07.2017 newsletter

Colorado Wolf AND WILDLIFE CENTER JULY 2017

Horses and Burros and fox.. oh my!

Coyote, Raccoons and a Chipmunk.. oh no!

Some of the animals at CWWC for permanent residence and some for release

email CERTIFIED BY THE

The Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization certified by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA). Look for this logo whenever you visit a zoo or aquarium as your assurance that you are supporting a facility dedicated to providing excellent care for animals, a great experience for you, and a better future for all living things.

The contents of the material we include in our newsletter does not necessarily reflect the views of Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center. We collect information from sources that are from other organizations, the web, news feeds, and/or other sources. We choose articles that are in the related field of education and conservation.

My two friends and I just celebrated our 60th birthdays at a remote cabin in Florissant. I wanted to do something special for them on our way back to Denver, so I booked the Interactive Alpha Tour at Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center way back in February.

I just wanted to send you a note of thanks for the “exclusive” tour we were given by two of your guides on July 11th. One guide’s name was “Sam” and I’m sorry, I can’t remember the other gal’s name, but she was young, tall and had a big, beautiful smile. We arrived at your facility over an hour early and had the pleasure of being the only three people on the Interactive Tour. We were allowed access into two wolf enclosures, and our guide took lots of photos that we were given to us on a thumb drive. The facility tour was amazing too…Sam was so knowledgeable and answered everyone’s questions. The best part was when we all howled at the end, and all the wolves howled back at us. It gave us all chills! We had the best experience we could have ever hoped for. Here is a photo of us with Na’vi. From left to right, Sally, Sharon and Brenda.

Wayne Pacelle: A Humane Nation July 21, 2017

Recently, Vietnam agreed to the rescue and relocation of 1,000 bears who live on bear farms. These Asiatic sun bears are held in deplorable settings and “milked” in extraordinarily inhumane ways for their bile (used in tonics and in traditional Chinese medicine). The shut-down of this industry is a big moment in the global campaign to protect these predators, and we salute the Vietnamese government and also Animals Asia Foundation, which drove the outcome. We hope this policy advance creates more pressure on China to replicate the policy.

Xanda, pictured left, was four years old when Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer killed his father, Cecil, with an arrow. Xanda survived the loss and grew into a mature male who mated and had cubs of his own.

Thank you so much for making our 60th birthdays so special! Sharon

awesome graduation card

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Trophy hunter slays son of Cecil

Photos with the wolves make beautiful holiday cards... make your reservations early! Check out our interactive tours at wolfeducation.org

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Photo by Fish Eagle Safaris USA

In Africa, on the other hand, there’s jarring news on the treatment of predators. There’s been an eerily familiar slaying in Zimbabwe: a trophy hunter shot and killed Xanda the lion, whose primary range consisted of a portion of Hwange National Park. Xanda was the son of Cecil, who was also killed two summers ago after a hunting guide lured him outside of Hwange as a set-up for his fee-paying client.

Xanda was four years old when Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer shot Cecil with an arrow, wounding him and allowing him to suffer through the night before finishing him with a second shot approximately 10 hours later. No one knew what would become of Cecil’s progeny, since trophy hunting disrupts social relationships among family members. Lions live in communities where males sometimes work together to protect their mates and cubs; when a dominant male is lost, new male coalitions may seize the moment and try to take over prides. When they succeed, they are known to kill the cubs to ensure the females continue only their lineage.

Xanda survived the loss of his father and grew into a mature male who mated and had cubs of his own.

The professional hunter who led his client to kill Xanda

handed over his collar to Oxford University biologists, who were tracking Xanda. His death has the potential to disrupt the pride again. What will become of Xanda’s cubs, Cecil’s grandchildren? Will they, too, share the same fate as their father and their grandfather?

The scientists at Oxford University, who have been studying the lions in Hwange for decades, have data to show that lion hunting is not sustainable in the Hwange area, and have pressed for lower hunting quotas and, more recently, a no-hunting buffer zone, around the park. The scientists’ data reveal that trophy hunters are exploiting the lions who live most of their lives in the park. They lure the lions from the park, baiting them with prey species who are strung up in trees as a setup for the kill.

