Mountain lion has a place to hide at Yellowstone Wildlife Sanctuary.

The Yellowstone Sanctuary, the only real place for damaged wildlife to live in Montana, may have to shut down because of some undisclosed animal violations, the Missoulian reports.

The Missoulian says director Ellie Marion told them the center isn’t meeting certain accreditation standards of a federal agency, but she wouldn’t say which one. “Basically, we are in a tough spot,” Marion told the newspaper, saying they could be fined up to $50,000. “The federal agency has the power to close us down. If we can’t meet the most basic needs, we won’t be able to keep our doors open.”

I got to visit the Sanctuary, then known as the Beartooth Nature Preserve, a few years ago after a trip to Yellowstone and it seemed totally well-meaning and clean. The animals had fun things to do and the people who worked or volunteered there knew them all individually. I didn’t hear back from the sanctuary when I called to ask what is up. On their website the only mention is a meeting that went down on Feb. 2 that promised to answer the question “What the heck is going on up there?”

I don’t really see what all the secrecy is about. Zoos and sanctuaries that exhibit animals are governed by the Animal Welfare Act. That’s enforced by APHIS–the same branch of the USDA that goes out and kills wildlife at the bidding of ranchers. So it would certainly be ironic if the agency that normally shoots and poisons wildlife gets to fine a non-profit that takes in wolves, bears, birds and all other kinds of animals that have been injured,  abused or taken in as ill-advised pets.

So far the USDA shows the sanctuary as having a completely clean record with no violations, either direct or indirect, over the last four inspections. APHIS can exempt some sanctuaries from regulations–as long as they meet another set of regulations, including not using the animals in fundraising. Which would seem hard for an animal-saving charity to do.

One of Yellowstone Sanctuary’s residents has a celebrity friend. Ted Turner gave them his former pet, a magpie named Harry, when the bird turned aggressive, the book Gifts of the Crow reports. The bird now answers all queries with no, no, no. Maybe he can help them out.

If you ever visit Yellowstone National Park, it’s worth the side trip, especially since it’s in Red Lodge, MT, which has the Montana Candy Emporium, easily the best candy store I’ve ever visited.

Wild ravens often steel from this captive raven.

Two young bears at what used to be called the Beartooth Wildlife Sanctuary lived in a chain-link enclosure with lots of toys and interesting things to eat.

Donkeys have an expansive view.

What would have to spend to understand the messages birds  are broadcasting to each other when they sing and whistle? Would you pay thousands of dollars to take a Berlitz for bird language or go away to a cabin for months?

What if I told you that by spending random half hours in your own backyard listening to chatter, with the help of Young’s What the Robin Knows you would eventually decode their signals and get to know the characters in the soap opera that happens every day outside your window. But wait, that’s not all! You’ll also be able to use your new gentle way to get to travel quietly among birds everywhere, which will let you see more animals.

I first encountered Jon Young’s work maybe 10 years ago when a much more advanced birder friend passed me an absurdly enormous cassette tape series on bird language. Young is a protege of America’s most famous tracker, Tom Brown, Jr. When Brown got too busy and famous to teach everyone who wanted to learn from him at his New Jersey Tracker School, Young offered classes out west at the Wilderness Awareness School he co-founded in Washington in 1983.

So the tapes were pretty hard core, new agey and intimidating for me. I felt like I was learning bird language in a class taught in Italian (which I also don’t understand). But there was also something real there.

I was fascinated by what Young was saying, that birds and animals only do what is necessary to survive, so of course their communication is meaningful and essential. Other birders figure out which species is singing; Young explains what they are saying. Birds and animals listen to and sometimes acknowledge each other–except for humans, who stomp into the woods, disrupt the party and don’t say hi to anyone. The twitter tweet concept is pretty close to what birds (and some other prey animals) do: they broadcast alarms. It’s not that the robin tells the elk to look out for the jerk on the trail. The robin is just complains about the person and the elk picks it up and retweets it.  If you don’t want to annoy them all, you have to behave like a gentle person to even the small birds.

But I was the typical American lousy, unc0operative student. I took what I wanted. I didn’t quite follow all his his instructions about going to a favorite “sit spot” and writing down what happens every 10 minutes. I excused myself because my fire escape was my yard and my nature spot was in Manhattan’s tiny and unruly Tompkins Square Park. What could I keep track of there, aside from pigeons and starlings?

