April 2006

During the 71st North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, last month in Columbus, Ohio, a wildlife working group, a fish and wildlife agency director and a wildlife conservation board were accorded the highest honors of the Wildlife Management Institute (WMI). The California Wildlife Conservation Board received WMI's 2006 Presidents Award. Duane Shroufe was given the 2006 Distinguished Service Award. And the Mule Deer Working Group of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies received WMI's 2006 Touchstone Award.

The Presidents Award honors an agency...

The growing controversy over development of federally owned energy resources on private lands has resulted in the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) initiating a review and at least one state legislature debating legislation on the matter, reports the Wildlife Management Institute.

The federal review was ordered by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and was prompted by complaints from private landowners about the process. This controversy is referred to as the "split estate" issue. A split estate occurs when mineral rights lying beneath private property are owned by the...

It was a close call, but Being Caribou made the worth-reading list. It is the story of a Canadian wildlife biologist/author Karsten Heuer, and his filmaker bride, Leanne Allison, who chose to spend five months traipsing 1,000 miles to find, follow and keep up with the Porcupine caribou herd during its migration from inland wintering grounds in Canada's Northwest Territories to summer calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northeastern Alaska, and part way back. Their undertaking was an ambitious camping trip and a rather odd honeymoon.

Walking, skiing...

In a move foreshadowed by global market changes in the forest products industry, International Paper Company (IP) recently announced sales of 5.675 million acres of timberland, reports the Wildlife Management Institute. The divestiture is part of a three-part strategy announced by IP in 2005, to improve returns, strengthen the balance sheet and return cash to shareowners. The strategy proposed to improve shareowner returns by improving and/or realigning IP mills and evaluating sale of IP forestlands in the United States. IP projected that divestitures would return $8 billion to $10 billion...

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has contracted to construct a new office building for itself within a narrow corridor used by an already seriously stressed segment of migratory pronghorn, reports the Wildlife Management Institute.

When BLM allowed oil and gas development in the well-known Trapper=s Point big game migration route along the Upper Green River, a few miles west of Pinedale, Wyoming, the agency was met with a storm of protest. Records from archaeological sites along the route document thousands of years of mule deer and pronghorn migration and use of those...

The National Fish Habitat Initiative is now the National Fish Habitat Action Plan. This unprecedented multi-partner Plan to protect, restore and enhance fisheries and aquatic habitat, got a green light from state fish and wildlife directors and others last month during the 71st North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, in Columbus, Ohio.

The Plan began as an idea of an ad hoc group convened by the Sport Fishing and Boating Partnership Council. The idea gained momentum as fisheries experts around the country outlined a science-based foundation for documenting...