Colorado cougars routinely traverse urban areas, study finds
BOULDER – AF69, a 90-pound female cougar, makes a healthy living on human habitat – stalking, eating and hiding deer around houses – usually when people aren’t looking.
GPS has scientists reconsidering assumptions about animals’ range, habita
FORT COLLINS – GPS tracking data collected from radio collars on mountain lions, lynx, wolves and other wild mammals are challenging scientific understanding of the animals’ range and habitat.
Until about five years ago, the use of GPS technology was limited. Now, Colorado Division of Wildlife and other Western biologists are tracking more animals using satellites and computers and seeing them wander farther, more frequently and far beyond the bounds of what is believed to be their normal habitat.
“Go forth and be sheep,” says biologist moving bighorns to Hayman fire area
FOURMILE CREEK – A swath of Colorado’s most fire-ravaged forest last week became home to a band of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, a species that has made the best of degraded land before.
Across the western U.S., Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep have been hammered by respiratory disease, some of it spread from domestic livestock, and other stressors, such as development eclipsing their habitat and competition with non-native mountain goats for terrain.
A statewide sheep population estimate from 2001 of 8,000 this week was revised to 7,600.
But bighorn sheep are revered here as Colorado’s official state animal.
Feds culling elk as disease continues killing them
Government scientists are grappling with unchecked elk herds infected with a mysterious disease.
Experts testing tactics to keep harmful mussels from muscling their way in
A Denver-based federal team fighting invasive freshwater mussels is investigating new and hopeful treatments, including poison, blasts of ultra-violet light and shock waves, and the introduction of a mussel-destroying predatory sunfish.
The researchers testing these tactics say some seem to work and, if proved, could save tens of millions of dollars by protecting western hydropower and water delivery facilities against the proliferating Eurasian quagga and zebra mussels.
“Once the mussels are there, this would help control them,” said U.S. Bureau of Reclamation mussel program coordinator Leonard Willett, who this week was supervising tests at dams along the lower Colorado River.
Feds offer monitoring, not protection, for sage grouse
The federal government has picked a compromise path to protect the imperiled sage grouse, declaring it needs help to prevent extinction but giving Westerners a chance to save it voluntarily before Endangered Species Act restrictions are imposed. Sage grouse became “a candidate species,” in line along with 249 other candidates deemed deserving of federal protection.
Threatened Preble’s mouse could get 18,462 more acres of protection
A federal push to protect 18,462 Front Range acres as habitat for the Preble’s meadow jumping mouse has set off an endangered-species battle royale.
Wildlife conservationists cheered the release Wednesday of the federal proposal, which could limit development on the land, mostly along 184 miles of rivers and streams.
Representatives of developers promised a court challenge, arguing that protecting more habitat isn’t necessary because the mouse itself already is protected as a threatened species.
Among projects that could be affected: the planned Jeffco Parkway southeast of Rocky Flats, an expansion of Chatfield Reservoir and housing developments in El Paso County along tributaries of Monument Creek.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to nearly double the current 20,680 acres of protected habitat for the mouse — a bug-loving brown omnivore that springs up as high as 3 feet to evade predators.
Endangered-species lists may be broadened
State, feds take a fresh look at once-rejected protections
From wolverines to black-tailed prairie dogs, dozens of species in Colorado and across the nation are being re-evaluated for possible threatened or endangered status. The Obama administration is taking a fresh look, in many cases under court order, at Bush administration rejections of special status.
Colorado wildlife experts get aggressive going after smart bears
Colorado wildlife overseers flummoxed by a rash of bear-human conflicts are searching for options, from “adverse conditioning” to haze nuisance bears that have been trapped to raising the number of hunting permits to thin the population.
Wildlife officials say hundreds of clashes this summer in mountain towns — including a fatal attack, a mauling and myriad break-ins — require an aggressive response.
A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