Since then, there’s been an explosion of interest in wildlife skills, thanks to Tom Brown, Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv and a ton of academic research proving what the trackers have been saying, that animals really do communicate.  Middle America found its need for nature. Wilderness teachers, who traditionally mentor a handful of students for years, however, didn’t find way to reach us.

“‘I realized the Tom Brown story was not a mainstream story,” Young says. “How can we help the more average person in America? They’re not going to want to build a survival shelter. The average homeowner is not going to relate to raccoon poop, except that it makes a mess in their garage.”

What the Robin Knows isn’t just the hardcover version of the tape. Young says he went through an identity crisis, trying to figure out where he fit in the growing movement of people reconnecting Americans with the outdoors. Around the country tracking schools are now reviving ancient skills, including  White Pine in Maine where Young’s collaborator Dan Gardoqui teaches. Young worked with educators, consultants and editors for years simplifying the message and creating a program even I can understand and hope to accomplish. He also worked with the world’s premiere bird recorder, Elliot Lang, to create a database of some of the various expressions for each species. (You can check it out at Birdlanguage.com.)

“Start where you are,” Young says now. “My favorite sit spots nowadays are right at your front door.” In the book he tells people to keep it simple and that the sit spot shouldn’t be more than  minutes from their door.

Young breaks  down bird language into five categories: songs, companion calls, territorial, begging for food and alarm. The first four are all normal background chatter. Most of what birds say all day long seems to parallel what humans say when they get a cell phone: I’m here, where are you? The really interesting stuff happens during the alarms. Young even helps you figure out what creature is in the woods by the shape of the birds’ escape route. Are they hopping up a few feet? Or coming down from the tops of trees?

Humans all too often create a “bird plow” effect, Young says, pushing freaked out birds away from them, and setting off alarms that all other wildlife listen to.

One of the advantages of using a sitting quietly in one spot, becoming more aware of everything around you, is that you and the birds get used to each other and calm down.

That simple act is the gist of Young’s message. Though, he is quite generous in his teachings, throwing in specific exercises, fun bird language anecdotes, the sound library and just a lot of strange, useful bird knowledge.

After following some of the practices, I heard a big kerfuffle of robins and cardinals in a tree above a crowded Brooklyn playground. Then I saw a red-tailed hawk fly off the branch, swoop over the jungle gym to catch a rat. Nobody else seemed to notice, but I took my daughter Ginger out to see the hawk and its prey (she’s too young to realize that it, too, was a living creature). She also got to see the robins being brave and trying to scare the menace away from their families.

When I got to interview Young, one of the most fun parts for me was when he told me that before this upsurge in outdoor interest, people he knew would be supportive of him, but they thought his work was a waste of time. One New Jersey neighbor would tell him that his mother was worried about him. I am tickled by this scene because here’s this shamanistic mountain man getting hassled by suburban gossips. He might be just perfect to bridge the gap between contemporary American families who commute from the exurbs to the city with the wilderness they left behind.

Check out tracking classes at Tracker School in NJ, Wilderness Awareness School in WA, or White Pine in ME

Where to SEE BEAR Polar, Grizzly, Black, any kind

The USDA is going to shoot a Mexican wolf, even though she is one of only six successful wild mothers.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service and USDA have contrived a way to  shoot yet another endangered Mexican gray wolf, one of only 58 in the wild. Wolf  F118, head of the Fox Mountain pack, is one of only six successful wild mothers, but the agencies announced Thursday they would shoot her by Friday because of four local cattle deaths in Gila National Forest, NM.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has a long history of accidentally on purpose lowering this species’ survival chances. After this wolf is shot, they will have killed 13 on purpose, 18 on accident during capture, placed 32 in captivity and let ranchers kill 43 illegally without much fuss.  The federal government has wasted more Mexican wolves than it has saved.

Meanwhile, despite a massive breeding effort by biologists and wolf centers around the country, somehow the Fish and Wildlife Service has managed to find a way not to release any new Mexican wolf for about five years.  Either they are the worst species managers in the world, or they are just caving to ranching interests.

The Mexican wolf has become the most political animal in America. Desert ranchers in the southwest think of the Mexican wolf as he embodiment of federal meddling. They’re kind of like Wall Street bankers who got messed up the economy, got a bailout and now whine about regulation. These guys are graze livestock in semi-barren land, without a shepherd or cowboy to look over them, and with a huge discount on grazing fees at taxpayer expense on public lands. But they still think the federal government is out to get  them by returning land to the wild–the 2010s version of the black helicopters.

