Idaho and MT can manage wolves now

[mtmiller]

'chasr, for the love of God, zip-it...or take it to a childrens forum elsewhere.

 

[1_pointer]

miller-

+1. Since he's not talking, maybe one of those fancy suit jackets from the state hospital would help with the typing.

 

[huntinfool]

Not trying to ruffle feathers here but...... have any of you been in that area?
and if you have you would know that some of it is so pretty nasty country.
and yes I can say its nasty country because I grew up there. I guess my ?? is why the fuss?
some of you guys have a problem about the wolves and so on seems to me that allowing f&g to use a helicopter to get in there to tag them would help to get it closer to being able to hunt them, RIGHT?
F&G need to know how many wolves are realy out there so that they can be de-listed and if this helps then by all means do it.
and just what harm does a helicopter do to the enviroment any way?
I'de rather them use that than ATVs to hawl the live traps in. this way they dart the wolves , tag them and all the other stuff they do and then they're gone not tracks, no damage, Right?

 

[Ithaca 37]

huntinfool, I agree. The sooner we get to hunt wolves the better. Right now the hurdle we have to get over is collecting hard data to satisfy the FWS that the wolves are having a detrimental effect on elk herds. Dart the wolves, land the helicopters, put on the collars and get outta there.

 

[TheTone]

I agree landing the copters for the stated purpose here should really be a no brainer and hopefully it gets done. We're getting closer everyday on the wolves.

 

[Tuffbucker]

I really hope that they open up a wolf season someday. That would be awesome!! All I know is that this puts us one step closer....it might be a while, but I definitely think that its coming....

 

[huntinfool]

Has any one read the story one the front page of the Idaho Statesman?

Idaho officals consider killing wolves to restore Clearwater elk
This story came out on sunday the 8th of jan.
Its Very interesting. The whole of the story reports that F&G may be issueing specail tags for a wolf hunt.....mmmmmmmm
Could not find it on the web site so I scanned it and uploaded it hope this works

 

[BigHornRam]

IT,

Thanks for putting me back on your ignore list.

One question for someone else besides IT. If the feds have such an accurate count of wolves in Idaho, why does Idaho now have to radio collar wolves in the Frank Church? I thought the feds were collaring them or did they quit doing that years ago and switched over to the lower cost SWAG system to count wolves?

 

[BigHornRam]

Hfool, I can't read your attachments. Would you agree Idaho has a wolf problem? How can Idaho issue tags for wolves when they are on the endangered speicies list? How many days do you think it will take for a lawyer from (insert your favorite wolf hugger group) to shut that plan down?

 

[huntinfool]

I tryed to get those atta. to work too. will have to work on it.
not sure how they can I just know that the artical was in the Idaho statesman here in boise on the front page of last sundays paper. I went to they web site and had no luck there finding it.
as to a wolf problem in some areas of idaho..... I'de say yes , but only in some areas not all. I do know the areas we hunted last year definatly had a problem. In a 20 mile range we counted 4 packs with 5 or more adults in. we were there for 12 days and saw 1 bull and we walked our butts off...so you tell me?
as to the artical ill keep looking for it

 

[ELKCHSR]

What you might do is send them an e-mail, tell them you kneed the stories for a book report...

 

[huntinfool]

i have the artical I scanned it into my computer and changed it to a jpg file and then tryed to upload it and it uploaded but no one can open it know....lol and its a really good report to!!!!

 

[huntinfool]

ok i think i have it hey I GOT IT, I GOT IT!!!!!!

 

[Wapiti Slayer]

WS,

Can you show any examples of any agency being allowed to used mechanized equipment in a wilderness area because they want to be lazy?

The reason the agencies need to petition for the exemption is to allow over-sight into WHY they NEED to use mechanized equipment in a wilderness area. I can assure you that just being lazy will not cut it.

Nice try though.

Wolverine Watch

Researchers go far afield to capture elusive Gulo gulo.

By Rebecca Huntington

TETON WILDERNESS – As researcher Robert “Michael” Inman and his wolverine crew wrestled through knee-deep snow, few animal tracks dotted the open meadows blanketed in nearly flawless white fluff.


