Youth Engagement With The Outdoors – Learning About Wildlife

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Encouraging everyone to learn about and engage with the outdoors is part of the mission of PLAN Jeffco, and if we can capture the imagination of a youngster, get them excited about the outdoors and the critters that live in the wild, we figure we’ll have wilderness and open spaces advocates for a lifetime.

Rachel Martin was helping her class of youngsters understand and appreciate wildlife when they ran across our website and the wildlife articles we’ve posted (http://www.planjeffco.org/experience-open-space_articles.html).

One of her students, named John, was so excited by the find that he went home and did more web searches on his own. He found the website for the International Wolf Center* in Ely, Minnesota and a great wolf-cam page that he shared with Ms. Martin.

We at PLAN Jeffco were very pleased to hear that young John and his classmates had been studying wildlife and open spaces, and when the kids asked if we could add the link to the wolf-cam to our website, we were thrilled. So here it is: “Using Video Surveillance to Advance the Survival of Wolf Populations – A Case Study”

Thank you, Ms. Martin, for helping the next generation know, understand and love nature.

 * The International Wolf Center advances the survival of wolf populations by teaching about wolves, their relationship to wildlands and the human role in their future. http://www.wolf.org/

Leaving Only Footsteps? Think Again!

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Footprints in the Forest

So you think you’re only leaving footsteps when you’re out in the wild? Think again after reading this opinion article in the February 13, 2015 New York Times by Christopher Solomon. Solomon discusses and quotes much of the data that Dr. Sarah Reed presented at PLAN Jeffco’s November 2013 conference. The title of Drs. Reed and Sarah Thomas’ presentation at our conference was “Balancing Recreational Access and Conservation Objectives in Open Space Programs” (you can purchase the proceedings of the conference now).  The focus of their presentation was Outdoor recreation may enhance human health, but what about the impact on animals?

Solomon’s article discusses the loss or movement of wildlife away from areas of different forms of recreation in the outdoors. Surprisingly the studies show that motorized vehicles cause less disruption because their noise alerts the animals and they don’t stay around for very long. Read the entire article at http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/opinion/sunday/leaving-only-footsteps-think-again.html?_r=0

Elk in the winterThanks for your interest in Open Space, and thanks for reading our blog. To become a PLAN Jeffco member and become more involved with our open spaces, click here.

Gunnison sage grouse gets federal protection

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Gunnison Sage Grouse_Wikipedia

The Gunnison sage grouse, which lives only in western Colorado and southeastern Utah, has been declared threatened by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. This classification triggers the Endangered Species Act, which is something that Colorado leaders, who insist that state-led voluntary protection is sufficient to save the bird, have been fighting.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Dan Ashe declared the grouse officially threatened, which triggers Endangered Species Act protection. Federal protection under the Act restricts development on grouse habitat. Listing grouse as threatened, rather than endangered, allows exceptions for accidental killing to reduce the liability of landowners.

Governor Hickenlooper insists that the State will sue the Federal Government, no matter how the grouse is listed.

At present it is estimated that there are fewer than 5,000 Gunnison sage grouse alive, surviving on roughly 7 percent of their original natural habitat.

To read the full story go to http://www.denverpost.com/environment/ci_26922049/gunnison-sage-grouse-get-federal-protection-prevent-extinction?source=bn_simplepie_widgets