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Walter Medwid: Time for Change in Managing Vermont's Wildlife

11/29/2014

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Originally posted: VtDigger.org: Time for Change in Managing Vermont's Wildlife
NOV. 21 2014

This commentary is by Walter Medwid, a biologist who lives in Derby.

True to Vermont’s values, a board made up of citizens from around the state decides how to manage the state’s fish and wildlife. But, contrary to those values, the people serving on the Fish and Wildlife Board are chosen by the governor from a limited pool of citizens who take part in trapping hunting and fishing. This may seem to make sense, but wildlife is a public resource and not just important to people who are “consumers” of it.

This imbalance in representation came about for two reasons. First, hunting, fishing and trapping have traditionally been considered a mainstream of our Vermont culture. Second, hunting and fishing license fees and federal funds from taxes on certain sporting goods are an important source of income for the Department of Fish and Wildlife and to the governors who have to juggle budgets and appoint citizens to the board. It’s clear why governors would want to cater to that special interest group.

One clear sign that it may be time to do things differently is the steady decline in sales of hunting and fishing licenses. Since at least 1987, resident hunting and fishing license sales have dropped by double digits, but as Vermont’s culture and traditions have changed, the way wildlife management decisions are made has not. In the 21st century, having a Fish and Wildlife Board with a wide range of stakeholders who represent more contemporary and diverse public values is simply a sign of good government. We look at wildlife far differently than we did 25-50 years ago. Ironically, the consumer-value focus of the board becomes disproportionately stronger and even less representative of public interests as there are fewer hunters and fishers in the state.

One example of our changing views of wildlife is how we now think of predators. We once saw predators such as coyotes as vermin – the only good predator was a dead one. Today, through greater understanding of wildlife, ecology and the environment as a whole, most wildlife enthusiasts see the great value these animals bring to healthy wildlife communities. While many deer hunters see coyotes as a threat to “their” deer, biologists in New York have recently concluded that coyotes prey far less on deer and fawns than hunters believe. Only 10 percent of adult deer deaths are actually caused by coyotes. Biologists there have also found that coyotes hunt and eat beaver far more often than fawns. Regrettably, the board with its narrow focus and representation has, in the case of the coyote, kept the myth of coyote as “vermin” alive and well – they may be killed any day of the year for any reason or no reason. They seemingly dismiss and certainly discount more scientifically-grounded data.

The board’s stance on coyotes is even in conflict with the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s own professional wildlife biologists, who recognize the species’ importance in the natural Vermont community. They stress, “Coyotes fill the role of a natural predator, a role that is important for maintaining the dynamics and health of our ecosystems.”

It’s time for the Legislature and the governor to revisit Vermont’s wildlife laws and the mandate of the Fish and Wildlife Board so they reflect today’s Vermont, where hunting and fishing remains a key part of the equation, but is not the only “voice” represented at the decision-making table.

The board’s decision this year on moose management shows a similar disconnect. Vermont’s moose population is in decline – only half of what it was 10 years ago – and below the number state biologists estimate as what the landscape can handle. Yet instead of suspending the hunting season to allow the population to become stable again, the only consideration by the board was approving how many animals would be killed this year. This default to hunting values over ecological or wildlife-watching and eco-tourism interests reflects a serious lack of serving the entire public’s interests.

It’s time for the Legislature and the governor to revisit Vermont’s wildlife laws and the mandate of the Fish and Wildlife Board so they reflect today’s Vermont, where hunting and fishing remains a key part of the equation, but is not the only “voice” represented at the decision-making table. There should be a wider lens that the board looks through to ensure an ecologically diverse Vermont with healthy wildlife populations; the lens should not only look at game as the paramount product.

The gulf between who the board represents and the people it should be representing is growing and will only expand if the public at large is frozen out of the decision-making process. The response to no representation of the other sectors of Vermonters will surely be the “… rising tide of posted and inaccessible land,” as referenced by a recent fish and wildlife commissioner.

Hunters, trappers and fishers have done some of the heavy lifting when it comes to supplying fish and wildlife programs with money, although as license fee income has declined, support from general revenues has already increased. Logically that trend towards more public funding needs to grow since wildlife belongs to all Vermonters.

Stakeholders who represent the non-consumptive interests – the wildlife watchers (Vermont has one of the highest percentages of residents in the country who engage in some form of wildlife watching) and photographers, those who benefit from eco-tourism, and many more, need to step up to the plate and actively participate in hearings to give their input when decisions are made. They need to do this under a newly designed board. We need to anticipate vigorous debates as this new board reflects wider interests. However, that’s not a bad thing.

