This September, join F-11 Photographic Supplies and photographic artist Sandra Nykerk for an unparalleled photo workshop opportunity based at the spectacular B Bar Ranch just north of Yellowstone National Park.

You’ll enjoy exclusive access to the ranch property, sleep in your own mountain cabin, and enjoy gourmet meals prepared by the resident chef – all while expanding your photographic skills in the inspiring company of accomplished photographers.

The B Bar is a working ranch with stunning landscapes and scenic views, offering all of the photographic opportunities you would anticipate in a classic western landscape. From wildlife to rustic barns and a tipi tucked in the trees, from cowboys moving cattle to the majestic Rare Breed Suffolk Punch Draft Horses, you’ll have access to unique and varied photographic subjects, including the B Bar’s own organic gardens and greenhouses. We’ll also spend one day in Yellowstone National Park photographing the essence of this American icon – from elk bugling in the autumn landscape to the dazzling colors and unique patterns of the hydrothermal features.

Our days will be divided between photographing in the field and time in the classroom which will be devoted to ongoing discussions of photographic principles and techniques. You’ll expand your digital vocabulary and learn the differences between file formats and color spaces and what selections are the best for your specific needs and digital workflow. We’ll review the choices in your camera menus and recommend settings for optimal camera performance. Post-processing presentations will help you to optimize the full potential of your images using your expanding photo-editing skills. Editing techniques will be demonstrated utilizing Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Bridge exclusively, and we recommend you have at least the trial version loaded on your laptop for use during the workshop.

Nikon USA, our workshop sponsor, will provide equipment for use during the workshop, so you will be able to practice your new skills with state-of-the-art photographic equipment, including camera bodies, lenses, and flash units. From wide-angle landscapes to intimate macro details, you’ll gain experience in all aspects of outdoor photography. The instructors will focus on your personal learning goals, and the low teacher-to-student ratio assures that there will be ample opportunity for interactive sessions in the field, including the lens choices and composition considerations which will enhance your own personal vision.

Pack your bags, load your camera gear and get ready for a once-in-a-lifetime learning adventure in an unparalleled visual landscape.

The workshop begins with a welcome dinner and tour of the B Bar Ranch on September 14th, and continues through mid-morning on Friday, September 19th, 2008. The cost of $2100 includes photographic instruction, lodging and all meals. Make your reservation today.

Citing the recent rash of wolf killings in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, conservation groups asked a federal court last week to reinstate Endangered Species Act protections, while considering arguments that delisting the wolf was unlawful. The request for a court order to stop the killing was filed with a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s wolf delisting decision.

According to an Associated Press article, at least 37 wolves have been killed in the three states since the delisting took effect on March 28. The death toll could be even higher since kills are not required to be reported immediately, and ‘shoot and bury’ tactics mean that some kills might not be reported at all.

“Until now the reintroduction of gray wolves to the Northern Rockies was one of our greatest endangered species success stories,” said Louisa Willcox, Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) office in Livingston, Mont. “Now the region has become a killing field for wolves, just as we predicted.

“Dozens of wolves have been killed already, and more are certain to die under state laws that in many cases allow unregulated wolf killing anywhere, anytime, for any reason,” Willcox said.

In their request for a preliminary injunction reinstating Endangered Species Act protections, NRDC and 11 other groups argued that “the killing of wolves that have been removed unlawfully from the endangered species list is sufficient to demonstrate irreparable harm.”

“The killing must stop while the court considers the government’s illegal decision to revoke protections in the first place,” Willcox said. “The gray wolf simply hasn’t recovered yet. Every animal that falls victim to bait or bullet increases the odds that wolves will slide back toward extinction.”

Some of the first wolves to be killed since the delisting took effect include:

Wolf 253M – This eight-year-old celebrity wolf’s fans called him “Hoppy” because of his limp (caused by an injury from a fight with another wolf pack). He was shot the day after delisting on an elk feeding ground in Wyoming. This black wolf was one of the most recognizable members of Yellowstone’s famous Druid Peak pack. People snapped his photograph and shot video as he and his pack mates played, hunted and snoozed. Later, he became the first wolf to step foot into Utah in over 75 years and established his own pack in Grand Teton National Park.

