Alaska biologist certain wolves killed Canadian A Fairbanks wolf biologist testified at a recent Canadian coroner’s inquest in what has been declared North America’s first documented fatal attack by a wild, healthy wolf or wolves. Mark McNay testified in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, that he was certain that wolves killed Kenton Carnegie two years ago. McNay retired from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game three months ago. After three days of testimony, a six-person jury agreed with McNay. The testimony included photos and details of how Carnegie was killed and then eaten by a pack of four wolves at a remote mining camp in northern Saskatchewan. Humans have been killed by rabid and captive wolves in North America before. There also have been many documented cases of fatal wolf attacks in India. Carnegie, a 22-year-old engineering student from Ontario, was found dead on Nov. 8, 2005, at the Points North Landing supply depot. Co-workers found his mauled body — surrounded by wolf tracks in the snow — in the brush only about a half-mile from the camp....
Save Wolves from Senseless Slaughter! Adopt one for Christmas Give yourself or those special wildlife lovers in your life a howlin' good gift - and help protect America's wolves when you adopt a wolf! Adopt a Gray Wolf Family and you'll receive a big 17", super-cuddly plush wolf toy, a personalized Certificate of Adoption with an attractive 5"x7" wolf photo and a fact sheet full of great information about these magnificent animals. You can also choose to receive a Kids Wildlife Activities book for that special young person in your life. Once virtually eliminated from the lower 48 United States, wolves have made an incredible comeback since Defenders and others successfully fought for their re-introduction into Yellowstone National Park in 1995. But these and other wolves in America face a highly uncertain future, as plans are readied to remove vital protections and clear the way for the massacre of hundreds of wolves in the Greater Yellowstone area and the American Southwest....
Wolf Population Rebounds In Yellowstone The wolf may lose its place in the endangered species list. The Associated Press reported Friday that in just 12 years after the wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park after years of near-extinction, a sharp rise in the wolf population has been observed in the region. Wolf numbers increased 20 percent to 30 percent every year. Entire packs taken out to reduce livestock kills were quickly replaced by new packs. In 1995, 66 wolves were initially transplanted into Yellowstone from Canada. At present, an estimated 1,545 roam Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. As the wolf population grew, the number of livestock and other domestic animals killed by wolves spiked from 123 in 2000 to 330 in 2007. Wolves killed in retaliation by ranchers and federal wildlife agents soared seven times during the same period, from 20 to 146. If the wolf is delisted, hunters and trappers would be able to get permits to kill them. If the number of wolves drop lower than 450, hunting and trapping will be strictly controlled; 300 or lower, they'll be back in the endangered list....
The Bears Among Us No one can say for sure when things got out of hand — when relations between humans and black bears in the Canadian resort town of Whistler grew untenable for each side — but by the height of last summer’s tourist season, many of the bears that live around the densely developed, Swiss-style village in the mountains of British Columbia had apparently learned some new foraging techniques, and life for the humans took on an aspect of siege: Bears hitting the “bearproof” garbage bins along Highway 99; bears breaking into the loading bays and trash compactors behind the Hilton; bears discovering that snorting, jaw-snapping and bluff-charging golfers on the Whistler greens would cause those golfers to surrender their carts with their hands in the air. Beyond providing a setting of uncommon natural beauty, however, all this mingling of humankind and the wilderness seems to have produced something almost taxonomically unique: Wild bears so habituated to the presence of people that the biologists who have come here to study them say they’ve never seen anything like it — bears that lift the door handles of trucks to take possession of the cabs; bears that manage to snag the bait from a trap with one foot while holding the steel gate open with the other; bears that stroll munificently through the crowds at the Canada Day parade; bears in the pubs, the hotels, the day-care centers, the landfills, meat lockers, grease vents, underground parking garages. In Whistler, if a bear doesn’t get into something humans are guarding, it’s usually because too many other bears got there first....
Regulations flowing toward Yampa River Erin Light stands on the banks of the Yampa River knowing that this is one of the last places in the parched American West where you can take as much water as you like. But not for long. Even as the river flows rich and languid down from the Flat Tops Wilderness, the era of unimaginable plenty in this region is coming to an end. Light is the top water regulator on the Yampa, the first woman in Colorado history to oversee one of the state's vaunted rivers. It is a huge task. The Yampa is one of eight major river basins in Colorado that form a massive high-altitude headwaters, helping supply 19 other states, Mexico, and millions of people. Light's sprawling territory is a remote place where the river has flowed largely unfettered. Butch Cassidy once holed up here, and water users must often think of themselves as outlaws, too, holding out against a new demand by the state to regulate their river....
