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Wildlife: An American Ideal and Her Values: Continued: #7

GRAY WOLF: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wolves/bangs.html

The GRAY OR TIMBER WOLF, Canis lupus, is one of the world's wild dogs. His various geographic races go by a number of local names, including Alaska tundra wolf, Arctic wolf, Labrador wolf, buffalo wolf, Texas gray wolf, and Mexican wolf, but they all belong to the same species.

In size and shape the wolf is somewhat like a German shepherd but has a longer coat, long legs, and bushy tail. Full-grown males average 120 pounds or less, with 180 pounds the absolute maximum for North America, in spite of tales describing larger ones. Females weigh one-fourth to one-third less.

Wolves are gregarious and tend to live and hunt in packs rather than as individuals. Packs, made up of one or more family groups, may vary in size from five to twenty animals. The gray wolf ranges in color from snow white to solid black, including all shades and combinations in between.

Females begin to breed when they are two or three years old, and there is some evidence that they mate for life. Litters of four to eleven pups are born from April through June in natural cavities or in dens dug by the parents. The pups, furred but blind at birth, grow rapidly and sometimes follow the older wolves afield when only a month old. Both parents feed the pups and care for them, and all close observers of wolf ways have marveled at the affection among members of the family.

Wolves are tireless travelers. Except when confined to the den with pups, they move in rough circles over a wide home territory and hunt along the way, often following the same routes time after time. It isn't unusual for packs to travel twenty miles in a day, and they have been known to cover more than one hundred miles in two days.

In order to live, wolves must kill other wildlife. They are carnivores, or meat eaters, as are lions, tigers, leopards, and even weasels and shrews. How they kill is either an exciting or a sickening spectacle, depending on the observer's viewpoint.

It is probably the gory killing manner of wolves that is responsible for human reaction against them. There's nothing pretty about seeing an animal eaten while still alive. African lions, however, capture a meal in an equally savage and cruet way; yet, we think of the big cat as noble and call him king of beasts. Wolves are often bountied, while today a license just to look for a lion costs as much as $500.

At the end of World War II, when preservation of rare or dwindling fauna was beginning to gain widespread support, a splendid book, The Wolves of Mount McKinley by Adolph Murie, an experienced and respected biologist, was published. Murie had lived with McKinley's wolves for years, and his work accurately described the important role of these important animals.

He pointed out that wolves had always lived in balance with the big game animals, caribou, moose, Dall sheep, and grizzlies of Mount McKinley National Park, even though they ate some of them and always would. Murie added that there were, of course, periodic or cyclic fluctuations in the populations of all these animals, wolves included.

Unfortunately, the book's publication coincided with a sudden drastic dip in sheep and caribou populations all over Alaska and Canada. The decline was caused by severe winters and probably other, unknown factors. As a result, many hunters, guides, outdoor writers, and even some game authorities hit the panic button about wolf control.15

In 1948 - another book, Wolf Predication in the North Country, drew this conclusion: "This is it, brother. Extermination of the once-grand herds of our North Country is as sure as death and taxes unless a strong restraining order are interposed against slaughtering the wolf. Failure to act now means the permanent loss of revenue, a meat famine for thousands of natives by the taxpayer.

It is no wonder that an all-out war on wolves followed. The sheep and caribou populations bounced back again in the next decade, as scientific observers had known they would 16, but the damage to the wolf s reputation was lasting. War on wolves is still being fought by many people, including legislators who make game laws and appropriate money for bounties.
When dealing with such a controversial subject as wolves, emotion usually wins out over scientific evidence. A prime case involves the Nelchina Basin, some 20,000 square miles of excellent big-game range in south-central Alaska.

15 My note, G.G.: In addition to this, a modem reduction and major effect upon caribou populations is the recent Alaskan Pipeline construction project. The major affects upon the herds is at this time not fully known but is suspected to be serious. This does not include our own Air Force Fighters from straffing individual animals for practice or even small herds.

16 My Note, G.G.: What isn't mentioned is the weather became milder at exactly this time which helped ALL big game species to increase. Intensive control efforts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service between 1948 and 1955 succeeded in removing more than 400 wolves from the basin. Only an estimated thirty-five wolves managed to survive the control program. In other words the wolf was almost extinct in the vast area. In 1955 the basin's caribou herd which is one of Alaska's most important and which contains some of the best trophy heads was estimated at 20,000.

