Bobcat Trapping Curtailed Around Joshua Tree

Posted on January 15, 2014 by MadelineBodin

NYS bobcat It all began, says the High Country News Goat blog, when a California man found a bobcat trap on his property next to Joshua Tree National Monument. He had not given the trapper permission, so he sought relief from the local police. The police told the man that not only had the trapper not done anything illegal, but he had better give the trap back, or he would be the one doing something illegal, the blog says.

On January 1 a new law in California prohibited the trapping of bobcats in the area adjacent to Joshua Tree went into effect. Bobcat trapping in the area had recently doubled because of demand for bobcat furs in Asia, the blog says.

January 1 also saw the enactment of a new law limiting when and where nuisance mountain lions in the state can be killed.

Read the High Country News Goat blog detailing the new bobcat law, here.
Read a round-up of new California laws, including the bobcat and mountain lion laws, from KQED here.
And read a short item on the mountain lion law in Field & Stream, here.

Photo: Bobcat in New York State, courtesy of NYS Department of Environmental Conservation

Bobcat Trapping Curtailed Around Joshua Tree

Posted on January 15, 2014 by MadelineBodin

January 1 also saw the enactment of a new law limiting when and where nuisance mountain lions in the state can be killed.

Photo: Bobcat in New York State, courtesy of NYS Department of Environmental Conservation

River Otter Comeback in Illinois

Posted on September 19, 2013 by MadelineBodin

River_Otters Illinois Department of Natural Resources furbearer biologist Bob Bluet told the Springfield (IL) State Journal Register that the state’s first river otter trapping season culled slightly more otters than anticipated because fur prices were up. “More people were trapping and there was more opportunity to catch otters,” he said.

River otters haven’t been trapped in Illinois since 1929. It was believed their numbers were down to just 100 before 1990. A reintroduction program, which ran from 1994 to 1997 was so successful, that the otters became s nuisance in some places, the article says. The recent trapping season harvested 13 percent of the state’s population, not quite enough to reduce the number of otters in the long term, Bluet told the newspaper.

For more details on the river otter’s restoration in Illinois, the nuisance factor and the recent trapping season, read the article in the Springfield State Journal Register.

An abridged version of the article ran in the West Kentucky Star.

Photo: River otters by Jim Leopold, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

The Nation’s Strangest Wildlife Laws

Posted on August 21, 2013 by MadelineBodin

In Georgia, you may not keep a garter snake as a pet, but you can own a rattlesnake, says Whit Gibbons, an ecologist and environmental educator with the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, in a column in the Aiken (Georgia) Standard.

The poisonous snake exception to Georgia’s law prohibiting the ownership of native snakes and reptiles is probably the weirdest law in Gibbons’ round-up, which includes the fact that frogs are regulated as fish in Alaska and that you may hunt frogs with a dog in Kansas. (Frogs, you know, are both funny and hard to legislate, so lots of frog laws make the list.)

I appreciate Gibbons’ list for its intelligence and wit, but I suspect that the regs he lists are not the nation’s weirdest wildlife laws. Does your state have a weird wildlife law? Do you know of one in another state? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Read the column here.

Sage Grouse and Antelope Down in South Dakota

Posted on July 10, 2013 by MadelineBodin

Sage Grouse vs transmission lines The sage grouse population has fallen in South Dakota in recent years, reports an Associated Press story in the Daily Journal. To let the population rebound, the state’s Game, Fish and Parks Commission decided not to have a sage grouse hunting season this year.

Read the Daily Journal article, here.

The state’s antelope population has not rebounded after a recent decline, but in that case the state will limit hunting licenses for firearms to South Dakota residents, the Mitchell Daily Republic reports. Archery hunting licenses will be available to residents and nonresidents.

Read the Daily Republic article, here.

Photo: Greater sage grouse by Stephen Ting. Courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

NY Snapping Turtle Law Generates Buzz

Posted on May 20, 2013 by MadelineBodin

Snapping_Turtle All over the Internet, on Facebook, on blogs, on turtle forums and tortoise forums there are requests for New Yorkers to protest a proposed State Assembly bill that would allow trapping of snapping turtles.

I could not find any information on why these members of the New York State Assembly want to re-introduce the trapping of snapping turtles now. But I did find this informative article in the Baltimore City Paper explaining that trapping snapping turtles was banned in the state in 2009.

Ten years ago I researched an article on the global turtle crisis. Scientists and conservationists said that China’s increasing wealth had just about wiped out wild turtles not only in China, but throughout Southeast Asia. The Chinese were importing turtles from Africa and Australia. At the time scientists feared the crisis would reach the United States.

In the US, the southern states were the first to see turtle exports to China. Is the New York State bill an attempt to cash in on the trade? Current New York State law allows hunters to shoot the turtles with guns or arrow, but not live trap them. The Chinese market demands live turtles.

Snapping turtles are common in New York State and elsewhere. What made the global turtle crisis a crisis, however, is that the that the turtles started out common everywhere, but were quickly wiped out.

