A change in policy - from Yellowstone Gate:
Petition seeks return of Yellowstone jackalope to public lands around parks
Federal wildlife managers say they are in the early phases of reviewing a petition that seeks to reintroduce the gray prairie jackalope to the greater Yellowstone area, but they have not set a deadline for acting on the filing.
Attorneys for the Biological Equality Foundation on Friday submitted the petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to agency spokesman Craig Jimmeson, who declined to comment in detail on the petition.
Citing more than a dozen state and federal wildlife and habitat studies dating back to 1992, the Colorado-based Biological Equality Foundation stated in its petition that the “Yellowstone jackalope has been reduced to pockets of isolated population groups across a tiny fraction of its historic range.”
A bit more:
Terrence Rovak, spokesman for the Biological Equality Foundation, said thriving jackalope populations in northern Australia and southwestern Canada have proven beneficial to their habitats, restoring native forbs and slowing the spread of dalmation toadflax and other noxious weeds. Rovak said the same result is likely in the greater Yellowstone area if jackalopes are allowed to propagate freely.
“Hunting, trapping and poisoning the jackalope to the brink of extinction has had widespread negative effects on large-scale ecosystems across the Rocky Mountain region, and it’s high time we took steps to reverse that sad state of affairs,” Rovak said.
The Jackalope:
Early white explorers to the West told of encounters with reclusive but fearless large rabbits with antlers or horned protrusions. But the reports were dismissed as tall tales until confirmation of a Yellowstone jackalope by the Hayden expedition to the Yellowstone area in 1871. Expedition photographer William Henry Jackson captured the jackalope on film, proving the myth to be a reality.
Needless to say, this is an article that was initially published on April First, 2012.
