Pouring Bureaucratic Syrup on the Wolves

Gray wolf (Colorado Parks & Wildlife)

The people have spoken: Coloradans voted by a roughly 1% margin to order Colorado Parks & Wildlife to re-introduce gray wolves.   Or as one site put it: "Urban vote decides for rural Colorado."

As the Grand Junction ABC affiliate reports, roughly 62% of Western Slope voters said no to the measure, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Front Range voter advantage.

Which is usually the way it goes on statewide votes. 

The pro-wolf faction adopted the language of nature:

The Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund, a backer of the proposition, said this is the first time citizens have voted to initiate the restoration of a native species.

“Voters throughout Colorado took politicians out of the picture, choosing to restore natural balance by returning wolves to their rightful place in Colorado,” said Rob Edward, fund president.

 CPW director Dan Prenzlow bowed to the inevitable:

“Our agency consists of some of the best and brightest in the field of wildlife management and conservation. I know our wildlife experts encompass the professionalism, expertise, and scientific focus that is essential in developing a strategic species management plan. CPW is committed to developing a comprehensive plan and in order to do that, we will need input from Coloradans across our state. We are evaluating the best path forward to ensure that all statewide interests are well represented."

So where does the money come from?
(Graphic: University of Maine)

When agency heads start talking about "leadership" and "plans" and "stakeholders" and "statewider interests," and other vague terms, I call it "pouring bureaucratic syrup over a problem." Lots of soothing talk, sort of telling a child who awoke from a bad dream to just go back to sleep, Mommy is here.  Glug-glug-glug.

(I knew one US Forest Service district ranger who absolutely mastered it; I don't know if she accepted Smokey Bear as her personal savior, but she sure could drop twenty buzzwords in one sentence.)

Colorado now has a Wolf Management Website where you can track the process of trying to do what the voters requested while trying to find the money to pay for it. There is good information there on the legalities of "introduced" wolves versus those who wander in on their own, which agency (federal or stte) manages which wolves, and so on.

UPDATE: Newly elected State Senator Bob Rankin, who represents the area that included both self-transplanted wolves and the proposed wolf release, plants to introduce a bill to re-locate an equivalent number of wolves to Boulder and Jefferson counties. (Jefferson includes most of Denver's western suburbs.) 

“I do intend to do that,” Rankin — who won formal election to the state Senate last week — said following his victory. “I’m going to have to admit: it’s more just a protest, more than anything else, to call attention to the fact that the people most affected voted against [Proposition 114].”

 The bill stands no chance, and he knows it. There was a "credible" sighting on the Eastern Slope earlier this year though.

 

 

Federal Decision Complicates Proposed Colorado Wolf Reintroduction

Gray Wolf (Photo: US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Coloradans are voting right now through Tuesday on a ballot measure to reintroduce gray wolves in the state. According to Ballotpedia,

The measure would require the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to create and carry out a plan to reintroduce and manage gray wolves (Canis lupus) by the end of 2023. Wolves would be reintroduced on Colorado lands west of the Continental Divide. The exact location of wolf reintroductions would be determined by the commission. The commission would also manage any distribution of state funds that are made available to "pay fair compensation to owners of livestock for any losses of livestock caused by gray wolves." The measure would direct the state legislature to make appropriations to fund the reintroduction program. 

Colorado Parks & Widlife has not budgeted for this. Therefore the costs of the program and the "fair compensation" would have to come from shaking the Magic Money Tree (a clone of the one that grows in Bernie Sanders' backyard) or else be taken away from other programs. (Remember, Parks and Wildlife receives no funding from the state legislature, in other words, no tax revenues.) The Wildlife Commision has consistently opposed the idea of wolf reintroduction.

According to the state’s fiscal impact statement on the initiative, just setting up the program will cost nearly $800,000. There is no estimated budget for the actual ongoing management of wolves, but Prop 114 mandates that the General Assembly find the money somewhere, which experts say means taking the funds from other programs.

“There’s no extra money in the budget for it to come from,” former CPWC Commissioner Rick Enstrom told Complete Colorado. “It’s going to have to come from additional fees, or something else is going to have to go away. Is that funding for other endangered and threatened species? Is it from children’s education in public schools? Is it from any of the myriad issues Colorado Parks and Wildlife has to deal with every day with limited staff?”