The area was then closed to all wolf hunting as a test. Ten years later the basin's wolf population had increased again to 400 or 450, which might seem alarming. But in that same period the caribou herd had quadrupled to more than 80,000 animals. (The Wolf is an assest that promotes healthy, larger herds)

During each of recent hunting seasons, hunters have harvested nearly 8,000 caribou, 1,750 moose, and about 150 sheep from this same Nelchina Basin, and the kill could be far greater if much of the region were not so difficult to reach.

Yet hunters often blame wolves when their luck is poor.

The only possible conclusion that can be drawn from the Nelchina study is that wolves exist in numbers compatible with the numbers of prey animals. Never really abundant anywhere, wolves are comparatively numerous only where such prey species as moose and caribou are very numerous.

Natural mortality factors, including disease, parasites, accidents, fights, and cannibalism, keep wolf populations in bounds. In turn the wolves help to keep the number of browse-eaters down to what the range can support; this is the same role other predators play in wilderness habitats all over the world.

Isle Royale National Park, 210 square miles of roadless wilderness in upper Lake Superior, is another case in point. Studies there by Dr. Durward Allen of Purdue University and Dr. David Mech of the University of Minnesota have thrown a great deal of light on the relationship between wolves and their big-game prey.

Isle Royale is uninhabited by humans except for a few tourists in summer. The island's isolated location makes it an ideal laboratory for such a study. By the mid-1930s the Isle Royale moose herd had grown to an estimated 1,000 to 3,000 animals. No wolves existed there, the moose ate themselves out of house and home, and a shocking die-off occurred.

By 1949, when the cyclic moose population was again on the upswing, wolves had invaded the park, probably crossing on the ice from Canada. Since then the wolf population has fluctuated from nineteen to twenty-five, made up of two or three resident packs and a few lone individuals. And the moose herd has held at a steady 600 or so, which is about the carrying capacity of the island's browse supply.

Besides Alaska and Isle Royale, only one other section of the United States has a substantial population of wild wolves. That area is the Superior National Forest in northern Minnesota. The book A FIELD STUDY OF THE TIMBER WOLF by Milton H. Stenlund revealed that a population of about 240 wolves was helping to keep the number of whitetail deer, the chief prey species, within bounds on 4,100 square miles of the Superior Forest. Those figures prove out to a density of one wolf per seventeen square miles, meaning that the animal is a genuine rarity in Superior. And wolves are even less numerous over most of Alaska and Canada.
From 1943 through 1946, when big-game populations in western Canada and Alaska were very low, Ian McTaggart Cowan of the University of British Columbia, an authority on the subject, made a wolf prey study in five national parks in Alberta and British Columbia. He concluded flatly that a deleted food supply, not wolf predation, was responsible for the low numbers of trophy rams.

As nearly as can be determined by compiling the results of a number of recent wolf studies, an average wolf kills fifteen to forty large animals each year, the exact number depending greatly on the size of the prey.

At Isle Royale, Allen and Mech found that a pack of fifteen wolves killed nine moose in twenty-eight days during 1959, fifteen moose in forty-five days during 1960, and twelve moose in thirty-seven days during 1961. These totals average out to a moose per wolf every forty-five days. Mech figured that an average wolf's requirement is ten to thirteen pounds of meat per day.

A surprising fact about wolves is that they are not totally efficient hunters. Their unsuccessful attacks far outnumber their successful ones.

As man sits by his warm fireplace in winter-time and his bed is thick with blankets, all wildlife must survive with the fur that is on their backs and the calories they can burn for body heat. The harshest winter nights are lonely and the wolf's song is testimony to primative fears of an old heritage. The wolf's only security is the pack and the safe companionship it provides. "The hunt," is everything. It's success or failure is the difference between life and death. Food, is everything, even for those who are armed with a T.V. remote control during these same times. They with a refrigerator full of food cannot fully understand that which must hunt a moose in the Arctic in order to live, nor what it takes. gg

For example, Mech, reporting on three winters of aerial observation on Isle Royale, said that the island's big wolf pack detected 131 moose. Of these, the pack "tested" (chased or held at bay) seventy-seven. Of the seventy-seven moose, seven were wounded but escaped, and only six were killed, a surprisingly low hunting success ratio.

I have been fortunate enough to encounter wolves on many occasions. This is rare luck because many people live out their lives in wolf country without ever seeing one.

