California Legislators Call for Wildlife Official's Resignation

The wildlife official in question is the President of the California Fish and Game Commission. He is a proponent of trophy hunting and was photographed with a dead mountain lion in Idaho. Full story here.

Second Bear Killed On Trans-Canada Highway

Interestingly, we just went on a tour of the Canadian Rockies where the wildlife corridors and fences were lauded by the tour guide as a way for wildlife to avoid the roads. Apparently, there's room for improvement.

From the Calgary Herald....

The second bear to meet its end this year on the Trans-Canada Highway has prompted an animal rights group to call for immediate repairs to a fence line intended to protect wildlife in Banff National Park.

Park staff had been monitoring the bear in the hopes the adult female would avoid the busy roadway.

At one point, they had parked vehicles on the side of the road and flashed their lights, slowing down traffic.

The efforts were to no avail.

The bear was struck last week and found dead two days later.

The southern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society has reacted to the death by calling on Parks Canada to reduce the speed limit in areas where the wildlife fence is under construction.

Serial Poachers Devastate Montana

This article describes the devastation being inflicted on Montana's wildlife by serial poachers. It's also an insight into how serial poachers think. I would have thought serial poaching and serial killing were essentially the same, with the difference being the species, but this article says there is a difference.

Brian Golie, FWP game warden in Wolf Creek, .....classifies serial poachers as people who target trophy animals and will do anything to kill them. Serial killers, on the other hand, are people who kill everything they see and simply want to run up a tally. In some instances people kill an animal and cut off its head for the antlers. Others take the entire animal and still others leave the dead animal, although Golie said he's seen people come back months later after poaching an animal to try to recover the antlers.

Environmental Groups Call For End To USDA Wildlife Killing

Environmental groups have called on Obama to get rid of the USDA's Dept. of Wildlife Services, which is involved in mainly predator control programs (coyotes are a big target). Ranchers oppose the move.

From WildEarth Guardians:

WildEarth Guardians’ research reveals this agency is:

• Biologically Unsound - Wildlife Services uses a “sledgehammer approach” to wildlife management, meaning over one million animals are killed each year using non-selective killing controls such as poisons, traps, and aerial gunning. Animals killed also include threatened and endangered species, a number which has steadily increased since 2005. The number of carnivores killed has also increased since 2005, which is of particular concern to conservation biologists, since these animals play vital roles in ecosystems;

• Dangerous - Between 2002 and 2006, Wildlife Services failed several federal audits to safely inventory, store, and control access to chemical weapons, and in 2007 the agency itself admitted that it had experienced a “wake of accidents.” The aerial gunning program has killed at least 10 agents and injured 28 more. In 2008, the Environmental Protection Agency charged Wildlife Services for its illegal placement of a sodium cyanide M-44 (a highly lethal booby trap) on public land, which harmed a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and killed his dog. Additionally, Wildlife Services puts little emphasis on using non-lethal methods, and puts few resources towards developing new, ethical non-lethal research;

• Unnecessary and Fiscally Unsound - Taxpayers are paying the bill for these activities, and Wildlife Services fails to protect the businesses it supposedly helps. The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Services shows that most livestock losses come from weather, disease, illness, and birthing problems, and not predation. Carnivores killed less than 1% of cattle (0.18%) and approximately 3% of sheep produced in the U.S.;

• Out of Step with American Values - Americans value wildlife and abhor animal cruelty. Yet, Wildlife Services not only kills tens of thousands of targeted wild animals annually, their activities also result in the unintentional deaths of many others, including pets, using indiscriminate and agonizing poisons, torturous traps, and even dynamite.

This is what the USDA APHIS website has on the program:

The goal of the WS program is to manage the damage caused by wildlife, not to eradicate wildlife populations. Upon request, WS wildlife professionals implement or recommend effective management methods to alleviate or minimize predation. WS employees strive to remove only the predators that are causing the damage. To accomplish this goal, they direct control methods at only the specific animal or local wildlife populations in the area where damage has occurred. The WS program operates in accordance with its program wide Environmental Impact Statement, local environmental assessments and workplans, and Federal, State, and local laws and regulations, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Estimates of predator populations by State fish and game officials indicate that the number of predators removed by WS is small compared with overall predator numbers. Lethal control efforts of WS professionals typically remove less than 5 percent of a species' overall population. In many situations, the number of animals removed amounts to less than 1 percent of their total population. This amount is considerably less than the number of animals taken by hunters and trappers annually. The USDA's extension service, APHIS' National Wildlife Research Center, and the Federal Government's General Accounting Office confirm that lethal controls used by WS do not unduly threaten the well-being of Statewide predator populations.

Judge Denies Attempt by Bush Administration to Weasel out of Agreement

I originally wrote about this here.

In a nutshell, the Bush Administration entered into an agreement that set a timeline for making a decision on whether to list the sage grouse as an endangered species. They discovered to their horror, that if they stuck to the timeline that they might actually have to use science in their determination. It gets worse. Through the use of this science, they found that they might be forced to make a decision that might have an adverse effect on the oil and gas industry.

Oh, I'll bet someone at Fish and Wildlife spent a few hours in Deadeye Dick's chamber of horrors for that one. To him, the only good sage grouse is a dead one. Preferably after it's been drugged and tied to a stake so he can shoot the little bugger.

Anyways, they tried to back out of the agreement, and the federal judge is not having any of it.

A federal judge is holding the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to a deal reached with environmentalists that sets a timeline and other conditions on whether to grant threatened or endangered status to the sage grouse.

The wildlife agency sought to back out of a stipulation filed with the court in January that set a May 2009 deadline to determine whether to list the bird under the Endangered Species Act. The deal also required the agency to consider a new and critical scientific report on the bird due out in November and give the public 60 days to comment on the report's findings.

Across the West, decisions about the sage grouse are considered critical to the future of gas and oil drilling, agriculture and urban growth.

Last month, government attorneys sought to back out of the deal, saying top Fish and Wildlife officials never signed off on it. The agreement was approved by Department of Justice lawyers, who negotiated the timeline and other details with the Idaho-based Western Watershed Project.

Sigh. These people are just awful.