Meanwhile, wolves have arrived on their own.  A wolf on its own is federally regulated wolf, or has been, but now it won't be. If there is to be a state program, a wolf walking from Wyoming would not be part of it. It will be fun telling them apart.

Wolves were declared an endangered species (there is a legal definition for that) back in 1974. Now the Dept. of the Interior says that they have recovered enough to be removed from that list. 

The removal plan, which would turn wolf management over the state wildlife departments in the states where they live, has to go through several months of legal process. It has also upset the people I call "wolf cultists."

The long-anticipated move is drawing praise from those who want to see the iconic species managed by state and tribal governments, and harsh criticism from those who believe federal protections should remain in place until wolves inhabit more of their historical range. Gray wolves used to exist across most of North America.

It also complicates the ballot issue — which I strongly suspect will pass. Wolves, as mentioned are "iconic." 

A CWP spokeswoman, speaking in soothing bureaucratic tones (I call this "pouring bureaucratic syrup over a problem"), says that everything will be all right:

“The rule will be published in the Federal Register at an unspecified future date, and will not be finalized until the 60-day window post-publication has expired,” Rebecca Ferrell, a public information officer for Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), said in an email. After those 60 days, the management of gray wolves will be in the states’ hands.

Ferrell says that CPW will continue to monitor wolf activity and dispersal in Colorado. And if Coloradans vote to reintroduce wolves on November 3, CPW will “work with federal partners, neighboring states, all of our partners and stakeholders across Colorado to create a plan to implement the outcome of the ballot vote.”

Wolf-cultists don't trust the state agency because it gets money from hunters and works with ranchers. They want to swing the big federal hammer. But the federal hammer is being put back in the toolbox. So what now?

New Front Range Colorado Wolf Report

The Grand County wolf-like animal. Photo: Janice Freeman via Colorado Parks and Wildife.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife field officers are trying to confirm a wolf sighting in western Larimer County, just south of the Wyoming border in the headwaters of the Laramie River. According to CPW's "Colorado Wolf Update" for June 2020,

Wildlife managers are attempting to confirm a credible wolf sighting in the Laramie River Valley in Larimer County. An animal sighted in the area was wearing a wildlife tracking collar, which indicates it is likely a dispersal wolf from monitored packs in Montana or Wyoming, however flights and ground crews have been unable to detect a signal or visually confirm the wolf. It has been determined that the animal in Larimer County is not wolf 1084-M from neighboring Jackson County. If a wolf or wolves are confirmed in Larimer County, they would be the furthest east in Colorado in nearly a century.

Further west, in Grand County, campers reported being approached by a large wolf-like animal. Reading between the lines of the news release, it sounds as though wildlife officials suspect this could be wolf-hybrid, perhaps one that was dumped "in the wild" but is used to being fed by humans.

Biologists responded to the area to gather biological evidence that could be used to confirm the presence of a wolf versus a coyote, lost or escaped domestic dog or domestic wolf-hybrid.

"Biological evidence" . . . . that sounds like they need a very specialized tracking dog.

Wolf Reintroduction Makes Colorado Ballot — Who Will Pay?

 

In the video, wolf teachers encourage a grizzly sow to reduce her carbon footprint by not having too many cubs.

Last month, supporters of wolf reintroduction on Colorado's Western Slope said they had the necessary 200,000-plus signatures to put a measure on the ballot, and Colorado voters will make their choice on "Initiative 107" in November 2020. The initiative begins,

(a) Historically, wolves were an essential part of the wild habitat of Colorado but were exterminated and have been functionally extinct for seventy-five years in the state;

(b) The gray wolf is listed as an endangered species on the commission’s list of endangered or threatened species;

(c) Once restored to Colorado, gray wolves will help restore a critical balance in nature; and

(d) Restoration of the gray wolf to the state must be designed to resolve conflicts with persons engaged in ranching and farming in this state.

Item (c) is essentially a nature-religion theological statement. Scientific ecology has moved beyond the "balance of nature" thinking to more dynamic and complex ideas of constant change. Even the "trophic cascade" model, as applied to predator/prey relationships by Aldo Leopold in the early 1900s,  is now questioned by some researchers.

