corrupt campaign finance system is a rigged economy.

And what has happened is, I think, the American people have responded to a series of basic truths, and that is that we have today a campaign finance system which is corrupt, which is undermining American democracy, which allows Wall Street and billionaires to pour huge sums of money into the political process to elect the candidates of their choice.

The order was decided by coin toss.

You know you’re watching — whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or neither — because you believe the outcome of the election is important to you. And we believe that, too.

You know, at this point I’m not going to speculate on that without the intelligence briefing that any Commander in Chief would have, knowing what exactly is there.

Who has the leadership skills to lead? And, I’m proud of the fact that I have 12 Medal of Honor recipients, over 30 admirals and generals that believe that I would be a steady hand as Commander in Chief. That I serve as Governor of the state of Florida where we cut taxes and reduced government. I took on very powerful interests, forged consensus, fought for my beliefs, implemented them and the state was better off.

The drive-by shot at the beginning with incorrect and incomplete information and then the memorized 25-second speech that is exactly what his advisers gave him.

But I would add this. Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to change this country. He wants America to become more like the rest of the world. We don’t want to be like the rest of the world, we want to be the United States of America. And when I’m elected president, this will become once again, the single greatest nation in the history of the world, not the disaster Barack Obama has imposed upon us.

And let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Barack Obama is undertaking a systematic effort to change this country, to make America more like the rest of the world.

First of all, I respect what Ted just said, but if you noticed, he didn’t answer your question. And that’s what’s going to happen — OK.

I think that is an assessment the voters are going to make. And they are going to make it of each and everyone of us. They are going to assess who is level-headed, who has clear vision, who has judgment, who can confront our enemies, who can confront the threats we face in this country, and who can have the judgment when to engage and when not to engage — both are incredibly important for a commander-in-chief, knowing how to go after our enemies. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In the case of Iran, for example, who has the clarity of vision to understand that the Ayatollah Khamenei, when he chants, “Death to America,” he means it. We need a president with the judgment and resolve to keep this country safe from radical Islamic terrorists.

I am convinced every individual standing on this stage, would make a much better commander-in-chief than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders.

Nobody else wanted to mention the problem, I brought it up

I’ve gotten along with people for years and years, have tremendous relationships with many people

I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond to this and to tell the American people tonight why you do have the temperament to be commander-in-chief.

Cherry picking a quote here or there doesn’t change my record of having fought for racial justice, having fought for kids rights, having fought the kind of inequities that fueled my interest in service in the first place going back to my days in the Children’s Defense Fund.

So we could go back and forth like this, but the fact is most people watching tonight want to know what we’ve done and what we will do.

But if we’re going to get into labels, I don’t think it was particularly progressive to vote against the Brady Bill five times.

Given those policy positions, why should liberal Democrats support you and not Senator Sanders?

As Secretary Clinton may know, I am on the Health Education Labor Committee. That committee wrote the Affordable Care Act.

I am not going to wait and have us plunge back into a contentious national debate that has very little chance of succeeding.

the disagreement is where do we start from and where do we end up.

I also believe in affordable college, but I don’t believe in free college

I do believe that we should substantially lower student debt in this country, which is crushing millions of people. We pay for it, in my view, by a tax on Wall Street speculation. The middle class bailed out Wall Street in their time of need. Now, it is Wall Street’s time to help the middle class.

As patterns of wolf density, prey density, weather, and vulnerability of prey change, in comparison with the conditions of the study period described here, we predict that there will also be significant changes in wolf predation patterns and feeding behavior.

increased variety in diet compared with observed winter diets, including other ungulate species, rodents, and vegetation

based on their vulnerability

therefore kill primarily calves, old cows, and bulls that have been weakened by winter

Patterns of prey selection and kill rates in winter have varied seasonally each year from 1995 to 2004 and changed in recent years as the wolf population has become established

predation studies on a highly visible, reintroduced population of wolves are increasing our understanding of this aspect of wolf ecology

essential component to understanding the role that top carnivores play in shaping the structure and function of terrestrial ecosystems

Foraging and feeding ecology of the gray wolf (Canis lupus): lessons from Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA.

Foraging and feeding ecology of the gray wolf (Canis lupus): lessons from Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, USA.

His old pack, made up of his daughters and their new male partners, came roaring back to the Lamar Valley in mid-March. They swooped down on 755M’s den, attacked his consort, and chased the pair away. The two staggered into the forest, 755M’s mate leaving a trail of blood in the snow. She died that night. And what of 755M? He’s rarely seen these days. He wanders in the borderlands between other packs, hunted and haunted – a lone wolf, bereft of all.

We all love happy endings and, like many others who follow the Yellowstone wolves, I rooted for 755M and his new mate. It was not to be.

She wanted to know what had become of him, McIntyre said, just as we would if we became separated from our family members.

