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in reply to: Wolves and Rivers Video #44093
donthomas wrote: Also, please note that your third reference concludes, in essence, that it’s more complicated than that. It usually is. Don
Yes, I thought later about clarifying this point, because I could have worded it better. My listing of the three links should not be read as saying that the Monbiot talk and video were based on those three studies in particular.
I surmised that the talk and video were based on such studies, but I don’t have explicit evidence of that. I added the links for the benefit of those who wanted data from such studies.
Sorry for any lack of clarity on this point. Correct attribution to sources is a very big deal to me and has been since I participated in my first debate contest, back when Fred Bear was flinging arrows at polar bears. 😉
in reply to: Wolves and Rivers Video #44080It was indeed Aldo Leopold:
“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”
– Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949
As it happens, there was a film released last year concerning what he wrote that you may be interested in:
in reply to: Spring fever #41477The turkey season here in NH opens on May 3rd. I have long held an ambition to use skis to hunt them. Came close a few years back – this year is looking pretty good with a morning low of -6, three feet of snow in the woods and a possible big storm next week.
I’m inspired by one of the hunters depicted here:
in reply to: To sleep, perchance to … sleep? #41462Grab your beverage of choice and start reading:
The Best Sleeping Pad Review from Outdoor Gear Lab
Pads and Air Mattresses reviews from BackpackGearTest
in reply to: Signs of Spring? #37548Fallguy, I’m _sure_ if you drove over to Carlos Avery you’d see the aforementioned Sandhill Cranes right now. Or not. 😈
in reply to: Signs of Spring? #36952Aspen buds appeared a few days ago off our deck here in NH. Used to be a grouse that came by every year to feast on them, but not for the last couple of years. Woodpeckers have been chasing each other around, and it seems like the crows are starting to get a touch rowdy. Cold weather is undoubtedly suppressing some of this.
in reply to: Wolves and Rivers Video #34984I thought this sounded familiar. 😉
The talk and the video draw on several scientific studies on the subject of riparian effects of reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone.
Ask and ye shall receive, Dr. Thomas:
Trophic cascades in Yellowstone: The first 15 years after wolf reintroduction
Stream hydrology limits recovery of riparian ecosystems after wolf reintroduction
in reply to: String maker suggestions #34474Bearbowman makes the strings I use on my ’58 Kodiak and ’68 Grizzly:
Warning, he’s also got some good-lookin’ used bows for sale …
in reply to: Out of Place Critters #34467“It depends on what your definition of ‘stomping grounds’ is.” 😉
While driving once on the Parks Highway between Anchorage and Fairbanks, some movement in the brush alongside the road caught my eye. Nah, it couldn’t be. Circled back and sure enough, it was a musk ox bull, about five hundred miles east of the nearest free-ranging herd.
My excitement was tempered, however, by the knowledge that a non-free-ranging herd was located about sixty miles east of my location. Never heard whether he was compelled to return home. I know for a fact certain that he died lonely, if he wasn’t.
in reply to: Man Eaters of Kumaon #29595It seems the services of the late Mr. Corbett would still be in demand:
in reply to: A club for those of us without any back country #19009David Petersen wrote: Might it have anything to do with quadrupling our population in those 50 years or so?
It, and virtually every other environmental issue, has everything to do with this.
I’m a BHA member living in NH and I support its nationwide objectives. But my fairly harsh advice to the original poster is the path I’ve followed for the last many years: Find a way to relocate out of the Midwest. The population density and the politics of resource management are antithetical to the experiences you’re seeking.
Gotta go find my Nomex now …
in reply to: Anything Positive @ This Winter? #17736I did go back once afterward to look for tracks, but it was probably still a little early. There’s a largish boar that used to hang out in the vicinity, but I haven’t seen any sign of him for a while. I don’t hunt bear, but I’m a huge admirer of the non-human kind.
Should probably mention that two of my four grandparents emigrated from Finland. The theme music for the video is “Finlandia” by Sibelius. Some of you might remember it from a different, somewhat more modern context …
in reply to: Anything Positive @ This Winter? #17721Smithhammer wrote: [quote=eidsvolling]For Smithhammer and the rest of you nuts:
Hey now – I’m nowhere near as nutty as that guy. 8)
And those of you that know me better not chime in….
Wait – is that you?
That would be me, in a paean to the Finnish ski troops who fought off a certain bear in the Winter War: Battle of Suomussalmi
in reply to: Anything Positive @ This Winter? #17349For Smithhammer and the rest of you nuts:
in reply to: Anything Positive @ This Winter? #17321Fallguy and Northerner,
I grew up in MN, where the family farm was at a location I’m not “Embarrassed” to mention and my mom remembered a -54º morning there. I used to camp a lot in the state parks in winter, at a time when I had them completely to myself after dark. One of my early inspirations was Calvin Rutstrum, whose name you might recognize from his books. Here’s an excerpt from “Paradise Below Zero” that has stuck in my mind from the moment I read it more than forty years ago:
“Along the various arctic coasts, the first major snowfall produces a sense of exhilaration in every Eskimo village — a jubilation that strikes young and adult alike. This, we may be sure, is no mere caprice of mood prompted by the effects of weather. For the Eskimo, snow foretells a major change in his mode of living — a sudden heightening of seasonal interest, the beginning of travel by dog sled or motorized toboggan, the visiting of remote villages and outlying trading posts.
Increased mobility obviously does not provide the only advantages to the seasonal change. The very essentials of snow and ice themselves brighten the life of the Eskimo and expand his scope.
When we compare the Eskimo’s response to winter in the arctic with the despairing attitude in metropolitan and rural areas of the Temperate Zone toward approaching winter, perhaps we need to examine rather critically the reaction to weather in general as it underlies our own overall mode of life.
. . .
Unfortunately, just about every aspect of urban existence is negative toward the advantages of winter. Superheated home, office, and factory require clothing adaptable to the indoors, with little conversion-facility to cold and snow. . . . And since the urban population lives in homes that are essentially machines , and their travel is primarily in machines, a snowstorm — natural and magnificent as it can be — instead of becoming an interesting phenomenon to enjoy, tends to foul up the mechanized order of life, until season after season, city life, maladjusted to winter, sags into a kind of chronic discontent.
Man has largely been fighting the natural elements instead of adjusting to them since he first wandered away form nature’s indispensable benefits. . . . He is not likely to exercise vigorously indoors, and if he does, under indoor winter conditions of extremely low humidity and unbalanced oxygenation, the exercise is of questionable benefit, if not harmful — at best a tragic and needless substitute for the refreshing outdoor life available to him by a few simple rules of daily application.”
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