then told others and they made the faces on their domestic ungulates grow to normal. It is not my fault that you forgot to send a memo to the newborns telling them that homeopathic cell salts don’t work and anyone who says they do are lying. I am sure that they don’t care who is lying, as long as they can bite off foliage normally or if they are a bird, that they can pick up food and survive.

                  Here are the links to our three studies on the birth defects on wild and domestic critters and the third was also concerning human newborns. The Calc. Phos. 30X also stimulates their underdeveloped facial bones to grow to normal, if the child has underdeveloped facial bones. Homeopathic cell salts are simply an electrolyte that stimulates the cells to uptake the minerals they need to function – like grow to their normal genetically programmed size. If animals have broken bone/s the bone/s heal in half the usual time if one tablet of Calc. Phos. 30X is taken or given at least twice a day during healing. It took three weeks for a broken bone on an older lady’s leg to completely heal. If you don’t want to take or use cell salts, don’t, but don’t say things you can’t prove about people who do. That is not nice.

                  Hoy JA, Hoy RD, Seba D, Kerstetter TH (2002) Genital Abnormalities in White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in West- central Montana: Pesticide Exposure as a Possible Cause. J Environ Biol 23:189-97. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12602857

                  Hoy JA, Haas GT, Hoy RD, Hallock P (2011) Observations of Brachygnathia Superior in Wild Ruminants in Western Montana, USA. Wildl Biol Pract 7(2): 15-29. http://dx.doi.org/10.2461/wbp.2011.7.13

                  Hoy J, Swanson N and Seneff S. The High Cost of Pesticides: Human and Animal Diseases. Poult Fish Wildl Sci. 2015; 3:132. doi:10.4172/2375-446X.1000132

                  These studies show that there is a high prevalence of the birth defects and health issues on newborns that I mentioned.

                  Now you give me a link to a study that proves that the cell salts are not electrolytes and that they do not stimulate the underdeveloped bones to grow to normal and cause broken bones to heal much faster than normal. If you can’t do that then the critters and I are not the liars.

              4. Give what up? speaking the truth? Countering your lies and propaganda? You have no answer to the fact that wolves have hunted these animals for longer then humans have existed and yet their prey are still around. Somehow they survived without us to fix things.
                But early EuroAmerican hunters almost wiped out elk and bison. Bison only exist now as a remnant population thanks to YNP. In fact, even today hunters often take the biggest, strongest animals. Isn’t that counter to survival of the fittest?

    1. WM,
      I thought about submitting this and referring to you. I believe you all but predicted this would transpire.

    1. Sheep herders have already killed two grizzly bears and who knows how many more grizzlies and wolves have been killed that we will never know about?…It is time that the “Experimental Sheep Station” on the Idaho/Montana is permanently closed and the land returned to native wildlife.

    2. How is livestock grazing good for wildlife? All that grass that wildlife would love to eat gobbled up for profit. I wonder what grazed there before? Read early explorer accounts of that region, it was teeming with wildlife, now diminished.

  13. I’m shocked. Hunters agreeing to give up some hunting permits to save moose in Maine; Idaho’s sheep industry willing to leave some areas not grazed for study?

    The only thing I will say is that probably ranching and grazing is better for the land than a housing development, because wildlife will fare no better in that scenario either with residents complaining about bears and others, and probably housing developments moving further into wild areas is worse for wildfires too.

  14. The Colville Tribe is at it again.

    Think you can’t do anything because of their sovereignty? Boycotts work. The Colvilles have a casino, a store, and a museum. There are probably more businesses but I’ve been to the store and the museum.

    Boycott and encourage others to boycott. Put the word on the streets. And to all Natives: Spread the word throughout Indian Country. Tribes don’t like bad publicity. And they do respond to negative reactions from other tribes.

    http://nwsportsmanmag.com/wolf-season-now-open-year-round-no-limit-on-colville-reservation-north-half/?fbclid=IwAR1-QH6egNZpQ9roLTacivl6BMA3LWRoV9zWzgXRDTpMoQeo0VCQBy8tZIQ

      1. In looking at the article that Yvette posted – in my opinion Washington State has set an incredibly low bar for determining when wolves have increased enough to warrant not being considered Endangered… 18 breeding pairs in the whole State of Washington should not be considered a healthy/safe level for any species. It looks like the livestock industry is alive and well in Washington State – and Washington D.C.

        1. Ed, I think the numbers are much more complicated than you suggest in your post. WA does not count wolves on reservations in its calculation. It does indirectly rely on inter-connectedness of migrant wolves from northeastern OR, ID and importantly British Columbia Canada for genetic inputs and potential in or out migration. If I recall, however, the state said it wanted an independent population on its own, not relying on those sources – I forget the exact Plan language.

          Washington will do fine with its minimum number. And, it was scientifically derived. And, the Spokane tribe also has had a wolf hunting season. Whe the Yakama’s get theirs, and the wolves start feeding on the largest elk herd in the state, they will have a wolf season, too. And, as for Yvette’s boycott advocacy, I expect those tribes who have casinos (and their gambler patrons) could give a rip.

  15. It is. And anyone could have seen that there will be no limits on killing wildlife once they are delisted, especially wolves and species that people have totally irrational ideas and fears about.

    There’s one comment from someone who says that wolves disrupt the breeding cycles of deer and elk! Who are these people to question nature’s design? (But it’s a-okay for people to go on wild killing sprees of deer and elk, I guess). Just smh.

    Do not allow the same thing to happen to grizzlies, because it will be the same. And who in the world hunts skunks at night?

    1. Louise and idaursine, you have moved the discussion into my back yard. Sanders County is just north of Ravalli County and Missoula County from where as a wildlife rehabber, I have gotten injured and orphaned mammals and birds to care for in the last 50 years. I have even gotten a couple of young birds from Sanders County. I go to Sanders County to look at wildlife and have seen several bighorn sheep with an underbite in Sanders County. I am sure that the birth defects, premature births and other health issues we have documented on hundreds of wild and domestic ungulates here in Ravalli County and from Missoula County do not stop at the border of Sanders County. I will never understand why some people insist on blaming other animals for what we humans are doing.

      And Rork, I think I forgot to mention that I have necropsied over 500 wild and domestic animals, to document and photograph the adverse health issues, including internal birth defects and tumors (very likely cancer but can’t afford to have them all tested – cancer or not, tumors usually kill wildlife). I have also measured over 1200 game animals for our studies and I have cared for and released over 6000 injured or orphaned animals (that doesn’t count the ones that didn’t make it). I don’t know on what you base what you said about homeopathic cell salts, because you didn’t say.

      1. Judy: do you know what 30X even means? When I pee while swimming in Lake Superior, the concentration exceeds that for a hundred years. Maybe you have a quantum entanglement theory for how it could possibly work, or a double-blind clinical trial.

        1. It is extremely difficult to do a double blind study on wild critters. Homeopathic cell salts are electrolytes that cause a crystal-like structure to form in the liquid in which it is placed. The crystal-like structure has a negative charge. I have observed many times that is takes approximately (by visual observation of the almost dead critter’s behavior) 20 minutes for the crystal-like structures to get distributed throughout the body by the blood, lymph system, etc. after the cell salts and regular saline electrolytes are administered to an extremely malnourished and dehydrated animal. It is no longer unconscious as evidenced by having its eyes open and blinking. Then in about 25 more minutes, after the cells have a chance to uptake the crystal-like structures, resulting in the cells having a negative electrical charge inside and consequently being able to efficiently uptake the minerals all the cells need to work, the animal stands up and begins to walk around. After giving more saline electrolytes, and about 1 hour and 5 or 10 minutes after first giving the electrolyte combination of the cell salts and liquid saline electrolytes (like Ringers Lactate) or other liquid electrolyte, the animal can be given a small amount of food. If the homeopathic cell salts are not given with the liquid saline electrolytes, the animal often dies and it takes up to three hours before it can be fed without killing it, especially true of raptors. Regarding where you pee, all your pee does is contaminate whatever you pee in. If something drinks it or is fed it, it would not cause their cells to more efficiently uptake minerals, so I don’t see your point. My website showing before and after photos is http://www.judyhoy.com. I don’t care whether you believe me or not. The many people who have “fixed” their animal, children or themselves with the Calc. Phos. 30X and/or Bioplasma do believe it works, especially those who have had their broken bones heal in just three weeks, half the time that their doctors said they would, or those who made their child’s face grow to normal or their pets or livestock’s faces grow to normal. All those with that didn’t have it used on them still have an underbite or an overbite, or too 6 weeks or more for their broken bones to heal.

      1. “perceive” until your dog needs a tomato juice bath. Nancy, what a hateful post!

        1. You’re and idiot. And tomato juice doesn’t work. The only one who’s hateful is you.

          1. Now children, don’t argue or you will have to be sent to your rooms. Mat-ters, what was hateful about Nancy’s post, the army of skunk haters all trying to shoot one small skunk for no reason? Or was it because she reposted their disgusting video? Immer Treue is correct, tomato juice doesn’t work as an anti-dote for skunk spray. What does work is a quart of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide, 1/4 cup of baking soda and a teaspoon of liquid soap. Mix these ingredients in a bucket or pan right before using. Rub this liquid all over the fur of the sprayed cat or dog. Or rub it on a human’s skin and hair if a human is sprayed. Rinse the cat or dog with clean tap water. The sprayed human can just take a bath or shower. Put the human’s clothes in a large pan or a bucket and pour some of the anti-skunk solution on the clothes and fill with enough water to cover the clothes. Let stand a few minutes, ring out the clothes, rinse and ring out the water and hang the clothes out to dry. I know this works because as a wildlife rehabber, I have been sprayed several time by my baby skunk patients, until they learn that I am mom. Skunks are an important animal in the environment, deserve to live out their life, just as much as any other animal and usually, if they are not directly attacked, they will not spray. People who kill skunks for no reason except that they happen to see it (like those in the video) are very bad for biodiversity. With so many people, there is hardly any room for other animals to live their lives anymore and that is disturbing on a number of levels.

            1. Judy, using a 35 gallon rubbermaid cargo container 3qts of tomato juice box of used baking soda and rub dog down and slow rinse with hose …. 2 nights in an outdoor dog kennel/garage/shed and your back in business….. works great! Testimony’s are I once, my brother twice…. the “idiot” name caller speaks in a pompous tone so loud it echo’s in her diminished alma. Either way skunks are vermin…. and should be kept at bay from out pets and children

              https://abc11.com/pets-animals/rabid-skunk-killed-by-family-dog-is-4th-rabies-case-in-orange-county/4513988/

              1. To a skunk, you are vermin. You and any filled with such hate. Can’t you find it in a small part of your shriveled heart to give wild things some respect?

                1. Hiker, this urban block (where I live) (sq mi) has a population of ~15 dogs, ~dozen children, dozens of visiting grand children etc, ~15 homes, 20 out buildings and hundreds of potential hiding places for vermin like skunks. As has always been the case, it is immoral to allow animals that display habituation attributes (skunks and raccoons) to “co-exist” where they are most certain to cause issues. Those such as yourself that perpetuate the constant and continuous & unmitigated inter-species strife that WILL exist in their(your) make believe bogus utopia are the ones that have the lower leg on the moral scale. This block and its ecosystem has little to NO habitat that leads to a “co-existing” utopia with some and certain animals.

                  In contrast, my properties up north offer that habitat where their co-existence is possible and does exist. HERE, where homes and cottages are miles and miles apart is what and where you want everyone to believe that evil sportsman is killing and perusing every skunk. That is simply not true and an irrefutable testament your bogus heartless “wild things respect” nonsense!!

                  SHAME on you for trying to imposing your heartless bogus visions of utopia on both the people and pets in some urban places.

                  SHAME on you for trying to besmirch and slander sportsman in any way possible.

                2. YOU are the one who called skunks vermin. YOU are also the one who always blames wolves and uses phrases like “predator pit”. I see all the time hunters shooting things just because they can. I hear about the coyote killing contests.
                  I am not the one who “besmirch and slander sportsman in any way possible.” Many of them do that for themselves already. But not all, I know many hunters who are respectful.

                  BTW, I am sorry you live in such a horrible place where there is no habitat for wild things. But maybe that’s good, with your attitude if you lived amongst wildlife who knows what would die. I just hope you or any like you are never my neighbor. In my backyard I see Quail, Hawks, Gophers, Squirrels, Foxes, Coyotes, Bobcats, Roadrunners, and many others.

                  Also, I never said that “you want everyone to believe that evil sportsman is killing and perusing every skunk.” (didn’t you mean pursuing?) I was merely responding to what you posted about skunks. Based on your statements it seemed that YOU hated them. I extended that to any who think like you.

                3. “BTW, I am sorry you live in such a horrible place where there is no habitat for wild things.”

                  Shame, shame shame! You never seem to get it, do ya?! Plenty of habitat for all wildlife including raccoons, skunks and ground hogs. Especially those that remain wild. BUT, the ones that spray dogs, undermine roads and building structures & strip cornfields are vermin. YOUR unwillingness to except that fact is the problem NOT those that shoot the skunk that makes its den in the timbers of a sandbox or the groundhog that has dug its den under the elderly neighbor’s garage or having to trap the raccoons that have stripped the 1st 40 yards of the neighbors cornfield along the river bottom! Your over protection of those animals like the ones you listed and under protection of animals like deer elk and ducks defines you! A better case can be made that you “game farm” vermin VS hunters who help maintain population goals of game animals on public lands…which those here at times call “game farming”! Shame! Your acceptance to setting vermin up for failure makes it clear to me that you push for unmanaged vermin NOT because you care about them …it’s because of your hate for sportsman and ranchers.

                4. In other words Matters (less and less each day), animals exist to serve you. If they interfere with what YOU what they should be actively managed (removed). Talk about utopian ideas! To judge from your posts you want the world to adjust to what YOU think is right. As long as YOU get your elk or deer that’s all that matters to Matters!

                5. “YOU, YOU, YOU”…… Couldn’t be farther from the truth! Hiker, what the heck do I have to do with the neighbors raccoon problem? What I wouldn’t give to make YOU pay for the damage he has to put up with! OR make YOU repair Ms Burmister’s sinking/sloping and garage slab! OR BETTER YET pay the 15% of the road repair budget for our Township due to undermined roads by vermin! iMMER couldn’t have SAID IT BETTER…Y”BOTH”AI’s “wink”.

                  Reminds me of how ilk like you “saved” the wild horses! NOW, we are paying more than 100 MILLION every year to coddle your animal loving sickness! WITH NO END IN SITE! Your morals are off kilter and in line with the 100 million the left loves to give “planned parenthood” every year to kill babies! THE laughable answer to the horse problem….more fricking horses that don’t fart! AND IMMER says I’m the Idiot!

                6. I smell something burning. I think you blew a gasket. Did I touch a nerve? With a reaction like that and your general defensive attitude I think I’m closer to the truth than you could admit. Especially to yourself!
                  Don’t know how you brought in wild horses, beaver, and abortion in a discussion about skunks!
                  Why don’t you just admit that you and people like you have little room in your life for wild things that are outside your CONTROL.
                  The funny thing is that I AGREE with you about so many things. I AGREE that habituation must be avoided. I AGREE that there is value to hunting, especially for food.
                  But I disagree about how you view certain wild animals. To you if they cause any problems they must be dealt with (eliminated). That’s the real shame here.

                7. Hiker, Just finished Larry Elders book “Dear Father Dear Son”? And have more that I’m stacking up…. wasting my time here is a little entertaining & certainly more entertaining than Michelle Obummer’s book was. BUT, I have more books on the stack now then when I started my hiatus!

                  Again with me getting “hot”….. thanks for the chuckle…

              2. Mat-ters, I would rather not spend 2 nights outside in a kennel/garage/shed and my husband doesn’t like skunk smell. Therefore, I like the concoction I posted that immediately eliminates the odor chemically. Also, we like to drink tomato juice so don’t want to waste three quarts, when the other remedy works better/faster.

                I have known a lot of people in my life time and I have known quite a few skunks. I have never considered any of the skunks or any other wild animal to be vermin. I have no further comment on vermin or I will have to be sent to my room.

        2. Yes, perceive. Do you honestly believe that all skunks are always pests? If that’s not hate I don’t know what is.

  16. And the bill re [the taxpayers?] reimbursing trappers is laughably bold. That one I hope will never fly, except into the trash bin.

    1. I agree, killing wolves won’t save the caribou because the caribou newborns likely have the same birth defects/adverse health issues as the other wild grazing animals in North America. I talk to Canadian moose biologists quite often. I haven’t heard anything about birth defects on newborns of the caribou in Canada nor have I ever directly observed a dead caribou, but the moose, deer, Dall sheep, bighorn sheep, bison, etc. and domestic ungulates in Canada have had and many are still born with the same external birth defects, underbite, overbite and male reproductive malformations, as those in the U.S. and in Mexico. Premature birth and other mortality causing issues in newborns of a species can quite quickly cause population declines, for which the predators, especially wolves, are always blamed. It would be far better to determine what is causing the high prevalence of birth defects, premature births and other adverse health issues and do something about that.

      1. Judy,
        With Caribou, it’s got nothing to do with birth defects and everything to do with habitat degradation, in particular the woodland caribou.

        1. Immer, something you should consider before saying, “With Caribou, it’s got nothing to do with birth defects and everything to do with habitat degradation, in particular the woodland caribou.” Habitat degradation, and consequently less food and more stress, especially in winter when the caribou are pregnant, results in more severe birth defects and thus less viable young born in the spring. Whatever is causing the birth defects, disrupts the mother’s ability to digest the food she is able to find and eat. Malnourishment results in mineral deficiencies, causing thyroid hormone disruption in her fetus. The majority of the birth defects and other health issues I listed in previous posts are caused by thyroid hormone disruption. Everything is connected.

          1. Judy,
            Everything may be connected, but with the woodland caribou, a denizen of old growth low productivity forests, when those areas are compromised by logging, seismic lines, roads, via the extractive industries, etc those forests are then opened to new growth, an influx of deer and moose, which bring along more predation. The caribou become secondary prey, and these island populations are constricted and the caribou lose. The connectivity is man’s rapacious need for resources at the expense of other living creatures

  17. It’s just that, with skunks being nocturnal (I think I have rarely seen them), someone would really have to go out of their way to seek them?

    Nothing is safe from human killing, and this reminds me of the targeting of squirrels. Don’t tell me that skunks also are the ‘gateway animal’ for children to be taught how to kill!

    The odor is strong, but not that bad, and not a reason to wipe them out, of the many human complaints about ‘inconvenient’ wildlife.

  18. A skunk is an innocent, small creature who poses no threat to, or harm to anyone. Only a bully would want to harm one, and it is nothing to brag about. I only got a few seconds into that video to know that I didn’t want to watch it, a bunch of yahoos go at it.

    As far as vermin goes, I’d consider drug dealers and traffickers of all sorts to be in that category.

    1. Wow. You’re right – I applaud his efforts and hope he keeps trying.

      It’s never the case in Wyoming, though. I don’t even know what to say, that this kind of behavior is accepted.

  19. Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae or M.ovi for short the respiratory disease that has been killing wild sheep has been found in not only domestic goats sheep and Cattle but also moose Caribou muskox whitetail deer and Antelope. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has found it in Moose and Caribou that have never been habituated and the CDC is also following this disease.

  20. https://www.mlive.com/news/2019/03/4-canadian-wolves-released-on-michigans-isle-royale-including-92-pound-male.html
    There are many similar. 2 large males from near Wawa, where I am familiar with moose and wolves, both of which are large.
    “These large males, all around 90 lbs., will almost certainly know what to do when they encounter a moose.”
    Namely if it’s young or old, test it. If it’s a prime male, maybe not too much, especially since they are not starting with very big packs. That might be a problem, but the overpopulation of moose might mean there’s enough 12+ year olds to keep wolves fed for awhile. Its famous that allot of the adults killed there are old.
    I’ve never seen caribou or whitetails near Wawa. It’s a little too far south, and too far north, and it gets lake effect snow from Superior.

