Free Republic

PHOTO CAPTION - SNIPPET: "Officials believe that more members of the so-called Düsseldorf cell may still be at large." SNIPPET: "Halil S. is a man who knows his way around computers. When he went online..." SNIPPET: "German security officials allege that the 27-year-old is the fourth member of the so-called "Düsselfdorf Cell." The group is believed to be the al-Qaida cell currently active in Germany and tasked with carrying out a major attack in Europe. Three other members of the cell, Moroccan Abdeladim el-K. and two accomplices, were arrested in late April and are being held in custody. Authorities believe...

Nestled in the Pacific Ocean approximately 30 miles from the mainland of Santa Barbara sits a beautiful island where majestic Roosevelt elk and Kaibab mule deer roam free. Ferried across a treacherous channel, these grand species were brought to Santa Rosa Island some 80 years ago, but their days are officially numbered. A complete slaughter of these magnificent animals is scheduled to occur before the midnight tide rises on Dec. 31, 2011. Sharpshooters will be en route to the island soon to comply with a 1996 court settlement and 2007 legislation that reinstated the extermination order.

An elk drunk from eating fermented apples in southern Sweden ended its binge by making off with a family's swing set and hiding it in the woods. Hunter in hand-to-hoof battle with angry elk (12 Sep 11) Drunken elk rescued from Swede's apple tree (7 Sep 11) 'Leffe the moose man' promises elk intimacy (6 Sep 11) A homeowner from Storebro in northern Kalmar County arrived home on Wednesday night to find his garden littered with bits of apple and other signs that an elk had been partying in his back yard, the local Östran and Barometern newspapers reported. The...

A drunken elk desperate for just one more mouthful of fermenting apples lost its balance in the attempt, leaving it stuck in an apple tree in western Sweden. When Per Johansson of Särö, south of Gothenburg, returned home from work on Tuesday it was dark outside and the rain was coming down hard. Suddenly Johansson heard a bellowing noise from the garden next door. “I thought at first that someone was having a laugh. Then I went over to take a look and spotted an elk stuck in an apple tree with only one leg left on the ground,” Johansson...

SEQUIM — Prime forage land for the Sequim elk herd has been created, compliments of the National Forest Service and other wildlife preservation groups that have worked hard to create a plush green mountain meadow on historic elk habitat near Caraco and Canyon creeks in the Upper Dungeness River watershed. Since 2005, about $88,000 has gone into the project to improve habitat in the large land mammal’s historic calving grounds in Olympic National Forest. There’s only one drawback. No elk can be found there now that the restoration project has matured.

The 26 elk lips were just the tip of the pile. The items the Russian customs agents reported seizing Tuesday were exotic even by the standards of Russia’s border with China, where wildlife smuggling is rampant: 1,041 bear paws, lynx fur, unspecified claw parts and five tusks from the extinct woolly mammoth.

Wolves and grizzly bears are mostly to blame for a steep population decline in a signature elk herd in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, government scientists said on Wednesday. The elk population in the northern section of the park is prized by sportsmen who hunt outside Yellowstone boundaries in Montana and by the millions who pour into the park each year to see wildlife. Annual counts of the northern Yellowstone elk population show it has plummeted by more than 70 percent since 1995, falling from 16,791 to fewer than 5,000 today. Biologists said wolves and grizzlies are the...

United States District Judge Donald Molloy's August 5 decision to restore full endangered species protection to the Canadian gray wolf in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming virtually guarantees that more people will fall victim to the proliferating and increasingly brazen predators. In addition, elk populations as well as populations of other wild ungulates (moose, deer, goats, sheep, bison) may be driven to near extinction levels in many parts of the Rocky Mountain Northwest due to wolf predation. Ranchers also have experienced a sharp increase in wolf killings of cattle and sheep, enough so that some cattlemen and sheepmen have been driven...

Thanks to U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy's ruling (PDF file of preliminary injunction order) that the Endangered Species Act protections must be reinstated for wolves in both Montana and Idaho, be prepared to hear of more reports about large packs of wolves roaming the countryside in neighboring states like the one that was filmed in Oregon. Even though neither state, Washington or Oregon, were part of the Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf reintroduction program, they are definitely a recipient of the outcome. It was the late "90"s when the first wolves made it to Oregon, now they are beginning to...

The pictures you will see below are all taken in the Lolo Elk Management Zone 10 and 12. All that is except for 6 x 8 bull elk, which was taken 30 miles outside Libby, Montana in the Winter of 2008. I added it just to show that the wolves are also attacking and killing healthy adult bull elk for fun, and not for food. All these photos and and more were given to the Idaho Fish and Game officials IFG who refused to act upon the problem. You can bet that this problem is happening in every state...

