Feds delist Louisiana black bears and propose the same for Yellowstone grizzlies.

As spring bear seasons get underway around North America, bear populations throughout the continent are thriving. Recent news stories highlighted the recovery of a population of black bears in Louisiana and increasing numbers of grizzly bears in the Lower 48.

In March, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced that after twenty-four years of recovery efforts by a broad array of partners, the Louisiana black bear—the inspiration for the Teddy bear—will be removed from the Federal Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife.

The bear became part of American culture after a hunting trip to Mississippi in 1902, where President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a bear that had been captured and tied to a tree by members of his hunting party. The episode was featured in a cartoon in The Washington Post, sparking the idea for a Brooklyn candy-store owner to create the “Teddy” bear.

The delisting follows a comprehensive scientific review by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of the bear’s status. The majority of Louisiana black bear habitat falls on private lands, where the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and the Interior worked with Louisiana farmers to voluntarily restore more than 485,000 acres of bottomland hardwood forests in priority areas for conservation.

When the Louisiana black bear was listed under the ESA in 1992 due to habitat loss, reduced quality of habitat and human-related mortality, the three known breeding subpopulations were confined to the bottomland hardwood forests of Louisiana in the Tensas and Upper and Lower Atchafalaya River basins. Today, those subpopulations have all increased in number and have stabilized to increasing growth rates. Additional breeding subpopulations are forming in Louisiana and Mississippi, providing a healthy long-term outlook for the species. Today, the Service estimates that 500 to 750 bears live across the species’ current range.

In other encouraging bear news, the Fish & Wildlife Service is also proposing to lift the threatened-species designation for Yellowstone-area grizzly population, opening the door for possible future hunting for these bears in areas surrounding the park in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. The proposal caps a forty-year effort to rebuild the grizzly population in the Lower 48. Since grizzlies in the Lower 48 were added to the ESA list in 1975, the number in the Yellowstone region has increased from 136 to an estimated 1,000 today.

A final decision on the matter is due within a year. The potential delisting is likely to encounter resistance from animal-rights groups, however. An attempt was made to remove grizzlies from the threatened list in 2007, but environmental groups challenged the government in court, and protections were restored.

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A new study of game management areas in Zambia highlights the importance of the meat provided to local communities by hunting outfitters.

When hunters travel to Africa for a safari hunt, their friends back home often wonder what happens to the meat of the animals they kill. If you’ve been on an African safari, you know that some of the meat is eaten in camp. But most of it, especially in the poorest and most rural areas of the continent, is given to the local communities, where it is a crucial addition to the otherwise protein-deficient diet of much of the populace.

Until now, there have been few, if any, scientific studies attempting to quantify the amount of game meat that goes to local communities and the impact it has. That has changed with a just-published study of three game management areas (GMAs) in several regions of Zambia that assessed the quantity and impact of sport-hunted meat provided to the local communities between 2004 and 2011.

The study, entitled “Provisioning of Game Meat to Rural Communities as a Benefit of Sport Hunting in Zambia,” was authored by Dr. Paula A. White and Jerrold L. Belant and appeared in the online scientific journal PLOS One, published February 18, 2015. White is the Director of the Zambia Lion Project and a Senior Research Fellow at the UCLA Center for Tropical Research. Belant is an Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Management at Mississippi State University and Director of the Carnivore Ecology Laboratory. White, who conceived of the study and conducted the on-the-ground data collection, is extremely familiar with the GMAs in Zambia, having spent more than ten seasons doing carnivore research in the region.

As part of their lease agreements with the Zambia Wildlife Authority, hunting operators in Zambia are required to give to the local communities in their GMAs more than 50 percent of the meat obtained by their hunting clients. How much does that amount to? The study found that the rural communities located within each GMA where sport hunting occurred received an average of more than 13,277 pounds of fresh game meat annually from hunting operators. Extrapolating the results across all thirty GMAs in Zambia, the study estimated 286,000 pounds of fresh game meat are provided annually by the sport hunting industry to rural communities in Zambia.

