Tag Archives: threatened species list

Lynx delisting proposal triggers conflict

Environmental Issues, News, ,
Canada lynx - USFWS
Canada lynx – USFWS

Here’s a pretty good, locally focused backgrounder on the USFWS proposal to delist the Canada Lynx. You’ll encounter several familiar names . . .

The new millennium brought a new challenge for Lorin Hicks.

For years, Hicks has worked as a wildlife biologist for Weyerhaeuser and its predecessor, Plum Creek Timber Co., studying the inhabitants of Northwest Montana’s sensitive forests.

He gained a new research focus in 2000, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the Continental U.S. population segment of Canada lynx as a threatened species. That move required the agencies that manage area forests to take the lynx’s well-being into account.

Read more . . .

Feds decide not to upgrade protections for Cabinet-Yaak grizzlies

Environmental Issues, News,

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies are butting heads over the status of the grizzly bear population in the Cabinet-Yaak region . . .

Federal wildlife officials last week declined to upgrade protections for a small population of grizzly bears in the Cabinet Mountains and Yaak River drainage in Northwest Montana, sparking outcry from a conservation organization that claims the population is nearing extinction.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a decision in the Federal Register on Dec. 5 that said grizzlies living in the Cabinet-Yaak ecosystem are stable and likely to reach a recovery goal of 100 without changing their status from threatened to endangered under the Endangered Species Act…

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Proposed rule says current habitat ‘sufficient to conserve lynx’

Environmental Issues, News, ,

The protection of Canada Lynx continues to generate controversy — this time, over habitat designation . . .

A proposed federal rule on lynx critical habitat would assume the threatened cat doesn’t need forests it doesn’t currently use.

“The (U.S. Fish and Wildlife) Service determined that currently occupied habitat is sufficient to conserve lynx,” a statement from FWS Mountain-Prairie regional director Noreen Walsh stated last week. “Therefore, the designation does not include areas not currently occupied by lynx.

The new designation would cover 41,547 square miles in Montana, Maine, Minnesota, Idaho, Washington and Wyoming.

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Federal wolverine protection opposed by states

Environmental Issues, News, ,

Montana, Idaho and Wyoming officials don’t think wolverines need federal “threatened species” protection . . .

State officials in the Northern Rockies on Monday lined up against a federal proposal to give new protections to the carnivorous wolverine, as climate change threatens to melt the species’ snowy mountain strongholds.

A pending U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposal would declare the rare, elusive animal a threatened species across the Lower 48 states.

That could end trapping for the ferocious member of the weasel family sometimes called the “mountain devil.” And it would pave the way for Colorado to reintroduce wolverines in portions of the southern Rocky Mountains as part of a strategy to bolster their numbers ahead of future declines.

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Grizzly bear managers anticipate hunts in Northern Rockies

Environmental Issues, News, , ,

Grizzly bears have recovered in some areas to the point where some very limited hunting may be permitted in a couple of years . . .

With bear-human conflicts on the rise, wildlife managers in the Northern Rockies are laying the groundwork for trophy hunts for grizzlies in anticipation of the government lifting their threatened species status.

It’s expected to be 2014 before about 600 bears around Yellowstone National Park lose their federal protections, and possibly longer for about 1,000 bears in the region centered on Glacier National Park.

Yet already government officials say those populations have recovered to the point that limited hunting for small numbers of bears could occur after protections are lifted…

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Grizzly’s threatened status appealed in Oregon court

Environmental Issues, News, , , ,

From today’s Flathead Beacon . . .

Dueling attorneys for a conservation group and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offered starkly different opinions Monday about the future of the grizzly bear population in and around Yellowstone National Park, if the bear is taken off the threatened species list.

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