For most of the 20th century, scientists were taught to regard animals as mindless beings lacking thoughts or emotions. But that attitude, too, has been swept aside as researchers with a more evolutionary perspective have revealed that species from fish and turtles to rats and lions have mental skills not so dissimilar from our own. Many animals—not just human animals-- love and laugh and grieve (link is external).

Cougar societies that aren’t actively hunted—and so have the oldest males and females—also cause fewer problems for people.

From Rob Wielgus’s research at the Large Carnivore Conservation Laboratory (link is external) at Washington State University in Pullman

We know now that animals have personalities (link is external) (some are shy, others are bold) that affect their reproductive success.

Animals were regarded more or less like cogs in a wheel; one dies, another one takes its place. Long-term studies of elephants, chimpanzees, dolphins, and other species tell a different story, though.

But the numbers overlook the social consequences of these deaths.

And that is true. The death of one or two, or even a dozen Yellowstone park wolves (the number of park wolves believed to have been shot or trapped outside its boundaries in the 2012-2013 hunting season (link is external)) does not mean that the population is doomed. Wolf biologists emphasize how resilient the animals are. Packs may vanish, but others will take their place; there are pups this spring.

After the death of 832F, officials emphasized that the parks’ wolf population was still viable; there were plenty of wolves for people to see with more than 80 remaining.

“I can’t prove it, but I think that’s why 832 led her pack back there,” Rick McIntyre, a biological technician for the Yellowstone Wolf Project, told me. McIntyre has followed the canids daily since they were reintroduced to the park in 1995, (link is external) and knows the individual wolves better than anyone.  “Even though 754 wasn’t the alpha male, he was her favorite. I think she went looking for him.”

But two weeks before her death, the pack’s beta male, 754M, had also been shot and killed in the same area.

People were drawn to 832F because she was an unusual female wolf—saucy, independent, powerful and wily enough to bring down a bull elk alone, and unwilling to be anything other than the leader of her pack. She’d scorned all her suitors until she met a pair of malleable males, the black-and-silver furred brothers, 755M and 754M. They were younger than she was, and were mediocre hunters at best, but the trio formed a pack, which the brothers wisely let her lead. By 2012, they had grown to 13 strong, and were the indisputable rulers of the Lamar River Valley with its herds of elk and buffalo. All that changed, though, in early December 2012, when 832F was killed 15 miles from the park’s eastern boundary.

enormous repercussions, which continue to this day.

From a purely demographic standpoint, biologists say no. If there are sufficient numbers of wolves to breed, then the species is fine

Does the death of one wolf matter?

He is, after all, still alive, although some might say he’s but a ghost of his former self, because she is gone, felled by a Wyoming hunter’s bullet.

Only a few weeks before

lay so still he looked more like a stone or downed log. Most unlike a wolf, he was alone.

I learned this firsthand during a visit to Yellowstone National Park last winter

The decision is based solely on numbers, and so it misses what is increasingly evident to wildlife biologists and conservationists: the importance of individual animals.

according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service

When A Wolf Dies Do individual animals matter? Posted Jun 07, 2013

Virginia Morell

When A Wolf Dies

“Where management has been transferred to the states, America’s wolves have fallen under an assault of legislation, bullets, and traps,” wrote the founders of Living with Wolves in a June 2013 op-ed in the New York Times. “Have we brought wolves back for the sole purpose of hunting them down?”

“It’s time for Wyoming to step back and develop a more science-based approach to managing wolves.” 

“Any state that has a wolf-management plan that allows for unlimited wolf killing throughout most of the state should not be allowed to manage wolves,”

conservation groups have criticized the delisting of wolves in the state, fearing it would leave their fate to the whims of Wyoming’s ranchers and livestock farmers.

Reid Singer

“The court found that the agency acted arbitrarily and capriciously by relying upon improper factors,” Judge Jackson wrote in her ruling.

Since the Obama administration delisted the gray wolf in 2012, the Fish and Wildlife Service treated it as a trophy/game animal in parts of Wyoming with allotted hunting seasons. Alternately, in four-fifths of the state, the wolf was treated as a predator that could be shot at any time.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled on Tuesday that the management plan in Wyoming was inadequate and largely unenforceable.

Wyoming Wolves Back on Endangered Species List

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) removed federal protections for the wolves (Canis lupus) in 2012. The agency concluded that the canids had fully recovered from near-extinction

FWS spokesman Gavin Shire disagreed, saying that the “science clearly shows that wolves are recovered in the Great Lakes Region, and we believe the Great Lakes states have clearly demonstrated their ability to effectively manage their wolf populations.”

Howell agreed, finding that FWS had incorrectly interpreted the ESA by not assessing the species as a whole. The agency’s delisting decision was “fatally flawed,” she wrote, because it was tied to “a scientific finding that turned out to be, at best, premature, or, at worst, erroneous.”

At the time of the wolves’ delisting, federal wildlife biologists estimated the animals’ population in the region at 4400. That number dropped to 3748 this year as a result of hunting and trapping, and state plans called for an even greater decline. For instance, Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources was aiming for a statewide wolf population of just 350 animals (from a high of 800).

