Cascadia Wildlands

Posts Tagged ‘Oregon’

Feb11

Exciting Leadership Transition at Cascadia Wildlands

Dear Cascadia Wildlands Supporters,

Bushwacking through head-high ferns to find the elusive Devil’s Staircase waterfall. Watching salmon thrash upstream to their natal grounds. Hearing the pre-dawn keer of the marbled murrelet high in the canopy. Knowing wolves are reclaiming their rightful place back in Cascadia. Educating and empowering communities to confront power imbalances. These are the things that keep me feeling alive and ever committed to the work of Cascadia Wildlands.

It is an exciting time for me. I’ve recently been asked by Cascadia Wildlands’ Board of Directors to serve as our interim executive director as Bob Ferris phases into retirement.

I’m determined to lead our powerful team into the future and further realize our vision of vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia bioregion.

I’m grateful for what Bob brought to Cascadia Wildlands over the past three years to make us a stronger organization. His expertise in conservation biology, decades of non-profit experience, and his ability to dig up the dirt on and expose the despoilers of wild nature are just a few things that have helped take us to the next level.

Every day, I’m amazed at what we have accomplished for a conservation organization our size. I get even more fired up for what we have our sights on. Because 2015 may be the year gray wolves get established in the Kalmiposis Wilderness, northern California, Oregon’s Willamette National Forest, and Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Much of Oregon’s remarkable wolf recovery has been facilitated by our legal challenge that halted wolf killing in Oregon and ensuing landmark settlement agreement that created the strongest wolf plan in the country.

Please dig deep to help Cascadia accomplish this critical work in the 2015 year by making a tax-deductible donation today.

With continued determination, we will have a lasting conservation solution for Oregon’s 93,000-acre Elliott State Forest now that we have ground old-growth clearcutting to a halt. This year we hope to put a nail in the coffin of the proposed 150-foot-wide, 230-mile-long liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipeline and export facility slated for Coos Bay that would wreak havoc for salmon, wildlife and our climate. And we will continue to fight tooth-and-nail against the 6,000-acre Big Thorne old-growth timber sale in Alaska’s fabled Tongass National Forest (image at left) in Cascadia’s northern reaches.

Having been with Cascadia Wildlands essentially since its formation over 15 years ago, I’m excited, rejuvenated and ready to lead the organization into the future. Thanks for believing in us, taking action when called on, and supporting our conservation work over the years and into the future. Don’t hesitate to contact me with any thoughts or questions.

GIVE NOW
To Support Cascadia

Will you join me in supporting Cascadia right now?

For a wild and free Cascadia,

Josh Laughlin Signature

Josh Laughlin
Interim Executive Director/Campaign Director
jlaughlin(at)cascwild(dot)org

P.S. You can also mail a check or money order made out to Cascadia Wildlands and send it to POB 10455, Eugene, OR 97440.

Photo Credits: Top left, Josh Laughlin, Interim Executive Director of Cascadia Wildlands, at Devil's Staircase in 2012. (Photo courtesy Cascadia Wildlands.) Middle right, Subadult and pup from the Imnaha Pack, taken July 2013. (Photo by ODFW.) Bottom left, Breathtaking photo of the Tongass National Forest. (Photo courtesy of David Beebe.)

Posted by kaley in About Us, Blog, Campaigns, Caring for Cascadia’s Carnivores, Combating Climate Change, Home Page Hot Topic, In The Media, Keeping Rural Economies Vibrant, News, Press Room, Protecting Forests and Wild Places, Restoring Wolves and Other Species, Save Our Wild Salmon Heritage, Strategic Litigation

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Jan15

Cascadia Challenges BLM Clearcutting Just Northeast of Eugene

Press Release
For Immediate Release
January 15, 2015

Contact:
Nick Cady, Legal Director, Cascadia Wildlands, 541-434-1463
Doug Heiken, Conservation and Restoration Coordinator, Oregon Wild, 541-344-0675

Conservationists Challenge Largest Eugene BLM Clearcut in 20 Years

Forests Slated For Clearcutting in Second Show

EUGENE, Ore.— Conservation organizations filed a lawsuit today challenging the largest clearcut approved on federal land in Lane County in twenty years. The Second Show timber sale proposes 259 acres of public lands clearcutting and is located on public Bureau of Land Management lands just outside of Springfield, Oregon near Shotgun Creek. Clearcutting will have significant impacts to the watershed, which is already degraded, and will impact a popular recreation area.