Treating our national parks as incubators for trophy animals is also happening in the United States. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is aligned with state fish and wildlife officials in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana, and with the trophy hunting lobby to delist grizzlies so that hunters can shoot them outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. And a recent study in and around the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve showed massive mortality among wolves who spent most of their time in the preserve but then occasionally wandered outside, where they were shot or trapped. Conversely, a study of wolves in the United States, in Denali and Yellowstone national parks, found that sightings of wolves increased significantly in the years that trapping and hunting buffer zones were created around Denali and when no hunting was permitted in Wyoming.

Throughout all of Africa, perhaps as few as 20,000 lions survive – their number halved in the last two decades. Trophy hunting is, without question, one of the greatest threats to lions. Most lion trophy hunters are American and until last year, these Americans imported an average of nearly 600 lions a year into the United States. That stopped when, in response to a petition from The HSUS and Humane Society International to list the lions under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) prohibited lion trophy imports, including imports from Zimbabwe.

Now the USFWS may be buckling to Safari Club International, which is clamoring to resume such imports. Our best tribute to Xanda right now would be to ensure that we keep this ban in place. American trophy hunters should create no more mayhem, and must stop shooting lions as a headhunting exercise, including lions living in the supposed, protected confines of national parks.

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ONCE IN A LIFETIME Bear Quintuplets

Black bears typically have two cubs; rarely, one or three. In northern New Hampshire, a black bear sow gave birth to five healthy young. There were two or three reports of sows with as many as 4 cubs, but five was, and is, very extraordinary. The photographer learned of them shortly after they emerged from their den and set a goal of photographing all five cubs with their mom - no matter how much time and effort was involved. He knew the trail they followed on a fairly regular basis, usually shortly before dark. After spending nearly four hours a day, seven days a week, for more than six weeks, he had that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and photographed them. He used the equivalent of a very fast film speed on his digital camera. The print is properly focused and well exposed, with all six bears posing as if they were in a studio for a family portrait.

The photographer stayed in touch with other people who saw the bears during the summer and into the fall hunting season. All six bears continued to thrive. As time for hibernation approached, he found still more folks who had seen them, and everything remained OK. The photographer stayed away from the bears because he was concerned that they might become habituated to him, or to people in general, and treat them as approachable friends. This could easily become dangerous for both man and animal.

After Halloween, no further reports and could only hope the bears survived until they hibernated. This spring, just before the snow disappeared, all six bears came out of their den and wandered all over the same familiar territory they trekked in the spring.

The photographer saw them before mid-April and dreamed nightly of taking another family portrait, a highly improbable second once-in-a-lifetime photograph.

When something as magical as this happens between man and animal, Native Americans say, “We have walked together in the shadow of a rainbow.” And so it is with humility and great pleasure that I share these exhilarating photos with you.

On 25th of April, he achieved his dream.

PHOTOGRAPHER TOM SEARS

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A Note from the Center For Biological Diversity

The Trump administration is writing a death warrant for Yellowstone’s grizzly bears Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced plans recently to revoke endangered species protection for Yellowstone’s beloved grizzlies, even though their population is in decline. Trophy hunting of these world-famous bears could start as soon as this fall in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

We’ll fight to overturn this reckless decision so these magnificent bears are safe from the threat of being shot and turned into rugs and wall mounts.

State management could leave Yellowstone bears isolated. It could doom them to genetic decline by stopping them from roaming to find other bears in northern Montana and Idaho. But we won’t take it lying down.

The Center has filed more than 20 lawsuits against the Trump administration, including one against a new open season on bears and wolves in Alaskan national wildlife refuges. We’re in it to win. Grizzly bears are at the heart of Yellowstone, and Yellowstone is at the heart of America’s public lands.

Please contribute to Center For Biological Diversity to help fight this war.

