Jackson Hole Elk straddles sex divide
JACKSON, Wyo. – A gender-bent elk has been identified among the 7,000 ungulates that winter in the National Wildlife Refuge near Jackson. It’s not clearly a female, but neither is it clearly a male.
The Jackson Hole News&Guide explains that staff at the refuge, as well as visitors, have noticed that it has stubs of antlers, what are called eo-antlers. Eo-antlers are found in mostly older females because of hormonal imbalances. The animal’s hide has the coloring more akin to that of a cow elk.
But it’s of larger size, suggesting a male, and then there’s suggestion of appendages. “The guys on the sleigh rides say that they can see male parts,” said a spokeswoman for the refuge.
One final bit of evidence: it hangs with the bull elks.
Where are Masters and Johnson when you need them?
Wildlife photographers feeding faux pas
BANFF, Alberta – Three wildlife photographers are believed to have placed turkey meat along a highway in Banff National Park to draw wolves.
“It appears to have been intentionally placed for baiting wildlife,” said Steve Michel, a human-wildlife conflict specialist with Banff National Park. “The only people that were in the area were several photographers.”
The Rocky Mountain Outlook says that wolves can become conditioned to human food and then act boldly and aggressively toward people. The only time Parks Canada has had to destroy wolves in Banff was more than a decade ago, when the animals got a taste for human food.
That opinion was seconded by former Banff National Park superintendent and local author, Kevin Van Tighem, whose book The Homeward Wolf draws attention to unethical practices of some wildlife photographers.
“Once a carnivore associates people with food, that safe relationship between the two species is out the door, because of irresponsible, unethical and fundamentally selfish behavior by people.”
A record winter – for snowmaking
WHISTLER, B.C. – It’s been a record year for snowmaking at Whistler Blackcomb. Pique reports that 265 million gallons of water have been converted into snow, eclipsing the old record of 225 million gallons.
Before Christmas, Whistler got so little snow that the ski area operator lent snowmaking equipment to the municipality, to fluff up a plaza in the town’s interior with the white stuff.
Whistler Blackcomb, the ski area, now has $60 million in snowmaking infrastructure, a third of it installed for the Winter Olympics. With global warming expected to cause the snow line to rise, ski area operators expect to expand their investment even more in coming years.
Another tree-well death in Montana
WHITEFISH, Mont. – The body count was high this past week at ski areas across the West. Mostly people died after smacking into trees, but Whitefish had the more unusual tree-well inversion.
The 54-year-old was reported to have been skiing with his son between black-diamond runs. When the son arrived at the bottom and his father failed to show up, the son returned to the top and retraced their route. Eventually, he saw his father’s skis sticking out of the tree well, says the Whitefish Pilot.
Whitefish has had six inversion deaths since 1978, but this is the third in three years. Two people died two years ago. In the aftermath of one of those cases, the parents of the 16-year-old victim filed a wrongful death lawsuit that accuses Whitefish Mountain Resort of negligence.
Concern growing over oil shipments
WHITEFISH, Mont. – Four trains carrying crude oil from the Bakken formation of North Dakota and Montana have exploded in fiery wrecks during the last year, one of them the worst railroad disaster in Canadian history. That crash in Quebec last July left 47 dead.
Could it happen in Whitefish? The Whitefish Pilot notes that tankers of black oil, sometimes more than a hundred, one after another, have become a common sight in Whitefish. This is near downtown and just a few miles from the ski area of the same name.
The tankers do concern local officials, because derailments have occurred several times near Whistler, in one case spilling 20,000 gallons of fuel into a lake.
“This stuff is more dangerous than typical oil,” Whitefish Fire Chief Tom Kennelly said of Bakken crude. “The flammability is different.”
Lighter crudes, which contain more natural gas, have a much lower “flash point,” allowing them to ignite at lower temperatures.
Whitefish is not alone in being concerned about shipments of oil from the new fields in North America. The Los Angeles Times reports that shipments by rail have shot up 25-fold in the last several years, as producers export crude oil new shale fields in Colorado, Texas and other states.
Other ski towns concerned about rail shipments include Bozeman, Mont., the hub for both Bridger Bowl and Big Sky ski areas.
The federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration cautiously warned that oil from the Bakken shale fields “may be more flammable than traditional heavy crude,” and announced it would conduct tests to determine the gas content, corrosiveness, toxicity and flammability.
Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told the Times it’s time to reexamine national policy about rail shipments.
“It appears this is going to be in our nation’s communities for the next decade,” he said. “With this kind of transportation of hazardous material, there are a whole lot of issues that come to mind, not the least of which is terrorism. You are creating a movable bomb from community to community.”
Canada’s tar/oil sands pose a similar problem. Bloomsburg News says the major Canadian response to the U.S. foot-dragging over permits for the Keystone XL pipeline has been a four-letter word: rail. In the wake of high-profile railroad accidents, Keystone backers think opposition may soften.
Crested Butte hopes for info highway
CRESTED BUTTE – Being remote – four hours from Denver when the roads are good – and always at the end of a plowed road, Crested Butte has undeniable charm. But in one key respect, locals would like to be on the Internet equivalent of a four-lane highway.
What will it take? That discussion about increasing broadband has been under way for several years, with no clear resolution. By late summer, that bigger information highway could arrive.
For that to happen, however, several transmission towers must be built, and at least one would infringe upon land already staked out by Gunnison sage grouse. That would require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to conclude that the Gunnison sage grouse should not be protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Phil Chamberland, a Gunnison County commissioner, tells the Crested Butte News another option is to attach fiber optic lines to existing power lines maintained by Tri-State Transmission and Generation.
More places yet to score a bag of weed
STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – The rollout of recreational marijuana continues in Colorado ski towns. Among those now open for business is Steamboat Springs, while Carbondale expected to open a store by mid-January. And a medical marijuana dispensary in Aspen has applied to sell recreational marijuana.
At the first store to open in Steamboat, price wasn’t an issue for customers, most of whom came from outside Colorado, but especially Texas, reports Steamboat Pilot & Today.
An eighth of an ounce was selling for $50 at Rocky Mountain Remedies, or enough for about seven average-sized joints. That’s $7 a cigarette. But in Denver, some stores were fetching $100 for the same amount of marijuana, or $14 a cigarette.
Tax is a significant portion of the cost, more than 33 percent. That includes a 10 percent special state sales tax plus a 15 percent excise tax. As well, Steamboat levies an 8 percent tax.
– Allen Best
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