Here is a recent article by Alan Kovski, who’s work has been discussed here previously: https://ncfp.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/forest-service-tries-to-blend-strategies-of-forest-restoration-fire-risk-reduction/

 This article is reproduced with permission from Daily Environment Report, 73 DEN A-6 (Apr. 16, 2013). Copyright 2013 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (800-372-1033) <http://www.bna.com>

Here is where a PDF of the complete April 16, 2013 BNA Daily Report can be obtained:(whoops — forgot how to link a PDF form to these posts. Will fix ASAP, if I can).

Lawmakers Stress Time Has Come To Revamp Federal Forest Management

By Alan Kovski | April 15, 2013 09:50PM ET

(BNA) — Five Bills on Forest Management

Key Provisions: Congress is preparing for action to force the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to allow more timber cutting on federal lands.

Potential Impact: The bills could boost rural economies and reduce the risk of wildfires.

What’s Next: House Natural Resources Committee action is expected.

Members of Congress are preparing for action on bills to force the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to allow more timber cutting on federal lands to benefit people in rural areas and reduce wildfires.

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and author of one of the bills, stressed during an April 11 subcommittee hearing that the time for action has arrived. “We are going to move forward with legislation,” he said.

Above all else, lawmakers cited the poor economic conditions in many rural areas-including poverty and high unemployment-as a motivating factor. Lawmakers also said selective tree cutting would increase the health of forests by reducing the size and severity of wildfires and insect infestations.

“Right now, multiple counties in my district and in Western Oregon are approaching insolvency,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said in explaining legislation he and two colleagues have been circulating in draft form. “Many of these counties have real unemployment at or above 20 percent. Poverty is widespread and crippling.”

Like Hastings, DeFazio wants action soon. “The bottom line is, doing nothing is not an option,” DeFazio said.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said his rural district with extensive national forests is losing people as they give up on finding work in the area. “We’re depopulating in eight of my counties,” he said.

Limits Proposed on Environmental Analyses

The House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation discussed several bills aimed at revamping forest management practices, changes that would boost timber companies and sawmills and through them the communities.

Hastings, DeFazio, and several other members of Congress expressed particular concern about the scheduled expiration of the Secure Rural Schools program Sept. 30. Many rural school districts depend on a share of timber sale revenue for their survival.

A bill written by Hastings, the Restoring Healthy Forests for Healthy Communities Act (number not yet assigned), would require designation of parts of national forests where revenue would be generated from sales of materials. Annual volume of such materials would be no less than 50 percent of sustained yield.

The bill would limit National Environmental Policy Act requirements by specifying no need for the study of alternatives and by limiting each analysis to 100 pages. The bill also would provide categorical exclusions for proposed actions involving less than 10,000 acres, devised in response to catastrophic events, or developed for community wildfire protection plans.

“This draft legislation is intended as a starting point,” Hastings said.

Bills Would Speed Up Action

Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) spoke about his bill, the Healthy Forest Management and Wildfire Prevention Act (H.R. 818), which would force the Forest Service and BLM to expedite hazardous fuels reduction, which typically means a mix of tree thinning, deadwood removal, and prescribed burning. His bill would use the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003 as a model.

The Self-Sufficient Community Lands Act (H.R. 1294), proposed by Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), would establish “community forest demonstration areas” in national forests and create boards of trustees to manage those areas, with a mix of federal, state, and private interests on the board.

A share of revenue would go to local schools and communities, either through the formula of the soon-to-expire Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000 (16 U.S.C. 7111), or the older formula of the Forest Service section in a 1908 law (16 U.S.C. 5000).

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) vividly described the destructive effects of wildfires in his state as he advocated for his Catastrophic Wildfire Prevention Act of 2013 (H.R. 1345). The bill would expedite Forest Service and BLM work to prevent fires through such means as tree thinning. It also would speed up and limit the scope of NEPA environmental analyses.

