Saturday, December 28, 2019

The Sierra Club Chooses Killers over Advocates for Life and Nature By Paul Watson

We continue to receive private messages regarding the Sierra Club.

We show what the Definition of Conservation is below which does not include "Hunting"

Definition of conservation. 1 : a careful preservation and protection of something especially : planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect water conservation wildlife conservation.

On April 21st, 2006, Captain Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, commemorated John Muir’s 168th birthday by saluting Muir’s anti-hunting philosophy in an article that accompanied his resignation as Sierra Club National Director, only a few days prior. We have decided to reawaken Paul’s article, as we feel that this is a Position of a an Actual Conservationist, which echoes the feelings of many environmental, conservation and animal rights activists, alike.

The Sierra Club Chooses Killers over Advocates for Life and Nature By Paul Watson

My resignation from the Sierra Club received more letters of support for condemning hunting than criticisms and this was to be expected considering that more than 80% of Sierra Club members do not hunt.

Of the few who were critical of my anti-hunting position, they reportedly took offense to my remarks as being anti-hunting(of course they were) and they insisted that hunters were a strong conservation lobby and thus essential to protecting wildlife and wildlife habitats.

I probably should have been more definitive of my position. Instead of stating that I was anti-hunting or opposed to hunters, I should have said that I am anti-killing and opposed to killers.

The choice is really between endorsing the infliction of pain, suffering and death or opposing the infliction of pain, suffering and death.

Pro-killers will say that those people like me who are opposed to killing are alienated urbanities, of the privileged class, and insensitive to the traditional rationale that supports hunting.

That argument does not work with me because I was raised as the eldest of seven children by a single mother in a small fishing village in a rural area of Eastern Canada. My father was abusive and he was a hunter.

I have spent a large part of my life in third world nations and on the ocean. I oppose the killing of wildlife not because I am alienated from nature but because I happen to believe that you can’t love or respect nature with a gun.

I walked the trap lines in the Eastern bush as a child. I walked them to free captive animals from leg hold traps and to destroy the traps. I destroyed hundreds of these vicious contraptions between the ages of 11 and 18.

I have seen the suffering. In Kenya I watched a mother elephant literally weep for the loss of her calf. In Michigan I witnessed a Canada goose sit for days without eating beside the body of its mate who had been shot and not recovered. In Alaska I saw a Grizzly cub sitting confused beside the skinned body of its mother who was killed only for her hide. In the Yukon, I followed a trail of blood for over a mile to discover an aerial gut-shot wolf staring at me in fear and bewilderment.

What I have observed in the wild is suffering. It was plainly evident and I felt remorse for the arrogance of our species for justifying the taking of lives for sport, for enjoyment, for fun, and for pleasure.

In Zimbabwe I spent time with big game hunters, some of whom reluctantly led rich trophy hunters into the bush because they had lost their jobs as rangers and President Mugabe had ruled that unless wildlife made money the animals would be eliminated. These hunters described most of their clients as slob hunters, arrogant and ignorant and expressed their shame at being forced to participate in the murder business.

I was amazed to discover that a Texan accountant had won a prize from the Boone and Crocket Club for bagging a trophy whitetail deer and then he was exposed when it was discovered that the rack of an animal stolen from a taxidermist in Alberta had been surgically grafted onto a smaller animal on a game farm in Mexico where they flushed it out from cover into the sights of the great hunter’s rifle.

It was John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club who first described hunting as the murder business.

In a few places in the world people hunt for survival. In the past, people were forced to hunt for survival. The constituency the Sierra Club is now courting through its killer outreach program are not people who have a need to hunt for survival.

They are people who spend more money on weaponry, travel and related expenses than the value of the meat they obtain. It is not the meat they are after but the thrill of the kill.

Dick Cheney, when not shooting lawyers, describes how he loves to see the ducks tumble from the sky. I’ve heard hunters describe how pulling the trigger gives them an erection.

These are men who slaughter for pleasure. I call them perverse death deviants and I have no apologies for labeling them as such. Killing for pleasure is a sickness, no different than child molestation or rape.

There is no sport in killing an animal from a distance with a sophisticated tool designed to inflict death. The name sportsman implies that there is a fair contest. There is nothing fair about being ripped apart by high powered bullets.

Hunters target the biggest, the strongest and the best of the species they pursue. This is behavior outside the laws of ecology. It is unnatural predation and certainly cannot be condoned by credible conservationists.

Hunters defend their perverse desire to extinguish life by saying it is traditional. Unfortunately many barbaric practices are traditional. However, modern day hunting bears little relation to so called traditional hunting. Hunters today are more akin to those who eradicated the bison and took only the tongues.

Hunters were responsible for the extinction of the Labrador duck, the Passenger Pigeon, the Eastern Bison, the Plains Wolf and the extirpation of the Grizzly from most of the lower 48 states. They were not only killers they were involved in the act of specicide, the complete eradication of entire species. This was not conservation.

Hunters cite Theodore Roosevelt as a big game hunter who was also a conservationist. This is true, he was both. He lived in a time when killing for pleasure was accepted but it was also a time when racism was accepted as normal and it was considered abnormal for women to have any rights, especially the right to vote. Roosevelt did set aside land to conserve much in the same way that the British aristocracy set aside land as exclusive hunting preserves to keep out the lower classes.

The Sierra Club is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to reach out to invite killers to join the Club. The leadership of the Club believes that the over 80% of Club members who don’t take pleasure from killing must be tolerant of the less than 20% who do. They want to bring in more killers into the Club.

There is a big difference between hunting and killing. Photographers and film makers can hunt wildlife. It actually takes more skill to hunt a Mountain sheep with a camera than with a rifle. Any nimrod can pull a trigger and send a high velocity bullet unexpectedly into living tissue to shatter organs and induce shock. The photographer brings back nobility, a creature caught in its natural habitat in harmony with the world around it.

The killer watches his victim tumble from the air or crash to the ground as it chokes and gurgles on its own life blood. The photographer brings back life. The hunter brings back death.

I have been a hunter myself. I’ve never killed anything but I have stalked and hunted human poachers. I have destroyed their ships, their rifles, their nets, their longlines and their harpoons. I have snatched clubs from the bloody hands of sealers and defended myself from their attacks. My form of hunting is much fairer and gutsier than these killers who prey upon their unsuspecting and innocent victims. I target the guilty not the innocent.

Once I trekked with Kenyan rangers across the plains of Tsavo on the track of poachers. We followed their trail of elephant carcasses rotting on the ground with only their tusks removed. We found the criminals. They fired on us and killed one of our rangers. We did not kill them. We wounded two and arrested seven. They were armed with AK-47 rifles and our rangers were armed with British Enfield 303’s. We were up against a superior foe and we beat them. It was not sport. It was not fun. It was dangerous and necessary work and the objective was to save lives, not to extinguish lives.

That is the only kind of hunting that makes sense today in a world with a human population approaching seven billion. If every American exercised their right to kill, the ducks, geese, quail, elk, deer and other creatures would disappear quite quickly. There are simply to many of us and not very many of them.

It can hardly be an egalitarian sport if only a minority of citizens can realistically participate. Instead of encouraging hunting, groups like the Sierra Club should be discouraging the number of hunters. The nation and the world needs fewer killers of wildlife, not more.

