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NRDC's Green Gifts Simplify the Insanity of Holiday Shopping

2011-12-15T22:03:03Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

It’s no secret that National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is the greatest holiday film ever, and that Clark Griswold (the pinnacle of Chevy Chase’s acting career) is a bad ass.

What’s also true is that holiday shopping, for many people (myself included), is a fairly wearisome task.

The answer for those not looking to be ambushed by uncomfortably cheery adult elves at their local mall in the next couple of weeks is NRDC’s Green Gifts program.

With NRDC’s Green Gifts, you can choose from more than 50 different gift ideas that will help NRDC in our fight to safeguard the Earth (and you can take care of everything without having to walk past a single Cinnabon).

There are all sorts of gift options, from fighting Pebble Mine in Alaska to protecting Yellowstone’s wild buffalo population to hanging out with Bobby Kennedy, Jr.

Buying an NRDC Green Gift for a friend or relative is quick, easy, and good for the planet.

So grab a glass of eggnog, throw the amazing Clark Griswold into your DVD player, save yourself some gas money, and then click on NRDC's Green Gifts and start crossing names off your list.

Happy holidays, happy shopping, thank you for supporting NRDC, and good luck to Rudolph and his flying caribou teammates on the night of the 24th!

The "No Pebble Mine" Message Is Getting Louder

2011-12-09T19:13:53Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

Opposition to the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska’s famed Bristol Bay region continues to mount, with some major seafood processors now wading into the anti-Pebble waters.

In late November, the Pacific Seafood Processors Association, a seafood industry trade association, issued a statement explaining its opposition to the proposed mine. Notably, since its formation in 1914, the Association has never “taken a position in opposition to any specific development project or category of projects of other natural resource industries. Doing so now is not a decision our Association takes lightly.”

In fact, just four years ago the Association released a position paper that was “generally supportive of allowing the [Pebble Mine] project to proceed in the exploration, scientific research, and permit application processes.” But the paper went on to express “deep concern that the project appeared to pose an unacceptably high risk of degrading important watersheds feeding the world’s most productive sockeye salmon fishery,” and the Association stated that “it would oppose the Pebble Mine project unless the developer can ensure that there will be no negative impacts to the region’s water quality or to Alaska’s fishery resources and their marketability.”

Now, four years later, the Association has determined that it “can see no way that [Pebble Mine] can be developed, operated, and concluded without – at some point – causing irreparable harm to the watersheds, ecosystems, fishery resources, businesses, people, and communities of the region.”

Therefore, the Association “concluded that the level of risk posed by the Pebble mine is simply too high . . . [and] after careful consideration, we are compelled to oppose development of the Pebble mine project due to its unique location, size, and potential harm.”

This is huge news.

The corporate members of the Association are major seafood processing companies with thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars at stake (e.g., North Pacific Seafoods, Peter Pan Seafoods, Trident Seafoods, Alaska General Seafoods, among others). Viewing the proposed Pebble Mine through a dispassionate business lens, they see that the risks posed by the proposed mine to Bristol Bay and its renowned wild salmon fishery are simply too great to ignore.

A few months ago, I wrote about Pebble Mine, calling it The Worst Idea Ever, and my experience in the area where the developers of the mine want to build it. To recap, the proposed Pebble Mine would be one of the world’s largest open-pit mines – a 2,000-foot-deep, 2-mile-long gold and copper mine with massive earthen dams built to hold back some 10 billion (billion with a “b”) tons of mining waste. Roads will be built in what is now a pristine roadless wilderness, and the whole damned nightmare would be smack dab in the middle of a known earthquake zone.

As these major seafood processing companies realized, Pebble Mine poses an unavoidable risk of irreversible damage to Bristol Bay, including the permanent destruction of dozens of miles of wild salmon habitat.

Today, Bristol Bay is home to the world’s largest run of wild sockeye salmon (tens of millions of fish), which supports a sustainable fishery and thousands of jobs. It’s also home to brown bears, wolves, caribou, freshwater seals and countless birds and other cool critters.

Over the past few years, dozens of jewelry companies have also announced their opposition to Pebble Mine and pledged to boycott any gold sourced from the mine. According to the CEO of Tiffany & Co., “[T]here are some special places where mining clearly does not represent the best long-term use of resources. In Bristol Bay, we believe the extraordinary salmon fishery clearly provides the best opportunity to benefit Southwestern Alaskan communities in a sustainable way. For Tiffany & Co., and we believe for many of our fellow retail jewelers, this means we must look to other places to responsibly source our gold."

And there is more.

A new poll released this week sheds light – for the first time – on public sentiment toward the proposed mine in the lower 48 states, finding that a significant majority of Americans in the lower 48 (77%) oppose Pebble Mine. The poll also confirmed, once again, the opposition of a majority of Alaskans (68%).

And just this past summer a poll was released that showed 85% opposition to the Pebble Mine among the commercial fishing community in Bristol Bay. The poll revealed that fishermen and fisherwomen are virtually unanimous – 98% – in their agreement that the headwaters of Bristol Bay should be protected.

This succession of independent opinion surveys and concerted action by the jewelry and seafood industries graphically document the intensifying opposition to the Pebble Mine. More and more people and businesses are realizing that Bristol Bay and its wild salmon are worth significantly more without a massive gold and copper mine than with one.

All of this great news makes me want to go out and hug a wild salmon. (Well, truth be told, I love to fly-fish, and I’m always in the mood to hug a wild salmon.)

Anti-Pebble sentiment is growing, and, if you haven’t already, follow the jewelers’ and seafood processors’ lead and take action now to stop the Pebble Mine.

When it comes to protecting Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed, silence is not an option.

(Photos courtesy and copyright of Robert Glenn Ketchum)

Backpacking for Elk

2011-11-21T20:07:33Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

I parked at the end of the logging road, donned my backpack, grabbed my old rifle, and locked the doors. I’d be back in a few days, hopefully with a heavy load of fresh elk on my back.

It was Halloween weekend, just a couple of weeks ago, and while my wife put the finishing touches on her costume (she dressed as one of the cousins with the crazy hats from the royal wedding), I studied maps of the Gallatin Mountains and tried to think like an elk.

(Note: this is the first article in the history of the world to mention both elk-hunting and the royal wedding.)

I was looking for those spots on the map where I thought elk would be seeking refuge from hunters one week into rifle season. From my reading on elk, one fact was evident: if you want to find them, you have to get away from people and roads.

I employed that theory last fall the best I could on day hunts, and it worked. Early in the season I stumbled into some cows at first light that were only 100 or so yards away, but I tried to get a little too close and scared them off.

And then on the final day of the season, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I tracked and killed a bull elk in the snow. It was my first elk, and a day I’ll never forget.

(I am well aware that blind luck was primarily responsible for my elk encounters last fall, but it’s fun to pretend I employed theories that worked. Just go with it.)

I hiked south and followed a marked trail in the grainy dawn light. But I soon left the trail and started bushwhacking towards my target drainage. No trail runs up the drainage, which is why I went there. No trail should mean no people, which should lead to lots of elk.

After leaving the trail, I quickly cut some fresh mountain lion tracks in the snow and followed them for a few hundred yards. They reminded me that I wasn’t the only hunter in these mountains.

The hiking was tough, as there was snow everywhere, but not enough to make for solid hiking. Once I got up high, hiking across open slopes without trees to hold onto or lean against was slippery and difficult.

I hiked and hiked and hiked, but I saw no elk sign. While looking at maps and Google Earth in my warm kitchen, I decided the elk were supposed to appear as soon as I got into the drainage and away from the trail. Where the hell were they?

A few hours later, I was nearing the top of the drainage and still had seen no real fresh elk sign. The snow was also deepening. And I was thirsty and out of water. My master plan appeared to have a few cracks in it.

I collected myself, found a hole in the ice over the creek where I could pump water, and then turned around and hiked back down the drainage towards the thick timber, which is where I figured the elk must be. (There were also no other viable options at that point.)