The Ashton wolves – These two males were killed on April 1 near Ashton, Idaho. The first was shot within view of the shooter’s home near some horses. The second was pursued by the landowner for over a mile on snowmobile. Authorities declined to press charges against the shooter due to “reasonable doubt” as to whether the wolves were “molesting” livestock.

Wolf B160 – This collared wolf was found shot on April 3 near Clayton, Idaho. His body was still warm when a woman found him about 70 yards from Highway 75. He had been shot through the femur and stomach. (Photos of Wolf B160’s carcass are available on NRDC’s digital newsroom at http://nrdc.mediaseed.tv/).

In their challenge to wolf delisting, the groups alleged multiple violations of the Endangered Species Act. They said the death toll confirms arguments that the delisting decision threatens wolf survival. They also said the delisting decision was based on outdated science.

“We understand wolf biology, behavior and genetics much better than when the original wolf recovery goal was developed more than 20 years ago,” said Dr. Sylvia Fallon, a scientist with NRDC. “The federal government has simply ignored all the scientific advances in this area for two decades. This is no way to manage our important wildlife resources.”

The lawsuit says scientists have determined wolf populations are still too fragmented and a minimum population of 2,000 to 5,000 animals is needed to ensure enough genetic diversity for the animals’ long-term survival. At the time of delisting there were about 1,500 wolves in the region. All but 300 could be allowed to be killed under the government’s current minimum recovery standard.

NRDC filed a petition in February requesting that the Fish and Wildlife Service establish legitimate targets for recovery of wolves throughout the lower 48 states. In its petition, NRDC demonstrates that the service failed to recover wolves on much of the available public lands where wolves formerly lived, and ignored decades of scientific analysis. Without explanation or any scientific basis, the service set widely different recovery goals in the Midwest, Northern Rockies and Southwest regions.

The reintroduction of wolves by the federal government 12 years ago has been widely hailed as a major success story. It has measurably improved the natural balance in the Northern Rockies and benefited bird, antelope and elk populations, according to NRDC. Many thousands of visitors flock to Yellowstone National Park each year to see and hear wolves in the wild, contributing at least $35 million to the local economy each year, the group said.

Thousands of gray wolves roamed the Rocky Mountains before being slaughtered and eliminated from 95 percent of the lower 48 states by the 1930s. The gray wolf was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Reintroduction efforts placed 66 wolves in Yellowstone National Park and part of Idaho in 1995-96.

The lawsuit was filed by Earthjustice on behalf of NRDC, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, The Humane Society of the United States, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Friends of the Clearwater, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Western Watersheds Project, and Wildlands Project.

More than half of Yellowstone National Park’s bison herd has died since last fall, forcing the government to suspend its annual slaughter program.

More than 700 of the iconic animals starved or otherwise died during an unusually harsh winter, and more than 1,600 were shot by hunters or sent to slaughterhouses in a disease-control effort, according to National Park Service figures.

As a result, the park estimates its bison herd has dropped from 4,700 in November to about 2,300 today, prompting the government to halt the culling program early.

“There has never been a slaughter like this of the bison since the 1800s in this country, and it’s disgusting,” said Mike Mease of the Buffalo Field Campaign, a group seeking to stop the slaughter program for good.

Government officials say the slaughter prevents the spread of the disease brucellosis from the Yellowstone bison to cattle on land near the park. Brucellosis can cause miscarriages, infertility and reduced milk production in domestic cattle.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that half of Yellowstone’s bison herd is infected with the bacterium.

Previously, under the Interagency Bison Management Plan, wandering bison were sent to slaughter without being tested for brucellosis. (The meat — which experts say is safe to eat if cooked — and hides were distributed to Native American groups.)

Late this winter the slaughter was limited to animals that tested positive for the disease.