“It is a shame to see the BLM moving forward with this sale after the incredible amount of public opposition it received,” said Nick Cady, legal director with Cascadia Wildlands. “This sale could have real and devastating consequences on watershed health, salmon, and clean water for the surrounding communities.”

Despite the large scope of the project, the BLM neglected to analyze the effects of the project in conjunction with its ongoing commercial logging and road construction in the same area. A basic tenant of environmental law is that federal agencies cannot evaluate projects in a vacuum, they must take into account the additive impact to the surrounding community based upon current ongoing or proposed projects. In this case, the BLM has already moved forward on 1500 acres of commercial logging and over 25 miles of logging and access roads. The Second Show sale proposes clearcutting one of the few healthy, maturing stands remaining in the area.

“These forests are older than your grandpa and are developing fine habitat if we leave them alone. Every indication is that we need to protect forests like this for fish, wildlife, water quality, and to protect our climate,” said Doug Heiken of Oregon Wild. “We have worked with BLM for the last decade helping them meet timber targets by thinning dense young forests. Now they are reverting to the destructive clearcutting practices of the past. It feels like a slap in the face.”

Cascadia Wildlands and Oregon Wild officially raised these concerning issues to the Bureau of Land Management numerous times, but the Bureau neglected to respond due to purported mistakes by the Springfield postal service.

For a copy of the complaint click here: Second Show Complaint

Posted by nsc425 in Campaign News Updates, Home Page Hot Topic, In The Media, Oregon Campaigns, Press Room, Protect Public Forests, Protecting Forests and Wild Places, Uncategorized, Western Oregon BLM Lands

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Oct08

Annual Bear Cub Orphaning Hangs on Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission Vote

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: Nick Cady: 541-434-1463; nick@cascwild.org

Annual Bear Cub Orphaning Hangs on Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission Vote

(September 8, 2014) – Cascadia Wildlands and a coalition of conservation groups are urging Gov. John Kitzhaber and the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to reject the “Siskiyou Plus” proposal to expand springtime black bear hunting in southwest Oregon, during a time in which mother bears are nursing dependent cubs. The coalition of local and national conservation groups sent letters in advance of the commission vote.

Nick Cady, legal director of Cascadia Wildlands said: “Expanding the spring bear hunt and putting mother bears with young cubs at risk is simply nonsensical. Orphaning more bear cubs in the state will lead to higher levels of human/bear conflict and result in an increased cost to taxpayers.”

In Oregon, it is unlawful to kill cubs less than one-year-old or mother bears with cubs less than one-year-old. However, by increasing the number of tags offered during the spring nursing season, the likelihood of accidentally taking mother black bears is also increased. Since cubs are dependent on their mothers for survival for 16 to 17 months, orphaned cubs will likely die from starvation, exposure to the elements or predation.

Scott Beckstead, Oregon senior state director for The Humane Society of the United States, said: “If this dangerous proposal passes, the chances of orphaning bear cubs in Oregon will greatly increase. Mother bears regularly forage at great distances from their cubs, which may cause hunters to mistakenly believe they’ve shot a lone female, dooming the cubs.”

The Siskiyou Plus bear hunt seeks to open up a new geographic area in southwestern Oregon to spring bear hunting, and will offer more than 200 additional bear-hunting tags.

Sally Mackler, Oregon carnivore representative for Predator Defense, said: “It is disingenuous to hold spring bear hunts and at the same time prohibit killing cubs less than a year old. Spring bear hunts inevitably result in the killing of mother bears and their cubs being subjected to prolonged and painful deaths.”

Oregon voters have twice favored providing strong protection for bears in statewide ballot contests. Liberalizing spring bear hunting would be at odds with voter sentiment in the state.