The reintroduction of wolves to western habitats has met with plenty of controversy. Landowners, sportsmen and conservation groups have been on one side or the other since the project began. And now the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) is calling the bluff of pro-wolf groups like Defenders of Wildlife, Western Wildlife Conservancy and others for their manipulative use of data concerning the relationships between elk and wolves. The rub lies in these groups' use of RMEF statistics that supposedly show an increase in elk populations in the northern Rockies as a result of the wolf reintroduction program. Letters to the...

Link only - Hunting to help hunger - Game meat can be donated to food banks

A Swedish man who was arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife has been cleared, after police decided she was probably killed by an elk. Ingemar Westlund, aged 68, found the dead body of his wife Agneta, 63, by a lake close to the village of Loftahammer in September 2008. He was immediately arrested and held in police custody for 10 days. Now the case has been dropped after forensic analysis found elk hair and saliva on his wife's clothes. Mr Westlund told Expressen newspaper: "My family and I have been dragged through a nightmare." His wife had last been...

This 640-pound concrete elk statue lies on its side in the backyard of Mark and Carol Brye’s home in rural Viroqua. The dead buck lies about 20 feet away. A love-struck buck ran out of luck a week ago. The seven-point buck was killed when it rammed a 640-pound concrete statue of an elk in the backyard of Mark and Carol Brye's home in rural Viroqua. Bucks often fight during the breeding season, commonly called the rut. Dominant bucks defend breeding territories and female deer by sparring with subordinate bucks. Antler battles sometimes result in the death of one or...

My wife and I drove up to Estes Park, Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. We only saw about ten deer, but about 300 elk. They were everywhere. In the national park, but most were in town. They were eating shrubbery in people's front yard, crossing roads and only occasionally not disrupting things.

Rocky Mountain National Park officials expected some controversy when they culled the park's elk population last month. What they didn't expect was thousands of people signing up for free meat. After executing a long-planned shoot to control the exploding elk population, park officials held a lottery to distribute the meat. They thought a couple hundred people would respond. Instead, there were 5,247 applicants and the lottery was closed after just a few days. "I was flabbergasted," says Larry Rogstad of the Colorado Division of Wildlife. He was surprised because the lottery was barely advertised. But Rogstad says hunters do talk...

CASPER, Wyo. A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction and four-year prison term for a southwest Montana man who pleaded guilty in an elk poaching case. Michael David Belderrain of Whitehall, Mont., pleaded guilty in February 2008 to being a felon in possession of a firearm, transporting illegally possessed wildlife and possessing illegally taken wildlife. Belderrain was charged for standing in Yellowstone National Park, shooting an elk just outside the park and dragging the head to his pickup truck in the park.

JACKSON, Wyo. — When the mighty elk herds of the West were facing the possibility of extinction from overhunting, settlement and neglect a century ago, people here stepped forward and began what has turned out to be a profound biological experiment....A federal lawsuit filed last year by a coalition of environmental groups charges that feeding the elk violates the Fish and Wildlife Service’s charter to manage refuges for healthy populations and biological integrity.

Elk roaming throughout Rocky Mountain National Park are being taken down one-by-one as a federal program to reduce the size of the herd gets under way. A group of six to 10 volunteers arrived Wednesday in the park, about 70 miles northwest of Denver, to thin the herd because overgrazing by elk has nearly wiped out aspens and willows, prime habitat for beavers and birds. The National Park Service approved a 20-year plan in 2007 to reduce the elk herd. The number of elk killed each year will depend on the herd's size.

BILLINGS - A New York hunter may be feeling a bit sheepish after mistaking a feral llama in Paradise Valley for a Rocky Mountain elk, but he apparently did not violate any laws. Rusty Saunders, of Fort Edward, N.Y., called a Fish, Wildlife and Parks warden in Livingston in November to turn himself in after shooting the llama, according to Mel Frost, FWP information officer in Bozeman.

Former "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" actress Eliza Dushku has upset animal rights activists after she revealed she hunts elk and deer. The actress proudly showed off her bow and arrow skills on late-night talk show "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" on Wednesday and boasted about killing a deer in Oklahoma last Christmas. She also revealed she was hunting for elk in Colorado when she landed her role in the upcoming TV series "Dollhouse." Realizing the studio audience had turned on her over her Bambi-killing antics, Dushku joked, "My mother called me herself and said, 'You're a liberal from New England, what the...

