Included in the conference fee is the opening night dinner and the student-professional mixer.

The conference includes an informative Plenary that you can’t miss, “There’s More to Diversity Than Just the Wildlife“.

For travel and lodging information visit here.

See you in Snowbird!

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The BLM manages nearly 70,000 horses and burros on public lands in the West, at a cost last year of $64 million. See TWS’s new factsheet for more information about feral horses and burros in America.

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Black Bear with a Fish. Credit: Alan Vernon/Wikimedia Commons

The American black bear is North America’s smallest and most common bear. Its range extends over nearly all of Canada, and it is pervasive throughout the Cascade, Rocky and Appalachian mountain ranges in the United States. Small, scattered populations of several subspecies (including the Mexican Black Bear, Florida Black Bear, and Louisiana Black Bear) receive varying levels of protection from federal and state agencies.

New Jersey has a stable population of the Eastern black bear subspecies. Current estimates size the population at around 3,400 bears – a significant rise from the 1992 population of 500, and one that can be primarily attributed to protections received during the 1990s.

New Jersey black bear distribution map. Credit: NJ Division of Fish & Wildlife

Serious bear conflicts have also risen – by 2009, they were up 96% from 2006 numbers. In 2010, 76 Category 1 (most aggressive) bear incidents have been reported, and 13 aggressive bears have been euthanized. Over 9,000 comments on the CCBMP, including many that opposed a hunt, were received by the NJ Fish & Game Council before their vote in its favor on 13 July 2010. The decision to use lethal management was announced shortly thereafter, and attributed to a lack of efficient and effective alternatives.

Because the intent of the hunt is to reduce the overall bear population, all sex and size classes of bear (including yearling bears and sows with cubs) will be eligible for the hunt.

Details of the Bear Hunt

The hunt is scheduled to take place from 6 – 11 December 2010, on a 1,000-square-mile region of northern New Jersey situated north of Rte. 78 and west of Rte. 278. The area covers four bear hunt zones: Morris, Sussex, Warren, and Passaic counties. Hunters receiving a permit will be allowed to hunt only in their designated hunt zone.

New Jersey black bear hunting zone map. Credit: NJ Division of Fish & Wildlife

The permit period for the hunt opens on 1 October 2010, but the bear hunter seminar courses required to apply for a permit are

scheduled from 7 September through 10 November 2010. Hunters who retain a valid certification from 2003 to 2006 are not required to attend the seminar courses. The bag limit is one bear per hunter, and youth hunters with a valid permit are allowed to participate.

Controversy

The revised CBBMP has come under fire from animal rights and animal welfare groups, who oppose the hunt in favor of nonlethal bear management methods such as relocation, public education, and aversive conditioning.

Martin notes that although he continues to support and explore nonlethal options for wildlife management, the conclusions of the CCBMP were that lethal options would be the most effective and efficient way to limit the New Jersey bear population.

More Information

Learn more about bears in New Jersey by visiting the NJ Division of Fish & Wildlife’s Bear Fact Page.

Read FAQs about the 2010 bear hunt in New Jersey on the NJ DFW’s Bear Hunt page.

Review the Comprehensive Black Bear Management Policy here.

The Wildlife Society has provided comments in support of the CCBMP. Read more about those comments here.

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And this year’s winners are:

Erik Blomberg from University of Nevada, Reno
Stefanie Bergh from University of Minnesota
Peter Blank from University of Maryland
Kelly Corman from Texas A&M University – Kingsville
Susan Ellis-Felege from University of Georgia
Josh Felch from University of Kentucky
Katherine Guerena from University of Delaware
Matthew Hanson from Florida Atlantic University
Jake Harris from University of Exeter (United Kingdom)
Robin Holevinski from State University of New York – ESF (Syracuse, NY)
Agnes Pelletier from Trent University (Canada)
Tara Raabe from Texas State University
Christina Rockwell from Humboldt State University (Arcata, CA)
Shari Rodriguez from North Carolina State University
Rachael Urbanek from Southern Illinois University (Carbondale, IL)

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Scientific papers have for years revealed these cat-related risks. Two articles  from the early nineties showed that fleas found on cats and opossums carried murine typhus, a relatively mild form of the fever, and infected people, too. Yet another example of how feral cats provide the link between people and wildlife — and wildlife diseases! Not too many people hang out with opossums (myself excluded) but caring for feral cats seems to be a popular pastime these days.  

Toxoplasma gondii forms tissue cysts in the brain of its non-cat hosts, and it’s already been associated with behavioral changes and mental illness (toxo infection is statistically more prevalent in car crash victims and schizophrenics). Now, it looks like the parasite plays a role in Parkinson’s disease: A recent paper in Neuroscience Letters highlights a connection between inflammation of neurons caused by toxo cysts and degeneration of neurons that can lead to developing PD. About twice as many PD patients tested positive for toxoplasmosis than did subjects in the control group. In fact, neuroinflammation similar to that caused by toxo has been identified as an contributing factor of Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s, and Huntington’s diseases.

