Newly stocked catfish should create good fishing

May 21, 2012 by John McCoy

There’s probably no better time than right now to wet a line at park ponds throughout West Virginia. Division of Natural Resources workers have just finished stocking adult channel catfish in a slew of those ponds.

For details, here’s the DNR news release:

           SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. – The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (WVDNR) has stocked more than 8,000 catchable-size channel catfish during the week of May 14, according to WVDNR Director Frank Jezioro.  This popular stocking program provides fishing opportunities at popular and accessible lakes across the state.
            Lakes stocked are: Anawalt Lake (McDowell Co.), Barboursville Lake (Cabell Co.), Berwind Lake (McDowell  Co.), Cacapon State Park Lake (Morgan Co.), Cedar Creek State Park Lake (Gilmer Co.), Chief Logan State Park Lake (Logan Co.),  Conaway Run Lake (Tyler Co.), Coopers Rock Lake (Monongalia Co.), Edwards Run Pond (Hampshire Co.), French Creek Pond (Upshur Co.),  Handley Pond (Pocahontas Co.), Hurricane Lake (Putnam Co.), Indian Rock Lake (Nicholas Co.), Krodel Lake (Mason Co.), Laurel Lake (Mingo Co.), Little Beaver State Park Lake (Raleigh Co.), Mason Lake (Monongalia Co.), Mountwood Lake (Wood Co.), North Bend State Park Pond (Ritchie Co.), Pendleton Lake (Tucker Co.), Pipestem State Park Lake (Summers Co.), Tomlinson Run State Park Lake (Hancock Co.), Wallback Lake (Clay Co.), and Wirt County Farm Pond (Wirt Co.).
            As part of a cooperative effort with West Virginia State Parks, a total of 400 tagged channel catfish have been stocked into eight state park lakes, including: Cacapon State Park Lake; Cedar Creek State Park Lake; Chief Logan State Park Lake; Little Beaver State Park Lake; North Bend State Park Pond; Pipestem State Park Lake; Tomlinson Run State Park Lake; and Pendleton Lake at Blackwater Falls State Park.
            Anglers catching a tagged catfish and following the tag instructions for reporting the catch will receive a “tagged fish reward.”  The reward is a choice of a ride to Whittaker Station at Cass Scenic Railroad or a ride to Blennerhassett Island on the sternwheeler, The Island Belle.
            Anglers who catch a tagged fish are asked to return the tag or tag number along with information on the date of capture, if the fish was kept or released, and the name and address of the angler to WVDNR, 2311 Ohio Ave, Parkersburg, WV 26101.  Anglers also can call in the information (304-420-4550) or provide the information via e-mail dnrfishtags@wv.gov.

Posted in Fishing, West Virginia, WV DNR | No Comments »

Hiking-trail booby trappers face felony charges

May 20, 2012 by John McCoy

Charges filed

Forest ranger James Schoeffler ought to get a medal or something. Certainly hikers in Utah owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Chances are his actions saved at least one hiker from death or serious injury.

Schoeffler, a former military man, knew enough about booby traps to recognize them when he found them. And when he found booby traps at a trail shelter on a popular recreational trail, he took immediate action. And now the two men accused of setting the traps are facing harsh justice. Good.

From the Associated Press:

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Two Utah men accused of setting potentially deadly booby traps along a popular hiking trail have been charged with felony aggravated assault.
Benjamin Rutkowski, 19, of Orem, and Kai Christensen, 21, of Provo, await a June 13 court appearance after being charged with the third-degree felony in 4th District Court this week, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
They were arrested April 21 on suspicion of misdemeanor reckless endangerment.
According to court documents, the men built two traps around a well-known, makeshift shelter along the Big Springs trail in Provo Canyon, located about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City.
One was rigged to a trip wire to send a 20-pound, spiked boulder swinging at head level of an unsuspecting hiker, while the other was designed to trip a passer-by into a bed of sharpened wooden stakes.
U.S. Forest Service Officer James Schoeffler, who discovered the traps while on a routine patrol of the area, said the traps could have caused significant or lethal injuries, court documents state. Schoeffler spent 12 years in the military as a bomb disposal technician dismantling deadly devices in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Police have said it was fortunate that Schoeffler was the first to discover the traps, given his military training.
According to the charging documents, both men admitted making the traps but said they were intended for wildlife such as wild boar and bunnies, not people.
There are no listed phone numbers for the men. Phone calls went unanswered Saturday to Rutkowski’s father, Steven, who previously declined comment. Christensen’s mother, Sharon, didn’t immediately return a phone call. It wasn’t clear if either suspect had an attorney.
A third-degree felony carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

Posted in Ethics, Law Enforcement | No Comments »

Bowhunter pleads guilty for killing endangered panther

May 19, 2012 by John McCoy

Follow this link to the Tampa Bay Times’ story about a Florida deer hunter who shot an endangered Florida panther because he didn’t want the cat to interfere with his hunting.

Todd Benfield, 45, of Naples, pleaded guilty to the crime and said he’s sorry to have cast hunters in such a negative light.