Once on a hunting pack-trip through British Columbia's Cassiar Mountains, John Moxley and I sat on a low ridge to eat a cold lunch. Idly we watched a number of caribou crossing a distant valley. Suddenly a single caribou cow cam thundering toward us from behind. She probably didn't even see us in passing, nor did the three wolves that were in hot pursuit. We watched until the cow disappeared over the horizon. Long before that, the wolves fell far behind and finally gave up the chase.

Alaskan wolves seem to be more efficient killers than their Isle Royale counterparts, at least in winter, possibly because of favorable terrain and very deep snow which hinders the
quarry. Or it may be that caribou, which make up a large portion of the kill of Alaskan wolves, are easier to take than Isle Royale's moose.

Bob Burkholder, a former Fish and Wildlife Service pilot who reported results of an extraordinary study in 1959, feels that Alaskan wolves are good hunters. By flying, and occasionally from the ground, Burkholder kept a pack of ten wolves in the Nelchinal Basin under almost continuous surveillance for six weeks. There was good snow for tracking, and the wolves eventually became used to having an aircraft nearby r circling overhead.
Very seldom did this pack fail to kill after a target was singled out, and they did not have to chase many victims very far.

Mech, Burkholder, and most other observers agree that wolf attacks follow no set pattern. Rarely if ever do wolves hamstring their prey, as has often been reported. Instead they come tearing in, biting from all sides at whatever part of the animal they can reach, until it falls disabled. They will begin feeding, sometimes even playfully, while their victim is still alive. It isn't pleasant to watch, but nature is seldom merciful. 18

No matter how savage their attack, wolves are not wanton killers, as they have so often been pictured. Rarely do they kill more than they need.

Douglas Pimlott, then of the Ontario Department of Lands and Forests, spent the winter of 1958-59 following wolf packs in Algonquin Provincial Park with a helicopter. In five months he counted 219 deer that had been killed by wolves. Nearly all had been completely eaten.
"Only rarely did we find evidence of more than one deer being killed at a time by a pack," Pimlott reported. And he added, "We have grown into the habit of considering the killing of a moose or deer by wolves a bad thing, this is not true, either from the standpoint of sportsmen or from that of the moose and deer herds." Pimlott went on to call wolf bounties an utter waste.

here is still a great deal to be learned about the ways of the wolf. One summer, for example, I came across fascinating firsthand proof that wolves as well as brown bears are fishermen -or at least try to be. On the remote American River, just outside Katmai National Monument, I watched a large female wolf trying to catch spawning sockeyes in a shallow riffle. 18GG: It is only the human species that must eat its meat in a deceased condition. Other life forms have not the logic, man possesses towards repulsive nor acceptance of how food is eaten. Therefore, the word merciful is unknown in nature. Nature, is not a logical world, nor is nature a thinking entity. "How" ALL-wild animals eat has nothing to do with voting for or against their existence. Logic proves that wolves looked on from the grassy banks.

Photographing the wolves on the American River wasn't easy. In fact, I found it impossible to get more than two of them in the camera's viewfinder at one time. I'd estimate that there were six to nine in the pack that loitered near, but out of sight of our camp, which had been built to census, the salmon run.

One wolf was far more trusting than the rest, once approaching within thirty feet. Most of them would come no closer than the opposite bank of the river, about 150 feet away. Most of my pictures had to be made with a 500-mm. telephoto lens.

I think that the wolves were drawn to this spot because the Fish and Wildlife Service team had built a weir across the river there in order to count the salmon. The fish were especially vulnerable just below the weir, and the place soon attracted several brown bears. I think that the wolves were lured to the partly eaten salmon strewn along the banks by the bears. When that source of food ran out, the wolves turned to fishing for themselves.

The truth about wolves is the hardest thing for most people to believe. Perhaps no other North American wild creature is so misunderstood, and few animals are feared and hated so much. From the very beginning of settlement on this continent, all hands have been turned to eliminating wolves wherever they were found.

It is doubtful whether wolves were ever a menace to humans. I have not been able to find, in any reliable source dealing with them, a single authenticated case of unprovoked wolf attack on man in the last fifty years. There are numerous tales of such attacks dating back to the 1800s, but it is hard to sort out truth from fiction.

There are many other stories, apparently true, telling how wolves came very close but either left or was driven off and did not actually attack. Wolves once had an unnerving habit of closing in around a man under the right circumstances, often getting within a few yards or even a few feet. And if these animals have killed few or no humans on this continent, they have scared many half to death.