######

Link to coalition letter

Posted by bob in Bears, Black Bears, Caring for Cascadia’s Carnivores, Home Page Hot Topic, Press Room, Uncategorized

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Sep11

Female wolf is Northwest descendant: Trail cameras first spotted OR-7’s black female companion in May (an Excerpt)

By Lacey Jarrell

Klamath Falls Herald and News

September 6, 2014

The mysterious female wolf that mated with OR-7 is a confirmed descendant of Northwest wolves.

According to a press release, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has received the results of scat samples sent to the University of Idaho for analysis. The samples, collected in Southwest Oregon in May and July, identified OR-7’s mate and two of the pair’s pups as wolves.

************

Cascadia Wildlands Executive Director Bob Ferris dubbed OR-7’s female companion “Wandering Wanda,” or just Wanda for short, in a June blog post for his organization.

“We got tired of calling her the uncollared wolf that came from nowhere,” Ferris said. “Wanda probably wandered as far as OR-7 and her story is probably just as remarkable as his.”

Ferris said although Wanda is just a nickname, he believes it’s a reasonable solution to talking about a well-known animal that doesn’t have anything to call it by. ODFW spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy said biologists don’t name wolves; however, as a function of being collared, wolves are given an identification, such as OR-7’s. Dennehy said “OR” represents the state — Oregon — and “7” indicates he was the seventh wolf collared in Oregon.

Link to full article

Posted by bob in Bring Back Wolves, California Wolves, Home Page Hot Topic, In The Media, Oregon Wolves, Uncategorized, Wolves and Allies

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Aug21

A Clearcut Decision

By Bob Ferris

Francis Eatherington and I walked some timber sales yesterday near Roseburg (these are her pictures). It was good for us to spend time together because we do not often get to do that—particularly where we get to walk in the

trees and talk in that way that people do when walking in the woods.

In the grand scheme of things neither of the sales was particularly horrendous or anything that made us happy in any way. Did we like them? No. Could they have been better conceptualized? Yes. Were we going to make our feelings known? Yes. Would we sue? Probably not.

On one site we measured two huge trees (one Douglas Fir and one Incense Cedar) in the 5.5 to 6 foot in diameter range (DBH). Real beauties whose post-harvest future seemed bleak. We took pictures and rubbed our hands with dirt when we encountered the ubiquitous pitch on the surfaces we grabbed as we slipped down the slope and looked for big trees.

I had walked timber sales before and seen clearcuts along with other massively destructive forestry acts, but the whole exercise helped me understand how my world differs from Francis’ work in that I work to protect and restore and she has a smoking boot applied as a brake on a runaway stage coach. My world is largely depressing but her world seemed potentially debilitating. (Clearly forests can make me reflective.)

I also had a thought while looking up the hill towards these timber sales. My gaze drifted across the barren expanse of a clearcut on private lands replanted with something approaching 600 seedlings per acre and an emerging flora that only seems to make sense to an herbicide enabled 2X4 but not to anything that would want to live on those slopes. My thought had to do with land ownership.

I have owned large tracts of land (and even harvested timber on those lands) and many members of my family have held that same responsibility. And there is invariably a time when you hold your cup of coffee, day-end cocktail or partner and stare out across your acreage. The words running around in your head differ but generally they are about some kind of pride about the fact that you own the land and are managing it well and responsibly.

The pride-fullness swells most when you know that you are managing the land so that it supports your needs and values as well as not being the aesthetic and ecological disaster that looms in the darkest recesses of your human and wild neighbors’ nightmares. If your end result does not meet or exceed these fairly modest criteria—whether you are an individual or corporation—you really ought to ask yourself why not? Now you can rationalize your actions by claiming that it is cheaper, the trees grow straighter or it will all grow back, but you cannot get around the fact that had you done it responsibly that we would not be wrestling now over owls, murrelets, and salmon.

It may seem like an overly simplified notion and far too obvious, but these species did not just voluntarily jump off a cliff. They have been pushed and pushed hard over that precipice. Perhaps as we rush headlong into these must-pass bills to accelerate this "speeding stage coach," we should stop to look at this image of a clearcut and ask ourselves collectively if this fills us with pride and demonstrates our responsible stewardship of lands. Did I mention that walks in the woods make me reflective?

