Feeding Russia’s and China’s Fur Fixation

American trappers make a killing with bobcat pelts

from Takepart, by Taylor Hill, April 16, 2015

International trade is fueling California’s bobcat fur demand, but pressure from conservation and citizen groups is pushing the state to look at an all-out prohibition on commercial bobcat trapping. The act came about after it was discovered that trappers were ambushing bobcats on private land and in areas just outside Joshua Tree National Park. The public outcry played a role in pressuring the state to move quickly on the issue.

But as things often go in politics, by the time Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill, it had been workshopped into an amended semi-ban on bobcat trapping—creating no-trapping zones around national parks and wildlife refuges but allowing it elsewhere. In other words, the trapping problem near Joshua Tree had been solved, but much of the rest of the state was still fair game.

That’s allowed commercial trappers to keep making a pretty penny selling pelts overseas, thanks in part to growing demand in China and Russia. Today, bobcat pelts are fetching between $200 to $600 for just one clean, white belly fur hide—quite an increase from the $78 a bobcat pelt fetched as recently as 2009.

Those rising pelt prices fueled a 50 percent increase in California bobcats killed in 2012 compared with the previous year, resulting in 1,813 bobcats taken from the wild.

Now only a year and a half after the passage of the bill, wildlife officials are once again getting an earful from the public, with conservation groups and citizens calling for the full ban to be instated—and an end to the pelt trade for one of the last U.S.-based species of wildcat still for sale on the international market.

At a state Fish and Game Commission meeting last week, officials reviewed their options and heard from the public on the bill: Around 40 people spoke in support of a total ban, with only four members speaking against it.

“Right now, the fate of bobcats is tied to the rise and fall of its fur prices in the international market, instead of a science-based plan,” said Brendan Cummings, senior counsel for the conservation group Center for Biological Diversity.

Click HERE for original and complete article.

$14 Million donated to Wildlife Conservation – so animals can be trapped?

April 16, 2015

from The Assoc for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals

The website is full of beautiful images: moose, owls, endangered species and traditional landscapes. Their conservation work is impressive, protecting various habitats and affecting policy. The problem? They’re not entirely up front.

The Canadian Wildlife Federation, a national organization that took in some $14,000,000 in donations last year, is affiliated with groups dedicated to promoting hunting, fishing and trapping. But to look at their website, annual reports or even their organizational description, one would have no idea of these associations.

In fact, the only way to know is if one explores their Board and Affiliates page, which is buried in a 2008-09 report, and sees the list of affiliates, which includes:

–Alberta Fish and Game Association
–B.C. Wildlife Federation
–Fédération québécoise des chasseurs et pêcheurs
–Manitoba Wildlife Federation
–New Brunswick Wildlife Federation
–Newfoundland and Labrador Wildlife Federation
–Northwest Territories Wildlife Federation
–Nova Scotia Federation of Anglers and Hunters
–Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters
–Prince Edward Island Wildlife Federation
–Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation
–Yukon Fish and Game Association

All are groups that focus on the preservation of “resources” for “recreational” or “mixed-use.” Which translates to hunting, fishing and trapping. As we’ve already stated, they’ve done impressive conservation work. But the devil is in the details – and those details are hidden deep down.  We know that many people donate to the Canadian Wildlife Federation because they believe in their work. And we won’t tell these people not to donate to whomever they choose. But we do want people to understand, fully, what they’re donating to. We want people to be assured that the organizations they’re supporting have policy statements or values that reflect their own.

Please note that the CWF is not the only conservation organization with these types of ties – there are many out there. We want people to ask questions – and find the truth. Don’t let non-profits take advantage of your love for animals.

Click HERE for original article.

Humans have changed the planet

Here’s how we design for that now

by Helen Walters

For most of us, the job of taking care of the planet is very definitely the responsibility of Someone Else. We might have thoughts, we might have standards, we might even have a composting habit, but we more than likely hope and expect that the trained professionals have got this under control. One problem, of course, is that those who are trained to look after the world often come from many different disciplines; they might be working on the same problem simultaneously from two very different points of view that clash.

That has to change, says landscape architect and TED Fellow Bradley Cantrell in this epic conversation with ecologist Erle Ellis. Below, the pair talk about how their two professions can understand each other and work together in surprising ways to build a sustainable future for wolves, rhinos, butterflies … and us……

Click HERE for complete article

Woflandia: the fight over the most polarizing animal in the west

From Outside magazine.

