Buffalo Field Campaign Update. July 24, 2008

I’ve haven’t posted a BFC update for a while, and it’s time.

RM

Update: related. State vet: Brucellosis came from elk. By Jennifer McKee. Helena Independent Review State Bureau
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DNA tests confirm captured canids in Washington are wolves

The good news has now been confirmed.

DNA tests confirm wild gray wolves in Okanogan Co.. Associated Press (as printed in Idaho Statesman).

Update: there are 6 pups. So a North Cascades pack of 8 wolves!

Update: there are photos in this story. Long-absent wolves denning in Washington. Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Montana’s Board of Livestock to reconsider brucellosis “split-state” proposal

Board brings back ’split-state’ status. By Matt Gouras. Associated Press.

Thank god! Let’s hope they adopt it. It is only one of the proposals they are considering.

Although oil shale method discredited, Bush pushes rules to develop

Bush proposes rules on oil shale development. Though energy retrieval through the process has been largely discredited, optimists remain. By Patty Henetz. The Salt Lake Tribune.

Folks might recall that Bush’s former Secretary of Interior, Gale Norton, the scourge of our public lands, is now a lobbyists for oil shale.

. . . . more . . . . Statement of the Center for Biological Diversity. On the Bureau of Land Management’s Draft Oil Shale Leasing Regulations. BLM Moves Ahead With Efforts to Squeeze Oil From Rock; Will Do Nothing to Lower Gas Prices.

Hmmm, guess I’m not very positive on oil shale. RM

[Idaho] Livestock leaders object to wolf relisting

Livestock leaders object to wolf relisting. Patricia R. McCoy. Capital Press

This article in a prominent ag newspaper says, among other things, that the Idaho Wolf Plan Plan went through 17 drafts and that the members worked hard and negotiated in good faith. Now those who didn’t like the product have litigated (bad bad!).

They don’t say the Idaho wolf plan was solely the product of the Idaho livestock industry with a couple of other token members. It doesn’t matter if it took them 100 drafts before they got their anti-wolf plan just right.

The members were: Jack Lavin, co-chair; Stan Boyd, co-chair; Ted Hoffman; Dr. Jim Peek, Bob Loucks
Cameron Wheeler, Laird Noh.

Except for Lavin (a Forest Service ex-bureaucrat) and Dr. Jim Peek (excellent), they were all anti-wolf, livestock people with Stan Boyd perhaps the most pervasive livestock lobbyist in Idaho.

USFWS reinstates rules following Molloy’s injunction

This news release was issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today (July 22) in the wake of Judge Malloy’s decision returning the wolf in the Northern Rockies to the endangered species protections of various kinds (from experimental, non-essential to endangered, depending on the area).

Those wolves in extreme northern Idaho and NW Montana now have the most protection. None of Wyoming is a wolf free kill zone anymore.

RM

Here is the news release-

Native Carnivores are scared from Parks by even quiet human use

Native Carnivores Being Scared Away From Parks. RedOrbit.

Feverish natural gas drilling has wreaked havoc on West’s precious natural features

“The industrial takeover of the West is not about oil or the price of gasoline at the pump. Domestic oil production, in fact, has suffered from a shell game.

Nearly all the drilling on public lands is, in fact, about methane: natural gas. The booty at the wellhead is methane and stockholder cash.”

Natural gas drilling is hurting land. By Ed Dentry, Rocky Mountain News.

Bush/Cheney/McCain say “drill and lower gasoline prices,” but most of the drilling onshore in the West is not for oil, but for natural gas (which is mostly methane).