February 2008

As scientists take a close look at the switch from petroleum-based fuels to biofuels, it appears that the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with many types of biofuels has been vastly overestimated, according to the Wildlife Management Institute. GHG emissions are primary drivers of global warming.



The initial studies projected an average reduction of approximately 20 percent in GHG emissions as a result of the use of biofuels. However, those estimates did not take into account the release of gases as a result of land-use changes. In recent modeling...

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee took its first look at reforming the 1872 hardrock mining law on January 24, and promised that any bill put forward would look much different from the version that passed the House last November. The Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act of 2007 (H.R. 2262), shepherded through the House by Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, gives broader authority to prohibit hardrock mining (gold, silver, copper, etc.) claims and assesses a royalty payment on the mining industry. H.R. 2262 passed by a vote of 244 to 166, but western lawmakers...

More than a dozen climate change bills have been introduced in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Leading the way is the Climate Security Act of 2007, S. 2191 climate-change bill, or the "Lieberman-Warner" after its principal Senate sponsors. It would provide billions of dollars annually to address climate-change impacts, including to fish and wildlife. The bill was favorably reported out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on December 5, 2007. If enacted, the bill could alter the landscape of fish and wildlife funding for decades to come. In a rare...

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and USDA Forest Service (USFS) have teamed up with the Colorado Division of Wildlife (CDOW) to relieve snowbound wildlife populations by closing state and federal land to all human activity in the Gunnison Basin, reports the Wildlife Management Institute.

The closures went into effect in late January after CDOW launched an emergency winter-feeding operation designed to prevent massive winterkill of the basin's 21,000 deer and 600 pronghorn due to above-average snowfall and colder than normal temperatures. Concern about the effects of human...

There were only four things I didn't like about John James Audubon: The Making of an American (2004) by Richard Rhodes. One of those was the title; it has little bearing on the biographical construction. Other than the title and a couple, minor, pesky things, this 500-page volume was wholly captivating, twice.

There must be 30 other books that detail Audubon's life and another 200 that address his artwork. But Rhodes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, in the fashion of Evan Connell's Son of the Morning Star, gleans and crystallizes the best of all those works and...

During the last week of January, the Conservation Leaders for Tomorrow (CLfT) program completed its fourth and final workshop of its 2007-08 initial expansion year. Sponsored by the Max McGraw Wildlife Foundation and the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI), the CLfT program was developed to introduce nonhunting wildlife and other natural resource management upperclass and graduate students to the roles, values, issues and experience of recreational hunting. The late January workshop, held at Paradise Lodge, near Julian, Pennsylvania, mirrored the success of all previous workshops.
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After a series of court decisions that muddy the waters on definitions for wetlands, efforts are gathering steam on Capitol Hill to clarify the Clean Water Act, so as to ensure protection of critical wetland habitats, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The Clean Water Restoration Act (HR. 2421), introduced by Representative James Oberstar, and the Water Resources Restoration Act (S. 1870), introduced by Senator Russell Feingold, currently have 173 cosponsors in the House and 20 cosponsors in the Senate. The main focus of each bill is to define clearly the waters of the United...