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All Politics Articles
As summer winds down and bears rush to pack on the pounds before hibernation, at least a few ursines have exhibited unusually aggressive behavior.
Director of Bear Smart Durango Bryan Peterson said unprovoked, aggressive behavior is unusual for black bears, but it's not unheard of.
A recent pair of incidents were reported in which bears exhibited this type of behavior, both taking place in the heart of Durango.
Wolves and bears don't behave well in courtrooms.
But the two big predators are likely to spend the next 18 months there as their advocates and enemies try to untangle them from the federal Endangered Species Act.
Last week, Montana wildlife managers decided to appeal U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy's Aug. 5 decision placing the gray wolf back under federal protection. Meanwhile, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials in Missoula appealed another Molloy ruling that prevented state management of Yellowstone ecosystem grizzly bears.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has drafted a bear management plan that attempts to grapple with all the issues raised by the resurgence of a species that can reach 600 pounds and has a taste for garbage.
The plan calls for setting up local resident groups to work out bear issues; reducing those killed on roads; establishing wilderness corridors to reconnect shrinking, genetically isolated bear populations along the Gulf coast with larger ones inland; and — most controversially — considering whether Florida should reopen bear hunting, banned in 1994.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service filed an appeal earlier this month to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the relisting of the estimated 600 grizzly bears in the Yellowstone ecosystem.
“The Yellowstone grizzly population is increasing at 4 to 7 percent per year and is recovered and the agencies are committed to spending more than $3 million per year to maintain this healthy, recovered population,” said Chris Servheen, Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator, in a statement.
A resident of Whistler, B.C., wants crossbow hunting banned in the municipality after learning that it's legal to use the weapons to hunt bears within the resort community's boundaries.
Sylvia Dolson opposes bear hunting and says it's just a matter of time before a person becomes a victim of a crossbow.
"Safety is a major concern," Dolson told CBC News. "We have all kinds of parks, hiking trails, biking trails."
Citing the recent off-duty action of one of its officers, the Anchorage Police Department on Monday urged the public to avoid zapping bears with Tasers unless life or property is in peril.
The statement comes after police Lt. Dave Parker used a Taser on July 22 to discourage a black bear lured to a fish fryer at Parker's Hillside home. When the incident was publicized the next day, it stirred up strong reaction pro and con.
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Police have mounted a manhunt for the owner of a restaurant in Chiayi County who has disappeared following reports that he allegedly mistreated endangered bears and even sold the animals' paws and meat as a delicacy.
The Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) held a press conference on Friday to accuse Lin Chin-hsiu, operator of the Quanyuan Villa and restaurant in Chiayi's Meishan Village, of abusing the protected bears and of possibly selling the meat after one of the bears died.
FAIRBANKS -- The National Parks Service will not pursue charges against a hiker who fatally shot a grizzly bear while hiking in Denali National Park and Preserve two months ago, saying his actions were justified.
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports the North Pole man told authorities he shot the bear after it charged his girlfriend while the two were hiking up Tattler Creek on May 28.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTVA-CBS 11 News) In light of more bear encounters in many Anchorage back yards, one state lawmaker says it is time to come up with answers.
State Rep. Charisse Millett, R-Anchorage, held her second in a series of bear aware events Saturday at the Hillside Trail Head.
Millett was joined by members of the Anchorage Police Department, the Alaska Center for the Environment, Alaska State Troopers and Alaska Waste to better educate Anchorage residents on how to deal with living in bear country, and avoiding deadly trail encounters.
Wildlife officials have killed a grizzly bear in Wyoming and a grizzly bear in Montana to head-off potential lawsuits.
The Montana grizzly killed and partially consumed Kevin Kammer at a Gallatin National Forest campground near Cooke City , Mont. on July 29. The Wyoming grizzly killed 70 year-old botanist Erwin Evert on June 17 on the Shoshone National Forest near the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park.
NEW JERSEY'S latest bear-management plan is a well-researched and reasoned document. It has the right primary goal: maintaining a robust, healthy black bear population.
But we disagree with its conclusion, which state environmental officials formalized last week: to hold a six-day hunt this December.