Trump Administration Apparently Not Afraid the Big, Bad Mexican Wolf Will Become Extinct Friday, June 30, 2017 at 6 a.m. · By Joseph Flaherty phoenixnewtimes.com/news/trump-administrations-mexican-wolf-recovery-plan-concerns-advocates-9459349

The Trump era’s blizzard of environmental-regulation rollback doesn’t seem to stop. The administration could now lower the bar for protecting and reintroducing a critically endangered wolf in the Southwest.

Recently, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced a highly fraught revised recovery plan for the Mexican gray wolf, also known as the lobo, setting up a confrontation with conservationists and advocates for the predator.

The new proposal is far less robust than a Mexican wolf recovery plan developed in 2012 under the Obama administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service. At issue is the number of Mexican wolves that would signal endangered species protections ought to be removed.

Under the new plan, just 320 wolves in Arizona and New Mexico, plus 170 wolves in Mexico, would mean the species could be downgraded from its protected status under the Endangered Species Act. Currently, there are only 113 Mexican gray wolves, including just 10 breeding pairs, living in Arizona and New Mexico, and 30 to 35 wolves in Mexico, according to the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson.

Conspicuously absent from the text is any plan to reintroduce the Mexican wolf into the Grand Canyon regions of Colorado or Utah – another provision of the scrapped 2012 plan. Neither state has Mexican gray wolf populations right now.

Arizona has been a staunch opponent to building up Mexican wolf populations; along with 18 other states, the state’s attorney general sued the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2015 over the reintroduction plan. An appeals court sided with the federal government, allowing wolf recovery to move forward.

The Arizona Game and Fish Department did not respond to a request for comment. The Fish and Wildlife proposal will receive written comments from the public at informational meetings in Arizona and New Mexico until August 30.

The Mexican wolf was hunted to the brink of extinction from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s.

In a cruel bit of irony, the species’ scientific name (canis lupus baileyi) pays tribute to Vernon Bailey, a Department of

Agriculture biologist who studied how to exterminate the animals, which he saw as pests, around the turn of the 20th century. Cattle ranchers wholeheartedly agreed with Bailey, and hunted the Mexican wolf with the blessing and even financial support of the federal government.

The Mexican gray was named an endangered species in 1976, and a captive breeding program that began with just seven Mexican wolves is the only reason the species still exists. Thanks to a 1998 reintroduction program, small populations of wolves live in southern Arizona and New Mexico, as well as the Sierra Madre Occidental of northern Mexico.

But these wolves still suffer from a lack of genetic diversity due to inbreeding.

Slowly, the U.S. and Mexico have been reintroducing wolves into the wild in an attempt to create resilient, genetically diverse populations. But the new plan changes the formula for what constitutes an ecological comeback.

Michael Robinson, a conservationist with Arizona’s Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal government and several Western state’s wildlife agencies bowed to the demands of a politically connected livestock industry, which abhors renewed wolf populations.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service abdicated its responsibility to write a science-based plan, and as result what they have is a slender draft recovery plan,” Robinson told Phoenix New Times. “It has almost no reference to the relevant science and it has a very low threshold for when wolves could lose federal protections.”

Also worrisome for conservationists: The Trump-appointed deputy director at Fish and Wildlife, Greg Sheehan, was previously the head of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. Last year, he told Deseret News that establishing the Mexican wolf in southern Utah, part of the broader Grand Canyon ecosystem, was the wrong idea.

Robinson, however, said that because wolves pose such a minor threat, financial or otherwise, to the livestock industry, “what we’re seeing is ideological opposition.”

He told New Times, “It’s a disagreement with what most Americans already support, which is endangered species, including wolves, being a part of the web of life.”

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CONSERVATION CORNER

Okapi Conservation There are many species of animals and plants going extinct because of deforestation. Without natural habitats, many animals are finding themselves without homes and their sources of food. One such animal is the Okapi. The Okapi or Okapia johnstoni, is a relative of the giraffe and is a forest dwelling mammal. It is almost soley dependent on its forest camouflage along with some other very interesting defenses to survive .

