1. Another Prescribed Fire Report “Burn Back Better” from PERC. How Western States Can Encourage Prescribed Fire on Private Lands.
Here are their recommendations.
Recommendations
- Improve permitting systems to remove bureaucratic obstacles to prescribed burning.
- Develop more flexible approaches to setting “burn days” in which different types of prescribed fires can be implemented.
- Design training opportunities and other resources to educate and support, rather than regulate, landowners’ use of prescribed fire.
- Clarify and improve liability regimes to reflect the public benefits of prescribed fire.
- Harness private investment to benefit forest health through catastrophe bonds.
In their summary, they have another map from FEMA (interesting given today’s other post).
2. Brucellosis Compensation Fund
Paradise Valley ranchers who participated in a 2019 survey ranked the disease brucellosis as the most concerning wildlife issue they face, and a think tank, several conservation and sporting groups and a financial tech firm have partnered up to propose a solution.
Earlier this month, the coalition announced plans to set aside a “Paradise Valley Brucellosis Compensation Fund” for ranchers whose cattle contract the bacterial disease from wildlife. It’s part of an effort to build tolerance for the elk that migrate across the valley’s working lands.
3. Mountain Lions Attacking Pet Dogs near Nederland from the Colorado Sun
Mountain lions killed 15 dogs in 30 days near a Colorado town. Attacks continued and now a lion is dead.
It’s interesting because the story includes the views of different people in town and also the Colorado Parks and Wildlife folks who have the challenging job of helping manage wildlife-human conflicts. It’s a long article, but also another one of “no one understands why this happens at this particular time and place, but it does.”
4. Wolves Also Attack Dogs But Usually Not Pets
Cat Urbiqkit of the Cowboy State Daily did a review of dogs and wolves’ coexistence issues:
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources maintains a website and phone app where it maps “wolf caution areas” due to recent conflicts between wolves and dogs.
The agency reports, “Although wolf attacks on pet dogs in residential areas are rare, they do occur and have increased in recent years.” In 2016, more than 40 dogs were killed by wolves in that state.
What does vary is the type of dog killed by wolves, which is largely reflective of the interconnected human-dog use of areas occupied by wolves.
In Alaska, it’s tethered sled dogs.
In Wisconsin, it’s trailing hounds used for hunting.
In Wyoming, it’s livestock guardian dogs used to protect domestic sheep flocks. In 2021, a wolf pack (the Dog Creek pack located in western Wyoming) killed or injured five livestock guardian dogs, according to the Wyoming Game & Fish Department’s Annual Wolf Report.
Urbigkit also reviews some northern European wolf literature.
That 2003 paper also noted: “Our results suggest that, in the wolf pack exhibiting strong aggressive and/or predatory behavior towards dogs, this behavior may constitute a tradition that may be passed on from generation to generation within a family unit. The hypothesis that aggressive behavior by wolves towards dogs is an inherited, traditional behavior, has important management implications and should be investigated further.”
Regarding my home state of Wisconsin, the headline should be “Wolves attack dogs that are trained to help ‘hunters’ kill wolves.”
P.S. Go wolves. Hound ‘hunting’ of wolves should be outlawed.