Yellowstone Grizzlies: How Many Could Hunters Kill?

As Endangered Species Act protection ends, it’s all about the numbers.

Editor’s note: For more on grizzlies, see our feature investigation, “Yellowstone Grizzlies Face Unbearable Divides”

The total number of grizzly bears that will be available for hunting inside the Yellowstone Demographic Monitoring Area each year will depend on the annual estimated grizzly population.

The Demographic Monitoring Areas covers 16,000 square miles and includes Yellowstone and Grand Tetons national parks, surrounding national forests and wilderness areas and the Wind River Indian Reservation.

Up to 20 grizzly bears could be hunted in 2017 based on 2016 population estimates and acceptable federally set mortality limits. Trophy hunting is highly unlikely in 2017 because the three states bordering Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks intend to hold public hearings before hunting rules are finalized.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has set an annual population goal of 674 bears within the Demographic Monitoring Area, which is the estimated average population between 2002 and 2014.

The agency has set total mortality rates for independent males, independent females and dependent young in order to maintain the target population. The mortality rates increase as the population rises above 674.

Last year there were an estimated 695 bears in the monitoring area. The maximum mortality limits for independent males at this size of population was 20 percent and for independent females and dependent young 9 percent.

The estimated number of independent males in 2016 two years and older was 238. The estimated number of independent females two years and older was also 238. The estimated number of dependent young was 213.

Based on these numbers, the total acceptable mortality for independent males last year would have been 47.6 (20 percent of 238). The total acceptable mortality for independent females would have been 21.4 (9 percent of 238).  The total acceptable mortality rate for dependent young would have been 19.17 (9 percent of 213).

grizzly hunting quotas
If mortality from all causes other than legal hunting is less than the total number of allowable deaths based on the mortality percentage at corresponding population levels, then the difference can be allocated to the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho for possible trophy hunts. Source: Federal Register/Vol. 82, No. 125/Friday, June 30, 2017

According to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team 2016 annual report, the actual number of independent male deaths within the monitoring area last year was 37. The total number of independent female deaths was 12. And the total number of dependent young deaths was 9.

This means that if hunting is allowed in 2017 the total number of independent male grizzlies that could be shot would be approximately 11 (47.6 – 37 = 10.6). The total number of independent females that could be killed by hunters would be approximately 9 (21.4 – 12 = 9.4).

Hunting of dependent young will not be allowed within the monitoring area.

Wyoming is allocated 58 percent of the total number of bears that can be hunted each year; Montana will receive 34 percent and Idaho 8 percent. If hunting is allowed in 2017, Wyoming would have the right to hunt approximately 12 grizzly bears, Montana 7 and Idaho 2 (allowing for rounding).

If the total estimated population falls below 600, no hunting will be allowed unless necessary to address human safety.

The are no limits on the number of Yellowstone grizzlies that can be hunted in the zone between Demographic Monitoring Area boundary and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem boundary. Each state will determine how many bears can be hunted in this region.

Air Pollution Linked to Stress, Heart Disease

A new study reveals that air pollution from industrial sources increases levels of five different stress hormones.

A new study reveals new details about the effects of air pollution on the human body. The study, out of China, finds that air pollution from industrial sources increases levels of five different stress hormones: cortisol, cortisone, epinephrine and norepinephrine. It also caused negative metabolic changes, including increases in blood sugar, amino acids, fatty acids and lipids. All of these effects were lessened by air purification systems. The study used conditions of 53 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter of air, well above levels in the U.S. but typical of pollution levels in some other parts of the world.

Florida Anglers Are Targeting Endangered Sharks

Not only that, they’re giving each other tips on how to get away with it.

Some Florida fishermen are purposefully flouting laws and reeling in endangered sharks, an important new paper reveals.

The illegal activities were uncovered by shark researcher David Shiffman, who studied postings on the online message boards of the South Florida Shark Club, the largest club in the state for fishermen who practice from piers or beaches. Shiffman examined more than 1,250 posts by these land-based anglers and found evidence of people knowingly catching protected species such as lemon sharks (Negaprion breivirostris), sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus), tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier), and three hammerhead shark species (Sphyrna lewini, S. mokarran, and S. zygaea). At least 389 sharks were illegally caught, according to his analysis.

“I was somewhat shocked to see all this evidence of illegal fishing, along with so much evidence that some anglers know that it is illegal, right out in the open like this,” says Shiffman, a postdoctoral research fellow at Simon Fraser University.