"It's a really romantic story," Utah State University ecologist Dan McNulty said. "It's a story about a world that doesn't really exist."

A year ago, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission voted 7-4 against wolf reintroduction. This month, former CPW commissioner Rick Enstrom, who served on and earlier "wolf working group," offered a negative opinion.

Predation [of elk herds] is hardly the only problem with wolves in Colorado, says Enstrom. The biggest issue is money. The proposed initiative calls for wolf management and predation compensation to be paid out of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) wildlife cash fund “to the extent that they are available.”

The wildlife cash fund pays for all wildlife operations of CPW. It’s replenished primarily by hunting and fishing licenses, and it’s always over-budgeted says Enstrom.

Where compensation for livestock losses will come from when there is no money available in the wildlife cash fund is left unstated.

The initiative states that the General Assembly "shall make such appropriations as are necessary to fund the programs authorized and obligations, including fair compensation for livestock losses that are authorized by this section but cannot be paid from moneys in the wildlife cash fund, imposed by this section."

In other words, costs created by the wolf-reintroduction would have to compete for funding with highways, social programs, universities, prisons, and everything else that the state has to pay for.
 
And the perpetually stretched-thin district wildlife managers (wardens), techs, and biologists will not have another huge responsibility dumped on their plates.

I hate to bang on about money, but 90 percent of the voters probably do not realize that Colorado Parks and Wildlife is not funded by the taxpayers — like the Dept. of Corrections, for example. CPWis funded mainly by license sales, user fees, some federal excise-tax money, and donations (the state income tax-refund donation).

And what license fee brings in the most money? Out-of-state elk licenses. So not surprisingly, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is against re-introduction.

“To be clear, RMEF strongly opposes the forced introduction of gray wolves to Colorado,” said Kyle Weaver, RMEF president and CEO. “We have witnessed 20 plus years of lies and litigation in the Northern Rockies concerning wolves. This Colorado effort is driven by the same groups using the same tactics to accomplish their agenda.”

Cat Urbigkit is a writer and an internationally known authority on livestock guardian dogs, which she and her husband (and others) use to keep wolves and coyotes away from the sheep on their western Wyoming ranch. She bluntly accuses the pro-wolf group of wanting to create a wildlife Disneyland, and she notes that the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project is funded mainly by the Tides foundation, rather than grassroots donors.

If one were to believe the spiel, wolf advocates are benevolent custodians of the public interest, and ranchers suffer from “the myth of the wolf” and “a fear deeply ingrained” that can be cured with education. A few recent examples of this custodial role show that the advocates propose “a wolves for thee, not for me” landscape – one in which decisions are made by unaffected residents of population centers on behalf of uneducated rural serfs (serfs whose work feeds the nation and are most impacted by ever-expanding wolf populations).

Anti-reintroduction groups, such as the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, are organized at Stop the Wolf, where they have plenty of photos of what wolf attacks look like as well as information on political opposition.

For a longer take on the pros and cons of wolf re-introduction, you should read this Colorado Politics piece from September 2019, "Is It Time to Bring Gray Wolves Back to Colorado?

Actually, if the billionaire-funded Tides foundation wanted to do it right, they would offer to pay for the reintroduction, instead of sticking an always-underfunded state agency with the job.

CPW: New Wolf Pack Appears in Colorado

Wolves -- our spiritual teachers (stock photo).

I have a longer blog post in the works about the upcoming Colorado ballot measure on the reintroduction of wolves. Meanwhile, they are again reintroducing themselves, says this Colorado Parks and Wildlife news release.

MOFFAT COUNTY, Colo. - Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials say an eyewitness report of six large canids traveling together in the far northwest corner of the state last October, in conjunction with last week's discovery of a thoroughly scavenged elk carcass near Irish Canyon - a few miles from the location of the sighting - strongly suggests a pack of gray wolves may now be residing in Colorado.



According to the eyewitness, he and his hunting party observed the wolves near the Wyoming and Utah borders. One of the party caught two of the six animals on video.



"The sighting marks the first time in recent history CPW has received a report of multiple wolves traveling together," said CPW Northwest Regional Manager JT Romatzke. "In addition, in the days prior, the eyewitness says he heard distinct howls coming from different animals. In my opinion, this is a very credible report."



