November 2007

Recent compromise by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on one of a dozen climate change bills currently in Congress may lead to significant funding for wildlife conservation, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The Warner-Lieberman "America's Climate Security Act of 2007" (S. 2191) is focused on capping greenhouse gas emissions through a variety of market techniques. These include trading, banking, borrowing and offsetting carbon credits, and auctioning carbon credits to generate substantial federal funds. This wide-ranging and comprehensive legislation would...

Three thousand scaup and a few hundred coot are dead on Minnesota's Lake Winnibigoshish, the apparent victims of a deadly intestinal parasite, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The affected lake is a known stopover for scaup and other migrating waterfowl, and state wildlife officials fear that, as more birds arrive, the number of deaths will increase.

The parasite indicated in the Lake Winnibigoshish deaths is a trematode that is most likely passed to the ducks by way of a favored food source-snail. The small intestinal parasites use the snails as an intermediate host...

The Wildlife Management Institute's highest individual honor?its Distinguished Service Award?will henceforth be known as the George Bird Grinnell Memorial Award for Distinguished Service in Natural Resource Conservation. With the permission and enthusiastic approval of George Bird Grinnell's relatives, the award now carries the name of the gentleman many consider the "father of conservation."

Grinnell?author, publisher, sportsman, ethnographer?was a powerful force behind the emergence of natural resource conservation as a public notion, political responsibility and professional...

On November 11, 2007, the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA) issued a request for proposals (RFP) seeking applications from conservation partners interested in assuming the lead national role in managing the operations and growing the capacity to implement the Northern Bobwhite Conservation Initiative (NBCI).

Published in 2002 by the SEAFWA and its Southeast Quail Study Group (SEQSG), NBCI has been shepherded by the southeastern states for five years, with the staffing of a National Coordinator (Don McKenzie) on long-term loan from the Wildlife...

The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (UDWR) will host the 3rd International Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) Symposium in the summer of 2009, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. It will be held July 22-24, 2009, at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Park City, Utah. Utah is the westernmost state to discover CWD in its free-ranging mule deer population.

According to event coordinators Leslie McFarlane, Wildlife Disease Program Coordinator for UDWR, and Mary Conner, Research Assistant Professor at Utah State University, the 2009 Symposium will address the latest CWD...

At age 24, a naive, energetic greenhorn stepped off a Northern Pacific railcar and into the nearly Wild West. In short order, he established the Elkhorn Ranch north of Medora, North Dakota. Despite his "work conquers all" attitude, "all" didn't include winter weather on the Northern Plains. His cattle operation busted and the greenhorn withdrew in 1887 to different fortunes back East. But had he not spent that time in the Dakotas, the failed rancher claimed he never would have become President of the United States. Accordingly, had Theodore Roosevelt (T. R.) had neither the time nor...

With the price of crude oil approaching $100 per barrel, the continued volatility of foreign energy markets and increasing acceptance of the link between fossil fuels and climate change, the hunt for "clean, green" energy has spurred an alternative energy boom in the United States. One of the significant energy source investments is wind power development. Wind power production increased by 27 percent in 2006 and, so far in 2007, 2,300 megawatts (MW) have been installed. The wind industry estimates that a record-breaking 4,000 MW (enough electricity to power 1 million homes) of new wind...

The number of North Americans who hunt and/or fish continues to decline, according to the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation (Survey), which was recently released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It indicates that 5 percent of the U.S. population 16 years of age and older hunted in 2006. The actual estimated number of active hunters in 2006 was 12.5 million. That compares to 13.0 million active hunters in 2001-a drop of 4 percent.

Whereas more people in the United States fish than hunt, a decline in participation was more pronounced for...