Wolves and Coyotes in Maine – A First-Hand Observation by Gary Stevens

 

ORGAN, NEW MEXICO — Amid the flurry of activity concerning the wolf re-introduction issue in the Southwest and Rocky Mountain states, I haven’t read anything in the blogs about wolf and coyote activity in the Northern New England.

 

Before moving to the Southwest, I lived in Maine for most of my life.   I have some observations about wolves and coyotes in Maine and Quebec Province.

 

Ninety percent of Maine is covered with deep, dense forest which stretches up through Canada to the St. Lawrence Seaway and Quebec.  This vast area is comprised of  little more than well maintained logging roads, lakes, rivers and mountains.  The towns are few and far between, mostly centered around paper plants, the financial and social lifeblood of the deep north woods.   This is prime territory for wolves, coyotes, deer, moose and bear.  For the most part, these wild animals have thrived for eons without any human intervention at all.

 

Traditionally, the deer hunting season is used to balance the deer population from year to year.  The number of deer taken varies each year according to the deer population and available food supply.  This is one of the few examples of   man’s meddling and intervention  proving to be successful.  The deer population has been kept stable for the last century, or so.

 

The wolves that populate the north woods are of the Canis  Lupus Lycaon species, also known as the Eastern timber wolf or Canadian wolf.  As far a size goes, the males range 30 to 36″ at the shoulder and occasionally weigh in at 100 pounds, although more commonly 80 to 90 pounds.  These are formidable animals.  Their behavior is much the same as the other wolf species, with the alpha pair and highly social pack behavior.

 

There have been documented wolf sightings in the Bethel and Moosehead Lake areas in Maine.  In 1993, a two-year-old female wolf was shot near Moosehead Lake.  The animal was identified as an eastern wolf through DNA comparison with a known wolf from the Quebec region. The wolf density in this region is about one wolf per sixty square miles.  Using  Google Earth or Topozone the curious can access images or maps of these areas.

 

In all of my years living at the edge of the Maine wilderness, I have never seen a wolf.  Coyotes, however, are a different story.  They are much more of a problem, in Maine, than the wolves.  The Eastern coyotes, also known as the brush wolf, occupy all regions of the state, including the cities and suburbs in Southern Maine, with a statewide population of 15,000.    They are slightly larger than their Western cousins, and just as bold.  Although they usually shy away from humans, they are known to attack dairy cattle, sheep and house pets.  Occasionally, there is a confrontation with people.  When I was living in Bethel, Maine in the late 70’s, a lumberjack was treed by an aggressive pack of coyotes.  The logger had a rifle, but it was in his truck, a short distance away.  He had to remain treed until a work mate came looking for him, shooting at and dispersing the coyote pack.  The coyotes were looking for lunch.

 

For many decades, there has been a $50.00 bounty on the eastern coyote in Maine.  The hunter simply presents the left ear of the coyote as evidence of a kill.  Over the years, this has proven to be a successful program, as the “problem” coyotes, the ones who lurk in populated areas, are the ones that are thinned out.

 

The real bottom line here is the fact that wolves haven’t been a problem in Maine due to their remote habitat.  There has been no need to hunt them or “re-introduce” them to the environment.  The best way to “manage” them is to leave them alone.

***

U.N. Biosphere Reserve Next Door

UNESCO MAB Programme

Biosphere Reserve Information
United States of America

JORNADA

General Description

Jornada Biosphere Reserve is one of three biosphere reserves representing the Chihuahuan Desert (among Big Bend Biosphere Reserve in western Texas and Mapimí Biosphere Reserve in Mexico). The area extends from the crest of the San Andres Mountains, which are dominated by shrub woodlands, to the Jornada Plains characterized by semi-desert grasslands.

All three biosphere reserves in the Chihuahuan Desert are located in areas traditionally dominated by a livestock raising economy. Today, they face a variety of resource management issues relating to the sustainable development in desert ecosystems. Problems are associated with grazing of livestock, air pollution, and water quality, poaching of plants and animals, and loss of habitats.

Jornada Biosphere Reserve, while in a rural area, is becoming more and more influenced by the urban economies of Las Cruces (New Mexico) and El Paso (Texas). It focuses on long-term experimental research directed toward range management and maintenance of healthy desert ecosystems.

