Posts

Can Human Hunters become a Natural Part of the Ecosystem?

  Who doesn’t love nature?  The fresh air blowing through the trees, the sweet songs of birds and frogs, and the absolute feeling of being free.  The chance to see a female deer and its fawn excite even the most urbanized kid and seeing a real life equivalents of Chip and Dale chasing each other would make anyone laugh.  Those who have worked with or have been in nature know that when nature is in balance, things work out beautifully for both man and nature. But nature is not entirely balanced these days. Despite the pristine appearance of our natural areas, there is a problem happening within.  Deer and elk have been visiting the riparian areas (where land and water meet) of streams, rivers, and lakes more often than they had before and have been consuming more than their fair share of sapling trees.  Why is this all bad?  Well, with the deer and elk visiting the riparian areas more often, they are consuming the sodium-rich plants that are essential t...

Predator Control on Sheep

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  Introduction “Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep, And doesn’t know where to find them. Leave them alone, and they’ll come home And bring their tails behind them.” We have all heard this little nursery rhyme growing up. It always seemed cute and innocent in the cartoons and books we heard it from.  But as we grow up, we tend to make fun of our childhood memories, sometimes humorously or deviously.  For this nursery rhyme, I had an image in my head of a wolf that said, “Where are Little Bo Peep’s sheep?  THEY’RE IN MY BELLY!”  A pretty funny thought, eh?  Well, it is funny to think about.  But in the real world, the idea of a wolf or any form of predatory animal eating a shepherd’s sheep (whether the shepherd’s a beautiful young lady or a grumpy old man) is very serious for the shepherd and the predator in question. It is no secret that in the predator world, the sheep is considered to be the perfect prey animal.  Since domesticated sheep are prett...

Livestock Grazing on Public Lands

“ Home on the range Where the deer and the antelope play Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word And the skies are not cloudy all day ” That old song was is one of the many things you would think of when you look at the prairies and mountains of the western states, especially in Colorado.  It is also one of the songs you always hear when people think about ranchers and cowboys.  As a rancher’s son, I’ve always been proud of my heritage.  So much so that I always wear a straw cowboy hat around every day and everywhere (to the point that my friends and family can spot me a mile away because of it).  I remember, while growing up, that city folk were envious of my upbringing in a ranch environment, thanks to famous western movies (from the old classics with Clint Eastwood in  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly  and John Wayne in  True Grit , to the recent ones with Robert Duvall in  Broken Trail  and Harrison Ford in  Cowboys vs. Aliens )....

On the Idea of Resurrecting Extinct Species

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  The famous "Life finds a Way" quote from Jurassic Park, quoted by Ian Malcolm, played by Jeff Goldbum (from giphy.com) When we hear about the idea of resurrecting extinct species, we tend to think of ethic issues and dilemmas that science-fiction books and movies depict. The most popular of these is “Jurassic Park”, the novel by Michael Crichton and the movie by Steven Spielberg, along with the new "Jurassic World" film coming up. Some of these questions asked include “Should we do it?”, “Are we playing God?”, “Is it the right thing to do?”, “Would anything we bring back cause any environmental issues?” etc. Additionally, we would respond to the idea of cloning extinct species as impossible since most scientists claim that ancient DNA is mostly degraded and would not be viable for biological functions. This was true initially, but in the last few years, remarkable breakthroughs have been achieved in science, making the possibility of resurrecting extinct species m...