February 2009

In early February, the National Park Service (NPS) began a cull of the elk population in Rocky Mountain National Park with the intention of killing up to 100 cow elk. The cull, combined with other vegetative management techniques, was authorized in the park's Elk and Vegetation Management Plan that was finalized in December 2007 with the Record of Decision released in February 2008. The park believes the cull will allow them to maintain a population at the high end of the natural range of variation, between 1,600 and 2,100 animals (600 to 800 within the park and 1,000 to 1,300 that winter...

On February 17, President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The $787 billion economic stimulus package, which had ballooned over $900 billion at one point during debate in Congress, is intended to create jobs and encourage economic activity in the country.

Included in the package are more than $3 billion for agencies and programs that will directly impact natural resource conservation. The bill moved through Congress on largely party-line votes, with the final conference bill being voted on late on Friday, February 13.

A letter to...

In 2001, in response to the alarming population decline of the American woodcock since the 1960s, federal and state wildlife agencies and several non-governmental organizations petitioned the Migratory Shore and Upland Game Bird Committee of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies to create the Woodcock Task Force.

Since then, biologists and land managers developed and implemented the American Woodcock Conservation Plan (Plan), with the goal of halting the population decline by 2012 and achieving population growth by 2022, reports the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI)....

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Natural Resources and the Wildlife Damage Management Working Group will sponsor a deer damage management workshop at the DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge (near Omaha, Nebraska), August 4-6, 2009.

The workshop agenda will address deer biology, fencing, fertility control, hazing devices, habitat modification, human-wildlife management issues, shooting, the use of repellents and trapping.

Participation will be limited to 40 people and early registration concludes March 31. For more information, go to...

Charlie Potter is a duck hunter. He does other things, but mostly, I have reason to believe, he's a duck hunter. During the 1982-83 hunting season, for example, Charlie not only went on a duck hunt, but he went on a migration. It started in September at The Pas, on the Pike Lake Indian Reservation in northern Manitoba. It concluded five months later at Pass-au-Loutre Wildlife Management Area in Louisiana. The odyssey?an armchair waterfowler's "Travels with Charlie"?is chronicled in the first two-thirds of Following the Flight (1999).

In a secondhand pickup truck, towing...