Posts Tagged → science
Our Wildlife Management Comments Submitted to the PA Game Commission
Dear PGC Commissioners,
In so many ways the Game Commission is on an exciting path, really moving forward on policy, staff culture, and scientific wildlife management. It is an exciting time to be a hunter and trapper in the great state of Pennsylvania, thanks to you. Hunting and trapping are supposed to be fun, and the PGC should be able to maximize opportunities without sacrificing the natural resource base. If anything, the agency has been perhaps too conservative, too cautious. In that vein, here are some small suggestions for improving hunting and trapping in Pennsylvania:
a) Make all small game seasons concurrent, start them in late September or early October and run them unbroken until mid February. The current on-again-off-again schedule is silly, an artifact from many decades ago. Our current small game hunting schedule leaves kids and oldsters alike out in the cold with nothing to hunt if they can’t get to deer camp, or if they do kill a deer and want to keep on hunting. Hunters deserve maximum opportunities that do not degrade or put wildlife populations at risk, and adding a few extra days won’t hurt anything, but they will help hunters tremendously. Put another way, the risk of changing this is very low to non–existent, and the benefits are huge. Well, what is the risk, really?
b) Allow the use of snares in rural WMUs and/or on private lands. Cable restraints are an important trapping tool under any circumstances, and especially so as we experience ever-increasing freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw winters, with rain no less. These weird winter conditions render traditional footholds nearly useless both early and late in the season. Cable restraints can function better than footholds under those conditions, but they just are not sufficient for the big coyotes we are encountering. Getting coyotes into cable restraints is tough enough, and holding them there is even tougher. Chew-throughs of our cables are common, where a snare would positively catch the coyote and hold it, bringing it to hand and into the bag. In rural areas (or on private land) there is a far lower expectation or risk of a pet or feral dog or cat being caught. We are ceding too much to the anti-trappers by prohibiting snares where they can do the best good. A pet is an animal that lives in a home. Eliminating a very useful tool because of some vague or low-probability worry is not good policy. We can do better, and snares are much better than cable restraints in general, and particularly in the northern Big Woods areas. Also, CR certification can only be done right in person, through hands-on training. This online certification is going to lead to problems, especially where CRs are used like snares.
c) Allow the use of body-grip (Conibear) traps outside water courses, specifically on running-pole sets for fishers, bobcats, and raccoons. Like the snare situation above, our trapping regulations are unrealistic, they are too conservative, penalizing law-abiding trappers because of vague fears that under reasonable circumstances will not happen. Securing body-grip traps up off the ground is well out of the reach of dogs and domestic cats. Separately, if a pet owner lets their animal out the door to run free, where it can trespass, be hit by a car, be eaten by a coyote or fox or hawk, or get hurt in a fight with another animal, then they do not truly care about it and it is not a real “pet.” Pennsylvania trappers do not deserve to be hurt because of others’ irresponsible behavior. Elsewhere in America, the use of bodygrips on running pole sets is very effective and humane. We can stick with the #160 size as the maximum.
d) Extend the fisher trapping season and areas. Trappers in Berks and Lebanon Counties have told me of catching fishers in their sets, and we are seeing them in Dauphin County. There is no good reason why we cannot extend where and when we trap these abundant predators. Incidentally, they eat bobcats and turkeys, and it would be silly to expect fishers to simply harmoniously co-exist with other animals. They are a voracious predator and they will have a disproportionate impact on predator and prey populations alike if allowed to expand unchecked. Fishers are cool animals and I am all for having them in our ecosystems. What is lacking now are the mountain lions and wolves that in the distant past would have eaten them, and kept them in balance with other wildlife. We humans now fulfill the role of lions and wolves. Let us at ’em.
e) Make sure bobcat populations can sustain these long trapping and hunting seasons. We are seeing a lot less bobcat sign and fewer bobcats on our trail cameras. This was the first year we did not get a bobcat through either trapping or calling in 2G and 4C, and while this may be just our observation, we are concerned. If bobcat harvests must be reduced, then we prefer that it come out of their hunting season. There is a ton of hunting opportunities in Pennsylvania, and not a lot of great trapping opportunities. Heck, muskrats are practically extinct, coyotes have eaten most of the red fox in the southcentral, and possums are clogging nearly every trap. Let us keep our bobcat trapping intact.
f) Reinstate concurrent buck and doe deer hunting. We are seeing a high number of deer nearly every place we hunt (WMUs 2G, 4C, 3A, 5C, 5D). Deer populations are definitely lower than in 2001, and deer are harder to hunt now than then, but the quality is unbelievable, and the herd can sustain both doe and buck hunting. Pennsylvania is now a real trophy destination, so keep up the scientific management, which would include allowing hunting on Christmas Day.
g) Expand the bear season by one day in WMUs 2G and 4C, or rearrange the season entirely. There are an awful lot of bears everywhere, especially in 2G and 4C. On the Friday before bear season starts, we see loads of bears having tea and crumpets in the back yard. They are watching football and hanging out leisurely in reclining chairs. Come Opening Day through Wednesday, we might see the hind end of a bear or two, or we might occasionally harvest a bear, if we work hard enough. By deer season opening day the following week, the bears are back to having tea and crumpets in the back yard, hardly disturbed by all our hunting efforts. Another way to address this is to make bear and deer seasons concurrent, at least for one week, and perhaps start that concurrent season the week of Thanksgiving.
h) Do more to end wildlife feeding. We continue to see mangy bears, and deer baiting under the guise of “helping” wildlife through artificial feeding. It’s not good for the animals, and can actually be bad. People also feed wildlife to entice game animals away from (other) hunters. This is a cultural practice that PGC needs to do more to end, through education and enforcing the bear feeding regulation.