    1. Looking at the comments, it didn’t take long. Give you one guess who Sam Lobo is.

    1. It seemed obvious in the video that the elephant did what the man told it to do and then stayed there waiting for instructions on what to do next. How was it the elephant’s fault that the man slipped and fell right under the elephant’s hip right when the elephant sat down?

  21. Thank goodness that for the most part, Isle Royale is out of the jurisdiction of most wolf haters. MYOB, to lob their own words back at them.

    I may visit Isle Royale on a vacation, and forget about the Western states – a lot easier to get to, and sounds quite peaceful.

    1. Late August to early Spetmenber. Typically nicer weather, and mosquitoes fading. You need reservations, in particular to get across Superior. It’s one of, if not the least visited NP’s in the country

    1. “Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt was expected to announce the proposal during a Wednesday speech before a wildlife conference in Denver, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Spokesman Gavin Shire said in an interview with the AP.”

      One of his first orders of business? But isn’t it always the way with wolf persecution – you’d never know it wasn’t 1819, or 1919 in these states. Colorado, for such a liberal state, is very unfriendly to wildlife, wolves in particular.

      1. Colorado is not “unfriendly to wildlife.” In fact, my experience has been to the contrary. But they would prefer, regarding wolves, to have their neighbors fight their respective battles to keep them from repopulating. There are a lot of high meadows with long histories of federal grazing (sheep and cattle). Valley bottoms are mostly private land. Even a proposal to reintroduce wolves to Rocky Mountain National Park fell flat on its face a few years back – too small, no local support for it outside the Park. Let’s not forget the state with the largest elk population in the entire US is Colorado, by quite a bit.

        The liberals of Colorado to which you refer are mostly along the Front Range Corridor that runs from north to south along Interstate-25 in a very narrow strip. Of course, most of the elk, cows, horses, burros and sheep are not along that strip, except the stock in feedlots for finishing.

        1. Well to me, that is unfriendly to wildlife, except for the wildlife they want(to keep for themselves?).

          Wolves should be on a landscape as iconic as Colorado. A big disappointment. At least in WY, ID and MT – you know where they stand.

  22. Oh definitely reignite, because there is still prime habitat where wolves have not been reintroduced. Why don’t they just give it up?

    1. From the F4WM.ORG website:

      “Our Efficiency is Unmatched
      F4WM has removed 415+ wolves with just over $225,000 membership and sponsor dollars, with zero tax funding. That’s less than $550 per wolf, solely funded by Sportsmen and concerned citizens. Without the F4WM program, the US Dept of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, would have to be employed through the Idaho Wolf Control Board to remove the same wolves.” Is this legal as a tax-exempt 501(c)3)organization??

      1. Why would it not be legal? Probably no worse (and costs the taxpayer less) than a wolf advocate chaining him/herself around the neck to an entrance door of an agency, or with linked hands under plastic pipe blocking a road, and requiring law enforcement or EMT’s to remove the constraining devices while maintaining safety of the individuals. Of course, some of that stuff done by 501c3 organizations is definitely illegal- and costly.

        IDFG is probably applauding the reimbursement (and I do believe it is characterized as that “reimbursement” cost of private, but legal wolf control). The important regulatory part for the state of ID is that they maintain the minimum wolf population and genetic diversity above their duly adopted and federally approved Wolf Plan document. That part does not seem to be a minimum number or distribution problem. On the other hand, achieving ungulate objectives in various hunting units is.

        1. “The important regulatory part for the state of ID is that they maintain the minimum wolf population and genetic diversity above their duly adopted and federally approved Wolf Plan document”

          How do they even know what the wolf population is if they haven’t done a survey in over 3 years?

          Between legal take (hunting/trapping) illegal take (poaching- SSS) and now this “bounty” the anti-wolf mob is hell bent on exterminating wolves once again.

        2. It’s a bounty, government funding of wildlife killing. Let the trappers pay their own way.

  23. “This is it. Trump has declared a nationwide war on wolves.” This is laughable, I’d wager Trump knows or cares anything about wolves.
    Let’s not forget this little fact:
    “One of the first acts of the Obama administration was to delist wolves in the Northern Rockies. Incredible harm and sadness has come from this completely shocking and disturbing decision, a Democrat who promised to set a new tone in Washington, turned his back on the ESA and wolves.”
    Not defending Trump or any other politician but let’s get real.

    1. Yes, Trump is just the latest. But, since the Democrats want to obstruct Trump in every way possible, I am not as worried. Under the Obama administration, I think most of the Democrats supported him in all things.

      I was thrilled to see Elizabeth Warren involved in the ethics investigation of the latest bad Interior Secretary candidate. I don’t like that he hasn’t even been confirmed and vetted, and yet is making important decisions for the country. Devious, to me.

  24. Thank you timz for reminding us that Pres. Obama’s Interior Dept. was also poor regarding the protection of rare species including wolves, grizzlies and bison…And now we have Democratic Minnesota Senator and presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar, who has actually co-sponsored a bill to REMOVE the gray wolf from the Endangered Species Act list in Wyoming and the Great Lakes region. She will not getting my vote!

    1. Ed are you from MN? I grew up there so my first wolves “up north” when I was a youngster. Al Franken when he was in the senate also pushed for de-listing.

      1. If any place should get delisted it is MN. Wolves have come to neighboring states thanks to them. Federal protections there don’t make much sense to me. The problem is we lack a plan and perhaps the will to have wolves again in lots of other places. MN is not the problem. No wolves in Maine seems ridiculous to me.

        1. I think one of the delisting problems is the rush to hunt/trap immediately post delisting. This Dennis Simon email from the MN DNR captures this rush very handily.

          It’s an email sent by Dennis Simon, chief of the Wildlife Management Section, to several fellow DNR managers last April 23. In a few short sentences it seems to show that DNR (a) felt it had leeway to start the seasons this year or later, (b) recognized there was public opposition to starting too soon, but (c) was feeling pressure from hunters and farmers to get on with killing wolves.

          Dated last April 23, and with emphasis added, the memo says:

          All things being equal I would prefer that we delay the season until we can establish a license, complete the population survey, and draft a population model even if we have to estimate harvest effort and success initially. I believe that this deliberate and conservative approach would be more palatable to those who are uncomfortable with a wolf season in the first place and DNR will have broader support when we do have a season.

          However, after giving it considerable thought over the weekend, I have come to the conclusion that we owe it to our primary clients, hunters and trappers, and to livestock producers as secondary clients, to do what we can to establish a legitimate harvest opportunity now that the wolf is under our management authority.

          We have been clear that a season will be conservative to start and data collected will inform our future management options and our model. We can always work deliberately toward establishing the wolf as a unique harvest species through future legislation. I am supporting a limited season, both hunting and trapping, this fall under current authority. This will require a reallocation of wildlife resources to do it correctly and I am prepared to do that.

          His first paragraph voices discretion, then he counters that with owing it to primary clients, hunters and trappers, and secondarily to farmers and ranchers.
          As far as a conservative season, 413 wolves were taken that first year.

          I believe I have somewhat addressed the topic before, but how does one manage wolves? Is it strictly by number? This can’t be done as with antlered animals, because sexual differention for wolves in the field is all but impossible. Stats Bear this out as male/female take was almost exactly 50/50.

          Killing wolves in wilderness areas such as the BWCA does absolutely nothing in regard to livestock depredations. No livestock, no bus stops, etc out there.

          Primary clients- hunters and trappers, ergo license fees, the commodification of wolf killing.

            1. Thanks for posting, Immer.

              “but (c) was feeling pressure from hunters and farmers to get on with killing wolves.”

              You see? This is not the kind of attitude people are comfortable with after a recovery delisting.

    2. I think under the Obama administration, there was too much attempt at compromise.

      Didn’t work with wolves, hasn’t worked with sage grouse (still waiting, instead of word kept we got a lawsuit instead) and I hope the grizzlies won’t be the next to be compromised. 🙁

      No delisting will pass both houses (I hope, anyway), and they missed their chance for another sneaky bill rider during the gov’t shutdown.

      Haven’t there been a number of court decisions stopping delisting in the remainder of the country due to certain obligations not being met? Trumpeting propaganda at ‘a wildlife conference’ is getting a little old now.

  25. The wolves have recovered, so we can start shootin’ ’em again!

    I don’t know if I follow that logic.

    But perhaps if there would not be a predictable, knee-jerk, automatic hunt after their delisting, or a shoot on sight when one is seen in any state, a delisting would not be so opposed? But you won’t ever see a guarantee of no hunting after a delisting, I would bet money.

    I don’t know about you, but an estimated 5,000 wolves in the entire lower 48 isn’t that much of a recovery, if you ask me. And the latest killings of five mountain lions in Colorado shows, if not unfriendly, then an antiquated view of wildlife in a liberal voting state. Wildlife must not be a priority for voters in CO (but we certainly know what is!). 🙁

    From the Denver Post:

    “Now more than 5,000 of the animals live in the contiguous U.S. Most are in the Western Great Lakes and Northern Rockies regions. Protections for the Northern Rockies population were lifted in 2011 and hundreds are now killed annually by hunters.”

    https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/06/gray-wolves-federal-protections/

    1. Hunting is not automatic. Voters in Michigan twice passed referendums to have no wolf hunts. It can be done, at least in theory. Since we lack methods to insure good representative governments (in all 50 states, not just here) our government can contradict the will of the majority of voters. It has become a shameless tradition here lately.
      PS: No hunting does not imply no killing.
      There are 3000-7000 cougars in Colorado. That’s not too shabby.

      1. There has never been a case where hunting has not followed a delisting, to my fairly recent knowledge. Sometimes hunting even ignores the 5-year watch and wait period required by the ESA, or is planned for even before a delisting. That to me is automatic, or at least knee-jerk.

        If Colorado does have a healthy mountain lion population, casual killing doesn’t necessarily have to follow. It is ethical to try to do the best to relocate and try non-lethal measures before destroying another living thing.

        We’ve got so many that a few killed won’t matter really isn’t the best management. Voters need to try harder if they truly want to protect wildlife.

        1. idaursine – rork is correct that “hunting is not automatic”. America’s symbol, the bald eagle is a prime example. It was one of the first animals placed on the Endangered Species List and then when it recovered was removed from the ESA list in 2007. However, other laws were first put in place to fully protect the balk eagle from any hunting. What the US needs now are similar laws to our bird protection laws and the Marine Mammal Protection Act which says that these animals are fully protected from hunting no matter their status as endangered or not. We need a “Land Mammal Protection Act” that protects listed mammals from hunting or trapping, whether they are Endangered or not… Because, they manage their own population sizes and do not need to be “managed” by humans or they are managed by wild predators themselves, I suggest that the following mammals should be placed under the “Land Mammal Protection Act”: wolves, mt. lions, bob-cats, grizzly bears, coyotes, fishers, lynx, wolverines, prairie dogs, wild bison – and more.

          1. That’s just it – any laws to protect wolves and coyotes do not exist yet – and because of the irrational beliefs about them, probably never will. So it’s best to keep them on the Endangered list until then.

            Yes, I still say that hunting is automatic after a delisting of wolves and grizzlies. I was referring to wolves and coyotes, grizzlies, not the bald eagle. There’s a different mindset entirely for wolves.

            1. Yes I agree, “There’s a different mindset entirely for wolves.” and thus until they and other rare mammals are protected by some sort of “Land Mammal Protection Act”, wolves, grizzlies and other Endangered mammals should definitely remain on the Endangered Species list. And, other persecuted mammals should be added to the ESA list, including prairie dogs, fishers, wild mink, bob-cats, lynx, wolverines, wild bison.

          2. WY is already planning a hunt for grizzlies, who were placed *back* on the Endangered list after taking it to court. They had planned hunting all the while waiting when grizzlies were originally delisted, and when they were finally delisted – the three states set a hunt in motion immediately – automatically.

            In the back and forth delisting of wolves, a hunt was held in the time between the court case(s), I think back during the Obama administration.

              1. From the article:

                “Colorado still has a policy that it will take care of any wolf that wanders into the state on its own. The issue is intentionally releasing them.”

                Yeah, we know. 🙁

  26. The other thing I worry about is that once there’s a delisting, any thought of ‘controlled management’ flies right out the window.

    It seems to me that female wolves are especially targeted, because they could be pregnant? I don’t think by the book, hunting is allowed during breeding season, but there seems to be a very small window where there is no hunting. There’s also poaching and ‘mistakes’ and ‘mistaken identity’ and not much of a deterrent to this.

  27. I was looking for season info, and here’s some about the upcoming season setting meeting for wildlife In Idaho.

    Also, just look at the video of the cutthroat trout swimming up a fish ladder, which I didn’t expect to see. Awesome.

    I do hope this ‘vermin’ attitude towards our wildlife will change some day.

      1. Thanks WM,
        If I am reading the maps correctly, the State of Idaho is reporting NO active CWD anywhere in the state, even though is it prevalent directly across the open border with Western Wyoming. My guess is that this is because local politics has trumped science in Idaho’s CWD reporting.
        Why anyone would still be eating wild elk or deer is beyond me for it is only a matter of time before CWD jumps species.

        1. “for it is only a matter of time before CWD jumps species” is an irresponsible opinion, supported by almost no published research, with plenty of evidence against it. What I’m saying is that the prevalence of CWD in humans is likely to be remain tiny, according to what scientists actually know now. Recently some expert was quoted as saying “just a matter of time” but he was not quoted giving reasons that this would be true. Fear of deer eating may lead to reduced hunting in high prevalence CWD areas, when we really need scorched earth.
          I made deer brats. They are fantastic.

            1. I’m quite aware of that story.
              First, it is indisputable that journalists are very bad at science in general, and are horrible about prions in particular. Next, the date in the first link was July 19, 2017. What is the hold up? I do not announce results over a year before my paper is ready – in fact people would suspect I’m a charlatan if I acted that way. I have invented cold-fusion by the way. You can make a link to this comment.
              Assays to detect CWD are extremely tricky. We want you to have performed appropriate negative controls. Because if you have not done your best to estimate the chances of your positive result being false, it is not science. Small point: I’ve not seen it said what genotype the Macaques had at PRNP. I doubt the journalist asked.
              I can be wrong and people will be found with CWD caused diseases next month. My prior on that is low, based on many published papers.

              1. “I can be wrong and people will be found with CWD caused diseases next month. My prior on that is low, based on many published papers”

                And I’m thinking we humans just don’t have much of an arsenal of information on hand or… just flat out ignore it, especially when it comes to how we’ve managed to F**k up many ecosystems these days, by ignoring all the many warnings signs.

                1. This is not as complicated as ecosystems (which are beyond comprehensive modelling). I have pointed to the very elegant studies before, and it’s been replicated by several groups. Give mice a deer PRNP gene and challenge them with deer prion – voila, they get the disease. Give them the human gene instead, they don’t. There are various other controls. Pubmed literature search to find articles is easy.

                2. I should have added the caveats, that this does not prove humans can’t get it. Deer get it easy, so that deerized mice get it is no surprise. Humanized mice may just be very hard to transmit it to. They don’t live very long either.

      2. Now, this leads to the question of whether or not this kind of disease affects carnivores too, or will eventually, or are they immune?

        I don’t know that we’ve ever heard of it in carnivores, or just that we aren’t aware?

        1. idaursine: It appears that so far carnivores like wolves seem to be immune to CWD… In fact, some wolf scientists think that wolves are so sensitive to diseases within their prey, that they can spot a diseased elk or deer before it shows any signs of sickness to the human eye…This is just another reason we should let wolves alone, so they can cull the diseased elk and deer in our midst before we even know they are sick.

        2. It amazes me that so much press these days is devoted to “Climate Change”, when it is only a result of the world’s real driving cause of most of environmental problems — Over-Population. In America our expanding population is mostly caused (80%) by immigration (both legal and illegal), in the poorer countries it is caused by extremely high birth rates. Unless we achieve a world with Zero-Population Growth”, even if Climate Change were solved today, we would still have urban sprawl, deforestation, converting natural lands for cultivation, draining of wetlands, loss of rare species, etc, etc, etc.

          1. Zero population growth is such a nasty term for so many people. One becomes labeled as anti people for even mentioning the term, when all it means is each set of parents with two children, achieve ZPG.

          2. Ed-L, I agree with everything you said, but I would add that the highly excessive use of Roundup and other pesticides (umbrella term) which were never actually tested for effects on plants and animals, especially non target species is greatly contributing to climate change. The deadly effects of rain and snow containing pesticides falling on all forests weakens the trees, causing them to be more susceptible to disease and insects, resulting in billions of dead trees, if not trillions. Every tree that dies is less carbon dioxide taken from the air. Of course, the huge and growing people population, using more and more pesticides is not helping at all, which is back to your very good comment.

    1. Cold but beautiful! Thanks for posting the article, Jeff E.

      16 degrees here in southwest Montana (had minus 3 when I got up this morning) Definitely NOT average temps, going into the 2nd week of March!

  28. 400 hundred pound wolf??!!!

    https://nbcmontana.com/news/offbeat/giant-wolf-yuki-dropped-off-at-kill-shelter-rescued-by-sanctuary

    Kidding but made ya look, right? 🙂 And it really is all about the camera angle if you want that great shot with a 90 lb. dead wolf that appears more like 200 lbs.

    Yuki was not full wolf but a hybrid with a high percentage of wolf in his background. And IMHO, the idiots who breed these hybrids, should be taken out and horsewhipped.

    Interesting that his “humans” abandoned him because he was getting to big. But at 12 years old? Can’t imagine he was still “growing” More than likely they no longer wanted him around (he was deemed terminally ill at the shelter) and the hope was some sanctuary would spare, what was left of his life.

    Not a bad thing but why are there so many sanctuaries (catering to abandoned, exotic wildlife) out there these days? Perhaps because laws are so damn lax, on breeding, importing and purchasing these living, breathing beings (who often don’t adapt well to captivity) in the first place.

    Good read:
    The Lizard King/Christy

    1. I agree that I don’t like people having rights to keep wild(ish) animals. Maybe there’s a tiny gray area where someone wants to do something like domesticate a new animal (perhaps you are familiar with russian fox experiments), but I don’t like that either. Maybe I’m OK with kids detaining small animals (lizard, hedgehog) for a few hours. I’ve experienced it. Maybe instead the adults should have taught me how it is wrong though. St. Jacque (Cousteau) would have made me get approval first.

    1. “The DNR’s detailed field research has shown that wolf predation has consistently accounted for about two-thirds of the calf mortality….” The math above in this thread where someone talks about how ZPG “zero population growth” is sustained by “each set of parents with two children” may be true but reality says it is really NPG “negative population growth”. Why, because there is a percentage of adults that never have children…. close to 20 percent!

      https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/24/proportion-women-never-have-children-has-doubled-generation/

      One must take a step back and look objectively at what comes from our experts… some of which have the same biases as some that post here….when looking at things like the decline of moose in the two regions of MN one must wonder what is really behind the “ZPG”…. Ticks don’t kill baby moose!….

      https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2014/11/19/1332760/-Wolves-Killing-Unsustainable-Number-of-Minnesota-Moose

      Maybe, one must wonder if some believe in ZPG that is really NPG?????

        1. “You’re don’t remain”… You remain the best advocate for the annular direction of your comment.

          1. I understood Immer to mean “You remain an idiot.” The message seems quite clear to me.

            By the way, do you actually know the meaning of the term “annular” even in a medical context?