Ranchers, others work to rehab land When ranchers in the Thunder Basin grassland area drive the dusty red roads from pasture to pasture or from highway to home, they’re watching more than their cattle these days. The landowners who are part of the Thunder Basin Grassland Prairie Ecosystem Association are also keeping a sharp eye out for flora and fauna. They’re taking particularly careful notes in an almost 38,000-acre area where the association, with help from the state and others, is treating land with a mixture of fire, pesticides and native grass seeds to rehabilitate the ecosystem. The treatments are funded in part through the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust Fund, an account established by the 2005 Legislature. The association has submitted a new application for $600,000 to treat more land, according to Betty Pellatz, rancher and association chairwoman. If approved, the dollars would help fund rehabilitation on about 37,000 acres -- the 15 percent of association lands deemed to be short of historical ecosystem conditions, Pellatz said. Restoring prairie health in those acres is part of a bigger plan to solidify "candidate conservation agreements with assurances" with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Pellatz said. Under such agreements, private landowners who take on practices that conserve and increase habitat for particular species are allowed to continue their normal operations if the species are listed under the Endangered Species Act....
Dominguez legislation likely to come soon Legislation that would create the proposed Dominguez-Escalante Canyons National Conservation Area on the Uncompahgre Plateau is almost certain to be introduced in Congress in the next several months, according to staffers for Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo. The legislation is “absolutely” in the offing for the first couple of months of 2008, Allard spokesman Steve Wymer said Friday. Allard’s staff has scheduled a series of meetings with local interest groups through December to gather local input about what the proposed national conservation area should look like. Legislation, Wymer said, will address as many local concerns about access to the Dominguez-Escalante area as possible. If the conservation is approved as proposed, it would encompass approximately 211,000 acres of Bureau of Land Management canyon country and rangeland east of the Uncompahgre National Forest and west of U.S. Highway 50 between Delta and Unaweep Canyon. The proposed conservation area’s main attractions are Big and Little Dominguez canyons, Escalante Canyon and the Gunnison River. The Dominguez canyons would be managed as wilderness, with all non-ranching-related motorized vehicles barred from entry. Much of the rest of the conservation area would remain open to off-road vehicles....
Lambs trained to consume toadflax Imagine a lamb at its first pasture potluck, and you'll see how Montana lambs are learning to eat a noxious weed called Dalmatian toadflax. The lamb nibbles on familiar grasses and weeds, then notices her mom and aunts loading up on a tall plant that's pretty enough to place in a vase. Emboldened by her elders, the lamb nibbles a yellow blossom and decides she likes it. She cleans her plate and returns again and again to the all-you-can-eat buffet until it's time to go home. That's the scenario Montana State University researchers are seeing after trucking ewes, lambs and goats to Montana pastures infested with Dalmatian toadflax, said Lisa Surber of the Montana Sheep Institute based at MSU. The lambs won't touch Dalmatian toadflax on their own, but they will if they see their mothers or goats eating it. And once they try it, they like it. Surber added, "Ultimately, we think we can be very successful in controlling the plant, this noxious weed, with sheep and goats or sheep that have been trained. It's a question of understanding that learning behavior a little bit more. Some herds are not successful, and we need to understand why."....
So What's So Bad About Corn? To say that corn is king around here is to come close to demoting it. In the last couple of weeks, the farmers of this state finished harvesting an astonishing 14 million acres of corn, which is more than a third of Iowa's surface. The yield: nearly 2 1/2 billion bushels. That's about 420 billion ears of corn, or about 225 trillion kernels. This mundane plant, once arguably dull as dirt, its name useful as an adjective ("corny") to describe something kind of lame and hillbillyish, has become improbably controversial. The gist of the criticism: So much corn, doing so many things, serving as both food and fuel, and backed by billions of dollars in government subsidies, has been bad for America and the rest of the world. Start with food prices. Corn and its derivatives are in thousands of items sold at a typical grocery store, and corn is trading on the market at about twice the price it was just a couple of years ago. There are ripple effects everywhere. More acres in corn mean fewer in soybeans, and so soybean prices are also up. Soybean extracts are all over the grocery store, too. Meanwhile, there are ethanol skeptics. They say production of ethanol has outpaced the infrastructure -- flex-fuel cars, for example -- for using it. A 51-cent-a-gallon federal subsidy to ethanol blenders helps keep the ethanol market commercially viable. Environmentalists decry the impact on soil, waterways and wildlife of so much acreage planted in vast tracts of a thirsty, fertilizer-hungry plant....
