Polar Bear Cub Starves to Death in the Arctic

This is actually one of the most heartbreaking videos I have seen. It shows a mother polar bear with two of her cubs in Wapusk National Park in northern Manitoba. The mother is malnourished and two of her cubs are starving. This video shows the final moments in a polar bear cub's life as it dies of starvation.

The mother and cubs have been driven onto dry land due to melting sea ice, but there is little food for them there, so many of them are starving. The first cub died shortly after the video was shot. The second cub died two days later. Both probably died of starvation.

In the video, the temperature is below 0 degree F. The mother bear is malnourished, with little to no fat reserves, and she is having a hard time getting comfortable. Another bear, possibly a male, approached the mother and her cubs. He may be trying to pray on the cubs! The mother chases him off, but she doesn't have much energy to do so.

Afterward, one of the cubs, shaking and cold, begins to go into convulsions, possibly from hunger. He rests for about 10 minutes, then goes into a second set of convulsions. This set of shakes lasts longer than the first one. You are basically watching this poor bear die right in front of your eyes!

This video is actually sickening!

The Western Hudson Bay population of polar bears is being forced ashore each summer due to diminishing sea ice. They are now spending up to eight months on shore, where there is little food. During this time, they are normally utilizing sea ice to access their main food, seals. This polar bear population is expected to go extinct in 25-30 years if things continue as they are.

Polar bears are completely dependent upon large expanses of sea ice to hunt, feed and survive. They use the sea ice as a platform to capture seals and other prey.

Global warming is rapidly melting their ice and lengthening the ice-free season, forcing bears to spend ever-longer periods of time on land, where there is little for them to eat. The longer bears like the ones in this video are stranded on land, the more likely they are to starve.

Polar bears were listed as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 2008 due to sea-ice declines and dwindling populations. The U.S. population is projected to go extinct by 2050 if climate change is not reined in soon; the entire species may disappear by the end of the century.

The polar bears of western Hudson Bay are on the front line of global warming impacts: their population declined by 22 percent between 1987 and 2004 and may be the first driven extinct by climate change.

Bateau de Pêche Chinois entre en Collision avec le Navire de la Garde Côtière Japonaise

I am looking for translators to translate this post into German and Tagalog. Email me if you are interested.

Spanish translation (en Español). Norwegian translation (på norsk).

This is the French translation of the Chinese Fishing Boat Collides with Japanese Coast Guard Vessel post by super translator Natalie from France.

Voici une nouvelle vidéo qui fait le buzz, elle a été mise sur le Net le 7 novembre 2010. Elle montre un navire de pêche chinois qui éperonne délibérément le bateau des garde-côtes au large des iles Senkaku.

Ces iles sont situées au nord est de Taiwan et au sud est des iles Ryukyu dont fait partie Okinawa. Les États Unis ont administré ces iles comme faisant partie des Ryukyu jusqu'en 1972 lorsqu'elles ont été restituées au Japon. Dès lors elles ont été réclamées par le Japon, la Chine et Taiwan.

La dispute à propos de ces iles est un problème majeur entre le Japon et la Chine et entre le Japon et Taiwan. Il y a du gaz naturel dans la région, ce qui n'a fait qu'envenimer le conflit.

Ces iles ne sont pas habitées. Les iles plus grandes, Diaoyu Dao ou Uotsuri Jima, abritent des espèces rares, incluant la taupe de Senkaku, ou le Mugeri Uchidai et la fourmi Okinawa-kuro-oo-ari. La taupe est devenue rare à cause des chèvres importées dans l'ile en 1978. On en dénombre 300 à présent, elles devraient être tuées.

La vidéo diffusée ne devait pas être divulguée. Elle a probablement été mise en ligne par une personne se trouvant à bord du navire des garde-côtes japonais. Depuis la diffusion de la vidéo il y a eu des rassemblements nationalistes au Japon à cause de cet incident.

Kinesisk fiskebåt kolliderer med vilje i et japansk kystvaktfartøy

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Spanish translation (en Español). French translation (en Français)

This is the Norwegian translation of the Chinese Fishing Boat Collides with Japanese Coast Guard Vessel post.

Dette er en ny kjedevideo som lakk ut på Internett 7. november 2010. Det viser en kinesisk fiskebåt som bevisst kolliderer med et japansk kystvaktfartøy den 7. september utenfor Senkakuøyene .

Øyene ligger nordøst for Taiwan og sørvest av Ryukyu-øyene som Okinawa er en del av. De har lenge vært en del av Japan. Amerikanerne administrerte øyene som en del av Ryukyus fram til 1972 da de ble gitt tilbake til Japan. Siden da har de blitt krevet av både Japan, Kina og Taiwan.

Striden om øyene er et stort problem mellom Japan og Kina og mellom Japan og Taiwan. Det er naturgass i regionen, så dette har forsterket konflikten.

Ingen bor på øyene. Den største øya, Diaoyu Dao eller Uotsuri Jima, har noen sjeldne arter, inkludert den Senkakuske muldvarp også kalt Mugeri Uchidai, og Okinawa-koro-oo-ari maur. Muldvarpen er blitt sjelden på grunn av geiter som ble importert til øya i 1978. De teller nå 300, og de trenger å bli drept.

Lekkasjen av denne videoen var ikke ment å bli offentliggjort. Den er trolig utgitt av noen om bord på den japanske kystvaktens fartøy. Siden videoen ble sluppet, har det vært nasjonalistiske kriger i Japan over hendelsen.

Bote de Pesca Chino Choca Contra Buque de la Guardia Costera Japonesa

I am looking for translators to translate this post into German and Tagalog. Email me if you are interested.

Norwegian translation (på norsk). French translation (en Français)

This is the Spanish translation of Chinese Fishing Boat Collides with Japanese Coast Guard Vessel. Translator: Fabián Aguilar, a crazy guy from Bogotá, Colombia, who likes Saturdays.

Este es un nuevo video viral que fue subido a Internet el 7 de noviembre de 2010. Muestra un bote de pesca chino que deliberadamente choca contra un buque de la guardia costera japonesa el 7 de septiembre cerca a las Islas Senkaku.

Las islas están localizadas al noroeste de Taiwán y al suroccidente de las Islas Ryukyu entre las cuales está Okinawa. Desde hace mucho tiempo han sido tomadas por Japón. Estados Unidos administró las islas como parte de las de Ryukyu hasta 1972, fecha en la que fueron devueltas a Japón. Desde entonces, han sido reclamadas por Japón, China y Taiwán.

La disputa sobre estas islas es un problema mayor entre Japón y China y entre Japón y Taiwán. Hay gas natural en la región aumentando así el conflicto.

Nadie vive en las islas. La isla más grande, Diaoyu Dao o Uotsuri Jima, posee algunas raras especies, incluyendo el topo Senkaku y la hormiga Okinawa-kuro-oo-ari. El topo está en vía de extinción a causa de las cabras que fueron importadas a la isla desde 1978. Ahora existen alrededor de 300 cabras, deben ser sacrificadas.

El video filtrado se supone que no debió haber salido a la luz. Probablemente fue publicado por alguien a bordo del buque. Desde que el video apareció en Internet, ha habido manifestaciones nacionalistas por todo Japón debido al incidente.

Chinese Fishing Boat Collides with Japanese Coast Guard Vessel

I am looking for translators to translate this post into German and Tagalog. Email me if you are interested.