In Europe over a hundred million songbirds are gunned down every year. Elephant populations have been reduced by 70% in East Africa since I worked on poaching patrols there in 1978. World fisheries are in a state of collapse. Wildlife is getter scarcer and there is more need now than ever for protection.

Why can’t we protect wetlands simply because wetlands need to be protected? Why is there this demand that killers are needed to help protect wetlands simply because they want to slaughter ducks? Canada geese mate for life. Shouldn’t it bother us that we shatter tens of thousands of these relationships every year? Why should we tolerate the accumulation of lead and steel shot in the marshes and estuaries? Why should we tolerate the legal murder of human beings that we label as hunting accidents, especially when the victim is a non-killer, perhaps a child some nimrod has mistaken for a deer.

The son of Sigmund Freud was walking on his own property in Quebec when a hunter shot and killed him. The killer was found not guilty because the death was ruled an accident.

When a stranger can kill you on your own land and get away with it, it demonstrates that our tolerance for this legal killing has gone over the top of acceptability.

One killer wrote me to say that my radical anti-hunting ideas were unacceptable for a member of the Board of the Sierra Club. When did opposition to killing, to the taking of life, to the extinguishment of a living creature, to the wasting of a sentient being become a radical idea?

Sometimes I think we live in such a bizarre world where advocates for life are considered radical and proponents of death are considered normal, where violence is considered acceptable and non-violence is dismissed as unpatriotic or cowardly.

Few killers question the morality of their actions. Once you have reached a stage where you can inflict cruelty and death, thoughts of morality, empathy and respect have long since vanished.

For if a killer of a deer could feel the pain and anguish of his victim or see the fawn starve because of a mother that did not return they would have little appetite for the meat.

Humans who have crossed the line into dealing death and inflicting misery have become alienated from the wonderment of life and no longer see or appreciate the magic of being alive.

Life is to be cherished, protected, defended and championed, not to be wantonly and cruelly destroyed, and certainly not for so frail an excuse as pleasure or sport.

This essay may be freely distributed and published.

Captain Paul Watson
Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (1977-
Co-Founder – The Greenpeace Foundation (1972)
Co-Founder – Greenpeace International (1979)
Director of the Sierra Club USA (2003-2006)
Director – The Farley Mowat Institute
Director – www.harpseals.org

Whom when I asked from what place he came,
And how he hight, himselfe he did ycleepe,
The Shepheard of the Ocean by Name,
And said he came far from
the main-sea deepe.
– Edmund Spenser
A.C.E. 1590

“ECO-PIRATE: THE STORY OF PAUL WATSON” is a feature-length documentary about a man on a mission to save the planet and its oceans. Currently being screened at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival to wide acclaim, this documentary is the first of it’s kind to follow the life of Captain Paul Watson’s tireless battle to save our oceans. Do not miss this film!

Source: The Sierra Club Chooses Killers over Advocates for Life and Nature By Paul Watson AELLA https://protectthewolves.com/the-sierra-club-chooses-killers-over-advocates-for-life-and-nature-by-paul-watson/

Wis. professor leads innovative study Tracking wolves through sound in Wood County

BABCOCK, Wis. (WSAW) -- Researchers from around the world, led by Rothschild native and Carthage College biology professor Dr. Angela Dassow, are helping pioneer an innovative method of tracking wolves through sound.

Dr. Angela Dassow swaps cards on an acoustic monitor at Sandhill Wildlife Area. Dec. 27, 2019 (WSAW Photo)

The two-week study, funded through the non-profit Animal Welfare Institute and aided by other organizations, uses acoustic monitors to track the vocalizations of wolves, and wraps up December 29 at the Sandhill Wildlife Area in Wood County.

The team, comprised of researchers and students from as far as Slovakia and as near as Stevens Point, rises early in the morning to trek into the woods and check the camera traps and eleven acoustic monitors working around the clock to capture visuals and vocalizations of wolves. Making the rounds to swap out SD cards and change batteries can take several hours, and the team works late into the night once they return to analyze the data collected.

“It is going to be used in our study to localize or triangulate the movement of the wolves in our area,” Dr. Dassow explained. “We’re interested in wolf-coyote interactions and wolf-dog interactions.”

“Our goal is to determine if our methods could provide a better approach to reducing the damage done to wolf populations when human-wolf conflicts arise, and help repair the image of the wolf among farmers and landowners,” Prof. Dassow noted in a press release. Currently, wolves are most commonly tracked by trapping, sedating, and fastening a radio collar to a wolf before releasing it back into the wild. The acoustic tracking method is cheaper and more efficient, Prof. Dassow noted.

“What we’re trying to develop here is a way of getting that same information about where the animals are moving without having to do anything invasive,” she said. “When the wolves are howling or when the coyotes are howling and barking, that sound is recorded by these microphones.”

Acoustic monitoring was first started at Yosemite National Park to track their wolf population, a project that multiple researchers on Prof. Dassow’s team participated in. Part of the data analysis will track how wolves in Wisconsin behave in comparison to wolves in Yellowstone, Prof. Dassow noted. “I would anticipate seeing some differences, just because of Yellowstone not having as many homes around.”

Across Wisconsin, more than 900 gray wolves now roam the woods after the Fish and Wildlife service first added them to the federally protected species list in 1974—they were considered extinct in the state by 1960. They were removed in 2012 before being replaced on the list in 2014, an issue that has prompted state representatives to call for more local control of the population.

Today, about 40 packs move in central Wisconsin alone. The Wisconsin DNR has recorded 74 confirmed wolf attacks on dogs and livestock, and dozens more unconfirmed reports in 2019. At least 10 wolves have been shot illegally in the state in the past two years, according to Carthage College. Rising wolf attacks have prompted the DNR to investigate ways to best manage the wolf population—and to ask the Fish and Wildlife Service to de-list wolves in the state.

Dr. Dassow graduated from UW-Madison in 2003 with her B.S. degrees in wildlife ecoloy and entomology, before going on to earn her M.S. and Ph.D. in zoology. She has researched the vocal communications of white-handed gibbons as well as research into a variety of other species.

Source: Tracking wolves through sound: Wis. professor leads innovative study in Wood County Cut Off USDA Wildlife Services Funding, Endangered Species List, Gray Wolves, Restore Wolves to ESL #CutOffUSDAWildlifeServicesFunding #EndangeredSpeciesList #GrayWolves #RestoreWolvesToESL https://protectthewolves.com/wis-professor-leads-innovative-study-tracking-wolves-through-sound-in-wood-county/

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Donald Dashiell needs to be removed from Office for being a Racist

@JayInslee @seattletimes @BobFergusonAG Donald Dashiell being an Elected Official is a poor excuse and clearly exhibiting that he is a Racist in Comparing the killing of Wolves To Hitler! Our Children's Resources do not need a racist Elected Official for one and Not Only Our State, But Our Children Deserve Better! @JayInslee @seattletimes @BobFergusonAG it is time that Individuals Like Dashiell get removed not only from The Wag but also from his Elected Position!