Posted by bob in Blog, Home Page Hot Topic, Protect Public Forests, Uncategorized

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Jul28

Cruising Through a Three Dog (Pup) Night

By Bob Ferris

In conservation there are always turning points.

For instance, I remember working on a swan project in the 1990s that involved ultra-light aircraft and imprinting young Trumpeters to teach them a migration route. My boss at the time, Rodger Schlickeisen (below left at left), turned to me the morning of the first leg of the trial migration and said: Do you think this is going to work?

In the time leading up to that point I had not given failure much thought, but I did then. We had invested more than two hundred thousand dollars in the project and I was getting more and more nervous as the ultra-light cruised back and forth and none of the swans rose to follow. All our months of efforts selling the Atlantic Flyway Council on the idea, getting the permits, and training the swans came down to this one moment in time.

And then Yo-Yo the swan (at right above) took flight and the others followed. I was ecstatic. The project had pivoted on the wing beats of a young and improbably named swan who simply did what swans had done for hundreds of thousands of years—took off after the “leading parent” and started its first long flight.

My wife and I were getting ready to return from a family trip to California, when I got the news that Wanda and Journey had at least three pups rather than the two that we had originally thought (see one of the pups below right and more photos on our facebook page). This welcome news put the frosting on an already delicious cake and reminded me of that feeling so many years ago sitting by that frosty field when Yo-Yo took off.

We hit Dunsmuir, California about 10PM and for some reason we just started to

howl. Perhaps it was the glow off Mount Shasta or the acknowledgement of what was happening wolf-wise to the north of us.

Or maybe it was just the joy of turning this important corner in western wolf conservation. We were hoarse but happy when we reached Oregon and we came within legitimate howling range of Journey, Wanda and crew, but I am not sure that mattered to us in the least.

HELP WOLVES

Donate To Wolf Fund

Posted by bob in Blog, California Wolves, Home Page Hot Topic, Oregon Wolves, Restoring Wolves and Other Species, Uncategorized, Wolves and Allies

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Jun25

A Trip to Washington DC

By Francis Eatherington

During the week of June 16, representatives of Cascadia Wildlands, Oregon Wild, and KS Wild traveled to Washington DC to discuss two bills, one from Senator Wyden and one from Representative DeFazio. Both mandate an increase of logging on western Oregon BLM lands.

We had over 21 meetings with agency staff, senators and representatives. We pointed out that if laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) are weakened in Oregon (as both the Wyden and DeFazio bills propose) it sets a precedent nation-wide.

Both bills claim western Oregon BLM districts are in litigation “gridlock” because of environmental troublemakers. It’s not true. There is no gridlock. In December 2013 the BLM released information going back 6 years showing the BLM has been meeting its timber targets when averaged over all western Oregon districts. For instance, in 2012, the timber target for the 6 BLM districts with O&C land was 203 mmbf (million board feet). The exceeded that by offering 205.4 mmbf of mostly non-controversial, non-litigated timber sales. It is hyperbole to call this “gridlock.” Instead, the problem is that the BLM Districts with dryer forests (Medford and Roseburg) haven’t been able to meet their targets, which were set too high. But that is made up by the BLM districts with wetter forests (Coos Bay, Salem and Eugene) that have exceeded their target volume.

The Oregon congressional delegation is being pressured by counties who have such low tax revenue (and low tax rates) that they want to return to the days when they reaped in a huge share of BLM logging revenue.

We pointed out that reauthorization of the Secure Rural Schools legislation would solve that problem on the federal level, while we recognized that state and county governments need to address the funding crises at local levels. For instance, the large percentage of private land in Oregon owned by the timber industry has a far lower tax rate than rural families pay. And if a timber corporation owns more than 5,000 acres, they pay even less taxes. Added to those tax gifts is the fact that industry has no fees on the large amount of raw-log exports from Oregon, unlike the payments required from industry in California and Washington State on raw-log exports.