En route to the spot on the map where I planned to camp, I got turned around in the timber and found myself slightly lost. Another crack in my planning—I realized I'd forgotten my compass.

The sun was dropping, which created a sense of urgency to find a place to camp quickly, but it also helped me orient myself in the timber. I hustled toward the sun and the creek.

I arrived at the creek hot, sweating, and dehydrated. I grabbed my filter and headed to quench my thirst, but I found the creek frozen solid. Not late-October-in-Bozeman solid, but deep-in-northern-Manitoba-in-late-January solid. I tried smashing through the ice with a sharp rock, but that proved completely worthless. My pulse quickened a bit.

I hiked upstream until I heard running water under the ice. I again tried breaking through the ice with a rock. Fortunately, this time I was able to create a little holding reservoir in the ice a few inches wide and a couple of inches deep – just enough to cover the intake of my filter with ridiculously cold water.

I chugged some water, set up my tent, ate a cold dinner, and then stood next to a small fire in the dark for a long time. It was a hard first day, and I went to sleep early.

As for elk, the next day was not much better. I checked out some open slopes early in the morning, but they were empty. I then came across some moderately fresh tracks and beds in the timber, so I decided to hunt the timber hard that afternoon. Nothing.

I ate some buffalo sticks for dinner while not seeing elk in a small meadow at dusk. I returned to my tent and built a fire. Two long days, no elk seen. After I warmed up, I put out the fire, watched the stars in the dark and the cold for a while, and then went to sleep.

I awoke the next day, Halloween, ready to hunt hard on my hike back to the logging road. I did a short sit in a clearing at first light. Seeing nothing (like I even need to tell you at this point), I returned to camp to make myself a cup of hot coffee and pack up.

On the hike out, I finally cut some fresh elk tracks. I followed them through the timber and then up, up, and up some more. The terrain was getting steep and gnarly, and I was slipping and falling. The tracks then turned up-mountain once more, and I bid them farewell. They’re elk. I’m human. They win.

I hiked back to the truck and bumped into a father and his son at the logging road. They had been hunting that morning, and I asked them if they had seen anything. To my complete shock and awe, they excitedly told me about some elk they saw just off the main trail 10 minutes away.

I nodded in disbelief, trying not to think about the number of elk I saw in the past few days.

The dad then turned to me, looked me up and down, and said, “Looks like you’ve been out there a while.”

I peered back at him, paused, smiled, and then replied, “Yeah . . . I have.”

(This story originally appeared in The Bozeman Magpie.)

Wolves in Wyoming and Flip-Flopping Feds

2011-11-04T21:40:56Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

As I wrote a few months ago, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reached an agreement this past summer with the State of Wyoming over Wyoming’s long-disputed wolf management plan. And in October, the Service officially proposed removing wolves in Wyoming from the endangered species list and turning over management authority to Wyoming. In my August blog post, I explained how the Service disapproved of, then approved, then disapproved of, and now has again approved Wyoming’s wolf management plan.

In fact, if flip-flopping were an Olympic sport, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service would receive 10s across the board for their performance on wolves in Wyoming. (Well, they’d get a 10 from everybody but the French judge, who, we all know, would stiff ‘em with an 8.5.)

The details can be found in my previous blog post, but here are the critical facts: a huge problem with Wyoming’s wolf management plan is that it has designated wolves as “predators” that can be killed by anyone at any time without a license in almost 90% of the state. The other roughly 10% of Wyoming, the northwest corner of the state, would be classified as a “trophy game area,” where wolves would receive more protections and be primarily managed through regulated hunting.

As for Flipper the Dolphin, I mean the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, for years it said Wyoming’s wolf plan was unacceptable, then in 2008 it accepted Wyoming’s plan, but a federal judge quickly put the kibosh on that one and told the Service its new acceptance was illegal. So the Service went back to disapproving of Wyoming’s plan for a while.

And then Wyoming said this summer that it would slightly improve its plan, and the Service quickly agreed to it.

In the new and improved Wyoming wolf management plan, wolves would again be classified and protected with trophy game status only in the northwest corner of the state, but Wyoming would also establish a “flex zone” for parts of three counties immediately south of the northwest trophy game area. In the flex zone, wolves would be protected from October 15 through the end of the following February. For the remainder of the year, the shoot-on-sight predator status would apply.

Other minor changes to the plan were made, but Wyoming’s leaving intact a kill-on-sight zone for wolves across almost 90% of the state (plus a small seasonal flex zone) has probably drawn the most attention and criticism. In September, for example, the New York Times editorial board denounced Wyoming's revised management plan and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's accession to it, and the superintendent of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming even criticized the plan a couple of months ago (the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service are both Department of the Interior agencies).

Following the federal judge’s ruling that the Service’s approval of Wyoming’s plan in 2008 was illegal, the Service proposed removing Endangered Species Act protections from all wolves in the Northern Rockies except Wyoming (because of its bad management plan) in early 2009. In that final rule, the Service implored Wyoming to change its plan, drop the predator zone, and implement statewide trophy management.

Let’s travel back in time and take a look at what the Service said in its 2009 rule published in the Federal Register:

“We believe the entire State of Wyoming should be managed as a trophy game area. Continuation of the current regulatory framework in Wyoming would meaningfully affect the [Northern Rocky Mountains Distinct Population Segment’s] resiliency, redundancy, and representation, and decrease the ability to conserve the species.” Page 15,183.

Hmmmm. Looks like the Service wants statewide trophy game status.

“Statewide trophy game status: Will allow Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) more flexibility to devise a management strategy, including regulated harvest, that provides for self-sustaining populations above recovery goals; prevents a patchwork of different management statutes; will be easier for the public to understand and, thus, will be easier to regulate; is similar to State management of other resources like mountain lions and black-bears; and is consistent with the current regulatory scheme in that the entire State is currently nonessential, experimental.” Page 15,149.

Man, that really sounds like a plug for statewide trophy game status to me.

“‘Trophy game’ status allows the [Wyoming Game & Fish Commission] and [Wyoming Game & Fish Department] to regulate methods of take, hunting seasons, types of allowed take, and numbers of wolves that could be killed. All other States within the [Northern Rocky Mountains Distinct Population Segment] manage wolves as a game species.” Page 15,170.

I’m sensing a desire for statewide trophy game status from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

“A statewide trophy game area is also advisable given the dispersal capabilities of wolves.” Page 15,183.

Yes, I’m definitely sensing that.

“Furthermore, statewide trophy game status will allow more flexibility to devise a management strategy, including regulated harvest that provides for self-sustaining populations above recovery goals.” Page 15,183.

Seriously? This is getting redundant. I get it. You want statewide trophy game status in Wyoming. Talk about beating a dead horse.

“We believe that the best way for Wyoming to provide adequate regulatory mechanisms would be to develop a statewide trophy game management designation as the basis for any revised regulatory framework. At a minimum, this change would require a revision of Wyoming’s wolf management law as the current law establishes the limits of the trophy game area to only 12 percent of the State. Until Wyoming revises their statutes, management plan, and associated regulations, and is again Service approved, wolves in Wyoming shall remain protected by Act.” Page 15,149.

Yet, today, the Fish & Wildlife Service has agreed to shoot-on-sight predator status for almost 90% of Wyoming.

So, to quote the great Mike Lafontaine from “A Mighty Wind”:

“Wha' happened?”

(Wolves photo by SigmaEye on Flickr)

October

2011-10-20T20:30:27Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

My heavy flannel shirts have been summoned from the closet. Wood smoke fills the air in the neighborhood most nights now. A trace of gun oil can be detected on my jeans, and I unnecessarily linger outside in the morning tightly holding a hot cup of coffee, just because its warmth in my hands in the cold feels good.