By Virginia Morell

Judge returns Great Lakes wolves to endangered species list

Gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region are once again protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA), following a federal court ruling. The decision ends wolf hunting and trapping in Minnesota and Wisconsin. In Michigan, which does not allow wolf hunting, voters recently rejected an effort to establish a wolf season.

© 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights Reserved. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, PatientInform, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER.

Judge returns Great Lakes wolves to endangered species list

“For more than 15 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state wildlife agencies, tribes, conservation organizations, ranchers and other landowners have worked hard to recover gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains. Our collective efforts have brought this population to the point where it no longer requires Endangered Species Act protection,” stated Tom Strickland, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks for the Department of the Interior.  “The Service’s decision to delist the wolf in Idaho and Montana reflected the strong commitments from the states of Idaho and Montana to manage gray wolves in a sustainable manner. Today’s ruling makes it clear this wolf population cannot be delisted until the State of Wyoming has instituted an adequate management program, similar to those of Idaho and Montana.”

Montana and Idaho’s plans were approved in 2003, but Wyoming’s plan that would have categorized wolves as predators in much of the state allowing a “shoot on sight” policy was rejected.  Some compromises were made and, in spring 2008, the FWS announcement to delist the species was met by an immediate lawsuit by environmental organizations. 

Environmental groups once again filed suite but their request for injunction to halt the hunts in Montana and Idaho was denied on the grounds that the hunts would not do irreparable harm to the population as a whole.

in Wyoming. That state was excluded from the delisting because its wolf management plan, that would allow unrestricted killing of wolves outside the northwest part of the state, was not approved by the FWS. 

In addition, Montana wolf program coordinator Carolyn Sime suggested that one option under consideration would be application for a federal permit to conduct a research hunt. 

States are now scrambling to come up with alternatives to manage wolf populations.

Judge Molloy’s recent decision was met with frustration by the state and federal wildlife management agencies. “For more than 15 years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, state wildlife agencies, tribes, conservation organizations, ranchers and other landowners have worked hard to recover gray wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains. Our collective efforts have brought this population to the point where it no longer requires Endangered Species Act protection,” stated Tom Strickland, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks for the Department of the Interior.  “The Service’s decision to delist the wolf in Idaho and Montana reflected the strong commitments from the states of Idaho and Montana to manage gray wolves in a sustainable manner. Today’s ruling makes it clear this wolf population cannot be delisted until the State of Wyoming has instituted an adequate management program, similar to those of Idaho and Montana.”

Montana and Idaho’s hunts proceeded last fall with 72 killed in Montana and 188 killed in Idaho.  At the end of last year, the wolf population in the Northern Rocky Mountain Recovery Area, which comprises parts of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, was estimated to be at least 1,706, with 242 packs, and 115 breeding pairs.

Judge Molloy foreshadowed that he felt that the FWS had broken the law by delisting wolves in Montana and Idaho but keeping them listed in Wyoming.

Environmental groups once again filed suite but their request for injunction to halt the hunts in Montana and Idaho was denied on the grounds that the hunts would not do irreparable harm to the population as a whole.

The tug-of-war over wolf management in the Northern Rockies began when the FWS recovery goal for the species was reached in 2002 and proposed delisting was contingent upon acceptable state management plans.  Montana and Idaho’s plans were approved in 2003, but Wyoming’s plan that would have categorized wolves as predators in much of the state allowing a “shoot on sight” policy was rejected.  Some compromises were made and, in spring 2008, the FWS announcement to delist the species was met by an immediate lawsuit by environmental organizations.  In summer 2008, Judge Molloy granted a preliminary injunction to the organizations halting hunting seasons that were being planned by the state fish and wildlife agencies.  Then, in September of that year, the FWS placed the Northern Rockies population back on the endangered species list to re-evaluate the science and allow the states to amend their management plans. In spring 2009, the FWS—under a new Administration—officially classified the wolf population in the Northern Rocky Mountains as a distinct population segment and authorized the delisting of the animals throughout the region except for in Wyoming. That state was excluded from the delisting because its wolf management plan, that would allow unrestricted killing of wolves outside the northwest part of the state, was not approved by the FWS. 

The record in this case implies that the Service tried to find a pragmatic solution to the legal problem raised by the inadequacy of Wyoming's regulatory mechanisms, and Wyoming's choices about meaningful participation in a collective delisting agreement like that engaged in by Montana and Idaho. Even if the Service's solution is pragmatic, or even practical, it is at its heart a political solution that does not comply with the ESA.

The judge ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) decision to turn management over to the states of Idaho and Montana but to keep Endangered Species Act (ESA) protection in Wyoming was a political rather than a biological decision.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy

Grey Wolves Back on the Endangered Species List

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Grey Wolves Back on the Endangered Species List

has grown enough to be removed from the endangered species list and will stop receiving federal protection next month