Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Friday, May 06, 2016
First verified North Dakota wolverine since 1870 may have come from Montana
The 30-pound adult male wolverine was shot and killed near Alexander, North Dakota, a town located about 33 miles east of Sidney, Montana, and about 100 miles north west of Dickinson, North Dakota. A ranch hand, Jared Hatter, posted photos to Facebook in late April of the wolverine, saying it was harassing livestock when he shot it.
Hatter did not respond to an interview request.
North Dakota lists wolverines, the largest member of the weasel family, as furbearers with a closed season. But an overriding state law allows ranchers to kill furbearers considered a direct threat to livestock, said state furbearer biologist Stephanie Tucker.
“(Hatter) came out to a calving pasture and the cows had surrounded the wolverine and he felt it was a threat,” she said.
North Dakota has no breeding population of wolverines, which in the lower 48 typically occupy remote mountainous regions of the Northern Rockies and Cascades. Because wolverines are known to travel long distances and with populations in Montana and Canada, North Dakota maintains the furbearer status and closed season, Tucker said.
Tucker speculated that the wolverine may have come from Montana, and noted a March report from a Hingham-area rancher of a wolverine traveling across a stubble field...more
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