Thank you for considering our comments. We do love the PGC and admire your field staff, especially.
Josh and Isaac First (father and son)
Harrisburg, PA
Magic is in the air, and so is Spring
Today may be the first day of Spring, but you’d never know it, with all the snow that fell last night and today. Despite freezing temperatures all over the east, however, there is magic in the air. And it carries Spring on its wings. We can take heart. Nicer weather is indeed here.
Last night I stood way up north on a mountain side, surrounded by a silent, black, and deeply starry sky. Suddenly faint and quiet song and voices reached my ears. What started out as human sounds that put me on guard then became the distinctly identifiable gabble of migrating geese, high above, flying northward.
Magically migrating geese, ducks, raptors, and songbirds passing through our neighborhoods and yards tell us that Spring is here, even if our eyes and heating bills indicate otherwise. Migration is a mysterious thing. Some of it is now understood by scientists, and appreciated by novice naturalists, but much of it remains shrouded in utter mystery. How did these birds develop this pattern? Was it after the last Ice Age, ten thousand years ago, or was it after the previous Ice Age, 20,000 years ago? And if it was after the first one, how did they hold onto their knowledge of where and when to fly, when they spent so much time not flying at Spring time?
Migrating birds have a very thin margin for error. Go too far, too fast, and they run the risk of freezing to death, or starving, having burned too many precious calories to reach their Canadian and Arctic breeding grounds so far northward. If they are too slow, they will reach their destinations with too little time to raise their chicks to a size sufficient to survive the trek south again, when the winds get heavy on the border lands just a few months from now.
Yesterday, hundreds of geese and ducks shared the quieter eddies of the Susquehanna River in Liverpool.
Today, all around the borough of Dauphin, migrating black-headed vultures took up roosting positions like hunch-shouldered sentinels of death, harbingers of gloom and dead carrion, on trees, car tops, house roofs, power poles, and street lamps. This particular species of vulture is increasingly migrating into Pennsylvania in bigger numbers, and out-competing our more common (and “more” native) red-headed turkey vulture.
All of this magic is, to me, a sign of a the finger of God, with non-believers remaining perplexed, themselves, unable to draw upon human science alone to explain what is happening all around us. Surely my distant skin-clad ancestors stood upon a receding ice sheet somewhere, spear in hand, eyes skyward, hearts leaping for joy, as they, too, knew that this magic presaged abundant food, rebirth, new life, a new beginning for all.
Don’t take this magic for granted. Close your eyes at night and listen to the cries of the goose-honk music. Be part of this ancient cycle, if only by letting your heart be lifted with those of the excited geese, at the knowledge of the coming of Spring.
You call this global warming?
Not only is the northern hemisphere in a deep freeze, a bunch of “climate change scientists” looking for evidence to support their religion … Oops … I mean their theory, got frozen in the Antarctic ice. Their ship is immobilized because so much ice is not only not melting, but actually increasing. Rescue ships also got frozen.
Members of the crew said it was the most ice they’d seen in years.
Guess what? Planet Earth is a dynamic place, with dynamic weather patterns and a multitude of factors simultaneously influencing climate.
Trying to ascribe cause-and-effect to these factors, or even worse, claiming to know what’s really happening with all these factors, is not science.
It’s politics, for sure. We know how clean that is.
Its adherents behave as though they’re in a cult, or at least in some charismatic religion.
Too many environmental groups use crisis to whip up support for their causes and to fund raise. Climate change appears to be one more scare tactic. The evidence just isn’t there to support the claims. Today’s zero temperature is classic.
But if you want to talk about overfishing the oceans, loss of farmland, loss of critical wildlife habitat, good wildlife management, why then reasonable people are interested.
In the mean time, I’m shoveling loads of carbon…oops, sorry, I mean firewood, into our wood stove as we trade yesterday’s carbon for today’s heat. Seems like a good and sustainable trade to me.
“Climate Change” has a scientific consensus, alright
The NIPCC issued a report demonstrating that most earth scientists and meteorologists do not concur with the hypothesis of human-caused climate change or global warming: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/16/PLS-HOLD-FOR-TUESDAY-9-17-AFTER-11AM-ET-Climate-Study-Evidence-Leans-Against-Human-Caused-Global-Warming. In their report, the NIPCC point out that much of the climate change science is not rigorously or even scientifically evaluated. It’s more politics and money than actual real science.
A study shows that earth science and meteorological professionals are overwhelmingly skeptical of the big claim: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/
And this is my own beef: Why do all humans have to accept this new religion on faith? Why are we called names if we demand rigorous science? That does it for me. Once someone can’t make a strong argument, they’ve lost.