Now the program has been further curtailed; no bison have been killed in the past week.

“The plan requires all of us to do two things: protect a viable wild bison population and reduce the risk of transmission of brucellosis from bison to cattle. We’re required to keep bison and cattle separate,” National Park Service spokesman Al Nash said.

The USDA acknowledges that bison-to-cattle transmission is difficult to document, but it says investigations indicate that bison were the likely source of infections in cattle herds in Wyoming and North Dakota.

But critics call the culling an overreaction. There is no documented case of the disease passing from bison to cattle, they said.

“I mean, it’s hype, it’s a hysteria,” Mease said. “And it’s not a fatal disease.”

Last month, two women chained themselves to a railing inside the park’s visitor center to protest the policy.

“The Park Service is meant to protect and preserve wildlife in national parks, not indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of [bison],” one of the protesters, 20-year-old Miriam Wasser, wrote in a leaflet she distributed.

Yellowstone is the only place in the lower 48 states where a bison population has persisted since prehistoric times, according to the Park Service.

Herds once numbered in the tens of millions across the continent but were hunted nearly to extinction by the late 1800s. Protected since the early 20th century, the species has recovered.

Bison graze high on Yellowstone’s grassy plateaus during the summer. When the weather becomes too harsh and food becomes scarce, they often roam outside the park. That’s the problem.
Nash explained the situation in its simplest terms:

“Bison are bison. Bison are nomadic animals. Bison are looking for food. Food is difficult and scarce to come by at the end of the winter. They’re leaving the interior of the park [and going] to lower places, in part, to look for food. There’s limited tolerance for bison outside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park.”

That’s because just two cases of brucellosis would trigger stringent limits on export of cattle from Montana.

“Montana has spent millions of dollars over the years to get brucellosis eradicated from our livestock,” said Martin Davis, who has a cattle ranch within roaming distance north of the park. “And to put that in jeopardy — no one wants that to happen.”

Control of the bison population is essential, Davis said.

“Bottom line is, there’s too many of them. They’ve got to be managed. They ran out of pasture. … They’re eating themselves out of house and home.”

Under the management plan, rangers and cowboys hired by various government agencies try to harass stray animals back onto park property. Officials shoot animals that can’t be persuaded. (Ranchers are not permitted to kill wild bison).

Meanwhile, hundreds of bison are rounded up inside the park every winter and slaughtered to reduce competition for food and therefore the need for animals to wander onto private land.

“It becomes a private property issue,” said Davis, who has never had a bison encroach on his ranch. “They walked down onto private property. And if you don’t want a buffalo on your private property, you shouldn’t have to have them there.”

Mease, the activist, portrays the conflict as a simple turf war.

“The Montana cattle ranchers don’t want the competition for grass,” he said. “They want the national forests and public lands to be all their public-lands grazing allotments, and in that process, they don’t want bison.”

Federal and state officials said last week they will lease private land bordering the park where up to 100 bison eventually will be allowed to graze during the winter. But the problem is not likely to go away.

“The reality of the situation is that whether you have 4,000 bison or whether you have 200 bison, bison are a nomadic species and they will always be looking out to the horizon and expanding their boundaries,” said Tim Reid, chief deputy ranger at Yellowstone.

So the culling program is expected to return next winter.

“It is our job to protect the viability of this population,” the Park Service’s Nash said. “We take that seriously. We are not taking any actions that will have a serious ongoing negative impact on this population.

“The Yellowstone bison population is healthy, it’s strong, it’s vibrant. We continue to take actions to protect that herd.”

But to activists like Mease, it’s just not right to kill healthy bison.

“There’s less than 5,000 wild, genetically pure buffalo left in America,” he said, “and this is how we treat them?”

From CNN

The Carbella Bridge crossing the Yellowstone River will reopen to traffic at noon on April 28, according to Park County Commissioner Larry Lahren. The bridge has been closed since February due to damages from a car accident.

Gray wolves have entered the spin cycle.