Blaze orange and camouflage are seen everywhere, while clean-shaven faces have become rare. The sun’s rays are gentle, and morning frost on the windshield is comforting. I reacquaint myself with the stove and oven. The windows in my house are rarely open. I lay awake at night thinking about killing birds and animals for their meat.

October, finally, impossibly, has arrived.

When it comes to the tenth month on the calendar, Aldo Leopold, the great naturalist (and also a bird-hunter), probably said it best: “I sometimes think that the other months were constituted mainly as a fitting interlude between Octobers.” I could not agree more, as even during the sweet spot of a Montana summer, my heart yearns for October.

My love for October is peculiar, though not uncommon. From an objective standpoint, October is somewhat ghoulish, as death permeates everything. The leaves, the grasses, the flowers and plants all perish. Ducks, geese, and songbirds, in pursuit of life and avoidance of death, fly south. Hunters, in pursuit of both death and life, head for the mountains. And on the 31st day, all hell breaks loose with kids dressed as Harry Potter sidestepping glowing pumpkins to ring doorbells for a free hit of chocolate.

And though death pervades the landscape, sex, and thus life, pulses in the forests and mountains. Bull elk, having spent the past month breeding the cows in their harems, retreat to dense timber exhausted. Whitetail and mule deer bucks polish their antlers, as their period of lust draws near. The bison rut is well over, and now their shaggy coats are thick and beautiful.

Grizzly bears ravenously wander the landscape in search of nourishment for the deep sleep that awaits them. Ravens eagerly look forward to the gut piles hunters will soon leave for them. With their prey healthy and well-fed after a lush summer, wolves must work harder for a meal now.

And I, whenever I can, go hunting. Rivers, ponds, and lakes, bordered by muted yellow grasses, for ducks and geese. Creek bottoms, dotted with aspens of the purest gold, for ruffed grouse. High alpine glades for blue grouse. And soon, deep in the mountains, for elk.

On Sunday, my wife and I rose well before the sun appeared to hunt ducks on the Madison River with my hero, Aldo the bird dog. We watched ducks, geese, swans, and sandhill cranes fly for a few hours and then called it a morning. We didn’t shoot any ducks, but that didn’t matter. It was an October morning in Montana, and we sat next to a river in the rain and watched the chorus of the wild assemble itself for the day.

A few hours later, at home, I listened to “A Prairie Home Companion” on the radio. It’s a show I love, but one I can’t listen to in the summer, as I’m too restless to relax on a weekend afternoon when the sun is shining brightly outside. But on a cold Irish day in October after a duck-hunt, I can think of no finer way to spend a couple of hours indoors.

Garrison Keillor’s “News From Lake Wobegon” on Sunday relayed the story of a family getting together for their grandmother’s 89th birthday at the family farm. The birthday girl herself, however, was nowhere to be found. But she left a note to be read to her family, which explained that she was skydiving.

As the family digested the skydiving news (one of her daughters hilariously exclaimed, “I knew she was depressed!”), an object appeared in the sky, and, in vintage Keillor fashion, it was their grandma soaring towards Earth from a plane. Following a safe landing in a cornfield, the family rushed to meet her.

Ol’ grandma looked a little disheveled, but she was elated, and, following a swig from a glass of gin, she shed some wisdom on her stunned family. She said, “Do it all. And, if it feels good, do it again.”

When I heard those words, “do it all,” I realized that no three words could better sum up the month of October.

For, in October, life outside begs you to savor it. The cold, the colors, the smells, the death – the sweet purity of autumn.

So Aldo and I roused ourselves from the couch, and we headed into the Gallatin Mountains to look for grouse until nightfall came.

It’s October.

Do it all.

(This story originally appeared in The Bozeman Magpie.)

What's for Dinner?

2011-08-24T20:43:47Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

Brussels sprouts, sugar snap peas on a homemade hog panel trellis, and pole beans on a homemade bamboo trellis in my backyard.

I’m halfway through the book Tomatoland by Barry Estabrook, and my appetite for tomatoes is gasping for air on its deathbed. I find myself shooting dirty looks at bottles of Heinz ketchup at the grocery store, and I've been flipping the bird at the bowls of Paul Newman's Chunky Mild Salsa I encounter at summer barbecues. The reality, of course, is that my discontent is misplaced, as the tomatoes are the victims here.

(And, for the record, I love Paul Newman. He played Reggie Dunlop in Slap Shot, which is arguably the greatest film of the twentieth century. The guy's a hero to generations of hockey players, myself included.)

In Tomatoland, Estabrook tells a harrowing story about pesticides, fungicides, environmental abuse, and human slavery – also known as the Florida tomato industry. Ever wonder how you’re able to buy a perfectly round, red tomato in the middle of winter at your local grocery store? That tomato was likely grown in Florida, where it was slathered with all sorts of chemicals, picked when it was hard and green under horrendous working conditions, then gassed with methyl bromide to turn it red, and finally trucked to a produce aisle near you. Oh, and one more thing: that tomato tastes like shit.

And tomatoes are just one example. What about other fruits and vegetables? Or the disgusting misery of our industrial beef, poultry, and pork industries? Our modern food and agriculture system has spun wildly out of control, as writers like Estabrook, Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), Mark Bittman (The New York Times), and others have vividly illustrated. The good news, however, is that we can fight back and reclaim some sanity in how we acquire and consume our food.

Small, locally owned farms continue to pop up all over the country, and summer farmers’ markets have become a regular staple in many communities. Some towns even have winter farmers’ markets now, and the New York Times just ran a story about there possibly being too many farmers’ markets in parts of the country these days. Alternatively, you could buy fruits, veggies, and other goodies directly from the farmer through a community supported agriculture program.

Want to get your hands dirty? Put a few raised beds in your backyard and grow your own vegetables. Don’t have a backyard? Many towns and cities now offer community garden areas with small plots for rent. For the studious, all sorts of magazines, books, and blogs about gardening are becoming more ubiquitous, and many schools and other organizations now offer gardening classes.

And don’t stop at homegrown fruits and veggies. More and more towns are allowing their residents to raise chickens in their backyard (hens only) and enjoy ridiculously fresh eggs all year long. The town where I live, Bozeman, Montana, just passed a chicken ordinance two years ago.

My wife and I hope to start raising chickens next spring, but our dog, a two-year-old black lab named Aldo, ran across the street a month ago and committed a double chicken homicide in my neighbor’s yard. Notwithstanding the traumatic event (Aldo proudly brought one of the hens home for us – he’s a bird dog, after all), we still plan to start raising chickens next spring, and we’re currently working with a CIA security expert on the design of an Aldo-proof chicken coop.

And what about meat? More ranches are offering local grass-fed beef and bison, and you can buy it in large quantities directly from the rancher. No longer must you buy beef from cows that have been gorged on corn and antibiotics on a cramped, manure-filled feedlot in Kansas.

Many of you also live in places that teem with wild game (i.e., deer, elk, pronghorn, upland birds, and ducks). Grab a shotgun, rifle, or bow and head for the hills this fall, as you can’t get any more local and organic than wild game you kill and butcher yourself. Hunting will lower your carbon footprint and make you understand and appreciate that t-bone steaks don’t magically appear neatly wrapped in plastic in the meat section of your grocery store. An animal was slaughtered for you to eat that steak (or chicken, turkey, lamb, or pork), and more often than not that animal was raised in horribly cruel conditions. When you buy meat at the store, you're merely outsourcing the killing for your dinner.

Last fall, I consumed my first truly local, self-created meal. The potatoes, carrots, and green beans came from my backyard, the Hungarian partridge and sharp-tailed grouse were birds I shot, and the high-octane, hoppy IPA was beer I brewed. Besides being healthy and wildly delicious, it’s hard to describe how satisfying a meal it was.

Providing food for yourself is a powerful act. It will make you more conscious about where your food comes from, how it’s grown, and what you put in your body. And, unlike winter tomatoes from Florida, the harvest from your garden, eggs from your backyard, or the deer from a nearby forest will dazzle your taste buds.

