royaltine

You get it. The wolves are just pawns!

MinnFinn

Wolf and other large predator populations should be managed by residents of the states they are in, not USFWS, Congress, Interior Dept., "wooly things for wolves" or any other group thatis not directly impacted by these predators.

I'm really fed up with busy bodies (not here but in the public forums) sticking there noses in the business of people who live in the ranges of large populations of big predators telling them what they can and mostly can't do to control their populations!

RandyA

Your government charges the $50 and registers your firearm when you cross into canada. Why would our goverment want your government to do that??????

Here are two articles in the local paper. In the very beginning of the wolf introduction, the feds in yellowstone claimed the aspen stands were disapearing because of over grazing by to many elk. Well this bottom story contradicts the feds report as did several independent biologists that reported early on that the elk were not to blame.

I also just returned from two days in jellystone and with spotting scopes and binos, with late evening and early morning drives to photograph some elk, we never seen a single elk nor moose.

[blockquote]Win or lose, I like seeing the state standing up to eddie bangs and the feds.
Wyoming notifies feds of intent to sue over wolf management
By BEN NEARY
Associated Press
CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- The state of Wyoming has filed notice that it intends to sue the federal government over both last month's rejection of the state's wolf management plan and federal inaction on the state's request for changes in wolf management regulations.
"So far, their position has been their way or the highway," Gov. Dave Freudenthal said Wednesday of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We've chosen neither; we're going to court."
Last month, the federal government rejected Wyoming's petition to remove wolves in the state from the federal list of threatened and endangered species. In addition, the federal agency has yet to take action on the state's request to amend regulations.
Wyoming has proposed a wolf management plan that generally calls for leaving the animals alone in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks while allowing trophy hunting for them in areas outside the parks. The state has also proposed allowing them to be shot on sight as predators elsewhere in the state. In addition to their preying on livestock, Freudenthal has said he sees the spread of wolves in Wyoming outside the national parks as a public safety concern.
"It seems to me that we have a plan that satisfies the scientific obligation that they have imposed on us," Freudenthal said.
In rejecting Wyoming's proposal, federal officials said last month that they can't remove protections until the state sets firm limits on how many of the animals can be killed and agrees to minimum population figures. The state is now home to an estimated 252 wolves.
Ed Bangs, coordinator of the Fish and Wildlife Service's gray wolf recovery effort in Helena, Mont., said Wednesday he hadn't heard of Wyoming's formal notice that it would sue the federal government over wolf management. But Bangs said it was no surprise.
"They said they would pursue this thing in court, not matter how long it took," Bangs said. "I had hoped we could work out something more productive than litigation."
The Fish and Wildlife Service has already turned management of wolves over to state agencies in Montana and Idaho. Bangs said that about 400 wolves have been killed in those states for preying on livestock and for other reasons since 1987.
"They're continuing to kill wolves that are chronic problem animals," Bangs said, adding that his agency doesn't intend to leave Wyoming ranchers facing problem animals on their own.
Bangs said the federal government continues to manage wolves in Wyoming outside the national parks and said 106 have been killed since the reintroduction of the species. Last year alone, he said 41 wolves were killed in the state. "Those wolves killed last year 54 cattle and 27 sheep, confirmed, and one dog," he said.

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West's aspen groves hit hard in '06
By CHASE SQUIRES
Associated Press writer Monday, August 14, 2006

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These towering aspens in the Medicine Bow Routt National Forest form a canopy over a section of road known as Aspen Alley. Many of the trees in Aspen Alley are thought to be near the end of their life cycle. Photo by Dustin Bleizeffer, Star-Tribune

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DENVER -- Something is killing the quaking aspen trees of the Rocky Mountain West.

The slender, white-barked trees that paint the hills gold every autumn are dying, some scientists say, leaving bald patches across the Rockies. Experts are scrambling to figure out what's happening.

"As soon as we understand what's going on, then maybe we can do something about it," said Dale Bartos, a Forest Service restoration ecologist based in northern Utah.

Bartos thinks a fungus may be to blame, while others suggest everything from hungry caterpillars to drought to man's interference with the natural cycle of forest fires and even resurgent herds of hungry elk nibbling saplings to death.



[/align]Aspen stands have been hard hit in southwestern Colorado and northern Arizona. Bartos said a conservative estimate is that about 10 percent of the aspen in Colorado may have died or become afflicted with something in the past five to 10 years.

Since 3.6 million acres across the state are classified as aspen-dominated, that 10 percent equals 360,000 acres or 560 square miles of dead or dying trees.

"We really don't know what's going on," Colorado State University forester Tom Wardle said. "We will, I'm very confident, figure it out."

More worrisome than the tree deaths is that aspen stands don't appear to be bouncing back from adversity the way they have in the past.

Aspen grow differently than other species. Rather than spreading through seeds, aspens send out shoots, called suckers, from giant, interconnected root systems. Each stand, or "clone" system, can live hundreds of years and some consider them the world's largest living things.