Twenty years after wolves were reintroduced in the Northern Rockies, many politicians would still love to see them eradicated, and hunters and ranchers are allowed to kill them by the hundreds. But the animals are not only surviving—they’re thriving, and expanding their range at a steady clip. For the people who live on the wild edges of wolf country, their presence can be magical and maddening at once.
—————

The switchbacks on the old logging road still held two-foot-deep patches of snow in late March, when we set off on four-wheelers to scout for wolf tracks in the Boise National Forest, north of Garden Valley, Idaho. The riding was easy lower down, where the hardpack traced the course of a snowmelt-swollen stream through a tight canyon. Spiny rock towers rose from the banks, disintegrating into forbidding walls of scree and timber. If you were an elk or a deer, it would be a tempting place to come for a drink, but you’d be taking your life in your hands. Wolves love a terrain trap.

As we climbed, our engines strained against the grade, mud, and snow. We were headed to a vantage point above a place called Granite Basin, where we could scan hundreds of acres of forest with spotting scopes. Zeb Redden, a 35-year-old soldier based in Fort Carson, Colorado, carried his girlfriend, Joni, on the back of his ATV. Zeb had paid Deadwood Outfitters, owned by Tom and Dawn Carter, $3,500 for the weeklong wolf hunt. I was along as an unarmed observer.

Zeb’s tricked-out, AR-15-style rifle was tucked into a scabbard built into his backpack. A couple of days before, I’d watched him drop to the prone position, press his cheek onto the stock behind his scope, and put a 7.62-millimeter round on a bull’s-eye-painted rock 600 yards away. He was deadly at long range, but he said he probably wouldn’t take a first shot at anything farther out than about 500 yards.

“I’m shooting jacketed hollow-point boat-tails, and at that distance they’ll just go right through. They won’t open up like they’re supposed to,” he’d explained. “If he’s wounded and beyond 500, I’ll keep putting lead on him. But if it’s a first shot, I’d rather get in closer.” I wondered if adrenaline would change his mind if we actually saw a wolf…..

……….
“Some people find it ironic that U.S. taxpayers paid tens of millions to restore Northern Rocky Mountain wolves under the Endangered Species Act, only to have hunters tart blowing them away as soon as they were delisted.”
……….

For the entire article please click here.

Another hunter speaks out against trapping

[From The Montana Standard, April 27, 2014]

I am a hunter in support of I-169. I’m not an animal rights extremist. I grew up in Montana fishing, hunting and gardening with my Dad, and continue to fill my freezer this way each year. I hunt deer for food —not for sport, not for trophies, and not for pride. Like the vast majority of Montana hunters, my Dad taught me the necessity of fair chase, a quick and clean kill, knowing exactly what you’re shooting at, and wasting nothing. Most Montana hunters strive to continue this legacy with every round fired. We practice target shooting, keep our rifles cleaned, oiled and sighted in to be sure that we do have clean kills without waste. These are the ethics of hunting.

Trapping violates these ethics at every point. Animals are diabolically lured into hidden and baited unattended traps. Baiting game animals is illegal because it is not considered fair chase.

Trapped animals are seldom killed quickly. More often than not, they languish for days suffering exposure and predation, waiting to be bludgeoned, drowned, crushed, suffocated, strangled or shot. Offspring suffer and starve from the loss of their mother. So much for a quick and clean kill.

Non-target animals comprise a large percentage of animals trapped, including protected and endangered species. They are maimed or killed, or just left to suffer a prolonged and painful death. Occasionally they’re released, only to die later from their injuries. Although trappers are required to report the trapping of protected species if they can’t be released “unharmed” in the trapper’s opinion, it can’t possibly be enforced, and who would ever know, so why would they bother? So much for knowing your target.

Hunters are legally required to use all edible parts of animals killed, and aren’t allowed to sell meat. Yet for blood money, trappers sell only the fur of only some of the animals killed—just to end up adorning the backs of rap stars and teenaged billionaires. Most species are killed without limit. Carcasses either become bait for catching more victims, or are used to feed the maggots. So much for preventing waste. These are the ethics of trapping.

I-169 is merely a moderate step toward protecting some of Montana’s precious wildlife from the barbaric cruelty and unjustified waste and commercialization of trapping. It applies only to public land, about 1/3 of Montana. Trappers will continue their torturous tactics unhindered on the remaining 2/3 of our state. I-169 isn’t asking too much.

— Annie Reid, 129 Wilhelm Lane, Whitehall

See original article here.

Dispute over grazing fees rages on…

SANTA FE, N.M. — The accusation is a blunt one: That ranchers who hold permits from the federal government to graze their cattle on public land are little more than welfare recipients. The response is just as blunt: Like hell we are.

The argument has kicked around the West for years, and it’s come into sharper focus in recent months as ranchers in parts of northern and southern New Mexico have clashed with environmentalists over the recent listing of a critter most people in the Land of Enchantment have never even seen — the meadow jumping mouse.

