Kathie Lynch: Yellowstone Park wolf news

About 40 wolves are on the Park’s northern range-

Yellowstone wolf news. June 2009.

Copyright by Kathie Lynch

The beautiful green hills of Lamar Valley brim with bison, and their cute little orange calves greet early summer wolf watchers in Yellowstone. However, the drop from 171 wolves in Yellowstone Park in December 2007, to only 124 as of December 2008, means that it is now much harder to find a wolf to watch.

By my calculations (and these are definitely not official counts), there are only about 41 wolves in the Northern Range. That number includes only adults, as follows: Druid Peak pack (14), Blacktail pack (7), Cottonwood pack (6), Everts Pack (6), Agate Creek pack (4), 471F’s Group (3) and miscellaneous–“Big Black” (1). The Quadrant Pack (4) may also still be in the area, but I have not heard of any sightings. The Slough Creek, Leopold and Oxbow packs essentially no longer exist, although a few individuals may still be around. Other packs in Yellowstone’s interior include the Canyon pack (4), Mollie’s, Gibbon, Bechler, and Yellowstone Delta.

Fencing, Bright Lights and Loud Noises Keep Wolves at Bay

314 livestock were lost to wolves last year. Between 5000 and 10,000 head lost to other predators-

This feature ran on a number of radio stations.

Non lethal management of wolves, which keeps both wolves and livestock alive is feasible.

However, most livestock operators are not like Mike Stevens (see in story) because the U.S. government will kill the wolves for free for you and it looks like Idaho is about to get a million dollar slush fund to compensate operators for animals that were or might have been killed by wolves — a pretty strong incentive to conduct livestock business as usual.

. . . and In Wyoming, if a wolf kills your lamb or cow calf, steer, etc. you get compensated seven times its value! That is one royal payoff.

Rethinking Mountain Pine Beetles: Wuerthner testifies to Congress

A forest displaying beetle effects in Colorado

So many of us have seen the effects of Mountain Pine Beetles on forest we’ve visited here in the west ~ up close we see dead or dying trees and from afar perhaps a red and gray hue from within a forest canopy.

Mostly, we’ve come to learn via media accounts, the words and tones of managers – even conservationists – that Pine Beetles are “negative”, that they’re a “threat” to “healthy” forests.

Testimony of George Wuerthner June 19, 2009 Joint Oversight Hearing on “Mountain Pine Beetle: Strategies for Protecting the West”:

PEJORATIVE WORDS
Let me start my testimony by suggesting that many of the phrases and words used to describe natural ecological processes like episodic pine beetle events and wildfire are pejorative in tone. We heard a lot of people testifying in this hearing that pine beetles were destroying the forests and/or wildfires were catastrophic and so forth. From the perspective of human values, these words might resonate—certainly if a wildfire burns down someone’s home, it is a devastating experience. However, it is less clear that these terms are appropriate in describing natural ecological events like pine beetle events or large blazes. (See my comments on this in Wildfire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy or Rocca and Romme (2009).