            1. Haa yes, WM you can change the context to anything you would like it to mean for your sh[ts and giggles…. But, I’m thinking we both know the actual context describing “direction”, for only a nincompoop would think it to be anything else. (wink)

    1. Unveiling the Ghost of the Mountain:
      Snow Leopard Ecology and Behaviour
      https://pub.epsilon.slu.se/14488/1/johansson_o_170822.pdf

      In this study, snow leopards were found to have killed more wild prey than livestock,
      despite livestock number being at least an order of magnitude higher

      Snow leopards were crepuscular and facultative nocturnal, their activity peaks
      changed seasonally, occurring during dusk in the cold season and dawn during the warm
      season. Activity patterns of snow leopards appear to be driven by a combination of needs
      facilitating hunting (cover and visibility) and thermoregulation whereas no support was
      found for the common explanation that large carnivores mirror the activity of their prey.
      The critical assumption in abundance estimates based on capture – recapture calculations,
      that individuals are correctly identified, was severely violated in a test using known
      individuals. In our test the classifiers overestimated the number of individuals in the
      sample, which could have serious consequences for a threatened species.

      1. It all makes such beautiful sense, doesn’t it, the snow leopard’s behavior? 🙂

  29. “Government officials said their goal was to protect wolves from extinction, not return them to everywhere they were once found.”

    Just so unbelievably lame. They must think people are stupid. Again, (heavy sigh), nobody expects that they be returned everywhere, just that there is much habitat yet where they can go. (No, this doesn’t mean downtown LA, as I heard one wolf-oppose say.)

    “In a statement, the Center for Biological Diversity blasted the proposal for lacking transparency, noting that, though there would be a standard 60-day public comment period, no public hearings were scheduled and there was little information on the peer-review process that went into crafting the document. Michael Robinson, senior conservation advocate with the organization said that, if approved, the proposal would mean open season on wolves.”

    https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2019/03/us-moves-to-lift-remaining-protections-on-gray-wolves.html

  30. Typical double-speak from politicians. The rules that were set up as a compromise so the sage grouse wouldn’t be listed are now being weakened even more. What a joke that these agencies that are supposed to provide good stewardship of natural resources – they’ve become puppets to industries and corrupt politicians. I’m not faulting the low-level, local govt workers who are usually hard working and honest. It’s the higher-up policy makers who are at fault
    https://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/u-s-easing-oil-and-gas-drilling-restrictions-meant-to/article_b93c3d86-b9c3-575b-ba6e-cfc763164501.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

  31. It’s Black or White Wolves Must Die to Save Canada Caribou,

    https://calgaryherald.com/news/national/its-that-black-or-white-wolves-must-die-to-save-canadas-caribou

    Yet

    B.C. Approves 314 Cutbacks I Critical Caribou Habitat
    https://www.wildernesscommittee.org/news/bc-approves-314-cutblocks-caribou-critical-habitat-while-negotiating-conservation-plans

    Geographically, I’m pretty far removed from this area, but this type of “debate” has been going on for close to two decades if not longer. Not only does it destroy caribou habitat, but opens the area to new colonization: moose; deer and accompanying predation. Caribou become secondary prey, but because there are so few of them, the double whammy of Habitat destruction and increased predation. Then the debate begins if you want to save caribou, why would you oppose a wolf cull?

  32. https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MIDNR/bulletins/236c616
    Moose population still growing (slowly, we think) in western upper Michigan. That doesn’t mean I don’t expect decline in the future, or halts in the decline elsewhere (without treatments like knocking down deer). Western upper MI is perhaps less impacted by various factors thought to lead to moose decline. Deer can barely live in some of that country or not at all, and it’s still pretty cool in summer. There’s a ton of snow that many people don’t know about. Lake Superior sees to all this. There were great satellite shots of great lakes ice from Mar 8, btw.

  33. “The chairman of the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee, Arizona Democrat Rep. Raul Grijalva, said the changes would benefit former clients of Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Bernhardt worked as an oil and gas industry lobbyist before joining the Trump administration. Grijalva said in a statement that the administration’s decision represented “a smash-and-grab-job on our environment.””

    This is what you get when you naively make assumptions about ‘unprecedented collaboration’ to save this bird. You are lied to. Easing restrictions? There were never any to begin with, were they?

    And I hope that the “Acting Secretary” and his conflicts of interest are challenged by somebody, anybody.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-eases-land-restrictions-meant-to-protect-bird-in-west/ar-BBUOuJH?OCID=ansmsnnews11

  34. Here is a new study done at the South Dakota State University, concerning Imidacoprid, an insecticide also called a neonicotinoid and what exposure does to female white-tailed deer and their developing young. Neonics kill birds, beneficial insects, like bees, butterflies and lot of others, and according to this study, apparently kills and maims the young of large grazing animals. Since it has such a serious affect on females, fetuses and young of a large mammal, it likely has adverse effects on human fetuses and newborns. One of the birth defects it caused on the study white-tailed deer is also high in prevalence on other wild grazing animals, including pronghorn antelope, mule deer, bighorn sheep, mountain goat and all other commonly observed wild ruminants that are found in Montana(except for woodland caribou – no caribou were observed at all). Underbite on individuals was also observed on all wild ruminants in Wyoming, Idaho and other western states, but prevalence in states other than Montana is unknown.
    (2019) 9:4534 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-40994-9 1

  35. news from Colorado

    Federal government quietly establishes wolf conservation area that includes Grand County
    https://www.skyhinews.com/news/federal-government-quietly-establishes-wolf-conservation-area-that-includes-grand-county/

    Throughout Grand County, few local officials were aware of the existence of the wolf conservation area. Local government officials said they were still searching for any correspondence they had received from the federal government regarding the establishment of the conservation area as of Monday afternoon.

    “We have a history of wolves entering Colorado throughout this area,” explained Martin Lowney, state director for APHIS’s Wildlife Services in Colorado. “That is why they created this wolf conservation area. They are going the extra mile to protect any wolves that do enter Colorado.”

    Jennifer Strickland, spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages endangered species for the federal government, said the conservation area matches an easily defined area where wolves have been observed in previous years. It includes all of Grand, Jackson, Gilpin and Boulder counties and portions of Moffat, Routt, Eagle, Summit, Clear Creek, Jefferson, Adams and Larimer counties.

    1. “Federal employees, and the general public, are already restricted from killing, trapping or harming wolves in Colorado due to their designation as an endangered species.”

      But if they are delisted in the lower 48, all bets are off. When did this happen, anyway?

      But how convenient to blow a little smoke out there about wolves being protected, so that delisting and recover will be easier to sell to the public. And there are no documented wolves in Colorado (at least that haven’t already been shot) that I am aware of?

      There are so many twists and turns in this article I can’t keep track.

      I did like the line though that “local officials were still searching for any correspondence they had received from the federal government regarding the establishment of the conservation area as of Monday afternoon.” (see below)

      “Throughout Grand County, few local officials were aware of the existence of the wolf conservation area. Local government officials said they were still searching for any correspondence they had received from the federal government regarding the establishment of the conservation area as of Monday afternoon.”

      Thanks for posting this, Mareks.

      1. “When did this happen, anyway?”

        The wolf conservation area formally went into effect in November 2016.

        Colorado has a migratory wolf plan, essentially stating that until a management plan can be enacted, they are protected.

        1. Huh. I wonder how it will work if there is a national delisting, if the states are not ready for a delisting and do not have a management plan in place. I know Oregon is working fast and furiously. 🙁

      2. ^^or no documented pack(s) being tracked. “Observations” only do not count?

  36. Is Wolf Reintroduction Right for Colorado?

    A SPECIAL, MULTI-PART PLENARY SESSION ORGANIZED BY ASSISTANT PROF. REBECCA NIEMIEC (COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY) AND PROF. JEREMY BRUSKOTTER (OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY)

    Pathways 2019: Human Dimensions of Wildlife Conference and Training, hosted by Colorado State University and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be held from September 22nd-26th, 2019

    https://sites.warnercnr.colostate.edu/pathways/wolf-reintroduction-symposium/

    PLENARY SPEAKERS:
    Mike Phillips

    Turner Endangered Species Fund

    Jeremy Bruskotter

    Ohio State University

    Terry Fankhauser

    Colorado Cattleman’s Association

    John Vucetich

    Michigan Technological University
    Suzanne Stone

    Defenders of Wildlife

    John Duffield

    University of Montana

    Richard Knight

    Colorado State University

    Martin Nie

    University of Montana

  37. And then there’s this.

    https://www.denverpost.com/2016/01/13/colorado-turns-cold-shoulder-to-endangered-wolves/

    So it’s confusing. The state is against reintroduction, but seems to be saying that they would tolerate natural migration? Still, with no documented wolves (that are alive), they cannot be considered recovered. UT is the same story. And I’d love to see them in the Northeast Kingdom of New England at the border of Canada. It’s not very straightforward to push for a delisting.

    “Colorado still has a policy that it will take care of any wolf that wanders into the state on its own. The issue is intentionally releasing them.”

    This sentence was not very thorough then. To wildlife advocates, it sounds like eliminating them.

      1. Wow is right. But what is not so great is the passed and signed bill taking so much money from the EPA, right when the EPA needs to address the birth defects on the wildlife and the disappearance of the insects, which so many other species need for food. We, of course, need many beneficial insects for pollination and the other $57 billion a year in services to our economy that insects provide. Wildlife watching and hunting provide a huge amount of money to people also, so loosing birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals will not be good either.

  38. https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/MIDNR/bulletins/22f58b9
    is about restoration efforts on upper Michigan’s Menominee river, which is an incredible place. Slowly it gets done.
    Menominee is “wild rice people”, and maybe you’ve heard wild rice called manoomin (food-that-grows-on-the-water). It is holy stuff. Menominee is now also the name for one of our endemic medium-sized whitefish that are pretty tasty.

  39. https://www.fishwildlife.org/application/files/5215/3729/1805/AFWA_CWD_BMPS_12_September_2018_FINAL.pdf
    It’s this “association of fish and wildlife agencies” group, and they can speak their minds pretty much free of politics and what pesky consumers (like hunters) think, cause it is not in their official capacity, and somewhat anonymous. The ox has been taken off their tongues.
    It’s their best practice guide for CWD and it is harsh. No movement of deer. No movement of deer semen even. I liked it allot. When hunters disagree with me (and they constantly do about CWD – they are horrible at epidemiology mostly), I can point to this. You can too. Emoji.

    1. We are not far behind. Perhaps we’re not swallowing plastic bags, we are investigating micro plastics. In time they will accumulate to a choking point.

  40. Wolves living in proximity to humans

    Summary of a first enquiry on wolf behaviour
    near humans in Europe
    https://www.kora.ch/fileadmin/file_sharing/5_Bibliothek/52_KORA_Publikationen/520_KORA_Berichte/KORA_Bericht_76_Wolves_living_in_proximity_to_humans.pdf

    Answers were received from all 31 contacted countries, with 28 having resident wolf packs. All those 28 countries reported that at least some of their packs had established their territory close to or even including settlements, and had reports of wolves approaching habitations. 14 countries also had reports of wolves approaching people. Often these were exceptional cases, or witness reports that could not be independently verified.
    Aggressive behaviour towards humans was reported from 12 countries. The vast majority of such behaviour was assessed by the contacts to originate either from rabid wolves, or wolves that had to defend themselves. Only one contact from Spain reported the occurrence of unprovoked attacks of wolves on humans, the last of which had occurred in 1975. In no case was confirmed aggression towards humans directly related to the observation of wolves repeatedly showing up in/near settlements or repeatedly approaching humans

    1. Good to read! With CWD spreading, we can no longer continue with business as usual in these states.

  41. “If the Colorado River reservoirs keep going down and down and down, then two sectors will feel the brunt of the pain: the environment and people in poverty. Those are the two that always, globally, when there is water stress, feel the pain disproportionately,” Eklund said. “We’re trying, with this contingency plan, to go a different route that allows us to manage our water and the river system so that it stays healthy longer. It allows us to keep away from that acute crisis that, if history is any guide, would hit hardest on the environment and people in poverty.”

    https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/19/colorado-river-drought-contingency-plan/

  42. ^^It’s almost like an “and so it begins” moment, with the realization of the effects of climate change.

    1. Please review the drought section around 20:00! Also pay attention to where his data comes from!

        1. Nancy, the data says nature has been nature for longer than you and I have been on this earth! Give it up…

          Like the CA fires…. They are still fighting over what caused the huge outbreak! The last couple of years.

          https://abcnews.go.com/US/intentionally-set-california-wildfires/story?id=23744146

          Wouldn’t surprise me if it were some environmental wacko running around lighting fires when the fire warnings hit red…. It’s like telling them when to start the fire! ….. THEN, they have the audacity to blame “climate change” when they know full well the ALMOST EVERY YEAR they have dry spells and projected wind conditions that will produce these types of fires!

          1. What a fool you are. Casting doubt when everyone should doubt everything you say. It’s well known now how you support poaching. It’s well known now that you are a liar. Wouldn’t surprise me if YOU are a poacher. LIAR!

            1. Hiker – a reminder, Mat-ters knows what he is but he just can’t help himself:

              “In Internet slang, a troll is a person who starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract and sow discord by posting inflammatory and digressive,[1] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into displaying emotional responses[2] and normalizing tangential discussion,[3] whether for the troll’s amusement or a specific gain”

              Best to counter his vitriol with factual information/links.

              https://theconversation.com/what-i-learned-from-debating-science-with-trolls-30514

                1. HA! The Troll sticks his head out from under the bridge! What a joke you are! No one here believes anything you post, we know now how much you lie. Also, anyone who supports poaching on a wildlife site is truly an idiot.

                2. It’s interesting that you counter a supposed shell game with another shell game, sponsored/co-sponsored by The Heartland Institue. Just from the first few minutes.

                  The Polar Bear population increase. Your guy says in 1960’s there were only 5-6 thousand polar bears, now there are 20-25 thousand. He may have low-balled the 60’s population, then add to this an unsophisticated sampling technique compared to today, and also the fact that there was hunting of polar bears in the 60’s was not well regulated.

                  This next comment is just plane wrong. With added CO2 to atmosphere, plants increase growth rate and need less water. Biology/Chemistry 101 show this is wrong. The balanced equation for photosynthesis follows.
                  6CO2 + 6H2O —> C6H12O6 + 6O2.
                  Or for every 6 molecules of carbon dioxide photosynthesis requires 6 molecules of water.

                  Plus this from Scientific American

                  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-does-rising-co2-benefit-plants1/

                3. Keen falls prey to the old law pratfall of not know the answer to a question when you ask it “ how do you explain the spread of Yellow Fever in the North to a city like Philadelphia in 1790’s”

                  https://hsp.org/education/unit-plans/diagnosing-and-treating-yellow-fever-in-philadelphia-1793

                  The summer was the hottest in years. The humidity was hardly bearable. The muddy swamps of Philadelphia spawned round after round of mosquitoes which relentlessly assaulted their human blood meals. An eerie chill bestowed the empty streets of Philadelphia as the only sound heard is of the carriages making their rounds to pick up the dead.

                4. Two birds with one stone: William Happer and carbon/carbon dioxide.

                  https://www.npr.org/2019/03/01/698073442/heres-the-white-houses-top-climate-change-skeptic

                  Within a presentation in Dublin Happer claimed that fossil fuel power plants emit no pollution, and equated their CO2 emissions with a human exhaling. His inability to distinguish between CO2 in the current carbon cycle versus injecting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the oxidation of carbon stored in the ground for millions of years is a standard denier sleight of hand, and is also used in your presentation.

                5. Immer, two things on climate change:

                  Polar bears, I’m sure that the natives are already sick of bears that have become habituated and learning that humans are not a threat….and the continuance of issues & waste of government resources to take care of wayward bears. No matter which way you look at it the numbers of bears & their ecological health are not an issue. Those that try to use the polar bear as a symbol of “climate change” do the cause of climate change more harm then good… rightfully so!

                  “Carbon” and H2O, using the strawmans argument via going to water usage (irrelevant) and ignoring everything else is quite the laugher Immer! As was said in the video, those that use the word “carbon” in place of “carbon dioxide” show their hand as a partisan hack! I’m OK with getting the word out!

                  *****************

                  Keep up the good work of speaking for the liberal cause of climate change…. I laugh when they say the right has gone to far right….. THEN the lib talk reparations, abortion up until birth (and after if your the NC Gov), medicare for all, abolishing the electoral college, universal basic income, free healthcare, free tuition and my favorite open unfettered boarders!

                6. Classic Matters redirect! Stick to the point dumb troll!
                  Or do you want to debate the liberal agenda? On a wildlife site? All right, no one said health care or tuition would be free, taxes would pay for it. Or would you rather fund endless wars, lots of weapons, and illegal CIA takeovers? There’s a reason Iran hates us. Their ELECTED leader was assassinated by the CIA so we could install our own choice for leader. Maybe the average taxpayer is tired of funding all this nonsense so rich people can get richer.

                7. ““Carbon” and H2O, using the strawmans argument via going to water usage (irrelevant) and ignoring everything else is quite the laugher Immer! As was said in the video, those that use the word “carbon” in place of “carbon dioxide” show their hand as a partisan hack! I’m OK with getting the word out!”

                  Please do get the word out. As per the Keeling cycle, the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere has to come from somewhere. The only answer to that that I am aware, is from carbon locked deep within the earth, that we burn (oxidize) and is released as CO2 to the atmospher, and the increase of atmospheric CO2 has been well documented. There is no straw man there.

                  Water. It is not irrelevant. Without water, no photosynthesis. There is a comment during your video where one of them says CO2 will increase plant growth rate and require less water. This is impossible, as in the equation I provided for you. It is physically and chemically impossible to increase plant CO2 uptake without a corresponding increase in water uptake. And his doesn’t even factor in other plant requirements such as nitrogen.

                8. Hiker, I agree that wildlife is the focus…. Pointing out that “climate change” is all part of a pathetic liberal agenda is not “redirecting”…. IT’S pointing out that “climate change” is all part of a pathetic liberal agenda! YOU’RE the one that discarded & redirected the MAJORITY of my post and argument made on polar bears and carbon to go after my spot on liberal agenda summation.

                  The fact that Immer felt the need to post three times on the Heartland rebuttal speaks volumes to what those PHD’s and climate experts had to say! TALK ABOUT REDIRECTING…..
                  hahhahahahh

                9. Mat-ters,
                  To be honest, I really have no agenda, and my bottom line is fairly consistent with the point made 2-3 times in the video you shared, and that is we are going through a period of global warming, and per the video, Man is contributing to the warming. The question is how much is the contribution, and to what extent said contributions will have on future global climate patterns.

                  Where I come to differ with them, were points they presented that were wrong. I’m not a specialist by any means in climatology, but if I can pick out errors in the presentation, an expert in the field could probably write pages on their, errors, inconsistencies, misinformation, and assumptions without knowing the answers.

                10. In all seriousness, Hiker, Immer, Nancy….. what exactly are your predictions as far as the future a catastrophic future?

                  Are we dead in 11 year 10 months….?

                  Is there any truth to the rights assertion that MOST of the hype comes from a bureaucracy hungry for unlimited tax dollars and power?

                  Do you believe in shutting down decent in regards to climate change?

                  Is this issue the biggest issue we face & where does it stack up with our national debt!

                11. Alright Matters, polar bears. What right does a poaching lover like you have to speak about what natives like or dislike? When you label natural creatures as “vermin” and “disgusting” and advocate for poaching them you lose ALL credibility.

                  You have shown time and again what a liar you are. Your posts are full of lies and misinformation. Why should we even listen to videos you post. I wouldn’t trust ANYTHING you post.

                12. Good questions Matters. In all seriousness I do NOT have any predications. I hope for the best and soldier on. I do my small part so my Niece and Great Niece can ask “What did you do when the world changed?” I would have an answer for them.
                  Would your answer be like this? “Well children tried to destroy the last wild places with my narrow minded vision.”

