The Probe, Issue 173 – January/February 1997

From The President... -- Gene LeBoeuf James E. (Jim) Forbes retifed on December 31 as ADC State Director in New York. Donald Hawthorne returned to the state of Oklahoma as State Director of USD A-APHIS-ADC, effective December 8. A strain of rabies carried primarily by raccoons has spread to the Midwest from the mid-Atlantic states. A Colorado woman was killed by two wolf hybrids in December, according to the El Paso Co. sheriffs office. According to Range magazine, half of the 40 endangered black-footed ferrets transplanted into Montana to establish a new colony have been killed by coyotes. It has been more than a century since India faced the threat of wolves on the scale now terrorizing the state of Uttar Pradesh, 350 miles from New Delhi. Since the first killing in mid-1996, 33 children have been reportedly carried off and killed by wolves, and 20 more have been mauled. A recent publication of the California Poultry Industry Federation related the story of a unique device used by the FAA to test the strength of windshields on airplanes — an air gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane\u27s windshield at approximately the same speed the plane flies. More Abstracts from the 3rd Annual Conference of The Wildlife Society (October 1996): Economics of bird strikes to commercial aircraft in the United States -- Richard A. Dolbeer Famous Damaging Wolves and tbe Credibility of Wildlife Literature -- Philip S. Gipson, W. B. Bollard, andR. M. Nowak White-tailed Deer Conflict Resolution in a Georgia Coastal Community -- Douglas I. Hall, J. W. Bueifiloski, andD. M. Hoffman Feral Pig Eradication, Santa Rosa Island, Calif. -- Carmen A. Lombard