North Fork Clearwater Wolf Kill
The conservation group that photographed the Orogrande Slaughter [here] has done the same in the North Fork of the Clearwater River in North Central Idaho.
The Idaho Fish and game had closed the road in February and March to keep snowmobilers from harassing and causing undue stress and trauma to the wintering elk caught in very deep snow. IFG did not, however, prevent wolves from slaughtering elk and whatever else they could find.
In April, on the first day that the Idaho Fish and Game gave the green light to the Clearwater National Forest to re-open the road, the conservation team was on the ground taking pictures and documenting the wolf predation. Special thanks go to Lewis and Sharon Turcott and others for their incredible efforts providing these pictures to the public.
Warning: the photographs are graphic. The North Fork Clearwater Wolf Kill is [here]
Wyoming Wolves Dispatched
Here are 2 of the first 5 wolves taken near Big Piney and Pinedale, Wyoming. A law enforcement officer released these pictures. The wolves were taken legally.
Looters Limit Out on BPA Salmon Dollars
News from the Front #93 [here]
by James Buchal, April 22, 2008
Now more than ever, as we sink in a cesspool of public and private debt brought on by a corrupted federal government, and we all tighten our belts, we can ill afford wasteful public spending. BPA’s recent announcements of “Memoranda of Agreement” (MOAs) with Pacific Northwest States and Tribes promise just that, with substantial hikes in electricity rates to fund another billion in salmon spending, and no real public benefits at all. And the MOAs only set a floor for wasteful fish and wildlife spending, not a ceiling.
The general design of the MOAs is a wholesale subversion of the decisionmaking processes crafted by elected officials in favor of agency decisionmaking by contract with special interests. The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has been charged by Congress to develop the Region’s fish and wildlife plan, and BPA is by law supposed to follow that plan, funding programs the Council and its independent scientists identify as appropriate. The Tribal MOA gives lip service to the Council’s program, but warns that it contains “specific and binding funding commitments” irrespective of Council decisions. Thus big new programs will be established to promote salmon parasites (lamprey), irrespective of the lack of public or Council support for such programs.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is supposed to review actions concerning endangered and threatened fish, but through the MOAs, many of the choices NMFS would dictate are now to be specified by agreement with the special interest groups. The dam operators will now be bound by contract to take the fish out of transport barges, irrespective of scientific evidence proving higher survival. They will be bound to spill water at dams, irrespective of scientific evidence proving massive outbreaks of gas bubble disease. The Tribal MOA even attempts to bind NMFS to approve the wholesale gillnetting of endangered salmon, declaring that “tribal treaty fishing rights were present effects of past federal actions that must be included in the environmental baseline” and that the MOA is based on the “assumption that NOAA Fisheries will give ESA coverage” to future harvests. Ordinarily, scientifically-based natural resource management decisions might be expected to evolve based on better science, but the MOAs even attempt to prevent such scientific evolution.
Trouble Brewing in NV: Scurrilous Politics Or?
by Jim Beers, Jim Beers Common Sense [here]
The current argument in Nevada about whether the Governor should appoint an advocate of “managing” wildlife or an advocate of “saving” wildlife to a State Wildlife Commission is a scenario being replayed all over the nation. The gross stereotypes and character assassinations are part and parcel of the scenario, and the hidden agendas and distortions of facts present in one article [here] would take pages to decipher.
The following brief explanation is based on 30 plus years with the US Fish & Wildlife Service; nearly ten years of writing and speaking about such matters, and two appearances before the US House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee concerning the theft of $45 to $60 Million by the US Fish & Wildlife Service from the hunting and fishing excise taxes that, by law, could only be used for state fish and wildlife programs.
There are national and international campaigns to eliminate hunting, fishing, and trapping. All so-called animal “rights” organizations and most environmental organizations “partner” with select bureaucrats and politicians to attain this goal. Intimately interwoven with this movement are anti-gun, anti-animal ownership, and anti-private property organizations that are intermingled with US and UN government land and animal ownership schemes intended to force their views on the rest of us by using the coercive power of government.