After learning about the scavenged elk carcass, CPW initiated an investigation which is still ongoing. At the site, the officers observed several large canid tracks from multiple animals surrounding the carcass.

According to CPW wildlife managers, the tracks are consistent with those made by wolves. In addition, the condition of the carcass is consistent with known wolf predation.

"The latest sightings add to other credible reports of wolf activity in Colorado over the past several years," said Romatzke. "

In addition to tracks, howls, photos and videos, the presence of one wolf was confirmed by DNA testing a few years ago, and in a recent case, we have photos and continue to track a wolf with a collar from Wyoming’s Snake River pack.



Romatzke says from the evidence, there is only one logical conclusion CPW officials can make.

"It is inevitable, based on known wolf behavior, that they would travel here from states where their populations are well-established," he said. "We have no doubt that they are here, and the most recent sighting of what appears to be wolves traveling together in what can be best described as a pack is further evidence of the presence of wolves in Colorado." 


Romatzke adds CPW will continue to operate under the agency's current management direction.

"We will not take direct action and we want to remind the public that wolves are federally endangered species and fall under the jurisdiction of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. As wolves move into the state on their own, we will work with our federal partners to manage the species," he said.



The public is urged to contact CPW immediately if they see or hear wolves or find evidence of any wolf activity.  The Wolf Sighting Form can be found on the CPW website.

Seen a Wolf? There (Isn't Yet) an App for That, But You Can Report It

I received a news release a few days ago about a wolf that had escaped from a "sanctuary" near Divide, Colorado, in the mountains west of Colorado Springs.

The missing Mexican wolf.

On Sunday, November 11, 2018, a yearling Mexican wolf escaped an enclosure at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center (CWWC). The CWWC is a member in good standing of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and became a member of the AZA’s Mexican wolf captive breeding program in 2008. In response, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued the following statement . . .

This young wolf was born in a facility in 2017, and is not considered a threat to human health or public safety. Subsequent to the reintroduction of Mexican wolves to the wild, wolf-human interactions have occurred but there have been no wolf attacks on humans.  However, like all wildlife, the animal may become defensive if cornered or threatened. Members of the public are encouraged to scare the animal if the wolf is seen at close proximity. The wolf is not externally marked (no radio collar, ear tag, etc.), but is distinguishable due to blindness in one eye (one eye almost completely black.

I have not heard if it was located or not—I have been away for six days and pretty much ignoring news and social media during that time.

But what I did learn tangentially is that you think you have seen any wolf anywhere in Colorado, you can report it to Colorado Parks and Wildlife on this website.

Unless, of course, you think that such things should go unreported.

Quick Review: "Alpha," Where Boy Meets Wolf (Dog).

Kodi Smit-McPhee as Keda with a Czechoslovakian wolfdog that plays Alpha
(who has a surprise for the humans)

Just to save you the trouble, I will list some things that anyone familiar with hunting large animals will object to in the movie Alpha.

And then I will tell you that this story of a boy and his wolf is worthwhile anyway.

First of all, if the village hunters were going after Pleistocene bison, they would not walk miles and miles, leaving their families behind. Everyone would go. Non-hunters could still help drive the buffalo over the cliff by flapping skins and making a commotion. Throwing spears to create a "fence" is not going to stop charging bison.

When it is time to process the meat, you need everyone. And a lot will still be wasted, as archaeologists can tell you. Or visit the most famous and weirdly named such site in North America! (The movie too was filmed in Alberta, except for the CGI parts.)

Second, according to my archaeologist friend, 20,000 years BP is too early for bows and arrows, according to current information. I would give the movie-makers a pass on that one.

Third, when winter comes, why do people keep living in a windswept snowfield in what looks like northern Labrador instead of moving to a more sheltered place that might offer some fuel?

Fourth — and this is more of a continuity lapse — during his time along, Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) starts to grow some teenage whiskers, yet in the final scene, they are gone. But going by his father's beard,  this is not a culture where men shave.

And a goof, which someone at Internet Movie Database also noted, "In the first cave scene, Kedi [sic] is kneeling to approach the wolf, and the bottom of his boot clearly shows a rubber lugged sole." Yeah, it did.