The study looked at posts between 2010 and 2015. Some of these species gained protection in Florida in 2012, but Shiffman’s analysis found that the new state laws had no effect on the anglers’ practices. Not only did reports of landing these species continue, users posted that they knew what they were doing. “I won’t stop fishing because of this law, and I hope no one else stops either,” one user wrote. “We are outlaws now,” wrote another.

Even worse, the message board posts revealed that certain anglers were even giving each other tips on how to avoid getting caught and punished for their crimes. “Be smart, protect our sport by not naming specific beaches where you plan to fish in order to avoid any further conflicts,” wrote one. “They have to catch you fishing in state waters,” wrote another. One user recommended that people kill state-protected sharks in federal waters outside of Florida state jurisdiction.

The study, published this week in the journal Fisheries Research, comes out just a few weeks after media reports about abusive behavior toward sharks in Florida, including one shocking video of a man dragging a shark behind his speeding boat.

Land-based angling is far less dramatic as that now-notorious video, but Shiffman says it still poses a significant danger for sharks, even if the fishermen are practicing catch-and-release. “Land-based shark fishing has the potential to introduce much more stress to sharks as they are dragged over rough terrain while lacking the buoyant support of water, which means that even if sharks are released, they are less likely to survive if handled this way,” he says.

Shiffman says the research into this problem began because media reports often celebrate anglers bringing in big fish but fail to point out if the catches are protected endangered species. “We learned of this angling club from some of that media coverage and found their online forum shortly after,” he says. “The content on that forum contains years’ worth of useful data for a study like this, and it’s all publicly available.”

Anglers don’t kill as many sharks as commercial fishing, but they still have an effect on the region’s sharks. “There are over 1,000 registered users on this forum,” Shiffman says. “And while they may not represent the same level of threat worldwide as commercial fisheries do, they’re certainly having a significant impact on local population dynamics of threatened and protected species like hammerheads.”

Luckily, the analysis also reveals that the worst attitudes were far from universal among club members. “I was pleased to discover that many of these anglers appear to have a strong conservation ethic and that many are concerned about shark conservation in general,” Shiffman says. “However, they believe that the only problem sharks face is commercial fishing and that their own activities can’t have any impact, which is demonstrably false.” He points out that there are more recreational anglers than commercial fishermen and that they kill more sharks in the U.S. every year than their professional counterparts.

Shiffman says the goal of his paper is to “shine a light on some troubling practices that are currently happening in the shadows.” He says he expects similar activities to be taking place in other popular shark-fishing states such as North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

That, he says, shows that we should be paying much more attention to recreational shark fishing than we do now and that anglers need to be made part of the solution. “I think our results show that recreational fishing should get much more research, management and advocacy attention than it currently does. We also showed that there is a significant community of anglers that feels like they don’t have a seat at the table, and that they therefore are less likely to agree with or follow decisions made at that table.”

That’s important, because as Shiffman wrote in his paper, “a detailed understanding of stakeholder motivations can improve communications between policymakers and stakeholders.” Once that communication begins, maybe the illegal fishing will start to decline.

Previously in The Revelator:

Film Fakery: Does Shark Week Harm Conservation Efforts?

5/9: The Day We Passed the Climate Tipping Point

Climate change isn't a temporary fad, and it isn't going away.

“Five-nine” doesn’t have quite the cadence as “nine-eleven,” but when we look back on the early 21st century, I believe that May 9, 2013 — the day the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in recorded history — may in the future be understood as a far more important date than September 11, 2001. It may even be that 5/9 will be seen as the long-anticipated tipping point at which human impacts caused irrevocable harm to our planet.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps there’s still time to take the concrete, immediate actions experts suggest — along the minimum efforts laid out in the 2015 Paris accord that amplified suggestions made by President Barack Obama in his June 25, 2013 speech at Georgetown University — that would ensure a sustainable, high-quality future.

Tipping points are the cusp between one set of conditions and another; when a tipping point is passed, change is rapid, uncontrolled and often irreversible. Passing a tipping point is like crossing a threshold from one room to another and having the door triple-locked behind you; the state of the world after the tipping point is very different from the state of the world before the tipping point, and it is very difficult to go back.

