Press Release from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation:
MISSOULA, Mont.—The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation filed a joint summary judgement brief supporting a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to remove federal protections from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) grizzly bear population.
“We stand alongside the Sportsmen’s Alliance and our fellow conservation organizations in supporting federal scientists and wildlife biologists who declared the grizzly population fully recovered,” said Kyle Weaver, RMEF president and CEO. “The next step is keeping grizzly management under the umbrella of state agencies that manage all wildlife in accordance with the North American Wildlife Conservation Model, which uses hunting as a management tool.”
“Despite the emotional rhetoric of the animal rights crowd, the time has come to return this population of bears to state management,” said Evan Heusinkveld, Sportsmen’s Alliance president and CEO. “The truth is, this is a historic moment for the species and the Endangered Species Act as a whole. Returning the Yellowstone area population of bears to state management should be a monumental achievement widely celebrated as a conservation success story.”
Numbering more than 700, the Yellowstone grizzly population meets all delisting criteria. These factors include not only the number and distribution of bears throughout the ecosystem, but also the quantity and quality of the habitat available and the states’ commitments to manage the population in a manner that maintains its healthy and secure status.
RMEF and its partners helped permanently protect more than 169,000 acres of vital wildlife habitat valued at more than $131 million in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Additionally, RMEF also directly contributed more than $3.1 million and leveraged an additional $17.5 million to help enhance wildlife habitat on more than 426,000 acres in the GYE. RMEF also contributed more than $1 million in funding and leveraged an additional $10 million from conservation partners to carry out 118 GYE wildlife management and wildlife research projects.
“These projects are crucial and helped to contribute to the understanding of wildlife populations, ecology and habitat needs, including increasing the understanding of grizzly bears and conserving the habitat needed for them to thrive in conjunction with all wildlife populations,” said Weaver. “Habitat needs to remain the focus of on-the-ground conservation work, not seemingly non-stop litigation.”
The federal judge laid out a schedule that includes several more filing deadlines as well as a hearing in late August. He has stated he will make a ruling before the hunting season begins in September.
Maine Lynx Protection: The Absurdity Never Ends
We knew it was coming…I knew it was coming and here it is. Another lawsuit. All previous attempts at placating the perverted animal righters (better recognized as hunting haters and people haters) have failed in these people’s eyes and as has been predicted for decades now, they will not stop until it has all ended…laws and courts be goddamned!
It should say something that when many of these same idiots who filed a lawsuit against Maine to end trapping before, hidden behind the lie of protecting the Canada lynx, agreed to a compromise until such time as Maine could acquire a legal Incidental Take Permit (ITP), are saying it’s not enough. It must be pointed out as well that the guidelines worked out in the ITP are more strict than the Consent Decree; so much so that the ITP is ridiculous and was designed to foster additional lawsuits. That’s what the disease of Environmentalism does for us.
And yet, here we are, once again, about to embark on another costly court case disguised as a need to protect a species that needs no protection. Anyone with a brain would understand that more lynx will be “incidentally” caught and more run over by cars than ever before because the creature is over-protected and Maine is over-populated with lynx. But let’s not allow sense and sensibility to get in the way.
Perhaps we should give these clowns what they want. When the moose and the lynx have all disappeared because the clear-cut forests have all disappeared, who or what will they point a finger at in order to receive another pay day?