December 2007

After weeks of little progress, the Senate put its version of the 2007 Farm Bill on a fast track and passed it just before the holiday recess by a substantial margin, 79-14, according to the Wildlife Management Institute. The legislation still needs to clear a conference committee, in which differences between the House of Representatives (House) and Senate versions must be resolved. In addition, the conference committee will need to craft a final version of the legislation that is acceptable to the Administration. The White House has threatened a veto of the bill if it includes language...

Extirpated since 2003, Ecology and Management of the North American Moose is alive, better than ever and again available. Originally published in late 1997 and lost only a few years later when the publisher, Smithsonian Institution Press, went under, the book?all 760 pages, more than 1,000 photos, illustrations and tables, and 5 pounds of it?has just been released by the University Press of Colorado (UPC). A host of printing errors in the original release has been corrected in the new edition.

Albert W. Franzmann and Charles C. Schwartz compiled and edited this Wildlife...

On December 11, the U.S. National Park Service released the Final Elk and Vegetative Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) in Colorado, reports the Wildlife Management Institute.

The plan outlines five different management alternatives designed to address RMNP's burgeoning elk population and declining native vegetation. Along with a "no-action" alternative, the plan lists four "action" alternatives that incorporate, "adaptive management and monitoring to determine the level and intensity of management actions." These...

A new report released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) reveals that national wildlife refuges have a $1.7 billion impact on the U.S. economy. With nearly 35 million people visiting refuges in 2006, 27,000 private sector jobs were supported, producing about $543 million in employment income. More than $185 million in tax revenue was generated at the local, county, state and federal levels.

The positive impacts were focused largely on communities located near refuges, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. Although, 87 percent of refuge visitors came from out of the...

After only eight years since being identified in the United States, West Nile virus (WNV) has spread across the country, infecting over 3,400 humans in 2007 and causing the deaths of 98, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The disease, however, has caused significant reductions in wild bird populations, affecting more than 300 different species, particularly crows and jays.

Earlier this year, geneticists at the University of California-Davis (UC-Davis) isolated a gene mutation that turned relatively mild forms of the virus into the highly virulent and deadly disease that...

On December 4, Judge B. Lynn Winmill, of the U.S. District Court in Idaho, ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to reconsider its decision not to list the greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. In 2005, the FWS determined petitions to list the sage-grouse as endangered were "not warranted." Citing potential influence by former Deputy Assistant Secretary Julie MacDonald and what Judge Winmill considered "flaws with the FWS decision-making process," the court ruled that the determination was arbitrary and capricious....

It may seem a bit corny, but The Everlasting Stream is the story of a man's quest for kinship, for explanation of the modern human as predator, for friendship, for a firmer relationship with his teenage son, for Hoover hogs and for what's important.

Reluctantly and somewhat accidentally (by way of marriage) introduced to hunting for cottontail rabbits in pastures and woodlots of Barren County, Kentucky, author and professional journalist Walt Harrington comes face to face with a surreal world of hounds, shotshells, gut buckets and the liturgical adhesiveness of new-old...