Spanish translation (en Español). Norwegian translation (på norsk). French translation (en Français).

This is a new viral video that was just leaked to the Internet on November 7, 2010. It shows a Chinese fishing boat deliberately colliding with a Japanese coast guard vessel on September 7 off the Senkaku Islands.

The islands are located northeast of Taiwan and southwest of the Ryukyu Islands of which Okinawa is a part. They have long been held by Japan. The US administered the islands as part of the Ryukyus until 1972 when they were given back to Japan. Since then, they have been claimed by Japan, China and Taiwan.

The dispute over the islands is a major problem between Japan and China and between Japan and Taiwan. There is natural gas in the region, so this has heightened the conflict.

No one lives on the islands. The largest island, Diaoyu Dao or Uotsuri Jima, has some rare species, including the Senkaku mole or the Mugeri Uchidai, and the Okinawa-kuro-oo-ari ant. The mole has become rare due to goats being imported to the island in 1978. The goats now number 300, and they need to be killed off.

The leaked video was not supposed to have been released. It was probably released by someone on board the Japanese Coast Guard vessel. Since the video was released, there have been nationalist rallies in Japan over the incident.

Long-Dead Critters Resurrect Themselves

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Always great to report news of critters rising from the dead.

Debbie Martyr is a woman who has been working for some time in and around Kerinci-Seblat National Park in Sumatra, trying to come up with evidence for the Orang-Pendek, a new species of ape.

While doing this, she came across evidence of the Sumatran muntjac, last seen in 1930 and long since declared extinct. It was captured in a hunter's snare. Muntjacs are known as "barking deer" but I don't know much about them otherwise.

A Sumatran muntjac, thought extinct for 78 years, rediscovered in a national park in Sumatra. This one was caught in a snare, so they could capture it and study it. Too bad the Sumatran rainforest is being destroyed at an incredible pace.

A species of Harlequin frogs (actually called Andersson's Stubfoot Toad), thought extinct for over a decade, have been rediscovered in a small population near EcoMinga’s Rio Zuñaca Reserve in Ecuador. It was last seen in 1937 and was declared extinct long ago.

A photo of a dead Atelopus palmatus, recently rediscovered after 71 years in Ecuador.

The Desert Mouse from New South Wales, Australia, was last seen in 1857, 151 years ago, and was long declared extinct. It was recently rediscovered in Sturt National Park near Tibooburra.

The Desert Mouse, found in a drought-hammered part of a national park in New South Wales, thought extinct for 151 years.

And mountain lions are now officially documented in Louisiana after many reported sightings.

Photograph of a mountain lion in Allen Parish, Louisiana. My friends and relatives have seen these things, but I have never seen them. If you live in the woods in California, these animals are around all the time, but you just never see one. Amazing how they hide since they are so huge. There's not much reason to be afraid of these things, but I usually carry a large pointed hiking stick when I go hiking anyway.

They hardly ever attack people unless you are jogging or riding a bicycle. That is because when you do that, you look like a deer, an animal they are used to killing. They also attack little kids, because that is about the size of their usual prey too.

It seems to be a small population that is moving from East Texas into the state. There is a lot of controversy surrounding the Eastern Cougar, long thought to have gone extinct. But sightings have continued and have really stepped up in recent years. It's hard to come up with good, hard evidence though.

Many of those spotted are thought to be escaped pets, but some are probably real. We know for sure that there are cougars in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin right now, and there is good documentation of them around the Chicago area. Yes, mountain lions somehow crossed the Mississippi River. How? Who knows?

Cryptomundo is a good site for all this sort of thing, plus lots of Bigfoot, Yeti, Tasmanian Tiger and other more dubious stuff.

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On Spotted Owls

There are three subspecies of spotted owls in the US. The Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) ranged from Oregon and Washington down into the California coast ranges and over into the Siskiyous and Cascades. The California Spotted Owl (CASPO) lives in the Sierra Nevada, down into the Tehachapis and and into the mountain ranges of Southern California.

The Southern California population is isolated in mountain ranges that are not connected and is projected to go extinct over at most 100-200 years. Before mass settlement of Southern California, CASPO may have moved from range to range via river corridors, but now that is not possible. The Techachapi CASPO is probably not sustainable either. CASPO also lives in the Coast Ranges south of San Fransisco.

The Mexican Spotted Owl lives in the Southwest, mostly in Arizona and New Mexico. It was listed as threatened recently and recently had a huge amount of critical habitat set aside. It seems to be threatened by cattle grazing, but I forget how. Serious overgrazing in the Southwest seems to be devastating the grass and forb understory of the old growth pine forests.

This overgrazing has promoted heavy stands of small trees that are susceptible to drought and fire. The truth is that the Southwest should not even be grazed in the first place; it's too dry and cows just devastate arid regions.

Cows evolved in cold, moist England and they are not well suited to arid regions. During the hot, dry months, they congregate in riparian areas, which they utterly devastate. The Eastern US is much moister, and cattle grazing causes few problems there.

The NSO was declared a threatened species in 1990, setting off the timber wars in the Pacific Northwest. Clinton pushed through a crappy Northwest Forest Plan, which sold out way more to industry than was necessary. Logging in the region declined by 80%, but they had been horribly overcutting for decades.

As one might expect, the new regulations did not save the NSO, and it has continued to decline at 3.5% per year. The continuing decline of the NSO means that it may soon have to be uplisted from Threatened to Endangered.

In the far north, in northern Washington and British Colombia, the NSO is declining at about 7% per year. In southwestern B.C., there are only about 50 owls left and they are going to go extinct in the past few years unless something is done.

All spotted owls have selected for old growth forests. A new threat is the Barred Owl, which is a relative of the Spotted Owl, coming down from the north. The Barred Owl is much more tolerant of the open conditions created by massive clearcutting, and is displacing Spotted Owls in many places. In particular, it is interbreeding with them, creating a new hybrid type.

Loggers claim that the Barred Owl invasion is the true cause of the NSO decline, but they are lying as usual. The Barred Owl invasion is due to the more open conditions created by out of control clearcutting for decades in the Northwest.

The CASPO was petitioned twice for listing, in 2000 and 2004. I haven't read the petitions, but I have read hundreds of pages of studies on the CASPO. The CASPO, last I heard, was declining at a greater rate than even the NSO. In 2006, the US Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the CASPO as an endangered species.

That strikes me as a wrong decision, but Bush is listing species at a rate even 85% lower than his rightwing father, George Bush. Bring back George Bush Sr.! As we can see, with the years, the US Republican Party, and consequently the US Whites they represent, have gotten increasingly virulent in the attitude of hatred and destruction towards our precious environment.

Next to the immigrant hordes flooding our shores, our precious slice of American Gaia has no greater enemy than White Americans.

What is curious about this is that White nationalists insist that only Whites are altruistic enough to care enough to be environmentalists in any way. It's an interesting argument, but it's sure not true in the US, and almost everyone making this odd argument is voting for the party of Nuke Gaia. Go figure.

Northern Leopard Frog Needs Listing

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated September 9:

This long pdf, available for download on this blog, is a copy of the petition filed to list the Western population of the Northern Leopard Frog (NLF) as an endangered species in the US. Genetically, the Western population is genetically distinct from the eastern population, and may merit splitting into a subspecies or even a separate species.