Now for the positives

First,  Alpha is a beautiful movie to watch. Some of that is Alberta and a lot of it is CGI, I will grant. But wow, Shining Times. If you were an old man by forty, you still would have lived a life filled with wonder.

Second, it's a "dog story" with a happy ending, a bit like the lines from Kipling's Jungle Book:

When the Man waked up he said,
'What is Wild Dog doing here?'
And the Woman said,
'His name is not Wild Dog any more,
but the First Friend,
because he will be our friend
for always and always and always.'

Its images and story will stay with you.

A Venue of Vultures & Other Links

Crappy phone photo from across a pasture.

It has been raining, and when it's not raining, drizzling. Matt Sellers, Beulah's own weatherman, called in "Seattle Week" on his "Wet Mountain Weather" Facebook page.

Driving through eastern Custer County yesterday, I saw big dark birds in a tree holding their wings spread like capes. Through the binocular, they were turkey vultures exhibiting (I just learnt this word) the "horaltic pose." Drying their wings? But it was drizzling. Thermo-regulating? With the temperature about 48° F., there was no need to cool down. Maybe they just do it to look menacing.

What surprised me, though, was that I saw vultures at all. I thought they all had migrated south by now. Time to talk to the raptor experts.

Yes, according to that supposed lingo of animal gatherings, e.g. "parliament of owls," vultures form "venues." I suspect that the whole business was made up by some 19th-century English sporting vicar sitting in his study.

And there is more . . . 

• Five weeks missing!  All of Alma, Colo., celebrated after this lost dog was found on Mount Bross. 

• How to tell a bird's age by its molt pattern 

• Another lucky dog! A Minnesota wire-haired pointer dodges wolves. "' The dog jumped in the window of the truck, and the wolf did a quick lap around the truck,' Bailey said." I bet his owner will start carrying something on his hip for when a 20-gauge and #6 shot are not enough.

Lost Dog Survives Wolves & Winter — And She's a Chessie

So out of loyalty to this fine breed, I give you this story of a long-lost elderly dog who survived:

"The last [the dog's owners" had heard, a hunter in Jerusalem Valley had seen a brown dog in the forest, running from wolves.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article160290474.html#storylink=cpy"

"The past year’s hard winter would’ve been tough to survive in the wild, even for an animal in its prime, Glankler said. The dog she had rescued, though a hardy Chessie (a dog known for its wooly, oily coat that was bred for the extreme cold of retrieving in the Atlantic), was completely deaf and clearly pretty old. Glankler couldn’t be completely sure this dog was Mo."

Read the whole thing.

This post approved by Fisher,
who is not lost.

Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/article160290474.html#storylink=cpy"

A Kid, a Dog (?), and the World's Greatest Cave Art

What he or she saw: lions and prey at Chauvet

Sometime, say 26,000 years ago or more, a kid and a canid (wolf? dog? wolf-dog?) went exploring  underground.

The human prints are of a barefooted child aged eight to ten years old and standing about 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) tall. The child was walking, not running, although at one point it appears that he or she slipped a little in the soft clay. Researchers know that the child carried a torch because there is evidence of him/her stopping at one point to clean the torch, leaving behind a stain of charcoal.

It is amazing to think of a Paleolithic kid exploring this ancient cave, examining the paintings and bear skulls that were placed reverently at the back of the cave. Even more amazing is that accompanying (not stalking) the child’s footprints are the paw prints of a wolf (or possibly a large dog). This timeless image of a child and dog shatters the notion that dogs were only domesticated 15,000 years ago. More importantly, the new time period radically alters the answer to how dogs became man’s best friend.

OTHER NEWS: 

• There are more prairie dog towns in Colorado than we thought. But I am still sorry that my sister did not ever follow up on her plan to clandestinely reintroduce them in South Park, from where, she said, they had all been poisoned in the mid-20th century.

• Hunting writer Dave Petersen of Durango interviewed in High Country News.

When I interviewed Western writer David Petersen for a magazine article several years ago, I really only had one question to ask him: Could hunting be morally defended in the 21st century?

