RMEF leaders say the population forecast defines an alarmingly short window for conservationists to help shape the heart of elk country before an additional 20 million people are living in the region by 2030.

““We have to work with an increasing sense of urgency,”” said RMEF President and CEO David Allen. ““We often talk about conserving wild places for our kids and grandkids to enjoy, and that’s powerful motivation. But we’re on the doorstep of landscape-scale changes that will affect current generations, too, if we don’t act quickly. Some of us elk hunters could lose our traditional way of life before we even have a chance to pass it on.””

According to the Census Bureau, states along and west of the Rocky Mountains will see an average of 28 percent growth by 2030. For all states eastward, the bureau anticipates an average growth rate of just 14 percent.

About 90 percent of all elk in North America occur in the rapid-growth states.

RMEF’s five ways to prepare:

1. Good Planning. Any profusion of poorly planned subdivisions, sprawl or related activity could accelerate loss, fragmentation and degradation of elk habitat. Consideration of these areas is increasingly important for developers, city planners, highway engineers, food and energy producers, etc. To help, RMEF contributes habitat data to mapping programs available to professionals who wish to identify and avoid critical areas of elk country, including:

Winter Range— – In much of the West, some of the most attractive tracts for development are lower elevation lands that also happen to be historic winter range for elk. Abundance and quality of winter range are limiting factors in the size of a region’s’ elk herd.

Calving Grounds – —Like winter range, elk calving grounds also are used traditionally. Once displaced from primary areas, pregnant cows will settle for secondary habitats that offer less cover, space, forage and water.

Summer Range— – Lush green summer range is vital to the health of elk as they nourish calves, evade predators and enter the rut. But research shows that extended drought and overgrown forests are negatively affecting some elk herds, especially in areas where predators are undermanaged.

Migration Corridors – —Highly mobile elk do best with unimpeded travel routes between habitat types.

2. Land Protection. Conserving strategic tracts of open space is a key to offsetting human population growth. Tools include purchasing land from willing sellers and conveying it to public ownership, land swaps and conservation easements. To date, RMEF has used these and more to help permanently protect over 1 million acres of elk country.

3. Habitat Stewardship. Managing protected habitat for optimum productivity is ever more important. Prescribe burning, treating noxious weeds, forest thinning to create early seral habitat, rejuvenating meadows and wetlands, improving riparian zones and adding guzzlers are among the ways to help habitat hold more wildlife. To date, RMEF has used these and more to help enhance over 5 million acres of elk country.

4. Predator Management. Much of elk country no longer resembles its original form. People made it smaller. Fire suppression made it thick and overgrown. Noxious weed infestations made forage problems even worse. Elk are amazingly adaptable but in certain areas they are proving unable to handle the added challenge of burgeoning predator populations. Calf survival rates are too low to sustain some herds for the future. Current and expected habitat conditions dictate responsible management of wolves, bears and lions on balance with other wildlife and human needs. RMEF is pressing this issue on several fronts.

5. Keep Hunting. With the anticipated population growth in the West, open space and opportunities for hunting could be reduced. Loss of hunters will translate to less wildlife management and less funding for conservation overall, which will compound all of the above problems. RMEF is prioritizing projects that enhance public hunting access and strengthening America’s understanding of the important conservation heritage of hunting.

RMEF membership, now at 184,135 and growing, has set records for four consecutive years. With continued support, RMEF will be positioned to keep making a difference over the critical 18 years to come.

For more information, visit www.rmef.org or call 800-CALL ELK.

The bristlecone pines that created the shape of the Hockey Stick graph are used in nearly every millennial temperature reconstruction around today, but there are also a handful of other tree ring series that are nearly as common and just as influential on the results. Back at the start of McIntyre’s research into the area of paleoclimate, one of the most significant of these was called Polar Urals, a chronology first published by Keith Briffa of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. At the time, it was used in pretty much every temperature reconstruction around. In his paper, Briffa made the startling claim that the coldest year of the millennium was AD 1032, a statement that, if true, would have completely overturned the idea of the Medieval Warm Period. It is not hard to see why paleoclimatologists found the series so alluring.<<<Well Worth the Read>>>

Environmentalists and hunters, trappers and fishermen – those outdoor sportsmen – will remain formidable – horrible, terrifying, as the definition goes – so long as environmentalists continue their goals to reduce and/or eliminate hunting, trapping and fishing, and to continue the educational takeover of our schools and children to brainwash them with fallacies about the earth, wind and water and all the creatures that dwell therein.

The only response I will offer to George Smith’s portrayal of how warm and fuzzy relationships should be between sportsmen and environmentalists, is the photo image below. It pretty much says it all.

“This interview candidly reveals the activist bias of Judge Redden that I and many in the Pacific Northwest have suspected for years. Due to his personal views, this one judge unilaterally dragged and drove costly litigation on for nearly a decade.

“He issued unprecedented, questionable and expensive rulings resulting in his literally seizing control of the river system’s operation. He ignored clear and sound science that salmon species are returning in numbers greater than before these dams were built, and forced taxpayers to pay for millions of dollars in higher energy bills and lawyers’ fees. He ordered the waste of tens of millions of dollars by forcing the spilling of water past dams that science reveals has benefited few, if any, fish, and may have actually harmed them. He’s ignored federal science that shows more fish benefit from safe barge transportation, and he’s clouded any semblance of the best science and the law regarding federal salmon protection measures supported by three states, many tribes and other stakeholders.

“This one politician-turned-judge kept pursuing his agenda and imposing his own views over the policies of the elected Presidential Administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

“Judge Redden has admitted his bias in favor of the agenda of radical environmental groups whose sole goal is the extreme act of tearing down hydropower dams that provide the vast majority of the power generated for Northwest families and businesses—about 80 percent for Idaho, 70 percent of Washington and nearly 60 percent for Oregon. This is clean, carbon-free and renewable energy that has supported the Northwest’s vibrant agriculture, technological and trade economies for decades.

“Judge Redden’s bias is being used to further this radical agenda just months after he announced his retirement from the case and as a new, hopefully impartial, judge has been appointed to oversee the endless and unclear future of litigation he perpetuated.

“It’s time for the endless litigation and radical agendas—bolstered by one man’s personal views and grip on a judge’s gavel—to stop and to ensure that the Northwest will be given certainty that a plan supported by states, tribes and others will be approved to ensure that dams keep producing clean, renewable hydropower and allow for abundant salmon for generations to come.”

“If I was a bird, I’d be an angry bird right now,” said David Almasi, executive director of the National Center for Public Policy Research and director of the National Center’s “Occupy Occupy DC” project. “Countless innocent birds that only want to be with their eggs die every year from crashing into wind turbines. The environmentalists who promote wind energy at the expense of the birds are green pigs!”

Monday’s event is part of The National Center for Public Policy Research’s “Occupy Occupy D.C.” events at Freedom Plaza. The National Center obtained a five-week permit from the U.S. Park Service that forces the Occupy D.C. encampment to share the park between February 12 and March 15.

A report by the National Research Council estimated that wind turbines kill approximately 100,000 birds every year. The American Bird Conservancy claims the number could be triple that estimate — affecting the songbird community most of all.

“At some point the slaughter of birds and bats by taxpayer-subsidized wind turbines is going to trigger serious legal action,” added National Center Senior Fellow Bonner Cohen, Ph.D. “If the full force of the Migratory Bird Treaty and the Endangered Species Act were brought to bear on these unsightly killing machines, investors would turn their backs on this artificial industry in a heartbeat.”

The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank with over 100,000 recent supporters. Contributions to it are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.