In June, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service placed the mouse — which can hop up to three feet from its hind legs — on the endangered list. That has prompted the U.S. Forest Service to reinforce a gate along the Agua Chiquita in Otero County and erect barbed-wire fencing near the Rio Cebolla creek in the Santa Fe National Forest to keep cattle from damaging the mouse’s habitat.

The livestock industry has enjoyed special treatment from the federal government for so long that our streams have been trampled to death,” Bryan Bird, program director at WildEarth Guardians, said earlier this month when his group filed a lawsuit just before the fencing was constructed.

Bird’s comment echoes a long-running complaint environmentalists have about grazing fees on public lands.

They say ranchers have been getting a sweetheart deal from the government for too long, pointing to fees charged by the entities such as the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service charging $1.35 a month for what’s called “Animal Unit Months,” compared to an estimated $16-$20 a month on private land.

They also cite data from a 2005 report from the General Accounting Office and say U.S. taxpayers suffer a direct loss of more than $120 million because of the fees.

“Ranchers have benefitted from a whole suite of subsidies. I used to call them welfare queens,” John Horning, the executive director of WildEarth Guardians-NewMexico, told New Mexico Watchdog in an interview in July. “I don’t really care if it’s welfare because the bigger issue for me is not that (taxpayers) subsidize it, but that we allow the activity to degrade so many valuable things.”

But cattle growers push back just as forcefully.

“It couldn’t be further from the truth,” said Caren Cowan, executive director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association. “And it’s a tired old argument.”

Cowan says the price difference between grazing fees is misleading because ranchers have to pick up the costs for things such as managing and fencing their allotments, supplying their herds with water and absorbing any losses due to death and attacks by predators that aren’t usually incurred when grazing on private property.

“It’s kind of like you renting a house in Albuquerque that has all the amenities,” Cowan said. “It’s furnished, you’ve got electricity, all the utilities are done.” But grazing on public lands is like “renting a house that’s totally vacant, has no amenities … and anyone can come through your house and use the bathroom anytime they want … The price is low until you look at the amenities that don’t go with it.”

But Horning counters the pricing formula for grazing on public land has essentially been frozen by the executive order since 1986 when Ronald Reagan was president.

“The grazing fee today is the same as it was 30 years ago,” Horning said. “Name one commodity or one resource that you can extract today for the same fee you could 30 years ago.”

But for ranchers like Mike Lucero, grazing cattle along the Rio Cebolla is something his family has done for generations, going back to the time of land grants in New Mexico, predating the existence of the U.S. Forest Service.

“This is my family and ancestors’ heritage,” said Lucero, a member of the San Diego Cattleman’s Association.

Unique to states such as New Mexico, land grants were awarded to settlers by the Spanish government during colonial times. Under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the U.S. government pledged to honor the grants, but property disputes have persisted in the Southwest ever since.

“I totally agree, there is a discounted rate involved,” Lucero told New Mexico Watchdog this summer. “But when that used to be a land grant, that wasn’t federal land at all. So you’re telling me I don’t have a right to get a discount when it was taken away from my ancestors to begin with? Everyone knows land grants are for the people in those communities to make a living off of.”

THE MOUSE IN QUESTION: Listing the meadow jumping mouse as an endangered species has led to a battle between environmentalists and New Mexico ranchers.
THE MOUSE IN QUESTION: Listing the meadow jumping mouse as an endangered species has led to a battle between environmentalists and New Mexico ranchers.
Ranchers at the Rio Cebolla say their cattle only use the meadow for four-five weeks in the fall and one-two weeks in the spring. They insist they keep the area in excellent shape.

But environmental groups say the habitat for the meadow jumping mouse has been systematically degraded in New Mexico, as well as Arizona and Colorado.

“We are asking the Forest Service to keep cows out of 1 percent of public lands that have streams and rivers,” Bird said. “The livestock industry needs stop kicking and screaming and cooperate to ensure clean water and healthy wildlife.”

“Ranchers are responsible for the stewardship of their land,” said Cowan. “Recreationists don’t pay to hunt or hike or fish on those lands. But the timber industry, the oil and gas industry, the livestock industry (do). I think guides and outfitters even have to have some kind of permit. Those folks are paying the government something.

While WildEarth Guardians has filed its lawsuit to protect the mouse’s habitat, the ranchers have filed their own, alleging the Forest Service of heavy-handedness and not following its own environmental analysis.

Regardless of what decision is reached, it’s clear the debate — and the rhetoric — over grazing fees would continue.

“Grazing permits are costly food stamps for cattle,” wrote an attorney from Utah in the Salt Lake City Tribune earlier this year.

“The whole purpose of what (environmental groups) are doing on the land is not to save anything, it’s to protect it from people who actually doing something productive and I’m talking about ranchers ,” said C.J. Hadley, publisher of the pro-rancher publication RANGE magazine.

the full article here.