The Center for Native Ecosystems, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Black Hills, Forest Guardians, Center for Biological Diversity, The Ark Initiative, Native Ecosystems Council, Rocky Mountain Clean Air Action and Jeremy Nichols filed the petition in June 2006.

I guess there hasn't been any action on it yet, and they will probably have to sue to get any action at all.

I never even knew the Leopard Frog was in danger. They are very rare and probably extirpated here in California. They are most common in the Midwest.

The document is quite long at 200 pages, but I read through most of it easily.

Reasons for the decline are uncertain, but pesticides, herbicides, strange diseases, viral, bacterial and fungal, along with global warming in the more arid portion of its range, seems to be playing a role. Global warming is expected to cause general drying across the frog's range in the West (see Table 21). In one high elevation region of Colorado, leopard frogs were extirpated due to disappearance of breeding ponds, probably due to global warming.

Water pollution seems to be one of the main reasons for the decline. The leopard frog's main range is in the Midwest, and farming is big there. Herbicides, pesticides and water pollution from various things, in particular chemical fertilizers which cause algal blooms, seems to be hurting the frog.

In general, this frog seems to need clean, healthy wetlands and watercourses, and these are definitely declining.

This species is not going to get listed. The Bush Administration has by far the worst listing record of any US administration in history. Even his Bush's father was vastly better than his son. This shows how far to the Right the Republican Party, and the US Whites who give it support, have moved only in the last 14 years.

Even under the Clintons, the devastation of the environment was well underway. Nixon and Ford were much better for the environment than Clinton was.

Under Clinton, all of our nation's landmark environmental laws, mostly enacted under Republican Richard Nixon, went by the wayside in favor of "market solutions" that, as would be expected, failed the environment. This shows how both parties have been colonized by market ideology these days to where a Nixonian Republican was more progressive than a Clintonian Democrat.

Environmental groups have gone to great lengths to show us that environmental laws are actually cost-effective in market terms. I don't buy it. Wrecking the environment is profitable; saving it is bad for business. That's all there is to it. There's a reason why every business group in the US hates every environmental law we ever passed. It's not because they are stupid. They know the bottom line.

Environmental laws show the flaws of the market-based approach to life. There is more to life than the market and making a buck. The market will probably never effectively with any environmental issues, as it is just not cost-effective.

Environmental laws, especially the Endangered Species Act, are in direct contradiction with the Open Borders policy of most environmentalists and environmental groups. Logically, this makes no sense at all.

I hate to coddle White nationalists, but I am wondering. Is there any ethnic group other than White Europeans in the West who would actually set up an Endangered Species Act and thwart capitalism in order to protect rats, bugs, weeds, and minnows, as the detractors of the Act would have it?

I'm wondering. I guess Amerindians might. Who else? Surely not Arabs, South Asians, Africans (!) and SE and NE Asians.

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Deep Ecology - An Overview

One thing people ought to know about this blog is that one of my philosophies is Deep Ecology. Click that link and you so you can try to figure out what it means. It was part of a debate in the environmentalist (especially radical environmental) movement that probably really got going in the 1990's.

It had several rivals, including Social Ecology, promoted by a fellow named Murray Bookchin . Deep Ecology was promoted by a guy named Arne Naess. There's also Ecofeminism, which I'm not really up on, because I can't stand most kinds of feminism, although pro-porn feminists sounds like they are after my heart.

To me, Deep Ecology means something like, "Up with the animals, down with the people." I'm not saying kill the people or anything like that, but I think in general, most species have a right to survive just like people. And no, White nationalists may not give me a debate in the comments section of this post about why their race is an endangered species.

Notable Deep Ecologists and influences include Edward Abbey of The Monkeywrench Gang fame, Dave Foreman, founder of Earth First! (many EF'ers are Deep Ecologists), Mike Roselle, also of EF!, Judi Bari (probably framed by the FBI), Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Theodore Roszak, John Zerzan (anarchist intellectual from Oregon) and Gary Snyder (Buddhist beatnik poet).

An overview of the Social Ecology versus Deep Ecology dust-up is here. In general, Deep Ecologists were more anarchists and Social Ecologists were more traditional socialists. I recall a Social Ecologist saying that if an animal had to be driven extinct to keep poor humans from suffering, than so be it.

They also opposed the idea of protecting animals like tigers that kill humans. If a tiger protection plan deepened the poverty of already poor humans, they would oppose that. This is pretty much the mentality of socialist states in the past 100 years, which in general have cared a lot more about the needs of humans than animals.

Deep Ecologists had major roots in the Green Party and the worldwide Green Movement as a whole. They tend to support not just reduced population growth, but actual negative population growth and population declines within nations.

This puts Deep Ecology on an oppositional status with almost all nationalists, especially ethnic nationalists. Ethnic nationalists in particular have always championed high birth rates. White nationalists are extremely pro-natalist for Whites only, and they go nuts over articles about White women having 18 kids. That would keep me out of such a movement right off the bat.

Ominously, all fascists have also always been fiercely pro-natalist.

Capitalism also, dependent on ever-increasing population for the insanity of ever-increasing economic growth, is very much pro-natalist. Capitalist theory holds that population declines will destroy the capitalist economy. That's a great reason to reject neoliberal capitalism, or possibly capitalism itself, right there.

One of Deep Ecology's critiques of standard environmentalism is why we should preserve habitats and species.

The standard line is that we must do this because these things can or may provide great benefit for human beings. Wilderness areas are preserved so humans can run around in them, birds are preserved so humans can look at them with binoculars, and rainforests and species are preserved because science can study them and figure out new medical or technological applications to benefit humans.

Deep Ecologists say that this is anthropocentrism. Species and places should be preserved for their inherent value, regardless of whether or not humans can use them or exploit them for human benefit. That's a major philosophical position that you might want to ponder.

We had a big to-do over the California spotted owl (CASPO) in this part of the Sierra Nevada about 15 years ago. Bottom line is some mills closed, people lost their jobs, homes went into foreclosure, etc. About 100% of the population up here was in favor of the loggers who were wrecking the forest and against the owls.

As it turns out, the restrictions that the Forest Service put in are not even working to preserve the CASPO, and it surely needs to be listed at least as federally threatened. The crooked Fish and Wildlife Service won't do so because that would mean further logging restrictions.

At the time, I used to delight in infuriating people by saying that 1 spotted owl was worth about 20 humans. Hardly anyone seemed to go along with that.

The species accounts on this blog are in the spirit of Deep Ecology. I'm an animal lover. I wish I could love human animals just as much, but it seems like non-human animals are in general nicer and more reliable.

By the way, Dave Foreman's Confessions of an Eco-Warrior (1991) is highly recommended as a primer in deep ecology.

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The Sierra Nevada Red Fox

This was formerly part of another post, More California Wolverine Photos in the Sierra, that I decided to cut up into two posts in order to focus this one on the Sierra Nevada Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes necator). This fox is very rare in the areas and it seems to qualify as endangered on the basis of the Endangered Species Act. I think it needs an emergency listing.

The only confirmed population is a tiny population of only 10-15 foxes in and around Lassen National Park where the Northern Sierra meets the Southern Cascades.

This area has historically seen more sightings than any other part of California (sighting map for Northern California). This concentration is focused in Lassen, Tehama and Shasta Counties in and around Lassen Park. There have also been a few sightings in Modoc, Siskiyou and Trinity Counties.