These farms' cash crop is bottled On the heels of the microbrewing boom, new microdistilleries are thriving in some unlikely places. And some of the latest and quirkiest entrants to the industry are in places like Kansas, Iowa and Indiana. Small, private distilleries are opening at a rate of 10 to 20 a year. There are about 100 across the country. Seth Fox, a cattle rancher down on his luck, had about $100 in his checking account when he decided to get a license to distill vodka. Taking advantage of generations of moonshining expertise in his family, Fox scraped together junked parts and started the High Plains liquor company on his farm in Atchison, Kan. "I'm the seventh generation to be in alcohol. Just the first to do it legally. Well, I had a million dollars in sales last year," he said. His bestseller, Most Wanted vodka, is in local liquor stores. His ultrapremium Fox vodka is served at some of the region's finest restaurants....
Tumbling cattle prices worry Arizona ranchers Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, it's time to talk about, well, beef. Arizona ranchers have something to beef about all right. And some of that has to do with two other ingestibles: corn and water. "They have to cull deeper, which means they take cattle that they would keep that might be 8 years old and sell them and keep the younger ones," said C.B. "Doc" Lane of the Arizona Beef Council. "We have significantly thinned already," said Judy Prosser, whose 330,000-acre Bar-T-Bar Ranch on private, forest and state lands between Winslow and Happy Jack has been in her family since the 1920s, "and I think it's probably pretty widespread. "We're looking at liquidating all of our heifer calf crop, which we would normally keep replacements out of, because it's so dry and we're worried about the condition of the land - to not overuse the land." One factor in the equation is the price and availability of corn, once a staple feed stock. Now, its growing popularity for use in ethanol production has increased its price. Prosser said Arizona ranchers who give their cattle supplemental feed are seeing higher-than-normal hay prices, plus the freight charges, increased propane costs and the skyrocketing price of fuel for their vehicles....
New Jersey Company That Recalled Hamburger Meat Declares Bankruptcy The Topps Meat Company of Elizabeth, N.J., which nearly two months ago recalled 21.7 million pounds of hamburger meat, has declared bankruptcy, according to papers filed on Wednesday in federal bankruptcy court in Newark. In the filing, Topps said the “severe economic impact of the recall” forced it to cease operations. Topps shut its doors and laid off most of its employees on Oct. 5, a week after issuing one of the largest beef recalls ever. Federal and state health officials found at least three types of the O157:H7 strain of E. coli bacteria in the plant. At least 40 people in eight states were sickened by the contamination, which raised questions about the effectiveness of inspections by the federal Agriculture Department. The agency was also scrutinized for a delay of several weeks in requesting the recall after tests showed that meat sold by Topps was linked to illness from E. coli. Federal investigators said the company failed to require adequate testing of raw beef it had bought from domestic suppliers, and it sometimes mixed tested and untested meat in its grinding machines....
Cattle trade slowly adjusts after border opening When Sylvan Martens of Marten's Cattle Company near Spiritwood sold a Charolais-bred heifer in 2002, he never suspected it would take five years for the purchasers to collect their assets. The operation that purchased the Charolais is located in the United States, and the Canadian bovine spongiform encephalopathy crisis was just beginning. As a result of the United States border opening to older cattle on Monday, the opening day of the Canadian Western Agribition, Martens was finally able to provide the buyer with the mature animal and several of her offspring. When the American border opened to older Canadian cattle this week, it was marked with caution by some. R-CALF, a Montana-based protectionist ranchers' group, is attempting rally support in the U.S. and has various lawsuits seeking re-closure of the border. To foster cross-border communications between Canadian and U.S. cattle industries, a roundtable discussion was organized at Agribition by the Consul General of Canada in Denver and Minneapolis and the International Trade Office in Regina....