Conservationists see the Mexican gray wolf as the ultimate Obama sell-out. With rancher Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary, the administration has managed to avoid releasing a single Mexican gray wolf in four years. And now it wants to kill one three months before election day. They apparently have four puppies, whose survival chances will be cut if mom disappears. In past years those removing wolves have had a deadline of Oct. 31  in 2009 and Oct. 28 in 2008.

MexicanWolves.org suggests calling the White House and Obama campaigns.

“Instead of killing this successful wolf mother, more should be done by affected ranchers to protect their livestock,” said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity. “This kill order is a shocking return to reviled and destructive Bush administration policies toward Mexican gray wolves.”

Sure, I’m still going to have to vote for Obama. But last time I volunteered and donated. This time I think that money will go to the Center for  Biological Diversity.

Feds May Call Mexican Gray Wolf Endangered

 6th Mexican wolf dead this year (of 42 wild); Arizona proposes finally releasing one

 Where to Go to See Wolves

Doss has some serious, boring inventions and then a side-line in goofy stuff like the face feeder, which he came up with after a hummingbird hovered in front of his red bird.  “A hummingbird came out of nowhere and just hung there, two inches from my nose,” he says. “My immediate response was, I froze. I never forgot the experience. It was such a magical type of thing.”

Decades later, Doss took a professional welding face shield and covered it in a red pattern that hummers love. Then he put a rubber tube between the eyes to be filled with sugar water. The birds came. This isn’t the first attempt at a hummingbird helmet. This adorable video shows a little girl watching hummingbirds in the more popular variety–and initially flinching and scaring them away.

The face shield serves to draw hummers in (they love red) and to make humans confident they won’t get their eyes poked out. Hummingbirds are so agile, they’re not going to go bumbling into your face.

Doss says the tube was the hardest part to figure out. During the northern California spring, when three or four hummingbirds may be buzzing the helmet, he may refill it more than once a day. In winter he can skip a day.

The reason people are both fascinated with hummingbirds and frustrated in seeing them is their speed. They may only be there 15 seconds, but if they’re an inch from your eye, you can really drink up the details. “You can actually look into their eyes. You can appreciate their tiny little feet. They have the smallest feet because they never walk. You see markings, so you can see this one’s not that one. You see them feed, then back up and look left and look right.” While the person wearing the hummingbird helmet can distinguish between individual hummingbirds, the birds are oblivious to which person is behind the mask. That means, once the birds in your yard get used to eating from a red helmet, they’ll feel at home when your visiting friend wears it or they see some other guy wearing a helmet 100 miles away.

As he nears 700 of the $80 feeders sold–mostly in the US and Canada, although most hummers are in Latin America–there’s getting to be a chance that hummingbirds will start to recognize the feeders, which will make them even more fun to own.

Check out the “face to face” feeder

In winter animal tourists get close to elk at the refuge. Lori Iverson / USFWS

The federal handouts to 12,000-some elk on the National Elk Refuge near Jackson Hole, WY, have gotten a lot of criticism lately as a potential mass distribution system for chronic wasting disease. An online documentary series, Terra the Nature of our World, just re-aired the documentary Feeding the Problem by Danny Schmidt, which warns that unless feeding is phased out, the scary, brain-destroying, fatal disease may sicken most of the population. Bruce Smith, a former biologist for the range who was interviewed in the film, also just relaeased a book Where Elk Roam: Conservation and Biopolitics of Our National Elk Herd, which says the population should be cut in half.

For about a century people have been feeding elk in the winter on the range. It started as a way to placate local ranchers, who otherwise ended up feeding the elk with their cattle. Now it’s a hit with hunters, who have a supersized elk population to stalk. And, let’s be honest, animal tourists get a kick out of seeing them so easily. In winter the herd is a spectacle and tradition. Horses pull sleighs among the animals. The antlers they shed are picked up by boyscouts, auctioned off and turned into monuments in Jackson Hole.

At this point it’s inevitable that CWD will reach the feeding ground–even those who support feeding admit that. But they question whether it will be that big of a deal. One rancher complains in Feeding the Problem that there is “too much science” in the argument against feeding. It’s one thing to hear Republican presidential candidates pretend that global warming doesn’t exist; they get money and support from the oil industry. But here are local guides and ranchers arguing that science isn’t really about data and results, but a matter of theory and opinion. As Upton Sinclair said: “It’s hard to make a man understandsomething when his livelihood depends on him not understanding it.”

