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Show WILDLIFE REPORT UTVH STATE DIVISION Or WILDUI E RESOURCES ' 1? Ry Jon Leatham Conservation Officer On March 23rd, tlie" Divisions pilot. Chuck Morris and I flew over the area between the Colorado- I'tah bold e r and Cisco. Our purpose of the flight was to make an aerial survey of the antelope in the area. A few years ago, the Colorado Division of Fish and Game planted antelope in Colorado near the I'tah border, and for the past few years the herd has been increasing. As the antelope ante-lope have dispersed, they have found good range on the Utah side of the border and have increased steadily. As Chuck flew the Cessna 180 back and forth across the area, the wind bounced us a-round a-round like a kite. It wasn't the best day for counting antelope from 200 feet above the ground but we did have some success. We spotted spot-ted several small bands of four to eight head, and one band of 20. The antelope would usually spook when they saw the plane and would run with their white rumps glistening glist-ening and the dust a-fh a-fh ing! They are truly a beautiful animal to watch. In an h o u r w e had counted 37 doe and 8 buck. We noticed a few of the buck were all alone, and as the plane flew over them they would jump up out of the black sage and just watch but would not run. These wise old bucks just don't panic like the average antelope. Earlier that morning. Chuck flew the Hatch Point area with Leon Bogedahl. the Conservation Conser-vation Officer from Monticello. and they reported re-ported seeing over 130 antelope, but because of the rough winds they figured fig-ured they missed several sev-eral small bands. In spite of the bad winter, the antelope appear ap-pear to be doing well, and as long as we have no unforseen setbacks we may well have two turntable antelope units within a few years. The Division of Wildlife Wild-life Resources has learned le-arned that a documentary document-ary film on declining wildlife. "Say Goodbye" Good-bye" is currently being released to schools and television stations. The film distorts the truth about conservation and the management of wildlife wild-life populations. Conservation organizations organ-izations such as the Xat-i Xat-i o n a 1 Wildlife Feder- ation; U.S. Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife; and the International Inter-national Association of Game, Fish and Conservation Conser-vation Commissioners have condemned the film for being misleading and non-factual. More than one sequence seq-uence in the film was staged or phony, but the one that aroused the ire of conservationists depicted de-picted an alleged polar bear hunt on the sea ice off Alaska. It shows a hunter i n a helicopter shooting a female polar bear that has two cubs. The narrator did not state that it is illegal to shoot from a helicopter and also to shoot a mother moth-er bear. The film shows the mother bearthrash-ing bearthrash-ing and twisting as if in her death throes while the cubs look on. The scene is totally frad-ulent. frad-ulent. Film footage had been obtained from Alaska Al-aska wildlife authorities and had been cut and spliced to fit the film. In reality the bear had been tranquilized with a harmless drug as part of a bear research project in which the bear was weighed, measured and tagged. This mother bear recovered shortly with no harmful effects and wandered off unharmed un-harmed with her cubs while the biologist watched. wat-ched. The data from such tagging projects will in fact help man in providing the polar bear a hopeful future. The narrator did not mention that either. |