It remains to be seen whether Benfield will serve any jail time for the illegal killing. In previous panther-killing cases, judges have levied fines but have been reluctant to issue jail sentences.

Posted in Bowhunting, Ethics, Hunting, Law Enforcement, Wildlife | No Comments »

Teen gets stripped of striper record

May 18, 2012 by John McCoy

What is it about record-breaking fish that makes anglers want to lie, cheat, break the law and do all manner of unscrupulous things?

That was a rhetorical question, of course.

Latest case in point: A Colorado teenager who caught a state-record striped bass — oops. From the Associated Press:

LONGMONT, Colo. — A Longmont teenager has been stripped of his record for a 31-pound, 8-ounce striped bass after he admitted he lied about where he caught it.
Isaac Sprecher says he was immature for contending he caught the fish at northwest Longmont’s McIntosh Lake, when he’d actually reeled it in from a pond at Pella Crossing, a Boulder County Open Space area with catch-and-release rules.
According to the Longmont Times-Call, state wildlife managers verify all claims for fish records and they smelled something fishy about Sprecher’s claim.
The state’s official striped bass record-holder remains a 15-pound, 11-ounce fish caught in 2009 in Pueblo County.

The full story can be found here, in the Longmont Times-Call.

Posted in Ethics, Fishing | No Comments »

‘Outdoor classroom’ to open soon in W.Va.

May 17, 2012 by John McCoy

Getting kids interested in the outdoors isn’t easy nowadays. Video games, texting and the Internet are difficult to compete with, but a new “outdoor classroom” being built in Shepherdstown, W.Va., might just have enough pizazz to do the trick.

From the Associated Press:

SHEPHERDSTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — A special kind of outdoor classroom opening soon in West Virginia is intended to be a national model for nature-based learning.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will celebrate the opening of the Nature Explore Classroom and Children’s Tree House Learning Center in Shepherdstown on June 16.
Both are at the National Conservation Training Center. It was selected for the project along with the Creston National Fish Hatchery in Montana.
The outdoor classrooms are designed to let children climb, crawl, think and create using their five senses in a natural setting.
The project also created jobs for young people. Students from the Harpers Ferry Job Corps installed materials, built walkways and created unique features for the children.

Posted in This and That, West Virginia | No Comments »

Elephants being found poisoned in Indonesia

May 16, 2012 by John McCoy

The poisoned elephant (AP photo)

It’s happened again — a second rare Sumatran elephant was recently found dead in Indonesia, apparently poisoned by villagers attempting to protect their crops.

From the Associated Press:

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) — An official says a second endangered Sumatran elephant has been poisoned in western Indonesia, apparently by villagers trying to protect their crops.
Forestry Ministry official Harmidi says the carcass of the 20-year-old male elephant was discovered Wednesday near a plantation in Aceh province.
Harmidi, who uses only one name, says a group of elephants had been wandering in the area in recent days, roaring and destroying crops.
An 18-year-old female died in Aceh after being poisoned in late April.
As forests disappear, elephants stray into inhabited areas in search of food.
Fewer than 3,000 Sumatran elephants are left in the wild and environmentalists warn that they could be extinct within three decades unless steps are taken to protect them.

Viewed through the lens of Western values, killing an elephant like this seems tragic and wasteful. While I don’t by any means condone the poisoning of elephants, I understand why people who lead hand-to-mouth existences feel they have no choice but to do it.

Look at the dateline on the AP piece — Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Sound familiar? Aceh province was the one most devastated by the Christmas 2004 tsunami that killed an estimated 167,000 people in Indonesia alone. Seven and a half years isn’t much time to recover from such a ruinous event, and I have no doubt that the villagers in Aceh are having a tough time of it. To them, a crop-eating elephant is a threat to their survival.

As I said before, I don’t condone the killing of elephants. In this case, though, I believe I understand it.

Posted in Conservation, Wildlife | No Comments »

Game warden rescues trapped coonhound

May 14, 2012 by John McCoy

Sometimes conservation officers are called upon to do rather … unusual things.

From the Associated Press:

PARIS, Ind. — A hunting dog that spent more than a day trapped underground after falling into a southeastern Indiana sinkhole was rescued early Sunday by a state conservation officer.
Indiana Conservation Officer Zach Walker was smeared with mud after he rescued the unharmed coonhound, MoMo, about 1 a.m. Sunday from the Jennings County cave.
Walker said he carried MoMo part of the way up a ladder he had used to reach the cave’s floor, and the dog was raised the rest of the way via rope and reunited with his owner.
“He was really excited to be back aboveground,” Walker said Sunday.
The coonhound went missing about 9 p.m. Friday during a raccoon hunt near the town of Paris about 35 miles north of Louisville, Ky. Walker said MoMo may have fallen about 20 feet into one of the cave’s numerous sinkhole openings.
The dog’s owner and two other raccoon hunters searched throughout Friday night for MoMo and returned to the area again Saturday. They finally called police after finding the trapped, barking dog late Saturday night, and realizing they wouldn’t be able to free the hound.
When Walker arrived, he lowered a ladder through a narrow opening and carefully entered the cave.
“If I weighed five more pounds, I wouldn’t have been able to fit through that hole. It was like fitting a key through a hole,” he said.
At the bottom, Walker found the excited dog in a cave room that was about 30 yards long and lined with a layer of mud.
Because the hole was too narrow to bring the dog up in a cage, Walker carried the hound up the ladder part of the way.
“His owner asked how much he owed me and I said he’d already paid for my services with his tax money,” Walker said.