The big question is what will happen to the elk when the disease hits the feeding range. Will CWD inflict widespread disease and suffering and wipe out the elks? Or just cause widespread disease and suffering? Should we try to avert a catastrophe? Or just wait and see how big a catastrophe it really is?

Right now Wyoming is already testing for CWD, which is strongest in the opposite (southeast) corner of the state. Because the disease can spread through contact with droppings and urine, the feed ground staff already spreads the feed wide and covers over elk droppings with snow. But there is still confusion about how exactly CWD spreads–though biologists are pretty sure it’s more easily than other brain-wasting transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), also known as prion diseases. Neighboring Montana accuses Wyoming of allowing the disease to spread.

One of the ranchers interviewed, Brad Mead, says he was reluctantly turned around by the  science and thinks the area would be better off dealing with CWD before it hits the elk refuge. “I have to believe tourism would suffer a lot if ppl driving down the highway past the elk refuge saw elk dying of chronic wasting disease in the hundreds or thousands,” Mead says.

Of great interest to bison lovers: Mead also says that as a rancher, brucellosis isn’t really that big of a concern. Brucellosis is the excuse for slaughtering bison that roam outside the park–even though it’s been shown they catch it through elk. But I guess that’s too much science.

Where to SEE ELK

SEE ANIMALS IN THE WEST (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, OR, UT, WA, WY)

See a local webcam of the Elk Refuge

California ground squirrel / Courtesy of Alan Vernon

I was looking forward to seeing the mottled little California ground squirrel (Spermophilus beecheyi), but I may have found a squirrel I don’t really like. Or at least one that doesn’t like me.

These little spectacled rodents are all over California. You can see their little den holes in the dusty chapparel. Wikipedia says they are “common and easily observed ground squirrel of the western United States.” Easily observed, my ass.

You won’t see one if they see you first. There are other squirrels who aren’t shy. A few fox squirrels flagged their tails at me, then went back to eating the black walnuts of Franklin Canyon.

Yellowstone Bison

Two plans are under consideration to limit the Yellowstone bison population but end the periodic mass slaughters. Montana ranchers want to “hunt” the lumbering bison, even inside the park. The USDA, meanwhile, is trying out a one-shot chemical constraceptive or castration. Either way ranchers get what they want: fewer bison and therefore no reason to tolerate wolves.

The AP’s Matthew Brown got his hands on a now secret plan to allow regular hunting–even inside Yellowstone National Park boundaries. Hunting is a bit of a misnomer because any fool can get within several yards of a bison and shoot it like a cow. About 3,700 buffalo roam the park now, but hunters would keep it at about 3,000. About 330 bison would be “hunted” or captured to be relocated or butchered annually. (The rest die off naturally.)

MT Gov. Brian Schweitzer wants to “hunt” the bison. “These things have to have some give and take,” he told the AP. By that he means, that the park boundary should be considered inviolate as far as bison getting out, but more flexible about hunters coming in. A park spokesman told Brown, who did a great job investigating the plan, that they wouldn’t allow hunting within the park–even though that’s what the plan said.

Meanwhile, the USDA, whose Wildlife Services unit kills wildlife for farmers and ranchers, is finally thinking about a contraceptive. GonaCon works with one shot, well, mostly. And it curbs ovulation, estrus, marking and the urge to mate as well as the ability.

Contraceptive in general is a better approach than the mass slaughters we’ve seen in recent years, with bison rounded up or shot just beyond the park boundary, if they migrate out for the winter. But Stephany Seay, media coordinator of Buffalo Field Campaign, told The Atlantic that it’s all still a manipulation of a wildlife species to accommodate ranchers.  “Brucellosis is being used as a tool to manipulate the movement of wild bison,” she said. Ranchers hate bison because they compete for food and may spread Brucellosis, a disease that makes cows abort fetuses. But they are noticeably less concerned about the brucellosis brought in by the elk, which they feed and like to hunt.

Where to SEE BUFFALO, Bison and Wisent

Where to SEE ELK

SEE ANIMALS IN THE WEST (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, OR, UT, WA, WY)

Yeah, there’s a new dynamic: ranchers, hunters and government agents can kill wolves like they haven’t in a century. Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity points out that delisting wolves means that the USDA’s Wildlife Services unit, which kills wildlife for farmers and ranchers at taxpayer expense, will now be able to kill even more wolves for even more reasons. Like to promote elk hunting. Even though biologists say the wolves aren’t really hurting the elk.

