Idaho Fish and Game sold 1,825 wolf tags in the first hour. By mid-afternoon the first day, about 4,000 tags had been sold. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
It’s open season on wolves starting
today. Lester Graham reports
Idaho has issued tens of thousands
of hunting permits for the first
wolf season since the animal was
taken off the endangered species
list:
Transcript
It’s open season on wolves starting
today. Lester Graham reports
Idaho has issued tens of thousands
of hunting permits for the first
wolf season since the animal was
taken off the endangered species
list:
This is the first time a state has allowed an open hunting season on the wolf since it was protected by federal law.
Jon Rachael is state game manager for Idaho’s Fish and Game. He says there are about 1,000 wolves – far more than the original plan when the wolves were reintroduced.
So, hunters can kill as many as 220 of them.
“The intent of that is to reduce the population slightly. But that would leave us in the neighborhood of about 800 wolves at the end of the year.”
A Montana hunting season would allow another 75 wolves to be killed.
Environmentalists say it’s outrageous to kill so many wolves in the northern Rockies so soon after they were taken off the endangered species list.
The Environmental group Defenders of Wildlife sued to stop the wolf hunting season. A federal judge has not yet ruled on whether to stop the hunt.
The gray wolf is slated to be removed from the Endangered Species List. Many are worried this will have a negative impact on wolf packs. (Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Fish and Wildlife Service)
This year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to officially remove the northern
Rockies gray wolf from the federal Endangered Species List. The agency will hand over
management of the wolves to states in the region. The states will allow hunters and
ranchers to kill wolves during specific seasons, or even year-round. But scientists and
conservationists are concerned about the hunting plans. Kinna Ohman reports some
conservationists think hunting could disrupt the way a wolf pack works, and even lead
members to seek out easier prey such as livestock:
Transcript
This year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to officially remove the northern
Rockies gray wolf from the federal Endangered Species List. The agency will hand over
management of the wolves to states in the region. The states will allow hunters and
ranchers to kill wolves during specific seasons, or even year-round. But scientists and
conservationists are concerned about the hunting plans. Kinna Ohman reports some
conservationists think hunting could disrupt the way a wolf pack works, and even lead
members to seek out easier prey such as livestock:
Biologists in Yellowstone National Park have had an unprecedented opportunity to study
wolves over the last twelve years. They’ve looked at everything from what wolves prefer
to eat, to why wolves kill big prey such as bison. But one topic they haven’t studied
much is how a typical wolf pack works.
Doug Smith is a biologist with Yellowstone’s wolf recovery program. He says they now
understand healthy wolf packs need lots of older, skilled members in order to hunt natural
prey:
“They’re very good at it. They have a lot of teamwork. They switch back and forth
about whose doing what job.”
In fact, studies have shown it takes 3-4 skilled adults to kill an elk. It takes more wolves
to kill a bison. Packs in Yellowstone are naturally filled with large numbers of adults.
But in places where wolves are hunted by humans, skilled adults are in short supply.
Smith says a lack of skilled wolves in a pack could mean they’d be more likely to go after
easier prey including livestock:
“If they don’t have that experienced age structure in the pack, they make do, and so
you will have probably inexperienced killers out there and inexperienced killers are gonna
look for easier prey. The elders of the pack, if there are only 2 or 3 of you,
are much more likely going to go after a sheep or cow than if there’s 7 or 8 of you.”
These concerns could become real when the gray wolf is taken off the Endangered
Species list in the northern Rockies. The states of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming will
take over management. Suzanne Stone with the Defenders of Wildlife in Idaho says
hundreds of wolves could be killed as part of state management plans:
“They’re talking about killing now about 500 to 600 wolves after delisting. You
don’t manage any population of wildlife like that. The delisting plan, as it’s written
right now, is just a recipe for failure.”
Stone says the gray wolves were protected to build healthy populations, and how a wolf
pack works should be part of that consideration.
But the government is focused on how sport hunting effects just wolf numbers. Ed Bangs
is the wolf recovery coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He says that
hunting won’t threaten the wolves:
“One thing that does happen everywhere in the world that wolves and people
overlap is that people kill wolves. And the answer is yes, that does have an effect on
wolf pack structure. And it certainly never endangered wolf populations.”
So it’s hard for conservationists to convince officials that the sport hunting of wolves
could change how wolf packs work and even lead to more livestock conflicts. Biologist
Doug Smith says that’s because the decision to delist the wolves is based purely on
numbers:
“Delisting is entirely numbers. Some conservation biologists have made the
argument that delisting should not occur until the endangered species is integrated
back within the ecosystem and functioning as a member as that ecosystem. That is
not how delisting occurs now for the Fish and Wildlife Service. It’s ‘do we have
enough?'”
Many conservationists and activists will soon be arguing that killing 500 to 600 wolves
leave too few. They’ll likely file lawsuits, stressing that the importance of healthy wolf
packs should be considered before hunting is allowed.