These changes would be a return to those Vermont values held so dear for so long – equal representation – equal voice that is true to the population’s needs and growth. Vermont could lead the pack by managing its wildlife this way. Should we expect anything less in a state where citizen involvement stands at the heart of its identity?

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Northeast Wolf Coalition draws wildlife experts to Walden Woods

11/20/2014

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Northeast Wolf Coalition Attendance
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 20, 2014

Contact:

Wolf Conservation Center: Maggie Howell, maggie@nywolf.org
Endangered Species Coalition: Tara Thornton; tthornton@endangered.org
RESTORE: The North Woods: Jym St. Pierre; jym@restore.org

Recognizing the need for an ongoing collaboration to explore the vision of and potential for wolf recovery in the Northeast USA, the Northeast Wolf Coalition, an alliance of conservation organizations from New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and beyond, recently gathered at Walden Woods in Lincoln, Massachusetts.  Inspired by the lands, literature and legacy of the quintessential American author, philosopher, and naturalist, Henry David Thoreau, the Coalition examined its ethic of environmental stewardship and social responsibility - both cornerstones of Thoreau’s philosophy.

Informed by some of the nation’s best and brightest wildlife conservationists and scientists,  the conference brought together more than two dozen stakeholders to review the focus and the direction of its mission and to plan collaborative projects based on common goals and the most current scientific principles. 

The Coalition believes that the return of the wolf will reflect a more fully functional and wild ecosystem in the Northeast, with wolves fulfilling a dynamic and evolving ecological function in the changing environments that comprise the region.

"We know wolves and other top predators are key to a healthy ecosystem”, said Tara Thornton, Program Director for the national Endangered Species Coalition. “In the Northeast, it's critical to have protections in place for wolves if we are ever to see them return to their native landscape," she added. 

“One of those safeguards must involve better protecting the hybrid eastern coyote which lives throughout the region,” said Jonathan Way, Ph.D., a biologist who has studied wild canids for over a decade. “While the eastern coyote has a different ecological role than larger wolves, it looks very similar and can easily be mistaken, even by trained wildlife biologists.”

Although the howl of the wolf has been silent in the Northeast for over a century, the Coalition worked together to design a preliminary framework from which it will begin to transfer scientific evidence into informed practice and advocacy to promote wolf recovery in the region.

According to Jym St. Pierre, Maine Director, RESTORE: The North Woods, “The wolf once was the most widely-distributed land mammal on Earth. It lived throughout the Northeast, performing an essential ecological role. While wolves are making a comeback across many parts of the U.S., they remain missing from our northeastern landscapes. Scientific studies show there is plenty of habitat and wild food to support a viable population of this important species. For biological, spiritual, and even economic reasons, it is time to get wolf recovery in the Northeast back on track as part of the rewilding of our region.”

The Coalition believes the imminent loss of federal protections for wolves in the lower 48 states threatens the survival of individual wolves that attempt to move into the region from existing populations located to the north and northwest in Canada that are well within dispersal range of reaching the Northeast.

“Wolf recovery is possible when states recognize their legal obligation to conserve the species as a public trust resource. Such recognition implies that states must now assume the critical role in wolf protection and apply the leadership necessary to ensure they recover in sustainable numbers throughout the region,” said Maggie Howell, Northeast Wolf Coalition Coordinator and Executive Director of the Wolf Conservation Center in New York.  “Doing so moves the debate about wolf recovery in the Northeast back into the scientific as opposed to the political arena.”

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Center for Biological Diversity Report: Ample Room for Wolves in the Northeast

11/10/2014

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For Immediate Release, November 3, 2014
Contact: Amaroq Weiss, (707) 779-9613

New Report IDs 350,000 Square Miles of Additional
Habitat for Wolves in Lower 48


Obama Administration Prematurely Abandoning Recovery,
Despite Ample Room for Wolves in Southern Rockies, West Coast, Northeast
PicturePhoto: Center for Biological Diversity
SAN FRANCISCO— A first-of-its-kind analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity identifies 359,000 square miles of additional habitat for gray wolves in 19 of the lower 48 states that could significantly boost the nation’s 40-year wolf recovery efforts. The study indicates the gray wolf population could be doubled to around 10,000 by expanding recovery into areas researchers have identified as excellent habitat in the Northeast, West Coast and southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the Grand Canyon, an area where a radio-collared wolf was photographed in recent weeks.

Map by Curt Bradley, Center for Biological Diversity. This map and wolf photos are available for media use. The report comes as the Obama administration moves to strip Endangered Species Act protection from gray wolves by the end of the year, even though wolves have been recovered in less than 10 percent of their historic habitat and are routinely trekking hundreds of miles to disperse to areas of the American landscape they once called home.