State Wildlife Commissions (New Jersey and Maryland are current examples) are objectives to be controlled by the anti-“management” (i.e. anti-hunt/fish/trap) cabals. There are either the outright anti- animal ownership/use zealots as appointees or there is the supposedly benign Veterinarian or “hunter” who simply advocates “all animals” as objects of government benevolence. These are always opposed by hunters and fishermen and trappers that are characterized as unsophisticated “bumpkins” (clinging to guns and religion?). Politicians are either “progressive” (if supportive of the “new” visions) or are “conservative” with voting records distinguished as “Crimes Against Nature”.
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Wolves Kill Dogs — Brutal Weekend Attack Leaves Families Shaken
Is this what we want for our “ecosystems”?
Posted at Wolf Crossing [here]
Last weekend a woman witnessed a pack of wolves attack and kill two of her dogs just outside of her window, near Ashton, ID. She tried to scare them off and they ignored her (she’s probably lucky they did since she wasn’t using the correct deterrent).
Our ancestors did their best to get rid of the problem and then we re-created the problem that we are going to have to address, AGAIN.
This incident occurred east of Ashton. The wolves traveled down the reclamation road last night and killed 9 dogs. This one survived the night. The photo was posted by Dr. Griffel. DON’T LOOK IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH. Idaho Dog Attack — CAUTION GRAPHIC.
Wolves Make a Killing
by Roni Bell Sylvester, Good Neighbor Law [here]
The wolf program has nothing to do with any promised esthetics of a “seeing experience” for the mire handful of individuals who would deliberately SUV, hike, walk, crawl, ATV, wheelchair, RV or Harley into a wolf den.
Each “look see” probably costs us taxpayers $10,000. Can we afford this show?
When Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announced a wolf initiative in 1994, it is said by many including a U.S. District Judge, that Babbitt misinterpreted the law, exceeded the authority of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and ignored the concerns of the Indigenous whose homes were on the very land he wanted to plant wolves.
Why did he do this? Study the history of ESA, and you’ll clearly see how it has been mis-skewed by an elite few to gain control over the usage of our land and water.
After all, he who gets control over land and water gets the gold! It’s all about money. All takeovers of land, water, company or private property, follow the same formula. Depending on the structure of the organization, this formula works by: finding something “to save;” waiving public debate; ignoring shareholders or members; pretending they found this thing “to save” on your land; disturbing you to such extent that you (now spent financially, physically and mentally) throw up your hands and cry out, “I can’t handle this anymore. I give up!”
Yesterday, the take-over artists enlisted the federal government’s help. Today, they receive welfare from, and dictate marching orders to, our federal government.
In the case of Endangered Species, the once well-used spotted owl has been replaced by the wolf, polar bear, the overpopulated and very common meadow mouse, and a myriad of critters.
Since 1994, untold numbers of ewes, lambs, calves and other livestock and pets, have been lost due to wolf killings. I doubt whether Bruce Babbitt or any wolf follower drone has suffered a wolf kill. With that as a given, their lack of comprehension regarding the financial and mental toll these kills have on those who have incurred such losses should absolutely disqualify them from any decision making process.
Meanwhile Babbitt now enjoys money and status as head of the World Wildlife Foundation. Together with Al Gore, his new something “to save” is the entire earth from sea to shining sea and everything above and below. After all, he who gets control over land and water gets the gold!
It’s not about a “seeing experience” for the many. It is instead, all about money… for a few.
Can you imagine the killing these wolves are making?
Topsy Turvy
What is going on in the Environmental Movement? Most people think of the enviros as pro-wildlife, and maybe they once were, but that does not seem to be the case anymore.
When the Biscuit Fire roared through the Kalmiopsis Wilderness six years ago, it decimated wildlife and wildlife habitat. Some fifty spotted owl nesting stands were destroyed permanently. Did the wildlifers care? Not one bit. The 180,000 acre Kalmiopsis itself was almost entirely consumed by high-severity fire. Even today the effects are still extreme. From Wilderness.net [here]:
The nearly 500,000 acre Biscuit Fire of 2002 included the entire wilderness area. The environment has changed dramatically and provides a unique opportunity to observe a natural response to fire disturbance through plant succession, erosional and depositional occurrences and changed habitat for flora and fauna. While the lightning caused fire was a natural event for the wilderness it did provide damage to the nearly 160 miles of trails and trailhead facilities. Large areas of high fire severity occurred, killing much of the overstory trees in these areas, which will result in continued damaged to the trail system over time. The trails have always been challenging due to their steepness and narrow rocky surface. The impact from the fire includes added challenges, such as large numbers of downed trees, missing trail signs, holes and lose rock on the tread etc. For now and in the foreseeable future, wilderness users should recognize the need for increased safety awareness when traveling and camping.