One marker of the Okapi are its beautifully striped back legs. Many people immediately associate the Okapi with being part of the zebra family but in actuality is is closer related to the giraffe and is considered one of the oldest living mammal species; comically enough though it was only discovered by the western world in 1901.

The Okapi is a solitary creature, usually only seen by themselves, or a pair, such as a mother and her baby. They are not in big herds like giraffes. They average around five feet tall to the shoulder and weigh roughly between 450 and 750 pounds. Unlike giraffes where both sexes have horns, only the male okapi has horns, making them sexually dimorphic. The female Okapi is usually taller and redder than their male counterpart. Giraffes and Okapis share a beautifully long sticky tongue . These remarkable and very unique tongues help giraffes and Okapis not only with eating and gripping, but also with grooming.

Something very interesting about Okapis that is not apparent unless you touch them is that the okapi is a very greasy and oily animal. There are a few reasons for this. One is to help wick off water from rain. Another reason is if a predator lunged onto the Okapi, they will not be able to keep their grip and fall right off.

When looking at a giraffe and an okapi side by side it is hard to see that they are close relatives, but their taxonomy and morphology show a different story. When the Okapi was first classified , it was thought to be related to the horse. So it was incorrectly placed into the horse genus. However science later revealed that its closest common ancestor is the giraffe.

So it was changed into its very own genus and is the only one of its genus.

They are a very unique animal and usually catch the eye of tourists in zoos and safari parks because they are such a strange looking animal. They are having trouble in the wild though because of increased deforestation, but there are a group of wonderful people working as hard as they can to help this elusive and beautiful creature. The Okapi Conservation Project works with the Institute in Congo for the Conservation of Nature to help protect the Okapi’s in the Okapi Wildlife Reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This Reserve was established in 1992, after the Okapi Conservation Project which was established in 1987, It not only helps preserve okapis but also other plant and animal life along with the cultures and lifestyles of the indigenous people who live there.

Since so many people have never heard of the beautiful Okapi, a World Okapi Day, October 18th, helps bring awareness to the endangered ungulate. They are still having difficulty and Okapi numbers are decreasing. Increased public awareness can make a difference in the Okapi population by educating the people who live in and around the reserve. More information about this project and the Okapis themselves can be found at the project’s website, okapiconservation.org

By Ciera MacIsaac summer intern

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ADOPTION CORNER

Available from TCRAS · Teller County Regional Animal Shelter

Available from San Luis Valley Animal Welfare Society

tcrascolorado.com · 719.686.7707 · NO-KILL shelter in Divide, Colorado

slvaws.org · 719.587.woof (9663) · Non-Profit NO-KILL Shelter

pepper

AGE: 1 y 6 m 24 d SEX: Female/Spayed Black/White Border Collie/Shepherd

Look at this gorgeous girl!!!

She has the most beautiful bushy tail. She is looking for a family with experience in herding behavior & high energy dogs. Please come in and visit this beauty.

ADOPTION FAIR Saturdays 11am-5pm at the Petco in Colorado Springs at 5020 N. Nevada

nick

7 years old, very affectionate.

Gets along with other dogs.

Husky/shepherd, neutered.

Surrendered because of owner’s health problems.

lavina

AGE: 0 y 9 m 16 d · SEX: Female/Spayed Blue Domestic Shorthair/Mix

This beautiful cat came from a multi-cat home and was born with a missing hind foot. Do to the complication with the leg she is now adapting to having the leg amputated. She is shy but once she knows she is in a safe environment she is very sweet. Please come by to visit with her. | 8 | COLORADO WOLF AND WILDLIFE CENTER

Photo credit Shirley Huckle

lanny Lanny was rescued from a hoarding situation.

Very loving, mellow. Age unknown. Lab mix, neutered. Very energetic but needs to lose a few pounds.