Wolves in Salmon, Idaho Decimate Elk Hunting This is something I received from an Idaho outfitter regarding the impact on elk in the Salmon, Idaho area. Although it is about Idaho, the same things hold true for Wyoming. There are some in the G&F who like wolves and will go out of their way to skew their studies to let the wolves off the hook. On the other hand, there are some in our Wyoming G&F who hate the wolves for what they are doing to our big game herds. Name withheld.

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - With little else to attract tourists, promoters of two Swedish counties are pinning their hopes on a truly gargantuan wooden moose. When completed, the 148-foot tall, 155-foot-long moose will have a restaurant in its belly, as well as a concert hall, conference rooms and a shop, according to Thorbjorn Holmlund, project coordinator and local tourism promoter. The monument to the moose will be so big that its massive wooden hooves will be firmly planted in two different counties, Vasterbotten and Norrbotten, about 540 miles north of Stockholm. "The reason we decided to build a moose is because...

Officials in northern Sweden have just given the all-clear for the construction of the world's largest elk, or moose as the animal is known in North America. Perched on top of a mountain, the 45-metre (148-foot) elk will double as a restaurant and concert hall that can seat up to 350 guests. From its antlers, more than 500 metres above sea level, visitors will be able to enjoy the spectacular view over the valleys below. For over three years, officials from two northern counties have discussed the implications of having a gigantic elk straddling their border from its vantage point...

When bull elk reach 2 1/2 years old, 50 to 75 percent of them leave the area they were born for new locations. No one is sure of the reason, but discoveries such as this can make it a tough job for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, which is in charge of controlling animal populations. Northwest Colorado landowners have complained for years that the elk herd population estimates were faulty, and those complaints did not fall on deaf ears. A Thursday evening meeting at the Moffat County Fair­grounds pavilion was the result of such complaints. About three dozen landowners, outfitters...

Healthy, Tasty... Expensive STOCKHOLM (JP) - Farmers in northern Sweden are milking moose, hoping that cheese-lovers with deep pockets will develop a taste for moose cheese. It's healthy and tasty - and very expensive (nearly $500 per pound) because moose milk is hard to obtain. Christer & Ulla Johansson started the 59-acre "Moose House" - the only moose dairy farm in Europe - seven years ago in Bjursholm (400 miles north of Stockholm). Moose House has 14 moose in the fields, but only three cows (Gullan, Haelga & Juna) can be milked. The cows were found as abandoned calves in...

There are now at least 1,300 wolves prowling Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, far more than anyone imagined when the species was reintroduced in the Northern Rockies 12 years ago. The wolf population has, on average, grown by about 26 percent a year for the past decade. The latest estimates, which summarize counts completed at the end of 2006, show they aren't slowing down. "I keep thinking we're at the top end of the bubble," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I can't see that there's room for any more, but we'll see." As...

For a case study in why bureaucracies tend to be unimaginative, consider the question of the elk herd in Rocky Mountain National Park. The Park Service could reduce the swollen numbers of elk, which are destroying vegetation and otherwise wreaking havoc, by culling the animals itself, hiring sharpshooters, or permitting qualified private hunters to do the job. The third option is the least expensive, so naturally it's the one the Park Service has all but ruled out. All right, maybe that's a cheap shot. The Park Service says it can't legally permit a private hunt even if it wanted to,...

An angry elk is terrorising kids at a school in Gothenburg. The animal has been skulking around the school for days and is "completely crazy", according to staff. It may also be very drunk. This morning the king of the forest lay dozing at the entrance to the school. When the elk finally got up and moved aside pupils at the school were still afraid to pass and had to be led in by their teachers. "The children are terrified," school secretary Camilla Andersson told Göteborgs-Posten Yesterday the elk was so aggressive that the headmaster, Lars Clemensson, felt compelled to...

Owning a slice of paradise isn't what it used to be. Generations of ranchers on the rural fringes of Yellowstone National Park passed their land to offspring or sold it to like-minded people. "only 26 percent of buyers were "traditional ranchers"... The largest category, at 39 percent, were "amenity buyers," ... The new buyers often arrive with a different set of values from those who have family ties stretching back generations... Contrary to what some might think, developers bought only 6 percent... The study area, though, didn't include fast-developing areas in Gallatin County, Mont., and Jackson Hole. In many cases,...

I have been a Freerepublic member for many years (go ahead and look it up ;-)! As a long-timer, please allow me to take a quick moment to introduce a candidate for District Court Judge for the Kansas 13th Judicial District (Butler, Elk, Greenwood Counties). Jim Murfin is an experienced lawyer with many years spent in both the role of council and of judge. That aside, I know of Jim and his family from the perspective of a long-time friend. Jim posses a strong love of God and family, and is proud to have earned the Kansans for Life endorsement....