I’m not a fanatical gardener, I don’t eat perfectly or sustainably all the time (not even close), and I’m not a huge fan of self-righteous, holier-than-thou food snobs. But I think about where my food comes from more than I ever have.

Unfortunately, our food and agriculture system won’t be revolutionized overnight. But while we wait for The Great American Embarrassment known as the United States Congress to pass a sane farm bill, we can empower ourselves through gardening, hunting, and supporting local farms and ranches.

Happy eating.

Since I was posting this blog entry today, I snapped a few photos of my garden last night to have images to accompany the blog post. I was about to take a nice picture of the garden, when Aldo, the chicken-killer, waltzed over to my middle raised bed, looked back at me, and then starting peeing on my Brussels sprouts. Thanks, Aldo.

Update: Following my posting of this blog entry, I learned that NRDC's award-winning OnEarth Magazine previously excerpted a section of Tomatoland, and Barry Estabrook, the tomato maestro himself, is now a contributing writer to OnEarth. (News travels slowly to Montana.) I also discovered that OnEarth has a gardening blog, which I'll be reading going forward. Who knew?

(A verison of this blog post originally appeared in The Bozeman Magpie.)

Wolf Recovery in the Pacific Northwest

2011-08-16T22:29:44Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

Sarah Skoglund crossing the Hoh River, Olympic National Park, Washington.

While the Wolf Wars in the Northern Rockies garnered all sorts of attention over the past few years, a curious development was taking place just west of here: wolves were recolonizing parts of Oregon and Washington for the first time in many decades.

Initially, the first wolves to show up in Oregon and Washington were wolves that had dispersed west from Idaho. This was a wonderful discovery, as it demonstrated how Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the Northern Rockies allowed the wolf population to grow and reclaim historic habitat. But this initial recovery of wolves in Oregon and Washington was still limited to the Northern Rockies.

Washington and Oregon are big states, and the eastern third of each state is technically part of the Northern Rockies Distinct Population Segment of gray wolves. So these first recolonizers in Oregon and Washington were part of the same broader population of Northern Rockies wolves as those in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. In fact, when Congress removed Endangered Species Act protections from Northern Rockies wolves this past spring (with the exception of Wyoming, where wolves remain on the endangered species list for now), the wolves in eastern Washington and Oregon also lost their federal protections.

But following this first phase of wolves dispersing into Washington and Oregon, more exciting news arrived when wolves were recently discovered in the Cascade Mountains in central Washington. DNA tests subsequently revealed that some of these wolves are descendants of wolves from British Columbia. This is a fantastic development, as significant viable wolf habitat exists in the Pacific Northwest, and, as my colleagues and I have previously written, the return of a native apex predator like the wolf benefits the entire ecosystem.

We’re thrilled about the return of wolves to the Pacific Northwest, and, going forward, NRDC will be stepping up its efforts to help wolves establish a sustainable population in the land of huge trees and lots of rain. We will work with local conservation groups in the Pacific Northwest, such as Conservation Northwest and Oregon Wild, and we will push Washington, Oregon, and the federal government to manage wolves responsibly and give wolves in the Pacific Northwest room to develop a legitimate, sustainable population.

Last summer, my wife and I explored the Olympic Peninsula of Washington, and, this past spring, we drove out to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Wild steelhead, lush rainforests, cold-water surfing, strong coffee, great beer – what’s not to love about the Pacific Northwest? Up to now, the only thing missing has been wolves.

But that’s finally starting to change.

(Wolf photo by haglundc on Flickr)

Wyoming and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Reach Agreement on Wolf Plan

2011-08-10T20:02:10Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

Last week, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the State of Wyoming announced that they had reached an agreement over Wyoming’s long-disputed wolf management plan. Such an agreement paves the way for the Fish & Wildlife Service to remove Wyoming’s almost 350 wolves from the endangered species list in the near future. Unfortunately, the feds got very little in the negotiations, and Wyoming walked away with its draconian wolf management plan pretty much intact.

To put this agreement in context, you need some background information.

The Achilles’ heel of Wyoming’s wolf management plan has been twofold: it has failed to commit to maintaining at least 15 breeding pairs of wolves in Wyoming, and it has designated wolves as predators that can be killed by anyone at any time without a license in about 90% of the state. (In the other 10% of Wyoming, the northwest corner of the state, wolves would be classified as a trophy game species and managed as such.)

Almost ten years ago, the Fish & Wildlife Service rejected Wyoming’s 2003 wolf management plan because, among other things, the plan failed to clearly commit to managing for at least 15 breeding pairs in the state, and the predatory status of wolves under the plan did not “provide sufficient management controls to assure the Service that the wolf population [would] remain above recovery levels.”

Wyoming tweaked its plan in 2007, and the Fish & Wildlife Service did an about-face and approved it, notwithstanding the plan's retention of the defects the Fish & Wildlife Service had already said were unacceptable.

Following the Service’s approval of Wyoming’s 2007 wolf management plan, the Bush Administration removed Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in the Northern Rockies in early 2008. For several reasons, one of which was the blatant inadequacy of Wyoming’s wolf management plan, NRDC and other conservation groups, represented by Earthjustice, challenged the “delisting” rule in federal court. We won the lawsuit, and one of the primary reasons for our victory was that the federal judge presiding over the case found that the Fish & Wildlife Service’s reversal on Wyoming’s plan was arbitrary and capricious.

With Wyoming unwilling to play ball with the feds, and with the political pressure to delist wolves in the Northern Rockies mounting, the Bush Administration got around the “Wyoming problem” by simply delisting wolves in all of the Northern Rockies except Wyoming during its last week in office in January 2009, notwithstanding such a state-by-state delisting being patently illegal under the Endangered Species Act.

The Obama Administration rubber-stamped the all-of-the-Northern-Rockies-except-Wyoming delisting rule in the spring of 2009. The same coalition of conservation groups challenged this delisting rule as well, and, because the rule was blatantly illegal, we won the lawsuit last August. Following our victory, the political pressure reached a fever pitch, and, as you probably know by now, wolves in the Northern Rockies (except Wyoming – where the state still didn't have an adequate management plan) were removed from the endangered species list this past spring through the insertion of a delisting rider (no Congressional hearings, no process) to a must-pass budget bill.

With wolves delisted in all of the Northern Rockies but Wyoming, all eyes have turned to The Cowboy State in recent months, as the Fish & Wildlife Service has pushed Wyoming to legitimately revise its wolf management plan so the Service can also remove Wyoming’s wolves from the endangered species list.

But after months of negotiating, the Fish & Wildlife Service has agreed to a mere marginal improvement in Wyoming’s plan. The new modified “dual-status” plan would again classify and protect wolves with trophy game status only in the northwest corner of the state, meaning you must have a hunting license to hunt wolves in Wyoming’s northwest corner. In the rest of the state, wolves would be considered "predators" and could be killed on sight by anyone at any time without a license.

The new twist in the dual-status plan is that Wyoming would also establish a “flex zone” for parts of three counties immediately south of the northwest trophy game area. In the flex zone, wolves would be protected from October 15 through the end of the following February so they can travel and connect with other wolves in central Idaho. For the remainder of the year, the shoot-on-sight predator status would apply (even though the county commissioners from one of the three counties, Teton County, appealed to the Governor of Wyoming to keep wolves from being killed as predators there).

For contextual background purposes, in rejecting Wyoming’s 2003 plan the Fish & Wildlife Service indicated that wolves should be designated as trophy game statewide and stated:

The designation of wolves as ‘trophy game’ statewide would allow Wyoming to devise a management strategy that provides for self-sustaining populations above recovery goals, regulated harvest and adequate monitoring of that harvest. As is the case with other trophy game in Wyoming, the state could establish management areas, season dates, and quota limits to control populations in a regulated manner. In addition, Wyoming could address wolf depredation concerns through regulations that exist for currently classified trophy game animals.