Endangered Species List, Oppose Welfare Ranching not Wolves, Protect The Wolves, Restore Wolves to ESL, Wolves in the News, Wolves in Washington #EndangeredSpeciesList #OpposeWelfareRanchingNotWolves #ProtectTheWolves #RestoreWolvesToESL #WolvesInTheNews #WolvesInWashington https://protectthewolves.com/donald-dashiell-needs-to-be-removed-from-office-for-being-a-racist/

McIrvin still telling the Public he looses 100 cows per year

It is Time to Close McIrvins Grazing Allotments! Not only is he a proven problem causer, he has no concern for lives that were there long before He moved in. This self proclaimed right by Many Ranchers, Including Donald Dashiell elected official just the other day on our page needs to be shown once and for all that The Publics Resources are more important than near free grazing. Our Research and path have already been proven will in fact work. It worked for the Grizzly without even so much as a Thank you.

With Your Help, Our Research can begin closing Allotments for these types of problem causers. Join Us Today. To Travis Fletcher, Colville National Forest district ranger, He should be focused on stopping bad ranching Practices as opposed to killing Wolves faster as he stated in this Article.

McIrvin says his business has lost $1 million since 2008 from the killings of 75 to 100 cattle a year by wolves—many times the number that the state has officially confirmed—and from declines in weight and pregnancy rates among traumatized livestock.

McIrvin says the problem is clearly the wolves, not the ranch.

When Washington ranchers find that gray wolves have attacked their cattle, they can call the state wildlife agency, which has killed 31 of the protected predators since 2012 under a program intended to save vulnerable livestock.

Many ranches have routinely used state-contracted range riders to ward off wolves, which are listed by Washington as endangered even as they have gradually returned during the last decade after being reintroduced in Idaho.

But not the Diamond M Ranch, which has grazed its cattle on federal land near the U.S.-Canada border in northeast Washington since World War II.

Twenty-six of the 31 eradicated wolves were killed after the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife deemed that members of their packs had attacked Diamond M livestock.

Environmentalists say the ranch not only fails to take preventive steps to safeguard its herds, but in some cases also brings on the bloodshed by leaving cattle near known wolf dens.

Operators of Diamond M deny that's the case, but are vociferous about their rights. The issue highlights a clash of cultures between rural eastern Washington residents and city dwellers west of the Cascade Range who, they and other cattlemen say, don't know squat about ranching, wildlife and predators.

"Seattle doesn't ask us what to do with their homeless, and I don't think we should have to ask Seattle what to do with our wolves," said Bill McIrvin, 50, a fourth-generation rancher in the family that owns Diamond M.

Wildlife department officials acknowledge that Diamond M has declined offers of state-funded range riders who could help protect cattle. But the agency is not required to mandate preventive measures before wolves are shot or trapped, they say.

Gov. Jay Inslee has asked that fewer wolves be killed, but his authority is limited to appointing members of a commission that oversees the state agency. When its director replied requesting more funds and promising to develop a new policy in Diamond M's region by May 1, Inslee said the agency had "not responded with alacrity."

Passions over wolves are running so high that in August, agency officials cited threats of violence in canceling a statewide series of 14 public meetings to discuss management once recovery is sufficient for Washington to end the species' endangered status, as Congress did in 2011 in areas including the eastern third of the state. Similar controversy is building in Colorado, where proponents of reintroducing gray wolves submitted signatures Tuesday for an initiative on the state ballot next November, despite opposition from ranchers and state wildlife commissioners.

In Washington, the wolf population had grown to 126 by the end of last year, slowed by the state's efforts to cull those deemed livestock eaters.

Diamond M itself is a 2,500-acre spread across a mountain pass from the high school Bill McIrvin once attended. Doffing a cowboy hat and muddy boots by the ranch-house door, he sat for an extended interview recently as his wife, Berta, sporting an anti-wolf T-shirt, served coffee.

The stocky cattleman denied goading wolves to attack. Rather, he said, his business has lost $1 million since 2008 from the killings of 75 to 100 cattle a year by wolves—many times the number that the state has officially confirmed—and from declines in weight and pregnancy rates among traumatized livestock.

McIrvin says the problem is clearly the wolves, not the ranch.

"I don't feel that we have room for wolves in Washington state," said McIrvin, who said his family would continue to oppose what they see as a broader agenda of wolf advocates and officials. "If it's allowed to continue, it's going to drive the ranching industry out of Washington, which is what a lot of people want. We're just stubborn, and we won't leave the range."

McIrvin views reintroduction of wolves in the West as a plot to end grazing on public land, much as environmentalists used protection of the threatened spotted owl in the 1990s to preserve Northwest forests.

For centuries in the continental United States, government bounties encouraged trapping, shooting and poisoning wolves, which were wiped out across the West by the 1930s. In 1974, gray wolves gained protection under the federal Endangered Species Act, and in 1995 researchers began releasing wolves to Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.

Gradually, wolves spread into Washington, where they will be downgraded to "threatened" status once breeding pairs have established across the state. There are now about 1,500 wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Oregon is known to have 137; California, fewer than a dozen.

Wolf advocates see Diamond M as an extreme example of ranchers abusing public land privileges, and the wildlife agency as pandering to cattle producers and hunters by slaughtering animals it's supposed to protect.

"Year after year, Diamond M reportedly loses cattle to wolves while neighboring producers are able to effectively protect their herds," said Claire Loebs Davis, an attorney for wolf advocates suing the state wildlife department.

In 2012, all seven members of a wolf family known as the Wedge pack were shot, most from a helicopter, after the Washington wildlife department determined that the group had preyed on Diamond M cattle in grazing allotments in the Colville National Forest.

In 2016, the agency spent $135,000 for a gunner and trapper to kill seven members of the Profanity Peak pack, also blamed for attacking the ranch's cattle. Over the next three years, the agency killed a dozen more wolves after Diamond M attacks, including the last four members of a pack just hours before animal advocates won a court injunction to save them.

Court fights continue, waged by Washington environmentalists and the Center for Biological Diversity, a national conservation organization. The group obtained state wildlife agency records linking Diamond M to the 26 "lethal removals"—a number that neither the agency nor the ranch disputes, except to note that in one case wolves were also blamed for attacking other cattle.

Davis views the wildlife department as having been "captured" by ranching and hunting interests. The agency counts on revenue from hunting and fishing license fees, which depend significantly on continued access to private ranch land, she noted.

Jay Holzmiller, a southeast Washington hunter and cattle rancher who served a recent six-year term on the state wildlife commission, countered that politicians in the state's urban areas wield decisive power. "The ranching and hunting community does not have near the influence, nor near the number of attorneys, as ... the environmental side does," he said.

Environmentalists say that restoring the apex predators at the top of the food chain helps revive ecosystems, bringing back songbirds and salmon. They say wolves cull unnaturally large herds of hoofed animals, known as ungulates, allowing vegetation to return, and boosting bird and fish habitat.

Last summer, Diamond M paid $4,177 to graze 736 pairs of cows and calves on 80,000 acres, an arrangement Coleman called "cheap babysitting." He said that one way to prevent cattle from being attacked would be to move them out of deep forests ideal for wolves and onto pastures where they could be readily monitored.

To Travis Fletcher, Colville National Forest district ranger, the solution is to move more quickly to kill wolves that prey on cattle. "By doing it soon enough, you remove the offending wolves that probably killed those livestock," he said.

The state wildlife agency is allowed to kill wolves after three attacks on livestock in 30 days, or four in 10 months. Officials say they also consider whether shooting or trapping wolves would jeopardize recovery of the species, and whether the cattle owner has used nonlethal measures to prevent attacks.