Honoring of 1937 Law Sought

The O&C Trust, Conservation and Jobs Act (no number assigned yet) drafted by DeFazio and fellow Oregon Reps. Greg Walden (R) and Kurt Schrader (D) would force BLM to honor a 1937 law known as the O&C Lands Act, which was written to require that BLM lands in southwestern Oregon be managed to produce timber harvests for the economic well-being of local counties. Under that law, 50 percent of timber revenue goes directly to counties.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), ranking member of the subcommittee, agreed on the need for action but expressed frustration that Democrats were excluded from the drafting of the chairman’s bill. He objected to elements in the Republican bills that would involve “skirting public opinion” and would mandate timber harvest levels.

“This is grandstanding and not legislating,” Grijalva said.

But Grijalva, too, indicated there was a need for action. “There’s a crisis in our forests,” he said, noting a growth in the size and severity of forest fires. “I’m ready to sit down with my colleagues and try to work out something that has a realistic chance of becoming law.”

Administration Opposed to Some Bills

At the April 11 hearing, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said the Obama administration opposed the Tipton, Labrador, and Gosar bills, notably because they would shift some degree of authority to states from the federal government.

Tidwell argued that the Forest Service already has goals for expanded timber harvests, within the limits imposed by constrained budgets and the low prices that the service has been seeing for its wood.

Republicans on the subcommittee were uniform in their criticism of the administration for requesting an increase in federal funds for purchasing land when the government is so deeply in debt that it is cutting many programs. They said the administration is not effectively managing the land the government already owns.

Question of Which Public Served

Members of Congress and Tidwell circled around the question of what public was being served by the administration’s public land policies.

Tidwell said the administration was “driven by what we hear from the public.” Lawmakers emphasized the public in communities adjacent to federal lands.

“You keep saying that the public wants this,” Labrador said. “What public are you talking to?”

Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) asked Tidwell whether the Forest Service prioritizes or weights its estimates of public input to recognize that local communities have more at stake. There needs to be a weighting, Thompson said.

“There’s no weighting going on,” Tidwell said. “We don’t prioritize.”

National environmental groups in recent years have resisted the idea of showing greater concern for the economics or opinions of local communities near the forests. National land belongs to the whole nation, including environmentalists and others in cities far from the forests, they argue. 

For More Information

The forest management bills discussed during an April 11 House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing are available, along with prepared testimony and an archived hearing webcast, at http://naturalresources.house.gov/calendar/eventsingle.aspx?EventID=326329

From the Grants Pass (Oregon) Daily Courier.

http://www.thedailycourier.com/articles/2013/04/17/breaking_news_free/news1.txt

Anyone know about Rough & Ready Lumber? Is the lack of logs the only factor?

Rough & Ready Lumber closes, lays off 85 workers

CAVE JUNCTION — Rough & Ready Lumber Company announced Wednesday the closure of its lumber mill, a major local employer that recently celebrated its 90th year in business in the Illinois Valley. The business will lay off 85 employees.

In a news release issued Wednesday afternoon, company officials said the decision is the result of the mill’s inability to secure a sufficient supply of logs from the surrounding federal forests.

“We deeply regret having to close the family lumber business that my grandparents founded in 1922,” said Jennifer Phillippi, CEO and co-owner of Rough & Ready.

Link and Jennifer Phillippi and Joe Krauss are the third-generation of family members to operate the mill. Many employees are third-generation, too. Rough & Ready is known for producing high-quality wood products that are used in doors, windows and exposed beams.

Over the years the family continued Rough & Ready’s tradition of reinvesting in the community, including a $6 million biomass cogeneration facility in 2007, Forest Stewardship Council green certification for sustainably produced wood products, and an investment in the region’s first small log mill, according to the company’s news release. Rough & Ready was poised to begin a new $2 million sawmill project in 2014.

“But, we can’t justify the cost with an inadequate, unpredictable log supply supporting only one shift,” Phillippi said. “It’s like sitting in a grocery store not being able to eat while the produce rots around you.”