Read the Assembly bill here.
Read the Baltimore City Paper article here.

Photo: Snapping turtle by Chelsi Hornbaker, courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service

California Bites the Bullet

Posted on March 6, 2013 by MadelineBodin

California banned lead ammunition within the range of the endangered California condors (Gymnogyps californianus) in 2008. Now environmental groups are moving to take the ban statewide to protect the condor and other large scavenging birds such as bald eagles from lead poisoning. The National Rifle Association protests.

An article in the San Jose Mercury News reports the NRA saying that because copper bullets cost $40 a box and don’t fly as true, while lead bullets cost $20 a box, the ban is equivalent to a ban on hunting, and that the groups’ ultimate goal is to ban guns. (The article also quotes an Audubon spokesman saying that of course the group does not oppose either hunting nor guns.)

An article in the British newspaper The Guardian links to a recent Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences paper detailing the condors’ vulnerability to lead poisoning from ammunition. It seems the condors are such effective scavengers that even if only one percent of the carcasses or gut piles contain lead ammunition, 30 to 50 percent of the condors will feed from one of them.

Read the San Jose Mercury News article here.
Read The Guardian article here.
Find the PNAS abstract here. (Fee or subscription needed for full access.)

Photo: California condor by Scott Frier, courtesy Arizona Game and Fish Department

Minnesota Cancels Moose Hunt

Posted on February 15, 2013 by MadelineBodin

“The state’s moose population has been in decline for years but never at the precipitous rate documented this winter,” said Tom Landwehr, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources commissioner in a press release announcing the cancellation of Minnesota’s moose hunting season.

The commissioner noted that the state’s limited moose hunt was not the cause for the population’s decline.

The 2013 moose hunt was cancelled after aerial survey revealed the sharp drop in the moose population, the press release says. The survey was part of an on-going study of the state’s moose decline. (Previously covered here.)

The hunt’s cancellation was covered on NBC News’ national news. Read the article here.
Read the Minnesota DNR press release here.
Read more about the department’s moose mortality research project, on its webiste, here.

Photo: courtesy of Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources

Old-timers Keep Mountain Lions Stable

Posted on October 10, 2012 by MadelineBodin

In January, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife will begin using “equilibrium management” to determine the number of mountain lions (or cougars, Puma concolor) taken by hunters in each management unit, according to a press release from Washington State University. This will limit the take to the natural amount of reproduction — 14 percent, according to the release.

Research by Washington State University’s Large Carnivore Conservation Lab has found that mature, adult male mountain lions are the lynchpin of the species’ population dynamics. According to the press release, mature males will kill younger males to protect their territories, keeping the overall population low. The mature males are also less likely to prey on livestock.

There is no word, however, on how using equilibrium management will prevent hunters from killing all the mature males in an area, therefore releasing the less stable younger males.

Several news outlets have published the press release with no additional reporting. Read the press release here.
Find the current studies of the Large Carnivore Conservation Lab, including many studies on Puma, here.

Photo courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation

Sage Grouse on the Brink

Posted on April 27, 2012 by MadelineBodin

A recent study of sage grouse in northeastern Wyoming says that the population there is just one severe weather event or West Nile outbreak away from extirpation. The study was conducted by three University of Montana wildlife biologists on behalf of the US Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Read the report, a 46-page PDF, here.
Here’s the BLM web page with links to other info about the report
And here’s the story in the Casper Star-Tribune.

Despite the dire forecast, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission will not close the three-day hunting season in northeastern Wyoming. The reasoning, says a Field & Stream blog post, is that because it is primarily energy development and disease, not hunting, that is causing the birds’ decline, hunters should not be penalized.

The blog post leans heavily on another article from the Casper Star-Tribune. Read that one here. That article notes that state biologists proposed closing the hunting season, but were over-ruled when dozens of people attended the Game and Fish Commission meeting to protest the closing. The article does not note the irony of the citizens who disagreed with the over-ruled scientists saying that the scientists’ recommendation was based on politics.

More troubling than even the possible extirpation of this population, or the politics behind the species’ management, is the fact that the Wyoming sage grouse management plan is the model for the nation. We’ve written about Wyoming’s plan being the national model before:
When a newspaper editorial praised the Wyoming sage grouse management plan;
And when the BLM took the lead on coordinating sage grouse management efforts across its range.

Photo: Greater sage grouse by Stephen Ting. Courtesy US Fish and Wildlife Service.

State Wildlife Research News

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Category Archives: hunting regulations

Bobcat Trapping Curtailed Around Joshua Tree

Bobcat Trapping Curtailed Around Joshua Tree

River Otter Comeback in Illinois

The Nation’s Strangest Wildlife Laws

Sage Grouse and Antelope Down in South Dakota

NY Snapping Turtle Law Generates Buzz

California Bites the Bullet

Minnesota Cancels Moose Hunt

Old-timers Keep Mountain Lions Stable

Sage Grouse on the Brink