A unique opportunity to observe erosion? That’s the value today? The Baby Foot Lake Botanical Preserve once held a stand of rare Brewers spruce. They all died in the Biscuit Fire and spruce is not returning. The recommendation from the USFS? Decommission the Preserve.
The vaunted Center for Biological Diversity obtained a Court Order forbidding Wildland Fire Use in the Mexican spotted owl habitat on the Kaibab NF. Less than a year a later Kaibab personnel allowed the Warm Fire to burn 40,000 acres of the off limits habitat. Did the CBD complain to the judge? Heck no. It turned out they really didn’t care about that habitat in the first place but were just playing legal games for fun and profit.
The Sierra Club is pro-wildlife right? Not really. They are happy to see wolves kill elk for sport. The more the merrier. Ditto the ten other enviro-litigant groups who sued to stop wolf delisting in the Northern Rockies. Wolves are in no way endangered there anymore, but plenty of other wildlife are. Do those enviro outfits care if the wolves drive elk, deer, antelope or bighorn sheep to extinction? Not on your life.
The Wilderness Society wants unrestrained fire to burn everywhere. Does that benefit wilderness, non-wilderness, streams, airsheds, wildlife, habitat, or any other wilderness value? Not hardly. But that’s their current trip.
Last summer the Murphy Fire alone destroyed sage grouse habitat across half a million acres. Do any wildlife groups give a golly gosh darn? No way, no day. Just peachy with them. Their attitude: let’s burn some more.
In December the WildEarth Guardians sued the USFS to force NEPA review of Fire Management Plans in four Region 3 National Forests [here]. Their real goal was to get the USFS to implement Let It Burn. Gail Kimbell pulled a fast one on them and waived fire planning on those forests altogether. Will the WEGs protest or appeal? Don’t count on it. They got what they wanted, Let It Burn. The NEPA process was just a means to get there.
Andy Stahl and the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics are suing to ban the use of fire retardant. What’s ethical about that? Or more to the point, how will that benefit wildlife and wildlife habitat? It won’t, of course, but benefiting wildlife is not the goal. Burn, Baby, Burn is.
Is a charred wasteland your idea of a protected, preserved environment? Probably not, but then you’re most likely out of touch with the modern Environmental Movement. The trend is to incinerate environments, not to conserve or preserve them.
Did Aldo Leopold, John Muir, Henry Thoreau, or any of the original philosophers of Environmentalism yearn for scorched earth? I doubt it. They had greener ideas. Green is not the color of choice anymore; charcoal black is.
The quest to protect Mother Nature has turned into a rabid scramble to destroy nature, to make the planet unfit for all life, and especially human life. A darkness has descended on the Green Movement, and hatred has replaced whatever positive motives that once were. Make no mistake about it. It’s not your father’s Environmental Movement anymore. If, indeed, it ever was.
Idaho Fish & Game investigate Mullan wolf kill
By TY HAMPTON, Shoshone News Press [here]
SHOSHONE COUNTY - Nearly a week after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruled to remove gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains from the federal endangered species list, Idaho Fish and Game confirmed that at least five elk carcasses found over the past month in the Mullan area are thought to be wolf kill.
Wallace Fish and Game Conservation Officer Josh Stanley reported that three carcasses were found along a popular snowmobile path up Dead Man’s Gulch with two others near the fish hatchery, all killed by wolves. An additional two elk fatalities are in question.
Stanley said wolf tracks were discovered near the recently found carcasses with similar wounds that indicated death by wolf rather than mountain lion.
“We are just now beginning to see wolves visually in the Mullan area,” Stanley said. “And what we’ve found is just what we can see. There is no telling what has occurred up in the mountains.”