Donny Martorello, the department's wolf policy lead, said Diamond M has taken precautions, waiting to turn out cattle for grazing until fawns and elk calves are born in the area, providing wolves with a wild food source.

But he said that range riding is "one of the places we'd like to see improvement," acknowledging that last summer, Diamond M declined riders offered by the wildlife agency. The agency recommends riders to help keep cattle apart from wolves and to remove dead or ailing cows that attract predators.

Coleman and other environmentalists suing the agency accuse Diamond M of keeping salt blocks near a wolf den, causing cattle to swarm around it. Davis, the wolf advocates' lawyer, said internal agency documents show that qualified range riders have never patrolled a Diamond M allotment where attacks occurred.

McIrvin, at Diamond M, contends that "government-sponsored range riders ... have never once protected a cow or a calf."

But range riders counter that they indeed make a difference.

Jan Wright has patrolled on horseback in areas near Diamond M's federal grazing allotments, safeguarding cattle belonging to five other ranches. Her territory has included parts of the Colville forest, where about 10,000 cattle grazed last summer from 34 livestock producers including Diamond M.

Contracted by the wildlife agency, Wright works to deter wolves by hanging up cloth strips and carrying a gun that shoots whistle flares. She removes dead and injured cattle that might attract carnivores. And she outfits cattle with cowbells.

"When they wear bell collars, it sounds like the cavalry are coming," Wright said. "The ranches that I've been riding for in the last few years have not had wolf kills."

Source: 1 ranch, 26 wolves killed: Fight over endangered predators divides ranchers and conservationists Endangered Species List, Gray Wolves, Oppose Welfare Ranching not Wolves, Protect The Wolves, Wolves in the News, Wolves in Washington #EndangeredSpeciesList #GrayWolves #OpposeWelfareRanchingNotWolves #ProtectTheWolves #WolvesInTheNews #WolvesInWashington https://protectthewolves.com/mcirvin-still-telling-the-public-he-looses-100-cows-per-year/

Conservation Northwests Jay Shepherd cozying Up to Rep. Joel Kretz

Had Conservation Northwest not rolled over on the Publics Wildlife, they wouldn't have to cozy up to the likes of Jowl Kretz who has openly stated on his Facebook Page He still has 45 minutes to kill something. It is past time to get Our Research into the Courts to begin closing Problem Ranchers like Len McIrvins Grazing Allotments, with Your Help and Support we can begin making positive steps.

During Washington’s early years of wolf recovery, social conflict between people with different perspectives and values has increased dramatically. There are some using this conflict for a broader agenda, not attempting to reduce the polarization. Many others with various perspectives concerning wolf recovery are spending significant time and resources sincerely attempting to work together.

The decade or so that wolves have been making their way back into Washington from surrounding states and provinces has been a bumpy ride for wolves, ranchers, agencies, advocates and others. Wolves have injured and killed multiple cattle and sheep, leading to costly and controversial lethal removals of wolves since 2012. In northeastern Washington, the wolf population has grown significantly and exceeded the regional recovery goals for Eastern Washington for some time. The two other regional recovery zones in the northern and southern Cascades must meet similar goals for a change in statewide management status. However, we are working on potential paths forward, paths that include both cattle and wolves.

For years many ranchers and conservation partners in northeastern Washington have applied preventative deterrence methods to reduce wolf-cattle conflicts, conflicts that have led to both dead cattle and dead wolves. The use of deterrence methods, especially range riding or human presence, to reduce wolf-livestock conflicts has grown. This part of the story – collaboration, work and stress – hasn’t made it out to the general public. It’s a story about hard work, tough conversations, and eventual trust and friendships. Not sensational but it’s a remarkable story that needs telling.

Many hardworking ranching families in northeastern Washington strive to co-exist with wildlife, including wolves. Wolf recovery has added costs, work and stress to ranching. Any acceptance of wolf recovery in rural Washington depends on reducing financial impacts and stress on ranching families. If the entire financial burden of implementing practical wolf deterrence methods is placed on ranchers, there will be less use of deterrence methods, and most likely less collaboration. We believe both practical deterrence methods and collaboration help ranchers and wolves in the long run.

The Northeast Washington Wolf-Cattle Collaborative is helping with the cost of nonlethal wolf deterrence efforts and also attempting to learn methods from folks in other states who have lived with wolves for much longer than Washington. The collaborative strives to be effective and efficient in the use of nonlethal wolf mitigation methods, and implement strategies designed to reduce wolf-livestock conflicts such as low-stress livestock handling and herd management. Some methods have been learned from friends in Montana. such as the Tom Miner Association and the Blackfoot Challenge. The collaborative also shares range riders and equipment with the community. Lessons learned and knowledge gained concerning raising cattle in wolf country are shared with our livestock-producing community. Participation and membership in the collaboration is opt-in, just a friendly hand.

We all need to ask what should wolf recovery look like in Washington? In five years? In 10 years? Do we want continual upheaval and a growing cultural divide between Eastern and Western Washington, or do we want rural acceptance of wolves on the landscape and urban acceptance of wolf management including protection of cattle?

We believe the majority of Washingtonians want a sustainable ranching community and a recovered, stable wolf population. Therefore, we will see wolf-livestock conflict; namely livestock killed by wolves and the removal of offending wolves. We and others are committed to searching for methods to reduce both the numbers of dead cattle and wolves. We don’t want to force change, but we do believe as a wildlife species, wolves are unique in their ability to negatively affect livestock producers. We feel that this means herd management practices that are better adapted to protect cattle from wolves and, when necessary, targeted and efficient lethal removal of wolves both are warranted.

If we communicate, look for common ground, embrace cooperation, are willing to adapt, there is a path forward.

Rep. Joel Kretz is a member of the Washington House of Representatives, representing the 7th Legislative District. Jay Shepherd is Wolf Program Lead with Conservation Northwest.

Source: Rep. Joel Kretz and Jay Shepherd:: Wolf management works better when collaborative | The Spokesman-Review Endangered Species List, Oppose Welfare Ranching not Wolves, Protect The Wolves, Protect Wolves in Washington, Wolves in Washington #EndangeredSpeciesList #OpposeWelfareRanchingNotWolves #ProtectTheWolves #ProtectWolvesInWashington #WolvesInWashington https://protectthewolves.com/conservation-northwests-jay-shepherd-cozying-up-to-rep-joel-kretz/

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is caught in the crossfire between wolf lovers and haters boohoo

WDFW needs to Man Up... We get Threats almost Daily from people that would rather kill than protect the ecosystem.

Martorello as well as Susewind need to stop Pandering to Ranchers, and begin listening to the General Public. Ranchers claim its a way of Life for them. Listen Up its also a way of life for our wildlife, they were here long before the self claimed entitled Ranchers. It is Past time to begin kicking Ranchers off of Grazing Allotments. History shows that areas once fertile are now taken over by invasive weeds from livestock. Not to mention the costs to You the Taxpayer. See Our Oped Regarding 5th Generation Ranchers

Matthew Konkle, a state Fish and Wildlife official stationed in northeast Washington, forwarded an email to his colleagues in September with a picture attached: A yellow "Pavement Ends" sign sits with a forest in the background. Stuck to the front of the sign is what looks like a customized bumper sticker: "WDFW = Enemy."