Since March 28, when the wolf was taken off the list of federally protected species in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, a fierce battle of perceptions and posturing has unfolded on the Web and in the news media as pro-wolf and anti-wolf forces stake out sometimes hyperbolic positions concerning where in the West animals and humans should exist.

The backdrop is a running time clock and a lawsuit. On April 28, a coalition of environmental groups has said it will to go federal court challenging the decision to lift protections.

Until then, the court of public opinion is in session, as cases are built for how the new system of state management is working or not.

One wolf lover in California, in a forum posting on the Web site Yellowstone.net, proposed that tourists boycott Wyoming to protest the policies in a state where at least 10 wolves were shot in the first week after the rule change, according to state figures. Some Wyoming residents responded that such an action would be just fine by them, especially if more Californians stayed home.

Some ranchers and hunters urge caution in killing wolves unnecessarily, to avoid inflaming emotions that could haunt the legal process later on.

“I would certainly not want to create any useful ammunition, no pun intended, for the pro-wolf environmental groups that have announced their intention to sue,” said Budd Betts, a dude-ranch operator and former Wyoming state legislator near Jackson Hole. “The legal aspect is connected to the emotional and the political, and no judge is immune.”

Pro-wolf forces, meanwhile, say that wolf killers may have created a martyr. On the first day protections were lifted, a partly crippled and much photographed radio-collared wolf named 253M was legally shot near the town of Daniel in western Wyoming.

The killing made headlines as far away as Utah, where 253M had wandered in 2002, before being transported back to Wyoming. A story in The Salt Lake Tribune quoted a woman as saying she had wept at the news of the animal’s death.

Responding to what it says are numerous public inquiries, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department began a weekly wolf update on its Web site, starting on April 4.

“We’re hearing a lot, from all sectors of the public,” said a spokesman, Eric Keszler. “Some want no wolves to be killed — others ask where the trophy game area is going to be.”

Wyoming, Montana and Idaho plan their first wolf trophy hunting seasons this fall. About 1,500 wolves inhabit the three states, most of them descended from 66 wolves introduced into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in the mid-1990s.

State management plans allow for wolf hunting — or in some places, outright eradication — with a target population of 150 in each of the three states.

Doug Honnold, the lead lawyer for the environmental coalition planning the lawsuit, said these initial weeks of state management were helping build his case that tougher restrictions on wolf hunting are needed.

“We often segregate the court of law and public opinion, but it’s important to prevail in both,” said Mr. Honnold, who works in the Bozeman, Mont., office of Earthjustice, a conservation group with headquarters in Oakland, Calif. “This wolf mortality that we’re seeing now shows the need for a safety net.”

But John Bair, the chairman of a multistate hunters group, Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, which strongly supported taking wolves off the endangered species list, accused opponents of delisting with posturing and harboring hidden agendas. Ranchers and ordinary residents who have killed wolves legally in recent days, he said, are just following the law.

“My opinion is that they don’t really care about the number of wolves — they care about the political advantage,” said Mr. Bair, referring to the environmental groups. “The wolf is their silver bullet to do away with ranching and sport-hunting, which they oppose. That’s what this is about.”

From the New York Times

Gray wolves in the Northern Rockies were removed from the endangered species list Friday, turning management over to the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

The delisting follows a dramatic 13-year recovery effort that drew international attention and generated a wide spectrum of emotions, from elation at seeing the animals back in the wildlands around Yellowstone National Park to fury over the wolves preying on livestock and other wildlife.

Several environmental groups have filed notice that they intend to sue to restore federal protection. They contend there are too few for public hunting, and that the animal could be driven toward extinction.

State wildlife officials have said that wolf-hunting licenses will not be sold in Montana until the looming lawsuit is resolved.

“It’s important to understand that wolves are now an official part of the Montana wildlife environment,” Jeff Hagener, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks director, said Friday in a prepared statement. “The wolf will be managed like Montana’s other wildlife species.”