Stanley said ever since the wolves were reintroduced to the region they have met, reproduced, and formed new packs in concentrated areas. He added that a pack has been known to travel between Mullan and St. Regis, Mont.
“That will only last for so long before we have a pack in Mullan,” Stanley said. “I really believe the Coeur d’Alene drainage will have its own pack soon if the trend continues.”
Stanley called the wolf kills a new and growing mortality source for elk in the area, citing winter conditions and the occasional mountain lion for the bulk of local elk fatalities.
Should we let another one bite the dust?
by Julie Kay Smithson
Ah, people. Some learn faster than others. Like the song, some “don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” — but they’ve been tricked into thinking what’s gone is a species of fish or predator and not their own property rights.
LD does not always stand for “learning disability,” although that meaning, in conjunction with “language deception,” does fit and is being used to make property rights, i.e., freedom, go extinct in America.
We are speaking of the “Endangered Species Act.”
Some knew, when the de facto real estate agent, better known as the “endangered” spotted owl, was used to shut down Pacific Northwest timber and logging — that it was the harbinger of things to come.
They and a few more realized that the “endangered” “Preble’s meadow jumping mouse” would be used to stop ranching.
They and others “got it” that the “endangered” quasi-Canadian gray wolf would be used to stop hunting in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and beyond.
They and others figured right that when along came the “endangered” whatever, another resource providing industry and its property rights would be shut down and stolen.
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Wolf ‘reintroduction’ still rankles
By Mike Satren, Outdoors editor, Coeur d’Alene Press [here]
Clash of worldviews pits rural versus urban
When the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducted its Feb. 21 conference call to brief the media that wolves would be delisted from the Endangered Species Act on March 28, USFWS leaders and Interior officials patted themselves on the back.
“Gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains are thriving and no longer require the protection of the Endangered Species Act,” said Interior Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett. “The wolf’s recovery in the Northern Rocky Mountains is a conservation success story.”
Many of the rural folks in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming don’t share this rosey view now and they didn’t like it back when the Canadian grey wolves were first turned loose in central Idaho in 1996 and 1997.
They counter that the real conservation success story was much earlier during the 20th century when hunters and fishermen put their tax money where their mouths were. Angry at the severe depletion of herds and flocks caused by the unchecked market hunting of the 19th century, President Theodore Roosevelt - supported by sportsmen - worked to pass laws to implement game regulations throughout the states heralding an era of wildlife abundance.
Retardant Justice
by Dave Skinner, the Flathead Beacon, [here]
It must be spring. After all, environmentalists have “sprung” at least six or seven new lawsuits on the Northwest court system the past couple weeks – and Earthjustice is about ready to file against delisting Northern Rockies wolves.
But it’s a just-dismissed lawsuit that has my attention, especially since I just got “carded” for this year’s fire season. It was filed by the Eugene, Oregon-based, so-called Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics (FSEEE) in District Judge Donald Molloy’s Missoula courtroom, way back in October 2003. I’ll spare you the stultifying federal acronym soup.
On the surface, FSEEE basically sued the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) in order to force a full-blown paperwork shuffle on the environmental effects of air-dropped fire retardants.
Judge Molloy took two years to rule for the paperwork shuffle, in October 2005, at which point FSEEE crowed “Group Wins Lawsuit to Protect Firefighters and the Environment From Toxic Aerial Fire Retardant.”
But the use of chemical retardants hasn’t been stopped. FSEEE never asked for that to begin with. Molloy’s 35-page ruling specifically pointed out the case was not about the safety or toxicity of retardants per se, but only a procedural case affirming the need to shuffle paper if and when “substantial questions” of environmental impact “may” exist.
The already overwhelmed Forest Service dragged butt on the shuffle, goading Judge Molloy into threatening Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey with jail unless the paperwork hit Molloy’s desk – which it did in late February 2008.
The Forest Service concluded that using retardant poses no “significant environmental impact” to Judge Molloy, who dismissed the case March 12.
Now, after four-plus years, FSEEE spokesman Andy Stahl (the guy who made “spotted owl” a household word) is telling reporters his group intends to file ANOTHER lawsuit over retardant in Molloy’s court. It’s all part of what Missoulian reporter John Cramer terms “another decade-long campaign” to stop “the war on fire.”
