Alaska Targets Polar Bear Protections

  • The governor is promising to spend another $800,000 for outside legal help and he’s putting money into next year’s budget for a new attorney in the Alaska Department of Law. That attorney’s only job? Dealing with endangered species. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish And Wildlife Service)

The Governor of Alaska plans to fight
the Endangered Species Act protection
of the polar bear. Rebecca Williams
reports the governor plans on hiring
more lawyers:

Transcript

The Governor of Alaska plans to fight
the Endangered Species Act protection
of the polar bear. Rebecca Williams
reports the governor plans on hiring
more lawyers:

Governor Sean Parnell is picking up where Governor Sarah Palin left off and suing the federal government over the polar bear. Polar bear protections could get in the way of drilling for oil.

He’s now promising to spend another $800,000 for outside legal help and he’s putting money into next year’s budget for a new attorney in the Alaska Department of Law. That attorney’s only job? Dealing with endangered species.

“We’re going to continue to take this fight to the mat to protect our jobs and our economy so that the ESA, the Endangered Species Act, is used to truly protect species and not lock up our opportunities here.”

The Governor says those opportunities are jobs and money connected to oil and gas drilling in the polar bear’s habitat.

Governor Parnell will have more than the polar bear to worry about. Environmental groups are also trying to get several other species on the endangered list – including three types of ice seal.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Keeping Panthers and People From Colliding

  • Rebecca Galligan with her dogs Roscoe and Sable in their new panther-proof pet house. Galligan and her husband lost their dog Riley to a panther, so they had this enclosure built to keep their pets safe. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

People are killing Florida panthers.
Usually it’s not intentional. But
Rebecca Williams reports biologists
are trying to figure out how to keep
panthers and people from running into
each other:

Transcript

People are killing Florida panthers.
Usually it’s not intentional. But
Rebecca Williams reports biologists
are trying to figure out how to keep
panthers and people from running into
each other:

There are only about 100 Florida panthers left in the wild. They’re endangered.

If you live down here, it’s one thing to know there are panthers hunting for food in the Everglades. But it’s something else when they visit your backyard.

(sound of tropical birds singing)

Rebecca Galligan and her husband didn’t give panthers all that much thought. Until one day, when they came home from work, and found their dog Riley had been killed.

“The scratches on the body and the way he’d been killed it was pretty obvious it was some sort of wild cat.”

Two days earlier something had killed their neighbor’s sheep. Then a dozen goats got killed.

A biologist decided the predator was a panther. In the past few years in South Florida, more people have been losing pets and farm animals to hungry panthers.

Galligan calling to dog: “C’mere, have a seat!” (Roscoe sniffs the microphone)

Now, when she’s away, Rebecca Galligan keeps her dogs Roscoe and Sable in a little panther-proof house. It’s made out of steel and chain link fencing.

“There’s so much nature and wildlife, and so I mean, we just can’t destroy it all because we want to be safe. That’s why we had this pen built, so we can keep the animals a little safer from the animals that live around us.”

And a lot of people here think the panthers have a right to stick around.

But some say there’s a gaping hole in the law that’s supposed to protect panthers.

The panther has never had what’s called critical habitat set aside. That means developers don’t have to consider the land panthers need to survive. Panther habitat or not, they can just build.

So panthers are getting crowded out by subdivisions and huge new cities.

Andrew McElwaine is president of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida. He’s asked the Obama Administration to officially give panthers that habitat.

“So, the more habitat we take away, we’re forcing panthers to move out. We’re getting reports of panthers in urban areas of Southwest Florida looking for somewhere to live, if you will.”

And, as people move in, panthers are becoming roadkill.

Last year 10 panthers were killed by cars. So far, this year, six more panthers have been killed.

(sound of cars whizzing by)

“There are some panther tracks here. There’s one there… and there…”

Mark Lotz is a panther biologist. We’re hanging out in an underpass below the highway. It was built for panthers. Miles of fences run along the highway and make a funnel, so panthers have to go below the road.

Lotz says there are 36 panther underpasses on this stretch of highway. And he says fewer panthers get hit here. But underpasses are expensive – about $2 million each. And giving panthers room to live isn’t always even that simple.

Lotz says the biggest challenge is getting people to adapt to panthers. To him, the cats are majestic. But he also knows a lot of people think they’re terrifying. Somebody actually shot a panther a few months ago.

“Naysayers could make the argument there’s no panthers in Pennsylvania or any other eastern state and things are going just fine. But then I would counter – look what’s happening with deer populations there. You know, panthers are part of the ecosystem. Without them there’s just something missing. In a way part of the wildness disappears.”

But if panthers keep running out of space, they could disappear.

We talked to the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. And we asked him whether he’d set aside critical habitat for panthers.

“Yeah, we’ll have to get back to you on that.”

That’s been the kind of response he’s given to other reporters too.