Game meat drying for biltong at a hunting camp in Africa. The new study quantifies how important such meat is to people who live near safari camps.

The study authors also wanted to find out how well the outfitters were complying with their requirement to provide this meat, so they compared the amount of meat expected based on the quotas for each GMA versus the amounts that the communities actually received during a three-year segment of the study period. In seven of eight annual comparisons of these three GMAs, the amount of meat the communities received exceeded what was required. The meat donations occurred throughout the May-to-November hunting season, but the largest amount of meat was given to the communities in September and October, which is about the same time rural Zambians are most likely to run short of food since their crops are not yet ready to harvest.

The estimated annual cost to purchase the equivalent of 286,000 pounds of fresh game meat would be more than US$600,000, not including butchering and delivery costs. Using an estimate of 20 percent protein per 100 grams of game meat, the meat from the GMAs provided the equivalent of 519,084 people-days of protein per year. This figure is based on the recommended daily protein requirement of 50 grams per day.

To put this in perspective, studies show that 48 percent of Zambia’s population is classified as undernourished, and their recommended daily protein requirements are rarely met. Most Zambians actually get less than 20 percent of their dietary energy from animal protein. That’s because, to obtain protein other than the donated meat, rural Zambians, who cannot legally hunt for themselves, have three choices: raise their own livestock, fish, or buy meat. In many areas of rural Zambia inadequate grazing or the presence of tsetse flies makes raising livestock impossible. To fish legally requires purchasing a permit and having access to water, and purchasing meat is prohibitively expensive for most Zambians, who live on less than US$1 per day.

“Thus, although meat provisioned by sport hunting operators represents a small percentage of protein requirements for Zambians overall, it appears an effective means of distributing fresh, high-quality meat to some of the most remote areas of the country with the greatest protein needs, thereby partially alleviating protein deficiencies in rural Africans,” the authors concluded.

“As I began to examine the data in depth, I was surpised by the large amount of meat that was being distributed,” said White. “I was also surprised at the paucity of scientific studies that examine how hunting activities can directly support conservation. There is a wealth of colloquial information, but it rarely gets quantified or distributed in a manner that helps demonstrate the benefits that hunting can provide, in this case to rural communities in Africa.”

The paper goes on to discuss a recent, tragic development related to the original study: A hunting moratorium that was put in place during 2013 and 2014 throughout most of Zambia’s GMAs meant the game meat normally donated by the hunting industry was eliminated. This created a crisis, made worse by the fact that rural areas of Zambia are not exactly overloaded with employment opportunities. The jobs provided by hunting camps were lost during the moratorium, and the items that the hunting camps usually buy from local communities (grass for thatching, vegetables, cornmeal) were not needed. The upshot was that, in addition to losing their supply of donated meat, many rural Zambians lost the income that would have allowed them to purchase meat.

Under these circumstances, the locals can hardly be blamed for doing their own hunting. Unfortunately, the indiscriminate methods used by the local “bushmeat” hunters, such as the use of crude snares and the overharvesting of females and young animals, are unsustainable and quickly lead to the depletion of wildlife populations throughout a wide area–unlike legal safari hunting, which is carefully controlled by quotas and regulations. It’s unquestionable, the study authors said, that the severity and rate of bushmeat poaching escalated during the hunting closure. It is uncertain if any of the GMAs affected by the moratorium will be reopened to hunting this year.

“In the absence of legitimate operators, the GMAs will continue to get encroached upon by humans and livestock, and hammered by poachers as has been happening throughout the last two years,” White said. “The communities feel forgotten and are getting by however they can. It is hard to watch, but given what they have lost during the moratorium–meat, jobs, money–and the uncertainty of their future, it is hard to blame them. Right now, they are just trying to survive any way they can.”

Read the full text of the study HERE.

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A groundbreaking program at Kansas State University is training students for outdoor careers.

