Posted on 10/10/2015 11:13:51 AM PDT by george76
A U.S. judge on Friday approved a deal between conservationists and Montana officials to restrict road-building and logging in roughly 22,000 acres of state forest lands that make up core habitat for federally protected grizzlies.
The agreement resolves a lawsuit brought by conservationists after the state had sought to open 37,000 acres , mostly in the Stillwater State Forest, to timber harvesting despite what environmentalists said would be the destruction of prime grizzly bear territory.
...
U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy in a decision last year found the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act by issuing a permit to Montana for the project opening up the expanse to the timber industry.
Montana appealed the judge's ruling and conservation groups later appealed separate parts of the decision, leading to a stalemate that set the stage for both sides to hammer out a settlement.
Molloy approved the agreement on Friday, said attorney Tim Preso of the firm Earthjustice
...
The settlement comes after a federal-state panel managing grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park, mostly in Wyoming, said a separate population of about 700 bears has recovered and recommended they be stripped of federal protections.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to make a decision on delisting soon.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Well, at least when they burn this, we get to breathe roast bear along with the smoke.
“Okey dokey, kill all the bears.
While you are at it, get rid of all the wolves.”
Works for me!
Isn’t that the truth?
See post 46. St Ignatius.
Grizzlies are eating a lot of calf elk. You tube. Stuck n the rut.
I don’t know where you live but here we feed and hunt whitetails.
Part of a strong hunting culture is conservation.
When last winter got more than a few minus 30 temps, we bulldozed some woods for the deer.
Speak for yourself on what people are willing to do for money. Or maybe you already did.
When they finally allow grizzly hunts I will think of you fondly.
I live in the apex of that 'corridor', the Flathead Valley. You don't have any idea what you are talking about. And btw, SCREW Florida. I will die right here. And so will my sons and daughters.
The entire population of Montana is about one million. Wonder how many people live in the Grizzly Bear Corridor?
Howabout mind your own damn business?
Well, then, believe me.
Those alleged relatives would be happy to move for one billion dollars each.
There is *NO* amount of money that will pry my ass out of this valley. IT_IS_MY_HOME. And money has nothing at all to do with it.
Again, Stop screwing with stuff you don't understand, and go mind your own damn business.
You need to improve your reading skills. No one has mentioned forcing anyone to move. The rhetorical offer was to anyone who would like to move.
Again, you don't have a single clue. Your entire premise is absurd - There is no reason for anyone to move, because this mythical 'north-south corridor' means bloody well nothing.
And if you are so bloody sure of yourself, unless you live in the desert or the swamp, grizzly belong wherever you are right now - so work to preserve them locally. And no matter where you are, wolves are native - So work to get murderous McKenzie River wolves 'reintroduced' to your own place.
We've always had griz. We've always had wolves. They sure as hell were never endangered here. We know what we need here - You do not.
So mind your own damn business.
I was working on my reading skills when I thought about that phrase “grizzly corridor” , which was new to me. Interesting to Google the words “grizzly corridor” and see who comes up.
Looks like some liberal sierra club lookalikes suing the feds for denying ESA protection to yet another supposed subspecies of grizzly.
That’s the way to do it. Tons of wolves? Choose ten and call them a subspecies, and off to court we go.
Methinks miss Lucy may be a leaner to the left on this issue at least.
Hopefully she can raise her own grizzly family in her own backyard, instead of forcing her views on locals.
Not yet.
Because the feds denied protection to a fairytale subspecies of grizzly.
They have to get that litigation under control before they can set aside your corridor to protect an endangered species.
The Grizzly Bear corridor was identified when the Fish and Wildlife Department began tagging bears with radio tracking devices. Bears traveling the sparsely populated area between Yellowstone and the Canadian border found berries and small game for winter hibernation.
The corridor is located two mountain ranges away from St. Ignatius. Because fires destroy natural habitat, bears are not confined to one small area, they search` eveywhere for food. If they go into hibernaation without enough nourishment, they will die during their winter hiatus.
If you want to kill all bears, I couldn’t care less. Please get rid of wolves while you are at it. Wolves are destroying the elk population as well as farm and ranch animals.
