Bundys Get Their's

Oregon federal juries infamously found the Ryan and Ammon Bundy innocent of their role in the armed occupation of Malheur Wildlife Refuge, {14.02.17} but other members of the rogue family were convicted of arson on federal property. Jurors heard evidence that Steven Bundy handed out matches to his hunting party asking that they set the range on fire. The fire put 139 acres ablaze. Dwight and Steven Bundy served a combined sentence of 18 months.  Both received a presidential pardon in 2018.  Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke, a friend of the free range radicals, order reinstatement of their grazing privileges on public lands, overriding BLM recommendations to cancel the permits for their “unsatisfactory record of performance.”

A federal judge agreed with conservationists who brought suit against the decision and issued a temporary injunction against the permits. Secretary Zinke decided to issue the permits to the Bundys without environmental review or public comment. The allotments in issue contain important habitat for the greater sage grouse and redband trout. Grazing on one of the allotments, Mud Creek, was scheduled to occur later this week. Grazing in June impacts nesting and survival chances of newly hatched grouse chicks. Favored foods of prelaying and brood-rearing hens in Oregon are common dandelion, goatsbeard, western yarrow, prickly lettuce, and sego lily. Chicks consume primarily insects for their first few weeks. Redband trout are disturbed when cattle create erosion and muddy streams. The conservation groups said Zinke's decision misinterpreted the pardon granted by Donald 'Duck' to the scofflaw family of ranchers, and did not take into consideration Oregon's amended sage grouse management plan. One conservationist said that the decision to issue a temporary stay demonstrates that the regime "shouldn’t be allowed to engage in this blatant political interference". Grazing permits are supposed to be assessed for environmental impact before granting. The land in question has not been grazed in five years, so it provides sage grouse with a much needed reprieve from the harmful impacts of cows grazing on public lands.

Leopard Seals Granted NZ Residency

courtesy: NZ Conservation Dept.

Leopard seals, Hydrurga leptonyx, are formidable predators.  In fact a leopard seal is credited for taking a British woman, part of an Antarctic research team. But that grizzly occurrence did not stop New Zealand giving leopard seals legal status as  residents, no longer classed as "vagrants". The seal lives primarily in Antarctic waters, but it is found as far north as New Zealand in every region of the island nation.  Leopard seals are protected under New Zealand's Marine Mammal Protection Act; anyone caught harming them can be fined $250,000 or spend two years in prison.

The animals are usually placid when found resting on a beach after feeding. Nevertheless, a leopard seal was found shot in the head last year. A member of Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Trans-Antarctic Expedition was chased on the ice by a leopard seal and only escaped after a colleague shot the animal dead. They are large, weighing up to 600 kgs and have serious teeth befitting their carnivorous role second only to killer whales in the southern ocean. They are the only seals known to regularly hunt and kill warm-blooded prey, including other seals.

The promotion to resident status was welcomed by conservationists.  The change could be credited to a female seal, Owha, that made Waitemata Harbor her territory. Her presence along the south island coast for seven years prompted investigation into the numbers of leopard seals living in New Zealand waters.  Previously thought to be outside their home range, New Zealand has an increasing number of leopard seals staying there. However, the archeological record shows that leopard seals were known to the Maori who occupied New Zealand around 1300. Three leopard seal births on the mainland have been documented in the past.

COTW: Don Veto's Imperial Priorities

As the angry orange baby blimp basks in the pomp of a state visit to the UK and Queenie, it is time to remind HRH's subjects that this is what Don Veto is all about when he is not insulting local dignitaries:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” ― Dwight D. Eisenhower

Pygmy Rabbits' Uncertain Future

Columbia Basin's rolling landscape once covered in native sagebrush and bunchgrass stretching to the far mountains at the horizon is now a fractured landscaped invaded by cheatgrass, divided by highways and farming roads into a patchwork of wheat fields.  This is the home of a diminutive rabbit the size of a grapefruit, the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis) which, but for human intervention, would not have made it into the 21st century.  The last pure bred member of this isolated rabbit population died in 2008.  Since 2001 captive breeding has kept the population hanging on in the Basin.  Sixteen of the last few dozen members were captured then, and two decades of intervention followed.

Early in the program, the reproductive rate was slow and the offspring produced were sickly, perhaps due to inbreeding.  University scientists and government biologists decided to perform a "genetic rescue" by hybridizing them with Great Basin pygmy rabbits from Idaho, a closely related population, in 2004.  After that, things picked up and the smallest American rabbit began to reproduce--like rabbits. In 2009 the Oregon Zoo produced 29 kits.  Unsurprisingly the Zoo found that pairings based on familiarity and preferences resulted in greater breeding success than pairings based only on genetic relatedness.