"The struggles in my district appear to be escalating faster than solutions are being provided by our decision makers," Konkle wrote in the email to the Fish and Wildlife executive team. "I strongly appreciate the moves recently taken to protect the safety of my staff such as addressing recent safety concerns with impending meetings."

At the end of the August, Fish and Wildlife announced it was canceling 14 meetings about wolf recovery because of safety concerns. An Inlander public-records request turned up a slate of angry rhetoric, much of it directed toward the Fish and Wildlife staffers.

"Kill the state officials responsible for the crime," one commenter demanded.

Other comments on other pro-wolf Facebook pages featured similarly threatening comments, like "I wish someone, ANYONE, would shoot the sharpshooters!," and "Shoot them in the knee caps as they are not human."

Fish and Wildlife concluded that the best course of action was to cancel the public meetings and hold a series of online webinars instead. But while the cancellations were greeted with relief by some nervous Wildlife staffers, other groups reacted with cynicism.

"The state knows very well that the vast majority of people will come out to the hearing and tell them to stop killing wolves. They don't want that," says Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "The state represented at the end of the day the interest of a small group of ranchers, but not the interests of the majority of citizens."

But Diamond M Ranch's Len McIrvin, one of the northeast Washington's most vocally anti-wolf ranchers, also saw conspiracy, but in the other direction.

"It had nothing to do with safety." McIrvin says. "Fish and Wildlife has an agenda and that's to put us out of business with the wolves."

BARED TEETH

You can trace Washington's fight over the fate of wolves and cattle to 2012, when Fish and Wildlife used a helicopter to kill wolves in the "Wedge pack," which the department concluded had been eating McIrvin's cattle.

To environmentalists it was an atrocity — seven different conservation organizations sent a letter to the governor condemning it. But to conservatives like Steve McLaughlin, who once ran for state commissioner of public lands, the state's policies have been "hog-tying" ranchers' ability to pursue a more aggressive removal of wolves.

"Bottom line is, they want us off the land," McLaughlin said at last year's Marble God and Country rally in Stevens County, arguing that wolves were being intentionally used by "the communists and the New World Order ... to depopulate the West."

In 2013, Fish and Wildlife tried to bring together ranchers, environmentalists and hunters as a part of a Wolf Advisory Group to develop clear standards for when a wolf pack needed to be killed, says Donny Martorello, the state's wolf policy lead.

"The ideas that we put on the table, everybody hated," Martorello says. "We thought, 'Hey, everybody dislikes us and we're in the middle and that puts us in a good spot.'"

But Martorello quickly realized they were wrong. If anything, the mutual distrust of his agency was exacerbating the tensions.

Each time wolves were killed, a national outcry would follow, unleashing a flood of phone calls, emails and comments on social media that went from angry to downright sinister.

"We've had staff take it to the level where they needed to change how they look, change their hairstyle, grow out their hair, because of their concerns for their personal safety," Martorello says.

A few years ago, Martorello says, he got a series of "I'm coming for you" emails from someone angry about Fish and Wildlife killing wolves. It concerned him so much he put his family in a hotel room for two days.

PACK MENTALITIES

The fights aren't just about policy, Marterollo says, but also about culture and values.

"On the surface, it's about the lethal removal of wolves," says Martorello. "But there's a deep-rooted identity-based conflict beneath that."

The agency spent $1.2 million over three and a half years to bring in a nonprofit to begin to heal the divide, according to the Washington Post. Francine Madden, executive director of what's now the Center for Conservation Peacebuilding, tried to mend some of the underlying wounds hobbling the debate.

The strategy: Set the wolf-and-cattle issue aside at first, and help each side build relationships and understand each other.

"There were so many moments where people amazed themselves that they could engage in this constructive problem-solving and come up with stuff that they could live with," Madden says.

Madden helped the Wolf Advisory Group find consensus, developing a new standard for how the state should handle conflicts between wolves and livestock, getting some ranchers to agree to deal with wolves through non-lethal methods and some conservationists to sign off on wolves being killed in rare circumstances.

The problem? Some participants found themselves targeted by those on their own side for being sellouts.

Chase Gunnell, spokesman for Conservation Northwest, says that they've "received threats for collaborating with ranchers and agencies," generally from "hardcore environmentalist" groups out of state.

Meanwhile, on the other side, you have some northeastern Washington ranchers like McIrvin, who blames Fish and Wildlife bureaucrats for inciting death threats against him and refers to environmentalists as "animal worshippers" and "degenerates."

"I don't care if everybody in Seattle says they want wolves, I still have a constitutional right to defend my property," McIrvin says. "I have every right to eliminate those wolves."

The rhetorical climate, Madden argues, is a reflection of the national climate of zero-sum partisanship.

"If your take is, 'It's my way or the highway' and you try to annihilate the other side, then you're probably going to be disappointed when society comes together," Madden says.

STILL IN THE HUNT

For all the progress that Fish and Wildlife officials felt they made over the last few years, it didn't prepare them for a month like August.

That's the month when wolf advocates successfully won an injunction to stop the state from killing more members of the Old Profanity Peak pack — but just hours earlier, state officials had killed almost all remaining wolves in the pack. That same month, the Stevens County Cattlemen's Association offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to the identity of the person allegedly shooting cattle, suspecting retaliation for wolf deaths. The month ended with the announcement that they were cancelling the wolf meetings.

Still, the department plans to schedule wolf meetings next year. They haven't solved the conflict that has spanned generations, Martorello says, but today he feels like they have the tools to begin to try.

"There were many people who get into this business because they like to get outdoors and like to deal with wildlife," Martorello says. "We weren't necessarily trained for the social conflict of this." ♦

Source: The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is caught in the crossfire between wolf lovers and haters | Local News | Spokane | The Pacific Northwest Inlander | News, Politics, Music, Calendar, Events in Spokane, Coeur d'Alene and the Inland Northwest Endangered Species List, Gray Wolves, Oppose Welfare Ranching not Wolves, Protect The Wolves, Wolves in the News #EndangeredSpeciesList #GrayWolves #OpposeWelfareRanchingNotWolves #ProtectTheWolves #WolvesInTheNews https://protectthewolves.com/the-washington-department-of-fish-and-wildlife-is-caught-in-the-crossfire-between-wolf-lovers-and-haters-boohoo/

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

They Blame Junction Butte pups Killed to highly habituated to humans SERIOUSLY?

[caption id="attachment_5710" align="alignleft" width="300"] Junction Butte Yearling Female 2016[/caption]

What they forget to mention is that a couple Years ago A Guide that had lost their Horse String, Then rode right through the Rendezvous Den Location, may have contributed to their not using the Traditional Rendezvous Location. Not to mention there is no mention of the speeds at which Visitors Travel through the Park. In Typical Government Fashion they choose to blame all of the wrong issues that a prudent Individual may see as the Cause.

We have Video posted of the blatant disregard for the park rules but the outfitter. (Link to Video is Posted on Our Website) The Outfitter was called 27 times yet they claimed they didnt receive the call, however they mentioned that they saw missed calls... So had their phone not been connected, the missed calls would not have been recorded. Its sort of like when you have your cell phone off.... It does not show you later that you missed a call. We were standing right there when they were asked.

An unusual set of circumstances led to an extremely habituated litter of wolf pups being raised near Slough Creek last summer, a behavioral trait that likely played a role in two pups being hit and killed on Yellowstone roads months later.

