Montana closing sage grouse hunting?
- Thread starter bigskyblueman
- Start date
A buddy of mine has a great ginger-wasabi butter recipe for them. It would be great with any upland bird, but it certainly made that young hen delicious.
Hunts
Member
Dan Vermillion, Chairman
Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission
P.O. Box 200701
Helena, MT 59620-0701
Dan,
Like many Montana bird hunters I am concerned about the push by Montana FWP to close the 2014 season to hunting. I wanted to email you and ask you to oppose this decision.
"A closure during this season would be in direct opposition to the stated management plan guidelines, since at worst counts have been below 45% of LTA for only 2 years, not 3. Also,
its important to point out that sage-grouse populations can fluctuate pretty dramatically year to year based solely on weather. In Nevada as much as a 50% reduction in the number of sage-grouse males in the population between one year and the next during the onset of a multi-year drought. After good years (high precip and cool temperatures) numbers can almost double in a 1 year period. That's not to say that there aren't major concerns about long-term declines in sage-grouse, because there are, but they still exhibit the same boom and bust dynamics that many other upland birds do". Here is the research paper that I referenced-
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1890/ES11-00304.1
"Second, interpreting a 1-year change in the number of males on leks is an inappropriate use of lek count trends. This is because not all males visit the leks every year (some take a year off) and the proportion of males that do attend changes from year to year. This is why waiting for 3 consecutive years of low counts would be important, and not jumping the gun in year two". Reference-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...sCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
"Most importantly, there is just no good reason to think that hunting harvest has anything to do with sage-grouse declines, or that closing hunting will make any positive difference in improving sage-grouse numbers. In a study that spanned both Nevada and Colorado, its been show quite clearly that even fairly liberal harvest (nearly 20% of the fall population) does not effect the average annual survival rate at the population level - that is to say that the effects of harvest are most likely compensated by reductions in other sources of natural mortality (e.g. predation)". Reference-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2193/2009-071/abstract
Please take a minute to review these papers. Perhaps they can help preserve a very limited harvest in 2014.
Thanks,
Steve Hunts
Bozeman, MT
References coutesy Erik Blomberg
Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission
P.O. Box 200701
Helena, MT 59620-0701
Dan,
Like many Montana bird hunters I am concerned about the push by Montana FWP to close the 2014 season to hunting. I wanted to email you and ask you to oppose this decision.
"A closure during this season would be in direct opposition to the stated management plan guidelines, since at worst counts have been below 45% of LTA for only 2 years, not 3. Also,
its important to point out that sage-grouse populations can fluctuate pretty dramatically year to year based solely on weather. In Nevada as much as a 50% reduction in the number of sage-grouse males in the population between one year and the next during the onset of a multi-year drought. After good years (high precip and cool temperatures) numbers can almost double in a 1 year period. That's not to say that there aren't major concerns about long-term declines in sage-grouse, because there are, but they still exhibit the same boom and bust dynamics that many other upland birds do". Here is the research paper that I referenced-
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1890/ES11-00304.1
"Second, interpreting a 1-year change in the number of males on leks is an inappropriate use of lek count trends. This is because not all males visit the leks every year (some take a year off) and the proportion of males that do attend changes from year to year. This is why waiting for 3 consecutive years of low counts would be important, and not jumping the gun in year two". Reference-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...sCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
"Most importantly, there is just no good reason to think that hunting harvest has anything to do with sage-grouse declines, or that closing hunting will make any positive difference in improving sage-grouse numbers. In a study that spanned both Nevada and Colorado, its been show quite clearly that even fairly liberal harvest (nearly 20% of the fall population) does not effect the average annual survival rate at the population level - that is to say that the effects of harvest are most likely compensated by reductions in other sources of natural mortality (e.g. predation)". Reference-
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2193/2009-071/abstract
Please take a minute to review these papers. Perhaps they can help preserve a very limited harvest in 2014.
Thanks,
Steve Hunts
Bozeman, MT
References coutesy Erik Blomberg
Last edited:
bigskyblueman
Member
Between closing sage grouse season and killing pregnant elk in May, the wheels have come off FWP decision making , somewhat, and hopefully they will rethink these rash conclusions.
