Archive for September 13, 2010

Let’s Think About This Before Moving Forward…

by John Weckerle

In last week’s Mountain View Telegraph, a Guest View by Sandia Bearwatch member Dennis Hayes rebuts an August 25 Guest View by Tijeras resident Jeff Young, which takes issue with the reaction to New Mexico Department of Game and Fish plans to increase the number of bear hunting licenses in New Mexico in response to supposed bear population increases in New Mexico.

Mr. Hayes’s article provides some very interesting information on how bear populations are estimated.  Mr. Young provides some information as well.  There is one point, especially, on which Mr. Young appears to be incorrect, and that has to do with moose populations in the Yellowstone National Park area, and there are things to be said about Idaho elk populations, as well.

Mr. Young attributes decreases in moose populations in Yellowstone to wolf recovery efforts.  In fact, most sources we found attribute the decline to wildfires in 1988 that greatly reduced the moose habitat in Yellowstone.  Of particular interest is this summary, which discusses not only the factors leading to the moose’s decline in Yellowstone, but how it came to be there in the first place.  According to the paper: “Archeological evidence of moose has not been found in northwest Wyoming and south central Montana. Moose appear to have been scarce in Yellowstone until the latter half of the 19th century and in Jackson Hole until early in the 20th century. Forest fire suppression, restrictions on moose hunting, and moose transplantations contributed to their subsequent range expansion and population increase.”  In short, the higher populations seen in the past were essentially an aberration caused by human influences on the local ecosystem, and the subsequent decline was not primarily caused by wolf predation, but resulted mostly from a return to natural processes (fire, to be specific) that impacted the moose’s habitat.

»» Let’s Think About This Before Moving Forward…