Breeding was transferred to semi-enclosed areas in the rabbits' native habitat, to aid their transition to release into the wild.  Over 1300 kits were produced in the enclosures since 2011, allowing the release of over 1200 pygmy rabbits into the Sagebrush Flats Wildlife Area.  On average, about 25% of the released rabbits' genome are wild genes.  These genes reappear generation after generation because they produce traits that have survival value--natural selection at work.  Thus, preserving the native pygmies from certain extinction rather than translocating another race was worthwhile work because it preserved genetic information coded by the unique ecosystem of the Columbia Basin.

credit: R. Bose for High Country News

Successful emergency intervention has given the pygmy rabbit an uncertain future, however.  It eats only sagebrush in the winter, and is only one of two species that digs its own burrows, beneath sagebrush. [photo, left] Wildfires that proliferate due to fire resistant native vegetation being replaced by invasive species, can wipe out a recovering rabbit population. Fires occur now twice a decade instead of twice a century, the historic norm.  The thirty thousand acre Southerland Canyon fire in 2017 destroyed most of the rabbit population living there.  Breeding in enclosures has its drawbacks too--proximity promotes disease in the animals.

Consequently, expanding and preserving habitat is the key to reestablishing the species on a firm basis.  The landscape is fragmented by human settlement.  No one is suggesting humans move out, but some unneeded land can be set aside for habitat restoration and wildlife.  There are Department of Agriculture programs that pay farmers to do that, and there are private organizations like Nature Conservancy that buy land solely for conservation.  Stitching these separated parcels together with wildlife corridors would signify wildlife gain in an era of global loss.  To do that, cooperation from the human inhabitants is a necessary ingredient.

Impeachment Article III

The United States House of Representatives, pursuant to the exclusive authority granted to it in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States hereby specifies the following Articles of Impeachment of the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump,

Resolved:


Article III: The President of the United States knowingly made illegal campaign payments through his attorney and agent of his presidential campaign to Stephanie Clifford and Karen McDougal in return for their contributions in kind to not disclosure their sexual relations with Donald Trump during his presidential campaign in an effort to influence the outcome of the campaign; accepted a contribution from a corporation; accepted an individual's contribution in excess of legal limits; and failed to report these contributions and payments, all in violation of federal campaign finance laws.

TO BE CONTINUED*....

*The factual basis for this Article is already largely known given the sworn public testimony of Michael Cohen, Individual I's former personal attorney, his guilty plea to two violations of federal campaign finance laws, and the guilty plea of America Media Inc., former publisher of the National Enquirer. Individual I attended a meeting in August 2015 with the publisher and Cohen in which it was agreed that AMI would pay Karen McDougal for exclusive rights to her story and then suppress it. Individual I later discussed with Cohen how to buy back the story from AMI. The excessive payment to Clifford was made directly by Michael Cohen at the direction of his client. The fact that so much is already publicly known about the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of Donald Trump makes the delay in beginning impeachment proceedings by the House of Representatives increasingly questionable. He may think impeachment is a "dirty, filthy" word, but if he quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, US Person says, "He's a duck".

Comments on Oregon's Draft Wolf Plan

Oregon's plan for managing growing wolf (Canis lupus) populations is in its draft stage.  Consideration for adoption by the Fish & Wildlife Commission is scheduled for June 6th and 7th. US Person wishes to direct the Commissions attenuation to page 31 et seq of the Draft Plan in which the department intends to include limited hunting as a means of controlling wolf populations. The provision should be eliminated as necessary and contrary to the goal of allowing the nearly extirpated wolf to regain its former place in Nature within the boundaries of the state.

There are a lot of cows and sheep in Oregon. The Plan states there are over 1.2 million cattle and over 200,000 sheep in the state. About two thirds of cattle in eastern Oregon spend some time during the year grazing on public lands. The US Forest Service permitted grazing for 91,341 cattle and the BLM permitted 151,877 cattle in 2016. Despite this huge number of livestock dependent on subsidized public grazing, wolves kill relatively few cattle. Predation* on livestock is not ingrained in wolves; it is a learned behavior usually governed by the lack of prey, proximity of human settlement, and husbandry practices. Coyotes kill more cows than wolves do; according to 2011 statistics by the US Agriculture Department 63% of cattle losses were caused by coyotes. Wolf kills in Oregon show an upward trend over the last ten years, (chart p.34) but the crucial fact is that the increase has been less than the increase in minimum wolf counts. For the period 2009-28 there were only 193 confirmed losses of livestock due to wolf predation. Livestock owners who suffer losses due to wolf predation are eligible for state funded compensation. In 2017, a total of 10 participating counties were awarded $252,570 in 23 grant funds.

