Black-footed ferrets return home

Environmental Issues, News, ,
Black-footed ferret
Black-footed ferret

Here’s more news regarding the ongoing effort to restore the black-footed ferret population . . .

A nocturnal species of weasel with a robber-mask-like marking across its eyes has returned to the remote ranchlands of western Wyoming where the critter almost went extinct more than 30 years ago.

Wildlife officials on Tuesday released 35 black-footed ferrets on two ranches near Meeteetse, a tiny cattle ranching community 50 miles east of Yellowstone National Park. Black-footed ferrets, generally solitary animals, were let loose individually over a wide area.

Groups of ferret releasers fanned out over prairie dog colonies covering several thousand acres of the Lazy BV and Pitchfork ranches. Black-footed ferrets co-exist with prairie dogs, living in their burrows and preying on them.

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Utah lawmakers introduce bill that could allow mountain bikes in wilderness

Environmental Issues, News, , ,
Mountain Biker by Mick Lissone
Mountain Biker by Mick Lissone

Looks like the Sustainable Trails Coalition folks found someone to front a mountain bike bill for them . . .

Two Utah senators have introduced legislation that would allow federal officials, such as U.S. Forest Service supervisors, to decide whether mountain bikes could be used on sections of trail in designated wilderness areas.

U.S. Sens. Mike Lee, R-UT, and Orrin Hatch, R-UT, are proposing the Human-Powered Travel in Wilderness Act, a bill that would change the rule banning bikes in protected wilderness, such as the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

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Scientists get video of a wolverine in the Sierra Nevada

Environmental Issues, News,
Wolverine in snow - Steve Kroschel
Wolverine in snow – Steve Kroschel

Following news of a wolverine that showed up near Havre comes this story of another one hanging out in the Sierra Nevada . . .

Scientists following up on a rare wolverine sighting in the Sierra Nevada set up cameras and captured video of the animal scurrying in the snow, scaling a tree and chewing on bait.

They believe the wolverine is the same one that eight years ago became the first documented in the area since the 1920s.

Chris Stermer, a wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, set up the remote cameras in the Tahoe National Forest after officials at a field station sent him photos in January of unusual tracks in the snow near Truckee.

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How a guy from a Montana trailer park overturned 150 years of biology

News, Science, , , ,
Lichen on blue rock along American River, Folsom, CA
Lichen on blue rock along American River, Folsom, CA

Here’s a fascinating story from The Atlantic magazine.

Remember learning about lichens in high school or college biology? Turns out, you learned it wrong. Sort of. And a persistent fellow from Montana proved it . . .

In 1995, if you had told Toby Spribille that he’d eventually overthrow a scientific idea that’s been the stuff of textbooks for 150 years, he would have laughed at you. Back then, his life seemed constrained to a very different path. He was raised in a Montana trailer park, and home-schooled by what he now describes as a “fundamentalist cult.” At a young age, he fell in love with science, but had no way of feeding that love. He longed to break away from his roots and get a proper education.

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Bob Marshall advocates still pushing for wilderness part of lands deal

Environmental Issues, News,
Chinese Wall - Bob Marshall Wilderness
Chinese Wall – Bob Marshall Wilderness

Members of the Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project are still working to get the wilderness components of their 2008 agreement implemented . . .

It seems odd to stand beside Seeley Lake, looking at the mountains that border the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex, and not actually see the wilderness.

The border of that 1.6-million-acre, federally protected backcountry runs along the crest of the Swan Range. The western face of those mountains, where all the trailheads start, has no special status.

That makes sense from a scenic standpoint. The Seeley-Swan Valley lacks the churning peaks and glittering lakes that glorify the Bob Marshall and Mission Mountains wildernesses on either side. From the air, the state Highway 83 corridor offers no contest to the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

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Most national parks ignoring planning, overcrowding laws

Environmental Issues, News, ,
Logging Lake in Glacier National Park, USA - National Park Service
Logging Lake in Glacier National Park, USA – National Park Service

Glacier Park is doing better than most national parks in dealing with and planning for increased visitation . . .

With a 17-year-old general management plan in place and work continuing to address traffic issues on Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier National Park appears to at least partially escape the wrath of a conservation group’s complaint that most of America’s national parks are ignoring federal laws requiring management plans.

The recently released reports come as the National Park Service promotes its 100th anniversary, and many parks are braced for record crowds. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility says its review of 108 of the 411 units the NPS administers – including all 59 of America’s national parks – reveals that just seven have established visitor limits, called carrying capacities, and six of those only cover certain areas or facilities.