On our last day in DC we discussed with legislators our concerns over exporting Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). Veresen, a Canadian corporation, wants to use southern Oregon to export fracked gas to Asia. Veresen claims that if they can’t export, they will have to stop fracking. They want to take property from over 300 Oregonians for a pipeline to Coos Bay to feed a proposed LNG terminal in a tsunami and earthquake subduction zone.

While the staff of Senator Wyden seemed concerned when they met with us, they could offer no explanation to Senator Wyden’s statements that he “applauds” this project. They will get back to us on if he meant he applauds condemning his constituents lands, or he just applauds the release of huge amounts of methane in fracking, as methane is 100 times more polluting than coal when released unburned into the atmosphere. I’ll be sure to let you when they get back to us.

Posted by francis in Blog, Combating Climate Change, National Forests, No Coos Bay Coal Terminal, O&C Legislation and Negotiations, Uncategorized, Western Oregon BLM Lands

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Jun24

The Hopes in a Howl and Science

By Bob Ferris

One of the distinct advantages for me of working in a small organization versus a large one in DC with security doors and receptionists, is that I get to talk with people and see how they are impacted by our work. Yesterday was a prime example.

About mid-day yesterday an animated woman came into our office semi-out-of-breath and beaming. She had a story to tell. She had just come back from camping in rural part of Cascadia about 150 miles from where a certain very famous wolf couple (i.e., Journey and Wanda) is currently thought to be tending to their pups.

“We heard them,” she said.

And what followed was a discussion about wolves and wolf howls—how they sound and how they differ from coyotes or dogs. We talked about the deceptiveness of distance and a little wolf biology and then I asked her, “Did this enhance your camping experience?“

Of course I knew what her answer would be even before it came bubbling out because I’d had this conversation hundreds of times before. I did not have to listen to words because excitement was written all over her face and in the tone of her talk. I cannot say for certain what she heard and whether or not it was a wolf, wolves or “the wolves” and it really does not matter. She—like so many before her and many to follow—was excited simply by the hope of wolves.

This concept of excitement over the existence of something that is not seen and often not experienced has been discussed and debated for the two decades that I have worked on this creature of myth and mystery. The concept of existence value, though demonstrated repeatedly by hundreds of people lining the roads in Algonquin Provincial Park near the US-Canada border hoping to hear a wolf howl (you have to listen very, very closely) or thousands sending comments from New York City on wolf recovery, is a little like the wolf itself; either you get it or you don’t.

The above operates on the emotional and my wife frequently ponders why we even bothered to hire a wedding photographer, because my expression is always the same. It is her way of saying I am a scientist and while I like the howls, I am excited on a deeper level by the ecological implications of the wolf and all that we are learning about this amazing critter. And I may not have been at that campground and heard that howl but I have been reading the literature and the last month or so has been pretty amazing with four papers of note.

The first one out of the chute is that paper about the BC coastal wolves and how diet and habitat might be creating genetic separation between fish-eating coastal wolves and their inland neighbors. I am still digesting this but had a short conversation with one of the co-authors, Paul Paquet, about this when we were writing our piece on the ill-advised delisting proposal by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. This is an interesting and thought provoking development and it brings to mind long ago, rancorous arguments in the scientific community about the possibility of species living with or near each other diverging in a process called sympatric speciation. Good stuff.

The second piece in this series has to do with a theme of much interest and debate: trophic cascades. Thomas Newsome and William Ripple out of Oregon State are the authors of a study that looked at fur trapping records across a broad expanse of Canada to see how wolf populations impact coyote and fox populations. This article puts the punctuation mark on the idea that trophic cascades—the trickle-down economics of the animal world (only this actually works)—need lots of apex predators across a broad area to work.

Cristina Eisenberg and I have had discussions about this idea that there is a critical mass required for trophic cascades. It seems key when we look at how broadly we have to recover wolf populations to get the benefits that we need to accrue.

The third article is the one on cougars and wolves. The research found that cougars tended to avoid areas occupied by wolves. This makes sense and addresses, in part, the concern that wolves act as an additional predator on the landscape when the story is likely more complicated than that. Here again, the functional outcome probably has a lot to do with density and distribution and argues against the notion that a few wolves in a few places is sufficient.