Feral cats in neighborhoods and backyards increase the chances that people will pick up T. gondii in soil and sandboxes. The moral of this story? Don’t let feral cats mess with your head (and read these papers for more information).

On typhus: Velten et al. 2008. Human cases of flea borne (endemic) typhus in Orange County, California, during 2006-2008. Orange County Vector Control District.

Sorvillo et al. 1993. A suburban focus of endemic typhus in Los Angeles County: association with seropositive domestic cats and opossums. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 48(2): 269-273.

Williams et al. 1992. Typhus and typhuslike rickettsiae associated with opossums and their fleas in Los Angeles County, California. Journal of Clinical Microbiology 30(7): 1758-1762.

On Parkinson’s Disease: Miman et al. 2010. The probable realtion between Toxoplasma gondii and Parkinson’s disease. Neuroscience Letters 475: 129-131.

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Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey held a hearing earlier this month despite the congressional recess to examine the oil budget, and cornered NOAA scientist Bill Lehr into admitting that the numbers in the report could be overly optimistic, and that it was not peer-reviewed before its release — a process that’s happening now. Markey insisted that NOAA present the algorithms and methods behind the budget for scrutiny. He emphasized his concern that the report is a public relations effort to quell fears about the spill’s effects and instill confidence in the administration’s response.

 Biologist Rick Steiner is skeptical too. In an interview with The Huffington Post, he said that NOAA’s estimates are based on some questionable assumptions — like the percentage of oil in skimmed oil-water mixtures — and could lead to misunderstandings about the ecological consequences of the spill. He has proposed that BP set up a second $20 billion fund, in addition to the one designed to compensate economic losses due to the spill, to address habitat restoration. He believes that the oil still left in the water will have long-term and unpredictable consequences on fisheries and the general health of the Gulf. Actions like wetlands restoration and water pollution control could help to bolster the ecosystem against these damages.

Of course, part of the reason that the spill’s effects have been downplayed is because they’re out of sight, deep below the surface in underwater plumes — some as big as Manhattan, scientists say. Studies in Florida, for example, have found that large amounts of oil on the ocean floor are taking a toll on benthic and deepwater systems, and the oil is not degrading as quickly at depth as was hoped.

Read The Huffington Post’s coverage of this story and the interview with Rick Steiner for more information on the estimates, the oil that remains, and the way forward.

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Below is some helpful information to show the value of attending the Annual Conference

General Tips

Many travel budgets and training budgets have been slashed, and some agencies and organizations are experiencing severe financial problems. Which means that regardless of the merits of a conference, you’ll probably need to justify the expense – so here are some things you might want to consider:

* Focus on what you will specifically bring back to the organization as return for the investment.
* Offer to prepare and deliver a short presentation and Q&A to your colleagues to share what you learned. This way others in your unit can also benefit from your attendance.
* Share the syllabus and speaker handouts with your colleagues. As an attendee, you have unlimited access to materials posted by speakers.
* Be ready with a plan that shows who will cover for you while you are attending the conference.
* Offer to share a room to reduce hotel expenses by finding a roommate on the Share a Room group on the TWS Annual Conference Facebook Group.

How to calculate ROI of the conference

Read this article to understand more about your expenses and benefits of attending TWS Annual Conference

Justification letter for your supervisor

Download a sample letter that you can easily edit to fit your needs

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Our thoughts are with both Hicks and Romanjenko, and we wish them a speedy recovery.

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Of course, cat advocates also do not mention that feral cats in the United States–even well fed ones– kill and eat millions of other native animals besides introduced rats and mice, including most notably migratory birds and various other small animals, some of which are threatened or endangered with extinction.  They don’t mention that rats and mice multiply far faster than cats can keep up with them, even if the cats were to focus their attention exclusively on rodents, which they don’t.

Feral cats are about as environmentally friendly as a major oil spill.  In fact, conservationists have lamented the loss of thousands of birds, including brown pelicans, to the Gulf oil spill, but feral cats are responsible for killing millions of native birds annually–an impact many times larger than that of the spill.  The cats are “green” movement is therefore another attempt by feral cat advocates to snooker the public into believing that the presence of these animals is beneficial to nature and humankind, when, in fact, if biodiversity conservation is our goal, then nothing could be further from the truth.

Perhaps even more incredible is their claim that cats–because they occasionally eat rodents–are protecting people against diseases carried by rodents, such as Hantavirus.  What they do not mention, however, is that feral cats themselves are carriers of serious diseases, such as rabies, toxoplasmosis, and feline leukemia, some of which can infect both humans and wildlife, such as sea otters and Florida panthers.

But my favorite quote from the above link from Green Cats is that “the feral cat provides a humane and environmentally friendly method of rodent control.”  Humane?  Humane for the cat, perhaps, but have these people ever watched a feral or domestic cat play with and kill its prey?  Guess not, because if they did, they would hardly classify it as humane.  Environmentally friendly?–Not with the skeletons of millions of dead birds and other small mammals killed by feral cats littering our parks and suburban neighborhoods.  Not with wildlife, such as sea otters, suffering from toxoplasmosis.

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