Interior secretary announces recovery of wolves in the Western Great Lakes, removal from Endangered Species List

FromThe Wildlife Society NewsBrief:

U.S. Department of the Interior    Share   
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has announced that gray wolf populations in the Great Lakes region have recovered and no longer require the protection of the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is publishing a final rule in the Federal Register removing wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and in portions of adjoining states, from the list of endangered and threatened wildlife and plants. More

Fish & Wildlife Service and NOAA's Fisheries Service propose policy to improve implementation of Endangered Species Act

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service    Share   
A new federal policy proposal will help clarify which species or populations of species are eligible for protection under the Endangered Species Act and will provide for earlier and more effective opportunities to conserve declining species. The public is invited to comment on the policy, proposed by the Interior Department's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service, the two federal agencies responsible for administering the Endangered Species Act. Comments will be accepted for the next 60 days. More

Hunting and Fishing Montana's Rocky Mountain Front

This from the Backcountry Hunter's and Angler's by Ben Long:

The Buffalo Are Back – Well, Almost

 This article originally appeared in the Montana's Bully Pulpit blog:

By: Jim Posewitz

While it is a little soon to put your ear to the ground to hear the throb of running buffalo -- they are back. Recent efforts to “manage” the Yellowstone buffalo and their quarantined overflow merely represents a passing checkpoint along the route to restoring wild, free ranging, state managed, and huntable Montana buffalo. The current proposal involved the idea of penning the brucellosis free surplus either on the Spotted Dog or Marias Wildlife Management areas. The idea drew little support from Montana hunters and open hostility from vicinity landowners. The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission made the right decision today in allocating the available buffalo to herds managed by Montana Indian Tribes. Given the truth of history, there is a certain moral justice in that decision. Besides, there was no “fair chase” hunting potential in the corralled buffalo.

As the buffalo drama continues to play itself out in our natural and political environments we must sharpen our focus on the CMR Wildlife Refuge and its potential to host wild, free ranging buffalo. Over a million acres of public land, once home to this iconic species, make the refuge ideal for initiating this consummate wildlife conservation aspiration. Add adjacent public lands and the area’s potential triples. For now, an immediate start on the CMR is clearly in order. It is time for the U.S. Department of Interior and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks to launch a joint environmental assessment on the restoration of buffalo. That assessment will focus on the natural environment. While the assessment is underway the rest of us need to address the political environment by spreading the message that we are ready to put the final piece of the North American wildlife restoration miracle in place. It will be a treasure our generation can pass to hunters still within the womb of time.

**Photo is of Jake Butt with 2011 Bull in Crow Pasture. Jake submitted this photo in the photo contest. Good luck in winning some more Sitka gear Jake, looks like you already swear by it.

Officials debate way forward on grizzly bear management

Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee ponders what's next
At its winter meeting in Missoula last week, members of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee questioned what would be next for the grizzly bear populations in the Northern Rockies, as the bear remains--for now--under federal protection.
Missoulian; Dec. 4

Invest in Conservation

This from the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership:

No one can better appreciate the importance of conservation funding than sportsmen.

Eric,
With Congress continuing its debate over budgets and the national deficit, the TRCP is collaborating with other sportsmen’s and outdoor recreation groups to promote the message that investments in conservation stimulate the economy and protect American jobs. 
This week, the Outdoor Industry Association, the American Sportfishing Association and the TRCP co-sponsored an advertisement in Politico magazine to advocate for continued funding for conservation in America. View the ad.
The TRCP’s latest action in support of hunting and fishing was prompted by a recent letter to the president from more than 100 of the nation’s leading economists, stating that funding for public lands supports American jobs and drives economic growth. No one can better appreciate this than sportsmen.
The economists’ position validates the findings of a study commissioned by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation revealing that activities related to outdoor recreation, including hunting and fishing, as well as natural resources conservation and historic preservation, generate 9.4 million jobs, $107 billion in annual tax revenue and more than $1 trillion in total economic impact. Learn more about the report’s findings.
Learn more about the TRCP’s work in support of conservation funding – and consider supporting our efforts.

Why Do We Get Up at 0 Dark Thirty?