Of the few critters to have left tracks in the new snow, Inman instantly recognized the pencil eraser-sized prints of the least weasel, the thumb-sized impressions of an ermine and the even bigger paw marks of a pine martin. All

three critters, are members of the Mustelidae, or weasel, family.
“Now all we need to see is the big daddy,” Inman says, referring to the largest mustelid, the wolverine.


But the odds of finding the “big daddy” are long. Inman and his crew have chosen one of the most remote corners in the Lower 48 to look for an animal Inman’s research shows to be scarcer than grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Area.


Historic trapping records indicate wolverines were extirpated from the region by 1900, most likely due to trapping and the extensive use of poison baits to kill predators that likely also killed scavenging wolverines, Inman said. A few survivors might have remained in the Greater Yellowstone.


Although wolverines have been making a comeback, Inman said the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Greater Yellowstone Wolverine Program aims to provide scientific data to state and federal managers to help those agencies maintain the rare species. Conservationists have petioned the species for listing as a threatened species, but to date such petitions have been denied.


In five winters, the program has captured a total of 26 wolverines in Montana and Wyoming. Using radio tracking devices implanted in the wolverines’ abdomens, researchers have learned that the species “Gulo gulo” has individual home ranges large enough to occupy multiple mountain ranges across two states. That’s one reason wolverines are hard to find: They require vast tracts of land and are territorial.


This marks the first winter the crew will try to trap gulo in the Teton Wilderness. While it can take months to catch a single wolverine, the crew has only one month, February, to get lucky in the Thorofare. By March, the risk of accidentally attracting a grizzly waking from hibernation increases.


Should the crew succeed, the information could be invaluable. By studying wolverines in such a wild location, Inman said he hopes to gain insight into how the animals behave in the relative absence of people. Typically, the Teton Wilderness attracts visitors only in summer and fall. Even when the area bustles with elk hunters, it’s quiet compared to most forests.


Despite daunting logistics, wolverine crew member Austin Chapin said the team didn’t balk when Inman asked whether it would be possible to trap in a such a remote and wild location. “You’ve got to realize,” Chapin said, “if he had asked us to put a trap on the top of the Grand Teton, we would have said ‘Yes.’”

Last fall, crews built the traps, essentially miniature log cabins stout enough to hold an animal famed for its fierceness. While the trails were still snow-free, the Forest Service hauled in food supplies on horseback in preparation for the February endeavor.


That was the easy part. Last month, the Forest Service determined that a helicopter could not be used to hover above the pre-built traps to drop deer carcasses – a method called pre-baiting – due to the area’s wilderness designation, which prohibits motors. So, the team, including Jackson mountain guide Forrest McCarthy, had to ski four deer carcasses 20-plus miles into the wilderness on sleds.On Jan. 31, with the traps pre-baited, Inman, Chapin and Deborah McCauley struck out from Turpin Meadows trailhead to ski roughly 25 miles in two days to Hawks Rest, where a Forest Service patrol cabin sits just south of Yellowstone National Park. Chapin and McCauley will live at the patrol cabin for a month running the wolverine trap line while support crews rotate through to help.


A 26-year-old Montana resident, Chapin provided the muscle, hauling nearly 100 pounds of supplies with a pack and sled, including more wolverine bait. Although Chapin is a seasoned skier, Inman, 37, and McCauley, 37, also Montana residents, have almost no skiing experience. No matter. McCauley, an ultramarathon runner, embraces long slogs. The crew got a break the first day when fellow team member Mark Packila rose before dawn and broke trail through a foot of fresh snow to smooth the way. Packila cleared a path for several miles – on his day off no less – before running into a party led by McCarthy, who was returning from a baiting mission to Hawks Rest.


Sailing along the smooth trail, Chapin, Inman and McCauley arrived at the Enos Lake patrol cabin, the first leg of their journey, well before dusk. But Chapin’s heavy load took a toll. His ski bindings broke three times in the first 10 miles. Chapin scrounged up some wire and used the wood stove and an axe to jury-rig a binding.