The existence of the Sierra Nevada red fox has recently been confirmed by a team led by John Perrine of UC Berkeley. The team has located a small population of 10-15 Sierra Nevada red foxes existing in and around Lassen National Park in the Cascades Range. A later study proved that these were Sierra Nevada Red Foxes and not Eastern Red Foxes, which are abundant at the lower elevations in California.

A good description of the Lassen study, along with several rare photos of the foxes, can be found here. In the Sierras, the Sierra Nevada red fox was typically found at about 9,000 feet, with one record at 4,000, another at 5,500 and another at 7,000 feet. In the Cascades, they are usually found at around 6,000 feet, dropping down to 4,000 feet in the winter and moving up to 8,000 feet in the summer.

A report by the DFG in 1987 said the Sierra Nevada red fox was endangered, but noted that sightings continue in the rest of the Sierra Nevada outside the Cascades within the traditional range of the species. I believe that they probably still exist in the Sierras. I am aware of some recent sightings on the East side near Mammoth Mountain at high elevations.

They reportedly still exist in Mineral King south of Sequoia National Park.

I am also aware of sightings of the Sierra Nevada Red Fox in the past 30 years on the Sierra National Forest. In 1971, a Sierra Nevada red fox was sighted at Florence Lake at about 9,000 feet. In 1973, there was a sighting at Soda Springs near Mammoth Pool Reservoir at 4,500 feet.

In 1987, there was a sighting along Highway 168 between Auberry and Shaver Lake at about 4,300 feet, a very low elevation. In 1991, there was a sighting at Papoose Lake north of Lake Edison at about 10,390 feet.

There have also been a few sightings in Yosemite Valley in the past decade or so.

On the Stanislaus, there have been a number of sightings in the area of the Emigrant Wilderness, in particular something called the Waterhouse Wilderness Study Area on the northwest edge of the Emigrant Wilderness.

In Mono County, Sierra Nevada red foxes have been reported from Bridgeport Valley.

In Nevada County near Lake Tahoe, there is a sighting from 1994 along Highway 89 north of Truckee.

This cool paper by C. Hart Merriam shows that Sierra Nevada Red Foxes were formerly common at high elevations in the Mount Shasta area, and that tracks were seen almost every day (!) but they were very wary and never entered the traps that they had set. It is interesting that fishers were also present in this area. V. v. necator is probably very rare to absent in the Shasta area now.

This report makes one wonder just what it is that has driven V.v. necator to near-extinction. I strongly suspect grazing.

One of the best historical sources on the Sierra Nevada Red Fox is this chapter from Joseph Grinnell's hard-to-find Furbearers of California from 1937. Since continued attempts to open the file in a browser with Opera and Firefox kept crashing my system, I finally opened it online with Internet Explorer and was able to save it to my drive.

I'm making it available on this site for download so you can view it in Adobe Reader without crashing your browser. It was even hard to upload the file, so there is something wrong with it, but you should be able to view it ok. One thing it makes clear is that the Sierra Nevada red fox was much more common in the first four decades of the century than it is now.

It has declined drastically and desperately needs Endangered Species listing. If you want to risk crashing your browser, you can try it with Internet Explorer here.

At the time of Grinnell's writing, this fox was preying heavily on Sierra Nevada Snowshoe Hares and White-Tailed Hares, both of which are now pretty rare in the Sierras. I wonder if that is related to their decline? The decline of the white-tailed hare in the Sierra, formerly common on the East Side, is related exclusively to grazing.

All high-elevation needs to be banned from the Sierra anyway, as it is simply a catastrophe. Cows do not belong in high elevation meadows, and there is no place for them up there. We can start by getting rid of grazing in wilderness areas. Allowing grazing in wilderness areas was the only way that the Wilderness Act of 1964 could be passed.

I am not impressed at all with the ability of the US Forest Service to preserve wildlife in general, not to mention sensitive or endangered species. I spent years monitoring the Sierra National Forest and the workers I met with were some of the most corrupt and dishonest people I have ever dealt with.

The entire mentality was devoted to resource extraction, and even wildlife biologists, botanists and fisheries specialists routinely issued "no significant harm" on virtually every single Environmental Assessment Report I ever saw.

Even less impressive is the California Department of Fish and Game, though at least their heads are in the right direction. Individuals working with the DFG are good people, but the Commission is run by political clowns.

There are all sorts of species that need to be listed as threatened or endangered, but the DFG has hardly made even one such listing in the last decade. The DFG has been routinely denying petitions to list any species at all as threatened or endangered for a decade or so now.

Further, there are questions about how much a CA T & E designation even helps a species, as the DFG seldom intervenes in any way to help even the species they have listed as T & E.

In the early 1990's, the CA DFG produced some excellent volumes - Reptiles and Amphibians of Special Concern in California by Mark Jennings, Fish of Special Concern in California by Peter Moyne and Threatened and Endangered Species of California.

The reports by Jennings and Moyne listed numerous species that should be listed as species of special concern, threatened or endangered. To my knowledge, 15 years later, not a single one of these has been listed. A prime example is that the Sierra Nevada Red Fox, which the DFG even admitted in 2004 was critically endangered, is still listed as "threatened" instead of "endangered".

Even a petition to uplist it will surely be denied. The game here has been to devastate the DFG with budget cuts, even during times when the state is flush with cash. Then the DFG gets to say that they don't have any money to list any new species. Cool game, huh?

It seems every year, the DFG gets hammered with new budget cuts, and in lush years, the money never gets reinstated. Any environmentalist who is a fiscal conservative needs to have their head examined.

The FS complains of budget cuts too, but in contrast they are actively hostile to the environment. Their whole agenda was to let grazing and logging go on to the greatest extent possible and to deny all negative impacts on the environment of such.

Go into a local FS office and the whole place, even the wildlife biologists, are avidly listening to Rush Limbaugh! Most of them, including once again wildlife biologists who supposedly believe in evolution, are members of fundamentalist churches! Go figure.

Such is the state of things in the supposedly pro-environment US. Large majorities support the environmentalist agenda, but of course the Republicans and incredibly even the Clintonista triangulating Democrats are both very hostile to the environment. There is no logical reason for either party, especially the Democrats, to take this stance.

The only explanation is that both parties are completely dedicated to the corporate and pro-business agenda, and the entire rest of the population, even if that means 55-98% of the population depending on the issue, can just go to Hell.

Click the wolverines label at the end of the post to see other posts on wolverines in the US, including many sighting reports and photos.

References

CDFG. 1987. Sierra Nevada Red Fox: Five-year Status Report. California Department of Fish and Game, Sacramento, California, USA.

Grinnell, Joseph. 1924. Animal Life in the Yosemite. Berkeley: University of California Press, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.

Kucera, T. E. 1995. Recent Photograph of a Sierra Nevada Red Fox. California Fish and Game 81:43-44.

Merriam, Clinton Hart. 1899. Results of a Biological Survey of Mount Shasta, California. Washington D.C.: U. S. Department of Agriculture, Division of Biological Survey.

Perrine, J. D., J. P. Pollinger, B. N. Sacks, R. H. Barrett, and R. K. Wayne. 2007. Genetic Evidence For the Persistence of the Critically Endangered Sierra Nevada Red Fox in Northern California. Conservation Genetics 8:1083-1095.

