Outside Bend

I wouldn't be worried. No one's proposed banning minnows and other bait.

Looks like MDC is taking comments on their proposal to ban live crayfish sales: http://mdc.mo.gov/contact-us/crayfish-regulation-comments or http://mdc.mo.gov/node/18027 ....and a little light reading: http://mdc.mo.gov/newsroom/crayfish-regulation-discussions-continue-0 http://www.mostreamteam.org/Documents/Research/AquaticInverts/Pages%20from%20DiStefano_et_al._Fisheries_12-09.pdf

I guess IMO the market situation is irrelevant- USFS' job is to protect and manage the lands it oversees for the benefit of the public. Logging is a tool for meeting those objectives, but propping up the timber industry- in the PNW or anywhere else- shouldn't be a Forest Service priority. Every logging outfit is at the whim of the landowner, whether they're a crotchety old man or the federal government. I guess I don't understand why the feds shouldn't be able to dictate what operations take place on the land they manage.

Public lands are just that- public, and managed for more than the interests of the logging interest. I guess I don't see what's offensive about the Forest Service managing the property they own- determining what activities are and are not allowed. If the timber industry needs public support to stay afloat, perhaps they need to develop a better business model. Free market, consumer choice, divorcing gov't and the private sector, fair competition, all that good stuff

If you think that's eye opening, wait till you hear about all the species imperiled by oil spills, gas fracking, mountaintop removal, acid rain, and strip mining. Not to mention climate change.

I see what you guys are saying, less than 5% isn't nothing. But high mortality is the nature of trout populations- produce tons of offspring, of which only a few survive. In any given year more than half the population may be dying from those factors we can't control- water temperature, predation, lack of habitat/food, etc. Given that, I'm just not sure tweaking a minor source of mortality like barbed hooks is going to dramatically improve the fishery. It's not a bad reg, but at it's best it's only adding another dozen or so fish per mile- is that something most anglers are going to notice? IMO there's more gain focusing on issues like habitat.

As long as the fish are on separate stringer, and each stringer is marked to identify the landowner, you should be in the clear.

Factors like water temperature and handling time have a far greater role in fish mortality than barbless hooks- most studies show mortality due to barbed hooks is typically less than 5%. I wouldn't be opposed to barbless regs- they're easier to remove and do less damage to mandibles and gills. But if dramatically reducing fish mortality is the goal, I'm not sure how constructive it would be. I'd support C&R or even a closed season during spawning- but I'm not sure how effective a yearlong C&R season would be. There's relatively few very large fish in Crane, and relatively few anglers with the skill and patience to catch those fish- except when they're spawning.

And that's probably just salary/benefits- doesn't include things like new trucks and equipment, training, etc.

Out west I had a guy tell me he had been catching cutt-browns, which I thought was pretty amusing. But apparently Utah developed a brown-rainbow cross in the 90's to try and offset the effects of whirling disease on their fisheries. Crazy stuff.

Climate change was real during the last ice age. But that doesn't mean the same mechanisms underlie past climate changes and our current climate shift.

Or the unseasonably mild winter, the low western snowpack, or the slew of large wildfires out west- including the largest in New Mexico history.

Bison aren't elk. Different animals, different habitat requirements, different implications when reintroduced. It's a red herring. I don't see much ecological value in reintroducing bison- cattle basically fill the same niche, have the same effect on the landscape. But if there were substantial public support for it, if MDC thoroughly studied the issue and developed a means for introduction while addressing landowner concerns and disease issues (as they have with elk), I wouldn't be opposed.

So you're saying when wildlife is properly managed, its negative interactions with people can be minimized, right? I'm not sure how MDC repeatedly saying "Hunting is proposed to be implemented as soon as possible after the elk become established," indicates there will obviously be no hunting season. Yes it's only 400 animals, but western states are currently planning gray wolf seasons with an established population of only 100-150 animals. There may only be 200 bighorn sheep in a given western mountain range, yet those small populations are managed for hunting. Moose and mountain lion have pretty low densities out west, yet managing those populations for hunting isn't an issue. If other states can manage game populations of animals in the hundreds, we shouldn't have an issue with it.

Deer/car accidents account for less than 5% of auto accidents most years in Missouri, and there's more than a million whitetails in the state. MDC is managing for 400 elk. We're talking about vanishingly small chances of anyone actually hitting one.

First you say a poor lil whitetail or deer will not overgraze an area, then you say you've seen whitetail decimate an alfalfa field from overgrazing. Which is it? Many private landowners are already growing 1000 lb eating and moving machines-cattle. There's more than four million cattle in this state, going through fences pretty regularly, yet the problem is 400 elk which may someday go through a fence. The reality is a private landowner is far more likely to see damage from their own livestock than from introduced elk- it's a logical fallacy, using a small number of dramatic events to try and outweigh the statistical evidence. Making a mountain out of a molehill, as it were.

Emphasis added. When the elevation of Carter County reaches 7000+ feet and they have 10-12+ feet of snowpack, we're going to have significantly larger problems than where the elk are going.

They won't be tagging every elk in the state. They've tagged every animal up till now, in order to collect some baseline data. They'll keep a few animals tagged to monitor herd health, but no, not every animal in the established population will have a goofy yellow collar. Missouri isn't Colorado or Wyoming or Montana. Those states are large, so they can manage large herds of elk. We're small, so we're managing a small herd of elk. The habitat's different too- elk movements out west are motivated in large part by food availability, migrating from high elevation summer ranges to low-elevation winter range. That roaming behavior tends to break down when elk are introduced into places where food is abundant- Kentucky or Pennsylvania, for example.