Ed Bangs with the Fish and Wildlife Service says he’s confident the agency has followed
the law. He says they’ll meet the requirements of the Endangered Species Act by
delisting the wolves and handing management over to the states:
“My deal with the Fish and Wildlife Service is: What is the purpose of the act as it’s
currently written by Congress, have we met those conditions for wolves, and the
answer is clearly yes and therefore we’re supposed to delist them. If people want the
act to say something different, they need to talk to their elected officials, not the Fish
and Wildlife Service.”
But the wolf’s defenders will argue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as the
states need to understand how the wolf packs work before declaring open season on the
wolf.
People rarely build a house with tornadoes in mind. Some think that developers and homeowners should be more aware of potential natural disasters. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA)
There’s a whole category of disasters people think will probably never happen to them. Major floods, landslides, and earthquakes happen sometimes decades or centuries apart. So, people don’t think about them or they ignore the risks. And, some experts say, that’s why we build or buy houses
in places that really aren’t safe. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Melissa Ingells reports:
Transcript
There’s a whole category of disasters people think will probably never happen to them. Major floods, landslides, and earthquakes happen sometimes decades or centuries apart. So, people don’t think about them or they ignore the risks. And, some experts say, that’s why we build or buy houses in places that really aren’t safe. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Melissa Ingells reports:
Disasters happen. It’s only a matter of when. The problem is, we prepare for things like tornadoes that happen every year, but we aren’t prepared for a major flood that might only happen once a century. Donald Hyndman is with the Department of Geology at the University of Montana. He’s an expert on disasters.
“People just do not understand the scale of events, they also don’t understand that if in their lifetime there hasn’t been a really major event, that there won’t be a really major event.”
So Hyndman has co-written a new textbook on disasters. He says there’s a lot of pressure to build houses in places that are hazardous. Maybe it’s just a great view, so people build there despite warnings. Or, they think they can stop the ground from moving with retaining walls, or think they can stop floods using levees. Donald Hyndman says that even well built projects just can’t stand the power of nature.
“There is increasing pressure to build in the same lowlands, the same flood plain areas, and the developers say, well, the Army Corps of Engineers has built a major levee or dyke here, that protects people on these floodplains. The problem is, levees break and they always break.”
Donald Hyndman’s co-author is his son, David Hyndman, a geologist from Michigan State University. David Hyndman, says even when a place is a known area for disasters, demand for housing means buildings go up all over again in the same spot.
“There’s always development pressure, and the developers even fairly soon after large floods like some that occurred in California, they keep pushing and the public has forgotten what has occurred and then often the development will be allowed, which causes a disaster afterwards.”
Donald and David Hyndman both say developers don’t help the situation when they build in dangerous areas.
But folks in the housing business say there are plenty of laws to warn potential homeowners, before a house is even built. Lynn Egbert is the CEO of the Michigan Association of Homebuilders. He says that people often ignore the regulations because they want to live where they want to live.
“Consumer desire – consumer interest and desire is the primary reason, even though there are state regulations and federal regulations to put people on notice and protect against the risk for insurance, to locate where they want to locate, which is a property right.”
Egbert says that real estate people and lenders are supposed to let property owners know of the risks. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes people don’t know to ask. And sometimes people think that despite the risks, a disaster just won’t happen to them. Donald Hyndman says we don’t respect how powerful the earth really is.
“Basically, some people feel that they can control nature, or improve on nature, and I’ve actually heard some politicians say we can improve on nature. We can not only not affect the results, those results are typically – they typically backfire. So we really cannot control nature.”
The Hyndmans are hoping their new textbook will help build awareness of all kinds of disasters—but especially the ones that could happen right in our own backyard.
A recent newspaper report says that the White House stopped the EPA from issuing a warning about widespread asbestos-contaminated insulation last spring. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
Transcript
A recent newspaper report says that the White House stopped the
EPA from issuing a warning about widespread asbestos-contaminated
insulation last spring. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton
reports:
Zonolite insulation was produced in this country from the 1940’s through
the 1990’s, and almost all of it was made from ore that came from one mine
in Libby, Montana. Thousands of miners were killed or sickened because
the ore was contaminated with an extremely lethal asbestos fiber.
But it was only last year that the EPA decided to issue a public health
emergency warning to residents and workers who could come in contact with
Zonolite insulation in homes where it had been installed.
A St. Louis Post Dispatch investigation revealed that the White House Office of
Management and Budget intervened, and the EPA never issued the warning.
The Post Dispatch reports that EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman was
outraged by the decision.
Hundreds of thousands of homes in Michigan and Illinois probably have
Zonolite insulation. The insulation is often strewn loose in attics.
It’s silvery-brown and comes in feather-light pieces ranging from the size
of a pea to the size of a nickel.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.
Idaho Fish and Game sold 1,825 wolf tags in the first hour. By mid-afternoon the first day, about 4,000 tags had been sold. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
