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popsci_2013 01162.txt

#Grizzly bear Survival: Yet Another Reason Not To Shoot Yellowstone Wolveseven though every respectable regulatory service says shooting wolves in and around Yellowstone national park is bad for everyone involved wolves are still being shot. Well add one more paper to the pile: a new study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology finds that the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone has had a positive effect on the population of...wait what? Grizzly bears? How? Putting together the puzzle pieces of a diverse ecosystem like Yellowstone is tricky; shooting wolves is like pulling out a piece of an enormous Jenga game. Some parts seem unaffected some parts are balanced distinctly less and eventually the whole game will crash. This study looks at how the wolf affects the ecosystem as a whole and as we thought wolves are an essential part of the health of Yellowstone. The iconic endangered-in-the-U s. grizzly bear relies on lots of fruit especially berries when preparing for its winter hibernation. High in sugar and containing lots of important vitamins the berries including serviceberry chokecherry buffaloberry twinberry huckleberry and others and make up a substantial portion of the grizzly's diet in the summertime. A lower amount of berries has been found to have a negative effect on the survival and reproductive abilities of grizzlies the following year. There have been quite a few low-berry years lately. That problem says the study can be attributed to the lack of wolves in Yellowstone: wolves typically prey on the abundant elk herds in the park. Elk eat berries just like the bears do. But without wolves the elk population has exploded which means there's hardly any berries left for the bears. So the bears aren't as well fed which makes them less healthy. And it's not even just as simple as that. The elk are eating so many berries including the entire berry shrubs that animals that rely on the shrubs like bees and butterflies are also in decline. The bears without access to the fruit they'd normally be eating have to eat more meat which means they sometimes prey on elk but just as often on livestock nearby. And that makes the ranchers angry and the ranchers shoot bears or wolves or whatever else they feel like because Wyoming does not know or care how ecosystems work. Neither does Friends of the Yellowstone Elk Herd a pro-hunting organization. But the reintroduction of wolves the study finds has had marked a improvement on that entire system. The researchers from Oregon State university and Washington state University analyzed grizzly bear scat and found that the percentage of berries in the scat has doubled since the reintroduction of the wolves. Turns out the two most iconic animals of Yellowstone depend on each other in more ways than we thought. via Physorg...because Wyoming does not know or care how ecosystems work. Great writing? How about firing the undergrads and hiring actual writers? These articles are quickly becoming a joke. Maybe you don't understand the difference between wildlife management and extermination. We stopped exterminating wolves and a host of other species in the U s a long time ago. Allowing hunters to purchase licenses to hunt a limited number of wolves is called wildlife management. For an excellent example of how management works look no further than the link to the U s. Fish and Wildlife Service page on Grey Wolves you so helpfully provided: Long-term the Service expects the entire NRM population to maintain a long-term average of around 1000 wolves. These wolves represent a 400-mile southern range extension of a vast contiguous wolf population that numbers over 12000 wolves in western Canada and about 65000 wolves across all of Canada and Alaska. The Service and our partners will monitor wolves in the region for at least 5 years to ensure that the population s recovered status is compromised not and if relisting is warranted ever we will make prompt use of the Act s emergency listing provisions. Really this again? Your bias is showing and the worst part is you write like you assume you're right because you have all this science to back it up. Outdoor life had an article that showed some science in argument of the other side of this issue and they managed to present it without the snarky sometimes outright offensive language. At least pretend like you've given some rational thought to the other side of this argument. I appreciated this interesting article and view. Thanks for bringing up issues with insufficient regulation on hunting and interesting scientific articlesno no no 8472 we in the science (meaning actual objective science not misappropriation of some half-contrived psuedo-scientific facts for a political agenda) community do not accept this fanatic into our ranks. We hate him as much as you do we reject his political rhetoric and biased hate-talk as much as you do and we humbly request that you do not blame his nonsense on us. We're in this fight against idiots together!**Note: the guy who literally claims to know more about ecosystems than the ENTIRE STATE OF WYOMING holds a degree in...not biology...not geology...not environmental engineering or conservation or meteorology or heck anything scientific at all...but no English literature.**Seriously though I'm usually the guy defending the liberal slant of this website's writers from overzealous conservative counter-arguments in the name of an improved discussion. Today I'm just as annoyed as anyone else. Forget promoting objective scientific discourse; YOU guys at Popsci are the ones who have ruined it. The funny thing is that maybe just maybe if you didn't take a confrontational tone from the start things wouldn't have to devolve into rants and philosophy. If you didn't begin with inflammatory remarks like Wyoming doesn't know or care how ecosystems work (incidentally you clearly don't either) maybe we wouldn't all sound like kindergartners on the playground arguing over who knows more. Unfortunately in the name of'saving the wolves'you alienate the people you most need on your side to help'save the wolves 'because you simply had to insist that they are idiots and you with your*ahem*English degree know more about the plants and animals (and conservation models and ecological history and etc. etc.)that they live with every day. Well done. As someone who would have otherwise been inclined to agree with a reasonable assessment of insufficient conservation I now thanks to you support wanton murder of wolves in Wyoming. Yup you're disregard for all things scientific and logical annoyed me that bad. Sorry wolves. I genuinely don't understand how a scientific magazine can publish an article this biased...and straight wrong. This is from the every respectable regulatory service link you gave: Thus this population has been delisted and is now being successfully and responsibly being managed by the States. One of those states happens to be Montana which I have lived in for many years. The wolf hunting is being managed by the Fish Wildlife and Parks department there which I have worked at. It is a very competent agency with many educated biologists who have done extensive research on the wolf population...allowing the population to become delisted as an endangered species. It is obvious that the states are competently handling the situation (as your own link states they are doing it successfully and responsibly. There are reasons to control the population by shooting wolves and despite the fact wolf hunting has been possible for many years the population is still thriving. This article is garbage with the bias so pathetically unsupported that its own links contradict the article. Is this clown at it again? C'mon Popsci you can't afford the hit to your rep. Fire this biased idjit and get back to the real science. uptil I saw the check four $7047 I didnt believe that...my...mother in law was realie earning money parttime from there labtop..there dads buddy started doing this for under 6 months and as of now paid the dept on there place and bought a gorgeous Fiat panda. go to...www. Yad7. comi was going to chime in but it seems you guys took care of that for me lol. I would like to add though that from the rancher's point of view livestock are very expensive to buy and maintain and simply loosing one cow can put you back a thousand dollars. I'm trying to raise a family and maintain a business-a way of life like my pa and grandpa did. If a bear or some wolves wonder onto my property and effectively steals a thousand dollar cow from me i'm going to shoot them. I'm going to shoot them and i'm going to drag their dead carcass out for all the other hungry bears and wolves to see so they don't come back. Because I don't care if that poor little wolf is hungry i'm hungry too and so is my family. Nature is just going to have to remember who's is who's. Such sentiment certainly doesn't speak for everyone who kills a wolf and i condemn those who shoot wolves illegally. Formally Nooneyouknow...Keep'em coming Dan. The yahoos commenting just don't like simple facts. The most important one being that humans are very poor at managing nature. With Friends like these wildlife doesn't need any enemies!@@firehorn you turned far too easily...I cry foul l

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