The intention is to ensure that wolves can only be “purposely killed legally” during official hunting or trapping seasons, when killing or harassing livestock or to protect human life, Hagener said. However, such incidents will have to be reported to FWP within 72 hours.

Both those who argue that federal protections should have been removed from the wolf long ago, and those who say lifting them was premature, agree on one thing: For the wolf to survive under state management, it’s critical for the state to pay the bills of ranchers who pay the price for its return.

“This piece needs to work for the overall wolf management plan to work,” said John Edwards, Montana’s first livestock loss mitigation coordinator.

Throughout history, people have had a love-hate attitude toward wolves, said Carolyn Sime, the state’s wolf program coordinator.

It’s the goal of the state, she said, to prevent a pendulum swing in the other direction by keeping the wolf population from getting too large and compensating landowners who are making sacrifices to have wolves back.

“If people are not willing to live with wolves, they kill them,” she said.

As Europeans began settling the U.S., they poisoned, trapped and shot wolves, causing a once widespread species to be eradicated from most of its range in the Lower 48. They were gone from Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, as well as adjacent southwestern Canada, by the 1930s.

“People hated them,” said Ed Bangs, the wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, when the government announced in February that wolves were being delisted. “We came from areas from Europe that hated wolves.”

Values changed, and the wolf was given federal protection in 1974. At that time, only a few hundred wolves remained in Minnesota. Those animals were delisted as “threatened” last year.

Bangs came to Montana from Alaska in 1988, to lead the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s effort to restore the “endangered” gray wolves in the West.

Recovery efforts first began in Canada in the 1960s. Wolves there began dispersing into Montana, with the first two packs denning in Glacier National Park and on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in the late 1980s.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced wolves from Canada into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995.

With federal protection limiting human-caused mortalities, wolves flourished. Nobody was surprised. If mortality is kept in check, the number of wolves can more than double in just two years, officials said. Today Montana has about 420 wolves in about 73 packs, including 39 breeding pairs. Regionally, there are thought to be about 1,500 wolves.

“Wolves are just pretty incredible animals,” Bangs said.

The cost of the wolf recovery effort in the Northern Rockies was $27 million. Bangs said he believes too much was spent, but says the public demanded it.

Managing wolves will cost the state about $1 million a year, said Sime, who added that the state is hoping the federal government will help fund management efforts. Montana, she notes, is one of the few places in the country where Americans who called for restoring the wolf can see the animals.

“We’d like the American public to help,” she said.

Montana has been managing wolves, using federal guidelines, since 2004, so the transition between state and federal rules that began Friday will be “seamless,” Sime said.

What is new in the state’s wolf management effort are a seven-member Livestock Loss Reduction and Mitigation Board, and the role of Edwards, who will work closely with that board.

The price the state will pay for livestock animals killed by wolves kill be determined by how much they would have likely sold for at the Billings auction.
Under state management, USDA Wildlife Services will continue to verify whether wolves were responsible for losses. The size of the prey, tracks, and canine teeth marks are part of the forensic science conducted at a depredation scene.

Ranchers will get 100 percent compensation for both confirmed and probable losses. Under the old compensation program, which was privately run by the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife, ranchers received 100 percent for confirmed kills and 50 percent for “probable” losses to wolves.

“There’s always losses that can’t be verified, and this program is supposed to help with that also,” said Elaine Allestad, chairwoman of the Livestock Loss Reduction and Mitigation Board.

The state Legislature allocated $30,000 to fund reimbursements and created a $5 million trust fund. But to date, that trust account is empty. The eventual goal is to build it up through private donations and use the interest to fund operations.

The basis behind the state’s program is the same idea Defenders of Wildlife had when it launched its compensation campaign in 1987: Sharing the responsibility for restoring wolves to the landscape while fostering greater tolerance for wolves in the ranching community.

“Compensation was a critical component of the program of wolf restoration,” said Suzanne Asha Stone, a Boise, Idaho-based wolf conservation specialist for Defenders of Wildlife. “It helped people overcome their fears and certainly overcome the financial risk of having wolves back.”