At a time when few people seem concerned about that question — either they’re already convinced that hunting is barbaric, or just the opposite, that it’s a right that ought to be exercised with as few restrictions and as easily as possible — Petersen has spent much of his life examining what it means to kill in order to eat.

More about his hunting-ethics documentary here.

• New study revises tree-ring dating of archaeological sites.

Currently, archaeologists have to rely on relatively sparse evidence for dating the history of Western civilisation before 763 BCE, with Chinese history also only widely agreed from 841 BCE. For example, they depend on ancient records of rare astronomical phenomena, such as the solar eclipse during the ninth year of Ashur Dan III of Assyria, to determine the age of historical events. In the absence of such records, standard radiocarbon measurements provide the best estimates, but these are still often only accurate to within 200 to 300 calendar years. If the radiocarbon spikes in the tree-ring data were also found in archaeological items attributable to specific historical periods, the information could be used to anchor exactly when events occurred, says the paper.

The Mushroom Hunter, Her Dog, the Wolf, and the Bears

This is a "lost mushroom hunter" story with a twist. Joanne Barnaby, a resident of Canada's Northwest Territories tells the Washington Post how she and her dog were stalked by a wolf who tried for hours to separate them.

[She[ had been picking mushrooms in the remote Canadian wilderness [on June 10th ] when she had heard a growl behind her. She turned around and saw Joey, her faithful mutt, locked in a snarling standoff with a skinny black wolf.

Then a chance encounter with another top predator led a plan to extricate herself and Joey from what felt like a losing game.

Some people accuse her of being a nature-faker, claiming "wolves don't do that." (They're just furry angels who want bring us spiritual blessings.) She says otherwise, vehemently.

Is This How the Whole Dog Thing Started?

Ethiopian wolves hunt better with monkeys nearby — and then it is only an evolutionary eye-blink to women carrying Yorkshire terriers in their purses.

How Not To Become Prey

Bears biting backpackers. Mountain lions munching mountain bikers.

Every time that some carnivorous critter bites or kills a human, there will be voices proclaiming, "They were here first. We live on their territory."

That is true in a long historical view —  and it is also true that human populations have lived alongside big carnivores throughout history — but Wyoming writer Cat Urbigkit's new book, When Man Becomes Prey: Fatal Encounters with America's Most Feared Predators, adds some nuance and some new information.

Her book is divided into species-specific chapters

• Black bears
• Coyotes
• Gray wolves
• Mountain lions
• Grizzly nightmares
• Greater Yellowstone grizzlies

plus two more, "Habituation and Alaska Attacks" and "Learning to Coexist with Predators."

Each chapter begins with some narratives, the kind that you want to read in the daytime with a clear view of your surroundings. They then cover relevant scientific research and practical ways to avoid conflict with bears, mountain lions, or whatever. "For some hikers [in coyote habitat] rocks-in-pockets becomes a routine at the start of every hike."

For instance, I was raised to believe that while they were a threat to dogs and cats, coyotes left adult-size humans alone. Urbigkit leads with the 2009 killing of Taylor Mitchell in Cape Breton Highlands National Park by a small pack of three coyotes — all healthy. "Wildlife officials suspected that these coyotes had become habituated to humans during the tourist season, and this may have involved the animals receiving food rewards from humans." (There have been other attacks on children and adults , but she was the only recorded adult human fatality.)

Attacks on pets, even leashed dogs with people, are also increasing. Geographically, coyote attacks seem most common in parks, where no hunting is allowed, and into urban areas, again without hunting and with a variety of food resources.

A certain degree of hunting, she suggests, does encourage predators to stay away from people. Yet with mountain lions, for instance, "wildlife managers believe that when heavy localized hunting results in the harvest of older mature males, more young mountain lions are likely to disperse into those areas, creating an increase in [lion-human] conflicts."

Some other take-aways:

• While people think that black bear sows with cubs are the most dangerous, "the majority of the fatal attacks on humans involved male bears, and most attacks took place during the daylight hours." While most black bears are shy, some do prey on humans deliberately. Also, "no one killed in a black bear attack carried bear spray."

• Urbigkit, who lives on a sheep ranch south of Grand Teton National Park, believes in bear spray: "You don't have to be an excellent shot to be effective with a can of bear spray — a cloud of spray between you and a charging bear should be enough for your immediate retreat from the area."