The last piece is fun. It looks at the speculative function of face design and eye prominence in the dog family or canids as it relates

Sierra_Nevada_Red_Fox_Keith_Slausen_US_Forest_Service_2010

to sociality. Wolves are the hands down, look-me-in-the-eye champs in this followed by foxes (at right) where we see the eyes but not pupils and then solo wild dogs where it is even hard to see the eyes. Who knew “gazing” could be so interesting and what are the possible implications here for the social function of face and eye make-up in humans? All very interesting so enjoy!

Without your help, wolf recovery will remain a shrinking shadow of a promise. We need your help to move beyond this concept of isolated wolf refuges surrounded by hostile territories. So whether you gravitate towards wolves because of the howl or hopes of howls or the science grabs you or both, get engaged in the process and please get active.

HELP WOLVES

Donate To Wolf Fund

Posted by bob in Blog, Bring Back Wolves, Home Page Hot Topic, Restoring Wolves and Other Species, Uncategorized

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Jun22

Looking Backwards, Forward and to You

By Bob Ferris

Last weekend I stood on the rim of Crater Lake with my wife. We were staring at the spectacular, Ty-D-Bol-colored water and contemplating strolling down the 700-foot drop to the shore and then back along the mile-long trail. In walks like this there is always stunning beauty, but there is also a lot of looking forward to how much farther there is to go and looking back to appreciate how far you have come.

In a little more than a weeks’ time all the staff at Cascadia Wildlands will be going through a similar process at a staff gathering. I would call this a retreat, but it is anything but a retreat. For us there is definitely a lot of breath taking while we look at the growing mountain of issues we have yet to climb. There is also profound appreciation for the distances we have covered and the elevation we have gained on so many important fronts.

With each victory—our big steps up the slope—we seem to gain reputation. But success is its own curse as more look to us on an increasing number of issues in a broader geographic area. We welcome this and strive to be worthy of the trust and deserving of the necessary support.

During our time together, we will look at our forest, critter, water and carbon work. We will, for instance, put our minds towards figuring out how a small non-profit can go toe-to-toe with well-funded timber interests intent on clearcutting the three fractured off parts of the former Elliott State Forest they paid pennies on the dollar for. They hope that their arrogance and wealth will prove too steep a slope for us to scurry up.

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We will also talk wolves and maybe howl once or twice. Journey, Wanda and the pups need to be the start of something rather than the ending point. The more we learn, the more we know that we must fulfill the promising idea of western wolf recovery offered decades and decades ago. And while we cannot match other larger groups with stuffed wolves or glossy campaign materials (our highly desired wolf ears are handmade by staff–at left), we certainly match those groups in terms of organizational impact, experience and expertise.

Our expaned work on carnivores will be a topic. Since our adoption of Big Wildlife last fadll, we have increased our efforts on other predators like coyotes, bears, cougars and bobcats. A lot of this effort is directed at state wildlife commissions and agencies and getting them to take their roles as stewards of these species seriously and with sound science rather than looking at them as pests or not considering them at all. But it is also about strategies to get federal agencies, mainly the USDA's Wildlife Services, out of the predator control business.

Salmon and water too will be covered too. The suction dredge influx spilling out of California and Oregon and heading towards Washington needs to be met with an appropriate response and as we’ve been there before in Oregon with our successful legislation, we best get after it in these salmon and steelhead waters too.

Then there is carbon. Nearly all we stand to recover and save is made vulnerable by schemes to use or export fossil fuels. We butted heads with big coal and are making progress there but LNG, tar sands and shale oil are waiting none too patiently in the wings. We cannot allow the world to fry and dry or the oceans to become so acidic that they consume our aquatic life support systems. The situation with salmon in California’s dust-filled waterways and the dissolving sea stars of coastal Washington are alarm bells calling for our action. We have to figure it out.