The trees themselves are just an aboveground manifestation of the communal root. A tree may die, but beneath the soil, the stand lives on, the root sends out fresh shoots, and the cycle begins again.

What has Wardle and others concerned is that stands with dying trees don't seem to have the vigor they normally have in sending out shoots to replace old trees -- perhaps an indication that years of drought have inflicted deep damage.

In an 8,000-square-mile swath of Canada near Edmonton, aspen are virtually the only species that grows in large numbers. Canadian Forest Service researcher Ted Hogg said as many as 30 percent of the aspen in the affected region may have been wiped out in the past five years; he suspects a combination of drought, heat, fungus and bugs.

In northern Arizona, it's been blow after blow for aspen.

Forest Service plant pathologist Mary Lou Fairweather, who monitors the region's trees, said she has seen multiple factors rather than one cause. A late snowstorm in 1999 crippled trees as they put out leaves for the summer, drought weakened the survivors for attacks by caterpillars and opportunistic diseases, and elk gobbled up new shoots before they could mature.

Another Forest Service researcher, however, said there is no conclusive evidence of any long-term decline.

"We've taken a very long, temporal perspective," said Claudia Regan, who works in suburban Lakewood. "We've looked at changes in forest conditions over several hundred years and examined if whether or not over that long time frame we see a decline in aspen. There really is no evidence of aspen decline."

Regan said it appears the number of aspen in Colorado has actually increased in the past century. It's noticeable when a clone dies off, she said, but reports seem to be isolated and anecdotal.

And if there is a decline, it might be a natural reaction to earlier human interference, University of Wyoming botany professor Dennis Knight wrote in a paper for the Forest Service back in 2001.

"Widespread disturbances caused by timber harvesting and fires in the late 1800s and early 1900s may have enabled aspen to become unusually abundant in the Rocky Mountains," he wrote. "If aspen is now declining, the explanation may lie in natural processes. ... There is no basis to suggest that aspen is threatened globally, nor are most aspen groves likely to be lost in the near future."

While scientists speculate, preparations for the leaf-peeping tourist season continue.

"I was just up at Kebler Pass," said Rob Strickland, marketing coordinator for the Gunnison-Crested Butte Tourism Association. "I'm not a scientist, but I didn't notice any change."

Riley Polumbus of the Steamboat Springs Chamber Resort Association said no one is worried in the northwest Colorado area is worried.

"The aspens you ski through in the winter are excellent for hiking and walking through in the fall," Polumbus said.

On a cell phone from a hilltop near the southwestern Colorado town of Dolores, Dan Binkley offered some findings from his summer of research for CSU's Colorado Forest Restoration Institute.

There are fewer healthy aspens in the mountains of western Colorado, he said. But he hasn't found anything more than warm weather and drought to blame. Stocks of the trees may decline, but so far Binkley expects the stands to recover, someday.

"It'll be a visible blip, but the reassuring part is that the younger trees are faring better than the older ones. Unless I'm wrong, and it's not drought," Binkley said. "It's the sort of thing that we won't be surprised if we're surprised."
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_Dan

Actually, there is no longer a fee for the firearms.

tangozulu

Americans need a passport to enter their own country.

CtHunter8

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Actually, there is no longer a fee for the firearms.
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there isnt? thats news to me, good news


-Travis-

NVMIKE

Most Wy residents dont have a problem w/ the wolves being here, if the Wy game and fish was in charge there would be no issue. When the feds dump a bunch into the state then their only management strategy is to crucify anyone who shoots one.....thats a problem, and thats where we stand now.

moonelk

A Montana rancher told me, " If they want the wolf sooooo bad. Let release them in Central Park in New York City & how about downtown Chicago, Washigton D.C., Philadelphia...... then see what they have to say about wolves." I whole hardly agree. It's easy to support wolf reintroduction when you don't have to worry about your dogs & cats & horses, farm livestock & children. They're not enough votes out west in the Mountains for politicians to worry about. (sad but true).All Politicians are the scum of the earth. Think about it, they have never had to really work for a living............AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER THEY WERELAWYERS..

MinnFinn

Let them have their dogs and livestock (if they have any) out of their yards and pastures, then they might get what the problem is with quickly increasing wolf populations in states their "reintroduced" in or have been in all along just now with nothing or no one to keep them in check.

NE MN away from Lake Superior where most of my family lives, they've seen no fawns this year. None. The moose population has been stagnant for the past 20 years. Wolves are all over the place. No one in Wash. or St. Paul give a ####. People who don't have to live with them in the wild without a way to control them don't have a clue in most cases. They have this whacky idea that "the more the better" of everything including wolves is the ideal. Not so. Man is part of the equation and should play a role in keeping large predators in check, not wiped out, but in check. Otherwise, we'll continue to see the big swings, most down of the prey animals.