Fish and Wildlife

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- It was nearly 60 years ago on the Gila River. That's the last time anyone had documented a river otter in New Mexico. A government trapper found the dead animal in a beaver trap he had set.

Now, the chance of otters making any kind of a comeback in the upper reaches of the Gila is being put on hold indefinitely by New Mexico wildlife officials, a move that is frustrating conservationists and others who see the sleek mammals as the best hope for preserving endangered fish in the troubled river.

HEBER CITY -- The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources has discovered a potentially deadly parasite to fish in one of the state's most popular trout fisheries.

Whirling disease spores were found in two of 60 kokanee salmon that were collected from Strawberry Reservoir near Heber City this fall.

While the disease can be fatal to small trout and salmon, DWR officials said they're encouraged because it primarily affects fish much smaller than most found in the reservoir. They also said that many of the rainbow trout and Bear Lake cutthroat trout in the reservoir are more resistant to whirling disease than others.

"The disease is not a fatal blow to the trout fishery at Strawberry," said Roger Wilson, chief of the division's aquatic section. "There is life after whirling disease."

COOLBAUGH, Pa. -- Barry Warner has loved wildlife since boyhood, and lived out his dream of becoming a conservation officer. He sees no contradiction in the fact that he's also a lifelong trapper, skilled at capturing wild animals and, if appropriate, killing them as part of an avocation that many Americans view as barbarous.

Here in the township of Coolbaugh, on the edge of a vast track of state game land in northeast Pennsylvania, he's in his element. He demonstrates an array of traps unloaded from the back of his truck, reviews his 37-year career with the state game commission, from which he resigned as regional director in 2007, and recounts his periodic forays to North Carolina to trap bobcats, beaver and buck-toothed, wetland-dwelling nutria.

"Some people think trappers don't care about wildlife," says Warner. "It was my love for it that took me into this career. I don't want to see anything suffer."

When Seth Wenger and Dan Isaak release a scientific paper that predicts hard times for the West's trout, they know a lot of people are skeptical.

"Fundamentally, skepticism is a good thing in science," said Wenger, a fisheries researcher with Trout Unlimited in Boise.

Both Wenger and Isaak, a fisheries biologist at the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Boise, were a part of a team of 11 scientists who said trout habitat could drop by 50 percent over the next 70 years because of a warming world. The paper, published Monday in the peer-reviewed science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, predicts native cutthroat habitat could decline by 58 percent.

The two men, who have devoted their lives to scientific research, say they depend on the scientific method and peer review to judge the quality of the research that underscores their findings. The climate predictions are based on 10 of the 20 climate models developed independently worldwide that all show the world is getting warmer.

"The climate models have been right for 30 years and they are getting better all the time," Isaak said.

LOS ANGELES -- Federal authorities are investigating the deaths of at least six golden eagles at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Pine Tree Wind Project in the Tehachapi Mountains, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Tuesday.

So far, no wind-energy company has been prosecuted by federal wildlife authorities in connection with the death of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. A prosecution in the Pine Tree case could cause some rethinking and redesigning of this booming alternative energy source. Facilities elsewhere also have been under scrutiny, according to a federal official familiar with the investigations.

SHIOCTON, Wis. -- From 50 yards, it appeared as a reddish lump at the gray base of a mature ash tree.

At 20, several rows of spots were visible on the tawny shape.

Animal or plant?

If you've spent any time searching the Wisconsin landscape for a specific type of the former, you know the latter -- especially peeling bark -- is more likely.

But as we approached to within a few paces, a shaft of sunlight penetrated the canopy and highlighted the forest floor.

A black nose glistened, a pair of ears stood alert.