Category: Wildlife

Goldfinch

More Legal Wrangling over Michigan’s Wolves

By Glen Wunderlich

Michigan wolf management is now in the hands of a Washington D.C. federal district court judge.  At issue is whether wolf populations have fully recovered.  On one side of the matter is the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which claims that the gray wolf still needs protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA); on the other side is the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation (USSAF) and others such as Michigan United Conservation Clubs defending the 2011 delisting rule against the HSUS lawsuit.

The decision may well determine whether the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has the authority to delist recovered populations of a species, and return that recovered population to state management, while continuing to manage populations of the same species in different locales under the ESA. Read more

Animal Rights, Hunting, Wildlife

Warming Temperatures Pushing Chickadees Northward

 

The two chickadee species meet and hybridize in a narrow zone that has shifted northward 7 miles in the last decade.

Ithaca, N.Y.-The zone of overlap between two popular, closely related backyard birds is moving northward at a rate that matches warming winter temperatures, according to a study by researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Villanova University, and Cornell University. The research was published online in Current Biologyon Thursday, March 6, 2014.
In a narrow strip that runs across the eastern U.S., Carolina Chickadees from the south meet and interbreed with Black-capped Chickadees from the north. The new study finds that this hybrid zone has moved northward at a rate of 0.7 mile per year over the last decade. That’s fast enough that the researchers had to add an extra study site partway through their project in order to keep up. Read more

Wildlife

On-the-Ground volunteer efforts are making a big difference in habitat improvement

GW:  All I can think of when I see those logs is firewood.  And, I don’t care what kind of wood it is.

Rabbits and other small creatures will have some new homes at Fulton State Game Area now that a handful of volunteers – working on a Michigan-On-the-Ground program – spent a Saturday building brush piles at the Kalamazoo County site. The Michigan DNR and Michigan United Conservation Clubs have partnered to create Michigan On-the-Ground volunteer opportunities where people can work The program, a partnership between Michigan United Conservation Clubs and the Department of Natural Resources, recruits volunteers to help the DNR improve fish and wildlife habitat across the state. On-the-Ground has attracted the attention of sportsmen and others who want to help increase the productivity of state game areas, rivers and lakes.
Last Saturday, volunteers felled pre-selected trees to build lattices, which could be piled high with brush to provide nesting and escape cover for small game – like rabbits – and other critters. By noon, the crew had built 10 brush piles along the edge of an agriculture field on the area. Read more

Hunting, Wildlife

Charity Navigator Downgrades HSUS

This from www.HumaneWatch.org

Whenever we point out that the independent watchdog CharityWatch gives the Humane Society of the United States a C-minus grade, HSUS usually retorts that it gets four stars (out of four) from Charity Navigator, a different evaluator. No more.

Today we learned Charity Navigator has downgraded HSUS from four stars to three. The reason? After we filed an IRS complaint against HSUS last fall, alleging that HSUS had improperly inflated its revenue for several years, HSUS filed amended tax returns. (Independent experts, such as CharityWatch and a Minnesota tax attorney, also thought HSUS was in the wrong.) Based on this amended data, Charity Navigator has revised its rating of HSUS and downgraded the group. Read more

Animal Rights, Hunting, Wildlife
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