Black-footed ferrets found in S.D. prairie dog town

This is quite a tale. And the photos re remarkable. Ah, the value of a big telephoto lens. In any case, this finding, hopefully, shows the resiliency of wild nature.

Op-ed: Sportsmen care most about protecting habitat

Eddie Zygmunt, of Northeastern Pennsylvania, is a longtime friend and conservation colleague of mine. This op-ed from his pen was just published in the Patriot-News, the daily newspaper of Harrisburg, the state’s capital city. Eddie turned out a really nice piece. Read it, and let me know what you think.

Crimes against wildlife

This article from Twin Falls, Idaho, takes a nice hard look at poaching and the investigatory tricks employed by investigators. But there remains a whole other class of what could just as easily be called criminal: The ongoing destruction, paving over, fragmentation and outright loss of fish and wildlife habitat.

Building a bat cave to battle a deadly bat-killing fungus

The killer is the well-known, now, whitenose fungus. It started killing bats here in the Green Mountain State and across Lake Champlain in New York a bunch of years ago now. And still it marches on. It has apparently jumped the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Read about the human-made bat cave here.

The world does indeed need wolves

To thinking conservationists, conservation biologists, and ecologists, the facts explained in this p-ed article are hardly a surprise. Wolves do indeed belong in the oftentimes struggling wild of North America. They are part of the Web of Life. Yet, politicians tend often to listen only to livestock ranchers (growing cows and sheep on public land!) and out come the rifles and traps. When will they learn?

A conservation goal: Keeping the land ‘whole’

My latest newspaper column:

In fish and wildlife conservation lingo, the concept of “wholeness” is everything.

Wholeness means a whole habitat, one whose ecological values are intact, not chopped up (what conservationists refer to as “fragmented”) into smaller chunks.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in a fact sheet for the 2002 observance of International Migratory Bird Day, states: “Habitat is defined as an area that provides the food, water, cover and space

that a living thing needs to survive and reproduce. The quality and quantity of a particular type of habitat determines the

number and variety of its inhabitants.

 

“Unfortunately, in altering or creating habitat for human uses, people often cause the loss or damage of habitat needed by birds and other wildlife. This loss and degradation of habitat has resulted in widespread declines and extinctions of many species.

 

“It is not possible for people to live and prosper without affecting their surroundings. However, people do have the ability to consider the needs of other species and can choose to modify their activities to decrease the negative effects they have on wildlife habitat.”

 

This means that the little five-acre woodlot down the street (the one with the real estate agency’s sign on it, declaring the land as “available”) has much less ecological value to native flora and fauna than the 5,000-acre (or larger) forest that grows on yonder ridge.

 

Conservationists, whether toiling in Utah or New England or Pennsylvania (or any other place) know this to be the case. That’s why proposals to build mammoth land-devouring things like airports and highways and such generate lots of opposition. People who value, cherish and fight to protect Pennsylvania’s natural heritage really should be (excuse the cliché) “up in arms” over the still-alive chance that a cargo airport (isn’t “freight” airport a more accurate term?) will be constructed on terrain near Hazleton.

 

Before “authorities” allow bulldozers to be cranked to life and their land-eating blades lowered, let’s take a gander at the fate today of closed, former Air Force bases. I served at two such places that are within a one-day drive of Hazleton.

Both Griffiss AFB, near Utica, N.Y., and Plattsburgh AFB (four hours due north of Albany, N.Y.) were Strategic Air Command bomber bases. Aircrews at these, and many other SAC installations pulled what everyone referred to as “alert duty,” living together in secure dorm-style buildings referred to (no joke) as “alert facilities.” The base at Plattsburgh, not too long after the Air Force pulled out) became Plattsburgh International Airport. (In this case, unlike the Avoca airfield which still bills itself as an “international” port, the label is true as suburban Montreal, Quebec, is only an hour due north). Plattsburgh already had a 13,000-foot runway, loads of adjacent tarmac, and office space and aircraft hangars. Learn more at http://www.flyplattsburgh.com/opportunities/facilities.asp

 

Griffiss was home to a B-52 bomb wing (Plattsburgh had a fleet of the smaller FB-111 bomber). Visit http://ocgov.net/airport/tenants to learn about the civilian tenants that now operate at Griffiss International Airport. And by visiting http://ocgov.net/airport you get to see a nice aerial photograph of Griffiss. A brief look is all that’s needed to realize just how much land the place covers. Then, consider how a “cargo” airport in northern Schuylkill County would look from the air.

 

People who know the real “value” of Pennsylvania’s natural heritage (a value that covers a lot more territory than just dollars) ought to be nice, yet vocal in battling the very notion of putting a new airport near Hazleton. And think how you would reply to this question: If there’s such a grand need for a new “cargo” airfield, here or anywhere else in the Northeast or mid-Atlantic, how come the many ex-military airfields that dot a map have not already been pressed into service for such a mission?

 

Oddly, this ongoing discussion and debate brings to mind a late-afternoon chat I had with a pickup truck driver on a road splitting apart a Pennsylvania Game Commission holding in the Lehigh River watershed. The motorist (also a hunter, as evidenced by the .30-.06 rifle in the window rack behind his head), lamented that he didn’t see one white-tail, not even one, while driving down the road.

Groups raise new challenge to building of Adirondack resort

There is no way, regardless of what supporters of the planned Adirondack Club and Resort say, that this turkey development will not affect wildlife populations. All the data and survey results cannot change the fact that building the big bonanza would seriously degrade and fragment wildlife habitat, not to mention that habitat lost directly to land clearing operations. Here’s a report from North Country Public Radio.

National wildlife refuge in Nevada to remove all ‘wild’ horses

The refuge manager of Sheldron NWR in northwestern Nevada has signed off on a new management plan that calls for all so-called “wild” horses to be removed from refuge lands. Finally, a land-management agency shows some spine. Read about it here.

Survey finds low tolerance for wolves in Montana

This is a case of wildlife biology/maintenance by public opinion poll. Oops. Never mind what’s good for wildlife and the habitat. It’s public opinion that matters. That, and the revenue from the sale of hunting and trapping licenses. Hah.

Nev. panel OKs strategy to keep sage grouse off endangered species roster

And that strategy, implied but not directly indicated in this article, revolves around political considerations, not actual, real science. This is yet another case of “junk” science masquerading as the real thing. I would respect the politicians a little bit more if they simply said it’s about politics, instead of what PR flak tells them to say.