Alan Gregory’s Conservation News

I call your attention to this discussion taking place over at Ted Williams’ Fly Rod & Reel blog regarding the National Rifle Association (isn’t it time for a National Riffle Association?).

And I also urge you to check out Kathie Lynch’s Yellowstone wolf field notes posted at Ralph Maughan’s blog. Ralph includes a wonderful photo (by Mark Miller) that shows seven members of the Agates pack on patrol in Lamar Valley.

Kurt Repanshek, over at National Parks Traveler, has a nice remembrance of the 38th president’s brief (1936) career as a seasonal ranger at Yellowstone National Park. Kurt’s essay features a wonderful photograph of Mr. Ford wearing the typical ranger’s uniform of the day. President Ford was a great gentleman; an honest man who tried to do the right thing on behalf of his constituents. I didn’t enlist in the Air Force until after the first two years of President Carter’s tenure in the White House, but I well remember President Ford’s career in public service.

The 520,000-acre Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania is anything but a real forest. It’s a virtual pincushion of oil and gas wells, as this DailyKos posting discusses. Arguably, no federal public land in any of the 50 states has suffered more from resource extraction activities than the Allegheny. Be sure and take a look at the aerial photos this link will point you to.

And a collection of on-the-ground photos of resource extraction destruction on the Allegheny can be viewed here.

Another dam-removal success story, this time from Gouldsborough Creek in Washington State’s Mason County. The 30-foot-high Gouldsborough Dam blocked salmon from migrating upstream for more than a century. The dam was yanked out five years ago and the salmon returned.

On the negative side of the ledger, a decision by Vermont’s Public Service Board is holding up removal of the Peterson Dam from a Lake Champlain tributary.

From the (Vermont) Rutland Herald’s coverage: “The board said it had to weigh the benefits to fish against the environmental benefits of generating enough power for 3,000 typical Vermont homes without discharging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, citing a 2005 law that calls on the state to get an increasing share of its power from renewable sources.”

OK, but it’s still a bad deal for walleye, sturgeon and salmon.

The Bush administration has finally given up. The White House, through this Endangered Species Act decision regarding the polar bear, has finally fessed up to what the rest of the world has been saying now for years. No more rebutting of climate change science. Here’s the Associated Press’s Wednesday evening update of today’s big wildlife conservation story.

And here’s the Fish and Wildlife Service’s news release on today’s announcement. You can also look over various background materials, and a video, at the Fish and Wildlife Service’s home page.

Was this really a Bush decision? Or is it a Rovian manuever?

It’s a stretch to call hunting elk — or most any other critter — inside a fence “fair-chase” hunting. It’s a business deal, and hardly anything but a business deal.

Read what Dave Parsons, retired Mexican gray wolf coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, has to say about the reintroduction effort he guided for nearly a decade.

Things are not going well and, surprise surprise, political considerations are overriding on-the-ground science.

There were 392 manatee deaths in Florida waters this year, many due to red tide. But 82 died in collisions with boats.

Meanwhile, Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission thinks less protection is more, voting earlier this year to list the species as “threatened,” a step down from “endangered” status. Manatees remain listed as “endangered” under federal law.

An excerpt from the Miami Herald’s coverage of the grim milestone:

Scientists have said the manatee population is expected to drop 50 percent over the next five decades because of habitat loss, boat collisions and red tide algae. Still, they said, the species is not endangered — a classification that denotes a species on the brink of extinction.

”We hope people understand what is really going on here,” said Pat Rose of the Save the Manatee Club.

“The threats to manatees aren’t getting less. They’re increasing.”

 Read the entire piece. You know what to do.

Read comments about Outdoor Life magazine’s brand of outdoor writing over at Ted Williams’ blog (on Fly Rod & Reel mag’s Web site). And check out some of the other links there and offer your own comments.

Interesting that the Salt Lake Tribune would refer to the USDA’s “Wildlife Services” branch as an agency that “manages predators and nuisance wildlife.”

That’s a real stretch. The writer was far too generous and should have written the plain-speech description of what Wildlife Services does, as in “kills” native predators to protect ranchers’ livestock. Read the piece here.