The Arizona Game and Fish Department has been busy promoting recently published research which documents ample habitat for Mexican wolves in Mexico. This supports the recovery criteria in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s official recovery plan and the Department’s desire to assume management of Mexican wolves, which will occur when the delisting criteria have been met.
A bill that would ban most trapping on public lands in New Mexico cleared its first committee Tuesday, but not without concerns raised by some senators.
Marie Curie said, “nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” And yet men driven by fear want to convince you that New Mexico’s wildlife should be feared and that science tells us so. In response to a proposed bill to ban traps on New Mexico public lands, trappers are desperately pleading that we not listen to the bill’s proponents because they’re “bunny-huggers” who don’t know what they’re talking about, and that we all should listen to scientists.
When Lidia D’Amico and Katie Smith rounded the corner on a recent drive through the Marin Headlands, what they saw was what they dreaded most: a coyote sitting in a roadside turnout, waiting for a human handout.
Greta Anderson’s 11/23/20 post titled “What does coexistence with large carnivores actually mean?” highlights the fallacy that “coexistence” between public lands ranchers and wolves is fair to both wolves and ranchers. Whereas, in actual practice the long-term “existence” of ranchers is favored over the existence of wolves, and is supported by a variety of sources of monetary compensation. One source she mentions but elects to not elaborate on is the “artificially low grazing fee.” Few people realize the magnitude this subsidy.
A federal court has ruled against allowing the baiting of Alaska’s iconic brown bears in the state’s Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. The Court determined that state law, and its more liberal allowances around the killing of bears, should not trump federal management of wildlife on public lands.