HELP WILDLIFE FROM YOUR COUCH OR
KITCHEN TABLE
|
|
While we are in this strange new time with change happening on a daily basis, opportunities still exist for you to help wildlife. When you are at home and may have some extra time on your hands, you can write comments, sign petitions, and volunteer from your computer. As a civics educational lesson, you can have your kids draw or color pictures of wildlife and write down why they care about animals and want to see them protected. You can then scan these and send them to elected officials in Wyoming. See below for campaigns that are open now and how to contact the Governor and Wyoming Game and Fish Commissioners.
And....on a silver lining, we offer the words of Italian writer
Irene Vella about how this can be a time of healing for the earth:
“And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal. And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed."
We hope everyone stays safe and healthy.
Warmest regards,
Kristin Combs
Executive Director
|
|
The meeting to discuss Wind River Air's proposal to run helicopter tours in Jackson Hole and Teton Valley has been canceled for the time being, but this issue will eventually be discussed at a future meeting. These scenic flights will be highly disruptive to wildlife, especially the already threatened Teton Range bighorn sheep.
Read the
letter
sent by us and ten other conservation groups in Jackson opposing this action.
Email heli pilot/business owner Tony Chambers expressing your concerns as a community member or visitor to Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park:
The map below shows the proposed routes of the helicopter tours
(Photo: Andy Edwards, Jackson Hole News & Guide)
|
|
- YOUR VOICE IS NEEDED to help speak against trophy hunting of grizzlies as a method to reduce conflicts with ranchers. The research and data shows that non-lethal coexistence methods are more effective than lethal removal of bears. Prevention of conflicts is the best path forward for both people and bears. Ranchers need to be given the support and tools necessary to learn how to secure attractants like livestock carcasses and animal feed.
- Please submit a comment telling the council to fund non-lethal methods of coexistence. If we can educate ranchers and citizens in areas with bears, and prepare people where bears haven't shown up yet, on how to live with grizzlies, we can have a landscape where both bears and people can survive. Bears aren't going to change their behavior, we must be the ones to take action.
- If you enjoy traveling to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to see bears and value them alive, please also state that you are a economic contributor to Montana with one of your primary reasons of traveling here being to see grizzlies in the wild.
Public comment is continuously being accepted.
Please send your thoughts to the committee.
|
|
A proposal by Snow King Resort seeks to expand operations significantly into valuable wildlife habitat on the backside of the mountain. Northern goshawks, black bears, elk, deer, great gray owls, and more stand to be disrupted by yurt camping, a 25,000 square foot activities center, mountain biking trails, wedding venue, high-speed zipline, and skiing.
The comment period has been extended until March 31. Comment below to oppose the changes on our town hill.
Some of the larger problems with the Snow King Draft Environmental Impact Statement:
- The “purpose and need” is written in a way to predetermine the outcome (full development). It is written from the developers’ perspective, not true purpose & need for the USFS. Because of this flawed purpose and need, they discounted other viable alternatives.
- The FS did not include a reasonable range of alternatives, as NEPA requires. Other than the no-action alternative, the 3 alternatives are identical in all substantive questions (boundary expansion, backside expansion, etc).
- Wildlife impacts were generally dismissed by the consultants, including sensitive species like Northern Goshawk (home territory in the proposed east road expansion and new ski runs) and Great Gray Owls (courtship territory in Leeks Canyon) and big game habitat in Leeks Canyon. Elk winter range in Leeks Canyon will become more important if/when the Elk Refuge and WGFD reduce feeding. Elk calving range in Leeks Canyon, Skyline Trail, etc is important until July 1 – no mountain biking should be allowed during calving.
- Creation of a wedding venue at the top of the mountain which will disturb wildlife during evenings and nights.
- A year-round yurt camp with nine yurts and a pathway to them will be constructed on the backside of the mountain to provide for camping which will greatly disrupt wildlife.
Ask the Forest Service to create an actual alternative that avoids the above impacts including - No development in Leeks Canyon. In exchange for expanding the west boundary, pull back the backside boundary to the ridgeline. No mountain bikes allowed on chairlift/gondola to the top. An alternative without a top-to-bottom zipline. Upgrade the existing buildings at the top instead of construction of a large new building and ski school building. No wedding venue at the top so wildlife isn't disturbed during summer evenings. No additional ski runs or chairlifts on the backside of the resort. No yurt construction and year-round camping.
|
|
Kids can be involved in helping wildlife from home too. As a civics lesson, students can write to the Governor of Wyoming and the Wyoming Game and Fish Commissioners telling them how much they want to see wolves and grizzlies protected. Legislators and decision-makers need to hear from their constituents and interested citizens because that's who they serve!
Click
HERE
for a grizzly bear page to scan and send.
Click
HERE
for a wolf page to scan and send.
Email addresses:
|
|
Rewilding Earth
is finally launching a plate that they began discussing years ago. At their founder Dave Foreman’s urging, they name it simply Cassandra, in honor of the heroine of Greek mythology who tried, mostly in vain, to warn her people of the impending attack of the Trojans. In this
Cassandra plate
(‘plate’ as in tectonic), they invite essays and musings on how to help wild Nature survive, and hopefully even thrive, through the likely coming chaos, or the “long emergency” as catastrophist author James Howard Kunstler has aptly called it.
How do we help assure that National Parks and Wilderness Areas and land trust holdings, for instance, remain intact? How do we uphold the Endangered Species Act if the federal government has lost all credibility? How do we keep alive the Mexican Wolf recovery program if the federal government declares martial law, or do we just trust Lobos to prosper on their own, if subsidies for livestock grazing on public lands end? How do we achieve the Nature needs at least half goal if most people are too busy just trying to stay alive to even think about designating new protected areas. How do we complete continental wildways if communication systems are breaking down?
This Cassandra plate joins their emerging
Eco-Fiction
plate, which is where they share imaginative rewilding stories (such as Ken Swift’s Catrunners chapters). The Eco-Fiction section also offers a place to use stories to help bring about a wilder, better future for life on Earth.
Please send the Rewilding Institute your thoughts on how to assure expanding wild places for birds and bears, salamanders and salmon, great cats and tiny bats, massive trees and winsome flowers, long into the future. Serious essays will go in their
Cassandra plate
; imaginative rewilding scenarios will find a home on their Eco-Fiction plate.
|
|
Reading: A Social Distancing Approved Activity!
|
|
Ordering an e-book is a great way to help get you through this time of isolation. Check out these books for some great wildlife reads!
|
|
YOUR SUPPORT HELPS PROTECT WILDLIFE
|
|
Photos credits (in order of appearance): Grizzly bear:
Kent Nelson
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
