October 2006

Nearly 30 hunting/conservation organizations have urged Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to make greater use of the Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (CFWRU) research and training partnership in carrying out cooperative conservation efforts to meet this nation's pressing future natural resource challenges, reports the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI).

Each of the 40 CFWRUs, in 38 states, is a true federal/state/university/private partnership among the U.S. Geological Survey, a state natural resource agency, a host university and WMI. The CFWRUs build on these...

Recent research at Colorado State University (CSU) and published in the journal Science (vol. 314: 133-136) suggests that chronic wasting disease (CWD) can be spread from one animal to another through their saliva, reports the Wildlife Management Institute.

CWD is a neurological disease of cervids (deer) that belongs to a family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or prion diseases. The disease attacks the brains of infected deer, elk and moose, causing the animals to become emaciated, display abnormal behavior, lose bodily function and die. There is...

In 2005, the North American Grouse Partnership secured a National Fish and Wildlife Foundation Grant to develop grassland conservation plans for greater and lesser prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse-flagship species of prairie ecosystems and conservation planning. These grassland plans feature an ecosystem diversity approach to identify areas of the landscape on which to focus quality and quantity grassland habitat management efforts and to develop monitoring strategies to determine changes in prairie grouse populations. These plans also will benefit a host of other native species...

On October 12, President Bush signed the Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act of 2006 (S. 2430) into law, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The bill was cosponsored in the Senate by Mike Dewine (OH) and Carl Levin (MI) and in the House by Dale Kildee (MI) and Mark Kirk (IL). As reported in the August issue of this newsletter, S. 2430 doubles the existing authorization for fish and wildlife management activities in the Great Lakes states from $8 million to $16 million. Actual funding levels will be determined by Congress later this year.

The measure was first...

Who among us hasn't yearned to live a carefree, self-sufficient life in the wilderness, far from traffic, televangelism, election blather, cell phones, Paris Hilton updates and rap music, among other daily inflictions here in dense America? Who among us hasn't thought wistfully of escaping to the frontier, any frontier, to hunt, fish, trap, gather and generally be organic and at peace? Who among us hasn't decided to do all that maybe next year?

Heimo Korth did it 30 years ago. And he still is doing what many have thought and wished they could, and what only a few have actually...

Marley & Me (2005) is about a hunting dog that wasn't. Marley is a male yellow Labrador retriever. Me is John Grogan, a professional and talented scribe...talented enough, that is, to take a standard issue self-indulgent, tragicomical family pet story and turn it into a New York Times bestseller.

Back in an earlier millennium, I wrote a magazine article entitled "Dear Mr. Van Hauen: I Have a Complaint About the Dog You Sold Me." Same theme, but my male yellow Labrador retriever was a hunter and, for the record, the only very best dog that...