June 2007

Recipient of The Wildlife Society's 1998 Editorship Book Award, Ecology and Management of North American Moose, out of print and out of reach for the past four years, is being produced as a second edition by the University Press of Colorado. It is slated for release in October.

The first edition was published in late 1997 by the once-prestigious Smithsonian Institution Press, which tanked approximately four years later, but managed to sell off many of its titles to another publisher. Only a few copies of the moose book were left at that time and they soon disappeared. It was not...

One June 4, seven environmental groups announced that they are filing a lawsuit in Idaho federal district court challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) decision to remove grizzly bears from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), reports the Wildlife Management Institute.

In its April decision, the Service declared that the grizzly population in and around Yellowstone National Park had recovered sufficiently to be removed from the "threatened" status the bears had been under since 1975.

The environmental groups, including Earthjustice, Sierra Club, Natural...

Congressman Collin Peterson, chairman of the House of Representatives' Agriculture Committee, has indicated that he would like to have his committee begin consideration of the full 2007 Farm Bill in late June, with final action by the Committee prior to the July 4 recess, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. If Chairman Peterson can keep the legislation moving through his Committee on the proposed, ambitious schedule, the full House may be able to address the legislation by the week of July 16.

The current (2002) Farm Bill is scheduled to expire at the end of September....

The Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Alliance continues to improve the delivery of accurate, up-to-date information about CWD to hunters, wildlife managers, biologists, and all others interested in the effective control of the disease, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The most recent innovation is an interactive, on-line "regulations" map that allows users to check CWD-related information by simply clicking on the state or province they wish to research.

The information includes specific regulations concerning wild and captive cervid transportation, carcass transportation...

During the 72nd North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, held in March in Portland, Oregon, Marshall P. Jones, Jr., the Black Bear Conservation Committee and the Hoosier National Forest's Early Successional Forest Management Team received the Wildlife Management Institute's top conservation awards.

Marshall Jones, former deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, received WMI's 2007 George Bird Grinnell Memorial Award for Distinguished Service to Natural Resources Conservation. Jones retired from the Service in January 2007, concluding a 31-year...

Two years ago in December, in eastern South Dakota, my son and I semi-wittingly encountered what one resident of Aberdeen informed us was the worst blizzard in the region in at least 50 years. Other nearby coffee cup-gripping kibitzers nodded soberly in agreement. And the storm was, as best I can describe it, a doozey?a full-scale inland hurricane. We survived it in the shelter of a Motel 6, with cable TV and a bucket of 40-weight fried chicken.

The 50-year blizzard of 2005 was confined mostly to the northern tier of the Dakotas, cost a number of lives and it shut down...