Over the last 21 years, Defenders of Wildlife doled out approximately $1 million to ranchers in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Defenders, which is discontinuing its compensation program in Montana but continuing it in other states, has pledged to contribute $100,000 to help Montana begin its program.

As the Montana program evolves, property damage losses as a result of wolves, such as broken fences and veterinarian bills for injured livestock, will be funded.

Money also will be made available for livestock producers to purchase guard dogs, hire range riders and install electric flags called fladry, which have shown promise in keeping wolves away from vulnerable livestock in pastures.

“If you just rely on lethal control, more wolves die, more livestock die,” said Stone, noting that Defenders of Wildlife spent $81,000 on conflict prevention efforts last year in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.

Lane Adamson, the director of the Madison Valley Ranchlands Group, said range riders have been effective in monitoring summer grazing operations threatened by wolves. The riders spend four to five months in the area. Last year, the riders discovered a wolf den in the middle of a grazing allotment, but because of the riders’ presence, there were no depredations or wolves killed, Adamson said.

He said prevention efforts such as range riders are critical if wolves and ranchers are to share the same landscape.

Statewide, wolves killed 75 cattle in 2007, up from 32 in 2006, while confirmed sheep losses rose from four to 27, according to FWP.

Wolves account for a fraction of total livestock deaths, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Montana cattle producers reported losing 66,000 cattle and calves to all causes in a 2005 survey, with 3,000, or 4.5 percent, lost to predators. Coyotes were responsible for 54 percent of the 1,300 calves lost to predation, while all predators, including an unknown number of wolves, were responsible for the rest.

The state’s 2007 wolf-activity report points out that the restored wolf population represents a new source of livestock mortality, and the state’s wolf population increased 34 percent in 2007.

Wolves also can lead to indirect losses through missing livestock or poor livestock performance because of the stress of having wolves in the area, the report states.

“What we’re always hoping to do is decrease the risk that livestock producers have now that wolves are back on the landscape,” Sime said.

Of the 102 known wolf mortalities in Montana in 2007, 73 were killed for killing or chasing livestock. Seven of the wolves were illegally killed, according to FWP.

From the Great Falls Tribune

With heavy snow still covering the park’s vast grasslands, hundreds of bison have been leaving Yellowstone in search of food at lower elevations. A record number of the migrating animals — 1,195, or about a quarter of the park’s population — have been killed by hunters or rounded up and sent to slaughterhouses by park employees. The bison are being killed because they have ventured outside the park into Montana and some might carry a disease called brucellosis, which can be passed along to cattle.

The large-scale culling, which is expected to continue through April, has outraged groups working to preserve the park’s bison herds, considered by scientists to be the largest genetically pure population in the country. It has also led to an angry exchange between Montana state officials and the federal government over a stalled agreement to create a haven for the bison that has not received the needed federal financing.

“When they leave the park they have nowhere to go,” said Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a Democrat. “This agreement would have given them a place to go.”

Al Nash, a spokesman for Yellowstone National Park, said park employees tried to haze the bison into returning to the park but often met with limited success. Last week, two employees on horseback drove a large herd across a snow-flecked mountain from the north entrance back into the park.

“They come right back out again,” Mr. Schweitzer said. “They just rebel. What would you do if you were a starving buffalo?”

The culling of bison at Yellowstone, while legal, has been a briar patch of controversy for more than two decades. In 1996, the count reached a peak — until this year — when 1,084 animals were killed.

In 2000, the State of Montana, the National Park Service and the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, which oversees disease issues for the Department of Agriculture, signed an agreement to manage the population. It had two main objectives: to stop the spread of brucellosis, which can also be transmitted from elk, and to allow some bison to leave Yellowstone unmolested.

Conservationists, Montana state officials and other critics say the first part of the agreement has been honored, but the second part has been ignored by the federal government.

“The public should be outraged,” said Amy McNamara, national parks program director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition in Bozeman, Mont., which has worked to allow bison to leave the park. “An American icon is being taken to slaughter.”