It’s important to make this distinction, because Malcolm Gladwell erroneously redefined tipping points more than a decade ago in his book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. In doing so, he changed the way we think about rapidly emerging social phenomena, such as the Dutch tulip frenzy, the housing bubble, or the re-emergence of a market for Hush Puppies. Although many have argued that the publication of The Tipping Point itself was a tipping point in how we think and talk about tipping points, Gladwell weakly equated tipping points with viral epidemics. This misleading analogy obscured the true meaning of “tipping point,” leading to confusion in how we think about responding to rapid environmental change.

Epidemics, you see, require an initial infection in a particular individual, a pool of nearby people susceptible to the same infection, and a way for the disease to be transmitted to the susceptible individuals. Gladwell similarly invoked mavens, connectors and salesmen who collect and transmit new ideas to the wider world to explain the rapid emergence of new social phenomena. But this analogy doesn’t necessarily work; resistance evolves to new diseases, epidemics peak and burn out, and most new social phenomena are simply fads. In fact all of the examples in The Tipping Point — the sudden emergence of fax machines and Airwalk sneakers, the resurgence of sales of Hush Puppies suede shoes, the rise and fall of crime rate in many cities (that is rising once again in some), and sudden epidemics of suicides — are of explosions of interest in new phenomena followed by a return to the status quo ante and a search for the next new fad. But they are not tipping points.

In contrast, economists, sociologists, historians, ecologists, climatologists, oceanographers and most others who for decades have given serious study to tipping points focus on rapid, seemingly permanent changes. In modern parlance, a tipping point presages a change in regime. And the prime example of a tipping point in the natural world is, many feel, climate change. Bill McKibben and the thousands of followers of 350.org working to solve the climate crisis assert that we passed a tipping point in the 1980s, when human industry caused the concentration of atmospheric CO2 to exceed 350 ppm: the so-called “safe” level of CO2 in the atmosphere. President Obama noted at Georgetown that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been measuring CO2 since the 1950s because of that agency’s even earlier concern that the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would disrupt the fragile balance of nature that makes our planet so hospitable to life and push us over the tipping point that leads to a planet beyond repair.

So on 5/9 — when NOAA’s observatory atop Mauna Loa, Hawaii, recorded a concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that exceeded 400 parts per million (0.04 percent) for the first time in recorded history — a tipping point finally may have been passed. Although the deciduous forests of the northern hemisphere that provide New England with spectacular colors every fall will inhale some of that CO2 as they leaf out every spring, those great “lungs of the planet” cannot keep the CO2 in the atmosphere below 400 ppm. And even if an all-powerful deity were to manage to convince us to stop burning of all fossil fuels today, the “inertia” in the climate system would ensure that the Earth’s temperature would keep increasing and sea levels would continue to rise another meter or two over the next 2,000 years.

The inexorable warming of the planet caused by an ever-denser blanket of CO2 above us is not a fad — on 5/9, we passed a tipping point and entered a new world. This new reality is a consequence of our lifestyles intersecting with fundamental and unbreakable laws of physics. We simply need to own up to the fact that we are in a new climatic regime; global warming indeed is happening now. It’s not a short-term trend, and it’s not going away.

© 2017 Aaron M. Ellison. All rights reserved

The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity, or their employees.

Rethinking the Big, Bad Wolf

Science shows that killing wolves does more harm than good.

Last month the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife killed its first wolf from the Smackout pack after deciding that the animals were preying on too many cows in the state’s Colville National Forest. The state’s action came after its “Wolf Advisory Group” concluded that “lethal action” was the best way to manage the pack’s population following a string of attacks on livestock on grazing allotments in the forest, despite the fact that numerous scientific studies have proven that livestock predation actually increases when wolves and other large predator animals are killed.

Almost 5,000 miles away, across the continental United States and Atlantic Ocean, a similar situation is playing out in Denmark. There wolves have established a population for the first time in more than 200 years, thanks to reproductive success in nearby Germany. As in the western United States, the argument that wolves should be managed according to science is playing out against livestock-owner and hunting-industry desires to use lethal measures to stop the animals from preying on stock and game. It’s a contentious struggle — and one that has its origins in Europe itself.

“Wolves and other predator animals have been persecuted in Europe for hundreds of years by ranchers who want to protect their animals from attacks,” says Hans Peter Hansen, a social scientist studying wolf policy at Aarhus University in Denmark. “Because today there are more people and more livestock, there is less room for wolves. And this has made it necessary for governments to ‘manage’ wolves, or ranchers might just wipe them all out.”