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Congressional attacks on wolves ramp up blog.humanesociety.org · July 13, 2017

It wasn’t enough that earlier this year a narrow majority of lawmakers in Congress targeted wolves and other native carnivores for destruction on 76 million acres of our national wildlife refuges in Alaska. Now, they are expanding that fight to National Park Service lands in Alaska – another 20 million acres, where they want to allow land-and-shoot hunting of grizzly bears, trapping of black and grizzly bears with snares and steel-jawed traps, and hunting wolves, bears, and coyotes in their dens. But that’s not all. They are also seeking to eliminate any federal protections for threatened wolf populations in the lower 48 states. And this comes at the same time that the Trump administration has announced it will delist grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and turn over management to the states, which have each vowed to establish trophy-hunting seasons.

Collectively, these bills and administrative actions amount to a grab bag of opportunities for trophy hunters, allowing private citizens to kill bears and wolves in dramatically larger numbers, often on lands set aside specifically for wildlife, and

by means that are often especially cruel and unsporting.

House Republicans have released a detailed draft of the Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement (SHARE) Act, which would remove federal protections for wolves in the Great Lakes and Northern Rockies regions and put Congress in a position to cherry-pick this species from the list of threatened and endangered species. That prospective bill, which includes a raft of other odious provisions to loosen restrictions on the baiting of migratory waterfowl and to bar EPA restrictions on the use of lead sinkers, strips protections for wolves and bears on National Park Service (NPS) lands in Alaska. The House Interior Appropriations Committee also contains a similar rider to delist wolves, in case the backers of these various measures cannot achieve their goal through the other route.

This is nothing particularly new for the legislators involved, who have pushed this legislation for years on behalf of ranchers and trophy hunters. But Democrats in the Senate, with a major assist from House Democratic leaders, have consistently stymied those efforts, by hanging together and holding firm on the issue in spending and reauthorization bills. To their immense credit, House and Senate Democrats fiercely resisted efforts to open national wildlife refuge lands in Alaska to extreme predator-killing practices, and fell short in the Senate only because Republicans invoked a previously little-used legislative maneuver known as the Congressional Review Act, which bars the filibuster option that has long empowered more than 40 lawmakers, acting together, to block controversial legislation.

But two weeks ago, three key Democrats – Senators Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Ben Cardin of Maryland, and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota – broke ranks with the Democratic defenders of wildlife and are signaling that they too are ready to go along with the Republicans’ bid to delist wolves.

Those three Democrats are original cosponsors of the misleadingly-named Hunting Heritage and Environmental Legacy Preservation (HELP) for Wildlife Act. By doing so, they aren’t putting just wolves at risk, but providing a precedent for Congress to subvert administrative authority over endangered species listing and delisting actions and to eliminate judicial review of those administrative actions. It may lead to a species-by-species gutting of the Endangered Species Act if they make deals to allow Republicans to remove species

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in return for other provisions they are allowed to tack on to exceeded. The state, at least in this study, concluded that lothese larger packages of bills. calized wolf control backfires, in an ecological sense, and that It’s an open secret that most state wildlife management caribou were starving. agencies have long been captured by the trophy-hunting NPS biologists who had been conducting their own conlobby. They consider themselves service agents for trophy current, 22-year-long, radio-collar study of wolves in the hunters rather than protectors of wildlife. For example, state nearby Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve found that wildlife managers in Minnesota and Wisconsin, before The wolf numbers even in the more meaningfully protected HSUS stopped them in the courts, allowed trophy hunters confines of the Preserve had been in rapid decline. Private and trappers collectively to kill more than 500 wolves a year. agents and personnel from the Alaska Department of Fish Wisconsin wildlife managers even allow the use of hounds and Game gunned down the vast majority of wolves who and bait to help kill the wolves, setting up a de facto animal ranged beyond the invisible boundary and safety zone of the fighting situation in the woods, when the packs of wolves Preserve. confront the packs of dogs.