So much for that.

Another change to the plan is that Wyoming will be required to maintain 100 wolves, including 10 breeding pairs, outside Yellowstone National Park and the Wind River Reservation. Above that minimum requirement, Wyoming also says it is “committed to manage wolves by using its statutory and regulatory authority to implement the commitments in this plan, and in cooperation with [Yellowstone National Park] and the [Wind River Reservation], to ensure the minimum recovery goals of at least 15 breeding pairs and at least 150 wolves are maintained.” Because Wyoming has no authority to manage wolves in Yellowstone or on the Wind River Reservation, however, this pledge of maintaining 15 breeding pairs in conjunction with Yellowstone and the Wind River Reservation has been a big issue in the past (and even 150 and 15 are really low numbers when you’re talking about the long-term conservation of the species in the Northern Rockies).

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s agreement to Wyoming’s plan is disappointing. It’s akin to a guy walking into a nice restaurant for dinner completely bare-chested and asking for a corner booth. The restaurant manager tells him he can’t enter the restaurant without a shirt on, so he goes into the parking lot, ties a few shoelaces around his stomach, walks back into the restaurant, and the manager says, “Let me show you to your table.”

Or, in the words of the federal judge that found the Service’s change in position on Wyoming’s tweaked 2007 plan to be arbitrary and capricious:

In 2004, the Fish & Wildlife Service rejected Wyoming’s 2003 wolf management plan. The Service determined the 2003 plan was inadequate to protect wolves because it permitted Wyoming state officials to classify the wolf as a predatory animal throughout the state and then failed to clearly commit the state to managing for 15 breeding pairs within its borders. Before delisting the wolf, the Fish & Wildlife Service approved Wyoming’s revised 2007 plan. This revised plan suffers from the same deficiencies as the 2003 plan: it classifies the wolf as a predatory animal in almost 90 percent of the state and only commits the state to managing for 7 breeding pairs outside the national parks. In supporting its decision to approve Wyoming’s 2007 plan, the Service does not offer any information not available to it when it rejected the 2003 plan. Armed with the same information, the agency flip-flopped without explanation.

Now it’s the 2011 plan and the only significant changes are the seasonal “flex zone” and a commitment to managing for 10 breeding pairs outside Yellowstone and Wind River (as opposed to 7 breeding pairs outside both Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks).

We hoped the Fish & Wildlife Service would pressure Wyoming in their negotiations to adopt a more conservation-oriented wolf management plan, but no such luck, as it turns out. (Or, in the blunter words of Wyoming State Representative Keith Gingery in today's Jackson Hole News & Guide, "The Obama administration folded like a cheap accordion.")

That said, last week’s agreement still has a ways to go before it becomes the official Wyoming wolf management plan and wolves are removed from the endangered species list in Wyoming. Specifically, the Wyoming Fish & Game Commission must approve it, the Wyoming State Legislature needs to codify it, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service also has to officially sign off on it.

The Wyoming Fish & Game Commission will be accepting public comments on its revised wolf management plan through September 9. NRDC will be submitting comments on the revised plan, and we hope others will as well.

Wolf recovery has simply come too far in the Northern Rockies for such an outdated anti-wolf plan to be accepted.

It's Official: Whitebark Pine Trees are Endangered by Climate Change

2011-07-18T23:58:40Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

Today, in response to a petition we filed in December 2008, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service found that the whitebark pine tree should be listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act. Specifically, the Service concluded that the threats whitebark faces, including climate change, are of such a high magnitude and are so pressing that whitebark pine is in danger of extinction. This is the first time that the federal government has declared a widespread tree species in danger of imminent extinction because of climate change.

A sea of dead and dying whitebark pine trees in the Northern Rockies in Montana.

Unfortunately, however, the Fish & Wildlife Service said it will not immediately list whitebark as threatened or endangered because of higher priorities and a lack of funding. But, because of the severe risks to whitebark, the agency assigned it one of its highest priorities for future listing, which is good news.

(Side note: if the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service does not currently have the funding it needs to implement the Endangered Species Act and help protect plants and animals threatened with extinction, why the hell are Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives proposing to bar all new listings of endangered species? Shouldn’t we be more conservative and try to conserve these species? Jeez louise.)

This “warranted but precluded” finding for whitebark pine by the Fish and Wildlife Service should send a loud and clear message to those still arguing that the earth is flat and the sun orbits around the earth, I mean those still arguing that climate change is not real. Thanks to warmer temperatures, the roof of the Rockies is dying, and the federal agency tasked with responding to Endangered Species Act petitions just issued a finding that concluded that the iconic whitebark pine tree, because of global warming, now needs a life jacket.

The background story of the collapse of whitebark pine is sad but straightforward: due to warmer winter temperatures, mountain pine beetles, a native insect, are surviving at higher elevations because the requisite prolonged cold snaps needed to kill the beetles are not occurring. As a result, the beetles have murderously worked their way through whitebark country, leaving a massive trail of dead trees in their wake. A non-native fungus, white pine blister rust, has also been attacking whitebark. The result has been an epic die-off of this magnificent tree.

In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, for example, a pioneering study undertaken by NRDC, the U.S. Forest Service, and a few other Whitebark Warriors in 2009 found that over 80% of whitebark pine forests in the Greater Yellowstone had experienced moderate to high mortality with another 15% in earlier stages of beetle infestation. And some experts predict that whitebark pine will be functionally extinct in the Greater Yellowstone in the very near future.

The death of this tree is a tragic loss, as the whitebark pine is a keystone species that affects the entire ecosystem. Whitebark pines stabilize the soil, shade snowpack into the summer (which helps delay snow runoff and thus feeds cold water to our rivers later in the summer when such water is badly needed), and their fatty, nutritious seeds feed Clark’s nutcracker birds, red squirrels, and grizzly bears. The loss of whitebark, therefore, significantly affects snowpack, vegetation, and wildlife.

Though a full endangered species listing would have, of course, been preferred, the Fish & Wildlife Service’s landmark finding of whitebark pine as a “candidate species” (i.e., a candidate for the endangered species list when funding is available) means the U.S. Forest Service, on whose land the majority of whitebark pine stands are located, will automatically designate whitebark pine as a “sensitive species,” which requires the agency to take special management actions for whitebark.

But, ultimately, the Fish & Wildlife Service’s finding is bittersweet. It is good to see the agency recognize the climate-driven plight of whitebark, but, at the same time, the Service’s finding shows just how dire the situation has become for the studly, stately tree of the high country of the Rockies.

And it makes me think about the scores of other species – fish, wildlife, plants, trees – that are being pushed to the brink of survival by our warming climate. Will those species ever get a life jacket? Or will an endangered listing for them also be "warranted but precluded"? Or, more ominously, is it already too late for some of them?

The above questions all point to the big question more people are asking: when will we stop kicking the can down the street and take decisive action on climate change?

As today's finding by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service shows us, the dying whitebark pine tree in the western United States is a juiced-up canary in a massive coal mine screaming for help.

(To see a bird’s-eye view of the plight of whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (a series of photos I took from a helicopter last fall), click here. For a separate photo essay of the calamity of whitebark pine I put together, click here.)

(And to stay updated on all of our efforts to protect wildlife and wild places, join www.Facebook.com/BioGemsDefenders.)

Oil Spill on the Yellowstone River Hits Close to Home

2011-07-06T19:23:07Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

Less than a mile from our office, as I write this, snowmelt from the Northern Rockies screams downstream in the Yellowstone River. The Yellowstone – the longest undammed river in the lower 48 states – is an iconic, wild American river, and, around here, people simply call it The River.

The Yellowstone begins in the wild, roadless southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. It flows north and east for almost 700 miles before it joins the Missouri River in western North Dakota. I have floated several miles of the Yellowstone, fished it many times, hunted ducks with my dog on it, backpacked alongside it with my wife and friends, and slept next to it. The Yellowstone River is an American treasure.

