Two more puma paintings grace my house, one in my bedroom and one in my office. The one in my office was painted by Amarillo artist Steven Cost and needs framing.
I want
to walk
with you
in my dreams
scream your screams
feel your blood
rushing
your heartbeat
mine
soft golden fur
wound in my hair
your amber eyes
glowing
through my brown
death defying
together walking
moonlit
wild
free
For a number of years I have mulled over reasons why humans seem to hate wolves considerable more than other predators. I have my own “theories”. What are yours?
January 10, 2017
A gray wolf moves through forested country in winter. Credit: MacNeil Lyons, National Park Service
The new Congress wasted little time in efforts to once again remove gray wolves from the federal endangered species list.
A bill introduced Tuesday by U.S. Reps. Collin Peterson, D-Minnesota; Sean Duffy, R-Wisconsin; and Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, would overrule a federal court action and remove federal protections from wolves in the Great Lakes and mountain west.
That already happened once, but a judge’s decision in late 2014 restored federal protections after wolves spent about three years under state control.
The members of Congress, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, say wolves have recovered enough in those areas to remove protections. But wolf supporters say the wolf hasn’t recovered over enough of its original range to remove protections in the few states where it is thriving, like Minnesota and Wisconsin. Wolf supporters…
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Some parts of Eastern Europe have worked at figuring out how to balance saving predators and protecting farmers and herders. Spain has programs to reimburse herders.
Conservationists widen toolkit for predator management
Source:Berkeley News
By Brett Israel, 12/13/16
Top predators like wolves, bears, lions and tigers have declined dramatically around the world over the past century. One major driver of these declines is retaliatory killing by people following predator attacks on domestic livestock. This lethal approach to predator management is increasingly controversial not only because of ethical concerns, but also the role predators can play in healthy ecosystems. A new UC Berkeley study shows that many non-lethal methods of predator control can be highly effective in protecting livestock from predators and in turn, saving predators from people.
A tiger drags a cow at Jennie Miller’s study site in India
The Berkeley study examined 66 published, peer-reviewed research papers that measured how four categories of lethal and non-lethal mitigation techniques — preventive livestock husbandry, predator deterrents, predator removal, and indirect management of land or wild prey…
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As a person more than a bit obsessed with pumas, I just had to share this with others.
I’ve become fascinated by cougars. Maybe because they are elusive, secretive, more akin to a ghost than an animal of flesh and blood. Which of course, begs the question: How do you get people to care about and protect an animal that they never see, nor probably will never see in their lifetime?
Mom and six month old kitten
Visitors to Yellowstone National Park can be almost guaranteed, if they are persistent and patient, to view wolves and bears, elk, bison, and bighorn sheep. But only the rare individual will have the opportunity to see a cougar in the Park. They’ve been spotted at Calcite Springs, hanging on the basalt walls and occasionally through a scope from the Hellroaring overlook. Usually the Park sightings are called in by wolf watchers. Once radioed around, tourists hear about it through the airwaves, then flock to those locations. Sometimes the cat might be hanging…
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For those following the fate of one of sub-species with few left in the wild.
October 18,2016 By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Federal wildlife officials are now under a court order to update a decades-old recovery plan for the endangered Mexican gray wolf, a predator that has struggled to regain a foothold in the American Southwest despite millions of dollars of investment in reintroduction efforts.
An Arizona judge on Tuesday dismissed the concerns of ranchers and others and signed off on a settlement between environmental groups and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Under the agreement, the federal agency must update the recovery plan by November 2017 while providing the court and other parties in the case with regular updates on the planning process.
Environmentalists have long argued that the agency had a legal obligation to adopt a recovery plan that spells out specific goals and milestones for returning the wolves to their historic range.
There are currently about 100 wolves in the wild…
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