BOZEMAN, Montana (AP) — Yellowstone National Park officials say multiple bighorn rams have caught a viral disease that causes unsightly mouth sores.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports the park’s videographer snapped images in November of rams with the sores.

Officials confirmed the videographer’s pictures Monday, saying the rams have sore mouth disease, a condition widespread among wild bighorn sheep in the Rocky Mountains. It is also common in domestic sheep and goats.

Officials say animals usually recover, but death can occur in severe outbreaks, particularly among lambs that can’t feed because of the mouth sores.

The disease can be transmitted to people if a person directly touches an infected sheep.

Yellowstone biologists are monitoring the infected animals.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The reward for information regarding the killing of two wolves in northeastern Washington state has grown to $20,000.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Cascadia Wildlands on Monday said they had doubled a previously announced reward by Conservation Northwest for information leading to conviction in the killing of the wolves.

Over the weekend, officials for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that two wolves that were being monitored had been found shot to death.

The animals were members of the Smackout and Dirty Shirt packs.

Wolves are a protected species across the state of Washington. Poachers can face fines and jail time.

Wolves were wiped out in Washington early in the 1900s, but started returning to the state earlier this century.

LAUREL, Montana (AP) — Wildlife officials approved a special hunt to learn more about the prevalence of chronic wasting disease in Montana.

The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission voted Thursday to allow the hunt that will begin Friday. Licenses go on sale Monday.

Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks official Greg Lemon says the hunt follows the first finding of chronic wasting disease in wild deer in Montana this fall.

Lemon says every animal that is killed must be sampled during this hunt. He says hunters have 72 hours to submit the animal for sampling.

Whole carcasses, heads and spinal columns won’t be allowed outside the designated area in order to prevent potential spread of chronic wasting disease.

The hunt area spans more than 1,200 square miles south of Laurel in south-central Montana.

MENDON — Seeing five or six wild turkeys trot from yard to yard used to be a novelty in Mendon. Then they started multiplying.

“Then all of a sudden there’s 50 the next year, then there’s 100 the next year, and then there’s 500 the next year,” Mayor Ed Buist said. “Not a novelty anymore.”

They’re hard to miss. Packs of birds, dozens at a time, can be found pecking at grass, walking across the street and leaving behind a trail of waste throughout the small, rural town. Buist said the turkeys end up causing property damage, but there’s not much he can do to protect his residents.

Only the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources can trap wild turkeys or issue hunting permits to thin their numbers.

Mendon resident Barbara Obray said she’s called DWR to encourage them to trap turkeys in the area. She said she grew up in Mendon and never saw a wild turkey within city limits until about 15 years ago.

At first, they would come down from the mountains in the winter to find food before heading back to the hills.

Now, they seem to be a perennial pest.

“Our group just keeps getting bigger every year because they don’t get shot or anything,” Obray said.

She said she’s counted 70 wild turkeys in her yard at once, while some of her neighbors have reported more than 100 at a time. She said the fowl drive off pheasants, demolish bird feeders, scratch at hay bales, eat flowers and destroy gardens.

But she’s more concerned about the “leftovers” they produce.

“The main thing is just the poop they leave behind as they go from one yard to the next,” Obray said.

Phil Douglas, DWR’s conservation outreach manager for the northern region, said the problem is much bigger than Mendon. Wild turkeys can be found throughout Cache County and beyond.

“We have turkey depredation issues really all throughout the state,” Douglas said.

He said there are three basic approaches to handling wild turkeys. The first option is to prevent conflicts between humans and wildlife by keeping them out of urban areas. Douglas said DWR has planted oats on the west side of Mendon to feed the turkeys and prevent them from heading into town to look for food. He said that has worked in the past.

The second option is trapping, of which there are two main types. A walk-in trap can handle 15 to 20 at a time, while a drop-net trap can round up 50 birds. Douglas said DWR crews are getting ready to start trapping. The cold weather and snow helps concentrate the birds in certain areas, making them easy to trap in groups.

“Cold temperatures and the snow that we just received will certainly mark the increased presence of turkeys in these areas,” he said.

The third option is issuing fall hunting licenses. Douglas said DWR is “fairly liberal” in issuing fall hunting permits to property owners in agricultural areas where appropriate.

Douglas said the public is welcome to call the DWR northern region office at 801-476-2740 with any questions or concerns.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The growing population of wolves in eastern Washington state does not appear to be hurting the populations of deer, elk, moose and bighorn sheep, according to a report issued this week by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The agency in 2015-2017 studied the populations of those animals, known as ungulates, that are hunted by wolves and found that none “in this assessment appear to show clear signs of being limited by predation,” the report concluded.

Gray wolves were hunted to extinction in Washington in the early 20th century. But the animals started migrating into the state in the early 2000s from Idaho and Canada. The first wolf pack was documented by the department in 2008.

At the end of 2016, the state estimated there were a minimum of 115 wolves, 20 packs and 10 successful breeding pairs in the state. All of the documented wolf packs are east of the Cascade Range.