As such, when I returned this week after spending the long holiday weekend camping in and exploring a remote mountain valley near the Montana and Idaho border – blissfully free of cell phones, computers, and the never-ending American news cycle – I was stunned and saddened to learn that a disastrous oil spill occurred in the Yellowstone River late Friday night when an Exxon oil pipeline ruptured and puked tens of thousands of gallons of oil into The River.

For most Americans (myself included), I bet that oil spills merely register as some distant event they watch on CNN. Sure, BP’s Deepwater Horizon nightmare in the Gulf garnered weeks of intense media attention, but unless the affected area of the Gulf is tangibly relevant for you (i.e., you live there, you fish there, you vacation there, etc.), it’s probably just another far-off disaster that gurgles from the TV while you cook dinner.

So when I heard about the oil spill in the Yellowstone, my heart sank, as I gasped, “The Yellowstone? No, that couldn’t have happened.” Oil spills are supposed to happen far away, not on a river you know and love.

I spoke with my younger brother, Dan, about the Yellowstone fiasco yesterday. He lives in Massachusetts, but he fished and floated the Yellowstone with me last summer. Also shocked, he said, “I can’t believe it. You just don’t associate an oil spill with the Yellowstone. Knowing the river, this is different. This is really insane.”

And the more I read about the Yellowstone spill, the more I realize how many more rivers and communities – places where an oil spill today seems intangibly distant – are also at great risk of a disaster in their neck of the woods.

An article in today’s Bozeman Daily Chronicle states that “as officials grapple with the oil spill in the Yellowstone River near Laurel, the fact is that oil and gas pipelines and storage areas along the banks of Montana's pristine waters are almost as common as trout fishermen.”

There are thousands of miles of aging buried pipelines, and there have already been spills in the past year in Michigan, Salt Lake City, and multiple in Canada and the Great Plains.

Where will the next pipeline rupture occur?

Fortunately, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle article also notes that the Yellowstone spill “has some people questioning whether regulators can do more to put a buffer between American fuel and American water.”

As my colleagues Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, Bobby McEnaney, and Anthony Swift have written this week, America’s pipeline safety regulations can – and must – be strengthened to protect precious resources like the Yellowstone River.

Because the reality is that while our friendly multinational oil companies do a wonderful job feigning shock and awe each time one of their pipelines bursts, these “accidents” happen regularly. We need tougher regulations, and we need to think more critically about where these pipelines should be built.

We are not going to free ourselves of oil tomorrow, but we need to do a much better job regulating how our oil is supplied and transported across the country.

A good place to start (in addition to toughening state and federal regulations) is for the U.S. State Department to say no to TransCanada’s proposal to build its Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline from northern Alberta in Canada through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma all the way down to the refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Tar sands oil from Canada is more corrosive, more prone to spills, and more difficult to clean up than conventional oil. And – you’re not going to believe this – TransCanada wants its tar sands pipeline, like the Exxon pipeline that just popped, to go underneath the Yellowstone River in Montana (though TransCanada says not to worry because it would be buried deeper in the riverbed than the Exxon pipeline, use thicker steel and operate at lower-than-allowed pressures). Oh, and the Keystone pipeline would supply about 20 times more oil than the ruptured Exxon pipeline.

About 100 miles downstream of our office, Exxon’s busted oil pipeline just created a nightmare for the Yellowstone River and the farmers, ranchers, anglers, and communities downstream of the spill. While federal, state, local, and Exxon officials work to clean up and contain the spill, this tragedy had better serve as a highly caffeinated wake-up call that it’s time to strengthen our pipeline regulatory system and say no TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline.

As the oil-stained water of the Yellowstone River shows us, we can’t afford not to.

Saving Native Trout in Yellowstone

2011-06-13T16:03:35Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

A brook trout in New England is a vastly different fish from a brook trout in the West. Genetically identical, same spots on its flanks, still heartbreakingly beautiful, but a brookie in the West is a fish out of water, if you will.

That’s because brook trout are native to the East. Saunter up a babbling brook that cascades down through a lush, dense forest in the gentle Green Mountains of Vermont – brook trout country. Slither through some sagebrush alongside a fast-flowing freestone river framed by snow-covered 11,000-foot peaks in June in southwest Montana – not brook trout country.

What happened? Simple: some “bucket biologists” with genuinely good intentions – both government-sponsored and independent – stocked rivers around the country with reckless abandon in the late nineteenth century and much of the twentieth.

Those big brown trout in the Yellowstone River? They, like soccer and small bathrooms, are native to Europe. And the fittingly named rainbow trout? Native to the rivers of the Pacific coast.

The thinking was: trout are good, so more trout must be better. Rivers were supplemented, fishless streams were amended, and our nation’s waterways would never be the same.

Today, some of our native fish species are paying dearly for our misguided efforts of yesteryear, none more so than the Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

Yellowstone cutts, as their name implies, are native to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. They are gorgeous fish, with an orange slash along the bottom of each gill plate (hence “cut throat”), rounded heads, and, what has always looked like to me, a friendly face.

Historically, their stronghold has been Yellowstone Lake, the largest lake at high elevation (i.e., more than 7,000 feet) in North America, and its many tributaries.

But thanks to non-native lake trout that were illegally stocked a few decades ago, the Yellowstone cutthroat population in Yellowstone Lake has plummeted in recent years due to predation by the lake trout, which is bad for grizzly bears, eagles, ospreys, otters, and the long-term future of Yellowstone cutts.

Adding fuel to the fire, Yellowstone cutthroat trout in rivers and streams away from Yellowstone Lake, including such fabled waters as Slough Creek and the Lamar River, are threatened by competition from non-native trout (i.e., rainbows, browns, and brookies) as well as hybridization from rainbow trout, as both Yellowstone cutts and rainbows are spring spawners.

(Oh, and there’s also this little fella named Climate Change, but let’s not go there today.)

Fortunately, Yellowstone National Park and the National Park Service have recognized the seriousness of the situation, and they recently released a Native Fish Conservation Plan, which sets out a more aggressive strategy to deal with this calamity.

And the plan is not limited to Yellowstone cutthroat trout. It encompasses protection efforts for two other severely imperiled native fish: river-dwelling Arctic grayling, which are now completely gone from all park waters, and westslope cutthroat trout, which now exist in only two small creeks.

According to the plan’s environmental assessment, “Of the approximately 644 km of river habitat that originally supported native fish when the park was established, only 50 km still have native fish that are genetically unaltered, while approximately 736 km currently support non-native and/or hybridized (genetically altered) trout.”

Clearly, the time for action is now.

The park’s conservation plan will involve various methods and projects, with the highest native fish conservation priority being the restoration of Yellowstone cutthroat trout in Yellowstone Lake. To accomplish this worthy goal, the park will, among other things, ramp up its netting of non-native lake trout for the next several years.

Additionally, the plan prescribes for removing non-native fish from certain streams, rivers and lakes in the park, creating artificial barriers or modifying existing natural features (i.e., small waterfalls) to prevent upstream movement of non-native fish, and then restocking such waters with genetically unaltered native fish (i.e., Yellowstone cutts, westslope cutts, Arctic grayling). No changes have been proposed for the Madison or Firehole Rivers.

The park will begin implementing its native fish plan this summer, and the timing could not be better, as native trout (and salmon) continue to face more and more threats across the country these days. Habitat loss, climate change, hybridization, predation and competition from non-native fish; listing the myriad of threats gives me a headache.

But in Yellowstone, the country's first national park, the park service is about to roll up its sleeves and get to work protecting and restoring native fish in the park. For that, I am grateful.

I look forward to hiking into the backcountry meadows of Slough Creek in Yellowstone with a fly rod this summer. I look forward to catching and releasing several plump Yellowstone cutts. I look forward to my knees getting weak at the sight of those beautiful fish.

And in fifty years, thanks to the park’s bold new plan, I look forward to our grandkids doing the exact same thing.

This article originally appeared in The Bozeman Magpie.

A Lesson from Wolves and Bison in Yellowstone

2011-05-27T18:05:18Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

As I wrote yesterday, I’ve spent a lot of time in Yellowstone National Park lately. And a couple of weeks ago, on a dark, ominous evening in the Lamar Valley, I received a very important lesson from some wolves and bison.

Two fantastically fun NRDC supporters and I were watching the four yearling wolves and two alpha males from the Lamar Canyon pack amble through some hills just north of the Northeast Entrance Road. (Yes, the alpha female in the Lamar Canyon pack has two beaus, who are brothers (scandalous!), but that’s a whole separate story.)

The four yearlings, full of wanderlust and eager to test their hunting skills, were running out in front of the alpha male brothers, looking to pick a fight. They hopelessly chased after some pronghorn antelope, the fastest land animal on the continent, while the brothers stayed back, conserving their energy and probably rolling their eyes at the youngsters’ exuberance.

But then the yearlings came across a bison cow and her tiny newborn calf, and the mood changed quickly. The yearlings had the bison mom and calf separated from the rest of their group of about thirty bison. With the mom and calf on their own, the yearlings closed in on them quickly.

The wolves surrounded them in a fairly tight square formation, with a wolf at each corner of the square. The bison cow stood completely still with her rope-like tail in the air, while her calf stayed so close to her side it was underneath her at times. A nervous pit swelled up in my stomach, as I had no doubt I was about to watch a bison calf get killed, a totally natural and normal occurrence, but still violent and somewhat tough to observe.

With the bison pair not moving, one wolf at a time would creep towards the pair. When the wolf got close, the bison mom would shift her position to put herself between the calf and the wolf. As soon as she moved, however, a wolf on the opposite side of the bison pair would then lunge for the calf. With the lunging wolf nearing the calf, the calf would quickly tuck itself under its mom’s chin and neck, while its mom, with a fiercely strong desire to protect her offspring, would turn ever so slightly to face the lunging wolf, which would cause the wolf to back off.

With the specter of death hanging over all six participants the entire time, this high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse slowly unfolded.

The wolves wanted to kill the calf for a meal, but they were also dealing with one tough mother. Wolves, like all wildlife, view the world through a highly tuned risk-versus-reward lens. On one end sits the bison calf, a tasty meal just out of their reach. On the other, the bison mom, who with one good kick could end a wolf’s life in an instant. Risk versus reward.

The yearling wolves kept pressing, but the bison pair held their ground, barely moving. With four wolves and one adult bison, I figured that, over time, the deck was stacked in the wolves’ favor, as one tiny slip-up by the bison, which was bound to happen at some point, would result in certain death for the calf.

But, much to my surprise, the bison mother never made a mistake, nor did her calf. After almost ten nerve-wracking minutes, the yearling wolves gave up and slowly trotted off. The bison mom had held her ground, fought off four wolves, and saved her calf’s life.

I’ve reflected on that extraordinary evening quite a bit over the past two weeks, and, to me, the takeaway lesson is obvious:

Never get too far from your mama!

Spring in Yellowstone National Park

2011-05-26T21:28:23Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

I’ve been out of the office for much of the past two weeks wandering around Yellowstone National Park with some of NRDC’s wonderful supporters.

We spent most of our time in the wild northeast corner of the Park. At this time of year, the high country is blanketed with several feet of snow, and thus the valleys teem with wildlife.

We saw wolves, grizzlies, black bears, pronghorn antelope, countless elk, bison (cows, bulls, and newborn calves), bighorn sheep, and a great variety of birds and waterfowl. We scurried up sage-covered hills, hiked muddy trails, endured funky weather, laughed a lot, and thoroughly enjoyed spring (with a dash of winter and a touch of summer) in America’s first national park.

The metaphor of spring as a time of birth and renewal gets pummeled every year right about now, but I’m going there anyways, because my time in the Park and – more importantly – my time with some devoted NRDC members rejuvenated me and put our work in the Northern Rockies in perspective.

People care a great deal about this part of the world and the wild critters that roam it, and it’s a privilege to live here and work to protect it.

Enjoy some photos of spring in Yellowstone.

A stunning photograph of the famed Lamar Valley captured by Val Schaffner.

A bison calf feeds from its mother.

Searching for wildlife while on a break from hiking.

A wolf track.

Winters in Yellowstone are harsh, as evidenced by the rack and skull of this huge bull elk.

Bighorn sheep on a high butte near the confluence of the Lamar and Yellowstone Rivers.

A grizzly bear on his lunch break.

Wildlfowers, such as these pasque flowers, are starting to bloom.

Black bear in the foreground, bison in the background.

"Spring" in Yellowstone is a relative term.

Fresh grizz tracks on the trail always get my attention.

Pebble Mine in Alaska. Worst. Idea. Ever.

2011-05-05T19:59:04Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

(Lake Clark National Park, Bristol Bay, Alaska)

In August 2005, shortly after enduring the misery of the bar exam, I hopped on a plane to Anchorage, Alaska, to fly-fish for ten days. A friend I had met earlier in the year on a fly-fishing excursion to Belize, Chris Terry, lives in Anchorage, and when I told him I’d never fished Alaska, he was horrified. Chris immediately extended a generous invitation to the 49th state to remedy the unfortunate situation.

Like all visitors to The Last Frontier, its beauty and sheer massiveness awed me. If you appreciate wildness, Alaska is a dream. Over the course of the trip, Chris and I fished some amazing rivers on the Kenai Peninsula and some spectacular creeks up towards Denali.

(Me with a dolly varden shortly before it was released)

But the highlight of the trip, by far, was our visit to the pristine Bristol Bay watershed. A huge system of lakes, rivers, and streams that connect to the ocean, Bristol Bay is home to some of the world's largest wild salmon runs. Brown bears, wolves, caribou, freshwater seals and countless birds also inhabit this legendary roadless wilderness.

Chris, his friend Walt, and I flew to Bristol Bay from Anchorage in Walt’s small floatplane (floatplanes are like bikes in Alaska) and stayed multiple nights in Lake Clark National Park. One day we flew over to Lake Iliamna, the largest lake in Alaska and a hallowed name in the angling world.

Massive runs of salmon swim through Lake Iliamna and up the lake’s tributaries to spawn. Huge rainbow trout then follow the salmon up the tributaries and feed on salmon eggs and the flesh of dead salmon. (All five species of Pacific salmon die after spawning, and their nutrient-rich carcasses nourish the entire ecosystem – from the bears to the birds to the bushes.)

(Red sockeye salmon swimming the waters of Lake Iliamna)

We cruised the shoreline of Iliamna low in the floatplane, searching the clear water of the tributaries for bright red sockeye salmon. After spotting a creek teeming with sockeye (and a big brown bear fishing at the creek’s mouth), we landed the floatplane on the water, jumped out in our waders, pulled it as close to the shore as we could, and then tied it to some bushes with a long rope. (There were many firsts for me on that trip, and tying an airplane to a bush to go fishing was one of them.)

With the plane secured (theoretically), we walked down the rugged beach of Lake Iliamna towards the mouth of the creek. Though our landing had flushed the feeding brown bear from the creek’s mouth, the image of that enormous bear filled my thoughts. (Obviously.)

We waded upstream to find the first pool of salmon. Though the abundant sockeye had convinced us to fish the creek, it wasn’t sockeye we were after; our quarry were the monstrous rainbow trout that had followed the salmon.

(Chris wading up the creek)

While wading upstream, I noticed what appeared to be a clearly defined hiking trail in the tall grass on the creek’s bank. Knowing full well it could not be a hiking trail, I asked Chris and Walt what it was. Walt answered matter-of-factly, “Bears.”