Once a thriving wood products region, Josephine and Jackson counties in 1975 were home to 22 sawmills, according to the news release. By 2003 six remained, and for the last several years R & R has been the lone sawmill operating in Josephine County.

The company has worked closely with federal and state policy makers since the early 1990s on solutions to the stalemate over federal timber harvests, and the creative ideas and leadership coming from Gov. Kitzhaber and Oregon congressional Reps. Peter DeFazio, Greg Walden and Kurt Schrader have been encouraging, Phillippi said.

“The outlook seemed especially hopeful,” said Phillippi, “when Senator Wyden was appointed chair of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, but we are disappointed that little has changed. The status quo just isn’t enough to sustain us, even with an improving economy and our customers begging for more of what our employees are so good at making.”

Rough & Ready announced that it would provide mill employees with severance pay and assistance in finding new jobs.

An article from the Bose (Idaho) Weekly:

Timber! State Officials Give OK to Significant Lumber Harvest

Posted by George Prentice on Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 9:38 AM

That’s the title of an Environment & Energy Daily article from today. Here’s a PDF:

Wyden slams agency for ‘staggering’ reduction in timber program

“The budget’s timber harvest goal is 2.38 billion board feet in 2014, down from a goal of 2.8 billion board feet in fiscal 2013 and down also from the 2.64 billion board feet that was actually harvested in 2012. The agency had previously set a goal of harvesting 3 billion board feet by 2014.”

The article notes that the agency’s budget request for fiscal 2014 is $4.9 billion, a figure I think is little changed from the past few years, but is less is real terms, as it does not keep up with inflation.

A companion article stated that Wyden “is concerned about proposals to place federal lands into private management.”

http://ncfp.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/wyden-splits-with-ore-delegation-over-putting-federal-lands-in-private-hands.pdf

“What is most likely to produce an increase in the harvests in a sustained way?” Wdyen asked. “Is it the collaborative approach, the way they’re doing in John Day [Ore.] … or is it more likely that the harvest will get up in a sustained way by in effect taking federal lands and putting them in private ownership? You know, there’s talk of a reserve or something of that nature. Which of those two approaches, in your view, is most likely to get the harvest up in a sustained way?”

John Day, where the last remaining mill is hanging by a thread.

Not private ownership, but federal lands managed by a trust via a board of directors. The O&C Trust, Conservation, and Jobs Act (discussion draft, Oct. 2012) states that:

 (2) actions on the O&C Trust lands shall be deemed to involve no Federal agency action or Federal discretionary involvement or control and the laws of the State shall apply to the surface estate of the O&C Trust lands in the manner applicable to privately owned timberlands in the State;

Thus, the Oregon Forest Practices Act would be in force. And:

“(b) TRUST PURPOSE.—The purpose of the O&C Trust is to produce annual maximum sustained revenues in perpetuity for O&C Trust counties by managing the timber resources on O&C Trust lands on a sustained-yield basis…”

From Environment & Energy News today in below. The letter mentioned is here:

Enviro Groups Letter on Forestry Bills

Enviro groups call GOP forestry bills ‘Trojan horses’

Phil Taylor, E&E reporter

Published: Thursday, April 11, 2013

Lot of good discussion around the black backed woodpecker recently.  Maybe everyone else is way ahead of me, but I have to admit that I wasn’t clear on how the ESA process worked (I only deal with the actual listed species).  There’s been plenty of debate today on advocacy vs. science, appropriate science  and the motivation of “petitioners”.  Hopefully this helps shed a little light on the process and how the USFWS considers science.  Thanks to John Persell for prompting me to do some more research.  The USFWS site is clunky, but here’s an overview:  http://www.fws.gov/endangered/what-we-do/listing-overview.html

What follows is a press release from conservation groups John Muir Project, Center for Biological Diversity, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance and Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project. – mk

SAN FRANCISCO— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that it will conduct a full status review to determine whether genetically distinct populations of black-backed woodpeckers — which thrive in forests where fires have burned — will get protection under the Endangered Species Act in two regions, California/Oregon and the Black Hills of South Dakota. Today’s decision that protection may be warranted for these birds comes in response to a scientific petition submitted by four conservation groups last May. Black-backed woodpeckers are threatened by logging that destroys their post-fire habitat.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons/Cephas. Photos are available for media use.

