My Page: Brodie Farquhar

New West Feature

The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, backed by several other conservation groups, has strongly criticized Yellowstone National Park’s winter use plan to keep Sylvan Pass open between Cody and the park’s east entrance.

The pass features 20 avalanche runs that must be knocked down by artillery shells fired from a 105 mm howitzer, at a cost of $325,000 per season. Weather permitting, high explosives are hand-dropped on the avalanche runs from a helicopter.

New West Feature

An agreement reached last week between Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Director Dan Ashe, and the State of Wyoming will allow treatment of the wolf as a predator that can be shot, trapped, or run over at any time throughout most of the state.

Interior has agreed to remove Wyoming wolves from the threatened and endangered species list, and give the state authority to manage wolves under a unique and widely criticized dual management plan.

New West Feature

In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, grizzly bear management faces a major constraint – all the best habitat for grizzly bears is already occupied, even over-occupied.

Or is it?

“I call it the ‘too many fish in a bucket’ scenario,” said Mark Bruscino, the veteran bear manager for the Wyoming Game & Fish Department. Fish, meaning bears, keep jumping out of the best habitat, he said, landing in rural habitats where they can get in trouble with people.

It doesn’t always work to scoop up the fish and put it back in the bucket – not when the fish/bear becomes habituated to human food sources or gets pushed around by bigger, badder bears and keeps jumping out of the bucket, said Bruscino.

New West Feature

Back in the 1980s, when fossil fuel development fell off a cliff in Western states, there was a popular sticker pasted on the bumpers of aging pickups, rolling on tires of diminishing tread: “Dear Lord, please give me another boom, and I promise I won’t p*** this one away.”

So how have Western states handled the latest 2003-2008 boom and bust? Have we gotten smarter about handling booms, or did we do what we did the last time?

The answer, according to a new study by Headwaters Economics, is it depends on the state, the counties, the fuel and the presence, or absence, of political and industrial leadership at the right time and place.

The core finding was that tax revenues have greater impact and sustainability than highly volatile energy jobs, which can vanish as fast as they appear.

New West News

The U.S. Senate approved a must-pass budget bill on Thursday, removing wolves in Montana and Idaho from Endangered Species Act protections and placing wolf management under state game departments.

A rider in the budget bill, sponsored by Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, returns the legal playing field back to 2009 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had delisted the wolves in Montana and Idaho. Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, chairman of the House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee, attached a similar measure to the House version of the budget bill.

“This is a responsible step, and a step I think needed to happen,” said Tester, in a late-afternoon conference call with reporters.

The budget bill passed in the Democratically-controlled Senate 81-19 and earlier in the Republican-controlled House 260-167.

New West News

“We’re trying to get out of this stalemate,” Mead said.

The key to the plan, which was originally suggested by USFWS, is what Mead called a “flex line” adjustment to the current boundary line separating trophy wolves in and immediately around Yellowstone, and the rest of the state where wolves are regarded as predators and can be shot on sight.

The flex line would extend the trophy boundary south about 90 miles from the current line near Jackson, down to Big Piney, including Sublette County and much of Star Valley in Lincoln County. But the flex line extension would last only for five months of the year, November to March.

New West Wildlife

Molloy’s denial of the settlement places the 1,300 wolves of Montana and Idaho back under ESA protections – for now, but for how long?

The settlement, prompted by concerns over livestock and wildlife losses to wolf predation, was widely viewed as an attempt to preempt Congress from enacting a delisting based on politics, rather than science. Conservation groups were horrified by the prospect of such a precedent, viewing it as a big step toward gutting the ESA. There’s little to no indication that, had the settlement passed muster with Molloy, it could have slowed or halted the Congressional rush to delist northern Rockies wolves.

Montana’s Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg’s H.R. 509 would delist wolves in the lower 48 states. Democratic Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson have language in the federal budget bill that would delist Montana and Idaho wolves, turning management over to state game agencies and banning judicial review. Tester said this week he’s confident the rider will pass. 

New West Feature

The 10 conservation groups that have agreed to the settlement are Cascadia Wildlands, Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Hells Canyon Preservation Council, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, Oregon Wild, Sierra Club and Wildlands Network.

The deal also calls upon USFWS to convene a scientific panel to reexamine the original wolf-recovery goal of 300 wolves. The current tally is based on 705 wolves in Idaho, 566 in Montana, 343 in Wyoming and some 40 in Oregon and Washington. No resident wolves are believed to currently be in Utah.

“Interior will look at wolf recovery in the region, based on the best available science. This is a very big deal,” said Bill Snape, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Conservation groups and independent biologists have insisted that 300 is too low and nonsustainable, calling instead for a population target beyond the current count of 1,651 – perhaps as many as 2,000 to 5,000.

For advocates of the deal, the settlement would allow wolf populations to grow in Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming and Utah, expanding into new habitat with a good prey base. 

New West Analysis

There are plenty of opportunities for governors and presidents to get cross-wise with each other, particularly in the West, where so much of the land is managed by federal land agencies like the Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish & Wildlife.

In most cases, squabbles among state and federal executives get worked out in the courts, through Congress or in the “bully pulpits” that governors and presidents use to persuade, cajole, denounce or otherwise set the stage for closed-door negotiations.

What we saw recently in Montana are all of the above, as well as something radically different.

New West Feature

None of the many tools for deterring predators from killing livestock is able to claim it’s the proverbial “silver bullet” for the job, yet an innovative combination of two such tools has generated some encouraging results.

Dubbed “turbofladry,” it consists of flapping flags tied on a wire fence and the electric fence itself, which delivers a stinging zap to anyone (human, predator or livestock) foolish enough to touch a charged wire.

Fladry, an east European term, is simply a string of closely spaced strips of flapping cloth. Hunters have used strings of fladry to block unsuspecting wolves, then driven the wolves into a fladry bottleneck, where gunners were waiting. Incredibly, wolves won’t cross a fladry line to escape, even when they are desperate to do so.