Posts Tagged ‘ u.s. fish and wildlife ’

Reward For Oregon Wolf Kill Climbs to $10,000

October 10, 2010
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This is the wolf that was found dead on September 30. The photo was taken in early August when it was captured and fitted with a radio collar. ODFW photo.

The reward for information about the illegal killing of a wolf in Northeast Oregon has increased to $10,000.

Conservation groups kicked in $7,500 on Friday. That’s on top of the $2,500 reward offered by the federal government.

After days of speculation and rumors, U.S. Fish and Wildlife confirmed that an adult male member of the Wenaha wolf pack was found dead in the Umatilla National Forest on September 30. The agency says it hasn’t determined how it died. But Oregon Wild claims the wolf was shot to death.

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Breaking: Sage Grouse Won’t Be Listed – At Least Not For Now

March 5, 2010
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A Greater Sage Grouse near Burns, Oregon. Photo from BLM.

Faced with a difficult decision about protecting – or not protecting – the Greater sage-grouse, Interior says it’s going to split the difference.

Secretary Ken Salazar announced Friday morning that the sage-grouse deserves to be listed by the Endangered Species Act, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon. The official label is that listing is “warranted, but precluded.”

So it becomes a candidate species. The bird’s status will be reviewed yearly. But Interior says it can’t protect every species that deserves it, and it has to set priorities. The sage-grouse falls into the bottom third of the candidate list.

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Why The Wait? Center Files Lawsuits To Protect Species In Oregon And U.S.

February 17, 2010
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Accusing the feds of dragging their feet, the Center For Biological Diversity has filed four lawsuits to win Endangered Species protection for 93 types of wildlife and plants.

In Oregon, the Center is seeking protection for the dusky tree vole, the black-footed albatross and dozens of native mollusks.

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Feds Reject Endangered Species Protection For The American Pika

February 4, 2010
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Courtesy Montana Fish and Wildlife

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will announce tomorrow (Friday) that’s it’s denying endangered species status for the America Pika, a small cousin of the rabbit that goes by the nickname, “boulder bunny.”

The decision is a huge disappointment for environmental groups. They say the pika is danger of going extinct because of global warming. If the feds had agreed, it would have been the first time global warming was the primary reason for listing an animal.

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Brown Pelicans Update, Much Quieter On The Coast

January 27, 2010
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After raising concerns about starving and dying brown pelicans, U.S. Fish and Wildlife says things are looking much better on the Oregon coast.

Roy Lowe with the FWS office in Newport says they’ve received no calls from the public today, and when he surveyed the beach this morning he didn’t see any pelicans at all. He says reports of pelican sightings on birding websites and e-mail lists are also down. He hopes the public is getting the message to leave the birds alone.

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Brown Pelicans Are Dying On The Oregon Coast – Again

January 26, 2010
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California Brown Pelican. Courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife

We’re at the beginning of what could be another major die-off of Brown Pelicans along the Oregon Coast.

Things are developing so quickly no one really knows yet how many of the birds have died, or how much worse things will get. Dawn Grafe with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says calls to the agency started coming in only Monday.

Grafe says the dead and dying birds are mostly adults, sexually mature birds that normally should be in Southern California or Mexico for breeding season. “They should not be off the Oregon coast. This is unusual.” says Grafe. “By now they should all be gone.”

In a typical year, most brown pelicans migrate south by the end of November. Grafe says this year, about 1,000 birds have stayed behind.

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Still Safe: Unusual Coastal Bird Stays On Endangered Species List

January 20, 2010
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Courtesy U.S. Fish and Wildlife

The timber industry has lost the battle to remove the marbled murrelet from the Endangered Species list.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the bird will keep its status as a “threatened” species. It made the decision after reviewing a petition from the American Forest Resource Council and other groups. They were hoping to delist the species along the entire West Coast.

The marbled murrelet is one of the more interesting characters in Oregon’s logging wars.

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Feds Want To Expand Critical Habitat For Threatened Bull Trout

January 13, 2010
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Photo from U.S. Fish and Wildlife

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is calling for a major expansion of critical habitat for the bull trout.