                13. The fact that Immer felt the need to post three times on the Heartland rebuttal speaks volumes to what those PHD’s and climate experts had to say! TALK ABOUT REDIRECTING…..
                  hahhahahahh

                14. Try that again.

                  Mat-ters,
                  “The fact that Immer felt the need to post three times on the Heartland rebuttal speaks volumes to what those PHD’s and climate experts had to say! TALK ABOUT REDIRECTING…..”

                  I really have no agenda in regard to global warming. In your video, they admitted, I believe three times, that temperatures are warming, and that man is contributing to that warming. I agree with that. They’re take is that it’s nothing to be alarmed about, and to be honest, I’m still weighing that issue back and forth. I’m not an alarmist, but as the world sits today, if the alarmist’s predictions hold true, then people are in for a world of hurt.

                  The panel made mistakes, they were sloppy, and their quantification too often fell on the word lots.

                  Yes, I posted 3 times on a number of different issues in the video you presented, and pointed out errors, assumptions, and misinformation. No misdirecting, but direct responses to the video you shared. Each post contained one or two items so it would be more digestible for the purpose of any type of discussion they might generate. There could have been more. I would predict that someone who is more attuned to the whole climate change/global warming topic would shred the talking points used in that video.

                15. You’re right, I do need to get back to my books….. Spending around $250 on books & working in conjunction with our library I have quite a few interesting books on the docket. I asked about what books you folks have for suggestions on “climate change” and all I got were crickets …..

                  In the middle of Abby Johnson’s unPlanned. Makes one sure that I’m on the unequivocal right side of history on that subject! I’ve always felt that to be my #1 issue when voting and has shaped my views on liberal immorality.

                  It doesn’t look like you, or anyone here, will respond and give intellectual answers to my simple ecological / climate questions….. go figure!

                16. Mat-ters, I did not respond to your global warming question because I think that human overpopulation, habitat destruction and most of all, the application of billions of pounds of pesticides toxic to all life will cause global extinction of life as we know it long before global warming or climate change or whatever you want to call it. Meanwhile, exposure to small doses of Roundup/glyphosate for example causes a significant drop in spermatogenesis, particularly in mammals. Perinatal exposure to glyphosate and a glyphosate-based herbicide affect spermatogenesis in mice. Ha Pham, Thu & Derian, Lohann & Kervarrec, Christine & Kernanec, Pierre-Yves & Jegou, Bernard & Smagulova, Fatima & Gely-Pernot, Aurore. (2019) and I posted the new study concerning neonics that shows very small doses of those insecticides cause facial bone malformations and reproductive malformations. Humans can get around the problems that these chemicals cause, but the wildlife don’t have doctors who help them get pregnant. Also, the neonics kill fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals and the insects that many of those need for food, and keep the flowering plants from being pollinated by killing all the pollinators, insect, bird and mammal. We are now in a serious extinction period. If we don’t fix it, we will go too.

                17. Matters, in the past I would have tried debating you. I gave up when, on April 1st, you admitted, finally after lots of misdirection and lies, that you support poaching of wolves. You have yet to debate ME on that, so Matters you are at a crossroads. Continue your evil ways and suffer the consequences, or disavow your unholy belief in the destruction of the last of the WILD. Till then I will not debate you, but continue to label you the fraud you are.

                18. Immer, thanks for being honest about “alarmist” and your stance.

                  Personally time is running out for alarmist for these models they push can be backdated and checked for accuracy! My push is going to be to defund the losers that have already predicted catastrophe for dates that have gone by….. they should be weeded out along with those that lie…. like John Kerry did in saying 97% are alarmist.

                  https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexepstein/2015/01/06/97-of-climate-scientists-agree-is-100-wrong/#79cd0653f9ff

                  Hiker, when you have a “lie” / “liar” that stands up to real rhetoric I’m willing to admit I’m wrong and will no longer “lie”…….as I’ve said numerous time!

                19. Thanks??? For what, being on guard, and trying to help out where/when I can. Attempting to act locally while thinking globally.

                  Your video still contains percentages of meteorologists poled with 50% weighing in that warming is/will be harmful and thirty percent are very concerned, not a majority, but enough to raise a concern for the future.

                  Even your Emma Marris addresses this concern in her book Rambunctious Garden. But to be completely honest here, you only seem to emphasize what you agree with, not with what you disagree when you put forth people like Marris, such as her piece that wolf culls will not save caribou, and the errors made in your video.

                20. Matters, you have a dilemma. Once you lie, who will believe you about anything? You constantly lie and post liars to support your lies. Please, go back to church and ask about what you should do about your sins.

                21. Hiker, thanks for your honesty for not debating me because you have a different view than the majority of Montanans who supported their Governors when he told his ranchers to start poaching and that any state employee that helped the feds no longer had a job!

                  Immer, “I’m not an alarmist” that’s being honest…. thanks for being honest…. I’m not surprised that you took offense to me thanking you! It’s like Joe Biden taking back his approving comments of Mike Pense character.

                22. 22,
                  Your thanks isn’t necessary, all I did was answer a question. My honesty is not adjusted per your approval.

                23. Judy, thanks for the response. I have an open mind as far as your interest in issues of animal deformation & loss of pollinators. We live on the edge of apple country & had a almost complete failure of my apple crop ~two years ago…. (20 plus apple trees) Last year we fully pollinated. The year we lost the Apple crop we had a frost at almost full bloom. The foolish “climate change” fanatic would blame CC…. but, I know that Grandpa warned and I have experience such failures around once every “dozen” years or so …. as Grandpa pass down to me what his grandpa passed to him. I had one failure in 2001 that wasn’t as bad as two years ago…..1996 was very poor also.

                24. Matters, I refuse to debate those who constantly lie and add stupid remarks about those who supposedly support their lies. Once you said you didn’t hate wolves. Then you said they were vermin and disgusting. Then you support illegally killing them. And that’s not HATE? Once you expressed concern about animals suffering the next day (maybe the same day) you support poaching. I wonder how you keep all these contradictions straight? You are morally bankrupt and the only reason I answer your posts is so that others will realize how much of a fraud you are.
                  Oh… WWJD!!!

              1. Nancy, This weeks message on the 5th Sunday of lent was the story of how Jesus treated the adulterous woman they brought to him. They questioned Jesus and told him that the law was that she was to be stoned…. They were trying to trick him into condemning the woman for a unjust law. After being pressed Jesus understood what they were trying to do in trying to trick him into condemnation of the woman. Jesus responded with “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” As the crowd left one by one, “Jesus straightened up and asked her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ ‘No one, sir,’ she said. ‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.”

                Do you think Hiker has an equidistant parallel to this story in his “poaching” interrogation of me & r22?

                Knowing that depredation is not spread evenly to all ranchers & that managing wolves is an inescapable inevitability …. do you think unjust laws that support no limit predator protection corresponds to my stance? Did Jesus commit adultery?

                Hiker, Did Jesus commit adultery?

                1. The master Troll speaks of stories from 2,000 years ago and seeks to apply them to his own support for poaching.
                  The REAL question is, is having poaching illegal unjust? Is it unjust of the American people to expect poachers to be prosecuted? If YOU were caught poaching I would expect the maximum sentence. How can I justify that? I am NOT guilty of poaching, which is a just law. You have sunk your own argument. Having poaching illegal IS JUST.
                  You have no basis in law or religion to stand on.

                  Now, go back under your bridge where you belong, TROLL!

      1. Don’t listen to anything this person says. He is a liar and supports poachers.

    1. I have seen one or two studies where coyote removal did work for increasing deer, a bit, and that’s not so surprising. Such paper always note that it’s not practical though. The amount of effort required (trapping them to smithereens) to get an effect size big enough to notice is too great. The biologists know this, so why some states like Utah and North Carolina try to increase coyote killing seems entire performative – a performance for hunters. Look, we are doing something (even if it is ineffective).

  43. All of the articles plainly state that one year isn’t enough to plan for the future and future growth in an arid part of the country. The Colorado River has been overused for decades:

    “But Burman warned Tuesday that one wet year doesn’t erase 18 years of the driest period on the river in 1,200 years.
    “It takes years to recover from the type of intense drought this region has experienced,” he said.”

    https://www.ksl.com/article/46514143

  44. In case anyone had any doubt:

    “They were doing quite well,” says Peter Alagona, an associate professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Barbara and the founder/facilitator of the Grizzly Research Network. “It was Anglo-American colonization – shooting, poisoning, other forms of persecution – that drove the population from 10,000 to zero within 75 years, one human lifetime.”

    http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/news/cover/the-california-grizzly-has-been-extinct-for-a-generation-now/article_3e229a40-4b4d-11e9-bbe1-87d7b51bf82d.html

    But if this were to happen, I personally would not need to visit any other state than California. Who could ask for more –

            1. No place in history ever had a better law than the ESA. Wildlife are precious, people like you, that support poaching and taking the law into their own hands, are not. If you think the U.S.A. is bad because of the ESA…please leave. Oh by the way…YOU ARE A LIAR!!! DENY IT AGAIN, LIAR!!!

          1. Anything you post is disregarded by me. No one should read what you write, you can’t be trusted. You support poachers. You are a lying rat. You are pure evil.

  45. For my TWN friends who believe Native Americans are all law abiding, even observing treaty rights themselves. Here is an incident where a Yakama Tribal member uses his own tribal government to assert an alleged treaty right in Puget Sound (which is about 160 miles away. And, importantly, the Columbia River does not empty into Puget Sound, it empties into the Pacific Ocean at the WA 0R border, which is not hydrologically connected to Puget Sound.

    Scum bag Yakama thief stealing from other tribes and non-Indian fishers. I think I have mentioned before the Yakamas are often bullies because they are one of the largest, if not largest, tribes in the Northwest. Lots of self-dealing, but often not reported (or caught doing the illegal stuff they do that affects us all).

    https://www.kitsapsun.com/story/news/2019/03/20/yakama-tribal-member-faces-felony-fishing-puget-sound/3189516002/

      1. an interesting and educational case:

        David Sohappy (1925-1991)

        https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/sohappy_david_1925_1991_/#.XJTR0Sj7QdU

        By the mid-1960s, Oregon and Washington had been prosecuting tribal fishers for fifty years, claiming that treaty rights did not exempt Indians from state regulation. In 1968, tired of shouldering the burden of conservation and the blame for depleted salmon populations, Sohappy and thirteen others filed a lawsuit against Oregon Fish Commissioner McKee Smith to prevent further state interference with their rights under the 1855 Yakama treaty.

    1. Awful harsh there WM. Your rant doesn’t fit with the peace loving, ecological harmonious wolf loving narrative we typically see here…. better tone it down a little or your 1st amendment rights will be tossed into the comment ash heap.

      Do ya think think one tribe should be able to get reparations from others for enslaving natives??

      https://www.salon.com/2019/03/19/reparations-are-overdue-confronting-the-truth-about-slavery-means-paying-for-it/

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_among_Native_Americans_in_the_United_States

      1. Matters, only you could say “better tone it down a little or your 1st amendment rights will be tossed into the comment ash heap.”
        Comment all you like, no one is stopping you. No one stops my response to your stupidity either.

      2. What u seem to not grasp is that this website is private property the same as a persons house, so you, I and anyone else does not have ” 1st amendment rights” when commenting here.
        Dumb ass

        1. Jeffie Jeffie Jeffie, Only a tonto el-buro thinks I believe that Ralph doesn’t have a right to manage his web site the way he wants….. BUT, if your paying attention, and reading closely you will see that what I did say is that when you stray to far from the narrative you might get yanked …… the first amendment thing is pure mocking derision… now were back to the tonto el buro….. you see Jeffie, like “climate change” trying to kill decent ONLY heightens decent. Watch this video … around 7:32 9:10 and bad either!

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_crkSnRa4o

          The only advice I have for conservatives and “deniers” is to get those that claim “catastrophe” on record ….. time is running out…. AOC was a tonto el buro when she said 12 years were dead! She’s already down to 11 years 11 months!

          1. Matters, “pure mocking derision” is always a good way of persuading others, NOT! Not to mention your constant condescending manner. You need to look around for that rock you’ve been under, you might be safer there.

            1. Hiker, Yup back to the rock for more reading. Any books you recommend?

              I’m looking for a good read on Climate change….. here is a good video for ya.

              1. Matters, don’t know any books I can recommend. But I know a great movie about climate change called “The Day After Tomorrow”. Joking of course, but parts of it are amusing.

  46. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29695429/
    B Race et al. Lack of Transmission of Chronic Wasting Disease to Cynomolgus Macaques. Journal of Virology DOI: 10.1128/JVI.00550-18 (2018). Failure even with intracerebral innoculation.

    https://isthmus.com/news/cover-story/new-study-raises-concerns-over-cwd-transmission/ was a fairly interesting article from before that, that came after the canadian study. It has interesting things to say about management in WI, IL, MI. Beware of stuff from Don Davis though – he is a spokescreature for deer farmers (as is James Kroll). I have assembled CWD data from counties in IL and WI btw. One of those states has keep prevalence down much better than the other one, that listened to hunters and where politicians meddled (as they are threatening to do in MI).

  47. People may not get it, but hunters need to be careful about how they handle and dispose when field dressing (as euphemistic as I can call it) so as not to spread the disease in the soil where it remains.

    We’ve all seen the young woman from CO waving her bloody hands around for the camera, and another hunter profiled in the NYT not wearing gloves either. No chest beating is necessary to prove you are a hunter. 🙁

    1. I do not wear gloves. They’d have to go up past my elbows. The guts are not where the most prion action is, though there are other things to worry about (tuberculosis, parasites). Where I live, when you gut a deer, it’s almost always within 50 yards of water.
      I have considered taking the guts home now, cause I’ve been making sausages lately. It’s allot of fun and I can make them more to my tastes than anything I can buy (and cheaply). I’ve always taken the liver, heart, tongue, kidneys. Why I’ve ignored the lungs up til now is a mystery too (except that they are usually shot up). The gut itself was always just too much work when you are very busy to begin with but I’ve been feeling kinda dumb lately when buying “casings” and such from domestic animals. The blood would be challenging. My relatives make fantastic things with all these parts from cows and pigs. It’s work.

      1. I’m no fan of hunting as I’ve said before, but this is all you could ask of those who do hunt – hunting for food to eat, not wasteful and using all of it, and showing a respect for the animal.

  48. ^^or if a carnivore or scavenger feeds on the carcass or gut piles and spreads it that way.

        1. Since the first epidemic of Weak Calf Syndrome in 1969, the thyroid hormone disruption that causes WCS has killed millions and millions of calves. Very little has been done to stop it and calves still die of WCS every spring. I grew up on a ranch in South Dakota. We never had anything like WCS in our calves. No underbite, no underdeveloped or damaged thymus, no heart defects, no disrupted mitochondria, no metabolic acidosis and no contracted tendons, etc. that are symptoms of thyroid hormone disruption during fetal development. Those are also all symptoms of Weak Calf Syndrome, which I repeat, has killed millions of calve in just the last 20 years, not to mention the many millions killed in the 30 years prior to that. Thyroid hormone disruption and thus, Weak Calf Syndrome is caused by exposure to pesticides (umbrella term) in the air, on the foliage they eat and in the water they drink. Thus, who is responsible for those many millions of calf deaths? Not wolves!

        2. Yup, acting like 31 confirmed depredations are all the rancher has to deal with is absurd! We always have to understand that depredations are not distributed equally among ranchers. Those on the frontline EVEN WITH excellent deterrents will feel the pain of wolves before others in the same drainage.

          From the web: “Non-recognition of the true loses of the ranchers on the front lines with wolves only hardens resentment of those that have to live with the vermin. Those that try to get you to think the only damage done by wolves is the confirmed depredations that’s blathered in propaganda posts need to be held accountable. Confirmed depredations are only a small fraction of true depredation. Dr Mech puts it at only ONE in six. THAT’S right only one in six, that means that the ranchers are taking a hit on FIVE livestock for every confirmed wolf kill. Rancher records say this is much higher, they say it’s more like one in twenty. Then you have fixing fences, lacerated livestock from running through those fences. Lost sleep thinking about what the morning will bring. Those that fall for the “confirmed” depredations as being true rancher loses are either gullible OR the one spreading such nonsense. A many of ranchers have been told that a wolf had ate their pet or livestock, but, did it kill it? They must prove signs of struggle in order to have a depredation “confirmed”. States like Oregon and Washington have put even STRICTER rules to follow in order to get a confirmation. When calves are ate from head to tail….. it’s hard to confirm a dead calf when a pack of wolves ate everything and all you have left is an angry mother cow with lacerations from running through fences and the loss of the dead calf AND their current pregnancy. Yes, cows will abort their pregnancy when they are running for their lives and complete stress and panic from the bawling of the calf as it is ate alive. This is how groups like the HSUS love animals. These same people expect ranchers to absorb the costs to move cattle to safer places NIGHTLY. Only ranchers understand how edgy and hard to work with cattle that have been stressed by wolves can be…. this does not only affect the dead ones! General lose of weight for yearlings that are raised in a wolf saturated environment is common knowledge. Acting like confirmed depredations is the only issues wolves cause are impeachable offences for the leaders of true conservation groups…..any groups that doesn’t recognize this truth should be labeled as a hate group. Recognition that MAN has always been a balancer of the ecosystem with regards to wolves is a must. MAN has been killing wolves here in North America of at least 12000 years. Leaving out MAN and creating predator pits in the wake of unnatural predator predation and destruction of healthy game herds is unacceptable. “

          1. Like I said, thousands of elk calves were killed by exposure to something after 1994 that caused multiple birth defects, disruption of the mitochondria and high mortality. Since the new SD study was published, Imidacloprid is a strong suspect. Imidacloprid is spread around in large amounts by humans. That has not been happening for 12,000 years. Everyone ignores the effects of the pesticides at their own risk and at the risk of their children and grandchildren. The Imidacloprid appears to seriously damage children as well as killing all life they depend on for their continued existence. Millions of cattle and especially calves have been killed by the birth defects and other adverse health issues caused by the pesticides, far more than any wolves can kill. Doesn’t that matter to anyone? Does the ranchers get reimbursed for the loss of his calves to pesticide exposure?

          2. It sounds like you are quoting yourself Matters.
            Let’s do the math: you say it’s 1 to 6, so 31 kills is really 186. Stop the presses!!!! 186 were maybe killed by wolves!!! Cows lost weight, injuries occurred, blah, blah, poor ranchers (the richest welfare recipients)! If you want us to feel bad for them then give a more balanced approach. Admit that many more cattle are lost TO OTHER CAUSES, not wolves. How did one storm kill 1600 dairy cows? Answer that for me please.
            Also, unless you are a time traveler, you have NO idea how many wolves were killed on this continent during the past 12,000 years. That’s just one more BULLSHIT argument that makes me lose respect for ANYTHING you say.

            1. It was 1800 cattle, hiker, not 1600. It was under 2% of the cattle in the valley. Knowing cattle (especially dairy cattle) as I do, most dairy farmers are insured for these types of losses which are rare. Just think if you extrapolate the wolf depredation losses of one of the MI rancher that gave up on protecting his cattle from wolves after years of dealing with the vermin and showed the world the results of these disgusting animals. Extrapolate those losses to the Yakima herd they would kill 40,000 EVERY YEAR! YES EVERY YEAR. That’s what unfettered depredation looks like and is the vision for wolves we see here!

              1. Matters, very interesting, you have shown how you really feel about wolves. After writing many times here that you do NOT hate wolves, you call them “disgusting animals”. Very revealing.
                Also, who here has ever advocated for “unfettered depredation”. If wolves EVER “kill 40,000 EVERY YEAR” I would be one of the first to say they should be stopped.