The NPS study found that humans, in their attempt to Alaska has been particularly notorious for a scorched earth “manage” these complex natural systems, can only achieve policy toward America’s apex carnivores, allowing their kill- short-term relief, and ultimately, killing wolves decreases ing by a wide variety of means, including the use of aircraft. their pack sizes and the number of breeders. The nearby, proAbetted and often directed by state politicians and political tected wolves simply increased their pup production to make appointees, state wildlife managers dolled up their ruthless up for the loss of those killed by wolf control. A recent study predator-control actions in the verbiage of scientific wild- conducted in Canada reached the same conclusion. life management. But their The point is, the collusion motivation was transparent: between Republican politiThe collusion between Republican they wanted human hunters to politicians, state fish and wildlife agencies, cians, captured state fish and shoot more moose and caribou, wildlife agencies, trophy hunttrophy hunters, and mining interests is and didn’t like the wolves and ers, and mining interests pullmurder on America’s small, remaining bears competing with them. To ing their strings are murder populations of beloved native carnivores. paraphrase my old friend and on America’s small, remaining ethical sportsman Ted Wilpopulations of beloved native liams, hunters believe that every moose or caribou killed by a carnivores. The Democrats in the Senate had been, in so wolf is one less hunting license fee paid to the state. In short, many cases, the last line of defense for these species, and The there was a bloodthirsty element to their killing wildlife, but HSUS urges these lawmakers to stand tall and not trade away there was also a self-interested economic incentive. our legacy of federal protection for wildlife. That includes the But even these agencies have moments where they must strong standards of stewardship on our national parks and pull back because of the mayhem they’ve created. Just last preserves and national wildlife refuges and, through the ESA, week, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced the shielding of vulnerable species from human attacks. that it will stop its wasteful and ineffective cull of wolves in The consensus among serious-minded scientists is that interior Alaska, near the border of the Yukon-Charley Rivers carnivores moderate prey populations and make them more National Preserve. vigorous by removing the sicker, older, and weaker animals.

State wildlife managers had become concerned that some Predator control schemes often kill the strongest, more rohunters were not getting sufficient opportunity to kill mem- bust members of populations and are unreliable, wasteful, bers of the famed Fortymile caribou herd, because it had de- and cruel, and fail in the long run to increase the abundance clined from 50,000 or so in the 1960s to just 6,000 by 1975. of the prey species that agencies treat like cash cows. Around To reestablish herd numbers, the state gave hunters fewer the world, the massive decrease in top carnivores is changing permits, and aggressively persecuted wolves in experimental our very planet. With trophy hunting and predator control programs, including by shooting them from airplanes. schemes, humans are “dumbing down” ecosystems, making As a result, the caribou herd once again artificially rose to them less functional and biologically rich.

50,000 members by 2014. But the state began to realize that Call upon your members of Congress and urge them to it could not maintain its quasi-agricultural aspiration of an vote “No” on any and all efforts to open our parks, preever-expanding caribou herd. Ultimately, the Department serves, and refuges to predator control, and to remove rare of Fish and Game found—to the surprise of no seasoned species, like wolves, from the list of threatened and endanobservers—that the carrying capacity of the land had been gered species.

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IN THE GARDEN WITH KATIE

original colored pencil artwork

by Katie

It is wildflower season in the Colorado mountains.

The monsoon season has arrived, and the daily rainfall has made the mountains come alive with wildflowers. One of my favorite native wildflowers is the Rocky Mountain Penstemon. It is one of the most common and showiest of the many Penstemon species. The royal blue to purple colored blooms are on spikey stems and can be 1-3 feet high.

They bloom in drifts or colonies among the mountain wild grasses.

They are prevalent in the montane and pinon-juniper forests throughout Colorado and the southwestern region of the U.S. Penstemon make a wonderful addition to your native plant garden. It is easier to plant an established potted plant rather than starting them from seed. They are easy to grow, live a long time and are drought tolerant. They require a well-drained soil and lots of sunlight. They also attract hummingbirds. Check out the Rocky Mountain Penstemon at your local nursery or through some of the terrific online nurseries.