Going into Wisconsin's 11th elk calving season this month, the state's wild elk herd is estimated at about 105 animals, which is quite a bit fewer than the experts had anticipated. "We assumed we'd have a 15% increase annually," Bernie Lemon, Northeast Regional Chairman of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, told me. "At 10 years, we thought we'd be at 175, plus." But a combination of factors, including elk-vehicle collisions; predation by wolves and bears; and brain worms and liver flukes - parasites carried by whitetail deer - have taken their toll. "We have documented a total of 69 elk...

Suit says state at fault in grizzly mauling... The widow of a hunter mauled by a grizzly bear while he was gutting an elk has filed an appeal with the Montana Supreme Court after a district judge here dismissed her lawsuit against the state. Mary Ann Hilston contends negligent management practices led to the death of her husband...in the fall of 2001. She filed a lawsuit in federal court in September 2004, claiming the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks knew there was an aggressive grizzly bear with two cubs prowling the...

Colorado is struggling with too much of a good thing - elk. The state's most majestic animals are denuding vegetation in national parks, gobbling shrubbery in Estes Park, threatening to contaminate valuable potato crops in the San Luis Valley, and destroying livestock feed on Western Slope ranchlands. Some of the conflict lies in sheer numbers. About 338,000 elk were in Colorado before last year's hunting season, in which 63,336 were killed. That still left Colorado with 275,000 - more elk than any other state or Canadian province.

The problem: elk chewing the bejeebers out of Rocky Mountain National Park. One solution: adding a pack of wolves to the park. Another problem: wolves wandering into nearby Boulder and Loveland, Colo. Still, the National Park Service is slated this week to propose, as one alternative, adding a pack of wolves, outfitted with radio collars, to chase the elk herds ravaging the park's aspen and willow stands. Biologists already have warned that keeping wolves in the 226,000-acre park may be next to impossible. "I can't conceive of a way to keep wolves in the park," said University of Minnesota biologist...

According to ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Schiavo/story?id=531907&page=1 In advanced cases of ketosis, the nervous system response is dulled, and patients rarely feel pain, hunger or thirst. There is also some evidence that ketosis can produce a state of well-being or mild euphoria. Five stranded elk shot; they faced slow starvation Caught on ledge: Wildlife officials say they saw no way to rescue the animals; two others had alread By Brett Prettyman The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune Someone collecting shed elk antlers above the Price River Water Treatment Plant noticed the animals and called officials Tuesday night. Division of Wildlife Resources...

Two Española men were arrested in raids Wednesday and are accused of participating in illegal elk and wild game hunts organized for tourists from Virginia. The hunts took place in the Valles Caldera National Preserve and the Gila National Forest, according to federal court records. Registered guide Jeffrey Clem of Española and Mike Archuleta, owner of Sierra Taxidermy in Española, were each placed under arrest and charged with violating federal wildlife law. During a raid at Archuleta's taxidermy shop Wednesday morning by officers from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Game and Fish Department, row upon row...

Bull Elk Charges Two in Yellowstone Wed Sep 22, 9:10 PM ET Add Strange News - AP to My Yahoo! YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - A bull elk charged and injured two people, including a tourist who took a flash photograph of the animal from less than 10 feet away. The 60-year-old Texas man was stuck by the elk's antlers Sunday at Mammoth Hot Springs, a popular area in Yellowstone National Park. He received cuts and bruises to his head, hands and chest, officials said Wednesday. The man, whose name was not disclosed, had walked up to the elk, took...

Scientists are reporting that, for the first time, they have made an artificial prion, or misfolded protein, that can, by itself, produce a deadly infectious disease in mice and may help explain the roots of mad cow disease. The findings, being reported on Friday in the journal Science, are strong evidence for the so-called "protein only hypothesis," the controversial idea that a protein, acting alone without the help of DNA or RNA, can cause certain kinds of infectious diseases. The concept was introduced in 1982 by Dr. Stanley Prusiner, a neurology professor at the University of California in San Francisco,...

Four Killed After Car Hits Elk in Washington Monday, June 21, 2004 NORTH BEND, Wash. — The guest of honor at a family Father's Day party was killed along with his wife and two relatives when their car hit an elk. A fifth relative was critically injured after Jesus P. Reyna swerved to avoid hitting one elk but hit another early Sunday on Interstate 90 (search) about 40 miles east of Seattle, Lt. Colleen McIntyre said. "The elk basically took the whole front end of the car and the windshield out and incapacitated the driver," McIntyre said. "It looks like...