                However, why should we support ranchers who don’t pay enough to graze on OUR public lands? They overgraze then demand that ALL predators should be “managed” (killed) to benefit them. All the while they are covered as you say “are insured for these types of losses”.

                1. I may be talking to myself, since no one responds, but far more than 40,000 calves die from fetal exposure to pesticides (umbrella term), especially neonicotinoids and Roundup, EVERY YEAR in the United States. I don’t understand why anyone gets bent out of shape over a couple hundred head (except for the owner of those dead cattle, of course). No one ever gets payed for the calves killed by pesticides, but they do get paid for wolf kills.

                2. Sorry Judy, I do read your posts and agree with them 100% I buy organic everything for years now. I worked for the National Park Service most of my life in part to escape pollution you describe. I have never bought or used any herbicides or pesticides. I use sonic devices to keep bugs out of my home(not 100% effective, but I would rather smoosh a cockroach with my bare hands then spray anything). I mostly respond to crap I disagree with, maybe I should change that.

              2. Using the word disgusting to describe something that is natural is typical for someone with such a narrow mind. It’s a human value you are putting on something that is not human. It’s like saying the sun is disgusting if you are too hot! Or a hurricane is disgusting for destroying a city! Wolves are NOT disgusting, they are natural. Unlike you’re twisted logic.

            2. One more thing on your “bu!!s#it” argument ignorance. I’m honored that you don’t have “respect” for me because I and others point out that for 12000 years man has been killing predators. First off there IS archaeological evidence of this. You can’t run from it…. what is in native american discard pits don’t lie. Next, we have the actual evidence from early trade with natives. It is utterly laughable to think natives only started killing predators and raided dens when Europeans arrived. Lastly, the general theme for all areas that have wolves is that the local people want and do support management of the vermin. From the UP of Michigan to those living in Northern WI to the ranchers living with them outwest. EVEN immers haunt in NE Minnesota has supporters of management. TO think that local bands of natives that observed and had an opportunistic environment to manage predator DIDN”T shows lack of understanding of the human condition! Its about the same as those that support the utopia of “socialism” policy and actually expect it to work!

              1. I would add that humans have been killing predators for a lot longer than 12,000 years.
                However, here in this country we seem to kill vast numbers of them to profit a few ranchers in the west. If cowboys are so independent and hate the government why do they rely on it to do so much of its dirty work? I say stop killing predators on our public land to benefit these very few welfare ranchers! Talk about “socialism”! Let those ranchers pay! Why should I?

                1. Hiker, Your comment reminds me of the idiocy of AOC’s comment about Amazons $3 billion in tax breaks and subsidies….. She is quoted as saying that NY should use that money for things like for schools and infrastructure. What a JOKE! & the biased media lacky’s didn’t cover it the way they should have! It’s extremely sad that leftist can’t comprehend that her advocacy and the pullout of Amazon LOST New York on 20 some BILLION dollars in tax base increase (of which Amazon only wanted a break of 3B)!

                  Do you actually believe that ranchers are on welfare? If you do, then you deserve local representatives that will get your infrastructure and school funding from vaporized Amazon tax breaks!

                  Do you really believe these limited part-time BLM leases used by local ranchers are of top value to the limited local ranchers? If you do, then you (JUST YOU) deserve a fully taxed food chain at every turn!

                  Do you really believe that part-time limited good timed cattle aren’t a good buffer for private lands and good for the wildlife and good for suppressing fire and good for the local school districts and good for the ecosystems! REALLY?

                2. Obviously YOU believe all those lies, so why does it matter if I do? After all YOU are always right here.

                  What else do you call a payment that is way less than what it used to be decades ago? Ranchers that need these breaks to survive are getting benefits at taxpayer expense. Hence the word welfare. I’m surprised that you are such a staunch supporter of this given your recent statements about socialism. I guess socialism is only bad when it’s for people you don’t really care about.

    1. 🙂 I forgot to add that Michigan’s Isle Royale and California are the most wildlife friendly states with places where I’d want to spend my traveling money.

      1. Even though Wyoming might not be viewed as wildlife friendly there are parts that are. I suggest Jackson Hole/Grand Teton N.P., especially last week of August. Bison are mating then (goto Antelope Flats), Moose (along the Snake River in the morning), and Elk (south of Taggert Lake in the evening). Go right before Labor day weekend, many kids are back in school and September has become busier lately. There’s also a good chance for bears throughout the park.

        1. Awwww, I do love Jackson Hole/Grand Teton NP – I don’t like to travel either in the crowded season, because it just takes away from the enjoyment – loud, rude, manners a thing of the distant past, etc. I would like to check out some of the areas you mention where I haven’t been, but I really have to think twice about supporting tourism in a state that abuses its wildlife.

          Still burned into my memory is when a couple of wolf haters, one an outfitter, drove into the Jackson Hole town square with a dead and bleeding wolf strapped to the hood of their pickup – while tourists took a few pictures.

          They meant to send a message – and they did.

          I do like meeting people when I travel, however – just not crowds.

          This was a cross between comical and tragic:

          https://www.thisisinsider.com/poppy-superbloom-called-poppy-apocalypse-because-tourists-walker-canyon-2019-3

  49. “Because Addeo was hunting in Wyoming’s wolf predator zone, where there are virtually no rules, a license was not necessary. The free-fire zone encompasses about 85 percent of the state. emphasis mine. The southern edge of the zone starts in Wilson, just south of Highway 22, for about half the year.

    Addeo could have shot all five wolves if he had the opportunity. The other four packmates, however, scampered off.”

    The outfitter, Sam Coutts, had contacted the jhnewsandguide to notify them of their location, and the guy who shot this wolf bragged and answered questions like he thought he was a celebrity! What an ego – but he just a notorious wolf hater.

    So I really cannot support WY tourism, if the state freely allows this. “But it was legal” just doesn’t cut it.

  50. Hi Hiker, sorry, I get a bit impatient. So many species are in serious fast decline (not because of wolves, Mat-ters) because of exposure to plastics and pesticides in the water everywhere and to pesticides on the foliage and in the air on land that it appears to me that we don’t have time to waste. Hiker, when you worked for the National Park Service, did you notice any birth defects on the animals in the park where you worked. On mountain goats and bighorn sheep in Glacier, the underbite defect appears to be quite prevalent. In YNP I have documented underbite with photos on nearly all of the wild ruminants, except interestingly, our study animal here in Western Montana, white-tailed deer. I was told by a Wyoming veterinarian that the bison are inbred and that is why they have malformed scrotum and underbite on so many. When I asked why all the other ruminants had quite a few animals with underbite in the population and birds have underbite, he hung up on me and didn’t answer the question.

    1. I honestly never noticed that on any animal. I even worked the sleigh rides on the National Elk Refuge in winter, so I got within 20 yards of many large elk and never noticed that. Not that I doubt what you have observed.

      1. Thank you Hiker. Actually, elk are more difficult to see an underbite on than some animals, unless the underbite is quite severe. Calves that have a severe underbite usually don’t survive to be seen, so only the elk with a mild underbite remain. The same is true of bison. Elk and bison almost have to be directly examined to see their underbite. The scrotums on elk (or actually short, misaligned or no scrotum) are difficult to see because of their long hair. However, the no scrotum and weird looking scrotums on bison males in YNP are very obvious. Unfortunately, no one notices because humans don’t seem to know what a male mammal scrotum should look like any more. What year were you working near the elk? Maybe it was prior to the beginning of the birth defects on multiple mammal species (and bird, reptile and amphibians also).

          1. Interesting, so you should have seen the strange or missing scrotums on the male bison. However, most people just don’t notice. For example, last fall some drunk guy attacked a bull bison and the video went viral on the Internet. That video was looked at likely by millions of people. I asked several people who watched it if they noticed that the bull bison had no visible scrotum. They all said no.

    1. This statement about carrying capacity comes from “Wyoming Game and Fish Department biologists “.
      They work for Wyoming Game and Fish which is funded through hunting licenses. They try to maximize hunting of elk and deer through management. Because of that they have a inherent conflict of interest when it comes to bears and wolves. I, for one, don’t trust anything they have to say.

      1. And yet the conflicts are increasing – nearly everywhere grizzly range is expanding and population is increasing. Some of us on this very forum predicted this was coming soon over 5 years ago.

        So your mistrust will naturally extend to MT and ID at least. And, as for wolves there are skeptics of WA, OR, MN, WI, MI, UT, AZ, NM and at least the Dakotas.

        1. I lived and worked in the GYE for over 10 years. I saw dozens of different Griz. and wolves and never had any conflict with them. I would guess that the majority of these conflicts are from ranchers who do NOT pay enough to cover the costs of grazing on OUR public lands. The AUM was just lowered by our wonderful Prez. Not that past admins. were much better. Any where you do business costs have gone UP with inflation over the last several decades. But not the cost of grazing on YOUR land. Why do these welfare ranchers reap all these benefits and then claim to have conflicts with OUR wildlife? How much better would it be if they didn’t graze at all where these so called conflicts take place. REMOVE all welfare ranching from public land then let’s see how many conflicts there are!

          1. Probably want to remember it is OUR Congresses and Presidents, past and present, which passed the Taylor Grazing Act and continue to set the grazing fees. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21232.pdf

            And, as long as there are 17 Western states that have Interior or USDA grazing lands, this will continue to be done, along with all the agriculture subsidies those states, and others in the Midwest and Coast enjoy from crop subsidies, conservation reserve programs, land and water conservation fund, crop insurance, etc. this will not change. And, in many cases the only way owned ranch properties in the West work out economically is in conjunction with federal grazing. Otherwise some of those ranches for raising cows become worth much less without the supplemental grazing, and would be sold for much less.

            Not that I like it, but it is the reality of agriculture in the US, and power brokering in national politics. Take away cheap grazing from the West and the other ag subsidies will also be affected, and it would all result in higher consumer prices, if market forces are allowed to dictate.

            1. I agree with most of your assessment but would not mind higher prices if these bears and wolves were better protected.

              1. By the way, I am not opposed to a federal/state/NGO buyout program for some of these private properties that might also result in retiring certain grazing allotments. It would, in many cases increase winter range for all kinds of animals, and improved public access.

                As for doing much to increase bear habitat, I am more uncertain there, because there will still be more opportunities for human encounters and potentially conflict that results in more bears being removed. I think roughly 10 percent of grizzlies get into trouble each year, and maybe half of those are euthanized or killed by someone involved in the encounter. So, expect more bear mortality as a part of the realistic impacts of having more bears around.

            2. Unfortunately there is no one site (or oversight) out there on the millions, if not billions, that have been spent keeping livestock owners “happy” in areas that truly can’t sustain their way of doing business when it comes to impacts on what’s left of wilderness areas.

              http://theconversation.com/the-true-cost-of-cattle-is-much-much-higher-than-you-imagine-29491

              Seriously, take a minute and a good look around the planet:

              https://qz.com/india/1051533/india-is-unprepared-for-a-near-future-when-it-will-be-the-worlds-most-populous-country/

              “Take away cheap grazing from the West and the other ag subsidies will also be affected, and it would all result in higher consumer prices, if market forces are allowed to dictate”

              I’d welcome higher consumer prices if it meant less destruction to what’s left of the environment and wildlife.

              1. Cheap prices come at a price. How much land has been sacrificed in one way or another? Either through subsidized overgrazing or overuse of dangerous chemicals. We have been sold a pack of lies. Cheap food is not cheap.

                1. You apparently forget the the settlement of the West. It is integral to its history, and to the development and success of the entire Country, which allows so many to live here in relative comfort. Start with the Louisiana Purchase, manifest destiny and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, while remembering all that came before to bring the new frontier all the way from the East Coast to the jumping off spot on the Missouri River at the little town of St. Louis. Don’t forget the railroads, the disenfranchised Mormons, and those looking for a better life than what they found after landing at Ellis Island in NY. Let’s also remember the incentives for the settlement of the West, as well – the Homestead Act, the Mining Acts, and later the Taylor Grazing Act. May I suggest you read James Michener’s “Centennial” as an entertaining starting point, as well.

                  Some of you folks just think we ought to abandon all that has come before carte blanche without any consideration whatsoever for those who came before you – centuries before. And you expect them to give it all up without any consideration whatsoever of their vested interests in the places they make a living, raise families and recreate. Then you wonder what the tension is all about. A very naive perspective in my view.

                2. Well, I disagree with all that. Progress equals change. Why can’t we change things for the better? Why do we have to be beholden to the past? Our country was founded because of change. We kicked out the Brits and their king and made something new! We can make new things, we do it all the time. Otherwise we wouldn’t be communicating like this at all! It’s time for change, not the same old excuses that “that’s the way we’ve always done it”. My life’s work is founded on those who changed things and founded the National Park Service. Why did that happen? People saw the devastation of the Giant Sequoia’s and fought hard to protect them. That fight is far from over. Keep fighting, don’t repeat mistakes of the past!

    1. From the article:

      “Gavin Shire, a FWS spokesman, said the length of time for the agency to accept and distill public comments is variable. But it won’t be delayed by “lots of click-and-send comments” that aren’t substantive, he said. The agency will decide whether to go forward with a final rule based on scientific and commercial reasoning.”

      I hope this doesn’t mean that they intend to pick and choose comments they don’t like, like they have been known to do, or even throw them in the trash, like the state of MI was found to have done? Everyone has a right to be heard and counted.

      “The idea is to delist gray wolves across the lower 48 where they are not already delisted, he said. The timing depends on the individual rule, not whether it applies to a local or national species, he said.”

      I don’t know, I think there is a court decision on this already, or lawsuit coming?

  51. What conflicts are there between wolves and people in Minnesota? There are already remedies in place for any livestock losses?

    And which is it, an overpopulation of deer on the one hand, or wolves threatening the deer population on the other?

    Same old BS and blowhards.

    1. “Same old BS and blowhards” You got that right at least…. YOU know full well that there are NOT remedies in place for livestock losses. Matter of fact you know that wolf loving biologist put it at OVER only one in six are remedied! BS spread by the likes of you poo poo the ranchers claim that its closer to one in twenty YET you then claim its remedied! BS! YOUR “remedies” don’t even cover depredations! FROM THERE it gets worse! I’m willing to bet that there were OVER 31 open cows caused by the stampeding of cows by wolves in WA (2018) where their were 31 confirmed depredations…. that’s right! Anyone that knows cattle knows what stampeding cattle can do to the unborn “true science” says it also happens in elk and deer! Who really cares about animals? Who really wants to set wildlife up for failure? What hate drives you to set wildlife up for failure Ida? If you care about animals why ONLY predators? Does your hate of the ranchers and sportsman override the consequences of no bounds predator proliferation? “Same old BS and blowhards” Ya nailed it Ida!

      1. Lies and more lies! I thought you found the rock you live under and returned. WE care about the WILD! That means the natural processes that occur without our interference. Those processes have occurred since life began on this planet. It’s fools like you that want to change this world to suit your narrow-minded ideas.

        1. Lies? And in your narrow-minded world wildlife suffers along with our pets and livestock.

          1. I never said anything of the sort. Is your goal to eliminate suffering? If so, do us a favor and stick your head back in the sand.

    1. I agree Ida. If ranchers have a problem they get a permit and take care of it. Wildlife Services (ironic title) also slaughters countless critters all in the name of support for ranchers. Reimbursement does occur.
      All this from matters ignores the very low price for grazing on public land. Just recently the AUM (animal unit/month) was REDUCED, which means ranchers now pay way less then they did decades ago. If you adjust for inflation the pricing is way less then it should be and is a big ripoff for the rest of the taxpayers of this country.

      1. So Hiker, how do you feel about conservation reserve practices (CRP), crop subsidies, dairy subsidies, crop insurance, environmental quality incentives (regular, ground and surface water, acp), energy tax breaks and the like, many of which are focused for Midwest farmers?

        federal land grazing is a drop in the bucket with respect to alleged “ripoffs,” yet relied upon by Western state farmers since 1934 (or even earlier before this law put structure on public lands grazing, with some, albeit minimum soil and water conservation environmental protections from blatant over-grazing)?

        1. The entire Mid-West has been damaged by industrial farming. People are now winning lawsuits against Bayer, which owns Monsanto. Most of those farmers MUST buy seed from Monsanto if they want to use Round-Up, now recognized as a carcinogenic. Monsanto owns the genetic copy right to their modified seeds. If you save seeds for yourself Monsanto will take you to court.

          All this has been done in the name of cheap food. When I was young the population reached 4 billion, now over 7 billion. What has been the result of all the poison dumped on farms worldwide? Cheap food and more people.

          All those programs you mention no longer help the family farmer, those days are over. Corporate farming is the new norm. It’ all about making as much money as possible no matter the consequences. Is it worth it?

          1. Corporate farming is evil. So is Montsanto/Bayer. I hope they get handed their head on a plate in these Round-Up suits. I just saw in the WA state Bar Magazine, one of the big PI firms in Seattle advertising to other law firms, their availability for consultation in Round-Up product liability litigation.
            I don’t disagree with much of what you say.

            Sadly, Congress will not adjust grazing in the West unless the other programs for Midwest farmers also take a hit. That is unlikely to happen.

            Need to continue to remember 1 in 4 of those 7 million is Chinese. 1 in 3 is Chinese or India born. And of our US population, in-migration (often illegal from Latin countries and their offspring) comprises a substantial percentage. Africa, of course, will be the source of much of the 21st Century for at least the next 50 years. All of this is kind of scary. Population increase- the result of fertility and lower mortality, or the availability of cheap food? The problem is a lot more complex than you suggest, IMHO.

            1. I agree with most of that, however don’t forget that China was an importer of soy from the U.S. The recent round of trade wars left many soy farmers high and dry with so much soy they couldn’t even store it, they were burning in it in the fields. I just read that most of these soy farmers will continue to plant soy in the hope things will settle down with China. The cost of switching to a new crop is too much. It’s worth the risk I guess.

              My relatives in the Mid-West used to be proud of the fact that they were feeding the world. Many of those crops are shipped overseas. Once again is it worth all the poison to increase food exports? It’s all for profits.

          2. People can win lawsuits about glyphosate causing their cancer and say they handled it properly, without either one of those things being true. Juries are not exactly packed with scientists. The basic science about glyphosate effects is not all that smashing.
            Farmers do not need to buy any particular strain of seeds. However, if you want to use glyphosate directly on growing plants, I suggest you obtain seeds that are glyphosate resistant. It turns out most farmers growing corn and soy do want that. But it was up to them. They like it because they make more money and have far less soil erosion – which has helped in the great lakes. They could instead have bought Clearfield varieties of rice, lentils, soy, or corn and god knows what else. They are resistant to other herbicides and aren’t GMO. See if you like those BASF chemicals any better.
            https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/plant-variety-protection talks about plant variety protections. They spur innovation. It’s a good thing. U of Kansas has made some great new wheat (KS Venada) – those evil people. The evil Hawaii dept of Ag made ringspot resistant papayas with genetic engineering. Check this out: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/new-way-genetically-tweak-photosynthesis-boosts-plant-growth, Or this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26945781. We invented hybrid corn too – in the name of cheap food. It’s of the devil.

            I am fully ready to subsidize agriculture less, and even tax some of it when it’s causing harms that aren’t being paid for.

            1. Most of the GMO’S are so more toxic chemical can be sprayed. The modification allows more pesticide use, this is the case with corn and soy (really of the devil, or corporate profits at the expense of everything else!).
              All of this is because many weeds have developed (evolved) resistance to lower doses of toxic chemicals. It’s like a hamster wheel that only speeds up. When will the wheel finally break?

  52. A little ironic comedy from the article I posted:

    “We never thought it would be explicitly necessary to state that it is illegal to land a helicopter in the middle of the fields and begin hiking off trail in the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve,” officials said in a Facebook post along with the hashtag #Don’tDoomTheBloom.