PEER says the National Parks and Recreation Act of 1978 requires “visitor carrying capacities for all areas” of all national parks. “The safeguards Congress enacted to prevent national parks from being loved to death have become dead letters,” Jeff Ruch, the executive director of PEER, says.

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Wyoming considers tribal call for grizzly transplants

Environmental Issues, News, , ,
Grizzly on ranch east of Yellowstone - Wyoming Game and Fish Department
Grizzly on ranch east of Yellowstone – Wyoming Game and Fish Department

Native American tribes want Wyoming to transplant excess bears to reservations rather than hunting them. Kudos to Bill Fordyce for spotting this one . . .

Wyoming might consider Native American tribes’ request that grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem be transplanted to reservations rather than hunted, a top official said last week.

Even though it has adopted framework regulations for grizzly hunting, Wyoming Game and Fish won’t dismiss the transplant idea, Wyoming’s Chief Game Warden Brian Nesvik said. His remarks followed a call by a tribal coalition that grizzlies be transplanted instead of hunted if managers seek to reduce their numbers in the ecosystem.

“Instead of trophy hunting the grizzly, Tribal Nations wish to see grizzlies transplanted from the GYE to sovereign tribal lands in the grizzly’s historic range where biologically suitable habitat exists,” coalition co-founder R. Bear Stands Last wrote Game and Fish director Scott Talbott on June 29. “The same quota of grizzlies that would be hunted per season could easily be trapped and relocated, removing any possible rationalization for re-instituting trophy hunts.”

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Satellites record spread of pine beetle infestation over decades

Environmental Issues, News,
Northern Williams Range, Colorado, where mountain pine beetles have killed more than 80 percent of mature lodgepole pine over many square kilometers - USGS
Northern Williams Range, Colorado, where mountain pine beetles have killed more than 80 percent of mature lodgepole pine over many square kilometers – USGS

Here’s an interesting article about using satellites to monitor and record the spread of pine beetle infestation . . .

In western North America, mountain pine beetles infest and ravage thousands of acres of forest lands. Landsat satellites bear witness to the onslaught in a way that neither humans nor most other satellites can.

Since 1972, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat satellites have been the watchman that never sleeps with spectral bands capturing the subtle turning of green mountainsides into dying forests. From the ground, the extent of forest land damage is simply too large for field observers to quantify. But 438 miles above the Earth, Landsat satellites pass over every forest in the country dozens of times a year — every year — creating a historical archive of clear, composite images that tells the hidden stories of life and death in our nation’s forests.

Such was the vision of Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall 50 years ago when he boldly called for Earth observations from space. What the U.S. Geological Survey has accumulated now are vast and continuous long-term records from Landsat that have become critical tools for agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service (Forest Service), which reports the status and health of our nation’s forest resources.

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Montana signs forest management deal with feds

Environmental Issues, News, , ,

Montana and the federal government signed the paperwork to establish a formal federal-state logging and restoration partnership . . .

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock signed an agreement with the U.S. Forest Service on Monday for the state to play a bigger role in forest management on federal lands, which officials say will speed up backlogged logging projects.

Forest management and the declining timber industry have emerged as major issues in this year’s governor’s race, with Weyerhaeuser announcing last month that it would close a Columbia Falls lumber and plywood mill. The closure will put about 100 people out of work in addition to 100 administrative jobs that are being eliminated or moved with Weyerhaeuser’s purchase of Plum Creek Timber.

With the Chessman Reservoir as a backdrop, Bullock, Forest Service Regional Forester Leanne Marten and Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation Director John Tubbs signed the Good Neighbor Authority agreement, which was authorized under the 2014 federal Farm Bill.

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Second bat with white-nose disease found in Washington

Environmental Issues, News, , , ,
Little brown bat affected by White nose syndrome - Marvin Moriarty-USFWS
Little brown bat affected by white nose syndrome – Marvin Moriarty-USFWS

The Flathead Valley along both sides of the border is a significant bat study area, so another report of white-nose syndrome in the Western U.S. is cause for concern . . .

White-nose syndrome fungus has shown up in a second species of bat in Washington, adding to the concern that the problem could be expanding west of the Rocky Mountains.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists reported finding a silver-haired bat that tested positive for Pseudogymnoascus destructans – a fungus that has killed millions of bats in 27 states and five Canadian provinces.

While the silver-haired bat was not made ill by the fungus, researchers worry it may be spreading spores to more vulnerable populations.

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