The Wilderness Sportsman

Should be back in a month or so. Things have been pretty busy around here, which explains the slow trickle of updates the past few days. Look for full on daily updates in mid-October.

Thanks for reading!

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“What’s happening here is the forest service is proposing too much logging and too many timber sales too fast and in too many of the wrong places and the result of that is we’re putting clean water, threatened species, and other important natural resource’s values at risk.”

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The squirrel was declared recovered despite the fact that it has yet to meet recovery goals in a recovery plan that was developed by the world’s leading experts on the squirrel’s biology and status, and that scientists have been raising alarm bells about the increasing threat of climate change related to anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

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This morning Supervisor Allen Nicholas announced the agency has changed its mind. The proposal now is to only increase fees at campsites.

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The Fee Repeal Act was introduced into the U.S. Senate in December, 2007, 4 months to the day following the unexpected death of Robert Funkhouser, our co-founder and first President. Without Robert’s ceaseless efforts the bill would never have happened, and it is heartbreaking that he was not there to celebrate.
The celebration was brief, however, because now comes the hard work of getting the bill passed. It has four powerful sponsors: Max Baucus (MT), Mike Crapo (ID), Jon Tester (MT), and Ken Salazar (CO), but it has to get through the committee process before it can move to the floor for a vote.

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When you boil it down, Burns says, almost all of his work is about the way American geography connects with the American character. And one of the country’s most startling innovations, he says, was the creation of a national park system in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Washington, DC - Alaska Governor and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is a strong promoter of the aerial hunting of wolves and bears, a practice that has been condemned by conservationists, scientists and many hunters alike. It involves shooting wolves and bears from the air or chasing them to exhaustion and then landing and shooting them point blank. The animals, shot with a shotgun, usually die a painful death. The hunters involved in the program keep and sell the animals’ pelts.

“Sarah Palin’s anti-conservation position is so extreme that she condones shooting wolves and bears from airplanes or using airplanes to chase them to exhaustion and then shoot them point blank. Most Americans find this practice barbaric, but it’s routine in Alaska under Palin’s leadership,” said Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund president Rodger Schlickeisen.

Sarah Palin has supported aerial hunting since taking office despite the fact that the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, the American Society of Mammalogists, and more than 120 other scientists have called for a halt to the program, citing its lack of scientific justification and despite opposition from many hunters who see it as violating the sportsmen’s ethic of fair chase. Palin in 2007 even proposed offering a bounty of $150 per wolf, as long as the hunter provided the wolf’s foreleg as proof of the kill. And just earlier this year, she introduced legislation to expand the program and derail a scheduled August 2008 citizens’ vote on the issue. The bounty was determined to violate the state’s constitution and her legislation failed.

“Sarah Palin’s positions against America’s wildlife could put her to the right of even the Bush administration,” said Schlickeisen. “She is a promoter of one of our nation’s most ugly and cruel wildlife hunting programs and Americans deserve to know her views on such matters before they vote.”

Absolutely hilarious.

Notice how the current administration was nowhere to be found at the RNC?

Joe Biden explains why: