Fw: Coyotes,Wolves,Cougars..forever!

HERE'S THE LATEST WILDLIFE NEW'S FROM  MY FRIEND RICK MERIL AND HIS WEBSITE--TAKE A LOOK --- On Sat, 2/4/12, Wolves, Wolf Facts, Cougars, Cougar Facts, Coyotes, Coyote Facts - Wolves, Cougars, Coyotes Forever <rick.meril@gmail.comDate: Saturday, February 4, 2012, 5:15 PM Coyotes,Wolves,Cougars..forever! Utah State Wildlife Professor Daniel MacNulty has studied Yellowstone Wolves for 16 years............He revealed to National Geographic that the depiction of Wolf behavior in the theatrical film, THE GREY, is complete and total b.s. and misrepresentative of how wolves behave...."would wolves see men as prey and stalk them in the wild?",,,,,,"In my 16 years of studying wolves in Yellowstone National Park, I have never been approached by a wolf or wolf pack. On the contrary, when I've inadvertently bumped into wolves they turn and run away—which is a problem when my objective is to observe them!" U. of Alberta biology student Sarah Rovang is conducting an Alberta, Canada Grizzly Bear study in the hopes of helping the Province increase the population(roughly 700 bears remain) of the "threatened" bruin .........Rovang does not believe in invasive capture and release analysis but prefers the less invasive and less costly "hair snag" DNA testing procedure and has designed a barbed wire corral that she baits with beef blood, canola oil, logs and moss........... While a new study funded by The National Science Foundation et al has shown that when domestic cats reside in areas where Pumas, Bobcats and Lynx are present, wildlife diseases like Bartonellosis,Toxoplasmosis and Feline immunodefiency virus can be spread from housecat to humans........"As human development encroaches on natural habitat, wildlife species that live there may be susceptible to diseases we or our domestic animals carry and spread," said Kevin Crooks, a biologist at Colorado State and co-leader of the project.........."At the same time, wildlife can harbor diseases that humans and our pets can in turn get. Diseases may be increasingly transmitted as former natural areas are developed." The way I see it, it is incumbent upon us to keep our cats on a leash and not let out to run wild in the woods........Not only are our cats killing untold number of birds and small critters, but by us letting them into wild spaces, we are condeming our native wild cats to destruction from disease as well as ignorant folks calling for the wild cats to be killed(with the excuse being that Pumas, Bobcats and Lynx are killing our pets) Utah State Wildlife Professor Daniel MacNulty has studied Yellowstone Wolves for 16 years............He revealed to National Geographic that the depiction of Wolf behavior in the theatrical film, THE GREY, is complete and total b.s. and misrepresentative of how wolves behave...."would wolves see men as prey and stalk them in the wild?",,,,,,"In my 16 years of studying wolves in Yellowstone National Park, I have never been approached by a wolf or wolf pack. On the contrary, when I've inadvertently bumped into wolves they turn and run away—which is a problem when my objective is to observe them!" Posted: 04 Feb 2012 12:02 AM PST WOULD REAL WOLVES ACT LIKE THOSE IN THE THEATRICAL FILM, "THE GREY?" Nationalgeographic.com Marc Silver The nominal star of The Grey, America's top-grossing film, is Liam Neeson. The real stars are the hungry wolves that pursue him and his fellow plane-crash survivors through Alaska's pristine wilderness. The CGI-enhanced wolves are big, smart, and scary. But is their behavior based in reality? To parse wolf fact from fiction, Pop Omnivore caught up with Daniel MacNulty, a wildlife-ecology professor at Utah State University whose research on Arctic wolves is funded in part by the National Geographic Society. First off, would wolves see men as prey and stalk them in the wild? I'd think that in a remote area like this one, wolves might fear or avoid humans. In my 16 years of studying wolves in Yellowstone National Park, I have never been approached by a wolf or wolf pack. On the contrary, when I've inadvertently bumped into wolves they turn and run away—which is a problem when my objective is to observe them! One of the characters in the movie says these wolves a) have a 300-mile hunting radius, b) will attack anything that comes near their den, and c) "are the only animal that will seek revenge." Is any of that that true? No. Nonsense, all of it. Would a wolf attack a man standing next to a fire, with other men nearby, as happens in The Grey? Not a chance. At one point two men are running alongside a riverbank in the middle of the day. Two wolves race out of the trees and charge them. Possible? No. Some of the wolves in the movie are huge—not Twilight size, but larger than I'd expect. How big can a gray wolf get? In Yellowstone, the average weight of adult male wolves ranges between 100 and 120 pounds. The average weight of adult female wolves ranges between 84 and 93 pounds. Do wolf eyes really glow in the dark, as they do in this movie? The eyes of wolves and many other wildlife appear to "glow in the dark" because of a layer of tissue in the eye called the tapetum lucidum. It reflects visible light back through the retina, which improves vision in low-light conditions. So when light shines into the eye of an animal [with] a tapetum lucidum, the pupil appears to glow. The cooperative hunting nature of the pack is played up a lot in this film. Is that accurate? The extent to which wolves cooperate while hunting in a pack is greatly exaggerated. In a recent study, I showed that wolves are often freeloaders. That is, most wolves keep up with a hunt simply to be on hand when a kill is made. Imagine tackling a moose or bison with only your teeth, and you can start to appreciate the incentive a wolf has to hold back during a group hunt. Speaking of cooperation, in one scene a lone wolf enters the men's nighttime camp. The protagonist says it's an omega wolf "sent in" by the alpha wolf to test the humans' defenses. Does anything like that ever happen with wolf packs? No. This is pure fiction. At the end of the movie, the hero finds himself in the wolves' den. It's littered with bones and carcasses. Is that a realistic depiction? In the dens I've examined, most of the bones and carcass remains are on the outside of the den rather than in the inside. In the final scene, the protagonist prepares to fight the alpha wolf. He tapes broken mini liquor bottles to his hands. Would that give him a chance against a large male gray wolf? If I was lucky enough to encounter a large male gray wolf in the wild, he would turn and run before I could tape the first bottle to my hand. Most people don't realize this, but wolves are wimps. Visit http://coyotes-wolves-cougars.blogspot.com

U. of Alberta biology student Sarah Rovang is conducting an Alberta, Canada Grizzly Bear study in the hopes of helping the Province increase the population(roughly 700 bears remain) of the "threatened" bruin .........Rovang does not believe in invasive capture and release analysis but prefers the less invasive and less costly "hair snag" DNA testing procedure and has designed a barbed wire corral that she baits with beef blood, canola oil, logs and moss........... Posted: 03 Feb 2012 11:54 PM PST Local works to improve grizzly research By Paul Grigaitis; edsonleader.com A graduate of Edson's Parkland Composite High School is now analyzing grizzly bear DNA collected using a method she hopes to prove will save conservation groups and government money. Sarah Rovang, now a masters student studying conservation biology at the University of Alberta, worked in the Hinton, Robb and Cadomin areas throughout the summer collecting hair from grizzly bears using barbed-wire corrals baited with rancid beef blood mixed with canola oil, logs and moss. The data is used to determine what is happening with the grizzly bear population in Alberta. In 2010, the Alberta government designated the grizzly bear as a threatened species under Alberta's Wildlife Act. Rovang tells the Leader that the population of grizzly bears in Alberta is in its hundreds. "We really don't know since then if the population has been increasing or decreasing or remaining constant. That's pretty important to know when you are trying to make conservation or management decisions. So we really would like to know that," she said. Collecting hair snags for DNA is not new. It is considered less invasive than drugging, capturing and collaring animals. However, the practice has been to use mobile plots, Rovang explained, which is costly because it uses expensive equipment such as helicopters. "The research that was done before to get those estimates kind of required substantial resources – time and money. You can't just go out and do the same thing and to get information. So to understand what the population is doing, we had to kind of take a step back and try a cost-effective way to monitor." Rovang believes a fixed method of gathering DNA samples could be just as effective but less costly. "To come up with those initial estimates they did use a hair snag method similar to mine but they had mobile plots where they would set up hair snags, they would detect a grizzly bear, or not maybe, but they would check that site and then take it down and they would move it somewhere else and they would just keep doing that –setting them up and taking them down. That's pretty effort intensive and costly. So I was testing this modified hair snag method where we just had a network of permanent plots." The challenge is making sure the permanent plots are well placed, she explained. She said she would compare her data with previous research to determine if there is some money to be saved. Rovang had collected 664 tufts of hair through the summer. "We're hoping to investigate kind of a trade off between the monitoring costs and how well we detected grizzly bears. We're trying to figure out what time of year is best to do it and where exactly we should be placing these relative to habitat and answering those types of questions. Hopefully, these results can kind of form the basis for a cost-effective and long-term monitoring program." Rovang worked out of the Foothills Research Institute in Hinton during the summer. Gordon Stenhouse is a research scientist and leader of the grizzly bear program at the Foothills Research Institute. He said the estimated population of grizzly bears in Alberta in 2010 was about 730. He said the biggest threat to the grizzly bears population is human contact."Biologists for the most part agree that the current population size and status is a direct result of excessive human caused mortalities – bears dying at the hands of people." He said Rovang's work is important in understanding the trends in grizzly bear populations. "Her work ties directly into the management of this species in the province," Stenhouse said. Rovang is 22 years old. She graduated from Parkland Composite High School in 2007 and has since earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in conservation biology from the University of Alberta. This is her first year as a masters student. Visit http://coyotes-wolves-cougars.blogspot.com

While a new study funded by The National Science Foundation et al has shown that when domestic cats reside in areas where Pumas, Bobcats and Lynx are present, wildlife diseases like Bartonellosis,Toxoplasmosis and Feline immunodefiency virus can be spread from housecat to humans........"As human development encroaches on natural habitat, wildlife species that live there may be susceptible to diseases we or our domestic animals carry and spread," said Kevin Crooks, a biologist at Colorado State and co-leader of the project.........."At the same time, wildlife can harbor diseases that humans and our pets can in turn get. Diseases may be increasingly transmitted as former natural areas are developed." The way I see it, it is incumbent upon us to keep our cats on a leash and not let out to run wild in the woods........Not only are our cats killing untold number of birds and small critters, but by us letting them into wild spaces, we are condeming our native wild cats to destruction from disease as well as ignorant folks calling for the wild cats to be killed(with the excuse being that Pumas, Bobcats and Lynx are killing our pets) Posted: 03 Feb 2012 11:44 PM PST http://www.nsf.com/ Domestic Cats, and Wild Bobcats and Pumas, Living in Same Area Have Same Diseases May bring them into human homes, bridging "infection gap" between people and wildlife Mountain lion photographed by a motion-activated camera, Uncompahgre Plateau, Colorado. Domestic cats, wild bobcats and pumas that live in the same area share the same diseases. And domestic cats may bring them into human homes, according to results of a study of what happens when big and small cats cross paths. Initial results of the multi-year study are published today in the scientific journal PLoS One by a group of 14 authors.The joint National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID) Program funded the study. Scientists at Colorado State University and other institutions conducted the research. It provides evidence that domestic cats and wild cats that share the same outdoor areas in urban environments also can share diseases such as Bartonellosis and Toxoplasmosis. Both can be spread from cats to people. "Human-wildlife interactions will continue to increase as human populations expand," said Sam Scheiner, program director for EEID at NSF. "This study demonstrates that such interactions can be indirect and extensive," said Scheiner. "Through our pets we are sharing their diseases, which can affect our health, our pets' health and wildlife health." The study looked at urban areas in California and Colorado. Its results show that diseases can spread via contact with shared habitat. All three diseases the scientists tracked--Toxoplasmosis, Bartonellosis and FIV, or feline immunodefiency virus--were present in each area. The research also demonstrates that diseases can be clustered due to urban development and major freeways that restrict animal movement. "The results are relevant to the big picture of domestic cats and their owners in urban areas frequented by wild cats such as bobcats and pumas," said Sue VandeWoude, a veterinarian at Colorado State and co-leader of the project. "The moral of this story is that diseases can be transmitted between housecats and wildlife in areas they share, so it's important for pet owners to keep that in mind." Lynx housecat The researchers followed wild and domestic cats in several regions of Colorado and California to determine whether the cats had been exposed to certain diseases.The effort includes data from 800 blood samples from felines of all sizes, including 260 bobcats and 200 pumas, which were captured and released, and 275 domestic cats."As human development encroaches on natural habitat, wildlife species that live there may be susceptible to diseases we or our domestic animals carry and spread," said Kevin Crooks, a biologist at Colorado State and co-leader of the project. "At the same time, wildlife can harbor diseases that humans and our pets can in turn get. Diseases may be increasingly transmitted as former natural areas are developed." The project also looked at whether bobcats in southern California were segregated into different populations by major highways. By analyzing genetic and pathogen data, the scientists found that bobcats west or east of Highway 5 near Los Angeles rarely interbred, but that the bobcats did cross into each other's territory often enough to share diseases such as FIV. Bobcat "The evidence suggests that bobcats are moving across major highways, but are not able to easily set up new home territories," said VandeWoude. "They can, however, spread diseases to one another when they cross into each other's territories. This could result in inbreeding of the bobcats trapped by urban development and end up in the spread of diseases." VandeWoude and Crooks say that the results don't necessarily mean that all domestic cats that are allowed to roam outdoors are at a high level of risk. They plan further studies to better assess that risk. It does mean that domestic cats and wild cats who share the same environment--even if they do not come into contact with each other--also can share diseases. The findings show that pumas are more likely to be infected with FIV than bobcats or domestic cats. While FIV cannot be transmitted to people, it is highly contagious among felines.The rate of Toxoplasmosis was high in pumas and bobcats across Colorado and California. Toxoplasmosis is caused by a parasite that, when carried by healthy people, has no effect but that can cause complications for infants and adults with compromised immune systems. Cats only spread Toxoplasmosis in their feces for a few weeks following infection with the parasite. Like humans, cats rarely have symptoms when first infected. Bartonellosis is a bacterial infection also called cat scratch disease. If someone is scratched by a cat with Bartonellosis, the scratch may become infected, but the infection is usually a mild one. Other studies underway include a fine-scale analysis of urban landscape features that affect disease incidence; evaluation of pathogen exposure and transmission in bobcats; and a survey of domestic cat owners about their attitudes toward risks for pets from wildlife. Large-scale projects looking at movement patterns of bobcats and pumas in Colorado, and a motion-activated camera analysis of human and wildlife interactions along urban areas, are also in progress. The take-home message, the researchers say, is that life in the wild may not be so wild after all. In addition to VandeWoude and Crooks, co-authors of the paper are: Sarah Bevins, Scott Carver, Mo Salman and Michael Lappin of Colorado State University; Erin Boydston, Lisa Lyren and Robert Fisher of the Western Ecological Research Center, U.S. Geological Survey; Mat Alldredge and Kenneth Logan of the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife; Seth Riley of the National Park Service in Thousands Oaks, Calif.; and T. Winston Vickers and Walter Boyce of the University of California at Davis. Visit http://coyotes-wolves-cougars.blogspot.com

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