These accounts, coupled with the many blood-chilling old stories from Europe (authorities believe that some of them may have been true), legends such as Little Red Riding Hood, and myths about werewolves, probably explain in good part of the reason wolves have been considered to be wanton killers and outlaws we can better do without.

It must be admitted, to, that wolves kill their natural prey savagely. They at times robbed fresh graves in the early days of the American West, an action that contributed to their bad name.

Many outdoorsmen believe that the only good wolf is a dead one, and that is also the official attitude in most places. Wolves are unprotected almost everywhere they still survive, from Alaska and Canada (except in national parks) to Russia. They are poisoned, trapped, hunted by plane and snowmobiles. In many places, there is still a bounty on their heads. Alaska at this writing still pays $50 per wolf. One bush pilot in southeastern Alaska told me that he could make a good living during the winter months by scattering poison baits along the shores of lakes in his area. He goes back later to collect the carcasses. His annual take is twenty-five to thirty-five wolves, worth about $4,000 in bounties and pelts.

To keep the record straight, in Alaska wolves are classified as both game animals and fur-bearers. But they are game animals on paper only.

In about seventy-five percent of the state, wolves receive absolutely no protection. In another ten percent (the Seward and Kenai regions, there are no wolves. In the remainder, there is a closed season on wolves and some restrictions on the use of aircraft in hunting them, but residents can still collect the $50 bounty on a dead wolf. Bounties on any wild animals are an outright waste. When they are paid on a vanishing species such as the wolf, their consequences are especially ugly.

Bounties have even tempted airborne hunters to invade such sanctuaries as Alaska's Mount McKinley National Park in quest of a fast and easy buck. The wolves there are particularly vulnerable since the country is largely tundra with little concealment, and it's easy to spot and kill the animals from planes.

It is hard to overcome deep-seated prejudice. But I submit that the wolf is an important and valuable member of the wildlife community and a splendid game animal. He deserves protection as much as does the grizzly, the polar bear, or the desert sheep. In fact, the wolf s need may be even more urgent today.

It's high time we made him a game animal wherever he survives. As Stanley Young says in his excellent book, The Wolves of North America, "Wolves are of surpassing interest as an outstanding group of predatory animals. There is no reason why they should not be accorded a permanent place in the fauna of this continent."

Does the wolf really qualify as a game animal? The answer is an unqualified and emphatic yes. He has all the qualities we demand in a big-game species. He is extremely shy, wary, and hard to hunt, and an autumn or winter wolf pelt is a beautiful trophy. The wolf is no more a wildlife villain than are any of the bears we regard so highly.

It's certainly true that for a man alone and on foot with only a gun, no large North American animal, except possibly the mountain lion or the jaguar, is harder to kill in fair chase. Fair chase, of course, rules out the use of aircraft or snowmobiles in actual hunting.

The need for regulations to give the wolf protection as a game animal is becoming more
19GG Note: Common Black Bear included. 20GG Note: Fair chase, according to Teddy Roosevelt, is on foot or horseback. NO mechanical transportation or vehicles allowed. urgent because of the growing use of snowmobiles in some areas of the North. This problem is parallel to that of the improper use of aircraft in hunting big game. Wolf hunting done, as it should be, on even terms, is so great a challenge that only hunters who deliberately seek them kill a handful of the animals each year.

I like what Dr. Joe Linduska, acting director of U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife, has to say about wolves as game: "Of course they qualify. And they should be made game because birds and animals so classed are in far less danger of extinction than non-game species. The timber wolf is to important to become only a stuffed relic in museums."

Our wolves are important for still another reason. They are exciting symbols of a wilderness that is dwindling all to rapidly. The American outdoors wouldn't be the same if wolf tracks didn't cross new-fallen snows or if the wolf s eerie song didn't shatter the stillness of brittle arctic nights.

MORE ON WILDLIFE AND FISH:

The uniqueness that exists in wilderness can never be reconstructed to it's natural un roaded condition once the Forest Service is let loose with it's DEFORESTATION plans. This is the one internal wound their Draft Environmental Impact Statements never drives home.

The difference is it can't happen if society says "NO!"

Roads predominate the majority of all our forests now. There is no lack of them. There are more roads than what is prudent to satisfy all who care to drive rather than walk or use horseback. The entire continent of North America has been highwayed. Just a few specks, by comparison, remain untouched.

The Forest Service builds thousands of miles of new forest roads each year.