Southern California Edison Company. 2001. Final Technical Study Plan Package (FTSPP) for the Big Creek Hydroelectric Projects (FERC Project Nos. 67, 120, 2085, and 2175). Terrestrial Resources - Chapter 13 - Mesocarnivores. Rosemead, CA.

Wildlife Conservation Board. 2002. Report to the Legislature on the Wildlife Protection Act of 1990. Annual Report - Fiscal Year 2002-2003. Sacramento: State of California.

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Wolverines Extinct in Sequoia - Kings Canyon?

A new study using baited trap stations, done during winter, failed to find any California wolverines in either Sequoia or Kings Canyon National Parks in the southern Sierra Nevada. However, in 1980, definite wolverine tracks were seen at two locales in Kings Canyon National Park by trained wildlife biologists. However, tracks always count as "unverified". But not to me.

I say that at least 28 years ago, wolverines were present in Kings Canyon National Park. Wolverine sightings in California do tend to be concentrated in Kings Canyon and Sequoia Parks. This area was long held to be the last stronghold of the wolverine in California. Many detailed sightings were made from 1900-1930 in Sequoia National Park. In one, a wolverine chased two adult bears away from a horse carcass.

A map of historical wolverine sightings in Kings Canyon - Sequoia Parks. As you can see, sightings were much more common from 1920-1955 or so and have dropped off quite a bit ever since. Click to view.

The survey utilized many trap stations set in winter for a couple of months. It was designed to test for wolverines persisting at very low densities.

A map of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks showing the locations of the bait stations used in this survey. It also includes sightings since 1980. In the past 28 years, there have been nine wolverine sightings. That is about one sighting every three years, not a very good record. I am also aware of tracks spotted at Courtright Reservoir in 1990.

Courtright is located at the far west end of of rectangle 5a on the map, outside far northern Kings Canyon in the Sierra National Forest. These tracks were verified by Sierra National Forest wildlife biologists. I conclude therefore that wolverines were present near northern Kings Canyon at least 18 years ago.

I am also aware of another sighting out of Bishop, California on the Sierra crest in 1980. This sighting was by a wildlife biologist. The location of this sighting was just off this map to the north of the station labeled EV, north of Kings Canyon National Park. From 18-28 years ago, wolverines were present in and around Kings Canyon. Whether the have been extirpated since 1990 is yet an open question in my mind. Click to view.

It failed to find any wolverines and the researchers concluded that the California wolverine is likely extirpated from the Southern Sierra Nevada. Many other recent studies have also failed to find any wolverines.

However, this winter, a wolverine was photographed north of Lake Tahoe by researchers studying pine martens. DNA analysis has subsequently shown that this animal is from the Rocky Mountains and not a California wolverine. It is not known how this male wolverine got to the northern Sierra Nevada, since the nearest population is in the Snake River Valley in Idaho far to the north.

The researchers advocate that wolverines be reintroduced to the Sierras, since they seem to be absent from most of the range.

I believe that California wolverines may continue to persist at very low levels in the Sierras.

Historical wolverine sightings in Yosemite National Park. Once again, sightings were much more common from 1920-1955 or so. But there were still quite a few sightings in the 1990's.However, I am aware of some recent sightings in Yosemite in the 2000's that were not included in this map. I believe that the wolverine may continue to persist at low levels in Yosemite. Click to view.

In August 2006, there was an unverified sighting of a California wolverine in the Soda Creek drainage northeast of Rainbow Mountain in the Mineral King area of Sequoia National Park.

The Soda Creek Drainage in Mineral King, where there was an unverified sighting of a wolverine on the northeast slope of Rainbow Mountain in August 2006. This is at the confluence of Soda Creek, Lost Canyon Creek and Big Arroyo Creek in the Kern River Watershed. I have been to Mineral King once backpacking in 1973. It's a pretty amazing place. If you can handle difficult hiking, it is worth the trip.

This part of the Sierra Nevada is a lot drier than the northern part where the wolverine photo was taken. According to a topo map I just found, the part of the Soda Creek drainage on the northeast slope of Mt. Rainbow would be very high, at about 10,826 feet. This shows that wolverines definitely range above 10,000 feet in the Southern Sierras.

Fishing is banned here to preserve a population of endangered Little Kern Golden Trout. There are also endangered Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep in the area. I have seen these sheep in the mountains just outside Los Angeles. A once in a lifetime experience!

In addition, this webpage states that wolverines continue to exist in Mineral King. A backcountry ranger for Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park said that he was 99% sure that there had been good wolverine sightings in Yosemite and Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP's as recently as 2003, despite these negative findings.

There have also been sightings on the Sequoia National Forest adjacent to these two national parks and the Sequoia National Monument. The last sighting was in 1988. Wolverines have been sighted as far south as Monache Meadows in the Dome Land Wilderness on the Sequoia NF, but the last sighting was in the 1950's.

The suggestion to reintroduce wolverines to the Sierra is probably the correct one.

The California wolverine as a proven subspecies is still controversial, and it seems to persist at either very low numbers in California or is extirpated altogether. California wolverines continue to exist in Oregon and Washington.

References

Graber D.M. 1996. Status of Terrestrial Vertebrates. SNEP Science Team and Special Consultants. Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project Report 25:709-734.

Graber, D.M. 2006. Disturbing Yosemite. California 117:4.

Hudgens, Brian R., Garcelon, David K. 2008. Winter Carnivore Survey Finds that Wolverines (Gulo gulo) are Likely Extirpated from Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks. Arcata: Institute for Wildlife Studies.

Sequoia National Forest. 2003. Giant Sequoia National Monument Management Plan Final Environmental Impact Statement. United States Forest Service, USDA.

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An Examination of the Frog Extinction Epidemic

Although many factors are involved in this epidemic, one of the worst is the Chytrid fungus epidemic. It is being spread by Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), which causes chytridiomycosis. This fungal disease is devastating frog populations all over the world, but particularly in Australia, and North, Central and South America.

The devastation in Central America has been particularly acute, with many species simply vanishing from the face of the Earth. Bd is just now spreading here in the US, with serious devastation of Sierra Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog populations in the Sierra Nevada. However, some populations are apparently surviving the epidemic with some some survivors intact and thereupon rebuilding their populations.

A paper in Nature (Pounds 2006) made the case that the chytrid epidemic was being driven by global warming. They suggested that Bd had always been there but had only become pathogenic in the face of global warming.

A new paper (Lips 2008) in the journal PLoS Biology challenged that theory with some interesting data. I did not read the Pounds paper, but the Lips paper was quite convincing.

Their argument is rather simple. If Bd had always been there, it would not show a spread rate typical of a spreading disease epidemic. Instead, it would tend to erupt in all places at once.

Lips' team showed first of all that Bd had not always been in the environment, that is, it was not an endemic. It appears to have escaped from an Australian lab around 1970 and from there spread through Australia. From Australia, it made its way to the Americas.

We can see several places where it seems to have been introduced, and we can plot the years of introduction on a map. So Bd is acting like an invasive alien species.

Bd appears in Costa Rica in 1987 and then heads south to Panama. It seems to be following mountain ranges there too. The number of species lost in Costa Rica is very large.

