| |
All Politics Articles
Jessy Coltrane, the Anchorage-area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, pulled her big white pickup onto Tudor Road and headed for one of the city's worst bear-problem neighborhoods: Muldoon.
The cab of her truck was packed with gun cases and rain gear. The bed held a dog kennel to haul moose calves and one very large net.
Each summer has a similar, chaotic tempo, she said. The bear calls begin in May. Then the moose start giving birth, and that goes on all of June while the bear calls keep ramping up. Mostly it's black bears scaring up trouble in neighborhoods. Occasionally, there's more serious trouble with a brown bear. The wildlife crescendo comes at the end of July and then things drop off once berry season starts and bears get more interested in blueberries than old pizza boxes, she said.
Parks Canada has implemented speed reductions on part of the Trans-Canada Highway, near Lake Louise, to protect wildlife.
Effective immediately, drivers will have to reduce their speed in certain areas that are deemed high-risk.Posted speeds of 70 km/hr have been put in place and are expected to remain until Thanksgiving.
PINEDALE, Wyo. — A Wyoming game official says the population of grizzly bears in the Yellowstone National Park region is off by about 40 percent.
Wyoming Game and Fish Deputy Director John Emmerich said there's at least 1,000 grizzlies in the region, 400 more than the official grizzly bear estimate of 600.
Staff at an animal rescue centre on Vancouver Island says a government policy designed to help save baby bears has stretched its resources to the breaking point.
The North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre near Parksville is home to 10 young bears, all orphans whose mothers were either shot by hunters, or died by accident.
Vast as Yellowstone National Park is, it's not big enough for grizzlies. Before European settlement, an estimated 50,000 grizzlies lived in North America. They ranged from Alaska to Mexico, and across the Great Plains. Since then urban sprawl, deforestation, pollution, and climate disruption have destroyed almost all of their historic habitat. Researchers estimate that in the lower 48 states only 2 percent of the mountains, forests, and prairies that grizzlies once called home still support their seasonal diets and migration patterns. Now there are scarcely 1,000 grizzly bears in the contiguous United States, confined to a few pockets of protected wilderness in Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Wyoming.
The Alliance for the Wild Rockies has filed a lawsuit trying to stop state and federal officials from using helicopters to haze bison into Yellowstone National Park, arguing the tactic also harasses grizzly bears.
"We have video footage from last year showing a Yellowstone grizzly bear fleeing in terror from one of these low-level helicopters," said Michael Garrity, director of the environmental alliance. "And, according to the National Park Service's scientific literature review of five different studies, helicopters cause grizzly bears to panic and flee 'in nearly all cases' and the bears never become tolerant of helicopters, even with frequent exposure."
A dogsledding tour guide is challenging a Shell Canada sour gas project near his Eastern Slopes home, arguing Alberta's energy regulator failed to properly take into account the province's dwindling number of grizzly bears before approving the project.
Mike Judd, 61, has lived near the tiny hamlet of Beaver Mines, just north of Waterton Lakes National Park, his entire life. The outfitter has been guiding backcountry and dogsledding tours for more than four decades.
The Colorado Wildlife Commission approved a regulation May 5 that bans hunters from hunting, killing or otherwise harassing bears in their dens.
The issue first came to the attention of the Colorado Division of Wildlife in November 2010, when Craig resident Richard Kendall tracked and killed a 703-pound black bear in its den in Moffat County.
A man with suitcases full of baby leopards, panthers, a bear and monkeys has been arrested at Bangkok airport.
Authorities stopped the first-class passenger as he waited to check in for his flight to Dubai.
Anti-trafficking officers had been monitoring him since he purchased the rare and endangered animals on the black market.
A member of a prominent family-owned Prince George, B.C., lumber company has been fined $2,500 following an investigation by provincial conservation officers into a citizen's complaint of bear-baiting in a remote B.C. park.
Kevin Novak, who is with Dunkley Lumber Ltd., pleaded guilty May 4 in provincial court to one count of placing bait.
Novak placed fish parts above the high-water mark, potentially attracting dangerous wildlife to an estuary in Foch-Gilttoyees Provincial Park in Douglas Channel, about 40 kilometres southwest of Kitimat, B.C.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) — The Alaska Board of Game has passed a statewide rule prohibiting the use of stun guns when hunting game or posing with it, in an effort to prevent what state wildlife officials call “catch and release hunting.”