Wilderness is not for everybody, but the opportunity to use wilderness must be guaranteed. Wilderness is a place where MILLIONS of Americans like to go. In wilderness they find not one automobile, not one telephone pole, no dams, fences, or human beings in large numbers that cannot be avoided. There is nothing civilized about wilderness. In this is its true value. Wilderness is mirrored perfection of all that was.

Wilderness that contains wild animals requires thought and prudence to enter. A policy of experienced guides, hired for their expertise and experience is available. Not so much to
21GG: Or resound off the canyon walls of the Selway Wilderness, or the draws and valleys of the Blue Joint, Bitterroot. There is nothing that fills the soul with more adventure, more exciting peace than the song of the gray wolf. To hear it once is to remember it always. The object today is not to protect the human intruder, but rather to protect the animals from humans.

These areas are a rare and unique opportunity for America. America doesn't need another West Yellowstone situation for a park, where the public has rest rooms, restaurants, asphalt roads, and parking areas. Here is a last chance to set aside an area where everything is natural, where animals may be seen as they really are and where they are safe, and free.

The record shows there is every reason to expect a high level of safety with wilderness. The streets at night in our cities are more dangerous and take more human lives than any wilderness has. So has zoos, medicines, hospitals, and electric chairs - yet we don't outlaw zoos, hospitals, or electric chairs, all of which have cost more lives than any wilderness ever will or has.

Mr. Jim Repine, commonly known as Mr. Alaska, probably encounters more grizzly and brown bears each year equal to any man alive today. In all the years and tens of thousands of bears he has encountered, has he had to shoot only one bear, That particular bear was not shot in the wilderness. The fact of the matter is, it was a black bear. Not a grizzly. Not a brown.

Personally, as a professional sportsman, I'm more blunt about the number of out-of-season killed bears. They are shot for the least of excuses by either cowards, non-professionals or simply by those who like to kill something bigger than they are. Then they make up huge lies about the situation.

This business of Wildlife Officials accepting wild stories of having to shoot this charging bear would stop quickly if regardless those individuals had to pay a $20,000.00 fine. If my life was truly in danger I would shoot the pipe-dream and be happy to be alive to pay the $20,000.00. Such a law would stop all of the outrageous shootings of bear in Alaska.

I have been with this man in Alaska, and what he means is you don't get between a cub and it's mother. You don't cut off a bears natural desire to want to get away and you always walk out of any pool they wish to explore for food.

So the question is, can we permit the introduction of grizzly bears into these areas? The answer is yes. Bears hate to be near humans. We are not talking about park bears but wild bears. All wild, big game animals dislike humans. Some take more time to back away or leave than others. But without exception they would rather leave or permit any intrusion to do likewise. The exception is mothers protecting young, a wounded cornered animal, or when a meal is challenged. Understanding these things removes almost all dangers of confrontation from all species. Even a magpie will fight a house cat if it's young are in danger and they manage to give cats a complete thrashing. Human mothers have been known to pick up the full weight of an automobile off their husbands. What is so unusual when nature provides the same instincts for survival for all animals when it comes to retreating or attacking? Retreating is nature's first primary urge.

Comparing to what land remains, some species are "rare". Forest Service intrusions will disrupt them. Which, I ask, will be disrupted? The Forest Service doesn't know!

I will name but a few of the animals that Walt Disney knows more about than the Forest Service does.

THEY ARE THE:

1) Masked shrew
2) Northern water shrew
3) Silver-haired bat
4) Hoary bat
5) Little brown myotis bat
6) Western pipistrel bat
7) Big Freetail bat
8) Big Brown bat
9) Grizzly bear (rare)
10) Black bear
11) Gray wolf (rare)
12) Coyote
13) Red Fox
14) Kit or Swift Fox
15) Puma or Mountain Lion
16) Bobcat
17) Lynx (rare)
18) Raccoon
19) Marten (rare)
20) Fisher (rare)
21) Long-tailed weasel
22) Short-tailed weasel
23) Mink
24) Wolverine (rare)
25) River Otter
26) Striped skunk
27) Spotted skunk
28) Badger
29) Porcupine
30) Beaver
3 1) Little Pine Vole or Northern mole pine mouse
32) Aplodontia or mountain boomer (rare)
33) Phenacomys or lemming mice or tree mice (rare)
34) Townsend Gophers (rare)
35) Yellow-bellied marmot
36) Golden marmot (rare)
37) Red Squirrel
38) Pine Squirrel
39) Fox Squirrel
40) Northern Flying Squirrel
41) Ground Squirrels
42) Thirteen-lined ground squirrel
43) Golden-mantled ground squirrel
44) Columbian ground squirrel
45) Bushytail wood rat
46) Possibly the White-footed mouse
47) Northern Grasshopper mouse
48) Western Jumping mouse
49) Pocket mouse
50) Western Harvest mouse
51) Kangaroo rat
52) Pika
53) White-tailed jackrabbit
54) Snowshoe Hare
55) Mountain cottontail
56) Wapiti
57) White-tailed deer
58) Mule deer
59) Moose (rare)
60) Bighorn (rare)
61) Mountain Goat (rare)
62) Yellow pine chipmunk
63) Pileated Woodpecker
64) Mountain Caribou
65) Wood Duck
66) Golden Eye
67) Mallard
68) Blue Grouse
69) Great Homed Owl
70) Brook Trout
71) Cutthroat Trout Types
72) Rainbow
73) Steelhead
74) Sculpin Species
75) Darter Species
76) Stream Entomology of all Stream Life Affected by Soil Erosion
77) Thermal Air Inversion Smoke conditions and air quality affects on all life forms.
78) All endangered or rare plants to be listed.

This list only names but a handful of animals and life forms that need the protection of wilderness. This list does not contain the hundreds and even thousands of additional animals, plants, and bird life that have not been inventoried or listed in the Draft Environmental Impact Statements.

The point is there is much more at stake than giving away our last wilderness timber to those who don't give a damned.

RANGE:

"Livestock use of the Forest will occur at the present level of grazing and in the same areas of the Forest. Recreation stock use and need for forage will continue to increase."

How many Animal Unit Months were allowed and at what rate of payment in 1985? How many livestock head were allowed in 1985 in all the wilderness involved? How many head were illegally allowed on national wilderness property in the State of Montana in 1980 through 1985?

Then why did Federal District Court Judge Paul Hatfield rule that oil-gas leases issued by Gallatin and Flathead National Forests are illegal? The Gallatin National Forest is Grizzly habitat. The Flathead National Forest is Grizzly and Caribou habitat.

As reported in the Spring Issue of "BEAR NEWS" 1985, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that an Montana National Forest's road construction and timber sales plan is illegal. The court's ruling stopped a timber road in the Nez Perce National Forest. Frankly, it's this researcher's opinion that since we made the Louisiana Purchase, I didn't ever dream the Forest Service would ever try to claim it all with one, massive blow.

There are three short comments that I include from BEAR NEWS.

"You pay the bill for Forest Service practices that can reduce survival opportunities for wild bears. A 1984 report by the General Accounting Office says it costs the federal government more money to sell timber in the Rocky Mountains than it received in payment for the timber. Cost of Forest Service road building was one cost blamed for the expense to taxpayers. Total loss estimated by GAO was $46 million."

"Assistant Agriculture Secretary John Crowell has stepped down. As the Reagan Administration's man in charge over the Forest Service and Soil Conservation Service, Crowell was a controversial figure. He was a former employee of Louisiana Pacific, a timber company dependent on sales of publicly owned timber. Critics said possible conflict of interest could arise by putting him in charge over the Forest Service. The Reagan administration has named Peter Myers to replace Crowell."

(To Peter Myers, we will send this report. Let us all find out WHO Peter Myers is).

"The controversial Eldridge Creek timber sale in the Gallatin Canyon near Yellowstone National Park has been canceled by the Forest Service. Critics of the sale said the U.S. taxpayer was paying $504 per acre in road construction and other costs of the sale, meanwhile destroying habitat needed by grizzly bears and elk, The Forest Service canceled the sale under pressure from the Bozeman, Montana Madison-Gallatin Alliance, other local conservationist and U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT)" (Who is an environmental crook).

WATER & AIR:

The U.S. Forest Service Says: "The quantity of water produced by Forest streams will increase less than 0.2 percent above current levels. Existing air quality conditions will be maintained."

This is impossible; it smacks immediately with no scientific proofs. It smacks of being a felonious understatement. To say only .2 percent increase above current levels can be expected, is based on understating fact. The Forest Service also have not stated what THE RATE of runoff increase will be when the Forest Service removes over 50% of the forest canopy. The Forest Service have not said what the soil erosion would be when winter is over and spring runoff begins.

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