Bd spread in South America following two introductions, one in 1977 and one in 1980. The 1980 Ecuadorian introduction heads both north and south along the Andes. The 1977 Venezuelan introduction heads south along the Andes. For some reason, Bd in South America is sticking to the Andes.

This is precisely how we would expect an epidemic following an introduction by an alien species to operate - a geographical spread from a point of introduction with a rate of spread in miles per year. Furthermore, the testing of many specimens in museums failed to find Bd in any of them prior to 1977. This suggests strongly that Bd is an invasive alien fungus that was not present in the environment before.

An alternative hypothesis was not tested but did occur to me: That even though Bd was an alien exotic invasive fungus spreading after accidental introduction, global warming had somehow made Bd much more lethal to frogs. I can't figure out a way to test that hypothesis, and I guess none of the researchers are considering it. The Pounds team is sticking to their guns on this one, but I think that they are wrong.

It's a good mind exercise to read academic science journal articles that test scientific hypotheses against competing hypotheses. It's hard to read that stuff, but if you can get through it somehow, personally I find these brain puzzles to be a lot of fun. If you see learning as virtually a sensual activity as I do, this kind of stuff is almost as fun as a vacation, sports, sex or any other other purely sensual activity.

Learning and thinking is actually a blast, to me anyway. Try it sometime!

References

Lips, Karen R., Diffendorfer, Jay, Mendelson III, Joseph R., Sears, Michael W. 2008. Riding the Wave: Reconciling the Roles of Disease and Climate Change in Amphibian Declines. PLoS Biology 6:3.

Pounds JA, Bustamante MR, Coloma LA, Consuegra JA, Fogden MPL, et al. 2006. Widespread amphibian extinctions from epidemic disease driven by global warming. Nature 39: 161–167.

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Additions to the Wolverine's Range in Idaho

The wolverine in Idaho is generally considered inhabit three main areas:

The first in the Sawtooth National Forest (northern part), Challis National Forest, Payette National Forest and Sawtooth National Recreation Area in central Idaho.

Yet another population is in the Lochsa River Drainage in the Clearwater and Bitterroot Mountains in Clearwater National Forest.

A third population is to the north in the Selkirks along the Canadian border.

The three populations are considered to be separated from each other, although at least the first population is thought to be healthy.

Nevertheless, we continue to get reports of wolverines in other parts of Idaho. A previous post noted a wolverine on a telephone pole along the Snake River Valley in King Hill, Idaho, earlier this year.

A radio-collared wolverine recently traveled from the Grand Tetons in Wyoming across the Blackfoot and Caribou Mountains in the Targhee and Caribou National Forests in Southeastern Idaho, across private lands to the Portneuf Range west of the Portneuf River. This range is about 20 miles east of Pocatello, Idaho, and encompasses part of the Caribou National Forest and the Fort Hall Shoshone-Bannock Indian Reservation.

The breathtaking Portneuf Range east of Pocatello, Idaho, where the radio-collared wolverine ended up. It promptly turned right around and went back to the Tetons. In the Basin and Range Region.


A grazing allotment on the Blackfoot Mountains in southeastern Idaho. Lance Armstrong, the peripatetic wolverine, crossed this range on his way from the Grand Tetons to the Portneuf Range opposite Pocatello, Idaho. Grazing is thoroughly devastating BLM and Forest Service land in this region. The problem is particularly acute in Southern Idaho, as it is more arid. All livestock grazing pretty much needs to be banned in at least these areas.

Incredibly, livestock grazing is allowed in National Forest wilderness areas. This was one of the only ways that the 1964 Wilderness Act could get passed was to grandfather in these grazing allotments. It's insane that grazing is allowed in wilderness areas. Grazing is particularly devastating in high-elevation forests of the Sierra Nevada and anywhere in the arid West.

The cow evolved in England and prefers a cool climate with lots of water. In the arid West, cows congregate during the summer in the riparian areas, which they completely devastate. A grand total of 2% of all US beef comes from public lands in the West - most beef comes from feedlots in the Midwest. Public lands grazing is welfare - the allotments are rented out to the ranchers at far below market value, so the taxpayer gets totally screwed.

Not only do we get ripped off on the rental of our lands, but we also get our lands devastated in the process. The whole thing is completely insane. If ranchers can't make it ranching on private land, they need to get out of the business.

Furthermore, increasingly, public lands ranchers, like everything else in US capitalism, is going corporate. Mom and Pop ranchers are going out and ranching corporations are in. A large number of public lands grazing allotments are now being run by corporations as investment vehicles.

The long-ranging wolverine above was finally killed by a trapper just over the Montana border in the Centennial Range. Since the Centennials range into Idaho, we ought to add the Centennial Range in the Targhee National Forest to the wolverine's range in Idaho.

The spectacular Centennial Range on the border between Idaho and Montana. This is where the long-ranging wolverine named Lance Armstrong was finally killed by a trapper over the border into Montana.

Montana still allows trapping of wolverines, which takes about a dozen a year. Studies are showing that even that small take may be too much for wolverines to sustain. However, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission recently voted to set limits on wolverine trapping for the very first time.

Additional searching around the net noted that a wolverine had been shot dead by some boys in the Snake River Canyon in Idaho a few years back. They were worried and they brought it in to the Department of Fish and Game office, but the wardens let them go because they were kids and did not know what they were doing, although the wolverine is protected in Idaho.

The Snake River Canyon near Twin Falls, Idaho. Some teenage boys shot dead a wolverine here about three years ago, but were not charged. Clearly, wolverines do exist in this part of the Colombian Plateau. This is where Evil Knievel tried his ill-fated motorcycle jump across this canyon decades ago.

There are various definitions about what constitutes the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. The most parsimonious definition says that it starts at the spectacular Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls, Idaho. It seems to continue west about 30 miles to 1000 Springs (great pics on that page) at Hagerman, where Wikipedia implies that it ends.

So this wolverine was apparently killed in the canyon between Twin Falls and Hagerman. That's only about 47 miles north of the Nevada border.

Way further afield, in the Seven Devils Mountains of far western Idaho in the Hell's River Canyon of the Snake River, wolverines exist As you can see in various places in this large document (page 6 for instance) they are actually doing surveys for their dens.

Included in the appendices is a report called Survey of Wolverine Dens in the Seven Devils Mountains of Hells Canyon.

The gorgeous Seven Devils Range in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. This range borders on Hell's Canyon and may serve as a steppingstone for wolverines to travel from Idaho across the Snake River to the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon.

There are also reports of wolverines in the Wood River Valley area. Part of the Wood River runs about 30 miles north of Twin Falls, but the Wood River Valley refers to private land about 60-70 miles north of Twin Falls. It includes the towns of Ketchum, Sun Valley, Hailey and Bellevue. We should extend wolverine habitat down from the Sawtooths into the Wood River Valley. There have been recent sightings in the Sun Valley area.

On the webpage for Power County, a county in southeastern Idaho west and southwest of Pocatello, the county claims that wolverines occur there. There are various ranges there, including the Bannock Range, the Sublette Range and the Deep Creek Range.

The spectacular Deep Creek Range in southeastern Idaho. It is about 40 miles long, and is bounded by Arbon Valley on the East and Rockland Valley on the West as it ranges through Power County. Wolverines may well exist here. Another Basin and Range mountain range.