She also offers a case where bear spray stopped an attacking mountain lion. I myself have used it only on aggressive dogs, where it worked well, so I suspect that it would work just as well on a wolf or coyote.

• There are no documented cases of black bears attacking humans in defense of a carcass, but as Northern Rockies hunters are learning, grizzlies, where present have done that a number of times.

• The old idea, from books like Jim Corbett's Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944), is that the predators who attack humans are usually elderly, crippled, or wounded. With grizzly bears, that is sometimes true, Urbigkit writes. But there also more North American predators than there used to be, thanks to recovery programs and more-regulated hunting. In addition, we have created such predator-friendly places as parks and food-rich subdivisions.

Consequently, they become habituated to us — and we become habituated to them, sometimes forgetting that they "are not loveable toys to be enjoyed when convenient [Yellowstone wolf tours?] and then discarded or destroyed when they reveal their true natures.

"Predators should be treated with a realistic acknowledgment that they are animals that kill prey to survive, and should be respected for the wild creatures that they are."

Any backcountry hiker or hunter, anyone who visits parks like Yellowstone or Great Smokies, and anyone who sees bears, coyotes, or deer in their neighborhoods — where there are deer, there are lions — ought to read When Man Becomes Prey.

It is available from the publisher, Lyons Press, or from the usual online source.

Wolves on the Colorado Ballot?

Gray wolf (Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks photo).

Colorado is known for its frequent citizen initiatives to change its constitution, which is why the state constitution is now almost as long as the Boulder telephone book.

In a discussion of the ecological phenomenon of the "trophic cascade" at Colorado College last night, noted conservation biologist Michael Soulé mentioned that plans are afoot to try to pass a new constitutional modification requiring the re-introduction of wolves.

It would certainly pass on the urban Front Range, he predicted sensibly, although on the Western Slope (he lives in Paonia himself), its chances would not be so good.

Evidently there is some serious foundation money lining up behind this initiative. So stock up on popcorn now, because this could be interesting.

Where would these furry ecological saints be re-introduced? He did not say, although I got the impression that Rocky Mountain National Park would be one obvious candidate.

Hunting Season? Your Dog Needs "Isa-tai"

Does your dog go into the woods during hunting season? Does he dart off the trail, refuse to come to the whistle, and then you find him gulping fat and guts where someone field-dressed a deer or elk — no doubt thinking that bears or coyotes would clean up the pile?

Does he then get diarrhea or, twenty-four hours later, throw up a mass of fat the size of both your fists together and stand over it growling because he thinks that he is going to re-eat it?

Most of the time, your dog eats food out of a sack, supplemented by whatever he can steal off the kitchen counters. He lacks the right blend of beneficial intestinal bacteria for digesting elk guts, hair, hide, etc.

He needs Isa-tai!*

Here at Hunt-Pro Labs, we start with the fresh feces of wild Wyoming wolves. We culture the bacteria and package it in clean, odorless capsules. A short course of Isa-tai and your dog will be able to digest everything that he finds in the woods, short of Amanita muscaria.**

He'll be a happier dog, and you won't have to clean up messes!

Isa-tai, for dogs who run a little wild!


* Isa-tai was a Comanche medicine man active in the 1870s on the Southern Plains. His name translates to Wolf Shit, although an alternative translation is wolf's (or coyote's) vagina. Some say the name was given to him derogatorily after a prophecy of victory went wrong at the Second Battle of Adobe Walls in June 1874.

** For that you want milk thistle.

Bison, Bears, and Wolves . . . in Europe

That buffalo (bison) in the photo banner up top is part of a private herd at the Wolf Springs Ranch in Huerfano County, Colorado. Where he is grazing is historic habitat, but the herd was re-introduced and built up by a wealthy rancher, Tom Redmond.

His distant relatives in eastern Europe, once almost extinct, are making a managed comeback in Poland and Belarus. So are some other species that seemed likely to be preserved only in museums and heraldry, says The Telegraph:

The European bison, which was extinct in the wild in Europe at the start of the 20th century, has increased by more than 3,000 per cent after a large-scale breeding and reintroduction programme. It now has particular strongholds in Belarus and Poland.