“This is the first time in the history of the Endangered Species Act that the government has initiated steps to protect a wildlife species that depends upon stands of fire-killed trees,” said Dr. Chad Hanson, an ecologist and black-backed woodpecker expert. “We are pleased to see the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recognize the naturalness and ecological importance of this post-fire habitat.”

Black-backed woodpeckers rely on what is known as “snag forest,” high-diversity habitat that’s extremely rare and ephemeral because it is only created when either fire or beetles kill the majority of trees in an area. These standing dead trees — called “snags” — then become a virtual bed and breakfast for black-backed woodpeckers by providing nesting space as well as large amounts of wood-boring beetle larvae for the woodpeckers to eat.

Post-disturbance forests are only livable for the species for a short time — roughly 7-10 years — which means the woodpeckers need newly burned or beetle-killed forests to continually appear on the landscape. Unfortunately, that habitat is often destroyed by post-disturbance logging that removes the very trees the birds rely on. Because of logging, suppression of the natural fire regime and large-scale forest “thinning” to prevent fires in backcountry areas, there is now an extremely limited amount of usable habitat available to black-backed woodpeckers.

“The black-backed woodpecker is so highly adapted to burned forests that it’s almost impossible to spot when perched on a fire-blackened tree,” said Duane Short, a zoologist with Biodiversity Conservation Alliance. “Its black back and wing feathers protect it from predators as it forages for beetles, some of which have themselves evolved in concert with burned forests.”

“These birds desperately need the lifeline of the Endangered Species Act,” said Justin Augustine with the Center for Biological Diversity. “There are likely only a few hundred pairs left in South Dakota’s Black Hills, and about a thousand pairs in Oregon and California — these birds could wink out of existence if we don’t stop razing their habitat as soon as it appears.”

With dangerously small populations of fewer than 1,000 pairs in Oregon/California and only about 400 pairs in the Black Hills, the birds depend on habitat that’s likewise extremely scarce: Just 2 percent of the forests within the woodpeckers’ range from the Cascades of Oregon through California’s Sierra Nevada are currently likely suitable for them to live in, and only about 5 percent of forests in the Black Hills are suitable. The great majority of this limited habitat is unprotected and therefore open to logging.

“Over my 22 years of field-checking proposed timber sales in eastern Oregon national forests, I have been privileged to observe black-backed woodpeckers but have increasingly noticed their scarcity as the Forest Service has been implementing ever larger timber sales aimed at artificially reducing natural fire and insect occurrence, as well as numerous post-fire logging projects eliminating black-backed woodpecker habitat,” said Karen Coulter of the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project. “This status review is a good first step toward reversing that trend”

The groups that filed the petition to protect the birds were John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute, Center for Biological Diversity, Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project and Biodiversity Conservation Alliance.

“BACKGROUND CHECKS FOR SCIENTISTS”

[NOTE: This editorial was first published by Jim Beers on March 13, 2013 in “The Pen,” a monthly newsletter of CST Talk Radio out of California, Missouri. It is republished with permission. Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC.  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands.  He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the “theft” by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He currently lives in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife “of many decades.”]

As the debate on requiring background checks for gun sales rages, I submit that background checks should be mandatory for scientists that sell their research to government bureaucracies.

A recent news article in The Washington Post (of all places) describes a former scientist at Johns Hopkins University that became embroiled in the controversy over growing scientific research retractions coinciding with the competition for available government grant dollars.

The tainted and slanted research that was going increasingly unquestioned, concerned cancer drugs and genetic relationships.  The scientist found that questioning results based on incomplete testing and ignoring applicable factual references resulted in his being disciplined, his eventually being fired and the suicide of a colleague asked to verify the unverifiable science purported to be reliable.