Given that the problem of wolf predation on livestock is not a "crisis" problem as some livestock owners with a grudge would have wildlife managers think, attention should be directed to managing wolf populations with the least amount of lethal intervention needed for effective population control. The Plan, by including public hunting as a means of wolf control, does not strike the correct balance. The Plan admits that lethal removal of offending wolves does not always solve problem predation. In Oregon, authorized lethal removal has occurred in six situation involving wolves. In two of those, subsequent kills occurred by the same pack after culling. After killing the entire Imnaha pack, predation began again less than four months later by new wolf occupants of the territory. (p.42) Non lethal methods, relatively inexpensive to deploy, such as fladry can be just as effective in deterring livestock predation over short term periods. Trapping, also allowed under the Plan is inhumane and should never be used a management tool.

In the Plan, general season hunts by the public are prohibited. (p.31) A good thing, but the prohibition does not go far enough. In the next subparagraph the Plan says the public may participate in "controlled takes" (culling) to assist ODWF conservation efforts in two circumstances: 1) in the instance of long-term recurring predation of livestock, and 2) the protection of desired human game animals which also happen to be the wolf's natural food source. This provision puts unwanted pressure on the agency to submit wolf predation problems to the public hunting community that views the wolf not as valuable predator species necessary to ecological balance, but as a trophy, or worse a varmint.  It is this illogical and counterproductive culturally bias thinking that needs to be removed from wolf management decisions. Such decisions also must be insulated from any revenue or budget considerations related to tag sales and licensing.

In order to achieve this, the Commission must put emphasis on the required use of non-lethal deterrence by livestock owners. Currently the Plan does not make such use mandatory (p.45). No culling should be allowed unless an agriculturalist has first attempted deployment of non-lethal deterrence before lethal removal is undertaking by ODWF. (pp.49-51) In addition, a livestock owner should not be permitted to take, or ODWF permitted to take a grey wolf until three prey incidents with 9 months are confirmed by authorities to be reasonably considered "chronic" livestock predation.

*The widely used term "depredation" is not used here since it is tainted by an implied moral judgment, as in "depraved" behavior by humans. Wolves hunt and kill to survive, only the human species kills for entertainment.  Predation is a normal biological function, not a immoral activity.

'Toontime: You Call this Leadership?

credit: Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer

BC Idonwanna sez: Nancy want fingerprints and tape recorded confession!

Mr. Gravitas, Robert Mueller, may not want to testify under the glare of lights, but he has an obligation to explain to the nation a somewhat cryptic investigation bombshell dropped on the public record. Most observers now agree with US Person that Mueller did not indict Individual I for obstruction because of a DOJ policy of doubtful legal validity.  In fact he said so in his public statement on Wednesday. But that is not all the questions that need to be answered. He may not have found evidence of a conspiracy with the Russians for their espionage attack on a US election, but as has been repeatedly discussed by experts, evidence of a federal crime is not the sine qua non for an impeachment offense. US Person has made this point in his first impeachment article posted at Person Non Grata.

A certain amount of visual theater has become necessary to the functioning of our political system in extraordinary circumstances. US Person understands the need to present a public case, but why this cannot be done in the context of impeachment proceedings is unexplained by Democratic leaders. Ms. Pelosi is constantly telling audiences, 'we need to follow the facts', but refuses or is unable to explain why the facts cannot be followed in the context of a formal inquiry. Is she afraid of what might be found beyond what is already known? So far the investigation under the guise of "congressional oversight" is going nowhere, bogged down in court litigation over valid subpoenas. Meanwhile, time is wasting, as Don 'Duck' so ardently desires, and consistent with his usual confrontational tactics.

Now that Mr. Mueller is soon to become a private citizen, Chairman Nadler can freely issue him a "friendly" subpoena so that the reluctant former G-man can tell 'Merica that the onus is on the House of Representatives to act in defense of the Constitution. The facts can be presented to the "Merican people as Chairman Nadler desires in the context of a constitutionally required process by any other name. US Person can only conclude the Democrats' reluctance to fulfill their clear constitutional obligation is purely one of political convenience, and indicative of the institution's crippling venality. Impeachment, now!