“This wolf's pioneering journey to Arizona, like the wolf OR-7’s remarkable trek across Oregon to California, highlights the compelling on-the-ground reality made clear in this new report,” said Amaroq Weiss, the Center’s West Coast wolf organizer. “The Obama administration must finally acknowledge that the job of recovering wolves to sustainable populations is far from done.”

Today’s report, Making Room for Wolf Recovery: The Case for Maintaining Endangered Species Act Protections for America’s Wolves, analyzes 27 published research papers identifying suitable wolf habitat. It shows that the current wolf population of 5,400 could be nearly doubled if federal protections were retained and recovery efforts began to restore wolves to some of the places they once called home.

The report documents 56 instances over 30 years where wolves have dispersed from existing core recovery areas to states where they have yet to reestablish, including Colorado, Utah, California, New York, Massachusetts and Maine. These events, which frequently have ended in the dispersing wolves being shot, highlight the need for continued federal protections and recovery planning to increase the odds for dispersing wolves to survive and recolonize former terrain. The most famous dispersing wolf, OR-7, traveled hundreds of miles from northeast Oregon to California and has started a family along the border of the two states.

The report’s findings come as federal wildlife officials are working to verify the genetic identity of the radio-collared wolf photographed near Grand Canyon National Park — a discovery that suggests the wolf is likely a northern Rockies gray wolf who traveled hundreds of miles to historic wolf habitat where wolves were exterminated more than 50 years ago.

“What we’re seeing is that the amazing journeys of OR-7 and the wolf spotted in Arizona are far from oddities — they’re reflections of very natural dispersal patterns in recent years, where wolves have traveled hundreds of miles trying to expand to enough of their historic range to survive ongoing threats,” Weiss said. “But without the protection of the Endangered Species Act, we know that these wolves will too often face the same kind of hostility that nearly drove them extinct a century ago.”

Since endangered species protections were taken away from wolves in 2011 in the northern Rockies and western Great Lakes, the states have enacted aggressive hunting and trapping seasons designed to drastically reduce populations. To date more than 2,800 wolves have been killed, resulting in a 9 percent population decline in the northern Rockies and a 25 percent decline in Minnesota. Idaho passed legislation this year creating a "wolf control board," with the sole purpose of killing wolves, and appropriated $400,000 for the task. Removal of protection in the rest of the country will ensure that anti-wolf prejudices prevail and wolf recovery is stopped in its tracks. 

“State management of wolves has turned an Endangered Species Act success story into a tragedy," said Weiss. "Rather than sound science, gray wolf management by the states has been dominated by anti-wolf hysteria and special-interest politics. Wolves need federal protection so they can survive, continue to recover, and eventually reprise their historic wilderness role at the top of the food chain.”

The report details the serious problems with state management and the important part wolves play in ecosystems; it can be read and downloaded here.

Background
Large members of the canid family, gray wolves are habitat generalists able to live nearly anywhere other than extreme desert or tropical environments, but which require human tolerance for survival. Living in family packs that typically range from five to 10 animals, wolves are highly social animals, with all pack members involved in rearing of young and in hunting forays for their prey (predominantly large wild ungulates such as elk, deer, moose and caribou). At around the age of two to three years, wolves tend to disperse from their family packs to seek mates and territories of their own.

Gray wolves were once the most widely ranging land mammals on the planet, with an estimated 2 million distributed throughout North America at the time of European colonization. As settlers moved west, they cleared the land for their grain and livestock, wiping out first the wolves’ wild prey and then the wolves themselves. Government-sponsored predator-eradication campaigns conducted on behalf of the livestock industry exterminated wolves everywhere in the lower 48 states, with the exception of a remnant population of fewer than 1,000 wolves in far northeastern Minnesota. 

Wolves were first federally protected in 1967, under a precursor to the Endangered Species Act. This allowed Minnesota’s wolf population to expand in number and range into neighboring Wisconsin and parts of Michigan. In the mid-1990s, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho; their descendants have slowly dispersed into parts of Washington and Oregon, with one wolf making it to California. In the late 1990s, the most highly endangered subspecies of gray wolf, the Mexican gray wolf, was reintroduced to Arizona.

In 2011 Congress stripped wolves of federal protections in the northern Rockies and adjacent areas, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did the same for wolves in the Western Great Lakes region. Under state management, in less than three years, wolf populations in these states have demonstrated substantial declines, with nearly 3,000 wolves killed in state-sanctioned hunting and trapping seasons. 

In June 2013 the Obama administration proposed stripping federal protections from wolves across most of the lower 48 states. Despite receipt of more than 1.5 million public comments opposed to delisting wolves and critical comments from scientists and a peer review panel, the administration is expected to issue an official rule removing protection from wolves before the end of the year.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 800,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.


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