Kansas State University’s Wildlife and Outdoor Enterprise Management (WOEM) program is the first and only Bachelor of Science four-year degree program in the United States that trains students to become hunting and fishing outfitters, gun and hunting club managers, resort managers, and provides training for careers in other outdoor adventure-related pursuits. Combining wildlife science with business and management, the WOEM program is a separate department within Kansas State’s College of Agriculture, Department of Horticulture, Forestry & Recreation Resources.

Located in Manhattan, Kansas, “K-State” is one of the nation’s most respected universities for wildlife biology and related studies. While wildlife and fisheries management is part of the course of study, the WOEM degree diverges in that it includes business, hospitality management, and training in outdoor skills. Under the direction of Dr. Thomas Warner and Dr. Peg McBee, experienced educators and outdoorspeople, the program was instituted in 2009. So far all graduates have found jobs in the outdoor industry, which speaks volumes about the degree and the dedicated young people pursuing it.

I’ve been fortunate to have spoken to the students in Manhattan, and this fall four students—three men and one woman—joined us at Timber Trails Ranch in southeastern Kansas for a few days of whitetail hunting and a series of seminars we arranged for them. These are really impressive young folks, looking forward to careers in the outdoor industry. Make no mistake, this is a serious course of study, with a six-month internship required to attain the degree. For information on this unusual program visit www.hfrr.ksu.edu/woem.

Wildlife and Outdoor Enterprise Management students gathered at Boddington’s Timber Trails ranch in December for some whitetail hunting.

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The Sage Grouse Initiative helps a game bird, improves big-game habitat, and even helps ranchers feed their cattle.

An impressive 4.4 million acres of habitat for sage grouse has been restored in just the past four years as a result of public/private partnerships through the Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI), according to a new report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Most of this work has been done through SGI’s partnerships with private landowners who find that the work done to preserve habitat for the wild birds is also beneficial to their rangelands and provides better grazing and food availability for their livestock.

“We’re working with ranchers who are taking proactive steps to improve habitat for sage grouse while improving the sustainability of their agricultural operations,” said Undersecretary for Natural Resources and Environment Robert Bonnie.

Efforts range from establishing conservation easements that prevent subdivision of working ranches to improving and restoring habitat through removal of invasive trees, especially conifers. More than a third of the easement acreage is in Wyoming, which contains 40 percent of the sage grouse population. In Oregon, more than 100 ranchers removed conifers from 200,000 acres of key nesting and wintering habitats for sage grouse, which also improved the forage available on their grazing land.

“American ranchers are working with us to help sage grouse because they know they are helping an at-risk bird while also improving the food available for their livestock,” Bonnie said. “As the saying goes, ‘What’s good for the bird is good for the herd.'”

What’s good for the bird is also good for herds of elk and mule deer, too, since these big-game animals share 40 million acres of key habitat with sage grouse. Crucial elk winter range, in particular, overlaps with core areas of sage grouse habitat.

The conservation programs funded by the 2014 Farm Bill mean that another $200 million will be added to sage grouse conservation efforts over the next four years.

SGI was launched in 2010 as a new paradigm for keeping the sage grouse off the Endangered Species List by using partnerships to get the most out of every dollar spent on conservation. Learn more at www.sagegrouseinitiative.com.

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Augusta Wallihan was a hunter, wildlife photographer, adventurer, and conservationist.

When I first saw the photograph of Augusta Wallihan entitled “Grocery Shopping,” I was intrigued and had to find out more. Who was this woman, dressed in the garb of the late 1800s and standing over a very nice mule-deer buck with a skinning knife and a Remington Hepburn rifle, exuding an air of confidence and competence?

As it turns out, Wallihan was even more interesting than I imagined. She and her husband, A.G. Wallihan, were among the first serious wildlife photographers in the United States, photographing deer, elk, bighorn sheep and myriad other big-game animals around their home in western Colorado. They gained international recognition for their photography and become influential conservationists as well.

