Please use this open thread to post your ideas, comments and information about issues not relevant to the content of articles published on the Black Bear Blog. Thank you.

MISSOULA, Mont. – The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has been officially notified that elk restoration efforts in Virginia will begin this spring.

Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries officials confirmed the news to RMEF, the project’s leading financial contributor with a pledge of $300,000. RMEF leaders say they will now step up local fundraising efforts to ensure the project, once started, continues to move forward and remains on schedule.

RMEF has received numerous donations for the project, including several large gifts from Virginia donors. Still, about half of the pledged amount needs to be raised.

Plans call for relocating up to 75 elk from Kentucky to Buchanan County, Va., with an elk management area to include Dickenson and Wise counties. Biologists are hoping for a sustainable elk population that will offer recreational opportunities such as elk viewing in the short term and a limited hunting season within four or five years.

David Allen, RMEF president and CEO, said, “Elk have been trapped and are now being held in Kentucky for a required quarantine period. The animals will be monitored and tested repeatedly to assure good health. Later, they will be moved to southwest Virginia and held for a second period to allow them to adapt to their new surroundings, and then released in May.”

“We are excited about bringing elk home to Virginia,” said Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries Director Bob Duncan. “And we’re excited about the opportunity to partner with RMEF – a leader in wildlife habitat conservation. RMEF’s support of our agency and our elk restoration project, not only monetarily but through technical assistance and support from RMEF members and chapters throughout Virginia, has been overwhelming. This partnership is beneficial not only to the restoration of elk in southwest Virginia but also to other wildlife species and programs in the area.”

RMEF invested more than $28,000 in 1996 for an initial elk restoration feasibility study in Virginia. Wildlife agency commissioners in 2010 voted unanimously to move forward with the project.

Kentucky’s elk herd, the largest herd east of the Rockies, was restored with financial and technical support from RMEF in the 1990s. That herd now numbers more than 10,000 animals, is a major tourism draw, offers ever-increasing hunting opportunities and is now serving as a source herd for restoration efforts in other states.

To be a part of this historic conservation effort in Virginia, join and support RMEF. Visit www.rmef.org and click “Attend an Event” to find fundraisers planned across the state. For additional information, call 800-CALL ELK or contact Chris Croy, RMEF regional director for Virginia, at 704-551-6223 or ccroy@rmef.org.

I’ve spoken of this before. The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation has proven itself a very reliable and effective means of responsible wildlife management in this country. As a matter of fact it is the envy of the planet. This model ensures that when properly administered all wildlife species will be managed in a way that promises healthy populations.

This Model utilizes hunting, fishing and trapping as one means of not only allowing the people the opportunity to harvest the resource but to control populations. Science and data collection are the basis for a plan for that management in which, once again if administered properly, will use harvest as a means of sustaining, lowering or increasing a population depending upon need. As I have said, historically this has been a very successful model.

When environmentalists, which include animal rights groups and anti-hunting groups, jump into the fray, they care little of science, history and the Model. Their goals are to end hunting, fishing and trapping and will do anything to accomplish that including lying, cheating and stealing.

Their childish behavior is not unlike the bratty little kid who, when not getting his way, throws himself/herself onto the floor in a fit of rage, often banging their heads on the floor hoping such an act will give them results.

When wildlife managers, at least those that still find accuracy in the North American Model of Wildlife Management, begin talk of creating a hunt for a particular species, the environmentalists will always jump in with their pseudo scientific claims that hunting a species creates more problems than not.

One example of this is the debate over predators and in particular wolves and coyotes. How often have we heard from these unruly jackanapes that if hunters and trappers kill wolves and/or coyotes these animals will simply run out and produce even more than were killed and this action will result in more problems.

In discussions of problem predators, environmentalists, when the action seems to call for it, will attempt to convince people that a general hunt of wolves and coyotes will do nothing to cure the problem wolf or coyote around a home or ranch, etc. When wildlife managers and animal damage control personnel begin talking about targeting only those destructive critters that feast on livestock, a different elucidation of canine behavior is brought to the table by environmentalists; a clear contradiction of previous statements.

Such is the case in Wisconsin. A bill in that state would allow for a wolf hunt, an event that has long been awaited by the citizens. Now that the wolf has been removed from the Endangered Species Act list and wolves are more than double in numbers the management targeted goals, wildlife managers want a wolf hunt. Not surprising, the environmentalists and wolfaboos are lining up to oppose such an action.

One University of Wisconsin environmental studies professor, Adrian Treves, says that hunting the wolves will result in having to place the wolf back on the endangered list because too many wolves will be killed.

This is just one example of demanding it both ways. Hunters are always blamed for the extirpation of a species. They were blamed, at times solely, as the culprits behind the extinction of the gray wolf in the United States 80-100 years ago. And yet, if a well-managed hunt is ever suggested of a predator such as the wolf or coyote, out come the killing-wolves-only-causes-a-population-increase card. Which is it? Either hunting creates population increases or it causes reductions. It can’t do both at the same time.

If this claim by the environmentalists were something they really believed in, they would be actively promoting more wolf and coyote hunting. They claim their desire is to have wolves in every state in the Union, then maybe it’s time to put their supposed scientific theories to the test. Let the hunting begin and according to them, the population of this species will grow at an even greater rate than it is now.

Oh, but that isn’t what’s behind all of this now is it? It’s all about control and manipulation. Environmentalists throwing themselves on the floor and demanding their way has become an effective tool for them. Couple that with lawsuits that bring them in millions of dollars, they now have money to pay any moron they can find who will come up with some lame scientific theory that gets tossed around as though it were actually a fact and people buy it.

EnvironMENTALism is a mental illness.

Tom Remington

Please use this open thread to post your ideas, comments and information about issues not related to the content of articles published on the Black Bear Blog. Thank you.

Please use this open thread to post your ideas, comments and information about issues not relevant to the content of articles published on the Black Bear Blog. Thank you.