Why unfavorable odds don't deter Vt hunters
WCAX
By Alexei Rubenstein - bio | email With only a few days left of rifle season, Eric Nuse is getting all the time he can. The 32-year veteran former Vermont ...
http://www.wcax.com/story/16114145/why-unfavorable-odds-dont-deter-vt-hunters?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6485716

Conference Workshop to Focus on Restoring Bison to the Northern Plains

Orion Founder Jim Posewitz is working on this project in Montana.

A workshop, “Bringing Bison Back: America’s Last Big Game Challenge,” is scheduled for 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., Monday, March 12, at the 77th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.  It will examine the political, cultural and ecological steps necessary for bison to be restored, managed and valued as a wildlife resource on northeastern Montana’s Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR) and other multi-jurisdictional landscapes. The Great Plains of Montana once sustained bison herds that numbered in the millions. Like so many other wildlife species, the bison population was decimated by market hunting and habitat loss during the latter half of the 19th century. Through historic conservation efforts—led primarily by sportsmen clubs and conservationists, including William Hornaday, Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell—many of the game species suffering from overexploitation recovered to a sustainable degree were and been restored to native habitat. The American bison, however, was not one of those species. More:

Locavore "Wild Foods" Festival

From The Elm the student paper for Washington College in Chestertown, MD:
...
The first event of the two-part celebration took place on Friday evening with a lecture entitled “Hunting: A Matter of Life and Death,” by Drew University Professor Dr. Marc Boglioli. Boglioli’s lecture explored attitudes toward hunting in Vermont, both of the hunters themselves and anti-hunting activists as researched in his book, A Matter of Life and Death: Hunting in Contemporary Vermont. His research focused specifically on deer camps and the stigmas associated with them, such as misogynistic perspectives and an obsession with killing. His findings, however, revealed that deer hunters in Vermont are separatist rather than misogynist and view the deer camps as an escape from the compulsory competition associated with gender in society. “Deer camp is a liminal place where men are free to act in ways counter to the dominant societal expectations,” said Boglioli.
Additionally, he described the hunters’ approach to nature as respectful rather than exploitative.
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Genuine Hunting

I'm rereading one of my favorite books, Hunting the Whole Way Home, by Sidney Lea. On page 25 he is describing a bird hunt in one of his Vermont covers. He tells of seeing chickadees, hearing the "gritty croaks of ravens" and the "pileated woodpecker's flourish."
He goes on to say:
"Why should I be less enthralled by any of these creatures than by a game bird? My answer is scarcely recondite, yet few will grasp it who have not traveled my kind of beautiful miles. And of course, indifferent or plain hostile to genuine hunting, that 's exactly what most people will never do. I preach to the small choir. To the great congregation my sermon is either an attenuated frontier romanticism or, more commonly, a bloodthirst tricked up as aesthetics.
It's true enough that I can't evade the fact of blood. A kill defines the hunt and all its subordinate objectives and agents, including the hunter: in that one moment, the path of an elusive and superbly equipped prey intersects with a human predatory capacity, both schematic and intuitive, mundane (which boots to bring, which shells?) and superstitious (hunt high ground in an east wing); and for that one moment, the world reveals a gorgeous coherency.
The anti-hunting propagandist is appalled by such a sacramental perspective, precisely because its icon is a bloodstain. Nor will the hobbyist sportsan read me rightly. I speak only to and for the passionate hunter, the one who regards this business as more than mere sport. Surrounded like everyone by a mechanized and abstractive culture, he appreciates how seldon human gesture can be unmediated, literal.
I've always understood all this somewhere in my soul, but I've need to come this far before bringing it to articulation, however imperfect." p. 25
Sounds right on to me.
Ps. Sidney Lea is the poet laureate of Vermont, you've got to love a state like this.

Federal Court Upholds National Roadless Rule; Sportsmen Celebrate Conservation Victory

News for Immediate Release Oct. 21, 2011 Contact: Katherine McKalip, 406-240-9262, kmckalip@trcp.org
 
Decision by appeals court resolves uncertainty regarding 2001 rule, safeguards the prime habitat provided by inventoried roadless lands. 