Only about 1,100 wolves survive out west, but Wildlife Services kills an amazing number: 452 in FY2010 and 481 in FY2009. Wolves didn’t get kicked off the list (this time) by a bizarre political deal until April. In Idaho 169 wolves have been killed so far this year: 122 for hunters, 42 for cows and 5 for elk. Montana has already killed 136, more than half by hunting.

Leslie Kaufman’s story has some sense of history, but the entire premise seems based on a fabulist rancher’s point of view. I don’t know any wolf people who feel they have “gone too far.” Nor do they–we–feel we have been the ones overpowering the meek. The whole premise seems based on one quote: “‘I personally look back and say there were a number of things that conservationists did that were not effective and which blew up on us,’ said Lisa Upson, executive director of Keystone Conservation, which teaches ranchers non-lethal control methods.

Sure, maybe rhetoric gets overheated. Pat Goodman, senior wolf handler at Wolf Park in Indiana, says, wisely, that “it is very easy to bring shame on your cause and harden the attitudes of people on the other side by losing your temper, and making ad hominem attacks. Wolf advocates can help, she says, just by listening respectfully to ranchers and trying to work out ways to lessen the real impact of wolves. “Defenders did a very good thing in offering to pay stockmen to allow wolves to raise pups on their land, unmolested,” she says. “This turns wolves into a “cash crop” in that stockmen get paid even if the wolves do not take domestic prey (and not all wolves take domestic animals).”

For decades the biggest tactic of wolf watchers has been to develop non-lethal control and share the cost. Defenders of Wildlife paid for livestock kills until 2010 and studies how to use non-lethal methods–like disposing of carcasses or using shepherds. (Ranchers says the criteria to prove losses are too high and the payments too low.)

But the New York Times balances the whole story on a single quote about a non-specific regret: “‘I personally look back and say there were a number of things that conservationists did that were not effective and which blew up on us,’ said Lisa Upson, executive director of Keystone Conservation, a Montana-based nonprofit group that offers ranchers help with nonlethal control measures.” It’s not like wolf advocates were out there shooting cattle on the sly. Upson even says she tried to share the cost of someone to guard cattle only to have ranchers use the money to hunt wolves by helicopter. Defenders says only 0.1% of cattle losses are from wolves.

What the story doesn’t get at is the sense of imbalance and injustice wolf lovers feel. I don’t think anyone, even ranchers, thinks that the convoluted budget rider that took wolves off the list by Congressional fiat, with no hope of judicial or scientific oversight, is how we like to run the country. And, in fact, the Center is fighting whether that’s Constitutional.

“This is an attack not just on the protection wolves, but also an attempt to undermine the Endangered Species Act as a whole,” Robinson says, sounding not particularly timid or bowed.

The federal government supports opponents of wolves–whether they are ranchers or elk hunters. Wildlife watchers far outnumber these groups, but we don’t get the kind of federal love. A rancher can graze cattle at a far reduced rate on federal land, then get another branch of the federal government to go out and kill wolves on their own land. That doesn’t even take into account all the lax meat inspection rules that favor meat producers over American families.

Yes, we lost that battle–for now. (The Center for Biological Diversity is appealing.) But wolves got defeated by stronger political opponents, not by science or deft arguments.

Check out the Center for Biological Diversity

Where to SEE WOLVES (plus coyote, coywolf and any wild canid)

Wild Burros / By Al_HikesAZ Alan English CPA

Rick Perry’s biggest hunting worry is the nasty name of his land, but horse lovers have a bigger problem with him. His wildlife officials have been shooting wild burros–again–to make way for bighorn sheep hunting on the Rio Grande. They stopped after public outrage in 2007, but a Freedom of Information Act request shows they’ve shot at least 47 this year, many with AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle.

AR-15, anti-burro weapon

The recent FOIA documents show two parks employees, Drew Hufstedler and Barrett Durst, somewhat methodically looking for and killing burros. But then  Jaime Sanchez, a Dallas County game warden, went out a few times mid-summer with an AR-15.  Not a particularly efficient shot or bureaucrat, on June 22 he only hit his target with six of nine shots from a .308 and may have only killed one burro–you can’t tell because from his paperwork. Then on the  Fourth of July Sanchez fired this semi-automatic version of an M-16 seven times to take down two burros. Some of his other paperwork is late–not that there’s any repercussion.

The big is to clear Big Bend Ranch State Park for big horn sheep, which hunters pay big money to shoot. A change.org online petition, already signed by nearly 100,000 people, asks Texas to knock it off. Not the adding sheep part–the shooting of the mules. Since there’s not real solid science that they even interfere.