Brown bear numbers have doubled and the grey wolf population of Europe quadrupled between 1970 and 2005.

There were also sharp rises in numbers of several species of bird, including the Svalbard breeding population of the barnacle goose, the white-tailed eagle and the Spanish imperial eagle.

But tell me, did someone at The Telegraph use a stock photo of North American bison? Compare to these.For a moment I wondered if someone was cross-breeding our bison, but I don't think so. The website of the European Bison Conservation Center says, "The [captive breeding] program should ensure separation of the pure Lowland and the Lowland-Caucasian lines and avoid hybridization with any other related species."

Rena and the Wolves

I am on the road. So go read Wyoming sheep rancher Cat Urbigkit's story of her livestock guardian dog Rena's battle with a wolf pack.

Colorado and Utah Fought Wolf Protection Plan

(I missed this item last month, but got the link from Cat Urbigkit's Wolf Watch.)

Documents obtained show that Colorado and Utah state wildlife officials strongly opposed federal plans to declare gray wolves "endangered" (hence protected) in those states if and when the wolves showed up.

The documents suggest the animal's fate was decided through political bargaining between state and federal officials, said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

The nonprofit group obtained the records through a freedom of information lawsuit and provided them to The Associated Press.

"In simplest terms, these documents detail how the gray wolf lost a popularity contest among wildlife managers," Ruch said. . . . .

The administration's plan unveiled earlier this month [June 2013] would declare gray wolves are only endangered in a relatively small part of the Southwest inhabited by a few dozen Mexican wolves — a subspecies of the gray wolf.

To quote again from the US Fish and Wildlife service's news release, "The Service is also proposing to maintain protection and expand recovery efforts for the Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) in the Southwest, where it remains endangered"

And that was the area under contention, apparently.

Colorado does not have any wolves, officially, although isolated individuals have wandered down from Wyoming. (Pet wolves or wolf-dog hybrids have also been released, another issue.) I have heard tales of wild wolves roaming on the Western Slope as far back as the 1980s, before they were reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park, but those tales remain just that. 

Why resist federal protection? The usual reasons: fear of reduced deer and elk herds, hence hunting-license revenue loss; fear of attacks on livestock, be that at traditional cattle ranches or New West-ish alpaca operations; fear of attacks on people.

Mange, Distemper Hit Yellowstone Wolves

An online Scientific American article says that both canine distemper and sarcoptic mange are affecting wolf populations in Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas.

I could not help but think of the unlucky coyote pup we transported last Wednesday. It seems likely that the distemper caused him to fall behind, be abandoned, and be discovered by a person who wanted to help him.

Heroes Are Made, Not Born

I am not sure where the division of society into "sheep," "sheepdogs," and "wolves" began, but the author of this three-part series, "Are You a Sheep or a Sheepdog" attributes it to the author Dave Grossman.

Part 1: Are You a Sheep or a Sheepdog?

Part 2: 8 Reason's You're Hardwired for Sheepness

Part 3: Your Roadmap to Becoming a Sheepdog.

Whatever the source, it's a useful classification system. And as the author notes, we are mostly born "sheep."

Grossman isn’t using the term pejoratively, he’s simply referring to the fact that most human beings are kind, gentle, and peaceful. The conflicts and ethical dilemmas they’re regularly faced with rarely rise to the level of life and death, good versus evil. For the most part people deal with challenges that are more annoyances than true crises. And when faced with conflict, they generally try to do the right thing, avoid making waves, and demonstrate pro-social behavior.

We are followers. We don't trust our intuition. We think, "It can't happen here." We suffer from "normalcy bias" and the "bystander effect."

33-year firefighting veteran Jack Rowley saw normalcy bias play out on a regular basis at bars in Columbus, Ohio. Fires were surprisingly common at bars on Saturday nights and whenever Rrowley showed up, he’d see smoke quickly filling up the establishment. But instead of mayhem, he’d find folks just sitting at the bar “nursing their beers.” He’d ask them to evacuate and the customers would say, “No, we’ll be just fine.”

Speaking of the real sheepdogs, Wyoming sheep rancher and writer Cat Urbigkit is in the middle of lambing season, and her livestock guardian dogs are earning their keep. (That is one of her book covers up above.)