Focus on elk as disease [brucellosis] persists near Yellowstone

What an outrage! The officials who speak for this special interest group need to be put in their place. This should be a national campaign issue.

Focus on elk as brucellosis persists near Yellowstone. By Matthew Brown, Associated Press Writer.

They will have to kill every elk in the Greater Yellowstone, and, of course, every bison. They miss some too, so even their “final solution” will fail. The ecosystem will collapse, all on account of an inconvenience to the livestock industry, one primarily of their own making by failing to adopt a split state status for brucellosis.

The real bad guys here in addition to the Montana Department of Livestock, are the Montana Stockgrowers Association who deliberately shot down governor Schweitzer’s split state status proposal. Then, of course, there are the Wyoming elk feedgrounds/feedlots that perpetuate transmission of the disease among elk.

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Please make sure this story and your reaction to it gets posted to other blogs and sent to candidates for office.

Kathie Lynch: Druid Pups and interesting Hayden/Canyon news

Kathie Lynch is spending the summer in Yellowstone. This is her first report of the summer. The Druid pups have finally been seen, and there are at least nine.

Ralph Maughan

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YNP WOLF Notes, June 16-July 5, 2008
By © Kathie Lynch

Yellowstone’s late spring rain and snow finally gave way to sunny summer skies in mid June. While the glowing green hills sparkled with a spectacular patchwork of wildflowers, raging rivers and muddy creeks spilled over their banks. An unbelievably beautiful carpet of yellow dandelions, studded with peacefully grazing bison, spread across the Lamar Valley floor. Wildlife watchers reveled in the renewal of life as they waited eagerly for news and glimpses of wolf pups.

Bad news for outdoors lovers: West Nile mutates in a bad way

The West Nile virus menace has now spread across most of North America, but it abates with frost and hot and dry weather that kills the virus-spreading mosquitoes.

Now it has mutated to be able to better withstand hot weather.

All diseases have their politics, as we have seen with brucellosis, AIDS, avian flu, MRSA, e. coli food contamination, etc.

The failure to develop a vaccine is another failure of the Bush Administration. In fact, the absence of any effort by the President to deal with this menace as it spread was the first clue to me that the weapons of mass destruction argument about Iraq was phoney because the sudden invasion of New York City by the virus by a viral agent given to Saddam Hussein back when he was the Reagan and Bush I Administration’s buddy in the fight against Iran, was the best candidate for a biological warfare attack, aside from the obvious anthrax attack in 2001.

Northern America May Suffer New West Nile Outbreaks. RedOrbit.

Book Review: Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators

Bill McKibben reviews “Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators” by William Stolzenburg for the Boston Globe.

[Mexican] Wolf recovery can succeed

Benjamin Tuggle, Southwest regional director of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) has published an Op-Ed in the Arizona Republic:

Wolf recovery can succeed

The Op-Ed is released, likely to smooth things over, amidst recent controversy in response to inaction on the part of FWS including at least 2 lawsuits and a recent poll demonstrating southwesterners [overwhelmingly] want wolves (77 percent of Arizonans and 69 percent of New Mexicans support wolf reintroduction on public lands).

The Mexican gray wolf is considered by scientists as the most endangered mammal in North America and efforts at restoration have been stymied, the greatest threat to Mexican wolves being predator control actions enforced on behalf of the livestock industry.