Just thought you all might like to know how your tax dollars are spent by
the USFWS.
The Bear River National Wildlife Refuge is in Utah, adjacent to the Great
Salt Lake. It is currently a prime area for tundra swans and potential for
trumpeters except that now they are legal to hunt there (even though a
petition to list this population under the ESA has been filed)
I also recently learned that FWS/Bear River is now cosponsoring/funding
(with Utah State University) research to determine whether trumpeters are
aerodynamically capable of flying to Utah, and to calculate the
characteristics of the
trajectories of their flight paths that might make them vulnerable to
hunters.

Earlier research by these same to groups (with funding from Ducks Unlimited)
was to put trumpeters into the hunt zone during the season and see if they
were differentially shot. They were -- 10,000 tundra, 20 trumpeters. 15
trumps dead in a week.

Many of our NWR are not refuges at all. And if the Hunting Heritage Act
gets passed by Congress (currently out of committee and moving on) then the
law will mandate a no net loss of hunting areas) some of our refuges may no
longer be available for use to restore threatened or endangered species, at
least it will be much more difficult.

Martha Jordan
marthaj at swansociety.org
www.swansociety.org