New Report Highlights Need for Changes in Predator Management Policies

by: Matthew Koehler

Tue May 24, 2011 at 11:38:18 AM MST

The report was written by George Wuerthner, a former Montana hunting guide who previously worked as a biologist and botanist for several wildlife and land management agencies.  Wuerthner is also the author of 35 books dealing with natural history, conservation and environmental issues.  The report was commissioned by Big Wildlife, a non-profit conservation group working to protect predators throughout the west.

Key findings in the report include:

• Current state wildlife policies often maintain predator populations above extinction levels, but well below maximum biological carrying capacity.

• Predator policy typically ignores the ecological influence of predators in terms of their critically important influence upon ecosystem heath and organization.

• Management of predator populations, without consideration of the social organization of top predators, can lead to great conflicts with humans and livestock.

• Simple animal husbandry techniques have been shown to greatly reduce livestock losses from predators; unfortunately, many ranchers don't use these practices.

Oregon Gov's Wolf Rider Letter to President Obama

by: Matthew Koehler

Wed May 04, 2011 at 07:15:28 AM MST

The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you for your hard work with Democrat and Republican leadership crafting a bipartisan budget package and averting a federal government shutdown. As the proposed Continuing Resolution (CR) moves to you for final consideration, I write to express serious concern over the inclusion of policy language unrelated to the budget.

Specifically, using policy "riders" within the budget to de-list gray wolves in the Northern Rockies region from the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) and eliminate the Free Choice Voucher program within the Affordable Care Act sets a highly undesirable precedent for making decisions on important social and natural resource issues that deserve open and informed debate.

A six-month budget resolution negotiated through backroom discussions is clearly the wrong vehicle to make permanent changes to significant public policy.  For nearly 40 years, the Endangered Species Act has assured decisions about our nation's natural heritage are driven by science, fish and wildlife professionals, and public input. Removing protection for an endangered species by congressional mandate, much less through a budget bill, stands in unprecedented contrast to this history. This action erodes the integrity of the ESA, excludes important public involvement, and usurps the agency structure, established based on a balancing of executive and legislative branch power, that exists to undertake important decisions affecting America's wildlife.

Similarly, budget negotiations are no place to decide health care policy. Improving the delivery of health care, reducing costs and improving outcomes are of critical importance to working people across Oregon and America. The ink is barely dry on the Affordable Care Act, and the Free Choice Voucher program would have improved access to more affordable health care by increasing flexibility and expanding choices. It's the wrong time and wrong process to undo important policy gains.

I raise the above matters as specific examples of bad precedent to be avoided in the future. The urgency surrounding the federal budget is no excuse for tacking on non-budgetary issues that deserve their own venue and public debate. I look forward to discussing how to avoid repeating such an approach to policy decision-making.

Sincerely,

John A. Kitzhaber, M.D.
Governor

c: Oregon Congressional Delegation
Ken Salazar, U.S. Department of lnterior
Robyn Thorson, USFWS, Pacific Region Director

Wolverine ruling puts politics ahead of science

by: Matthew Koehler

Thu Dec 16, 2010 at 09:59:16 AM MST

This week President Obama's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) decided the wolverine warranted listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). That action, in response to a lawsuit by conservation organizations, marks a dramatic turnaround from the agency's decision a mere two years ago that denied protection for these exceedingly rare animals. Unfortunately, wolverines will not be placed on the endangered species list and receive the protection they deserve. Instead, they will join hundreds of other species and continue their one-way march to extinction because the agency claims it doesn't have enough funding....

[T]hanks to both political expediency and the budgetary black hole into which ongoing wars have plunged the nation, even though the numbers of species deserving protection continues to grow every year, fewer and fewer plants and animals are actually being listed. Instead, as with the wolverine, the agency and the U.S. Congress that funds it, says protection is warranted, but their continued existence on the planet is a cost we just can't afford.

Even worse, we now have politicians like Montana's own Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester, who believe it's time to simply remove animals from the Endangered Species List through congressional mandate. I'm talking about the gray wolf, of course, a topic that never fails to spark heated debate these days over their numbers, livestock and wildlife predation, and the subsequent cost to sheep and cattle producers.

What Tester and Baucus fail to consider, however, is the consequences of their actions. If they succeed in pulling wolves from the endangered species list through a simple bill—or more likely, given Tester's recent proclivities, a rider on unassociated, "must pass" legislation—they will set a precedent that will literally gut the ESA....

The choice is clear. Congress can and should act. At the current level of more than $2 billion a day, only two or three days of military spending would fund the endangered species program into the foreseeable future. The excuse of "budgetary concerns" is simply a sad hoax perpetrated by politicians kow-towing to corporate interests. Unfortunately, between that and legislative manipulation of the endangered species list, this generation is stealing the future from those yet to come.