The demise of two of the Junction Butte Pack’s 7-month-old pups, which died after being hit by a vehicle, was reported by Yellowstone National Park officials last week. The pups were part of a Canis lupus litter that had attracted the attention of park employees looking to aggressively haze them for months. The animals, Yellowstone senior wolf biologist Doug Smith said, were perilously comfortable around humans.

“If people are around when they’re 2, 3 months old, they develop this lifelong outlook that people just aren’t a big deal,” Smith said. “That’s just not good.”

Smith pointed to the location of the wolf den as a cause of the habituation.

A first-time den site for the Junction Butte Pack, it was situated within eyeshot — 200 to 300 yards away — from a trail at Slough Creek, Smith said. Furthermore, there was a privately owned inholding in the area, Silver Tip Ranch, which made closing the area down entirely not reasonable.

“You’ve got that, and then you’ve got one of the most popular trails in Yellowstone,” Smith said. “The pups figured it out and they came to the trail. We suspect that when people saw them, they left the trail.”

By the time two of the Junction Butte’s 13 pups were hit in a Nov. 19 nighttime collision, they were 7 or so months old and likely 50-plus pounds. Silver Gate, Montana resident and avid wolf watcher Rick McIntyre, formerly of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, recalled that the pups retained their fearlessness of roads even as they aged.

“Some of them didn’t seem to have the understanding that it can be a dangerous thing to linger on the road,” McIntyre said. “I would compare it to young kids who don’t quite understand the same issue: the danger of being on the road.”

Yellowstone rangers are investigating the collision that killed the pups, and did not make law enforcement officers available for an interview. The hit-and-run collision, which wasn’t called in, took place near sundown.

Yellowstone Wolf Project employees and volunteers tried repeatedly to haze the litter, but “teachable moments” with tools like beanbag guns were hard to come by, Smith said.

“You can’t go out in the field and just start randomly pounding them,” Smith said. “We did get some opportunities, but I would say there were not great teaching events. We fired at them and missed, that kind of thing.”

Apart from the habituated Junction Butte litter, Yellowstone has tried to step up its efforts to make wolves wary of humans.

Legal hunters immediately outside Yellowstone boundaries have periodically taken advantage of wolves that generally lacked fear of humans. At times the deaths of habituated wolves have caused outrage, such as when a Cooke City, Montana, hunter killed wolf 926F in 2018. The hunter’s trophy was a former alpha female of the Lamar Canyon Pack with a lineage that traced to the 1995 wolf reintroduction. It was the same fate as the world-famous lobo’s mother, known as “06,” and it sparked an online fury, and calls for a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks investigation.

But it wasn’t until the 2019 Junction Butte litter that Yellowstone dealt with wolves that learned their habituated behavior as puppies, when they’re most impressionable. Not knowing how to deal with it, Smith called up his wolf management counterparts at Alberta, Canada’s Banff National Park, who had tried to counteract the behavior of wolves that lost their fear of humans in their earliest days.

“They said, ‘We’ve had to remove partial or entire packs,’” Smith said. “Hazing them did not help them, so they killed them.

“What we’re trying to do is prevent that kind of thing from happening,” he said. “We were on the trail all summer trying to haze those pups.”

The Junction Butte litters experienced some mortality at the den, but even with the loss of two more from the accident the litter still numbers eight animals. Smith and his staff aren’t giving up on trying to turn the youngsters into wild wolves that know what people and roads represent: danger.

“We’re going to try to keep hazing them,” Smith said.

Source: Junction Butte pups highly habituated to humans, even for Yellowstone wolves | Environmental | jhnewsandguide.com Endangered Species List, Protect The Wolves, Wolves in Yellowstone #EndangeredSpeciesList #ProtectTheWolves #WolvesInYellowstone https://protectthewolves.com/they-blame-junction-butte-pups-killed-to-highly-habituated-to-humans-seriously/

Monday, December 23, 2019

Wyoming Wolf Trophy Zones slaughter 26 Possible Yellowstone Wolves

protect the wolves, sacred resource protection zone, yellowstone wolves

We now have precedent setting case law that can be applied to help Establish our Proposed "Sacred Resource Protection Zone.". The only thing missing is the Public joining Our Voice as ONE. The Large NGOs refuse to, Its now up to the Public!! Together As ONE Voice We can begin creating necessary change.

Will Yellowstone Wolves be available for your Grandchildren to view?

Everyday Possible Yellowstone Wolves are being needlessly slaughtered in Wyoming, and need our Proposed "Sacred Resource Protection Zone", along with our proposed regulation changes.

An estimated 528 wolves resided in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as of 2015. As of December 2018, there were 80 wolves in 9 packs. A biological count (April 1, 2019) was 61 wolves in 8 packs.

With your help we can work towards insuring that they are!

Help us to put The Indian and Public Trusts to work Today!

Before they wipe out the rest of Your wolves, grizzlies, wild horses. https://continuetogive.com/protectthewolves

A total of it appears 26 possible park wolves have already been slaughtered in 2019 altogether 47 thus far in 2019 with 26 Wolves slaughtered in the Trophy Zones that surround Your National Parks. 22 from the general Slaughter Zone in this Bloodthirsty State!

Keep in mind that these are just Wolves that have been reported killed! Does not take into account all that people chose not to report as they are required!!
Please consider becoming a Paid Member with Just $1.00 per month so We are able to call these crooked states out in COURT. We have the Research, the tools, the Attorneys, only missing Ingredient is 57,000 plus followers.

Help us to put The Indian and Public Trusts to work Today, before they wipe out the rest of Your Yellowstone wolves, grizzlies, wild horses.

Please Consider Joining Our Voice to establish a "Sacred Resource Protection Zone" Surrounding National Parks in Blood thirsty states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana to begin with.

Take Back the Power that You as the public hold!

What will it take for the Government to Realize that Wyoming has once again proven they are incapable of managing The Public's Federal Resources?

YELLOWSTONE WOLVES ARE DYING

At an Alarming Rate!!!!

Endangered Species List, Oppose Welfare Ranching not Wolves, Protect The Wolves, Wolves in Yellowstone #EndangeredSpeciesList #OpposeWelfareRanchingNotWolves #ProtectTheWolves #WolvesInYellowstone https://protectthewolves.com/wyoming-wolf-trophy-zones-slaughter-26-possible-yellowstone-wolves/

Relocated island wolves outlasting mainland wolves But are they telling the truth?

So this article says the last Isle Royal wolf dropped over dead on a trail emaciated, The News reports him Killed by New Transplanted Residents. Why is it the Government constantly tries to blow smoke up your proverbial you know what? Not to mention the Park service seemed to forget to mention they capture Wolves for transplant using Leg Traps.... Listen Up Scientists... Leg Traps are already proven killers. But you refuse to stop using them.

Island life isn’t for everyone, nor, it seems, for every wolf.

One year into a federal effort to restock the wolf population in Isle Royale National Park in Michigan’s Lake Superior, a pack of eight relocated from a nearby island appears to be thriving, while four of 11 wolves brought from the mainland have died. Another wolf voluntarily departed last winter, returning to Minnesota over an ice bridge.