    “We were wrong.”

    Ha!

    1. ” “Matters” however may like it.” timz, your comment is self defining.

      My ethical boundaries have moral superiority to any no limit predator chulo who divulge their hate for sportsman, as timz did here trying to paint true sportsman(woman)in the image of these two imbecilic outliers.

      I salute the overwhelming majority of sportsman whom see this as it is & condemn the perpetrators along with those that try to pin this on the heroes that ethically manage our wildlife to be the great resource it is….. so valuable to those that go afield and more so the wildlife itself.

      1. Matters, your defense just had to include “no limit predator chulo”. I guess you stick to the motto “the best defense is a good offense”. However, your offense is NOT good. Just like you don’t like being painted a certain way, we don’t either.

        The way I see it you have done this to yourself. With all your talk of “vermin” and “disgusting creatures”, how do you think we might “paint” you.

        1. “how do you think we might “paint” you.”

          JEFF E painted him pretty well, but I resubmit idiot as an apt descriptor.

          …”heroes”that ethically manage… Yes, idiot describes him well.

        2. Hiker, the contrast between the “two imbecilic outliers” from the article and those that have “no limits” to wolves is not so clear.

          Those “no limit” souteneurs that pushed the Governor of MT to the point where he had to “tell his ranchers to start shooting wolves and said that any state employee that assisted the feds with regards to dead wolves no longer had a job” need to be held accountable.

          Also, holding them accountable for expanding wolves into marginal and poor habitat without continued removal of habituated leaning wolves is immoral and an unequivocal example of setting predators up for failure.

          And, holding them accountable for the annihilation of healthy sustainable game herds is paramount to wildlife justice.

          To this day we STILL see this abuse from the “no limits” gaggle in the great lakes region where good to marginal habitat is full and radial “no limit” groups continue to promote “save” the wolf talk!

          1. To compare poachers to people who want to protect ALL wild processes is a new low even for you.
            Your desire to “hold them accountable” is scary. In your world is it no longer acceptable to have different views? Remember poaching is illegal, viewpoints are important, ESPECIALLY if they are different from others! Your viewpoint is important to you, would you want someone to compare that to an illegal activity? Think about what you’re saying. It sounds like you only want viewpoints like yours to be allowed. Isn’t that similar to Fascism?

            1. Hiker, your fake outrage is on the scale of Russian collusion. You know full well that abusing laws to the point that the Governor of MT had to tell his ranchers to start shooting (illegally) wolves and said that any state employee that assisted the feds with regards to dead wolves no longer had a job is at a level of corruption and accountability that needs reflection by the like of some here! YES, I was in favor of the rebellion of those ranchers and their righteous governor. You’re the one that should be reflecting on your conduct in that regards that pushed people that far… not me….. and as we set more records in the great-lakes you can also reflect on your part of that law abuse and delinquency.
              Being part of a coterie behind abuse of laws like that doesn’t give you immunity to being morally corrupt and on the same scale as those imbecilic outliers…it just doesn’t!

              Where do I say you can’t have different viewpoints….?

              1. Matters, when you said people need to be held accountable for their views on wolves you crossed a line. No one should be held accountable for their views! Your reply above just emphasizes that. Your OPINION that some are abusing laws does NOT make it so. Your viewpoint that some are “being morally corrupt” does not make that a fact. It’s your point of view, which I respect that you have a right to. My point in replying to you has NEVER been to deny you that right from some false superiority.

                Making statements like “you can also reflect on your part of that law abuse and delinquency.” just shows how intolerant your arguments are. To state that I abuse the law and am a delinquent just demonstrates the weakness of your position.

                1. Hiker, And here we are at the apex of the argument. Two far contrasting sides…. imbecilic poaching outliers and no limits predator chulo.

                  The imbecilic poaching outliers are an extremely rare form of vermin. We all know that a huge huge group of sportsmen go afield every year. Things like this are rare, thankfully so. In Wisconsin alone WELL OVER a half million of their populous goes afield for the opening day of deer hunting. Rare incidence like what we see with the imbecilic poacher outliers on this thread are posted with pride…. Finding an incident that fits the narrative that this is a representative of the millions upon millions sportsman is like finding a shed antler in the spring of the year. Some here are gitty to pin it to a sportsman like timz here. That’s the way hate is nurtured for the sportsman & ranchers. Denning like this is rare but it wasn’t in the past. Past being before and shortly after whiteman arrived from Europe. Unequivocal evidence tells us this is so. Interestingly though, the only case that I know of with regards to recent denning of was back quite a few years where a den was raided in the general area where my cabin resides. That case stands out in my mind because what I remember the most was the talk in town… how, reporters were interested in the case/article UNTIL they found out that drag marks in the snow led from private lands to the local Indian reservation! I’d also like to distinguish between these outliers and those that took up Gov. Schweitzer on shooting wolves “poaching” when the no limit predator chulo’s went to far.

                2. The no limit predator chulo (nlpc) are not as rare….. matter of fact they are celebrated … groups (HSUS, DOW,etc) of these hate mongers try to recruit good intended animal and “environmental” lovers. Their MO is to promote one group of wildlife to the unequivocal detriment of others …. It is clear. Time and again, game herds where their no limit advocacy fails the very wildlife they claim to care about. Their advocacy is based on a lie, a huge lie. The lie, that predators have no limits, is proven a fallacy around people time and again. Matter of fact, in all of history long or short there has NEVER been a place or time where around people their livestock and pets’ predators like bears, mountain lions, wolves and don’t need to be managed. That includes places like NE MN. Yet, when it gets to the point where the Governor of a state says enough is enough….. they press on. Its clear the they can abuse the easily abuse ESA to any limit with the right judge. Environmental Impact Statements for areas where they want to create their predator deserts are created in laughable fashion (and those true scientist that give countering views are chastised and attacked…..then when it turns out that the countering views are right they brush it off and look for things like “climate change” or forest fires to explain their failure. Places like Rocky Mountain National Park would already have predators like wolves if it weren’t for the (nlpc). States seeing what happened in the great lakes and GYA are appalled at how laws like the ESA and EAJA are abused and used for the suffering of wildlife, livestock and pets …. all to coddle the visceral spewed by nlpc’s at our righteous sportsman and ranchers.

                3. Matters, at the end of your rant the only thing that Really MATTERS is that everything you just posted is YOUR OPINION. Your hatred toward certain groups is based on feelings not science. Predators have been around a long time, better get used to it.

                4. Also, there’s a big difference between doing something illegal (poaching) and having a different viewpoint (Chulo’s-in your words).

                5. This from the internet:
                  Chulo in Mexican slang refers to someone who is cute, hot, good looking etc. It can be used to describe almost anyone and is not related to sexual attraction (though it can be.)

                  So, Matters, thanks for the compliment, I guess.

                6. Gosh, but one can look at this as a jagged pill of irony, or just plane hypocrisy. But, there was an individual from Bay City, Michigan, William Hayward who plead guilty to killing three wolves.

                  https://www.outdoornews.com/2011/02/23/bay-city-mi-man-pleads-guilty-to-killing-three-wolves-in-upper-peninsula/

                  Share this pled guilty to charges of illegally killingthree wolves in Mackinac County
                  Digging into the past, a screen shot from June of 2012 TWN was saved and mentions our friend Mat-ters AKA reality22 showing how he wants to help a poacher.

                  Immer Treue says:
                  June 4, 2012 at 8:18 pm
                  reality22 said: Monday, February 28, 2011
                  As far as I am concerned, William Hayward is a civlian wolf population control manager. Let me know where I can send my support dollars! Poacher is a term to be used for people taking game against the will of the majority of the local people!

                7. Interesting Immer! Maybe Matters protests so much because it hits so close to home! Any reply Matters?

                8. Immer, maybe you should re-read my post above….. “to distinguish between these outliers and those that took up Gov. Schweitzer on shooting wolves “poaching” when the no limit predator chulo’s went too far”. Isn’t that consistent with “reality22″‘s comment!

                  After the hunting of wolves drastically curtailed depredation numbers, here we are again with the states in the great lakes setting depredation records…. and groups like HSUS and DOW licking their lips knowing people will get sick of it when their pets and livestock are no longer safe & take matters into their own hands. THEN HSUS and DOW can post articles like YOU DO HERE that will rile up the base & get their “donate now” button pressed. Sounds like a racket don’t it! And your part of it Immer. Wash your hands of the cabal if you want BUT we both know your blameworthy. Your as guilty as CNN & MSNBC is to the lie perpetrated on those willing to be gullible to Trump hate.

                  As depredations increase and those wolves that were successful killing and ripping apart someone’s FFA livestock or loved pet they become more aggressive and teach that to their young…..to the point you have wolves killing and consuming wildlife in between houses in small cities in places like the UP of MI. Those affected then understand the need to kill predators…. Habituation is always a result of the lie of those like some posting here and groups that promote the lie that its not inevitable. ONE, must ask WHY? Well we both know why and it’s not driven by love of the wolf…. its driven by hate!

                9. So, Matters, are you in favor of those who ” take matters into their own hands.”? It sounds that way to me! That would be illegal and is called poaching!

                  How would you feel if those wolf loving groups took matters into THEIR hands? Let’s say wolves get delisted and are hunted and someone interfered with a hunt. Would that illegal activity be OK with you? If not then you would be a hypocrite. Those groups you label with hate are working WITHIN the law. We expect the same from those who disagree.

                10. Mat-ters/reality22

                  reality22 said: Monday, February 28, 2011
                  As far as I am concerned, William Hayward is a civlian wolf population control manager. Let me know where I can send my support dollars! Poacher is a term to be used for people taking game against the will of the majority of the local people!

                  SickOfThis replied: Tuesday, March 01, 2011
                  Definition of POACHER 1: one that trespasses or steals 2: one who kills or takes wild animals (as game or fish) illegally If you want to send him support money then send him a gill net too because he probably does that as well. He gives real hunters and sportsmen a bad name. Everyone has to follow the rules so why should this guy be special? What makes him any better then any of us?

                  This is from over eight years ago and includes a follow-up comment to yours. fast forward eight years and timz provides a link and makes an assumption about you, not other sportsman, you.It’s more than obvious his assumption about you was correct.

                11. Immer Your attack of others is more in the mode of the passive aggressive and contributes to outrage on the same scale of the fake outrage of Russian collusion. You know full well that abusing laws to the point that the Governor of MT had to tell his ranchers to start(illegally)shooting wolves and said that any state employee that assisted the feds with regards to dead wolves no longer had a job is at a level of corruption and accountability that needs reflection by the like of some here! YES, I was in favor of the rebellion of those ranchers and their righteous governor. You’re the one that should be reflecting on your conduct in that regards that pushed people that far… not me….. and as we set more records in the great-lakes you can also reflect on your part of that law abuse and delinquency.
                  Being part of a coterie behind abuse of laws like the ESA and EAJA doesn’t give you immunity to being morally corrupt and on the same scale as those imbecilic outliers…it just doesn’t!

                12. Wow Matters, that’s almost a word for word post responding to me! You’re like a broken record. Every time you use the word “accountability” you cross a line. We are NOT accountable for our views. Neither are you. You are accountable for your actions. Did you offer support to poachers in the past? I have yet to see any denial of that in your posts.

                13. Hiker, I wouldn’t have been “illegal” or “poaching”! we simply would have tagged it and as we discussed taken it to the semi-local DNR office AS THEY SUGGESTED, for analysis!

                  YOUR assumption and comment is indicative of the ominous nature of the default view of sportsman some have portrayed here.

                14. Hiker, you make me laugh….. “Wow Matters, that’s almost a word for word post responding to me!” How in gods green earth can you notice my insouciant plagiarism here….. and hopelessly miss it when I do it with a post from Ida or Nancy… …….
                  The crux and entertainment value of the whole thing is the reaction to me in contrast to theirs as regards to my “tone” ….priceless!

                15. Matters, I haven’t missed any nonsense you post. You have labelled creatures as “vermin” and “disgusting”. I only made those comments about your hunting experiences because of YOUR previous posts. And yet I see NO DENIAL from you about Immer’s statement about YOUR support for poachers. Did you or did you not offer support to someone found guilty of killing wolves illegally?

              2. Mat-ters, I told that same Governor of Montana to whom you referred, that the elk and other grazing animals, including domestic cattle and other domestic grazing animals had birth defects and high mortality in the young. He didn’t want to hear about it. He didn’t want to do anything about it and he didn’t want the general public to even know that the animals had birth defects because he wanted to run for President. Consequently, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the Agriculture Department continued to tell people that there were no birth defects (I have what they said in writing). The ranchers said that the wolves were chasing their cattle and causing the calves to not gain weight, even where there were no wolves present. The actual reason that their calves were not gaining weight like they should was because between one third and about half of them had an underbite and couldn’t bite off grass efficiently. What the governor did was not only morally corrupt, he also contributed to biocide and what have been called crimes against humanity (with regard to Roundup and Monsanto) because of all the human babies that had similar birth defects and were maimed for life or died because of his failure to do anything at all to find the cause. An accomplice to murder is just as guilty as the person who pulls the trigger.

                Sadly, the two Montana governors prior to him were worse. The Montana governor at the time the birth defects on the animals began being reported each year beginning in 1996 and after, adamantly refused to admit that there were birth defects or other health issues on anything, including humans. I talked to him in person and showed him photos of the birth defects. He simply covered everything up. Also, when my mother apparently wrote a letter to him complaining about my brother and his family being affected by all the pesticides being sprayed here in Montana and mentioned the effects on the wildlife, he wrote her back saying there were no birth defects on the deer that were erroneously being reported by a lady wildlife rehabber. Since we did not have the same last name, he didn’t know he was writing to that lady rehabber’s parents. That didn’t get him any brownie points with me – LOL.

                It was the same with the governor who came after him. She adamantly claimed there were no birth defects on animals or human babies, no matter how much evidence we sent to her. She claimed, when I told her that frog researchers found over a half a part per billion of Alachlor in the Bitterroot River, it wasn’t very much in that Ravalli County pond. I had to tell her that the Bitterroot River hadn’t been a pond since Lake Missoula drained 6000 years ago and that much Alachlor is enough to turn male frogs into females. That much in a river the size of the Bitterroot River is a whole lot of Alachlor and it came here in the rain because none was used here up river from where the sample was taken.

                Those three governors represented two different sides of the political spectrum by the way. But, they were all guilty of letting many thousands (billions if you count invertebrates) of newborns be killed, including human newborns. That is in my view pretty morally corrupt.

                By the way, wolf pups are often born with the same birth defects as the grazing animals, especially the shortened jaw defect, so likely the pups often die of exposure to the same toxins that cause the issue in the white-tailed deer (see the new SD study of WTD and Imicloprid exposure) and other grazing animals. One year there were over a hundred wolf pups born in YNP and hardly any survived.

                Regarding view points, you can have as many as you like, it is a free country. However, it is best if they are based on facts. Just my view point.

                1. IN all my years I have only seen one deer with deformities ….. and we thought that maybe it was because went the fawn was born it was attacked by a predator and the doe fought it off and nursed it back to health…. (just a theory) I’ve read your post and have an open mind to what you say…. BUT if you blame “climate change” I’ll know your as reliable as some of our wildlife scientist.

                2. Mat-ters, what was wrong with the fawn? And I have never said that the birth defects are caused by Global Warming. I don’t even know how global warming could possibly cause birth defects. This is the link to the new study that shows what causes some of the most common birth defects on wildlife. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-40994-9 1

                  Hatchling birds began having underbite (short upper bills) at the same time as the mammals. If you want to see a lot of photos of white-tailed deer with short lower jaw, a main defects on the Imidacloprid exposed WTD in the study, just type “Dork Deer” on Google.

                3. Judy, that’s typical of Matters deeply flawed method. He will throw in something unrelated to your point that he is against just to piss you off. He’s done that to me many times here, so I’ve gotten used to it and usually ignore it. Your response, however, was perfect.

                4. The fawn in question didn’t have a tail and the rear end slightly dwarfed the rest of the deer. It reminded me of a hyena (without a tail). The fawn lived into the (bow)hunting season. Coming out to the food plot by the cabins without a doe and visited during daylight into the fall. We found it dead in the woods just before gun season…

                  The talk of the camp was should we put it out of it’s misery or just let it be….I was in the side of the camp of just letting it be for it look to be semi-healthy other than its odd walk and run, though I don’t think anyone of us would have ate it.

                5. I can picture the scene of you, Matters, around the fire with your buddies discussing the fate of this creature. One wonders if someone did kill it (to put it out of it’s misery, what Hubris!) would that have been considered poaching? If so then some of your buddies were actually thinking of committing a crime! Would you have reported them?

                6. Matters, that is not an answer. Do you or do you not support poachers (Of ANY animal)?

                7. Hiker, I’m not going to let your post go that easy….

                  We often see the no limit predator chulo (noun) brag about how their wolves clean up the “sick” “old” etc etc….. as I assume you also think is a benefit of wolves to wildlife??

                  THEN when we “sit around the fire” talking about this animals fate you have the audacity to take my side instead of the “poachers” side whom sole argument is to keep the game herd healthy….. The whole post is ripe with an immoral cant that wins the hypocrisy award for all of this WN 2/14/19 thread. Entertaining….

                8. Still not an answer. My new nickname for you is Captain Evasive. I’ll ask again, do you support poaching? Lets’ be specific. Would you support someone who illegally killed a wolf, for ANY reason?
                  Yes, I believe wolves hunt the sick and injured. Is that all they hunt? Obviously not. But more often than not they hunt animals that are not as fit as others. This is directly opposed to those who “trophy hunt”. Do trophy hunters damage the genetic fitness of a species over time?
                  See this link:
                  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6869673/Hunting-seen-big-cats-lose-strength-survival-risk.html

                9. Come on Hiker, I’ve already told you… and I quote “YES, I was in favor of the rebellion of those ranchers and their righteous governor.” As I am with those hit with the abusive lawsuits that are once again setting records for depredations across the Great lakes region. I personally don’t have much skin in the game “but we are getting close” ….. and wouldn’t have and haven’t taken the opportunity to do so as of now. You wouldn’t want me on a jury for someone accused of “poaching” a wolf where depredations are rampant… and wolves have become vermin.

                10. I guess that’s as close as I can expect to you admitting to favor those who poach wolves. I feel better now that you have stated your position. It should be obvious now to any who read your posts that you have no respect for laws if you believe they are wrong. Yet, you expect others to respect laws that you feel are important. Can’t you see the hypocrisy in your position? You really can’t have it both ways. If you don’t respect law don’t expect others to.

                  Now I wonder how much poaching YOU are guilty of. You have lost all credibility. Don’t expect us to hold back.

                11. Hiker, You see, when the majority of the state of Montana agrees with the Governor that the Endangered Species Act was hijacked & being used to persecute them its time to take a stand…. as I did…with them. Same thing in the Great Lakes…. as the abuse continues … I stand with those that are affected. You can “wonder how much poaching YOU are guilty of” all you want. It follows the narrative I just laid out about your side…. doesn’t it?

                  Hypocrisy …. that the lefts specialty!

                12. Whatever Matters. Just a short while ago you claimed you did NOT hate wolves. Then you called them vermin and disgusting creatures, now you support poachers. You are a liar who will say anything to make a point. You can try to make it about sportsman in general or state you have a majority in Montana. None of that matters anymore, now it’s personal. It’s all about you and how wrong you are. LIAR!