The number of research articles retracted in the field of biomedical research has increased “tenfold since 1975”.  Two thousand of these retracted scientific papers were reviewed and it was determined that “67% were attributable to misconduct, mainly fraud or suspected fraud”.  While government grant availability has increased since the 1960’s, when 2 out of 3 requests were funded: today only one out of 5 requests are funded.  Because jobs and funding for the researchers are really what is on the line today, shoddy and cheap “science” to give government grant administrators what they want is the only guarantor of future funding preferences.

If potentially human life-threatening aspects of cancer drugs relative to the genetics of those afflicted with cancer can be misrepresented, what is sacred anymore?  Eventual lawsuits by wealthy families suspecting misuse of drugs or malpractice as the cause of losing a loved one might well punish these “scientists” publishing misleading and self-serving results.  Yet these charlatans are evidently not deterred.  If this is so, what about all the environmental/animal “rights” “science” purchased by government since “the 1960’s”?

When “science” tells us that logging “must” be stopped; or grazing is “bad”; or hunting “unbalances the environment”; or predators “balance” the environment; or “native” species “belong” everywhere; or dams “must” be removed; or roads “disturb” grizzly bears; or fatal attacks by predators are the “fault” of those killed; or lethal control of predators is “ineffective”; or pipelines “disturb” species X; or sage grouse are “in danger”; or bats are “disappearing”; or wildfires are “good”; or Sanctuaries and Wilderness are “beneficial”; or that only more federal jurisdiction over water or more federal land ownership or easement control of private property will do X, Y, and Z: other than pandering for more federal funding, what possible down side is there for unscrupulous ”scientists”?

When federally-protected grizzly bears kill hikers, no scientist or bureaucrat is responsible.  Ditto when wolves decimate big game herds and force ranchers out of business and diminish the quality of rural life.  Ditto when logging communities are decimated and unmanaged forests result in fewer and fewer of the critters supposedly saved by eliminating logging.  Ditto when federal lands are closed to use and roads and access only to burn down and kill neighbors while their homes and belonging are destroyed.  All the faulty environmental/animal “rights” “science” since “the 1960’s” has bred a national nightmare to rival the corruption of human life-saving biomedical research that has become less and less reliable.

Until and unless the federal-influence spigot to Universities and research organizations is turned way down or off, corruption is inevitable.  The spigot won’t be turned off until the US Congress stops funding and writing laws that imagine laws and regulations that are triggered by or act only upon “science”.  Think Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection  Act, Animal Welfare Act, Wilderness Act, and other such laws that absolve all involved humans of any responsibility while pointing always to “science” as the reason and trigger for un-Constitutional and anti-human actions by a government of men supposedly bounded by a Constitution.  This is an especially important matter for rural Americans today.

The federal laws will not be amended or repealed until we elect federal legislators that respect the Constitution and have our best interests at heart.  Federal Legislators will not do the right thing until State Legislators and Governors stand their ground (think Wyoming and wolves as a role model here).  State Legislators and Governors with our best interests at heart come from Local elected officials like Commissioners, Supervisors and Sheriffs.  The time to get this food chain going is right now.  I won’t repeat that old Chicago canard about “voting early and often” but I will say we have to vote and vote for this aspect of our lives and liberty.  Letting bureaucrats and “scientists” rule us is akin to letting Druid priests read bones or Shamans stare into smoke as a basis for national decisions.  As Dirty Harry once remarked about his boss’s breath mint “it ‘ain’t’ cutting it”

Jim Beers can be reached (and his newsletter can be obtained) by contacting:   [email protected]

Study shows that illicit rodenticide use poisoning elusive carnivore on public and community lands

WCS and partners identify potential conservation threat

BOZEMAN (July 13, 2012) –A new study from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the Integral Ecology Research Center, the University of California Davis and other partners shows that imperiled fisher populations are being poisoned by the use of anticoagulant rodenticides (AR) on public and community forest lands in California–likely those used illegally by marijuana growers.