When settlers came from Europe to North America, they brought their livestock with them. This new presence of Europeans and livestock led to the widespread and systematic persecution of predators in North America. By the early 16th century, chicken, cattle, horses, goats, sheep and pigs began populating farms in the American West, and colonists protected their livestock with guns. This, combined with hunters’ thirst for wolf pelts, led to a massive decline in wolf populations. In some areas wolves were completed wiped off the map.

Today ranchers in Europe and the United States are still dealing with wolves and other predators in much the same way as they did in the 16th century: They shoot them — or lobby government wildlife managers to shoot them — when the packs prey on livestock.

While killing wolves that attack livestock may give ranchers short-term peace of mind, it’s more likely to plague them with long-term aggravation, according to the latest science. Researchers have found that killing wolves upsets pack dynamics — especially when young wolves are involved, like those in the Smackout pack — which leads ultimately to yet more livestock deaths. In one study scientists found that for each additional wolf killed, the expected average number of preyed-on livestock increased by 5 percent to 6 percent per herd for cattle and 4 percent for sheep.

Fewer wolves also means more of the prey they used to hunt, which can create a whole new set of problems. In particular, hooved wildlife such as elk and deer can overpopulate in a given environment. When there are too many of these hooved animals, plant life becomes overgrazed and entire ecosystems begin to fray. Unsurprisingly, livestock also contribute to overgrazing.

Further compounding wolf-management quandaries are European and U.S. policies that allow for livestock grazing, with permits, on public lands — the same public lands where wolves live. Wildlife managers encourage ranchers not to kill wolves immediately, but instead try using livestock guardian dogs, fences and alarms, lights and nonlethal ammunition. The key to effective nonlethal predator control involves a variety of tactics to keep wolves on their toes; it also requires “thinking like a wolf,” according to a recent Defenders of Wildlife report on the subject.

While nonlethal forms of predator control can help keep wolves at bay, in many cases — including the Smackout Pack case — that isn’t enough to stop livestock predation, according to Brenda Peterson, author of the new book Wolf Nation: The Life, Death and Return of Wild American Wolves. “Despite whatever nonlethal measures may have been being employed to prevent conflicts between the wolves and livestock, it’s clear that with a sustained proximity like this, the cattle should be moved elsewhere,” says Peterson. “The land where the cattle are being grazed is public lands, and the livestock owner has a permit to graze there — it is a permit, not an absolute right. From the facts we know at this point, it appears that alternative grazing locations should have been identified and the cattle relocated.”

Instead of forcing grazing allotment moves, the Wolf Advisory Group has agreed to kill off some of the Smackout pack wolves, a situation similar to that which played out last year in Colville National Forest when Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife killed off seven of 11 of the wolves in the Profanity Peak pack, which had also been preying on livestock. Peterson says the park has lots of downed trees, allowing the cows to spread out and making them vulnerable to predation.

Denmark’s wildlife managers face a similar situation: Ranchers are complaining that nonlethal measures to keep wolves from the country’s new pack — of six wolves — away from livestock aren’t working. So they’re considering the same type of management that’s being used in the United States, with one significant difference: It will be based on science, says Hansen. “We would make biologists’ voices prominent during meetings,” he adds. “Such experts can provide rural communities that might be afraid of wolves with facts that can help people understand why it’s important to have wolves.”

In the American West, some wolf advocates criticize the Wolf Advisory Group, accusing it of ignoring the best science when it decided twice in the past year to slaughter wolves. One of these advocates is Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf advocate with the Center of Biological Diversity (which publishes The Revelator). Weiss is a biologist and former lawyer who assesses conservation-agency actions and policies to ensure they fall in line with state and federal laws and follow the best available science.

“Wolf advisory groups that are established by state agencies do not have as a goal enforcing the law or following the best available science,” says Weiss. “Their goal is to reach social compromise.”

I saw this conflict in action last summer when I backpacked for a few days across Gila National Forest to look for endangered Mexican gray wolves, which have a controversial history in the west. After long-term, cooperative efforts to bring these wolves back from the brink of extinction, federal wildlife officials are tasked with releasing captive-born wolves into states that don’t want them, namely Arizona and New Mexico. While entering and exiting Silver City, which leads to the forest, I encountered large billboards and road signs opposing wolves’ very existence. “No, no, no wolves,” one proclaimed.