The Bannock Range in southeastern Idaho. Both the Bannock and the Deep Creek Ranges are southwest of Pocatello. The Bannocks extend from Pocatello 85 miles south into northern Utah through the Caribou National Forest. Wolverines may well exist in this range. Also located in the Basin and Range region.

Photos of all of these beautiful ranges can be seen on Ralph Maughan's excellent blog. Maughan is a professor of political science at Idaho State University in Pocatello. He's also really big on wolves.

Incredibly, the Bush Administration has removed all protections for all wolves in the United States! The Rocky Mountains population is doing fairly well, but they just completely removed the wolves from the endangered species list and handed management of them over to the states, who are proceeding to slaughter them as fast as they can!

Web page on myths about wolves. Wolves are hardly dangerous at all to humans. Predators killed 12,100 sheep in Idaho last year. Of those, a little more than 2% were killed by wolves. Domestic dogs killed far more and coyotes killed the most of all. There is nothing to do with coyotes, and no way to get rid of them. The more you do predator control against them, the more sheep they kill.

Ranchers claim that wolves are devastating Idaho's cattle industry. Wolves killed 24 cows in Idaho last year, .03 of all losses. All predators accounted for only 3% of all losses, and wolves accounted for less than 1% of all predator losses. Ranchers are reimbursed for all of their losses to wolves anyway.

This is a clear consequence of White Rule in America. White Rule has meant a total corporate takeover of every nook and cranny in this nation, along with utter devastation of our environment and every non-utilitarian form of non-human life in it.

What's odd is that surveys of Americans, including most Whites, show that they are strong environmentalists. But environmentalism is way down on the list. What's high on the list? Although most US Whites will tell you that they are not racist, the movement of US Whites towards the Republican Party from 1980-present has been pretty much predicated on race.

It's coincided with a dramatic decrease in the White % in this country. You tell me that is a coincidence? Forget it! When I was coming of age in the late 1970's, this was probably an 82% White country. The vast majority of people that I grew up with, went to high school, junior college and even college with, were White. The people I met at my jobs and on college trips were almost all White. It was just a White World.

Since 1980, our White World has gotten darker and darker. Whites have dropped from 82% of the US to about 64% and it's dropping all the time. This has amazingly coincided with Whites leaving liberalism en masse and voting hard rightwing Republican. The White Republican politics has gotten harder and harder rightwing with time.

During the 1990's and into the Bush Administration, we are now dealing with quite possibly the most rightwing President this country has ever seen - and it's all the fault of White people. Why are Whites voting more and more reactionary with time? Because their rule is coming to an end.

This is a predictable political trend for any ruling group which is desperately trying to hold onto power in the face of rising opposition. In truth, ruling groups often opt for dictatorship and often fascism as they desperately try to cling to power.

In summary, occupied wolverine habitat in Idaho should be extended beyond the description at the beginning to the post to Power County, Elmore County, the Snake River Valley, the Blackfoot Mountains, the Centennial Range, the Caribou Range, the Snake River Range, the Big Hole Mountains, the Targhee and Caribou National Forests, the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, the Portneuf Range, the Seven Devils Mountains , the Snake River Canyon and possibly the Bannock and Deep Creek Ranges.

References

Biodiversity Legal Foundation, Predator Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Northwest Ecosystem Alliance, and Superior Wilderness Action Network. (2000). Petition for a rule to list the wolverine (Gulo gulo luscus) as Threatened or Endangered under the Endangered Species Act within the contiguous United States. Submitted to the U.S. Dept. of Interior Fish and Wildlife Service on July 11, 2000.

Edelman, Frank and Copeland, Jeff. 1999. Wolverine Distribution in the Northwestern United States and a Survey in the Seven Devils Mountains of Idaho. Northwest Science 62:181-185.

Groves, Craig R. 1988. Distribution of the wolverine in Idaho as determined by mail questionnaire. Northwest Science 62(4):181-5.

Predator Conservation Alliance. 2001. Predator Conservation Alliance's Literature Summary - Draft - January 24, 2001 - Draft Conservation Status and Needs of the Wolverine (Gulo gulo).

Wildlife Conservation Society 2004. Wolverine Takes A Road Trip: Scientists Track Male Animal Over A Three-state, 550-mile Walk-about. Science Daily.

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Mountain Yellow-Legged Frogs in the Sierra Nevada

I don't write much about amphibians on here, but I am amphibian nut, in addition to being a mammal, reptile and bird nut. I would be a plant and insect nut too if I could only figure out how to identify them. I'm interested in fish, but they are a little harder to observe in the wild unless they are at the end of your hook.

Anyway, I have long taken an interest in amphibians here in California and to a much lesser extent, throughout the entire West. I am particularly interested in threatened and endangered amphibians here in the state.

The mountain yellow-legged frog has declined disastrously here in the state, starting with heavy fish stocking in the Sierras by pack mules, and then declining wildly with arial stocking of high country lakes via airplane that began after World War 2. This arial stocking has since proven to be one of the stupidest things that the California Department of Fish and Game has ever done.

Every year, countless fingerlings were dropped into lakes all up and down the Sierras, even though after a while almost all of these lakes had completely self-sustaining populations and many lakes saw few if any fishermen in a given year. Furthermore, the populations grew so high that the fish became stunted and malnourished.

In addition, they caused serious problems to the entire ecosystem of the Sierra. This is because in general, fish were absent from much of the high country in the Sierra. The exception was in the Southern Sierra, where the golden trout was native. In the North, Paiute Cutthroats and Lahontan Cutthroats were native to some streams.

Rainbow trout were present, but mostly at the lower elevations. Apparently the streams were so steep that trout were not able to climb up the rivers and creeks to even get into the high country. When men first came in numbers to the High Sierras in the late 1800's, they found most waterways devoid of fish.

However, there were vast populations of amphibians, in particular mountain yellow-legged frogs. They were so numerous at many high country lakes that you could almost hardly walk around without almost stepping on them.

Before World War 2, limited fish stocking began in the Sierras. Stocking was done in the high country via mule trains and was not particularly effective. However, the stocking was already starting to cause declines in the mountain yellow-legged frog population.

After WW2, arial stocking began and soon turned into a comedy routine and a massive waste of taxpayer money. The CDFG was addicted to fish stocking in the Sierras and refused to stop it or even study it even when environmental groups demanded that they do so.

CDFG claimed that the fish stocking program was somehow exempt from CEQA, California's landmark environmental law and probably the one law that California's business class hates more than anything else. Business interests have been trying to get rid of CEQA for decades now, but it's not going anywhere.

The reason environmental groups wanted the stocking stopped was because studies began to show that fish were having a devastating effect on the mountain yellow-legged frog (MYLF) populations. This is because the MYLF did not evolve in the presence of fish and hence had adopted no defenses against them. Wherever fish were present, MYLF was either not present or there in only reduced numbers.

The fact that CDFG dragged their heels on protecting the MYLF for ages shows that CDFG hardly has an environmentalist agenda at all. They almost never propose any species for threatened or endangered (T & E) status anymore, and usually reject almost all petitions by environmental groups to list anything. They hardly protect anything once it does get listed anyway, so one wonders what good the listing even does.

The CDFG screams that budget cuts means they can't do anything at all, and another problem is that much of their budget is funded out of fishing and hunting licenses. I have met quite a few individual biologists who work for the agency and by and large they are good folks. I think that there are political appointees at the top that thwart just about anything reasonable getting done though.