Walt then proceeded to explain that there were brown bears all over the place and under no circumstances should we leave the creek over the course of the day. “Uhhh, okay,” I mumbled, trying to think about big rainbow trout, not us being surrounded and outnumbered by huge brown bears on a not-so-big creek.

The reality, of course, was that the bears were fat, happy, and borderline intoxicated on salmon and thus posed little to no threat. But, still, they were brown bears, and my mind, unfortunately, is one that tends to wander in such situations.

We worked our way upstream and proceeded to catch (and release) shockingly large and stunningly beautiful rainbow trout all day. It was insane, and I didn’t want the insanity to end, but when I rounded a bend and saw a bear walking down the middle of creek towards me, I realized it was probably time to turn around.

I considered yelling, “Hey bear, I thought we agreed that we had the creek and you the trail. What’s up with you in the creek?” But I came to my senses and hurriedly waded downstream towards Chris and Walt.

On our walk down the creek to the lake, we encountered another big bear. He was fishing one of the pools we had fished earlier in the day. Unable to leave the creek to walk around him, we stood in the creek and watched him fish. Needless to say, it was mesmerizing.

(The brown bear on the bank of the creek)

After a few failed attempts, the bear’s dripping head emerged from the water with a big salmon in his mouth. His angling success was a relief, as we assumed he’d exit the creek and wander off with his dinner. But he merely climbed on to the bank and sat down to eat his supper.

We watched him eat. It was somewhat surreal watching this bear eat a salmon from a mere 40 yards away, but it was also getting late and we had to make our way to the plane. We needed the bear to leave the creek.

Following his “wild Alaskan salmon sashimi” dinner, instead of leaving, he stretched his front paws out in front of him and went to sleep on the edge of the creek. He looked like a big sleeping dog, and we couldn’t help but laugh; this bear was quite a character.

While the bear counted salmon in his dreams, we decided we couldn’t wait any longer. We had to walk downstream past him. We tiptoed downstream, my heart racing. While our downstream slithering was tense for us, the bear, in a food coma, could’ve cared less. He merely lifted his head and shot us a look that said, “You inconsiderate jerks, can’t you see I’m trying to sleep here?”

We made it to the floatplane and were greeted by a howling onshore wind. We waded out and pumped water out of the plane’s pontoons. With the plane ready to go, Walt instructed Chris and me how we were going to take off. Because the wind would blow the plane off course if we tried for a regular water takeoff, Chris and I needed to guide the plane forward while Walt gained speed. Chris and I were to wade out on each side of the pontoons while Walt accelerated. When Walt felt he had enough speed to beat the wind, he would yell for Chris and me to jump in.

For a variety of reasons, the plan seemed nuts to me, but I wasn’t about to question Walt. With Chris on his side and me on mine, Walt began to gain speed. The wind tried to turn the plane, and Chris and I fought it. We walked, and then we started jogging with the plane through knee-deep water. With the wind ripping, water spraying us, and the propeller screaming, Walt hollered, “Now!”

Chris and I pulled ourselves on to the pontoons, stood up, and dove through the open doors of the plane. Walt kept accelerating, and the wind began prematurely lifting the plane into the air. Each time the plane went up, Walt shot it back down into the waves.

While I thought Walt was trying to kill us, he later told me that if he tried to go with the wind and pull up too soon (something a rookie pilot might try), we’d climb for a while and then crash into the lake, as we didn’t have enough speed. So he kept forcing the plane back down to the lake, waiting for the right amount of speed to pull up.

When we finally took off, Walt, the king of understatement, quipped, “That was a close one.”

We arrived safely back at camp that evening, and I enjoyed quite possibly the greatest beer of my life. It was simply an epic day, one that I’ll savor for all my remaining years on Mother Earth.

(Brown bear tracks and a dead sockeye salmon)

Six years later, my memory of that day has taken on a whole new meaning. Little did I know at the time, but while I cast to colossal rainbow trout and my imagination fended off marauding brown bears, a consortium of multinational mining corporations were conspiring to dig one of the world’s largest open-pit mines on the northern end of Lake Iliamna in the heart of the Bristol Bay watershed.

If this nightmare known as the Pebble Mine is allowed to go forward, it will be – take a deep breath – a 2,000-foot-deep, two-mile-long gold and copper mine with gigantic earthen dams built to hold back some 10 billion tons of mining waste. Roads will be built, and the mine will be smack dab in the middle of a known earthquake zone.

Pebble Mine will inflict irreversible damage on Bristol Bay, including the permanent destruction of dozens of miles of wild salmon habitat. That’s why NRDC has joined Alaskan Natives, anglers, hunters and other conservation organizations to fight this wretched proposal.

Just a couple of weeks ago, for Earth Day, NRDC and our tireless board member Robert Redford ran a full-page ad in the New York Times demanding that the mining companies keep their paws off Bristol Bay. In the past two years, our incredible members and activists have helped us deliver over 300,000 letters of protest to the major investors in the Pebble Mine abyss.

Some good news arrived recently, as one of the investors, Mitsubishi Corporation, withdrew from the Pebble project in February of this year.

Unfortunately, however, this dire threat to Bristol Bay is still alive and well, as the other two mining giants, Anglo American and Rio Tinto, are still trying to move ahead with the mine.

We need your help.

Send a letter to the mining companies, make phone calls, tell your friends, put a bumper sticker on your car, spread the word on Facebook. Do something.

For if there’s one thing I know in every fiber of my body, it’s that Bristol Bay and the fish and wildlife that inhabit it are way more precious than any quantity of gold.

Great News: Yellowstone's Bison Get More Room to Roam

2011-04-13T22:13:35Z

Matt Skoglund, Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

The furry beast of the plains can finally dance a little jig, and – for the first time in many decades – it can bust those moves north of Yellowstone National Park.

Yesterday, the federal, state, and tribal agencies that collectively manage Yellowstone’s bison population signed an historic agreement that gives these iconic animals access to tens of thousands of acres of habitat north of the Park.

An attorney for the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho commented, “This is the most significant advance in recent times in tolerating bison outside Yellowstone.”

Specifically, the Interagency Bison Management Plan agencies agreed to allow wild bison from the Park to roam the 75,000-acre Gardiner basin north of the Park during the winter and most of the spring. While bison will not be allowed to enter Paradise Valley north of the Yellowstone River’s Yankee Jim Canyon, they will have access to U.S. Forest Service habitat and other lands in the Gardiner basin.

In modern times, this area has been off-limits to Yellowstone bison because of concerns related to the disease brucellosis, which some of Yellowstone’s bison carry. Brucellosis causes pregnant females to abort, and livestock producers fear wild bison may transmit the disease to domestic cattle.

Thousands and thousands of wild bison from Yellowstone have been hazed or slaughtered in the past few decades in the name of brucellosis – and millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent along the way.

But significant changes in recent years have forced all stakeholders to take a fresh look at the Yellowstone bison issue, which has been marred in conflict and controversy for too long.

These changes include new science documenting the very low risk of a brucellosis transmission, land-use changes near the Park (e.g., fewer cows on the landscape), more tolerant landowners, the reality that elk also carry the disease but are allowed to roam freely, and, maybe most significantly, a radical overhaul last December of the brucellosis regulations by the Department of Agriculture (which lessened the burden of brucellosis on livestock producers).

Collectively, these changes set the stage for more bison tolerance outside the Park. And NRDC – and our incredible Members and Activists – relentlessly advocated for commensurate changes to be made to bison management (as did business owners, hunters, property owners, Native Americans, and other conservation organizations).

The agencies listened, and they responded with this historic agreement. Each of the agencies – National Park Service; U.S. Forest Service; USDA-APHIS; Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks; Montana Department of Livestock; Nez Perce Tribe; Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes; and the Intertribal Buffalo Council – deserve a hearty thank-you.

While this agreement is certainly not perfect and more work still remains, today we should celebrate a big step forward for Yellowstone’s bison.

Let the bison roam – and, today, let ‘em dance!