I found plenty of deer, elk and cattle in the forest, but no wolves. Maybe that’s not surprising: Only 113 wolves currently live in the Arizona and New Mexico wilderness. In recent years western state agencies updated a draft recovery plan for the wolves that conservation groups criticize as insufficient because it defines “recovery” as establishing “adequate gene diversity” among the population — once 22 captive-bred wolves are released and reach breeding age in a given geographic area. But it doesn’t measure whether or not a wolf breeds once it reaches reproductive age, according to conservationists.

And, as illustrated by the situation in Denmark where all the new wolves are migrants or descendants of migrants, these canines can easily cross geographic lines. So limiting Mexican gray wolves — or any other wolf populations — to a specific area is virtually impossible. This complicates the politics of wolf management, which in the United States is largely delineated from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to states and community advisory groups. That legal structure pits the people who want to get rid of wolves against the people who want to save them, and sometimes ignores the best available science that should be used to guide wolf management.

Perhaps the West should look at Hansen’s goals for inspiration. “We live in this world of Trumpism — that all too often ignores the facts,” he says. “For past 15 years I have worked to create spaces to give all people a say on an equal level to deliberate with each other with all the facts on the table. And strange things happen. People who can be the most destructive voices in the public debate, who exercise distorted communication change and become responsible, grow with the task. It’s encouraging, something we need to explore much more.”

© 2017 Erica Cirino. All rights reserved.

Previously in The Revelator:

The Big Picture: Cyanide Killers

On World Lion Day, a Queen is Lost

Lady Liuwa, the lonely lioness who spent more than a decade as the last of her kind in Zimbabwe’s Liuwa Plain National Park, has died of natural causes on the eve of World Lion Day. A survivor of poaching and illegal trophy hunting, Lady Liuwa wandered the park by herself from the late 1990s until 2010, when the first of several companions were successfully transported to Liuwa. Alas, the story since then remained full of near-constant tragedies, but also some hope. Lady Liuwa never bred, but her impact continues with efforts to restore the once-ravaged park. African Parks has the history and a tribute to this resilient big cat.

The Big Picture: Cyanide Killers

USDA’s Wildlife Services kills thousands of animals a year with exploding cyanide capsules.

The term “M-44” sounds innocuous — almost like the name of a rural highway — but the reality is far more sinister.

M-44s are actually small, lethal devices used on farms and similar sites to kill so-called “pest” animals such as coyotes and foxes. The devices — a favored tool of a U.S. Department of Agriculture program called Wildlife Services — lure animals in with the smell of tasty bait, then inject a deadly dose of sodium cyanide directly into their mouths.

Technically known as “cyanide injector devices,” M-44s have earned the more lurid nickname: “cyanide bombs.”

Recent studies have shown that lethal control of predators actually tends to increase livestock deaths, but Wildlife Services continues to use outdated science — and animals die as a result.

It’s not just coyotes that are killed by M-44s. Since 2010, 14,431 animals have been killed each year on average by these poison bombs.
Select a species to view fatalities caused by cyanide bombs
Move the slider to view fatalities for all species

M-44s are typically stuck in the ground out in the wild where anything — or anyone — might find them, making them indiscriminate killers.

Wildlife isn’t alone, though. M-44s have been blamed for the deaths of numerous pet dogs, and even injured a child in 2017 after he touched what he said looked like “a sprinkler sticking out of the ground.”

With intentional and accidental deaths stacking up, many conservation organizations — including the Center for Biological Diversity, publishers of The Revelator — have called for and even sued to stop Wildlife Services from employing M-44s. As of this writing, however, their use continues.

  • References: USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service – Program Data Report
  • Image credits: Coyote by USFWS Pacific Southwest Region; Coyote portrait by Jean-Guy Dallaire/Flickr CC BY-NC 3.0; Gray fox by lonewolv/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0; Swift fox by Cburnett/Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0; Golden Eagle by Tom Koerner/USFWS; Ringtail by National Park Service; Bald eagle by USFWSmidwest; Collared Peccary by Nilfanion/Wikimedia CCY BY 3.0; Bobcat by Jitze Couperus/Flickr CC BY 2.0; Striped Skunk by animalphotos/DeviantArt CC BY-NC 3.0; Fisher by ForestWander/Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0; Marmot by Inklein/Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0; Raven by Ingrid Taylar/Flickr CC BY 2.0; Black Bear by Ryan Poplin/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0

 

Editor’s Note: The day after publication of this story, several conservation groups, including The Revelator‘s publisher, the Center for Biological Diversity, petitioned the EPA to ban the use of M-44 cyanide bombs.