The U.S. National Park Service (NPS) today released news of the most recent wolf deaths, and the emerging pattern is clear: Wolves relocated as a pack from Canada’s Michipicoten Island Provincial Park have so far been more successful on Isle Royale than wolves brought individually from either mainland Minnesota, Michigan, or Canada’s Ontario province. The Michipicoten wolves’ provenance as a bonded group was likely crucial to the fact they have all survived so far in the new environment, says wildlife ecologist Rolf Peterson from Michigan Technological University in Houghton, who has studied Isle Royale wolves since 1971. “That’s about the only explanation I can think of,” to account for the difference in the wolves’ fates.

Population ecologist Brent Patterson of Trent University in Peterborough, Canada, has been studying the Michipicoten wolves since a breeding pair crossed an ice bridge from mainland Canada to that island in 2014. Their large size, about 50 kilograms, is another important factor in their survival on Isle Royale, he suspects. Before settling on Michipicoten, where they hunted woodland caribou, the wolves had been preying on moose in northern Ontario, so they came equipped to hunt Isle Royale’s moose. At the time they were moved to Isle Royale, the Michipicoten wolves were food stressed and battered, having eliminated the caribou—but the presence of their pack mates and their large physical stature gave them a leg up in getting through the snow to hunt moose again, Patterson says.

The relocated U.S. mainland wolves, in contrast, were not moose hunters and were generally smaller, although they were considered healthy at the times they were moved to Isle Royale. The circumstances of their deaths have all been different. One Minnesota male died of pneumonia shortly after being moved in fall 2018. The body of another male, from Ontario, was retrieved from a bog in April; it was too decomposed to determine a cause of death. In September, two recently relocated females died; one from Michigan had an infection and wound from the leg trap used in her capture. The second, from Minnesota, died from severe trauma after an attack by another wolf or wolves. (Another Minnesota wolf intended for relocation in 2018 died before its move because of “capture stress.”)

NPS expected some wolf deaths, as well as wolf fights, or other random events to take a toll on the relocated animals, but “all the mortalities are surprising,” says NPS wildlife biologist Doug Smith, who directed a similar relocation of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and has worked on Isle Royale but is not involved in the current effort. In Yellowstone, 41 wolves introduced to restore the predators to the park all survived their relocation. Those wolves belonged to three packs, but individual wolves have also been successfully relocated, Smith says. He points out that moving wolves on a large scale to restore predation is still relatively new. “This is an art, not a science.”

Isle Royale researchers have been watching the movements of the new radio-collared wolves—except for the breeding male from Michipicoten, who slipped his collar in July—and consider their social dynamics to still be in flux. The public can investigate which wolves are hanging out together and where with a new online tool.

The last male wolf of the intensely studied island-born population also died this fall. It dropped dead on a hiking trail, where a ranger found its intact, though emaciated, body on 17 October. Eleven years old, it far outlived most wild wolves and was apparently survived by the 9-year-old island-born female that is both its daughter and its half-sibling. The female had been prodding the male along for several years. Pathologists at the United States Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center in Madison noted broken ribs, as well as several puncture wounds they attributed to wolf attack. “It is still a question in my mind what it actually died of,” Peterson says, noting that wolf attacks don’t usually break bones, although moose kicks commonly do. He may get more answers as the frozen corpse arrives this week in Houghton, where he will dissect the body and preserve the skeleton. Other Michigan Tech researchers plan to sequence the wolf’s genome.

Source: Relocated island wolves outlasting mainland wolves in new Isle Royale home | Science | AAAS Endangered Species List, Gray Wolves, Oppose Welfare Ranching not Wolves, Protect The Wolves, Wolves in the News #EndangeredSpeciesList #GrayWolves #OpposeWelfareRanchingNotWolves #ProtectTheWolves #WolvesInTheNews https://protectthewolves.com/relocated-island-wolves-outlasting-mainland-wolves-but-are-they-telling-the-truth/

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Isle Royale’s last native male wolf among 2 killed by new wolves

This is what happens when Humans Interfere, They should have sent HIM females only to see if he could keep his own Gene-pool Alive. He obviously was a strong guy. As usual the National Park Service has some messed up views you will see when you read the entire article!

Some territorial aggression by Isle Royale's new wolves seem to be behind 2 new wolf deaths on the island, the National Park Service says.

ISLE ROYALE, MI - He’d survived the last decade on Michigan’s most remote island against some pretty big odds. For more than 10 years, a male gray wolf known to researchers as M183 had roamed the forests and rocky outcroppings of Isle Royale in Lake Superior while nearly all the rest of his pack members died of accidents, disease or health problems caused by inbreeding.

Until recently, he and his mate - who was also his daughter and half-sister on his twisted family tree - were the last two island-born wolves to call it home. But when the National Park Service last year began an effort to relocate new wolves to Isle Royale to restore predator packs in the face of a fast-rising moose population, some scientists knew M183′s days could be numbered.

They were right. The park service announced today that two more wolves were found dead on the island this fall - killed by other wolves in what researchers are calling territorial aggression.

The remains of M183 were found in October by park staff, just before the island closed to visitors for the winter season. A month earlier, researchers monitoring the new wolves’ GPS trackers saw a female wolf’s collar was transmitting a mortality signal. They pinpointed the location and found her remains. They belonged to a wolf known as W004F, a 3-year-old that had been one of the first wolves captured for this relocation project. She had been captured near Grand Portage, Minnesota in October 2018, and released near Isle Royale’s Siskiwit Bay.

Necropsies of both animals determined the same thing: Their wounds showed they had been killed by another wolf or wolves.

“These events are not uncommon, as wolves defend and establish their territories and social hierarchy. With many wolves on the island sorting out their relationships with one another, the dynamic nature of wolf social organization, territoriality, and wolf-on-wolf aggression during group and pack formation is not unexpected," the park service said.

“With the death of the island-born male, travel patterns of the remaining wolves are likely to change significantly, and probably dependent on whether or not the island-born female is still alive, whether she is territorial and how she gets along with the newcomers, both males and females," said Rolf Peterson, a research professor at Michigan Technological University and long-time wolf and moose investigator on Isle Royale. "She is the final native wolf, never radio-collared, and searching for her will be a priority during the upcoming winter study.”

In all, six wolves have died and one has used an ice bridge to head back to the mainland in the 15 months since the park service began its multi-year effort to bring predator packs back to Isle Royale. Of those who died, one captured wolf died of anesthesia-related stress before she could be brought to the island, and another wolf that had been on Isle Royale for weeks died of pneumonia, park officials have said. One wolf caught in the U.P. this fall died within days of his release on the island.

These last two deaths bring the island’s wolf population down to 15: seven females and eight males. These include the last native-born female and 14 new wolves that hail from Minnesota, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, mainland Ontario, Canada, and Michipicoten Island in northeastern Lake Superior, Ontario, Canada.

Some see M183′s death as a chance for a new angle on the plethora of data researchers are collecting. Tracking collars on the new wolves are allowing scientists to map where they are traveling on the island archipelago, which sits about 60 miles northwest of Michigan’s U.P. mainland. What they are killing and eating is also being studied. Researchers are looking at everything from bones at kill sites to piles of wolf scat.

“We have a unique opportunity to look simultaneously at the past and future of Isle Royale wolves’ genetic health. With the death of M183, we can now more fully understand how genetic isolation and inbreeding impacted the historic wolf population and use that to better monitor the new founders," said Dr. Kristin Brzeski, a wildlife geneticist at Michigan Tech, whom the park service has partnered with to sequence the Isle Royale wolf genome for long-term monitoring of the population’s genetic health.