In nominating three biosphere reserves in the Chihuahuan Desert it was expected that cooperation would develop the knowledge and skills needed to manage the ecosystems of the Chihuahuan Desert for conservation and sustainable economic uses. Today, mainly research and environmental education projects characterize this cooperation.
Major ecosystem type Warm desert
Major habitats & land cover types
Location 32°37’N; 106°45’W
Area (hectares)
Total 78,297
Core area(s)
Buffer zone(s)
Transition area(s) when given
Altitude (metres above sea level) +1,260 to +2,830
Year designated 1976
Administrative authorities Jornada Experimental Range U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service

http://www.unesco.org/mabdb/br/brdir/directory/biores.asp?mode=all&code=USA+14

Otero County R.S.2477 rights-of-way Lincoln National Forest (Updated 9/21/07)

Otero County Commission item number 29 on the consent agenda, 9/20/07, reads:

Dr. Martin Moore – Request approval to designate the mapped or inventoried roads and trails located on, but not limited to, the following jurisdictions as 66 ft. wide Otero County R.S. 2477 rights-of-way, except as noted in county records or on exisitng maps. (U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Agriculture – Forest Service, U.S. Department of Interior – Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service).

This item was approved, McGuinn, Moore and Nivison all voting in the affirmative.

It appears that our county commissioners with the backing of their constituents are not swallowing the wilderness/no roads concept for Lincoln National Forest. The Forest Supervisor read and submitted this letter for the record:

Otero County R.S. 2477 Map
September 20, 2007
Good Evening Mr. Chairman and Fellow Commissioners:
The Lincoln National Forest would like to go on record as being supportive of Otero County’s efforts to have jurisdiction over certain roads and trails located on National Forest System (NFS) lands. We recommend that we work together to identify those roads and trails you are interested in and either use Cooperative Road Maintenance Agreements, or where appropriate, transfer jurisdiction and management responsibilities through easements to the County pursuant to the National Forest Road and Trail Act (FRTA), 16 U.S.C. Section 532-538. As you know, the map you are considering approving for R.S. 2477 status has no binding legal authority until it, with other supporting documents, is filed and approved by a Federal Court and the court rules on the request. This is a lengthy process, put the burden of proof for potential R.S. 2477 status on the County, and will be very costly to our taxpayers by the time this lengthy process is completed through the courts. We highly recomment that we work together to develop easements and forgo the costly and time consuming R.S. 2477 process. We believe we can reach both County and Forest Service objectives of providing safe access and travel routes to our publics in a more cost effective and timely manner if we work in this manner. I would like to submit this statement for the record. Thank you. /S/ S.E. “lou” Woltering FOREST SUPERVISOR Lincoln National Forest.

Incest: Roadless Areas, Clean Water Act, Buffer Zones

Congress will soon take up the Clean Water Restoration Act that will extend federal authority under the Clean Water Act to all United States waters rather than just “navigable waters.” By “all waters,” I don’t just mean lakes, rivers and streams, but literally “all waters,” right down to drainage ditches that are periodically wet.

The American Property Coalition, led by former U.S. Senator Rod Grams, was the first to bring this threat to property rights to our attention and they’ve done yeoman’s work. I encourage you to contact them for additional information. You can call either Linda Runbeck or Don Parmeter at 651-224-6219.

The Clean Water Restoration Act has tremendous implications for retirees, families, farmers, and small business owners, many of whom have the bulk of their assets tied up in homes or other real estate.

It could eventually have implications for American taxpayers, too. The bill would likely diminish property values which could harm the financial position of lenders. We’ve already heard talk of bail-outs in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage crisis. The last thing we need to be doing now is further diminishing the value of property.

If you’re willing to join in this coalition effort, please provide your name and other pertinent information indicated below and email it to me at dridenour@nationalcenter.org. If you prefer, you can fax it to me at (202)543-4110 or call me at (202)543-4110 ext. 16. Please sent it to me by Wednesday, September 19.

And, by all means, please feel free to circulate this letter widely.

Thank you for your kind consideration.

