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Summer Wildlife OutingsDESERT TORTOISEOn Friday, July 11th, we will be helping Game and Fish with their reproductive study on desert tortoises. This starts very early in the morning (we have to be at the site by 6am, so it means meeting between 5am and 5:30am) and goes until about mid day. This volunteer work includes some relatively strenuous desert hiking in order to locate and evaluate tortoises. Once you get away from the concrete of the city, it is really not as terribly hot as you would imagine, especially in the early hours of the day. Water, snacks, hat, sunscreen, and long pants are all necessities, however. Desert tortoises (Gopherus agassizii) live in two locations -- the Mojave Desert and the Sonoran Desert. This research focuses on the Sonoran desert tortoise. Tortoises have evolved over time to withstand extreme climatic conditions and to survive with little food or water. They feed mostly on native grasses and flowers and hibernate in the winter, when the weather turns cool. If you cannot participate in the field work, but would like to learn more about the desert tortoise and also do more to help, please consider a sponsorship; this will help the Arizona Game and Fish Department with its research and conservation work, including learning more about how the tortoise survives in the desert and what threatens it survival. You can mail sponsorship contributions to: The Desert Tortoise Project, Nongame Branch, 2221 West Greenway Road, Phoenix, AZ 85023-4399 For more information on the desert tortoise service trip or to find out about carpooling, please call Sandy Bahr at (602) 253-8633 or grand.canyon.chapter@sierraclub.org GET WILD!Please join the wildlife committee on July 16 at 6pm as we plan future activities and discuss ways we can assist Arizona's wildlife. We will also have a brief informational presentation regarding the status of some of the important wildlife programs in Arizona. Our meeting will be held at the Sierra Club office located at 202 E. McDowell Rd, Suite 277 in Phoenix. We will meet in the second floor conference room. For more information either call the office at (602) 253-8633 or email Kathy Roediger at kroediger@aol.com.
LEND A HAND TO THE BLACK-FOOTED FERRETGet out of the Valley heat and join us the weekend of August 8-10 in the Aubrey Valley just west of Seligman and north and south of historic Route 66 to help Arizona Game and Fish locate Black Footed Ferrets (Mustela nigripes). You can help locate ferrets via spotlights at night by joining us for one or two evenings or you can assist with assembling acclimation pens during the day on Saturday. All of the spotlighting is at night and goes until the early hours of the morning. Hopefully, we will see ferrets, but other animals we may encounter include badgers, coyotes, gray and kit foxes, pronghorn, burrowing owls, golden eagles, porcupines, snakes, kangaroo rats, grasshopper mice, a variety of bats and plenty of rabbits. The spotlighting is not to harass the animals or for our enjoyment, but at this time it is the best method available for locating ferrets, as they are a nocturnal species. The Black Footed Ferret is the only ferret native to North America and once was found wherever prairie dog colonies thrived. Black Footed Ferrets were extirpated in many areas by late the 1960s due to loss of prairie dogs (its main prey species) from human poisoning. These animals were believed to be extinct until 1981 when a small group was discovered in Wyoming, giving us a second chance to help the species recover. In 1996 Arizona reintroduced the ferrets into the Aubrey Valley. Your assistance will help Game and Fish determine how the ferrets are doing in the wild and will assist with a program that is often starved for funding. Arizona Game and Fish does impose an age restriction and allows no persons under the age of 18 to participate. For more information or to make a reservation, please call Sandy Bahr at 602-253-8633 or email grand.canyon.chapter@sierraclub.org. If you cannot make this date, but would like to help out another time, then contact Tiffany Volz or Kristen Hoss at (928) 422-0155 or at azferret@gf.state.az.us
Mexican Wolf Recovery: Three-year Program Review and Assessment"The ultimate factor determining population viability for wolves is human attitude." This fall the Grand Canyon Chapter Wildlife Committee will be assisting Game and Fish with a mailing to inform hunters about wolves. It is important that everyone understand that the wolves are out there and to discourage any kind of human-wolf interaction. The wolves ultimately lose in these situations. If you are interested in assisting with this, please contact Sandy Bahr at (6020) 253-8633 or grand.canyon.chapter@sierraclub.org. The Mexican Gray wolf is the smallest and southern most of the subspecies of the gray wolf, and also one of the most rare. These wolves once roamed the mountains of southeastern Arizona, central Mexico, southern New Mexico, and even portions of southwestern Texas, but predator removal efforts for the livestock industry extirpated them from the wild. It was listed as endangered in 1976. After years of meeting, planning, captive breeding, pushing, advocating, plus much more, 11 wolves were released into the Blue Range Recovery Area in March of 1998. In addition to assisting with this hunter information mailing listed above, there is more you can do to help the wolves. As you have probably read, for the first time since passage of the Endangered Species Act, the federal government deliberately shot a Mexican gray wolf. They did this because the wolf was chasing and preying on livestock. For the benefit of the long-term survival of these wolves, changes to program are needed, including requiring that the livestock industry remove carcasses of cattle and horses that die in our national forests before wolves scavenge on them and become habituated to livestock. This was one of several recommendations in the 2001 three-year review of the program. A committee of independent scientists recommended several changes in the reintroduction program including more flexibility for wolves when they wander outside the recovery area (currently they recapture them) and the above recommendation relative to livestock that die. Please write a letter to the editor supporting wolf recovery, flexibility for the wolves, and requirements for ranchers to remove dead livestock. Thank you for your support of wolf recovery in Arizona. |
DESERT TORTOISE Photo by Daren Riedle, Arizona Game and Fish Department (No that's not some kind of shell fungus; it is a transmitter.)
BLACK-FOOTED FERRET Photo by Scott C. Sprague, Arizona Game and Fish Department
Mexican Wolf Photo by Robin Silver
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Page updated: 06/23/03 Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Chapter, 202 E. McDowell Rd, Suite 277, Phoenix, AZ 85004, (602) 253-8633 |
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