Giving panthers habitat protection would mean more obstacles for developers. And, in this economy, that could be pretty unpopular.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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A New Threat to Grizzly Bears

  • The grizzly bear has a new threat - the Mountain Pine Beetle that's wiping out its food source (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

We’ve heard about a warmer climate affecting polar bears. Now, warmer weather seems to be threatening another kind of bear. Mark Brush reports on some tough times for Yellowstone’s Grizzly bears:

Transcript

We’ve heard about a warmer climate affecting polar bears. Now, warmer weather seems to be threatening another kind of bear. Mark Brush reports on some tough times for Yellowstone’s Grizzly bears:

Researchers say warmer temperatures in the last ten to fifteen years have been messing with the ecology in Yellowstone National Park.

In the fall, the grizzly bears eat pine cone nuts from white bark pine trees. It gives them a lot of nutrition before they curl up for the winter. But those trees are dying.

Mountain pine beetles are killing them. The beetle populations usually get knocked back by cold weather. But it hasn’t been getting as cold. So, there are more beetles killing more trees.

Doug Peacock lives near Yellowstone and has written several books on grizzlies.

“The white bark pine trees, this is the most important grizzly food of all in Yellowstone, they are gone. And we will not see them come back in our lifetime.”

And when the trees are gone, the bears get hungry – they go looking for food – and they run into people.

48 grizzlies out of the 600 in the region were killed last year.

Some environmental groups are suing the government to get the bear back on the endangered species list.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Orphaned Bear Cubs Find Refuge

  • Sally Maughan and her assistant John Knight (Photo by Sadie Babits)

Many state wildlife agencies can’t
or won’t take in injured or abandoned
critters. They rely on a lot of volunteers
to do the job. One woman in Idaho has made
it her life’s work to give orphaned bear
cubs throughout the West a second chance.
Sadie Babits brings us this profile:

Transcript

Many state wildlife agencies can’t
or won’t take in injured or abandoned
critters. They rely on a lot of volunteers
to do the job. One woman in Idaho has made
it her life’s work to give orphaned bear
cubs throughout the West a second chance.
Sadie Babits brings us this profile:

Sally Maughan used to be known as the “squirrel lady.” As a wildlife
rehabilitator, she took in weasels, foxes, raccoons and a lot of
squirrels.

She had no intention of working with bears until one day the
Idaho Fish and Game Department called.

“And they kept calling because nobody else had an enclosure that could hold a bear.”

Maughan named that first bear cub Ruggles. That was twenty
years ago.

So far, she’s helped 189 orphaned bear cubs from around the
West. She runs a non-profit in Boise called the Idaho Black Bear
Rehabilitation Program.

(sound of outdoors and cars passing)

It’s a chilly afternoon but it’s sunny. So Maughan, her helper John Knight
and I sit outside on her front steps. It’s hard to ignore the smell as
we talk. You know that musty smell of animals and straw and well, bears. It’s kind of an
animal barnyard smell out here.

This place used to be surrounded
by pasture. Not any more. On one side there’s an upscale subdivision.
And on the other side, there’s another large subdivision. Maughan says
her neighbors don’t mind the bears and sometimes she’ll let them come
visit.

“We don’t want bears seeing people any more than they need to.
John just comes in and feeds and comes back out. And I do the bottle
feeding which is when they really attach so once they are weaned he
pretty much takes over from there.”

(sound of gate opening)

Sadie: “So who’s that?”

John: “That is one of the Oregon bears.”

The cub makes a bee line for his house the minute he spots us. Maughan’s
assistant John Knight explains this bear and two others are the only
ones here at the center.

The bear pokes his head out then ducks right
back inside as I check out the roomy enclosure. There are logs to play
on and green apples to eat.

John: “That’s their swim tub.”

Sadie: “They have a swim tub.”

John: “Yep. They like to break it often.”

Sadie: “Will they get in there during the winter?”

John: Yeah. Some bears do. It’s odd. One bear last year was in it everyday. It was
snowing – 30 degrees. He was in it.”

These cubs are orphans. We don’t really know what happened to their
mothers. They may have been killed by licensed hunters or even illegally killed.

Each year more orphaned cubs show up at Maughan’s place. She’s one of only
a few bear rehabilitators in the West.

Jon Rachael works for the Idaho Fish and Game as a wildlife manager. He says they have
to turn to people like Maughan.

“We simply don’t have the personnel or resources to handle all
of that.”

Just in the last year, Sally Maughan took in 53 bears. It was a bad
year
for berries and there were a lot of wildfires around
the West.

“What are you going to do? Say, ‘I’m sorry I can’t take you – just die?’ Uh-uh. Can’t do
that. So, hopefully, eventually, there’ll be some more rehab-ers
for bears. It’s a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of energy.”

The World Society for the Protection of Animals covers most of Maughan’s
expenses. She relies heavily though on donations. It’s still not enough.

Anything left from her paycheck as a travel agent goes back to the bears.
She’s even wiped out her retirement just to get these black bears back
into the wild where they belong.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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