It's not well understood that California is not really a very liberal state in many ways. The voters are still mostly White and older and they are much more conservative than the population as a whole.

Despite blatherings by White Nationalists that Euro Whites are the only race that bother to protect any nonhuman life that lacks utilitarian use for man, since 1980 and US Whites voting rightwing, there has been no greater enemy of the environment and nonhuman life in the US than Whites.

These Whites have solidly supported a pro-business and pro-corporate agenda that has declared war on the environment and every living thing in it. If we let capitalists have their way, they will exterminate all nonutilitarian nonhuman life on this planet, all because those living things get in the way of making a buck.

Hence we have a state run by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger that is almost totally beholden to corporate and business interests. This has been the case for every California governor since Jerry Brown.

Anyway, various hypotheses have been proposed for the decline of the MYLF. The non-native fish hypothesis has born out well. Pesticides from the Central Valley drifting up the mountains have also been suspected in the decline, along with the ozone hole.

There is some evidence that pesticides are related to MYLF declines, but testing the ozone hole hypothesis has shown that a thinning ozone layer is not frying frog eggs, even at high elevations. However, the thinning ozone layer has been having a bad effect on other frog and toad species. It seems that different species are variably effected by the thinning ozone layer.

Another hypothesis has been that a fungus called chytrid has been killing MYLF's. This seems to be the case, and the killings are accelerating. Chytrid has been devastating frog and toad populations in various distant parts of the world, especially North, Central and South America and Australia.

An article was recently published in the journal Nature claiming that global warming was causing chytrid to spread. However, a subsequent article was published in another journal that seemed to indicate that global warming had not been proven to be behind chytrid's spread. A cautious analysis seems to indicate that neither side has proven its case yet.

This particular type of chytrid seems to have escaped from a lab in Australia and has since been devastating frog and toad populations. First it pounded populations in Australia, then it moved to the Americas. Frogs and toads may not have evolved with this fungus, so it's been hammering them hard. If any frogs and toads can survive the fungus, they may be able to pass on an immunity to it and enable the species to survive.

There have been widespread chytrid outbreaks in the Sierras in recent years. Just when some recent efforts to eliminate fish from some national park waters in the Sierra seemed to be bearing fruit, the fungus has been nailing the MYLF but hard. There have been 25-30% reductions of all types of frog populations in the Sierra over the past five years due to the fungus.

One theory is that the fungus has always been there but that recent environmental changes such as industrial and agricultural contaminants in the air, the frogs' immune systems have been compromised, making them susceptible to the fungus.

However, some populations get hit very hard by the fungus for a while and then bounce back. The theory is that they have some sort of genetic resistance to the fungus. If this is true, then maybe the MYLF can survive in the Sierra after all.

As usual, the Bush Administration, the most anti-environmental President in recent history, has refused to list the MYLF although it has been petitioned repeatedly. The most recent designation is " warranted but precluded".

This is a sickening game that the Fish and Wildlife Service has been playing for some time now, dating back the "liberal" Clinton Era. The game says that the species qualifies for listing, but there are no funds to list it. It's just a despicable bureaucratic game. How much does it cost to publish a listing notice in the Federal Register? Very little.

At the same time that they Administration pricks whine that there is no money to list any new species, they cynically and dishonestly cut the budget for listing new species! "Liberal" Bill Clinton started this bullshit, but Bush has taken it to overdrive. Sometimes, there is no lower life form than a politician.

Anyway, there are all sorts of species sitting on this idiotic warranted but precluded crap list for ages now. As the MYLF has declined by 93.3% in the last 100 years, that's an endangered listing right there, and I'm not even a biologist. I know the listing criteria.

The Southern California population, which may be a separate species, is virtually extinct. It has declined by 99%. The Bush Administration did list this frog, but it's almost gone anyway, as there are only 79 frogs left. Sometimes when something is about two inches from extinction, these Bush shitheads will list it, almost as a cruel joke.

Probably no man has done more to save the MYLF than Roland Knapp, a Research Biologist at the University of California Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory.

These guys associated with universities are usually pretty honest and non-corrupted, while the fisheries and wildlife biologists and botanists I met working for the local National Forest were some of the most awful, corrupted and dishonest people I have ever met. If you don't care about species and whether they go extinct or not, don't take a job with the feds dedicated to protecting them.

The local national forest, the Sierra National Forest, is doing absolutely nothing to my knowledge to protect MYLF and MYLF is almost gone from Sierra National Forests anyway. Truth is that even USFS wildlife and fisheries biologists are ecstatic if a rare species of extirpated or nearly extirpated from their forest. Now we don't have to save it! Less paperwork! I'm not kidding.

It was Knapp's research a while back that conclusively proved that it was nonnative fish that were driving the MYLF extinct.

Knapp's MYLF blog. Knapp's MYLF page.

Fishermen are understandably upset about fish removal projects in the Sierras. To date, these projects have been very limited. It is probable that the main reason that the Feds are not listing the frog is that a listing would mandate fish removal from many or most Sierra waters. Those fish were not even there to begin with, and the MYLF is only present at high elevations anyway. There are plenty of low elevations to fish in.

I've done fishing in the High Sierras myself, but if you are so shallow that you can't hike into the High Sierras and just dig it for what it is without wetting a line, I don't even think you should even be back there.

Even better, fish removal would probably reduce the number of humans in the backcountry. It's mostly wilderness anyway, so why do we need tons of people back there? They can remove the fish from most of those waters for all I care. If there are no fish in the lakes, just bring a book or lie on your back or explore around all day.

Recent research indicates that there are three separate genetic units of the MYLF in the Sierras, a Northern, Central and Southern genetic unit. At present, these have been split off into a new species, the Sierra Yellow-Legged Frog, or Rana Sierrae.

The Southern California population and some southern Sierra populations have been split into a whole new species, the Southern Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog. Distribution maps for Rana Sierrae and Rana Muscosa. Rationale for the split. The two species are estimated to have split 2.4 million (!) years ago. Hence, the Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog, the subject of this post, no longer exists in its former form.

This split was done on the basis of an article last year (Vredenburg et al 2007). Whether the three separate genetic clades of the Sierra Yellow-Legged Frog warrant splits into subspecies has not yet been determined. In order to split into subspecies, usually a certain X genetic distance must be shown.

In February of this year, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned again to list Rana Sierrae as endangered. Surely it qualifies. I am certain that the Bush Administration will not list it. It's been over two years (!) since they listed anything.

Bastards.

Lots of cool frog, tadpole and terrain photos at the links.

References

Lips, Karen R., Diffendorfer, Jay, Mendelson III, Joseph R., Sears, Michael W. 2008. Riding the Wave: Reconciling the Roles of Disease and Climate Change in Amphibian Declines. PLoS Biology Vol. 6, No. 3.

Pounds JA, Bustamante MR, Coloma LA, Consuegra JA, Fogden MPL, et al. 2006. Widespread Amphibian Extinctions From Epidemic Disease Driven by Global Warming. Nature 39: 161–167.

Vredenburg, V. T., R. Bingham, R. Knapp, J. A. T. Morgan, C. Moritz, and D. Wake. 2007. Concordant Molecular And Phenotypic Data Delineate New Taxonomy And Conservation Priorities For The Endangered Mountain Yellow-Legged Frog. Journal of Zoology 271:361-374.

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