“Conceivably someone could Taser a moose or bear, go up and get a picture taken with it, shut the (Taser) off and then release the animal,” said Larry Lewis, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist in Soldotna who wrote the proposal.
CALGARY – The Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA) is asking the Alberta government to once again suspend the hunting of grizzly bears to protect the threatened species.
Alberta’s spring grizzly hunt was stopped for three years beginning in 2006 but since that it has been suspended on a year-by-year basis.
No decision has been announced for 2011.
Well, it's that time of year again. Grizzly bears, some with young cubs in tow, have emerged from their dens only to be exposed to a slew of threats that imperil their long-term survival in B.C.: Hunters, mines, growing rural towns and an expanding web of roads and pipelines. Starting April 1, the bears' greatest threat - trophy hunters - will begin sighting their rifles with the hopes of catching a grizzly in the crosshairs. Without commenting on the ethics of this age-old custom, it's worth reflecting on the number of bears that die every year in B.C. at the hands of humans.
For the fifth year in a row there won't be a grizzly bear hunt this spring in Alberta, but conservation groups are split on how the province should ensure survival of the species.
The Alberta Wilderness Association said while it's happy the spring hunt was cancelled, it says there should be a five year moratorium on shooting grizzlies.
The association said it had hoped the province would announce it was putting off the hunt indefinitely.
VANCOUVER - The David Suzuki Foundation wants the B.C. government to set up what it calls bear parks, so grizzlies can roam free from the threat of human activity, including hunting.
Spokesman Faisal Moola says government records suggest more than 300 grizzly bears were killed in B.C. by hunters last year, but the real toll could be double that because of illegal poaching.
A man from Christina Lake, B.C. pleaded guilty on Thursday to feeding two dozen black bears around his remote property.
Allen Piche admitted in the Grand Forks provincial courthouse that he had fed generations of black bears that had visited his property.
Piche, a self-described "aging hippie" said his former partner began the feedings and he carried on when she was warned to stop because the bears kept coming back.
Or is it fear ruling Alberta’s wildlife rehabilitation program?
For a party that pledges allegiance to the dictum of “small government,” the Alberta Tories sure seem inclined to unnecessarily meddle in the lives of Albertans who have committed to give injured and infirm wildlife a second chance at life. Last summer, approved facility plans and permits in hand, wildlife rehabilitators across the province received in the mail a surprise from Alberta Sustainable Resource Development (SRD): An insidious “appendix” that contradicts their current permits and curtails, in a single stroke, the types of animals rehabbers routinely care for and release into the wild.
KALISPELL - Forest Service officials have withdrawn their appeal of a federal judge's decision halting several logging projects that threatened grizzly bear habitat in the Kootenai National Forest.
U.S. District Judge Don Molloy blocked the projects last June in a lawsuit between the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and Kootenai Forest Supervisor Paul Bradford. In his 64-page ruling, Molloy said the Forest Service was unable to show it had properly assessed how the projects would affect the dwindling population of grizzly bears.
Today new "Rules of the Hunt" legislation was enacted in Russia, which will effectively end the cruel hunting practice of rousting bears from their dens during winter hibernation and then shooting the bears. Often, this hunting practice left tiny bear cubs orphaned, and the cubs would quickly die of starvation or freeze to death.
Since 1995, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW - www.ifaw.org), has campaigned to end the winter den hunt and to rescue, rehabilitate and release orphan bear cubs back into the wild. To date, IFAW has successfully released more than 150 cubs from its rehabilitation center in Bubonitsy, Tver region.
With mortality rates for grizzlies unchanged and unsustainable for the third year in a row, environmentalists are demanding the province toughen up a bear management strategy they say isn't working.
Alberta Sustainable Resources and Development has released grizzly bear mortality rates for 2010, with recorded totals still at 21, the same as last year, and one more than 2008's total of 20.
But up to 40 per cent of grizzly deaths are estimated to go unreported every year, according to the province's 2010 Status of the Alberta Grizzly Bear in Alberta.
|
|
|