Augusta Wallihan, nee Higgins, was born in Wisconsin in 1837 and made her way out West with her first husband. When that marriage failed, around 1880, she headed to Colorado to join her brother, Thomas Higgins, who had partnered with another Wisconsin expat, Allen Grant (“A.G.”) Wallihan, in a cattle venture. Wallihan family lore says Augusta and A.G. somehow ended up snowbound in an isolated cabin for several months, and to salvage their reputations they got married in April 1885 in Rawlins, Wyoming. At forty-eight, Augusta was twenty-two years older than A.G.

They homesteaded in the tiny town of Lay, Colorado, west of Craig, and A.G. became the town postmaster. While they owned a lot of land, they apparently weren’t cut out to be farmers. A.G. enjoyed hunting, though, and Augusta soon learned to shoot and also became a very successful hunter, keeping their larder well supplied with fresh meat.

It was a chance encounter with missionaries traveling through the region that led the Wallihans into photography. The missionaries had a camera with them, and Augusta traded them a pair of homemade buckskin gloves (maybe similar to the ones she is wearing in the “Grocery Shopping” photo) for their camera. Neither Augusta nor A.G. had any training in how to use it, but they quickly taught themselves the basics.

Photography in those days was in its infancy, and the cameras were massive, weighing ten pounds or more and mounted on tripod legs; most challenging of all, though, were the long, slow shutter speeds that required subjects to remain still. That made wildlife photography impractical, and most “wildlife” photos of the day were of mounted animals in dioramas. The Wallihans, skilled hunters living in a wildlife-rich paradise, had the opportunity and the ability to get close to living wildlife in order to photograph it-—but there was still nothing easy about it, and they often were lucky to get a single good photo of a deer, elk, or bighorn sheep in an entire day of attempts. After long days afield, they spent their evenings developing the negatives on glass plates.

Augusta was, by all accounts, a forceful personality, in contrast to her more laid-back husband. Nevertheless, they made an excellent team. While most of the photographs were credited to A.G., those who knew them said that their photography was a team effort. She was likely the driving force behind the increasing success of their careers, too; before long, their wildlife photographs were being reproduced in newspapers around the country, and they even had two books published. Both of the books, Hoofs, Claws and Antlers of the Rocky Mountains (1894) and Camera Shots at Big Game (1901) are credited to Allen G. Wallihan, but it’s certain the photos they contained were a team effort. As the Wallihans’ fame spread, they were invited to exhibit their photos at the Paris World Exposition of 1900. They exhibited again at the St. Louis World’s Fair four years later, and this time won a bronze medal for their work.

Augusta became widely known as an expert hunter and crack shot. In 1895, according to one source, she was invited to the Sportsman’s Expo at New York’s Madison Square Garden, where she hosted the Hunters’ Cabin. That had to be quite an honor. She was also something of an outdoor writer. I found an article she penned in the October 1895 edition of Recreation magazine entitled “How I Got My First Deer.” After telling the story of stalking her first buck and dropping it with a single shot, she casually mentions that she has since dropped thirty-one deer with her Remington, “only wounding three and losing none.”

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Augusta and A.G. was their concern for wildlife conservation at a time when it was the fashion to thoughtlessly eradicate as many animals as possible. In fact, it was one of the main motivations behind their photography—the Wallihans were sure that the wild game around them would soon go extinct, and their photos might be all that would be left. Their concerns were not unfounded, as commercial hunters operated indiscriminately throughout the West in those days, transporting wagonloads of meat to the cities where it was sold.

As the Wallihans wrote letters and articles calling for conservation measures and controls on hunting, they found themselves on the vanguard of a conservation movement that began to take hold around the turn of the century, led by visionaries such as Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell. Thanks to these efforts, hunters of today still have the opportunity to hunt and photograph the same big-game animals that Augusta Wallihan did more than a century ago.

Special thanks to the Museum of Northwest Colorado (www.museumnwco.org) in Craig, Colorado, for the images and information in this article, which appears in the Nov/Dec 2014 issue of Sports Afield.

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