Environmental news round-up – wolf-baiting, ice-melting, elk-sickening

Government to look at claims of deliberate wolf-baiting

In a story High Country News reported last year, a Mogollon Rim ranch hand admitted deliberately baiting a Mexican gray wolf with cattle. His aim was to get the wolf to attack livestock, get its “third strike” on such attacks, and so be eligible for the euphemistic “elimination.”

Damn, even Idaho/Montana/Wyoming ranchers aren’t as bad with their reintroduced wolves as New Mexico/Arizona ones are with the reintroduced Mexican wolves.

Real brucellosis problem in Yellowstone

Is elk, not bison. Problem is, none of the Yellowstone-adjoining states have done much in the past to monitor elk populations. Problem No. 2 is that hunters don’t want the states culling elk, while they have no problem shooting a motionless bison from 20 yards.

West Antarctic ice melt speeds up

The West Antarctic ice sheet is calving more bergs and getting thinner. The Spiegel article is skeptical, in the good scientific sense, about tying this to global warming, mainly because the sheet has only been measured since the 1980s. Nonetheless, it certainly bears watching.