Alaska, big, bold and vulnerable is there as well. Defending the Tongass and Cooper River with our allies and getting people far from the majesty of these places engaged. Alaska’s wild landscapes cannot be out of sight out of mind and be expected to survive in anything but coffee-table books. Because we can assure you that energy, timber and mining interests certainly have this state’s resources in their sights. And once it is gone it is gone and we forever lose a shining example of what wild truly is. If we lose what we aspire to in terms of wildness, how can we show future generations what we mean by something that is truly wild?

And then there is you. How do we add all this above to our plates and still be the folks you love to visit and occasionally be “wild” with? How do we engage our supporters in ways that short circuits Facebook’s non-profit punishing algorithm and get our issues in the newsfeeds of those who support wildness and need to know about our work? What sorts of events do our members want and need and where? And how do barely more than a handful of staff work most effectively with volunteer activists and continue to have this level of impact (and more) across four states?

We suspect that we will come up with some of the above answers during our two days together, but we also hope that some of the answers come from our members and supporters who truly and totally get engaged. Towards those ends Carolyn and Kaley will be sending out more interactive materials in our e-news and other outlets (beyond Kaley’s riddles and jokes) to hear more from our public.

But you do not have to wait until then; ideas and other help are always welcome from our friends and allies. Do you have an idea for an event? Would your company like us to do a brown bag lunch presentation? Do you want to sponsor a house party or program briefing? Are you a member of a band that could play at Pints Gone Wild? All of these are ways to help as are inviting your friends to become fans on facebook or subscribe to our action and event filled e-newsletter.

If you are reading this you are already a part of Cascadia Wildlands and we are grateful for that. So while we are looking forward and back as well as thinking of you, this might also be a good time for you to think about what you can and are willing to do on all of these important issues (or others). Many of the issues that we work on are critical, serious and often heart-wrenching, but acting on these fronts and being generous to the natural systems and critters that support and sustain us is always a joyous act. Get engaged.

Posted by bob in Alaska Campaigns, Bears, Blog, Bobcats, Caring for Cascadia’s Carnivores, Cats, Cougars, Lynx, Uncategorized

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Jun12

The Un-BEAR-able “Siskiyou Plus Bear Hunt”

By Rance Shaw

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) Commission has proposed an additional bear hunt in the Southwest Region. The “Siskiyou Plus Bear Hunt” would make available 250 black bear tags in addition to the 4,400 normally issued for this region during the spring hunting season, which runs from April 1 – May 31.

According to ODFW’s 2012 Black Bear Management Plan, the Southwest Region of Oregon contains much of the state’s “good habitat” for black bears, and the area has the highest density of black bears. Oregon’s black bear population is estimated to be 25,000 – 30,000. The population may be steady or even increasing.

Spring bear hunts already pose a great threat to bears when they are most vulnerable. At this time, bears are emerging from winter hibernation. Black bears do not emerge from their dens at all during hibernation—not even for food and water. After this long period of inactivity, the bears remain lethargic for a couple weeks while they replenish nutrients.

Hunters may not kill sows with cubs less than one year old or cubs less than one year old. However, the proposed “Siskiyou Plus Bear Hunt” would certainly increase the likelihood of accidental takings of those sows and cubs. “Objective 1” of ODFW’s 2012 Black Bear Management Plan is to “[m]aintain healthy and optimum bear populations.” If that is truly ODFW’s first objective, why would they propose a plan to increase the number of hunters in the Southwest Region at a time of year when mothers and cubs are already greatly imperiled?

Black bears cubs remain with their mothers until they are 17 months old. Cubs over one year of age may survive if orphaned, but they will be extremely susceptible to death from starvation or exposure to the elements.

If orphaned cubs are found, ODFW handles them in one of six ways. Euthanasia and zoo placement are among those options, as well as simply leaving the cubs where they are found. However, none of the six options are satisfactory substitutes for the care that a mother bear provides for a young cub. For ethical reasons, no additional mothers and cubs should be subjected to possible orphaning for the sake of recreational hunting.

Please submit the letter to Governor Kitzhaber and ODFW Commissioners we have prepared (or personalize it) asking them not to allow the “Siskiyou Plus Bear Hunt.”

DEFEND

Black Bears

Posted by bob in Bears, Black Bears, Blog, Uncategorized

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