Listed as a threatened species in 1999, the bull trout was once plentiful across several western states, but now is found in only half of its historic area.

Fish and Wildlife proposes designating 22,679 miles of streams and 533,426 acres of lakes and reservoirs in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Nevada as critical habitat. This amounts to a nearly 600% increase in stream miles, and a nearly 400% increase in lake acres.

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VIDEO: Owl Vs Owl: The Feds May Be Ready To Take Sides

December 9, 2009
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Northern Spotted Owl. Photo by Dennis Newman.

Northern Spotted Owl. Photo by Dennis Newman.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is looking at a new tactic to help save the Northern Spotted Owl. Like so many issues surrounding this endangered species, what the feds are considering could be very controversial. But this time, it may be people in the environmental movement who’ll be unhappy.

Fish and Wildlife is proposing an experimental removal of Barred Owls from three areas in Oregon and Washington. Barred Owls are relative newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. They were rarely seen until about 10 to 15 years ago. But since then their numbers have exploded and spotted owls have suffered greatly. If removing barred owls helps the spotted owl recover, then Fish and Wildlife may want to expand the program across the region.

Here is where it gets tricky. Does “removal” mean shooting and killing barred owls, or does it mean trapping and relocating them? Fish and Wildlife says it hasn’t figured that out yet. So as of Thursday, it’s opening a 30-day window for public comment.

Video: In June, we went on a field trip to OSU researcher David Wiens who’s studying how Barred Owls compete with Spotted Owls.

Other questions Fish and Wildlife is wrestling with; how many barred owls should be removed and if they’re captured where is the best spot to release them?

So why do barred owls pose such a threat?

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Is This The New Spotted Owl?

November 5, 2009
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A Greater Sage Grouse. Photo by Terry Steele.

A Greater Sage Grouse. Photo by Terry Steele.

Take a good look at that photo.

This relatively harmless looking bird, the greater sage-grouse, may become the focal point of a new debate that could dramatically alter the economy and environment of Oregon, as well as more than a dozen other western states.

The debate could put two strongly held green values in opposition to each other. Will we have to choose between renewable energy and protecting an endangered species?

Currently, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reviewing the status of the sage-grouse to see if it should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. The process means collecting information from a variety of sources.

On Wednesday, we heard from the U.S. Geological Survey.  USGS released a massive report, known as a monograph, detailing the decline of the sage-grouse. The data will be used by Fish and Wildlife as it considers the bird’s status.

The picture painted by USGS isn’t very good.  The sage-grouse is found in only half of the territory it occupied before white settlers moved into the region.  From 1965 to 2003, sage-grouse numbers dropped an average 2% per year.  And while the population appears to have stabilized in the past two decades, some of the recent news isn’t good.

Estimates from Oregon Fish and Wildlife show a 50% decline in our state from 2005 to 2008. In Idaho, the numbers in the south central part of the state dropped 6% from 2008 to 2009.

The sage-grouse thrives in large areas dominated by sagebrush. A home range can cover 230 square miles. The USGS report says not only are we losing sagebrush habitat, but what’s remaining is increasingly fragmented into smaller and smaller sections. The number one culprit? Converting sagebrush areas into cropland.

Other factors include:

  • Energy development, including wind, geothermal, oil and natural gas. Everything from turbines to transmission towers can remove small chunks of sage-grouse territory.
  • Fire management, recent trends towards suppressing fires has allowed more growth of juniper and pinyon and the crowding out of sagebrush.
  • Cattle grazing.
  • Rural sprawl, as increasing numbers of humans move closer to wilderness areas they are taking away sage-grouse habitat.

But it’s the possible conflicts between renewable energy development and sage-grouse protection that pose the most troubling questions. The Obama administration is working hard to open up public lands as possible sites for wind farms and geothermal wells. Nine federal agencies recently signed an agreement that will speed up the process of placing transmission lines on federal lands. A decision to list the bird could dramatically slow down this development.

And here’s a tidbit that can’t be ignored. The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for about half of current sage-grouse habitat. The BLM is a grizzled veteran of the Spotted Owl wars.