Washington State grazing project draws threat of lawsuit.

This story is on Washington governor Chris Gregoire’s sellout to the cattle interests in NE Washington where they are being allowed to graze for free on land purchased for wildlife (not cow) habitat.

Story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Washington State grazing project draws threat of lawsuit. By Chris McGann.

Earlier stories on this:

March 27. Western Watersheds Project says it will sue to keep cattle out of Whiskey Dick Wildlife Area in Washington.

April 18. Another victory for WWP. Cattle turnout on Washington state Wildlife Areas stopped!

April 19. Photos and video of cattle in the Joseph Creek Wildlife area in Washington State

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Black gold’s tarnish seen in Alberta

Black gold’s tarnish seen in Canada. Cash and jobs flow bountifully from Alberta’s oil sands, but they come at a cost to the environment and native peoples.
By Tim Reiterman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer.

Northern Alberta is being destroyed environmentally by pit mining for oil sands. Worse still, the pollution doesn’t stay in Alberta, but flows north into the Arctic Ocean. You can see some of this devastation on Google Earth. Look at the area around Fort McMurray.

Although a great amount of oil is produced, once again the net energy is not all that great because it takes so much energy to extract the energy in the oil sands. This fundamental fact — that the world energy situation is not better off, worse off, counting the negative externalities, if there is little or no net energy, is very slow to sink into the minds of decision-makers.

This web site has some good (meaning awful) photos of the endless pits.  http://www.borealbirds.org/tarsands.shtml

Jon Way’s book on eastern coyotes is published — Suburban Howls.

Dr. Jon Way, who has often offered his expertise on this blog, now has his book, Suburban Howls: Tracking the Eastern Coyote in Urban Massachusetts, published.

You can order it from the usual on-line sources or a signed copy with special color inserts at his website: Eastern Coyote Research.

Video on Wildlife and the Trans-Canada Highway in Banff National Park

CPAWS has just made a video on wildlife and the trans-Canada Highway that runs through part of Banff National Park. Significant expenditures have been made to build fencing and wildlife overpasses and underpasses.

These measures work, but they have to be designed correctly, put in the right place, and one kind of crossing does not fit all species.

In sum, I think they concluded that these measures have dramatically reduced wildlife mortality on the highway, but they have not increased, and perhaps have even decreased, the amount to wildlife that gets over the highway.

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Is the wolverine simply hard to detect, or is it endangered?

This feature story is from the High Country News. The perils of secrecy. High Country News by Eve Rickert. “Is the wolverine, the country’s most enigmatic predator, in danger of extinction, or just misunderstood?”

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