Posted in Hunting, Law Enforcement, Wildlife | No Comments »

Cutting trees — with dynamite?!

May 14, 2012 by John McCoy

The effort to fell trees killed by pine bark beetles is booming — literally.

From the Associated Press:

MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — U.S. Forest Service workers have exchanged axes and saws for sticks of high explosives in southwestern Montana to bring down beetle-killed pine trees that pose unique dangers.
Crew member Gordon Ash said workers brought down hundreds of trees last week in the Pioneer Mountains by blowing up the trunks. He said beetle-killed trees often rot from the inside out, making them prone to shattering and falling in unpredictable ways.
“You’d calculate the proper amount of explosive, and then fix that on the tree with shrink wrap,” Ash said. “You’d put it right where a face-cut would be, and sever it off right at the point where you put the explosive — almost like a directional fall. The idea is to link as many of those trees as possible to be efficient. In three and a half days, we did 500 trees.”
The trees were also in difficult locations — overhanging parts of the Pioneer Mountain Scenic Byway in the Wise River Ranger District.
Charlie Showers, engineering program leader at the Missoula Technology and Development Center, said the danger of cutting down rotted trees in tough locations is another reason to use explosives.
“We just don’t have a whole lot of really good sawyers,” Showers told the Missoulian (http://bit.ly/J2VUkj ). “The days of going out and doing that activity are long gone in the Forest Service.”
He said crews are learning the most efficient way to bring down beetle-killed trees with explosives. Depending on how that goes, workers could use explosives to take out dead trees along highways in the Helena National Forest.
“My gut feeling is telling me when you’re looking at massive amounts of trees on steep ground that you can’t get at with a 30-pound chainsaw, where you’ve got rot and limbs hanging them up in the canopy, I think this is really going to be a very viable tool for the ranger,” Showers said. “Where we can’t go in with logging equipment, explosives are the safest way, generally.”
Robert Beckley, also of the Missoula Technology and Development Center, said he’s seen little effect from the blasting on wildlife.

Posted in Conservation, Nature | No Comments »

Back from an extended leave…

May 13, 2012 by John McCoy

Howdy, folks. It’s been quite a while since my last post. For the past nine days I’ve been on vacation. Usually while on vacation I check e-mail, monitor comments and update the blog. Not this time. I needed a complete break from everything, and I took it. Now I’m rested and raring to go. Let’s have fun!

Posted in Blogging, Personal Notes | 2 Comments »

Boing, boing goes the bear

May 2, 2012 by John McCoy

The bouncy house that caught Foster (AP Photo)

A cute little story, from the Associated Press:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — When a black bear climbed a tree in a central Arkansas city and refused to come down, authorities turned to unconventional rescue tools: bouncy houses.
Foster the Bear — named for the residential street where he holed up in a tree — wouldn’t budge from his branch Monday. So, authorities turned to a local hardware store owner who rents inflatable houses and castles for children’s birthday parties.
They asked him to set up two of the bouncy contraptions beneath the tree. Then, wildlife officials shot the bear with tranquilizer darts.
“He would slide to one side, and we’re like, ‘Oh, oh, oh, he’s going to come down, he’s going to come down,’ ” Conway police spokeswoman La Tresha Woodruff said. “And then he’d balance himself again.”
Foster finally passed out, but he still didn’t come down from his perch. Eventually, firefighters turned a hose on him until he tumbled down onto the edge of the inflatables below.
The bear, about a year old, wasn’t hurt, though he did land in between a blow-up castle and the other inflatable house — kind of “like if you get something stuck between the wall and the bed,” as Woodruff put it.
Spectators who had been watching the bear in the tree for hours cheered and clapped, Woodruff said.
“Foster was fine, just knocked out,” she said.
Wildlife officials plan to release the bear somewhere in the Ozark Mountains.
Police said the bear’s big-city adventure in Conway, about 30 miles north of Little Rock, started before he moseyed up the tree on Foster Drive. Someone had spotted the bear in a different tree on a nearby street before dawn Monday.
“Somehow, he crawled down out of the tree without them seeing him and got away,” Woodruff said.
Then, he managed to climb into another tree and inspire a Twitter feed, where someone posted updates — from the bear’s perspective — into the night.
“You ever have that dream where you’re falling and then you wake up with a dart in your butt?” one post read.
Another tweet summed up the bear’s day out.
“The cops want to shoot me,” one post read. “Fire dept says I’m too big for their cat getter-downer and 75 townies are below cheering my name.”

Posted in News of the Weird, Wildlife | No Comments »

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