Scientists Say Weight-Loss Substance May Have Caused Elk Deaths in Wyoming Mar 25, 2004 By Mead Gruver/ Associated Press Writer / CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - A substance found in some weight-loss diet supplements - and in a type of lichen - may have fatally poisoned more than 300 elk in Wyoming in recent weeks, scientists say. Scientists theorize the substance, usnic acid, may have caused the animals to weaken and collapse - too helpless to eat, drink or escape predators. The chemical was extracted from tumbleweed shield lichen, which grows on the ground in many northern states. Captive elk fed...

Russia's elk prove tough to tame By Artyom Liss BBC, Kostroma Trying to milk an elk might seem like a task for the brave or foolhardy. But it's exactly what Russian biologists are trying to master, on a remote Soviet-era farm. A domestication experiment in Kostroma, 360 kilometres (220 miles) north of Moscow, focuses on elk - one of the living symbols of Russia. The Kostroma elk farm was set up more than 40 years ago, but some of its workers admit that so far they have achieved almost nothing. As the elk are being herded away from enclosures in...

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) - A lichen native to the Rockies has been blamed for the deaths of at least 300 elk in southern Wyoming, a mystery that had baffled wildlife scientists and cost the state thousands of dollars, the state said Monday. Wildlife veterinarians had suspected the lichen after finding it in the stomachs of many of the elk that died in south-central Wyoming.To confirm their suspicions, three elk were fed the lichen at research facility. One collapsed and was unable to rise Sunday, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department said. A second elk also started stumbling and a third...

Since a coyote hunter found two paralyzed elk near here on Feb. 8, close to 300 elk have been felled by a mysterious illness that no one can identify. Wildlife officers have euthanized about 200 of those animals after finding them starving, dehydrated and unable to move. They took four into captivity to try to nurse them to health and learn more about their illness. [Only one of the four is still alive.] The snowy plain where many of the elk fell has become a macabre and curious scene. On a windy day earlier this month, one cow elk lay...

KSL News) -- Experts in Wyoming are baffled by the mysterious deaths of large numbers of elk. In the last few days at least 275 elk have died in an area roughly two miles by ten miles in ranchland near Rawlins. The elk appear to suffer a paralysis affecting their legs. They can't get up and usually live for a few days before dying. Experts have eliminated all the usual elk diseases and known environmental hazards. They say they've never heard of a case like this one. The leading theory is that the elk are being poisoned by something in...

By Chuck Adams American Hunter Magazine (NRA – National Rifle Association member publication) Montana resident Geri Ball stood with her fists on her hips and a knot in the pit of her stomach. At her feet were the remains of her prize female llama, entrails and unborn baby scattered across the animal’s pen. This 850-pound pregnant pet had been eaten alive by wolves from northwestern Montana’s Nine-Mile Pack. The mother llama’s screams of pain and fear had sliced through the night…but too late to save the mortally wounded animal. Hunting outfitter Bill Hoppe glassed a sweeping vista just north of...

EXELAND -- Charges are expected to be filed against two men, and possibly three, in an elk-shooting incident that left five farm elk dead and one wounded near Exeland during the deer gun season. According to a criminal complaint prepared by the Birchwood police, two men, one from Minnesota and another from Ohio, said they mistook a small herd of farm elk for deer while driving along Fairman Road in the Town of Meteor east of Exeland on Nov. 23, at about 3:30 p.m. The two men, after getting out of a pickup truck, shot from about 200 yards away...

-- Elk numbers continue to plummet in the northern Yellowstone elk herd, according to a report released late Tuesday. The herd is now the smallest it's been since the 1970s. A Dec. 18 flight by state and federal biologists found 8,355 elk despite "relatively good survey conditions," which means good weather and enough snow to make elk visible from the air. That's a drop of at least 880 elk, or 9.5 percent, from last year's count of 9,215, when conditions were poor and biologists said they probably missed a lot of elk. The herd has dropped by an average of...

High in the Oregon Cascades, I squinted into a wet, blowing snowfall for the antlers of a bull. I could see elk moving through a couple of gaps in the young fir trees about 60 yards away, when I caught sight of a bull. I flipped the cover off my scope lens and waited for the bull to show in the next opening. As the bull reappeared, I could see antlers distinctly through the brush. I shouldered the rifle and tried to look throught my scope, but the lens was covered with wet snow. I swept it off quickly with...

<p>IF YOU TOOK every failed, trendy educrat idea, packaged them in a school and put radical animal-rights activists in charge of it, you'd end up with something like the Humane Education Learning Community -- a K-6 charter school approved by Sacramento's San Juan Unified School District.</p>