The researchers looked at two distinct fisher populations: one occurring on tribal, private, and public lands in northwestern California and another within the Sierra National Forest in central California. Results of necropsies showed that of 58 fishers tested, 46 of the animals (79 percent) were exposed to one or more of the toxic ARs, and four had died directly from AR toxicity.

Fishers are likely exposed to AR when eating animals that have ingested it prior. They may also be drawn to it by bacon, cheese and peanut butter “flavorizers” that manufacturers add to attract rodents. Distribution of the poisoned fishers indicated widespread contamination of fisher range in California.

Members of the weasel family, fishers were once widely distributed throughout North America’s west coast but have incurred significant population decline and extirpation from portions of their former range. Populations inhabiting Washington, Oregon, and California have been designated a Distinct Population Segment (DPS) and declared a candidate for listing under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Study co-author and WCS Scientist Sean Matthews said, “Fishers play a vital role in the forests of the Sierra Nevada mountains and the Pacific northwest. With a body the size of a house cat and the disposition of their larger cousin, the wolverine, fishers keep forest rodent populations in check and are one of the only predators with the tenacity to regularly prey on porcupines. As fisher populations declined, they took refuge in the last remaining portions of mature forest in the Sierra Nevada and coastal mountains. Now a new threat has emerged in these remaining refuges.”

According to the authors, it is unlikely the fishers were exposed to AR used legally at or near agricultural or residential areas as these settings are not suitable habitat. Nor did animals tracked by telemetry collars during the study venture into those environments. Instead, the exposure points were likely encountered where AR is used illicitly as part of illegal marijuana cultivation in remote areas that overlap with fisher habitat. The study cites multiple examples of confiscation of marijuana plants and discovery of associated AR use in the region and notes that in 2008 alone, more than 3.6 million marijuana plants were removed from federal and state public lands in California, including state and national parks.

Sub-lethal effects that may also contribute to premature fisher death were discussed and include the compromise of the animal’s blood clotting and recovery abilities, decrease of its resilience to environmental stressors, and abandonment of dependent young due to direct mortality of adults killed by AR. During the study, the first documentation of a neonatal milk transfer of AR in fishers was recorded as a deceased six-week old kit was tested and found to have AR in its system. (Kits are dependent on mother’s milk until ten weeks of age.)

Matthews said, “The findings in this paper could signal a looming conservation threat for other species as well as fishers. As we discuss in the study, depletion of rodent prey populations upon which fishers and other animals feed, along with the anticoagulant poisoning threat might affect the Sierra Nevada red fox, wolverine, California spotted owls and other rare carnivores that inhabit the region.”

In their conclusion, the authors consider heightened awareness in removing AR when marijuana grow sites are dismantled and further regulation restricting the use of AR to only pest management professionals.

Study: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0040163
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zws1dXNwRkI&feature=youtu.be

The study, Anticoagulant Rodenticides on our Public and Community Lands: Spatial Distribution of Exposure and Poisoning of a Rare Forest Carnivore, appears in the July 13, 2012 edition of the online journal PLoS ONE.

Co-authors of the study include: Sean M. Matthews of the Wildlife Conservation Society; Mourad W. Gabriel of the Integral Ecology Research Center and the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at the University of California, Davis (UC-Davis); Greta Wengert of Integral Ecology Research Center; Benjamin N. Sacks of Veterinary Genetics Laboratory at UC-Davis; Leslie W. Woods and Robert Poppenga of the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory System at UC-Davis; Rick A. Sweitzer and Reginald H. Barrett of the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project at the University of California at Berkeley (UC-Berkeley); Craig Thompson and Kathryn Purcell of the Pacific Southwest Research Station—Sierra Nevada Research Center, United States Forest Service; J. Mark Higley of the Wildlife Department, Hoopa Tribal Forestry; Stefan M. Keller of the Department of Pathology, Microbiology and Immunology at UC-Davis; and Deanna L. Clifford of the Wildlife Investigations Laboratory of the California Department of Fish and Game.