Texas has been working with hunters to bring bighorn sheep to the park to shoot. The Texas Bighorn Society describes it as hard-working volunteers restoring a native species. Hunters argue burros aren’t native and compete with big horns and foul the water supply.

Mule lovers look at it as a bunch of yahoo hunters inserting sheep to have fun and make money. Van Atta says burros don’t interfere with bighorn, which, even if they were uproariously fun to shoot, might not really be native. The sheep and burros usually live at different elevations and if there’s a drought burros can dig water holes other animals use, she says.

Ram moving to Big Bend for hunters

The public first found out about shooting wild asses in 2007, when park workers told on state officials, which ended in a big investigation and a plan not to do it again, or at least be more discreet.

The testimony showed that State Parks rirector Dan Sholly and regional director Mike Hill just went out and shot at least 71 burros, at Big Bend State Park whenever they were in town for a meeting.

Meanwhile, complex manager Luis Armendariz tried to get the USDA to trap them, but they refused. Armendariz says the shooters referred to themselves as the “Yosemite mafia” and that one cryptically told him: “I have gotten rid of 15 of your problems.” Some burro carcasses were found shot in the belly–an unethical way of hunting that leaves the animal to linger in pain. Workers said the hunters seemed to use helicopters to shoot the mules.

“Shortly after that, Parks ordered them to take anything out of the gift shop that has anything to do with burros,” says Karen Van Atta.

To no one’s surprise, an internal affairs investigation found that it’s powerful wildlife officials had not committed animal cruelty or done nothing wrong. The findings say they didn’t use helicopters or shoot unethically–but the whole thing is by affadavit so I don’t see any way that they even confronted the men with the evidence. They just took their word on it. They don’t comment on using helicopters to shoot burros, so the report officially concludes they didn’t.

The shooters, all qualified marksmen, claimed they weren’t doing it for fun, just to make way for the trophy hunting of bighorn sheep. Shooters tried to claim that the burros were just abandoned pets of a recent parks manager, but Van Atta found evidence that predates the manager.

Horseback Magazine reported in February that state officials had resumed killing burros and also audad sheep. Wild Burro Protection League founder Marjoree Farabee went down to the park, which is on the Mexican border, and “discovered …that at least 46 more of these remarkable animals have also been wasted.”

Burros, as you may recall, were introduced by Spaniards 500 years ago. Americans have used and abused their remnant populations to haul mining supplies, amuse unethical hunters and make into dog food. But starting in the late 1950s, Americans got a little nauseated by the abuse and eventually passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971.

The act offers burros flowery compliments, calling them “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West…an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.” It generously promises “wild free-roaming horses and burros shall be protected from capture, branding, harassment, or death.” But then it limits protection, so it only applies on certain western lands. The Bureau of Land Management, which is pretty much rancher-owned and operated, can still capture and/or kill them. And apparently, so can the state of Texas under Rick Perry.

Where to SEE WILD HORSES and horse sanctuaries

Yellowstone Bison

Canyon Ministries is putting out a series of books that explain the major American national wonders–the Grand Canyon, Bryce–from a creationist point of view. But when it comes to Yellowstone National Park, where the big draw is wildlife, church founder Tom Vail is turning to animals’ complex relationships with each other and plants to argue that they didn’t just evolve.

Vail has been guiding people through the wonders of the Grand Canyon for 33 years. He says only in the last 18, after he became a Christian, did he start talking about creationism and looking at the canyon in a new light. For a while he’d puzzled over why the layers and folds in the rock seemed–to oversimplify his argument–too neat. A sudden event, the flood, made more sense to him.

Looking at Grand Canyon: A Different Perspective on Amazon, you’ll see people either love it or hate it. Of 70 reviews, 27 are five star, mostly along the lines of “The wonders of God’s hand through the power of cataclysm are portrayed here. The Grand Canyon book store can’t keep them on the shelf.” Many claim that skeptics want the book “censored” or “banned,” which I don’t see any evidence of. And then there are the 34 one star reviews, which praise the photographs but then say things like “However the text pretends to discuss the geology of the area but does so only from the point of view its biblical literalist authors….This book espouses both bad science and bad theology under one cover.” Some claim to have mistakenly bought the religious book, though I don’t see how that’s possible.

In a book he hopes to have out by the end of the year, Vail is turning to Yellowstone and its animals and ecosystems.

Where to SEE BUFFALO, Bison and Wisent

SEE ANIMALS IN THE WEST (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, OR, UT, WA, WY)