It's just another land grab. You can't hardly piss on the ground here without some government stooge popping up to declare it a protected watershed and an eagle flyway. This is just another means of increasing government authority and decreasing access to the forest - You can still walk in, anywhere you like, but so much of it has been gated off now that you need a week to get anywhere by foot... to places you used to be able to nearly drive right up to.
And it's total bull. Naturally, most traffic in the woods (wildlife or otherwise) tends to follow waterways, which always flow down interconnected valleys. That's how it works. But that is just a matter of ease-of-movement. It's easier to slope along a river or creek. But that doesn't mean a critter CAN'T go over a ridge into the next range - and a lot of times they do. Especially bears and elk. There are no such thing as 'corridors', other than migratory ungulates (and even that is subject to change, according to the grass), and the predators that follow them, overlaid with berry patches and fish migrations. Add in territoriality, and wintering dens... All of that is incredibly complex, and constantly changing.
You can't know the woods unless you are in them all the time. The whole of it breathes and moves. I wound up in a wheelchair for some years, and what I knew of the forest changed so drastically in that decade that I am basically starting from scratch. All my old berry patches are gone. all the clear-cuts I used to hunt are now forest, all my favorite fishing holes are changed, and all the places I used to go for firewood are picked clean... It ain't that there ain't anymore berries, hunting. fishing and firewood... It's just that it's all someplace else, and I have to go find it.
To establish a 'corridor' is absurd. Ten years from now it'll all be different, I guarantee, unless the intention is to control a choke point that shuts off vast systems beyond, which is exactly what these things are designed to do.
Tons of wolves? Choose ten and call them a subspecies, and off to court we go.
VERY true - but here (wrt wolves) it is just the other way around - We've always had Timber wolves here - Elusive, lean in the body, long in the leg, tending to small family packs... I hollered when they started hauling in McKenzie River wolves, I really did, for the sake of the native wolf that these marauders would displace. It wasn't until after these newly introduced greys had burgeoned that the 'science' caught up with what the natives knew all along - that these new wolves are very different from the native Timber wolf that belongs here.
The Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan was first approved in 1980, though it was then revised later on in 1987. The plan required a certain population of Northern Rocky Mountains wolves to reside in the area inside and around Yellowstone, which included at least ten breeding pairs, and for the population to remain stable for at least three consecutive years.[15][16] However, the Northern Rocky Mountains wolf was not, at the time of the initial drafting, recognized as a legitimate subspecies, so the wolves involved in the plan were instead the Great Plains wolf and the Mackenzie Valley wolf
src
It still isn't settled all the way. But the timber wolf I know is sure to be irrevocably changed. And the elk and deer that the timber wolf lived in balance with for all these years are now being decimated. It is horrible. Tragic.
And that is the problem when people a thousand miles away think they know better than the locals do. Their sophistry, after all, is 'for our own good', and makes them feeeeel better about their own 'superiority' in comparison to those dumb hicks that actually live in the place. In the mean time the idiocy they impose is almost always horribly destructive. I've seen it over, and over, and over again.
Thx for your reply.
No it's not. Stillwater Forest is nearly the entire west flank of the Flathead Valley, and it is where nearly everyone goes for resources... What you don't know is that everything east of the Flathead Valley with the exception of the Coal Creek area and the Swan Valley is already tied up clean to the Continental divide by Glacier Park, The Bob Marshal Wilderness, and the Great Bear Wilderness. And it is all chock-full of Griz.
So this will eventually gate off everything west of the Flathead, and most of the north fork (coal creek). And everything East (with the exception of the Swan) is already off limits. And there ain't anything south all the way to the Clark Fork.
So where the hell exactly are we supposed to go for forest resources? What is left to log? Where do we go fishing and hunting without hiking in three days?
You REALLY don't know what you are talking about.
Because fires destroy natural habitat, bears are not confined to one small area, they search` eveywhere for food. If they go into hibernaation without enough nourishment, they will die during their winter hiatus.
Oh, what pitiful bullcrap. And btw, Logging is how you control fires. Logging is therefore GOOD for griz (and it is). How does getting rid of roads and logging protect them then? It is idiocy. and land grab. Again.
If they search everywhere for food, then they must need this “everywhere” to be all for them. Puts it into their habitat you see. And now that habitat needs to be cleared of humans.
At least that is my take on it.
Put out a behavior whether it is genuine or not. Anything to get that ESA label.
Then you can push agenda 21 all the better.
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