The next morning, as the team started out at dawn, falling snow had erased the tracks left by McCarthy’s party. As Chapin led the way across Enos Lake, he felt only the hardened path underfoot. He couldn’t see the track or shoreline in the blowing snow and fog. Past the lake, the snow only deepened as the crew gradually climbed the Pacific Creek drainage and alternated breaking trail through knee-deep powder.


After crossing the Continental Divide where Two Ocean Creek splits into Pacific and Atlantic creeks, McCauley and Chapin headed to the Two Ocean wolverine trap to open it for the season. Inman continued breaking trail to Hawks Rest cabin, crossing the 2-mile-wide snowfield across Yellowstone Meadows as dusk turned to dark. The moon cast a helpful glow across the meadow while the constellation Orion beckoned over Hawks Rest Mountain.


Inman had just lit a lantern at the patrol cabin, tucked in the timber at the foot of the mountain, when Chapin and McCauley arrived.


The crew postponed opening more wolverine traps on Thursday to give Chapin time to fix his bailing-wire binding. The cabin has enough tools that Chapin was able to forge a new metal toe piece for his binding.


McCauley, meanwhile, organized her surgery kit. Should the team catch a wolverine, McCauley would have to ski to the site and surgically implant a radio tracking device. Wolverines are too rough on neck collars, typically used to monitor wildlife movements. Moreover, a neck collar could inhibit a wolverine, which likes to poke its head into rocky crevices, Inman said.


The implant surgery is similar to spaying a cat or a dog, a procedure McCauley frequently preforms on pets in Livingston, Mont., where she works as a veterinarian.


The traps are outfitted with devices that transmit a signal, which can be picked up from Hawks Rest, to indicate whether a trap door is open or closed.
Each morning, Chapin checks the signals. On Saturday, the two open traps – Two Ocean and Yellowstone – have not caught a wolverine or even a pine martin, a common cousin that often foils the team’s efforts. So Chapin and McCauley decide to head up Thorofare Creek to open a third trap. A 12-mile trek round-trip, the Thorofare site is the farthest from Hawks Rest and potentially the most promising, according to Inman.


Chapin found what could be wolverine tracks as he skied through a mature pine stand littered with the scat and tracks of moose, snowshoe hare and other species. When Chapin reached the Thorofare trap, he noticed that a deer carcass previously wired to a nearby tree as a lure, had been ripped off and dragged away. Wolverines are one of the few species, out and about this time of year, strong enough to steal the entire carcass.


Chapin replaced the meat and set the trap by wiring “trigger bait” inside the log box. When a wolverine tears at the bait, the trap door thuds shut.


McCauley, meanwhile, grimaced as she opened a container filled with “Bob’s Brew.” The brew, concocted by Inman, essentially smells like a road-kill skunk – an odor that might just tempt a wolverine to investigate. McCauley used a stick to paint the grayish sludge onto a tree.


By Sunday, the crew had three of four traps open but no wolverines had taken the bait, yet. Inman remained optimistic with the weather turning in the team’s favor. A few days earlier, the crew had gathered around the kitchen table, the only table in the heated one-room cabin, to listen to Jackson meteorologist Jim Woodmencey’s weather forecast on KZJH 95.3 through a small transistor radio. Woodmencey was predicting a string of clear, sunny days – good news for the team since wolverines travel more once the snow hardens, increasing the chances of a wolverine passing by a trap.


With Woodmencey’s forecast in mind, Inman departed Sunday from Hawks Rest, retracing the two-day journey back to the trailhead. He will return at the end of the month to check on the project’s progress. Even catching one wolverine would be a boon to the program. Inman needs to capture more females, in particular, to learn about their reproductive rates – a detail crucial to ensuring the survival of any species, especially one that occurs at such sparse densities.


“It’s going to take a long-term effort to answer these questions,” he said.
As for the prospects of finding a wolverine in one of America’s wildest places, with Bob’s brew wafting through the Thorofare, Inman said: “If they’re around, I think they should show up.”




Backing up to this old thread, if these guys can do it ....the pussys trying to radio collar the wolves need to take a lesson!