WASHINGTON – The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership today commended a decision by the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals that reinstated the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule as the law governing 49 million acres of inventoried roadless areas located on the nation’s national forests and grasslands. The ruling overturned a lower district court’s decision enjoining the 2001 rule in August 2008 and resolved uncertainty about federal management of roadless areas across America.
The so-called “roadless rule” is a multiple-use national forest management regulation that was designed to limit road building and timber harvest on undeveloped public lands managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The rule determines the management of all national forest roadless areas outside of Idaho.
“Today’s decision affirmed the value of backcountry areas in sustaining healthy and secure habitat for fish and wildlife – something hunters and anglers have known for   years,” said Joel Webster, director of the TRCP Center for            Photo by George Cooper.
Western Lands. “Sound roadless conservation policies safeguard big-game habitat security, productive trout and salmon fisheries and our sporting traditions. The 2001 roadless rule is a strong mechanism for conserving America’s backcountry recreational activities and outdoor heritage.”
The TRCP has mobilized a broad cross-section of sportsmen, conservationists and recreationists supporting conservation of roadless areas and the outdoor opportunities they foster. For purposes of the rule, roadless areas are defined as contiguous blocks of backcountry public land that are 5,000 acres or larger and do not have improved roads.
While access is important to sportsmen, densely roaded areas have been shown to negatively affect elk and deer behavior, reproduction and survival and consequently hunter opportunity. Excessive, poorly located roads contribute to increased sediment loads in waterways that are important to wild trout and salmon, thereby diminishing the number and size of fish.
“We appreciate the dedication of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in upholding this popular land management policy,” said TRCP President and CEO Whit Fosburgh, “and we applaud the court’s decision as one made in the absolute best interest of our public-lands fish and wildlife populations and outdoor recreation.

“As the 2011 fall hunting season continues, sportsmen have reason to celebrate backcountry conservation,” continued Fosburgh. “Whether they’re hunting the West Big Hole of Montana, the northern Blue Range of New Mexico or backcountry lands in Vermont’s Green Mountains, public-land hunters across the nation will benefit from the court’s thoughtful decision for generations to come.”
Learn more about the TRCP’s work in support of roadless area conservation.

Vermont wildlife officials say Pete the Moose's former home to close

 From the Burlington Free Press
 


MONTPELIER — The northern Vermont game preserve where Pete the Moose lived and died is to close, state officials said Thursday, moving Vermont a step closer to ending the practice of allowing wildlife to be imported into the state and fenced in on private hunting grounds.

Walt Driscoll, a member of the state Fish and Wildlife Board, said the owner of the Big Rack Ridge hunting preserve in Irasburg told him he planned to close the preserve in Irasburg.

...“For a long time, we’ve had this idea that wildlife that lives anywhere in North America and especially here in Vermont does not belong to any private individual,” Scott said.

Lawmakers made that position official this year when they passed a law declaring that wild animals are a public trust, meaning that legally they are “owned” by every resident of the state. 

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Baucus to introduce Front wilderness bill

From the Great Falls Tribune.com

Jim Posewitz, founder and board member of Orion-The Hunter's Institute and a longtime advocate for sportsmen, introduces Sen. Max Baucus at an unveiling of the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act, which Baucus will introduce in Congress. TRIBUNE PHOTO/JOHN ADAMS

HELENA — U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., announced Friday that he will sponsor the Rocky Mountain Front Heritage Act in Congress.
The long-anticipated bill, which Baucus said he plans to introduce this session, would add 67,000 acres of new wilderness to the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex. The measure also would designate another 208,000 acres as conservation management areas, which would limit road building but allow current motorized recreation and public access for hunting, biking, timber thinning and grazing.
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Green Fire, Aldo Leopold and a Land Ethic for Our Time

If you are a fan of A Sand County Almanac and Aldo Leopold, seeing this DVD is a must.
I was able to attend a screening at Sterling College with Leopold biographer, Curt Meine and film makers Ann and Steven Dunsky. The room was full of hunters, conservationists, students and environmentalists which led to a lively discussion after the film.
The essay, Thinking Like a Mountain, served as the thread that ran through the film.  Greenfire does an holistic job of tracing Leopold the man and his thinking from childhood until his death. 30 years after cutting down a female wolf and watching the "fierce green fire dying in her eyes." Leopold writes,"I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean a hunters' paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view."
DVD's can be ordered at the Aldo Leopold Foundation book store. More about the DVD and trailers at the Greenfire website. You will not be disappointed.