Wicked drum!

I'm still lost as to why elk are an exception. Yes, these elk are tagged- just like MDC tags whitetails, turkey, smallmouth, largemouth, paddlefish, sturgeon, ducks, geese, doves, and other critters. I'm not sure how that makes them anyone's pet. MDC's job is to manage wildlife populations. To manage wildlife populations, they need data. To acquire data, they need tags. Tags are expensive, but far less costly than hiring agents or technicians to track and monitor elk 24/7. Folks are already whining about the cost of the reintroduction program, how do well do you think hiring more people would go over? The collars look silly, but it's no different than any other tag MDC uses on wildlife, and collects volumes of valuable information on these animals. Would it have been better to blindly release elk, with no means of collecting data on where they are, what habitat they're using, or whether they're even alive and healthy? IMO complaining about collars is a pretty lame reason for poo-pooing the entire program, like saying we shouldn't bother managing stream smallmouth because those reward tags clash with their color scheme. Folks can see elk in parks and zoos, just as folks can see ducks and geese in county parks, whitetails and turkey in Grant's Farm, smallmouth bass in the tank at Bass Pro. Should we therefore ignore their wild populations? Not bother worrying about their interactions with people and the health of their ecosystems? If a fenced elk in St. Louis county has the same value as an unfenced elk in Carter County, why wouldn't a smallmouth in a tank have the same value as a smallmouth in the Meramec? And if those two are equivalent, why bother managing to benefit wild smallmouth? And sure, elk roam. Deer roam. Turkeys roam. Bobcats roam. Squirrels roam. Smallmouth, walleye, sauger, paddlefish, sturgeon, suckers, catfish- they all roam. Doves roam. Ducks roam. Geese roam. Songbirds roam. Hawks, eagles, ospreys...heck, box turtles roam. It's not just elk. And we find ways of managing these species, so why not elk? No one here is getting their panties in a wad over raccoons trapped in attics or skunks trapped under stoops- or flocks of geese shot because they landed on a tarmac. These animals are killed solely because they wound up in areas they weren't wanted- just as this elk did. It's not a novel concept.

Have you contacted local newspapers? Seems like there could be a better use for law enforcement dollars than this.

Grass carp are really good at grazing down rooted aquatic plants like coontail, but typically won't eat much filamentous algae. If you go that route, it's wise to stock light. Those young grass carp will someday be 15-20 lbs, with pretty hefty appetites.

Subspecies, not species. Even that depends on who you ask- they're genetically indistinct. And it's tough saying definitively what subspecies (if the term is appropriate) we even had in the state- whether they were eastern elk, western elk, or an intergrade. All we know for certain is that we had elk. Elk were native. While you can run into trouble supplanting one subspecies for another, it hasn't borne out in the places where western elk have been moved east. You think deer or turkey were reintroduced to the state to sell post cards? You could say the exact same thing about ANY game animal that has been reintroduced to the state- so why are elk somehow the exception? It is a native animal (see above) and they are being tested for disease before being transported from Kentucky. Feral hogs and horses were never native to the state, its an apples-to-oranges comparison. We've already demonstrated our capacity to manage, even eliminate, elk from the state. If elk harmed other populations of hunting animals, there wouldn't be other populations of hunting animals- they would've been outcompeted by elk long before we arrived. Other species got along fine living with elk for thousands of years, plants and animals adapted and coevolved with them. Historically, elk played as much a role in the populations of other game and non-game species as any other native species we see today. The presence of elk isn't the anomaly in Ozark woodlands- the absence of elk is.

Interesting logic. So then deer, ducks, turkeys, black bears, walleye, trout, muskellunge, prairie chickens, paddlefish, ruffed grouse, bald eagles- they weren't "destined" to live in the state either, right? That's my point- it's easy to justify MDC's expenses based on what you get in return. A waterfowler can say MDC's doing a great job because they intensively manage for ducks, a noodler can say MDC's doing a terrible job because they've banned their sport. But that's not the best metric for gauging MDC's success, and just because an individual doesn't see benefit doesn't mean a given MDC program is a bad idea or a waste of money. There's a whole body of research documenting the effects elk have on the ecosystem- shaping riparian and woodland plant communities, reducing noxious and nonnative weeds through grazing, maintaining open woodlands and glades through browsing woody vegetation, altering the distribution of competing species like beavers. Google it. I guess it's one of those tomato/tomahto things. I see a 20% poverty rate as a 20% poverty rate, you see it as "low cost of living, country style." You're right that the area has historically lived off the land, and it's also true the area has historically been one of the poorest in the state. I'm just saying their may be some correlation there, and that diversifying the economy of the region with a little more hunting/tourism revenue probably wouldn't hurt. Deer and turkey aren't elk- they have different food requirements, different habitat requirements, fill different roles in the ecosystem. And while elk density would only be about one animal per square mile, that animal runs 700-1000 lbs. It's analogous to putting another half-dozen or more whitetails on a square mile- that's enough to cause some notable habitat changes.

And if the Ozarks still had the human population it did in the mid-1800's, if there were fewer roads, if there was more public land, a broader introduction would be possible. But that's not the reality of the sitation- we have to work with what we have. Large parts of the Ozarks just aren't capable of sustaining elk anymore- too many people, too many roads, too many cows. A lack of forage, a lack of open woodlands, savanna, and glade habitats suitable for elk. The decision for the elk zone was not entirely political, it was the best area in the state for an elk herd to thrive, with the fewest number of private landowners to complain about it. To me that's being pragmatic, not politlcal.