I made it back to Massachusetts this weekend after a couple of days of driving from the sandhill region of northwest Nebraska. I spend a couple days with a colleague exploring the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is a 72,000 acre grassland that is embedded in ranching country. Indeed, they have grazing leases on the refuge and do a lot of prescribed burning to maintain the grasslands. I will share photos and more info soon.
It was a long week, leaving Wyoming and setting up in a campground in Nebraska. My friend had a motorhome, so it wasn't exactly roughing it, but we had pretty slow internet, so I didn't get up any new photos from there.
I have a good bit to share about grizzly bear management in Wyoming, energy and wildlife interactions, water use, and of course the Nebraska stuff. If there is something you want me to prioritize, please leave a comment.
On Friday the 5th, I'm heading to the 25th annual conference of The Wildlife Society. My term as President will end during the conference, but I've got a couple of days of meetings of our governing Council to run over the weekend and then a bunch of duties every day during the conference, highlighted by giving out our awards and introducing our daily plenary sessions.
I'll also try to post some highlights from the conference as time allows. Once I get back, after the 12th, I'll get caught up on all the material from the trip west and update new activities, too.
 |
| A view of the landscape of western Nebraska. |
 |
| Sunset from the campground south of Valentine, NE. |
Dr. McDonald, I thought that Grizzly bears were still listed on the endangered species list in Wyoming and in Yellow Stone National Park, what kind of population management did you learn about? The court ruled in 2009 that due to the decline of the Whitebark pine seeds that they should stay on the endangered species list.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, they were delisted a few years ago in the Yellowstone Ecosystem so the states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana were able to develop their own management plans, which included some very limited hunting quotas (for example, Idaho had a quota of 1 scheduled for this year). The district court judge recently ruled they should be protected again because of his interpretation of some of the population numbers. This will be a topic of a future post now that I am back from The Wildlife Society conference.
ReplyDelete