Engineering Eden

I just finished reading an interesting book.  Engineering Eden  It is about grizzly bear and elk populations in Yellowstone National Park and the evolution of thought about how humans should intervene in controlling their populations.  It also touches on prescribed fire and on the introduction of wolves.  I enjoyed reading it and am very interested in many of these subjects. The fundamental question is what is the park ranger's role - "guardian or gardener"?  What is natural?  Should humans be intervening in order to achieve it?

The book uses some lawsuits over the death of park visitors (killed by grizzly bears after closing the park's trash dumps to bears) to highlight the differing management philosophies.  It also shows the competing interests, politics, legal questions, and scientific disputes that influence the actions of the park management.  I have a new appreciation for the park rangers.  I find the organization of the book a little confusing - it jumps around between threads of the story - but it is really a worthwhile read if you are at all interested in human/wildlife interaction (or ecology or management).

On another subject, I stumbled across this post recently by the Fish and Wildlife Service on wolverines. FWS Wolverines    This is a critter that I have never encountered in the wild.  The above mentioned book also enlightened me on the various government agencies and their differing roles and philosophies (NPS, FWS, NFS, BLM, etc).

Quick Stop

 I made a quick stop-by to pick up some possessions that didn't make it into the car last week (Joan's bag - duh).  I had just enough time to make a quick spin and change camera cards.

 Surprised to see the bobcat again.

 He hadn't showed up for awhile.

There are a couple of bucks still holding onto their antlers.

 Neither was a record book entry.

 Turkey mating season starting to wind up - gobblers on the prowl.

 There was some interesting weather in the last few days.

 We have more predicted for tomorrow - it's been moving around anywhere from 2" to 10".

 Some of these deer looked soaked and miserable.

 But the sun comes out and they dry.

 Did you see the comment from Steve on the last post?  He suspects that critters like this one may be responsible for the "Poop of the Week" last week.

No shortage of predators.

And there's always pictures of possums, rabbits, squirrels and occasionally skunks.

 There have been no minerals or food out at these sites for weeks but they still attract crowds.

 High-stepping.

And many domestics...

Covered Some Ground - A Couple Sheds

 I didn't think about using an app to track my steps until I was halfway thru my third walk of the weekend.  The blue line shows me walking the property lines.  I have hired a surveyor to do a professional job of marking the boundaries.  It's a requirement for a forestry tax abatement program (TOFL).  Pike County is having some property tax turmoil and it appears that my taxes just doubled.  The red line is my approximation of my route before I turned the app on.

End of the day - 15,000 steps and the equivalent of 35 floors of stairs.

I did find three shed antlers.  I haven't had as much time as normal to get out there looking for them this year.

I made a large batch of jerky this weekend.

See the arrow pointing to the platform up on the pond stand.  It's about 20' in the air.  And, the poop of the week" is up there.

There were actually two of them.  The one in the foreground is about cat sized. The one in the background is dog sized.  What can possibly be leaving these up here?  Lots of roughage in there - not domesticated.

Daffodils at the base of the stairs.

A deer print and a dog or coyote print near the pond.

I ran into this possum in the field.  He was not too concerned about me.  I'll put a video later in the post with a couple other videos that I took this weekend.

Sunrise Sunday.  I was out on the porch playing with the jerky and two gobblers let loose gobbling about 15' away from me.  It took me a few minutes to get the phone out and try to video them.  I flushed a couple more gobblers on my walk.

More turkey evidence.

It's hard to describe my route for the walk.

I found all kinds of artifacts.

It's neat to see evidence of well worn deer trails that aren't so noticeable at other times of the year.

Broomsedge and cedars taking over old pasture.

More trees down across my trails.  I've got my work cut out for me when I can find the time to deal with some of this stuff.

Creek bottoms.

Interesting snags.

Shed antler.

Another snag.

Another skull/skeleton.

Plenty of up and down.

I did some riding too.

Here's a couple links of interest.  woman-killed-lion-sanctuary  The internet mobs don't seem to be as upset about this one as they were about Cecil.  Another one a couple years ago lion-whisperer-kevin-richardson-defends-lioness-who-killed-american-tourist

Some of the videos from this weekend. Harrier Hawk
Unafraid Possum
Gobblers That Almost Came On Porch
Turkey Vulture I Think

Looks serious.

Lots of gobbling this weekend.

Single file in snow.

One sided still.

Dropped.

Long shadows.

Fox

Coyote

Neighborhood dogs.