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).
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