The 45-page document lays out a variety of bear-management approaches, including trash management and sterilization. Some of the latest population statistics — which always seem to buttress the policy preference of whoever is in charge of state environmental policy — estimate the number of black bears in New Jersey at 3,400. That is triple the estimate in 2006, when then-Gov. Jon Corzine canceled a hunt and demanded that the state draft a new management plan. The plan by the state's Fish and Game Council now recommends regular hunts — no surprise, since the council is sympathetic to hunters.
Dolson leading effort to ban bow hunting within RMOW after bear killed with crossbow
True or false: it is legal to shoot a bear with a crossbow in Lost Lake Park during hunting season.
Answer: true.
That is also the case in the Callaghan Valley and the Interpretive Forest, any logging and hiking trail or anywhere within the RMOW, so long as the hunter is licensed and, according to a hole the Firearms Regulation Bylaw, is 15 metres away from the centre line on the road, and/or is 100 metres away from a playground or building occupied by people or domestic animals.
Wildlife management agencies are reporting that the delisting of the grizzly bear in Montana is in sight.
MT Fish, Wildlife & Parks staff, along with representatives from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, told the MT Environmental Quality Council that they are developing a post-delisting management plan.
They expect the plan to be complete by the end of 2012, with an application for delisting by 2015.
TRENTON — Before the state approved its last bear hunt in 2005, hundreds of farmers, homeowners, animal rights protesters and hunters voiced their opinions in a final, raucous hearing that had to be moved to the State Museum auditorium in Trenton to accommodate the crowd.
The scene was far different today, when the state Fish and Game Council voted unanimously — and with considerably less fanfare — to recommend a six-day bear hunt for northwest New Jersey in December.
Too many black bears are being killed in North Shore neighbourhoods because they see our garbage as an ursine smorgasbord.
Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart is fed up and is calling for fines of up to $10,000 for brazen citizens who flout bear-aware bylaws, some of which currently impose fines as low as $500.
Daily reports and aerial footage of the direct impact of the oil spill on marine ecosystems draws anger, outrage, sadness and much hopelessness among those of us removed, but tuned into the news updates coming out of the Gulf Coast region.
Certainly, much more heightened emotion is elicited among those directly affected by the fallout of this ecological catastrophe. But floating carcasses of bottlenose dolphins, growing numbers of oiled brown pelicans, northern gannets and sea turtles, and concerns over the health of shellfish and pelagic fisheries impress upon us how broad in scope and real this ecological tragedy is. And it is all the result of a single off-shore oil leak.
When British Columbia Conservation Officer Andrew Anaka learned that a Bella Coola Valley resident was threatening to "pop" a grizzly bear mother and her three cubs for stealing salmon off his deck, Anaka advised the man to instead remove his salmon. He said the family of bears should only be shot if they were an imminent threat. The resident did not remove the salmon and later shot all four bears.
Whistler is going for Bear Smart Community status! This has been a long time in the making. Since 2005, when we started researching human-bear conflict in Whistler, we’ve seen the municipality take big strides forward to do their part in reducing conflicts between bears and humans.
VANCOUVER — A federal review panel says that a proposed copper-gold mine near Williams Lake will have "a significant adverse cumulative effect" on the environment, though it hasn't made any recommendations on whether the mine should go ahead or not, The Vancouver Sun reported.
The provincial government approved Taseko Mining's $800-million plan to eliminate Fish Lake by turning it into a tailings pond, which will be filled with waste from the mine. Despite the environmental effects, the province approved the project because of the mine's economic benefits. The Vancouver Sun adds that the company plans to create a fake lake to replace Fish Lake.
The issue of garbage pickup in Whistler resurfaced recently with council narrowly passing a motion to revisit possible solutions for local residents who don’t have vehicles to take their garbage to the two existing compactor sites.
The lack of easy access to bear-proof garbage disposal facilities is listed as a top priority in Whistler’s Human-Bear Conflict Management Plan, which council adopted at its June 15 meeting.
While council has discussed various pilot projects and possible neighbourhood waste collection options in the past, the cost has always been deemed too high.
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