"This is an exciting time and we will be using cutting-edge genetic tools to track reproduction, inbreeding, and genetic change through time, hopefully providing a piece of the puzzle for maintaining a thriving Isle Royale wolf population,” she said.

Source: Isle Royale’s last native male wolf among 2 killed by new wolves - mlive.com Endangered Species List, Gray Wolves, Oppose Welfare Ranching not Wolves, Protect The Wolves, Restore Wolves to ESL #EndangeredSpeciesList #GrayWolves #OpposeWelfareRanchingNotWolves #ProtectTheWolves #RestoreWolvesToESL https://protectthewolves.com/isle-royales-last-native-male-wolf-among-2-killed-by-new-wolves/

Stallion Ran Wild For 26 Years. Then Died 5 Months Into Captivity.

Montana Huskies need a Home

Someone probably mistook the Husky for a Wolf, when they saw the error of their ways, they left it to die it appears.

The Bitter Root Humane Association, a shelter that takes in Ravalli County's abandoned pets and helps finds them new homes, received a call that a husky had to have its leg amputated because it was shot.

When they arrived, they uncovered much more than just a couple dogs in need of their help.

After 60 hours of trying to bring in the huskies, the Bitter Root Humane Association now has over 30 new dogs, which includes a litter of puppies.

That's already added on top of the 17 dogs they have, their cats, and five Macaw birds that they recently added. They are calling on the community's help this holiday season.

"At this point now we have about 25 to 30 adult huskies that were not sure where to go with at this point," said Bitter Root Humane Association operations manager Cyra Woehlke-Saltzman.

All of the huskies were in the wild before being rescued and Bitter Root Humane Association got to most of them before the elements or local residents could harm them.

Because these dogs were in the wild, the humane association has to take more time to find the right homes for them.

"We don't think they will be great with livestock, we don't think they will be great with smaller animals. But we don't know ... we don’t have the time and resources to actually sit down and work with these dogs to see where we can home them," Woehlke-Saltzman said.

While the humane association preps these neglected dogs to find homes, people are still invited to stop by and spend some time with them.

"I would welcome that. That would make my heart happy because then we know that they are spending that time (and) bonding with that dog," Saltzman said. "Then we can actually see the interaction day to day,"

In the meantime, the humane association is filled beyond capacity, so they can use help with donations including money, food, toys, blankets or time.

"That's the biggest thing right now. Volunteers that want to come in and start helping. Clinics that want to help. Rescues that are aware of us. If anybody wants to come help us at this point with donations or time that's something that we are needing the most right now," Woehlke-Saltzman said.

Some of the Huskies are bred with some wolf in them so they might need some special accommodations to find a permanent home.

Bitter Root Humane says that if you know of any husky rescues or anyone who might be able to accommodate for these dogs you can give them a call or visit their website for more information.

Source: Montana humane association seeking home for neglected huskies Ban Animal Trapping, Endangered Species List, Oppose Welfare Ranching not Wolves, Restore Wolves to ESL #BanAnimalTrapping #EndangeredSpeciesList #OpposeWelfareRanchingNotWolves #RestoreWolvesToESL https://protectthewolves.com/montana-huskies-need-a-home/

Friday, December 20, 2019

The mental state in Wyoming that Your Wildlife have to survive in

Herein lies the issue that Your National Park wildlife have to contend with in Wyoming. Your Children's Wildlife Resources are in dire need of our Proposed "Sacred Resource Protection Zone". Join Us today to begin making it a Reality.

It wasn’t the “white out” the school was looking for.

Two Wyoming high school students were disciplined after dressing as Ku Klux Klan members Wednesday, the Casper Star Tribune reported. The students at Riverton High School were dressed in all-white robes, and one added a pointed white hood, a cross around his neck and carried an American flag.

Terry Synder, Superintendent of Fremont County School District No. 25, which includes Riverton High, told that the Star Tribune that the district would “not tolerate anything that even begins to look like what it looked like.”

The students broke out the all-white Klan look for a “white out”-themed school spirit day, the Washington Post reported. Their punishment was not specified.

“We are an inclusive school that is proud of our diverse population and celebrate that fact regularly,” the school wrote in a statement posted to Facebook Wednesday.

According to the 2010 census, 83.5% of Riverton’s 10,600 residents are white. However, the central Wyoming town is nearly surrounded by the Wind River Indian Reservation.

Source: Two Wyoming high school students dress as KKK members for spirit day - New York Daily News Endangered Species List, Gray Wolves, Oppose Welfare Ranching not Wolves, Protect The Wolves, Wolves in the News, Wolves in Yellowstone, Yellowstone Wolves #EndangeredSpeciesList #GrayWolves #OpposeWelfareRanchingNotWolves #ProtectTheWolves #WolvesInTheNews #WolvesInYellowstone #YellowstoneWolves https://protectthewolves.com/the-mental-state-in-wyoming-that-your-wildlife-have-to-survive-in/

How Might Wolves In Colorado Affect Chronic Wasting Disease?

Colorado's poised to put the question of wolf reintroduction on the November ballot. One unanswered question is how the predators might affect the spread of chronic wasting disease, if at all.

CWD is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that currently infects deer, elk, moose and reindeer. Critics of wolf reintroduction argue that more predators on the landscape could further spread CWD.

Debbie McKenzie, who studies the disease at the University of Alberta, says wolves and other dog-like animals are generally considered to be resistant to CWD, but that doesn't mean an infected deer's prions—the proteins that spread the disease—die when a wolf preys on it.

"There has been some evidence that although the wolves themselves would not get a prion disease, that some of the infectious prions could end up in their fecal material and it could be a way of moving the disease around," McKenzie said.

She pointed to a study published in 2015 by researchers based in northern Colorado. They studied six coyotes from Utah, feeding them elk brain and analyzing the contents of the resulting feces. As the scientists wrote, the findings show that coyotes can pass infectious prions via their feces for at least three days after eating infected meat, "demonstrating that mammalian scavengers could contribute to the translocation and contamination of CWD in the environment."

On the other hand, proponents of wolf reintroduction say wolves could help limit the spread of CWD by killing off sick animals before they can infect many others.

A decade ago, Colorado Division of Wildlife researchers found that mountain lions prey selectively on prion-infected mule deer, and they noted other studies indicating that "predators like wolves and coyotes select prey disproportionately if they appear impaired by malnutrition, age or disease."

In a study supporting the pro-wolf line of thinking, published in 2011, researchers from the National Park Service, Colorado Division of Wildlife and Colorado State University wrote in the Journal of Wildlife Diseases, "as CWD distribution and wolf range overlap in the future, wolf predation may suppress disease emergence or limit prevalence."

Source: How Might Wolves In Colorado Affect Chronic Wasting Disease? | Wyoming Public Media Endangered Species List, Gray Wolves, Protect The Wolves, Restore Wolves to ESL, Wolves in Yellowstone #EndangeredSpeciesList #GrayWolves #ProtectTheWolves #RestoreWolvesToESL #WolvesInYellowstone https://protectthewolves.com/how-might-wolves-in-colorado-affect-chronic-wasting-disease/