                13. “Liar” Your fake outrage fools no one…Most here know what I hate and its certainly not wolves. “I don’t hate the wolf…. the fox or bobcat and black bear. I don’t hate the eagle, badger, fisher or grizzly. No hate for the coyote, cougar, panther, martins or lynx! I do hate the wasted tax dollars spent on frivolous lawsuits by groups that have made a cottage industry out of abusing the ESA. I hate that some people put this animal before people. I also hate the Endangered Species Act when it is used as a weapon by anti-hunters and not in the name of truly endangered species. More “hate” (really justifiable contempt} for people that pimp wolves for controversy only …. for they know that controversy gets the old “donate now” button pressed by the gullible and swindles the government into unneeded studies for animals that are not endangered at the taxpayers expense.

                  I also, have pity for the misinformed that think the predator pit created in Yellowstone in “natural” NEVER in the last at least 12000 years have predators had this unprecedented protection …. “

                14. Hypocrisy … that seems to be the only thing that most conservation organizations and state and federal government agencies, as well as people who want to kill every wolf in the U.S. for killing a couple hundred head of livestock each year, when people’s pesticide applications kill hundreds, if not thousands of head of livestock, millions of individuals of wildlife species, including big game animals that the predators need for food, and human children to boot, are good at. Mat-ters, can you understand the simple concept that if we don’t immediately stop applying pesticides that kill almost all life on the planet and if we don’t stop filling the waters of the planet with plastic and plastic particles, there will be no surviving humans, domestic animals or wildlife?

                15. Matters, anyone who supports poaching has no morals. You worthless bag of hot air. You’re words are meaningless just like your actions. You are fighting the majority who value the ESA. You DO hate wolves! You have called them vermin and disgusting! If that’s not hate, what is? Where’s your outrage for domestic dogs who kill WAY more livestock, pets, and even people!!! Where is your outrage for cats which kill countless songbirds because they like to!!! You are not a hero, you are a villain! Do you think villains think they are wrong? You are on the wrong side!! LIAR!!

                16. Not relevant to the discussion, Matters. But that is your MO, distract when wrong. You have no morals, you support those who take the law into their own hands. You support outlaws and thieves.

                17. Judy, “no surviving humans, domestic animals or wildlife”, I don’t think there is enough evidence to warrant even an inkling of a catastrophe you discribe. I recently was talking to a MT cousin of mine and brought up your concern…. they haven’t seen anything like your describing or anything out of the norm with wildlife OR their livestock…. the only thing they see that is not healthy is Yellowstone and surrounding area where wildlife is suffering from “nlpc”…. “wink”

                18. Has your cousin really looked at any of his livestock. Many cattle, sheep, domestic goat, camelid or equine owners don’t even notice if their animals are born with an underbite. I don’t know where your cousin lives in MT, but the big game animals throughout Montana have had underbite, overbite and reproductive malformations on newborns since spring of 1995 and most people don’t even notice. One sheep rancher I talked to several years ago said that he didn’t have to band one third of his male sheep and that saved him a lot of work, so he thought that was good. I thought he was absolutely crazy. There were two newborn calves shown on a recent TV news report. One had an obvious underbite and one had a normal bite as far as I could tell by a video (slight underbite can’t be determined without actual examination of the calf’s mouth). No one mentioned the underbite, but they said that because the ranchers had their calves born in February and this year, February was very cold and snowy, pickup loads of dead calves were hauled away to be disposed of. Hundreds and hundreds more than any wolves have ever killed in Montana. I would have liked to have been able to examine the mouths of all those dead calves. Based on one of two calves in the news report having an underbite, a study of underbite prevalence on the dead calves would have been very enlightening to the ranchers.

                  Regarding the ocean and fresh water, all that has been tested has been found to have plastic particles in it. All tested ocean animals have plastic particles in their bodies, including those eaten by humans. Many ocean animals, including mammals, birds and fish are dying from eating large pieces of plastic. If just all animals in the ocean, particularly the fish, other human edible species and large ocean mammals go extinct just because of the plastic particles, not to mention the pesticides that are seriously affecting all life on land and in the water, humans will go extinct. Then there is the serious decline in insects. The Insect Apocalypse is scaring the heck out of scientists who know how important insects are to life on the planet. In the last 50 years, from 40 percent to over 80 percent of the insects, depending on where the tests were done, are now gone. At the rate insects have declined in the last 20 years, there won’t be any in another 20. Without insects, most birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, spiders, and many mammals have nothing to eat and go extinct. That doesn’t leave much to keep Earth’s ecosystems functioning, so I doubt if many humans will survive without all those other animal species and all the plants that will go extinct without pollinators. I am sure that you and your cousin in MT will be just fine (possibly lonely) but just fine – right?

    2. Can’t look! But just sadistic cruelty.

      Has the law gone into effect yet in AK that would allow hunting of bears and wolves in their dens, and killing their young? This is what it will look like.

      For people who like to put their head in the sand and always think the best of human nature, and support too much leniency in wildlife protection laws.

    1. Perhaps we need to move away from the concept that the planet is dying. It’s not. However, it does appear that mass eviction notices are being lined up for future distribution.

      One concept difficult for many to grasp is the carbon that has been locked deep within the Earth for many hundreds of millions of year (first stumbling block is many don’t believe the Earth is 4.5 billion years +/- old)is being released to the atmosphere faster than it can be reabsorbed through photosynthesis. Cutting down forests and removal of vast tracts of prairie accelerate this process.

      Then we hear, oh, but it’s water vapor that is the true green house gas. OK. The more warming experienced by the Earth, the more evaporation and evapotranspiration (plants) occurs, thus more water in atmosphere. This is part of what contributes to severe weather incidents, case in point the super cyclone that walloped the central portion of the country, at a time when there was no place for the water to go…flooding.

      It’s obvious that the Earth has gone through periodic episodes of warming and cooling, as well as periods of extinction. One might look at it that we are going through a natural period of global warming/glacial retreat. The human species has benefitted from this natural occurrence: witness our global expansionduring the last period of glacial retreat. The new variable is with the added release of once locked away carbon, our species now has a foot on the accelerator.

      1. But what about the 6th Mass Extinction? That isn’t a hoax.

        What’s happening today isn’t a natural course of events, much of it is preventable is the difference, I think – and caused by only one life form, us.

        If all we care about is human life, then I guess you could say the planet isn’t dying, and we have a foot on the accelerator. (But I hope it doesn’t lead straight into a brick wall!).

          1. I agree with all of you, Immer, Ida, & Judy. All these problems seem overwhelming. But like Immer said, the Earth is not dying. If life can survive what killed off the dinosaurs, something will make to through our current crisis. That’s why I think it’s so important to preserve as much WILD nature as possible; something will make it from those areas we save. It may seem too little, too late, but it’s something.

            1. I never said Earth was dying. When it gets rid of humans, it will go on and new species will eventually evolve. Earth is fine – it is humans that will be down the tube. Earth likely has at least a couple billion years left before the sun winks out.

              1. Judy,
                There was no reference to you whatsoever with the “earth is dying” concept. But she be a changing with increasing velocity, and there’s no denying that.

        1. What we have with regard to extinction of humans and life as we know it, are at least three trains barreling toward a cliff (or a brick wall), GLOBAL WARMING and EXPOSURE TO PESTICIDES AND PRESCRIPTION DRUGS NOW CAUSING THE EXTINCTION OF INSECTS AND OTHER ANIMALS ON LAND and PLASTIC PARTICLES IN ALL THE OCEANS AND FRESHWATER KILLING OCEAN AND FRESHWATER ANIMALS. All these issues are exacerbating the others and increasing the speed of the others, so not sure which train will go over the cliff or into the brick wall first, but if all three go over or hit, that is the end of life as we know it and we won’t be around to know it anyway. It won’t matter if all you care about is human life, there won’t be any to care about.

      2. “The new variable is with the added release of once locked away carbon, our species now has a foot on the accelerator”

        Yep and IMHO, we humans have more than a foot on the accelerator if we care to take a look at other species, now going extinct, who amount to the core of warning systems put in place, tiny as they are… TO HUMANS by Nature… about how we are ignoring and then trashing the safeguards this planet may have put into place.

        https://www.pbs.org/video/nature-frogs-the-thin-green-line/

  53. Call For Action:

    Protect The Wolves™ has called the Wyoming Board of Outfitters to inquire what is necessary, to maintain an Outfitter License in the state of Wyoming. Amanda Mckee informed Us that there are rues in place for a Guide to maintain his license. We were also informed that his Outfitter license can be removed, suspended, or he just put on probation.

    Probation for his Poaching of a Wolf inside of park boundaries would be an unacceptable consequence for his actions much the same as what the courts sentenced him to which were not much more than a slap on the wrist!!

    Protect The Wolves™ is tired of these types of Individuals getting off scott free! We will be calling for removal of his Outfitter License for LIFE, as should have been his hunting privileges removed for instead of 1 year!!

    Under Wyoming Board of Outfitters 23-2-410. Powers and duties of board; generally; employees; licensing and regulation. We can file complaints against license Holders, in This Case Brian Taylor. We will also request in our complaint that his Outfitter license be suspended until his hearing with The Wyoming Board of Outfitters.

    Submit your Complaints to Amada Mckee Director of Wyoming Board of Outfitters and Guides to : amanda.mckee@wyo.gov

    https://protectthewolves.com/calling-for-wyoming-guide-convicted-of-wolf-poaching-to-lose-license/

  54. Joy, I had been reading several articles about Monarch butterflies lately, and I thought of your posts.

    https://blog.nwf.org/2018/03/monarch-butterfly-2018-population-down-by-14-8-percent/

    However, I had read that Texas is expecting a migration of 300 million? I don’t know who is right, or if it is just the tendency of people to gloss over the bad news.

    The article I posted attributes the continued decline to ‘bad weather’ – but the natural fluctaions ought to be considered when ‘managing’ wildlife. 🙁

    1. Fortunately, the Monarch Butterflies that migrate to Mexico had a great year last year, with everything going right for them, so a lot more made it to their wintering area than in several previous years. They did well during the winter and are now starting their migration back north. It is not about who is right and who is wrong. A bad year could nearly wipe them out, but hopefully that won’t happen. It didn’t hurt that Monsanto’s Roundup was taking hits for causing cancer, so less was used in the last three or so years. I totally agree that we can save many wild animals and plants, if we work to address the issues immediately. The plastics issue is getting news and people are working to clean that up. It never should have been thrown in the ocean in the first place – that was just being stupid and too lazy to deal with it correctly. For one thing, plastic can be turned into fuel to run cars and planes, etc. and can be recycled. Hopefully, the issue with neonicotinoids killing and maiming everything from invertebrates to human children will get them banned, as well as glyphosate/Roundup which works synergistically with neonicotinoids. Banning those two will significantly slow down that train wreck and dealing with the plastics and cleaning up that giant mess will hopefully put off that train wreck forever. Since what glyphosate does to native plants contributes to global warming, banning Roundup will help slow down that issue and of course there is a great deal we can do to immediately slow global warming. With a bit of help, the biodiversity of Earth can recover from some extremely serious things, like giant volcano eruptions, meteor strikes, and others. It can’t recover very well from humans until it is rid of them, unless we start helping.

      1. I’ve been talking about turning plastic into fuel for years, and our community used to do it, but now I’m told it is ‘too expensive’. It’s more expensive not to, I think.

        Now, do capped landfills emit methane? I think they do.

        We have to be careful about becoming (or staying) too complacent about the state of things.

        While the earth survived whatever killed off the dinosaurs, the dinosaurs will not return and are gone forever. We don’t want that to happen to elephants, rhinos, and a whole host of other animals, for the sake our own survival.

        And as far as wolf delisting, Idaho keeps on upping the ante. Anyone who doesn’t think this will happen if their is a nation-wide delisting is a fool. Do we really want to go back to these primitive times and behaviors?:

        https://www.kunc.org/post/state-idaho-funds-controversial-wolf-bounty-program#stream/0

        1. Since the pesticides applied in Idaho have come east in weather fronts on a regular basis and killed and maimed the wildlife in YNP and in Montana, I don’t know how they can be so completely brazen and stupid as to blame the wolves for anything. They should wipe their own butts before they start blaming other animals for the stink they made, not to mention the death and torture they cause with their toxins. I can actually smell the chemicals on the wind and in the rain, by the way. I have watched hundreds of amphibians, birds, mammals and insects be directly killed by the pesticides they spray in Idaho. I caught snow water in our yard in 1999 and had it tested for the fungicide, Chlorothalonil, after Idaho began spraying millions of pounds on their potato fields in 1994 for potato blight. Our county extension agent said no Chlorothalonil was used in our county then. There was 5 times more Chlorothalonil falling in our “pesticide free) yard than what studies say it takes to kill all life, including amphibians, in fresh water except algae. Chlorothalonil was also shown to be carcinogenic, but still wasn’t banned. I think Chlorothalonil is contributing, by working synergistically with neonicotinoids and Roundup, to the serious birth defects, especially in human children here in our area. Idaho people should clean up their act or leave the wolves alone. There is no way that 10,000 wolves could kill as many wild animals and domestic livestock in one year as the chemicals do each year that are coming directly from where they are sprayed on fields in Idaho. And no wolf here or in Idaho has killed and maimed hundreds of newborn children, like the stinking toxins from Idaho does here in our area.

      2. I’m sorry Judy, I just realized I called you Joy in my posts. 🙂

        Immer, I just think the terms eviction notices and canaries in coal mines were given several decades ago. I don’t see any real changes, just continual ‘dialogue’, but nothing substantial.

        Many animals have gone for good, or are now their way. Eviction notices have become death sentences.

        I hope people take this seriously enough, and have hope, yes, but not false hope.

        1. No problem, idaursine, a lot of people do that.

          I agree that milkweed smells great and it is pretty. Now that Roundup was found to cause cancer by the scientific community, maybe it will be banned so more milkweed will come up and survive. That will definitely help the Monarch butterflies, not to mention the animals that have been dying of cancer. We have a big patch of milkweed, but could find no Monarch caterpillars anywhere in the patch last year. Our Monarchs go to California for the winter.

          Regarding animals and canaries in the coal mine. For 22 years, whenever anyone asked the game departments in western states, particularly in Montana (where first reported) to do something about the astronomically high prevalence of between 40% and 70% depending on the species, of underdeveloped facial bones and reproductive malformations on wild grazing animals, the departments claimed they had seen no birth defects. Any birth defect at a prevalence of over 5% is supposed to raise a red flag according to biology and medical books. Even little children could see the birth defects on the animals and common ordinary citizens posted many, many photos on the Internet of animals with underbite and overbite. Just type underbite, the name of a grazing animal and images on Google if you don’t believe me. Hunters post WTD photos with overbite all the time and call them “Dork Deer,” even trying to out do each other with severity in the deer they kill (type Dork Deer on Google). Why couldn’t game department personnel see the birth defects that everyone else can see? Maybe a whole lot of people should ask them, unless no one wants big game animals to hunt.

          The other issue is that many human children began being born with the same birth defects at the same time as the other animals. The only doctor in our area who stated he was going to try to find what was causing the many birth defects (especially unusual heart defects, no kidneys formed, malformed heads, underbite, overbite and many with reproductive malformations) on newborn HUMAN babies, was killed in a car accident three weeks after he said that. This was not only tragic for his family, it was especially tragic for all the newborns born since that have died or had their lives completely changed by their birth defect/s.

          1. Sad. I remember as a child, monarch caterpillars seemed to be all over the garden, and what a beautiful sight now that I think back.

            Even if it affects us, greed doesn’t seem to care. 🙁

  55. I’ve started planting milkweed around my home, and it is the most beautiful, sweet-smelling plant. No wonder bees and butterflies are drawn to it.

  56. “We are proposing an alternate path forward — downlisting the gray wolf from federally endangered to threatened status,” said Brett Hartl, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. That action, he said, “would maintain federal protections the animal needs to survive in certain areas, while allowing states to share management oversight.

    His organization doesn’t oppose state management of wolves, but it does oppose hunting wolves for sport, he said. “Free-for-all hunting of wolves is not management, it’s slaughter.””

    https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-gray-wolf-protections-20190328-story.html

    I know this was suggested before, and I think the ‘wolf hostile states'(WY, ID, MT, UT and CO) which will be broadened to included MN, WI and MI, WA and OR if a delisting goes through, will not compromise for anything less than complete control, and free-for-all. But we’ll see.

    1. Might one conclude that this is at least somewhat in opposition to the “ecology of fear?”

      1. Yes, that’s one possibility. I was also thinking about what Matters has claimed here before, about how the elk have moved out of Yellowstone because of wolves. This study at least casts that into doubt. Maybe there’s still much to be learned about the reintroduction of wolves.

        1. Actually the reintroduction of wolves had very little to do with the steep decline in the elk population in the years after wolves were released. The elk calves died prior to or immediately after they were born in spring of 1995, resulting in a 13 calf per 100 cows ratio in fall of 1995. The wolves weren’t even released until winter of 1995. I guess no one ever read this publication. In the years prior to 1995 that this study was conducted, it took elk calves only 12 days to join the nurse herd and the calves were healthy. In spring of 1995, the birth defects on the wild grazing animals reported in the new South Dakota study began. In the three years the elk calf study was done immediately after 1995, a lot of calves died and those that survived took 49 days to join the nurse herd, over 4 times longer than before the Imidacloprid and Chlorothalonil began being used in astronomical amounts in the millions of pounds in the states directly upwind of where the elk lived. There were no wolves involved with the elk in this study. Why did the elk calves began having underdeveloped jaw bones (the study didn’t see the underbites, but I did), why did so many elk, especially the calves die and why were the surviving calves so weakened that it took them 4 times longer to join the nurse herd? Google this important study to see that the calves died like flies without any help from wolves. Biological Technical Publication: Neonatal Mortality of Elk in Wyoming

          1. In a nutshell Judy. (the video below) But who the “F” is paying attention in a world where all human needs are being met everyday now by huge corporations, bent on huge profits, regardless of their effects on the environment?

  57. interesting…

    DNR: State’s evidence for 2016 wolf kill overstated
    https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/03/25/state-overstated-threat-gray-wolves/2473841002/

    The Michigan Department of Natural Resources is now admitting it misled a federal agency into killing three endangered gray wolves in 2016, following a Detroit News investigation that raised questions about the shoot.

    Killing western Great Lakes wolves is not permitted under the U.S. Endangered Species Act unless human safety is at risk. Violations carry a maximum criminal penalty of one year in jail and a $100,000 fine, or $200,000 per organization. The incident illustrates a conflict as the state’s most controversial predator re-establishes its niche up north.

    The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service emailed its agreement to kill three specific wolves at the DNR’s request on May 20, 2016. The agency’s decision was based heavily on one sentence from Minzey.

    “In one case, the wolf was sufficiently bold as to enter the pasture and kill a calf at the very moment one of our wildlife technicians was in the same field investigating a previous kill,” Minzey wrote in an email sent a few hours earlier.

    The DNR now acknowledges the encounter did not occur. No one was startled by an attacking wolf. No calf was killed. The worker drove to where a passing motorist reportedly saw a wolf chasing cattle. One shot fired from 60 to 80 yards out scared the animal off.

    etc etc etc

    1. Wow. Thanks for posting, Mareks.

      And this is while they are supposedly protected under the ESA. Imagine what will happen with a national delisting.

      People will never accept facts about wolves and will cling to their irrational beliefs. These animals need protection.

      1. Even with protection there are many who take the law into their own hands. Fines need to be bigger. Take away hunting privileges. Jail time.

  58. http://newsstand.clemson.edu/mediarelations/clemson-researchers-work-to-understand-impact-of-coyotes-on-states-deer-population/
    Coyotes are not native there. True. That coyote predation is “significant” made me laugh – no quantitation whatsoever. Reintroduction of wolves might help.
    Rather than getting riled up about where wolves are abundant, I consider the bigger problem to be the “blanks” (as St. Aldo would call them). There are lots of places they belong where there are zero, and the people in these places have had a long time to ask for imports, but haven’t acted.