 

[Wapiti Slayer]

WS,

Can you show any examples of any agency being allowed to used mechanized equipment in a wilderness area because they want to be lazy?

The reason the agencies need to petition for the exemption is to allow over-sight into WHY they NEED to use mechanized equipment in a wilderness area. I can assure you that just being lazy will not cut it.

Nice try though.

Can you show any examples of an angency being allowed to use mechanized equipment in a wilderness area because they are not lazy?

The reason the agencies petition for the exemption to allow oversight into why they NEED to use mechanized equipment in a wilderness area is because they are a bunch of lazy ****s and want to do as little amount of work as possible. If they can waste tax payers dollars to petition the use of mechanized equipment in a wilderness area an do as little amount of work as possible,I think they are a lot happier! Why do more than you have to if the public is footing the bill?

These guys working on the Wolverine studies get VERY little help since the Wolverines are not a "endangered"animal.So these individuals bust there ass spending their own time to help this species out with little help from the Gov't. Most contributions are from private sectors and people willing to donate time.

So you show me BUZZ why these dick heads need all this big time money to collar wolves???? When these other peolple do it on 1/4 of the budget. Maybe you are bisaed since you are one of the lazy ****s wasting our tax dollars sitting here arguing on the internet instead of being out doing your job!

 

[BuzzH]

Wap Slap,

You're lack of knowledge is laughable. If you had the comprehension of a three year old, you'd realize that.

I said, "Being lazy will not cut it as an excuse to use helicopters in Wilderness Areas".

Thusly, the wolverine and wolf dudes were denied, just like I said.

My challenge to you is to find an example of the FS being lazy as the reason why they were allowed to use helicopters in Wilderness Areas. As long as I've been employed I've seen a couple reasons that were allowed: Firefighting and lookout maintainance. I guess you think those would be considered just being lazy? In particular when battleing the fires in the Scapegoat that burned over 100K acres in a day? Or when you need to haul lumber, shingles, etc. into lookouts that have no trails to them in Wilderness areas?

You cant find one, just like I knew you wouldnt, which means that once again, you're nothing but a windbag.

I'll let you in on a little secret...you arent man enough to do my job, and thats a fact. The group I work with, which is about 120 employees strong, hiked a total of 43,200 miles in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, Montana, Nevada, and Utah, including every wilderness area in all those states.

Take a guess how much work we completed with the use of helicopters...NONE.

Lazy? I think not.

I suggest you lay off the liquor for a while...

 

[Wapiti Slayer]

Buzz, your lack of having any recognition of what you said prior is plausible! My challenge to you is to find an example of the FS not being lazy as the reason to use helicopters in A Wilderness Areas? Do you understand dumbass?

Sorry $*)Q!#@$ loser I've been working out for the last 12 months straight, no Alcohol, weight training 4 days a week, cardio 3 days a week. If you would like a break down of my training program I could give it to you.

 

[BuzzH]

Wap slap,

No alcohol you say...ok lay off the meth then. Your incoherent posts are a red-flag to your substance abuse.

I gave you two reasons why the wilderness act is exempted...fire-fighting and hauling cargo to remote lookouts. If you understood the complex nature of fighting wildland fires, you wouldnt be asking such ridiculous questions.

Your lack of education, logic, comprehension and common sense is apparent in your posts.

 

[The Hedgehog]

Sorry $*)Q!#@$ loser I've been working out for the last 12 months straight, no Alcohol, weight training 4 days a week, cardio 3 days a week. If you would like a break down of my training program I could give it to you.

elkslayer, you're not going to show us a picture of yourself posing all oiled up in your Speedo. I sure hope not.

 

[Wapiti Slayer]

Wap slap,

No alcohol you say...ok lay off the meth then. Your incoherent posts are a red-flag to your substance abuse.

I gave you two reasons why the wilderness act is exempted...fire-fighting and hauling cargo to remote lookouts. If you understood the complex nature of fighting wildland fires, you wouldnt be asking such ridiculous questions.

Your lack of education, logic, comprehension and common sense is apparent in your posts.

Your lack of Comprehension is $*)Q!#@$ scary! I hope the #*^@#* you aren't in charge of anything except janitor duties!