Field Reports
WILDLIFE CONSERVATION
Elk Foundation building
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation broke ground recently on a new $14 million headquarters and Elk country Visitor Center in Missoula.
Hundreds of members and staff joined the festivities, including Bob Munson. Twenty years ago, the RMEF began in the back room of his trailer house-real estate office in Troy, Mont.
“It has been a wild ride,” Munson said. “I am thrilled about this building,” he said, remembering the succession of trailers, garages, an old doctor’s office and a remodeled tractor factory that did duty as foundation offices over the years.
“We’ve come a long way,” Munson said. “But don’t think for a minute that we’ve arrived. We are just warming up.”
Tom Baker of Kentucky, chairman of the RMEF board, said that over two decades the group has conserved or enhanced more than 4 million acres of elk habitat throughout North America.
Dozens and dozens of volunteers came carrying tokens from their days afield — hunting elk or restoring habitat — to place in a glass box that will form part of the display in the new visitor center. They included rocks, bones, necklaces, teeth, poetry, an arrow and a radio collar for monitoring an elk’s movement.
When complete in July 2005, the new headquarters will include the Elk Country Visitor Center, a volunteer service center and an international support center where the group’s 100 paid employees will work.
Associated Press
ICE AGE FLOODS
Floods trail proposed
A proposal to create a trail that follows the course of massive Ice Age floods through four states to the Pacific Ocean has gained momentum with the support of a member of Congress.
The Ice Age Flood Trail, which would be managed by the National Park Service, would include signs, markers, interpretive centers, exhibits and programs that would tell the story of the floods, under legislation being developed by U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco.
Hastings plans to introduce the legislation this year, according to spokeswoman Jessica Gleason.
“We’re really happy about this, believe me,” said Jim Pritchard, treasurer and charter member of the Ice Age Floods Institute.
Pritchard, an Ephrata resident, co-founded the group in 1992 after the Park Service began a study of the project. The trail would follow existing highways and would require the purchase of only about 25 acres for interpretive centers along the route, according to the study.
The national trail designation — similar to the Lewis and Clark Trail and Oregon Trail — would bring the area and geological event the publicity and recognition it deserves, Pritchard said.
Geologists believe the Ice Age floods took place 18,000 to 12,000 years ago, as ice that covered Canada and the northern United States melted to form giant Lake Missoula in Montana.
As a series of ice dams broke intermittently over thousands of years, floods rivaling the flow of all the current rivers in the world gushed across western Montana, Idaho and Eastern Washington to the Grand Coulee, where they followed the Columbia River south and then along the Washington-Oregon border to the ocean.
Staff and wire reports
FISHING
Steelhead reconsidered
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to reconsider its ban on killing wild steelhead on several coastal rivers, a rule change that sparked a culture war on the Olympic Peninsula and a formal protest from the city of Forks.
The 5-1 vote, taken during a recent teleconference, means the steelhead rule will be the subject of a public hearing sometime this summer.
The ban was adopted earlier this year as an amendment to less sweeping change to the steelhead rules, and drew protests that it had been railroaded through without proper input.
The hearing will likely turn into a showdown between factions of fishermen.
On one side will be the Wild Steelhead Coalition — the group that pushed the ban — and other wild fish advocates who argue that it’s high time to protect some of the last healthy wild runs of steelhead in the Lower 48.
On the other side of the table will be many Olympic Peninsula locals who depend on fishing-related tourism as well as fishermen who don’t want to lose the opportunity to take home a trophy fish during the wild fish run, even though killing wild steelhead has been banned throughout the rest of the state.
Associated Press
Wildlife
Park griz holding on
Grizzly bears in the Yellowstone National Park area produced an average number of cubs in 2003 and appear to be expanding their range, according to a federal study.
Biologists last year found fewer females with cubs compared with a record 52 cubs in 2002, but the 38 cubs matches the average between 1997 and 2002, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team reported.
The annual study, conducted since 1983, estimates that grizzly populations in the Yellowstone area have increased about 4 percent a year and shows grizzlies are consistently trying to move into new areas. Federal officials say there are probably 550 to 600 in and around Yellowstone.
In 2003, 11 grizzlies in the Yellowstone ecosystem died from human causes, such as being hit by a car or being shot. The figures from 2003 are the lowest since 1999, when seven grizzlies were reported dead because of people.
Associated Press
FISHING
Two hybrids catching on
The “splake” and the “tiger trout” are catching on after a decade of experimentation in Utah.
The splake, a cross between a lake and brook trout, is best able to fight off whirling disease, but its range is limited. It cannot, for example, be planted in some mid- and low-elevation waters.
The tiger, a mix between a brown and brook trout, is not as impervious to whirling disease. It is, however, more adaptable and, at this point, possibly more popular.
While both fish are aggressive and tasty, it is the tiger that got the looks. The tiger is a strikingly beautiful fish that’s being planted in several Washington waters, including Fish Lake near Cheney. It features a maze of dark stripes, thus the name tiger, which are stenciled over a body of pale green and gold. Its lower fins are a yellowish orange.
The hybrids are more costly to produce in the hatchery, but because the tiger is a hybrid, it is sterile, which means it can’t reproduce. This means numbers can be controlled and, more importantly they are not threat to breed with native fish, such as cutthroat trout.
From staff and wire reports
BIRDWATCHING
Hybrid goose spotted
Birders in Fairbanks, Alaska, are all aflutter over a hybrid goose that showed up at Creamer’s Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge.
The goose appears to be a cross between a Canada, white-fronted or snow goose. It has a white head, orange legs, a black neck, brindle beak and gray bottom.
“With orange feet and a white head I think there’s no doubt one of the parents is a snow goose,” said Dan Gibson, ornithology collections manager at the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks.
While hybridization does occur in waterfowl, upland game birds and some songbirds, it is not common, according to Gibson.
Associated Press