wish i would have seen this yesterday [frown] so did anyone attend that can shed some light on the meeting?
I don't understand why there considering doing this as they have been trying to eradicate a few of the birds
The Idaho [url "http://www.physorg.com/tags/fish/"]Fish[/url] and Game Commission in May approved a five-year plan to kill and haze American white pelicans in southeastern Idaho to protect sport fish and Yellowstone cutthroat trout populations. The plan calls for shooting some pelicans and applying oil to eggs to suffocate the embryos.
Pelicans are protected under federal law, so anything to cut their numbers requires U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approval.
"We didn't feel the management plan had enough data in it right now to issue the permits required," said Brad Bortner, the Fish and Wildlife Service's migratory birds chief in Portland, Ore. on Wednesday.
Idaho wildlife officials took exception to characterizations of their proposal as a "pelican eradication program" by wildlife officials in Utah
"Absolutely not," said Jeff Gould, chief of Idaho's Bureau of Wildlife. "It's a management plan for pelicans, with the primary goal of reducing impacts to fish."
Gould expects to meet with federal Fish and Wildlife officials later in July to discuss their questions about Idaho's plan, as well as what additional scientific justification will be needed to obtain permits to proceed with management of the big birds.
Pelicans at the Blackfoot Reservoir colony have increased from 1,400 breeding birds in 2002 to 2,400 breeding birds in 2008, while a colony on Lake Walcott on the Snake River increased from about 400 breeding birds in 2002 to more than 4,000 breeding birds.
The agency's plan calls for reducing bird numbers by more than half, while still maintaining a viable population: 700 breeding birds at the Blackfoot Reservoir and 2,100 in Lake Walcott.
Two Fish and Wildlife Service offices - in Oregon and in Utah - panned Idaho's plan, saying that implementing the proposal would undo pelican conservation accomplishments from the last 25 years and any damage could be irreversible.
"Given the conservation status assigned by Idaho and other western states, and given the threats to the species, we believe it is unwise to begin a pelican eradication program," wrote Larry Crist, Fish and Wildlife Service's Utah field supervisor.
"Lethal take of pelicans would not be reversible and it could take years for the local population to recover," he wrote.
Federal managers suggested Idaho instead construct in-stream structures, permanent wire arrays and plant streamside vegetation to discourage pelicans that prey on Yellowstone cutthroat trout, especially in low water years when those swimming upstream are particularly vulnerable.
They also said Idaho's plan failed to take into account how historic water levels in the Blackfoot Reservoir played a role in reducing Yellowstone cutthroat trout numbers. More than 4,700 spawning cutthroats were counted in 2001; the number dropped to just 14 in 2005.
But federal officials pointed out the crash following 2001 came after river discharges during spawning, while trout increased substantially in 2008 after several years of higher river flows.
Pelicans likely arrived in Idaho before white settlers, though the creation of reservoirs for farm irrigation like on the Blackfoot River in the early 1900s produced ideal island habitat for the ground-nesting birds. Some anglers complain the birds eat too many sport fish, though Fish and Game's own plan concedes 90 percent of their diet is composed of non-game fish like chubs.
Idaho can continue to haze pelicans that may be eating cutthroat trout. And for a fourth year, Fish and [url "http://www.physorg.com/tags/wildlife/"]Wildlife[/url] gave state managers permission to kill up to 50 pelicans, though only for scientific analysis of things like their diet, not to control their numbers.
another story
HN MILLER - Associated Press Published: May 16, 2010 at 9:25 AM MDT
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BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The badgers bailed. The skunk skedaddled. The pelicans persevere.
In April, the state Department of Fish and Game put five predators — three badgers, two skunks — on an island in the Blackfoot Reservoir in southeastern Idaho in a bid to keep American white pelicans from nesting there.
The agency blames the big birds for eating too many fish, including sensitive Yellowstone cutthroat trout, as well as stocked hatchery-raised trout coveted by anglers.
But two badgers outfitted with radio collars now appear to have swum to the mainland. There's no sign of the third badger, which had no collar. And only one skunk with a radio collar remains on Gull Island. The other has disappeared.
Mark Gamblin, Fish and Game's regional supervisor for southeastern Idaho, concedes enlisting skunks and badgers to control pelicans has been a bit of a disappointment, at least so far.
"This is exactly what adaptive management is: You try something, you learn something from it and decide what the best approach to take is," Gamblin said.
Pelicans in two colonies in southeastern Idaho, one on the Blackfoot Reservoir and the other on the Snake River's Lake Walcott, have tripled to about 7,000 birds since 2002. Idaho wants to reduce the flock to 700 birds at the Blackfoot Reservoir and 2,100 at Lake Walcott by 2013.
In 2009, Fish and Game proposed shooting pelicans and oiling their eggs to keep them from hatching.
That angered some who like the big birds. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal agency that manages migratory birds under a 1918 law, appeared likely to shoot down Idaho's proposed lethal measures after calling them an "eradication program."
As a result, Gamblin's agency decided to unleash the badgers and skunks.
That the predators bolted isn't exactly a surprise.
A badger's home range is tens or even hundreds of times the size of 6-acre Gull Island. A skunk's range may be 1,200 acres, too.
Both are swimmers.
A radio collar from one of the badgers is currently sending a "mortality signal" from an area that scientists believe is located on the mainland. That means the collar isn't moving. Until it's collected, Gamblin won't know if the animal is dead or has just shed its collar.
"It's a valuable collar, we need to retrieve it," he said.
Biologists who fly the reservoir regularly haven't picked up the signal of two additional collars, meaning the badger and skunk that wore them have likely wandered beyond the one-to-two-mile signal range.
Gamblin said spring snow flurries delayed pelican nesting this year, so the birds are still arriving to lay their eggs.
On Willow Island, a second island in the Blackfoot Reservoir, the state agency has also fenced off about half the pelican nesting habitat. But even that's no guarantee of reducing pelican numbers, because the adult birds might just crowd into nesting habitat that remains.
"It's been effective at preventing nesting activity within the fence," Gamblin said. "We may learn — we don't know yet — that the birds just pack into a tighter area."
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part is most of the people moving into idaho are not interested in hunting and fishing so eventually they are going to win out.