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March 22, 2000     NEW MEXICO TO GET MEXICAN WOLVES
SILVER CITY, N.M. (AP) Mexican gray wolves will make their reappearance in the Gila Wilderness this week.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the endangered Mexican gray wolves will be kept in special mesh pens in the Gila for up to 30 days to acclimate them to the area. The first wolves are to be moved to the pens today.

Wolves are being relocated from the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest on the Arizona-New Mexico line after some of the animals killed cattle.
Fish and Wildlife chose the Gila to release the wolves because it has extensive roadless areas free of human habitation or active cattle grazing allotments.

Four wolves from the Mule Pack are to be moved into the pens today, the agency said. The pack consists of an adult pair, with the female pregnant, and two pups born last year.

A second pack, the Pipestem, will be moved to the Gila and released later this month. That pack consists of an adult pair, with that female also pregnant; three pups born in 1999; and a 2-year-old female. Biologists have not decided whether to release the 2-year-old female, said Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Vicki Fox.

Wolves have been responsible for eight confirmed livestock kills through January, and the agency recaptured many of the animals.
Ted Turner's 210,000-acre Ladder Ranch near Truth or Consequences, N.M., is the new home for at least five wolves. Those animals are from the so-called Gavilan Pack, blamed for attacking cattle in western New Mexico in December and January.

The Mule Pack did not attack cattle but was recaptured to move the wolves to a better hunting site with more elk, Fish and Wildlife said.
The rare wolves first were released in Arizona in 1998 in a federal program to restore Mexican gray wolves to the wild. Five of the original 13 were shot, and one of 22 wolves released last year was killed by a car.
Hearings early this month in the Gila-area communities of Reserve and Silver City drew standing-room-only crowds of opponents and supporters of wolf relocation, but the opponents outnumbered those in favor.  Ranchers, who bitterly oppose moving wolves to the Gila, have said they fear attacks on humans, losses of livestock and damage to hunting.

March 21, 2000
THREATENED STATUS GRANTED FOR CANADIAN LYNX
US Fish & Wildlife Service has at long last listed the Canadian lynx as a threatened species.  The first petition to do so was in 1982.  Lynx advocates express concern that "threatened" is insufficient for the species' recovery in some areas in which they should have been given "endangered" status.

March 8, 2000
KENYA AND INDIA OPPOSE ANY IVORY TRADE
Nehemiah Rotich, director of the Kenya Wildlife Service pointed to two tons of ivory elelphant tusks his country had seized from poachers to demonstrate the effect  the limited renewal of the ivory trade in 1997 sanctioned b CITES at the request by Botswana , Namibia, and Zimbabwe  had on Nigerian elephants.  Both Nigeria and India realize that living elephants generate more tourist dollars than selling the tusks of slaughtered elephants to Japan.  The problem is that ANY legal trade in ivory  encourages poaching  by creating a chance for traffickers to insinuate their illegal ivory onto the market.  South Africa has joined in the petition to continue ivory sales which will be made at the CITES neeting in Nairobi, April 10-20.

February 17, 2000
PENNSYLVANIA PROPOSING BOBCAT TRAPPING SEASON
(retold from THE WELLSVILLE (NY) DAILY REPORTER Feb 14, 2000)
Trappers may be able to take bobcats under Game Commission plan if the Pennsylvania Game Commission approves at April 2-3 meeting in Harrisburg. 

Bobcats have been protected since 1970, but trappers have been catching and releasing almost 300 a year. (So much for selectivity of traps.) The state's bobcat population is estimated to be between 3,000 and 3,500 adults. The proposal is to issue 290 permits with the expectation of killing 175 cats. The season would be limited to trapping zones 2 and 3 in the northeast and north-central counties. Participants will have to first have a trapping license and then pay $5 (non-refundable) to make an application for one of the 290 permits.

"Mostly, I would think, it's the challenge of somebody catching a cat and wanting to get it mounted or get it tanned," said one trapper. "It's not going to be for the fur value. Bobcats are selling for maybe $20-$25 right now." Trappers will be allowed to keep the skins but must turn the rest of the body over to the Game Commission, which will use the skinned corpses for study without having to go out and find and kill them.

The bobcat population has been expanding in Pennsylvania, and it is
expected that "a trapping season with limited harvest could actually help that growth because much of the mortality is caused by old males eating the young." (It was not explained how traps could be set to catch mostly old males as opposed to young ones and females. Reducing the population will stimulate the production of larger litters as well.) Trappers anticipate a state-wide season not too far in the future.

February 12, 2000
PROPOSAL TO OPEN ONTARIO WILDERNESS PARKS TO SPORT HUNTING  The government of Premier Mike Harris is proposing to allow hunting in  the province's eight Wilderness Parks which are largely roadless and have heretofore been closed to hunting and motor vehicles. The Harris government created or has plans for 378 new parks, "Ontario's Living Legacy"  which will allow sport hunting, commercial trapping, snowmobiling and mining.  Areas around the parks will probably be leased to logging and mining interests.  According to the Toronto Star (April 25, 1999), the plan "protects development from parks--not parks from development". The Wilderness Parks  comprise vast tracts of land, each with a minimum area of c. 500 sq. km.  They are the only areas where natural diversity is allowed to run its course,  but this will no longer be the case if the plan to lump them in with the new "parks" is executed.  The province's Nature Reserves, the only areas  where wildlife will be allowed to determine its own destiny are much smaller areas. The government seems to be more attuned to organizations like the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters than it is non-consumptive outdoor recreationists.
Toronto, Ontario M7A 1W3                 Fax 416-314-2216

February 2000
VENISON-EATING WOMAN DIES OF TSE IN MAINE
A 28-year-old woman has succumbed to Creuzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), the third young American to die of this human transmissible encephalopathy (TSE).  Because of its long latency period (up to 50 years), CJD usually strikes only older adults.  The other young victims were both deer hunters believed to have contracted the disease from contact with the animals they killed.  Deer and elk, particularly in the western US, are known to suffer from a TSE known as chronic wasting disease which is similar to "mad cow" disease (BSE or bovine spongiform encephalopathy) which has spawned a new variety of CJD, nvCJD which attacks younger people.  It now appears that the disease may be present in eastern deer.

''It may be a coincidence,'' said Dr. Pierluigi Gambetti, professor of
pathology and director of the National Prion Disease Pathology  Surveillance Center at Case Western University in Cleveland, where the Centers for Disease Control sends its human brain samples. ''It
would be imprudent to say there is a danger of an epidemic. But, yes, it's something that has to be studied.''