In Freedom,

David A. Ridenour
Vice President
The National Center for Public Policy Research
501 Capitol Court, NE #200
Washington, DC 20002
Tel. 202-543-4110
DRidenour@nationalcenter.org

NAME
TITLE (if applicable)
ORGANIZATION (if applicable)
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For a history of incestuous activity among federal agencies, NGOs, Agenda 21 and the administration that should be required reading by all elected representatives and their attorneys go to: http://www.sovereignty.net/p/land/Freshwater.htm

David M. Graber, NPS Ecologist, Gave Shocking Opinion of U.N. Report

Wild idea – interview with National Park Service ecologist David M. Graber – Interview
Reason, Feb, 1999 by Michael W. Lynch
In a 1989 Los Angeles Times book review, National Park Service ecologist David M. Graber forcefully articulated the anti-humanism that informs much of the environmentalist movement. “Human happiness and certainly human fecundity, are not as important as a wild and healthy planet,” wrote Graber. “We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth….Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

Last fall, the United Nations released a report on world population growth that suggests Graber’s dream virus may have come along in the form of AIDS. (See “Population Bomb,” page 17.) Washington Editor Michael W. Lynch talked with Graber in December via telephone to find out what he thought about the U.N. data.

Q: Is AIDS the “right virus” for you?

A: I have no idea where AIDS is going to take us. The point I was making [in the review] was that, from the standpoint of just about every other living thing on the planet, human beings are a plague. That’s still an accurate and safe assumption. Anything that reduces human populations or reduces their growth is a benefit to just about everything else on the planet. Whether that’s desirable for human beings is a completely different issue.

Q: So from the point of view of the planet, AIDS is good?

A: It’s a very complex issue because [AIDS] also fouls up the economies of countries. That, in turn, can have other kinds of ecological consequences. Broken economies can lead people to consume primary resources at a faster rate if distribution breaks down. It isn’t just how many people you have on the planet. It’s how many resources they use. For example, because we use far more resources, Americans are much more expensive to the planet than people in the Third World. Somebody dying in central Africa reduces the impact on Earth much less than somebody dying in the United States. It’s not a simple question. I know you would like a simple answer, but I’m not going to give you one.

Q: So if AIDS were having the sort of effect in the First World that it’s having in the Third, that would be a good thing?

A: It would be a good thing for other organisms. It certainly wouldn’t be a good thing for people who were dying or their families. Ecology is a game where some win and some lose. Death is by far the crudest and cruelest solution to a problem of crowding.

Q: Why put humans on the same level as other organisms?

A: If we were to ask other organisms, they would say, “I’ve got a lousy deal here; those human beings are my plague.” Human beings are unraveling the very stuff of nature with every passing day. From a human viewpoint, and given how we’re heading, we need to ask: Do we want to live on a planet that looks like New Jersey or England, with no wild animals, no rainforests, no wilderness?

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1568/is_9_30/ai_53747403/pg_1

Agenda 21 & Secular Humanism by Linda Kimball, an Excerpt

Agenda 21: The Utopian Fantasy
Agenda 21 was adopted at the 1992 UN Conference in Rio de Janeiro. This 300-page document contains 40 chapters loaded with recommendations to micro-manage virtually every facet of human existence. Agenda 21 is not a treaty but a “soft-law” policy document that does not require Senate ratification. Some of the key players involved in its production and adoption are Al Gore, Ted Turner, and Maurice Strong. President George HW Bush signed it and President Clinton issued Executive Order No. 12852, which created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development.

In his, “Sustainable Development: Transforming America,” Henry Lamb provides us with a vignette of the emerging utopia. Speaking only of America, he says:

“Half the land area of the entire country will be designated ‘wilderness areas’ where only wildlife managers and researchers will be allowed. These areas will be interconnected by ‘corridors of wilderness’ to allow migration of wildlife…Wolves will be as plentiful in Virginia and Pennsylvania as they are now in Idaho and Montana. Panthers and alligators will roam freely from the Everglades to the Okefenokee and beyond…Transportation between sustainable communities (islands of human habitation)…will be primarily by light rail systems…highways that remain will be super transport corridors, such as the “Trans-Texas Corridor” now being designed…” (Eco-logic Special Report, Dec. 1, 2005)

For the whole commentary go to: http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/24580