Ms. McNamara added, “By next week they’ll be in somebody’s freezer.”

Federal officials say the money needed to make the agreement work — to obtain land along the Yellowstone River that would allow the bison to cross from the park to a publicly owned forest north of the park — has not been allocated by Congress.

Bruce Knight, undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs for the Department of Agriculture, said his department did not manage land or pay for the acquisition of habitat. “I’ve never received a directed appropriation for that,” Mr. Knight said.

At issue is a corridor of land on the Royal Teton Ranch, owned by a religious group called the Church Universal and Triumphant. Last fall, a final stumbling block was removed when church leaders agreed to move their cattle off 2,500 acres of the land so the bison could cross to the forest, about 10,000 acres farther downstream. Any movement from there is blocked by a narrow canyon and the river.

With the cattle removed from the land, there would be no risk of transmission of brucellosis from infected bison. The plan would allow 25 bison who had tested negative for exposure to the disease to be allowed out of the park. If that went well, 50 or more would be allowed to leave, and so on.

The State of Montana and conservationists committed to raising $1.3 million toward the $3 million or so it would cost to lease the church group’s land for 30 years. They expected the federal government, through the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, to provide the balance.

Mr. Schweitzer blamed Representative Denny Rehberg, Republican of Montana, for leading the opposition last summer to a $1.5-million Congressional appropriation that would have fulfilled the federal obligation. “He killed it,” Mr. Schweitzer said.

A spokesman for Mr. Rehberg, Bridger Pierce, said Mr. Rehberg wanted the spread of brucellosis dealt with inside the park before any bison were allowed to migrate outside.

The standoff has been made all the worse by the detection last year of brucellosis in several cattle elsewhere in Montana. Though experts believe the disease was transmitted by elk, not bison, the case has stirred passions among ranchers. Brucellosis is a bacterial infection that can cause spontaneous abortion in cattle, and when detected, requires that the cattle be destroyed.

If another incidence of brucellosis appears in Montana, the state would lose its brucellosis-free status, which would mean each cow exported would need to be tested, an expensive proposition for ranchers. Wyoming and Idaho only recently regained their status as brucellosis free after cases were detected in those states in 2004 and 2005.

“Our interest is having a brucellosis-free United States,” said Mr. Knight, the agriculture official. “The sole remaining reservoir is in the Greater Yellowstone. That makes it an exceptionally high priority for us.”

Mr. Knight says the best solution would be a vaccine for bison, which he said could be a year away. Park officials, however, say it is not known when a vaccine, which they are researching, will be available.

In the meantime, conservationists and researchers who care about the bison worry that serious damage is being inflicted on the population here.

In the last few years biologists have discovered that Yellowstone’s bison are one of only two genetically pure herds owned by the federal government.

James Derr, a professor of genetics at Texas A&m who is studying the Yellowstone bison, said he feared that some behaviors or traits, including the propensity to migrate, could be lost with the killed bison. “The great-grandmother, grandmother, mother and daughter often travel together,” he said. Killing them “is like going to a family reunion and killing off all of the Smiths. You are affecting the genetic architecture of the herd.”

In the next few weeks, so-called green-up — when the snow melts and new grass sprouts — is expected to begin in the park. At that time, some captured bison being held at a facility here who test negative for exposure to brucellosis will be released and allowed to head back into the park. Those that test positive, however, will be slaughtered.

“It’s a very difficult thing,” said Mr. Nash, the park spokesman, as he watched park employees load the bison for slaughter on Tuesday. “They do the job they have to do, but that doesn’t mean they enjoy doing it.”

From the New York Times

Montana’s wolf population increased 34 percent over the past year, to an estimated 422 wolves in 73 packs, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks reported Thursday.

The wolves are nearly equally distributed between northern and southern Montana, according to the agency’s annual wolf report, although the bulk of the population growth was in northwestern and far western Montana, where it increased by about 92 wolves, to 213.