    Ida: There’s no hunting on Isle Royale, not even for overpopulated moose. Not that it matters much compared to the mainland of MN, MI, and Ontario, where there are thousands of healthy wolves.

    1. It says that the moose are declining because the calves are not surviving. The mother moose in the documentary has hair that is consistent with thyroid hormone disruption. She appears to have a normal bite. It is difficult to tell if the calf has a slight underbite or a normal bite. It definitely doesn’t have a severe underbite. A new study published in Nature reports underdeveloped facial bones and reproductive malformations on captive white-tailed deer deliberately exposed to Imidacloprid, the most used insecticide in the U.S. Most alarming, even greater amounts of Imidacloprid were found in the spleens of wild deer that were tested, than in the spleens of the dosed study deer. The more Imidacloprid in the spleens, the more severe the defects were and the higher the mortality on both adult females and young deer. Prevalence studies of underbite on wild grazing animals have shown a very high prevalence of underbite and overbite on several and these birth defects have been documented on nearly all grazing animals in the U.S. both wild and domestic. Even grazing animals in the center of YNP have been documented with an underbite and/or reproductive malformations. This suggest that it must be raining Imidacloprid and other highly used toxins on all foliage everywhere.

  59. ‘Wilderness Watch’ and partners just won their lawsuit against the Trump administration’s illegal attempt to build a road through the heart of the fabled Izembek Wilderness and Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska!

    https://mail.yahoo.com/d/folders/1/messages/AC0sgI0GRAU7XKKLuQkMaCglrys?.rand=8gkugbcd2j22f&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9sb2dpbi55YWhvby5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAALtWjD2jbtSGqpQbKI8ILKH5bmlNceuuXP3kPhETbRkbXpZdzCGcKeyVjBNnYwyj3S1sVPPUtjyLtch_kjVQiqVMYnewMvRHmVVgduAswOeEHNzh4DTFxBH5QHxROj2TzHgWLQhe9zXG0LZmjZq0XfGsg6Ra2JrqKjCDkfcijN7x

  60. ‘Wilderness Watch’ and partners just won their lawsuit against the Trump administration’s illegal attempt to build a road through the heart of the fabled Izembek Wilderness and Izembek National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska! Sorry, that first Link didn’t work…Try this link to read the court’s verdict.

    http://wildernesswatch.org/images/wild-issues/2019/03-29-2019-Izembek-Court-Order.pdf?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=cbd356f9-44ed-44ea-869e-f9e6ffb578fb

    1. One has to wonder if is going going …. the same way Cougar hunting laws have stopped the hunting of cougars in CA. Gotta love CA!

      1. One has to wonder if anyone cares what a poacher lover like you has to say. Glad you don’t like CA. stay away…stay under your rock…it’s not safe out here for LIARS LIKE YOU!!

  61. climate change…..around 6:00… he talks about how natural warming is good for MAN….. cold is bad …. as we have seen on this tread.

    1. Another fantasy post from your favorite morally bankrupt, poaching, LIAR!!

      1. Personally, who cares what you think? You have no standing here whatsoever. If someone supports poaching they can never be trusted or believed about ANYTHING!
        “funded by Obama” … why even bring that up? Oh yeah…you always say stupid things.

          1. As if you know the “right thing to do”. You are hardly one to lecture anyone else about right and wrong. You support lawbreakers and liars. Poaching is wrong and evil, how dare you write on this site, dedicated to wildlife. You are no different then an old Chinese guy who buys powdered rhino horn to fix his problems…ignoring the ramifications of his actions. Very greedy and selfish!!

            1. Thanks for the endorsement Hiker, …. Characterizing me in the way you do is like CNN and MSNBC telling us Trump colluded with Russia.

              Could it be that selfish and greedy reside in turning blind eye to wasting EAJA dollars? Could it be supporting no limit predator chulo’s to the point they drive renewable organic game herds WELL below what is considered to be very healthy is the true selfish and greedy? I could go on …and on …. and on. As you know.

              1. Yes, please go on with your idiotic statements. Greed is in the eye of the beholder, however, I don’t think many would argue that POACHING is not greedy. Maybe only you could be so stupid as to actually think that being a poacher is not greedy and selfish.

                I thought you had some dumb books to read, that reinforce your twisted outlook on the world. Please do us all a favor and return to that endeavor. Or is your small mind already to full of itself?

  62. http://e.startribune.com/Olive/ODN/StarTribune/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=MST%2F2019%2F03%2F24&entity=Ar00603&mode=text&sk=33FE5D45

    The failures have raised questions among residents about the durability of the flood system and renewed criticism from conservation groups who say that America’s scattershot approach to flood control and development near rivers is simply setting the stage for future disasters.

    Q: How bad is the damage?

    A: Counties in Iowa and Nebraska that were left underwater when the earthen walls of their levees caved in say that they have never seen such widespread damage to their flood-protection systems.

    Some estimated the repair costs in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and said they had no idea how their rural communities could afford to rebuild them. Or whether they even should.

    “It was catastrophic,” said Larry Hurst, director of emergency management in Mills County, Iowa, where there were eight breaches. “How are we going to fix it and who’s going to fix it? The tax base isn’t there to build a whole new levee. What are we going to do?”

    We continually hear the demise of rural communities is the product of global conspiracies, wolves, etc. This is just another example of the canary in the coal mine as far as what’s going on in this country.

    1. You do know that MAJOR flooding accured along the olde Mis in…… There were also high river levels and some flooding along the lower Mississippi in the years 1937, 1945, 1950, 1973, 1975, 1979, 1983, 1997, and 2008. In 2011 and now in 2019…..

        1. I wonder if Matters is fake and is really a hardcore environmentalist who wants to rile us up. To think that he actually believes what he writes is truly horrifying.

            1. Not worth watching anything you post. As far as I am concerned you are tainted by your pro-poaching stance. Nothing you say will ever change my mind. Case closed. Game over. Please use the nearest exit.

    1. Very scary stuff:
      “The water is chock-full of stuff. This is a toxic brew that is going down the river…”

    1. Some in Montana are wise:
      “Sen. Mike Phillips, D-Bozeman, a wildlife biologist, noted that elk and deer numbers are largely driven by habitat, saying that wolves are not the “boogeyman” they are often made out to be.”

    1. The thing I find interesting about this is that these chemicals are used before they are proven safe. They would need to test these things in many different combinations for decades to prove them safe. Meanwhile so many different chemicals are used at the same time all over the landscape, does anyone know for sure what is happening?

      And, of course, all this is done in the name of producing more food (profits). The end result? Toxic chemicals everywhere, and lots and lots of people.

      1. Do you even get that dose makes the poison?
        What does “proven safe” mean?
        Seen that giant agricultural worker study?
        This thing that if profits increase it must be bad is not logical. Hybrid corn.

        1. Of course I get the idea of doses. You don’t need to be so condescending. I have a different viewpoint. I don’t think any study has focused on multiple exposures to many different herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc. Does anyone know what combinations, and how they act together, the average farm worker is exposed to?
          Proven safe? I thought that was self explanatory.
          My thoughts on profits is that all this stuff is done, without really knowing the result, so the rich can get richer and the poor end up dealing with all the problems.
          If just 10% of what Judy has written here is true we have problems.

          1. Another issue Hiker, is the idea that the higher the dose the worse the effect is not at all correct with regard to developing young animals. Extremely low doses cause far greater harm because the chemical is absorbed into the cells and disrupts all kinds of functions, resulting in birth defects, disrupted immune system, disrupted digestive system, disruption of the mitochondria functions and metabolic acidosis, to name a few of the most common results. If you read a couple thousand studies, like I have, you will see that most say that. A high dose will cause an immune response that protects the animal from the exposure. A really low dose sneaks in and either kills or makes the animal (people are animals) wish it was dead.

            When you said, “I don’t think any study has focused on multiple exposures to many different herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, etc. Does anyone know what combinations, and how they act together, the average farm worker is exposed to?” you are absolutely correct again. Most studies except for some synergy studies on bees, etc. only test or study the effects of one toxic chemical at a time. Also, usually adult male mice or rats are used to test new drugs or pesticides. Either of those work completely different on females and especially on developing young than on adult males.

            And finally if I haven’t alarmed you all enough yet, the lab mice are fed lab chow, made with grain that is pretty much covered with several pesticides, so most studies, especially those since Roundup Ready crops were planted, are compromised from the get go. So not even the properly tested drugs and pesticides are proven save. Even organic crops are contaminated with at least some pesticides because they are carried in weather fronts and fall all over the earth in the rain and snow.

            And finally you said this, Hiker. “– all this stuff is done, without really knowing the result, so the rich can get richer and the poor end up dealing with all the problems.” This is dead on – pun intended. JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY!

            And “If just 10% of what Judy has written here is true we have problems.” YOU ARE SO VERY CORRECT ABOUT THAT!!!

          2. Please point to where cars were proven safe. Or riding horses. Walking is probably not safe.
            If I sound condescending it’s cause you sound like an anti-vaxer, calling for “proven safe” when you don’t appear to know how one would prove such a thing, or even if it is possible to satisfy you. Glyphosate has been used a long time in the US, but not so much in Europe. There are a ton of epidemiologists who find tiny differences in the rates of change for lots of ailments and look for explanations, but I’ve not seen reports of big glyphosate effects. I realize that most of the public is unaware that there is no dust on the equations. I work in a building chock full of people looking at these things.
            Also in a risk/benefit analysis I’d want to include estimates of the benefits. You say you know the midwest, and aren’t 20. Noticed how much less tilling there is, and how that has improved water quality? How much less fuel farmers use? Those are part of my calculation. There are giant scars in the land here. They weren’t caused recently.

            PS: I could not get past “extremely low doses cause far greater harm” without a link, despite the brevity of Ayn Rand. Maybe it’s quantum entanglement.

            1. Your statements about cars, horses, and walking all make sense. Life is unsafe. However, the point I was making is this is an endless hamster wheel with no end in sight. And we have a choice, we CAN change.

              When was the 1st GMO? They weren’t around when I was growing up, so it has started in my lifetime.
              Why did they make GMO’s? The old poisons (herbicide, pesticide, fungicide) were no longer effective, or too dangerous (remember DDT, they said that was safe). Some of the weeds and insects they were meant to kill were immune and survived. They passed on those immunities. So, they started tapering with plants, at the genetic level (never been done before and I doubt we will know the full ramifications). They combined corn and soy DNA (two examples) with other DNA (mostly non-plant)… to find combinations that could withstand higher DOSES of more toxic chemicals. Currently those toxins are effective, but, soon enough, some weeds and insects will be immune to those.

              Then what? Different GMO’s that can stand ever increasing DOSES of toxins sprayed on an ever increasing toxic landscape. Where do those chemical go? Downstream and in the air. How long do they last in the environment? Who knows, but long enough to cause unintended damage. And all for what? To grow as much food as we possibly can and ship it overseas! We are poisoning ourselves and our children to line the pockets of the mega-rich, 1%, shareholding, fat cats, who time and again have almost destroyed our economy with their ways.

              Solution? Buy 100% organic products. Send a message to these people that it’s not worth it. People are already doing this in ever increasing numbers. Many already know pesticides and herbicides are NOT good for you. It’s worth the added price to buy organic. YOU are worth it. Our children are worth it. The PLANET is worth it.

              1. And the worst thing about GMOs for me was that they were testing them in ‘open laboratories’ in our nation’s wildlife refuges!

                I think that it was stopped when it was taken to court, but I don’t know if it has or will come up again.

              2. I repeat myself.
                I could breed corn to be glyphosate resistant, but it’s not worth it – please look at those Clearfield crops, where I again ask if you like those herbicides better, because I do not. GMO is not the problem. Plenty are very good. I do get being against damaging pesticides, but whether a genetic modification or simple selection made it possible is irrelevant. That we were no good at GM or CRISPR/Cas9 when I was young is irrelevant.
                “Organic” means natural, which does not imply better. I can just use natural poisons, then it’s OK, eh? Bt kills monarchs and luna moths as good as anything I’ve seen.

            2. Rork, there are so many studies that say “extremely low doses cause far greater harm” to developing young that I thought that was common knowledge now. When I have more time I will find a link to a good study, or even better a review of multiple studies.

      2. Hiker, you are totally correct. Have you heard of the Poison Papers. They proved that most of the most used pesticides (umbrella term) were not even tested. The testing labs did not care for the lab animals or the lab didn’t do testing. In either case, the lab simply wrote up what they thought the chemical company would like and sent it – then got paid. The chemical companies used the bogus “studies” to get the pesticide registered for use by the EPA. When this information came out, the EPA should had banned all chemicals that were involved but they didn’t.

        You are also correct in saying no one knows for certain what is happening on the land because of exposure to the toxic soup. I have necropsied and cared for enough wildlife, especially young ones, to have a general idea of what is happening to the other animals, humans not so much.
        However, I heard on the news recently that some teenagers are overdosing on nicotine because of vaping so much nicotine. Here is a thought, if you add the nicotine from vaping to the synthetic nicotine you eat in food, drink in water and breathe in the air because of so much neonicotinoids being used now on crops, yards, fruit trees and other, it would seem that overdosing on nicotine would be a given. However, not having tested that hypothesis because I am so allergic to cigarette smoke that 5 minutes of exposure causes me to vomit, I don’t know if this hypothesis is true or not. But, Hiker, you were talking about combinations being bad for health.

    1. 🙂 My cat is a definite house cat. I opened a sliding door in the kitchen over the holidays, and she checked it out, and then ran away in the other direction meowing at the cold breeze (or screaming). lol

    1. since the 2016 report the population growth is insigniificant (from 115 known wolves in 20 known packs including at least 10 breeding pairs to 126 individual wolves, 27 packs, and 15 successful breeding pairs).

      15 breeding pairs produced total net growth of 4 wolves…

      Rork:

      A Meta-Population Model to Predict Occurrence and Recovery of Wolves
      https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/jwmg.1008

      1. “five of the 27 packs known to exist in Washington last year were involved in at least one livestock mortality. WDFW investigators confirmed wolves killed at least 11 cattle and one sheep and injured another 19 cattle and two sheep.”

        LOL

      2. Thanks. That made me think Eastern WA is near saturated, but that there’s room for lots more in the Cascades and western WA.

  63. I have been reading that the Trump administration is trying to bring back the use of GMOs in our nation’s wildlife refuges. There are a few articles on this, but I chose this one (August 2018).

    But where this was already decided in court, stopped and phased out by 2016 court order, I don’t know how they can proceed?

    I don’t know why people insist upon doing things that will harm the environment. We all know that birds and wildlife, and wind will spread the seeds far and wide. And it just seems to repeat the cycle of the adaptation to and increase of more pesticides and herbicides. Europe has already banned a lot of it, why can’t we?

    https://www.missoulacurrent.com/outdoors/2018/08/wildlife-refuges-gmos/

    1. I agree Ida. I think the problem is a lack of political will. So many Americans believe the lies they’ve been told, it’s sad.

    1. I read this too. I don’t know – I kept saying to myself, ‘Get ‘er out of the trap!’ It seems her foot was in the trap for a long time, and all the heroics of finding the babies, finding food, etc etc.

  64. I kept thinking about infection, gangrene dehydration….

    as I read along. 🙁

    1. She probably lost the toes, Ida but at least she didn’t suffer the fate of thousands of animals caught in traps.

      1. Yes, she would be very lucky if all she suffered was the loss of toes – not a broken limb, sepsis, hypothermia, injury from trying to escape….etc.

  65. Carl Sagan — 1995

    “I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

    1. If you really want a prophet read “Brave New World”. “1984” is already more of a reality than most would like to admit.

  66. I think I said I would give some evidence other than my word that small doses of endocrine disrupting toxins can be far more damaging than large doses.

    In a peer-reviewed study, released on Monday, October 1, 2018 by Cornell University, levels of glyphosate were found in a range of pet foods. This was a discussion of the possible effects of the levels found in the pet food.

    The 18 dog and cat foods tested were all mixtures of vegetable and meat ingredients, and one product was certified GMO-free. The study found that all of the products contained glyphosate at concentrations ranging from approximately 80 to 2,000 micrograms of glyphosate per kilogram (ppb).

    “While the levels of glyphosate in pet foods surprised us, if a human ate it every day, their glyphosate exposure would still be well below the limits currently deemed safe,” one of the study authors Anthony Hay said.

    Dr Michael Antoniou of King’s College London, who has conducted research on the health impacts of glyphosate herbicide, reacted in a quote; “The authors of this study, as quoted in this article, are ignoring established scientific principles and evidence in arriving at their conclusion that the levels of glyphosate residues found in the pet foods are “within a range that would be deemed safe for humans”.

    “First, they do not acknowledge the well established principle of low dose toxicity, especially through endocrine disruption, which does not follow a linear ‘dose makes the poison’ model. Second, they ignore a large body of evidence that shows that daily intake of glyphosate well below what regulators have ruled as safe causes ill health to multiple organ systems such as the liver, kidney and reproductive system.”

    1. If you think a function being less than linearly in increasing implies that it is decreasing we have a math problem.

    1. Hello Harley, how are you?
      In regard to your question, in my opinion, the IR repopulation is being handled well. The whole concept of genetic rescue was faulty, because the increased presence of the “bad” alleles would have been present in population. Best scenario would have been wait til last two wolves die,then bring new wolves in. But the longer the wait, other consequences occur.

      It will be interesting to see what happens.

      1. Oofdah, sorry, I come on, then disappear again.

        Had to move last July and before that, far too busy caring for an aging mother with severe Alzheimer’s along with a whole host of other issues. Lost a couple of email connections along the way. I’ve settled in Texas now. A tad bit warmer than what I’m used to! It will be very interesting indeed to see how things play out on IR. 4 years ago this month, my good friend lost his life there while on one of the moose wolf expeditions. It took awhile for me to get back into habitually checking the goings on there and I was surprised to see that they had moved forward with the repopulation.

      1. Howdy Ida!

        Like I said to Nancy, I’m of two minds with all of this. On the one hand I’d rather let nature figure it’s own way out. But that is a LOT of moose and no predator.

    2. Hey Harley! Long time indeed.

      I’m afraid I haven’t really weighed in on the return of wolves to Isle Royale. There were good arguments on both sides in regards to reintroducing them. At least they will be able to live their lives free of the negativity and abuse that has plagued their species after reintroduction in western states.

      1. Hey Nancy!

        I still feel half and half over this. In some ways it negates all that talk about letting nature do it’s thing. Man didn’t move the moose there. Man didn’t move the original wolves there. I don’t believe what some say, when they talk about how wolves were deliberately put there.
        Will be interesting to watch and see.

  67. To me, organic is better. I’m willing to have my produce not so pretty, to me that kind of thing is irrelevant. I’m glad I live in a rural farm area, and protected water supplies. During bad mosquito outbreaks, this area is supposed to be avoided for aerial spraying because of farms and water supply, but I wonder if some does get by. It does feel close to nature to me.

    I love monarchs, and don’t get me started on the beauty of Luna moths. 🙂

  68. I don’t think all GMOs are bad, just the ones that include pesticides and herbicides worry me. It’s just that they haven’t the studied history of natural and human-assisted hybridization which is nearly as old as humanity. There needs to be more study IMO, and people should have the choice of what they want to buy and eat.

    Also there’s an ethics line there too that worries me; who needs glow-in-the dark fish?

  69. I un mistakably spotted a red wolf. Driving home through Melrose Fellsway perhaps 8 minutes after passing Melrose highschool . The long stretch of highway with thock woods on both sides. Very dramatic orange shade definetly not a coyote.
    I really believe this was a Eastern red wolf sighting. I happen to be a huge animal lover and was thrilled to have been the one the wolf ran in front off.
    I am a cautious driver and most definetly he wouldve been hit if it were folks behind me row of cars tail gating me when it happened.

Comments are closed.