What’s Killing the Great Forests of the American West?

Worse, die-offs are not limited to North America-

Next summer will probably be a pretty bad forest fire season in the Pacific Northwest due to a dry winter, and so many of the forests are dead.  This is not a local problem, however, as Jim Robbins discusses in the feature article below.

What’s Killing the Great Forests of the American West? “Across western North America, huge tracts of forest are dying off at an extraordinary rate, mostly because of outbreaks of insects. Scientists are now seeing such forest die-offs around the world and are linking them to changes in climate.” By Jim Robbins. Yale Environment 360.

As for myself, I have been following the politics of forest fires since 1980 when Idaho had its first large forest fire in a generation or so. In the 30 years, I have learned that forest (and range fires too) will always be used for political purposes to further the agenda of the timber and grazing industries.

Their lobbyists know that most people don’t know that the pine beetle kill covers the entire West. They know the people don’t know that logging an area has no effect at all in stopping the spread of the beetle. They know that the public doesn’t know that dead forests are probably less flammable than green, but dry (droughty) forests.

So it is easy to predict there will be an effort to blame conservationists for the forest fires.  They have been doing it for 30 years, and they will do it next summer.  The news media should be prepared for this. I can also confidently predict most of the media won’t be.

Is it legal to hunt Idaho wildlife by honing in on radio collars?

Yes, according to the IDFG.

Over on a popular, unnamed anti-wolf website there has been discussion of using radio receivers to track and hunt wolves and the frequencies of the radio collars on them so I asked the IDFG about this. I sent them the exchanges which have taken place there and, specifically, I asked “I would like to know if there is any language which prohibits the practice of hunting wolves, elk, or deer with the aid of radio tracking.”

The reply I received from Jon Heggen, Chief of the Enforcement Bureau for the Idaho Department of Fish & Game:

There is currently no prohibition against the use of radio tracking equipment for the taking of big game.

Radio collar frequencies are considered [just] a trade secret and therefore their disclosure is exempt from Idaho’s public records law.

The problem is that the radio collars frequencies are not a secret. A quick search of documents obtained through public records requests does reveal radio frequencies of wolves and it is common practice to give ranchers receivers with the frequencies of collared wolves. Are we to believe, that with the animosity towards wolves and, frankly, other wildlife, that this information will remain only in the hands of those with the authority to have it?

This is not only a problem with wolves. There are hundreds of elk, deer, bighorn sheep, grizzly bears, wolverines and many other species that are burdened by radio devices. It appears, based on my question and the answer given, that there is a gaping hole in wildlife protection that needs to be filled legislatively or through the commission. Is the state legislature or IDFG Commission going to fill this hole as quickly as they do when the profits of the livestock industry or outfitting industry are threatened or are they going to scoff it off because it might result in the death of a few more wolves and possibly other species?

Is the idea of “fair chase” a thing of the past?

Idaho Statesman’s opinion is save the sage grouse

[Statesman’s] View: It’s up to us: Act now to save an icon of the West-

Well this is good to hear, but the only thing that will save the grouse is to conserve the intact, already healthy sagebrush areas and to create some new ones. Other measures might help a little, but could well be mostly an effort to funnel money to those already well subsidized.

Statesman editorial.