In the Greater Yellowstone area, the population increased by 14 wolves, to 209.

Some of the growth can be chalked up to the birth of at least 163 wolf pups last year, the FWP report noted. But there were other reasons, too.



“Our monitoring is getting better and we have hunters, landowners and many others taking the time to tell us where and when they see wolves or wolf sign,” Carolyn Sime, the FWP’s wolf management coordinator in Helena, said in a written statement.

Wolves are still listed under the Endangered Species Act. Delisting was set for late March, but lawsuits are expected to delay that.



While the numbers are growing, 102 wolf deaths were recorded last year, according to FWP. Seventy-three of those followed livestock killings; seven were killed illegally; and six were hit by vehicles or trains. The others died from a variety of causes common in the wild n from poor health to old age.



“Despite the loss of 102 wolves, the Montana wolf population is still very secure,” according to the written statement on the report.



As for conflicts with ranchers, the FWP reported an increase in the number of confirmed cattle deaths due to wolves, from 32 to 75, and an increase in the number of sheep deaths, from four to 27.
Two llamas and three dogs also were confirmed killed by wolves, according to the report.



“We know Montana’s wolves inhabit places where people live, work and recreate,” Sime said. “We expect and try to anticipate conflicts and gear much of our wolf-management work toward helping landowners reduce the risk of livestock depredations.”



The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service planned to delist the gray wolves in the Northern Rockies — Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and parts of Washington and Utah — on March 28. The recovery goal, at least 300 wolves for three consecutive years, was reached in 2002 and has been exceeded every year since, according to FWP.

Federal law requires annual reports on the recovery effort.



This year’s update also noted that Montana’s wolf population included 39 breeding pairs, 23 pairs in northwestern Montana and 16 in southern Montana, the report noted.
And it estimated the total number of wolves in Wyoming and Idaho at 359 and 732 respectively.



A Montana biologist has withdrawn his claim in a recent study that a rabbit species has disappeared from the Yellowstone area.

Joel Berger, a senior scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said Thursday that he has been contacted by at least six biologists and naturalists refuting his conclusions about the white-tailed jackrabbit. He said they provided photos and anecdotal evidence the rabbit still lives in the area.

“Yes, there were some left,” Berger said. “I’ve got egg on the face, absolutely.”

Berger’s study, published in January in the science journal Oryx, claimed the once-common rabbit had disappeared from the Yellowstone region sometime last century, for unknown reasons. His findings were written about by news organizations including The Associated Press.

On Thursday, Berger said he now believes the rabbits survive in small numbers within Yellowstone National Park and nearby Gardiner. He provided a copy of a letter he said will correct the record in Oryx’s April issue.

The conclusion that the rabbits had vanished was based on Berger’s own work in the Yellowstone region, historical records and interviews with park biologists and naturalists. In the letter, Berger acknowledges interviewing more people for the study “would have improved abilities to detect whether the hares still persist.”

He said the study’s broader point — that the rabbit’s decline may have forced predators to turn to other food sources — remains valid.

Berger is also a professor in the wildlife biology program at the University of Montana.

Professional wildlife tracker and Gardiner resident Jim Halfpenny does frequent work in and around Yellowstone. He said Thursday that he has found multiple signs of the jackrabbits at the north end of the park as recently as last week.

“There’s a small portion of Yellowstone in prime jackrabbit habitat,” he said. “We’ve got plenty of jackrabbits there.”

Eleven conservation groups have notified the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that it violated the Endangered Species Act by removing gray wolves from the endangered species list.

The groups contend that populations in the Northern Rockies do not have adequate genetic diversity, and that the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have not made meaningful commitments to wolf conservation.

The groups (which include Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies) intend to challenge the agency’s decision in federal court.

In an effort to overturn the service’s delisting rule before hundreds of wolves can be killed in the three states, the conservation groups served the letter within hours of publication of the delisting rule for gray wolves in the Federal Register.

Under the delisting rule, the states will assume management of wolves on March 28.