Wildlife Management

I see that once again the anti-hunters have duped some bleeding-heart liberal San Francisco judge into trying to block a legally and biologically sound hunt for mountain lions. I only hope that the general public will not be duped by their sensationalism and emotionalism. Hunters and the dollars they contribute to our wildlife in this state play a vital role in wildlife management. The anti-hunters will never relent to having a hunt in this state. Most other Western states have lion hunts each year and their lion population is no where as high as California's nor do the hunts diminish the lion populations.

Endangered species are so concentrated in Southern California and a few other hot spots that conservation efforts should be targeted there to help stem the country's loss of biodiversity, researchers will report today. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, in an article that accompanied the report in the journal Science, said the new data will help revise federal policies to save animals and plants at risk of extinction.

Officials should be allowed to kill federally protected sea lions and seals as a last resort when the animals prey on a declining fish population such as salmon, a federal report to Congress says. The report by the National Marine Fisheries Services says the rapidly growing populations of California sea lions and Pacific harbor seals on the West Coast are harming salmon stocks and other declining fish species.

More than 5,000 hunters met Friday's deadline to apply for 235 licenses in Florida's first alligator hunt in 25 years. The lucky winners won't be allowed to use guns. Once an endangered species, the American alligator now numbers about 1 million in Florida and is increasingly encountering humans as the number of people in the state also grows.

Early this year a Montana forest ranger found an ailing bald eagle by the side of a road and took it to Jeff McPartlin, who was known for rehabilitating raptors--birds of prey. The eagle had ingested some poison, but McPartlin nursed it and two weeks later released it at the headquarters of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks along the Missouri River near Great Falls. Margaret Adams, an Audubon Society official, said she once took an injured great horned owl to McPartlin.

The alert went out as darkness enveloped Yosemite Valley. "Bear in campground, moving toward the orchard," said a voice on the radio. By the time wildlife technician Joe Madison arrived, the offending bruin was gone. That was unfortunate. If the chance had presented itself, Madison would have shot the bear with a beanbag to deliver a painful but necessary message: Go back to the woods. Now. Nowhere else do the lives of so many people and black bears intersect as in Yosemite National Park.

Now that their work in eradicating polio is nearly over, the green monkeys of Barbados face a life behind bars. More than 2,000 of the small monkeys idle in 3-foot-high cages at the Barbados Primate Research Center, stacked row upon row at a vast maintenance yard, conjuring the image of a primate cellblock.

For Slick Gardner, starting a horse sanctuary on his 2,000-acre ranch must have seemed like a great idea at the time. But that was before outraged animal lovers got together and before the county he once called "the Soviet Union of Santa Barbara" came down on him.

If you ask Jon Fischer, he'll tell you point-blank that nature isn't always pretty, and that people's efforts to save California's cute, cuddly animals don't always have the heart-warming endings of Disney movies. In fact, the best of intentions often go sadly awry, and the fox, goat or deer the public is trying to save ends up in a zoo, or even dies. Or an adorable creature is saved, but smaller animals that it preys upon hover dangerously closer to extinction.

Mike Windham, wildlife biologist for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, flew his Cessna 180 float plane over the Mississippi River where it spills into the Gulf of Mexico. "See that big bay over there on the west side of the river?" Windham asked as he passed low over the Pass A Loutre Wildlife Management Area. "That bay was all marshland, 10,000 acres of prime wetlands 30 years ago.