There have been numerous conflicts between wolves and livestock in recent years, and the state has killed 18 problem wolves since 2012, drawing sharp criticism from environmental groups.

Wolves are listed as endangered by the state in the eastern third of Washington and have federal endangered species protection in the western two-thirds of the state.

The study used population estimates obtained from aerial surveys, plus the number of ungulates harvested by hunters, the agency said. State officials have also launched a more comprehensive, multi-year study of the impact of wolves on ungulates.

The agency defined an at-risk ungulate population as one that falls 25 percent below its population objective for two consecutive years, or one in which the harvest decreases by 25 percent below the 10-year average harvest rate for two consecutive years.

The report showed that initial fears that wolves would wipe out wild ungulates were unfounded, said Amaroq Weiss, who works on wolf recovery issues for the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson, Arizona-based nonprofit group that focuses on protecting endangered species.

“Any hue and cry over negative predation impacts on elk herds in Washington with the return of wolves to the state is without merit,” she said. “The majority of mortality to elk in the state is human-caused.”

Sarah Ryan, executive vice president of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association, said ranchers support healthy populations of wild animals for wolves to hunt, she said.

“We need a robust population of ungulates so wolves will have something to snack on beyond cattle,” Ryan said, adding that she has not seen the study.

Washington state’s ungulate populations also include mountain goats and pronghorn, but they don’t usually live where the state’s wolves hunt.

Whether you are just getting started on your holiday shopping or you are approaching the finish line, your local Idaho Fish and Game office is a great place to shop for those still on your Christmas list.

For your favorite hunter or angler of any age, consider buying a gift certificate that can be used toward the purchase of licenses, tags or permits. Attach the certificate to a box of shotgun shells or to a headlamp or stuffed inside a pair of new wool socks, and you have a fun and useful gift any sportsperson would be thrilled to receive.

Keep in mind that certificates must be redeemed at a Fish and Game office, but the great thing is that a gift certificate from Fish and Game is never the wrong size or wrong color for those on your list. For those of you who tend to wait until the last minute, gift certificates can be purchased anytime — even on Dec. 24.

Maybe you have a wildlife watcher in the family. Both the “Idaho Birding Trail Guide” priced at $5 and the “Idaho Watchable Wildlife Guide” priced at $10 make great gifts at great prices. Both guides are filled with beautiful color pictures and a wealth of information about Idaho’s wildlife and viewing areas. And money generated from the sale of these books supports Fish and Game’s non-game program.

The Fish and Game office in Pocatello also has a nice selection of extraordinary pencil sketches by the late Pocatello artist, Edson Fichter. Unframed prints showcasing various wildlife species come in all sizes and start as low as $15. All money generated from the purchases of the Edson Fichter prints goes toward the continual maintenance and improvements of the wonderful Edson Fichter Nature Area in Pocatello near Indian Hills Elementary School.

Of course, it doesn’t take money to remember family and friends during the holidays or to simply spend time together. It is fun and inexpensive to just get outside and enjoy Idaho’s backyard.

Get your kids bundled up for an outdoor excursion and play “Outdoor Bingo.” You can make your own bingo cards out of small square pieces of poster board. Using a permanent marker and a ruler, divide the square up into equally spaced columns and rows. Maybe start off with three rows by three columns, though you can make your Bingo cards larger if you would like.

In each little square on the card, place a picture or a sticker of an animal, plant or landscape feature you might encounter on your adventure. Though you can reuse pictures for each card, be sure to vary the pattern a bit so that each card is different. And, don’t forget, the center square is labeled “Free Space” — everyone gets to mark that one off.

During your outing, keep an eye out for birds, wildlife tracks, deer, a creek, an icicle, an animal’s burrow — and mark them on your Bingo card. If you laminate the cards, you can use dry erase pens for marking the squares. That way the cards can be used multiple times. Wrap the cards up with ribbon, attach some packets of instant cocoa to enjoy when your game is over, and you have a fun stocking stuffer that promises to deliver on hours of outdoor fun and quality family time.

Hopefully, these gift giving ideas will help you go a little “wild” this holiday season without spending many “bucks” and will help build some great outdoor memories for you and yours.

Jennifer Jackson is the Regional Conservation Educator for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, southeast region.

Wow, I’ve had a great year and it was action-packed. But I still had two backpacking trips and a horse packing trip I wanted to do and yet I look at the calendar and Christmas is quickly approaching. Whoa, I’m not ready for summer to be over and yet it is long gone!

So if you’re like me and haven’t bought any Christmas presents yet, don’t panic. Outdoorsmen are easy to shop for. We love our gear, so you can buy something from $1 on up to $100,000. Let’s start off small and go up from there. I’ve tested a lot of gear this year. Here’s some items that have tested out well for me.

Small items

• Order him a map of his favorite hunting/hiking spot.

• Great book for camp cooking. Easy recipes and yet great tasting.

• We need to support the NRA. They’re the only ones fighting for our gun rights.

• This is a really specific item. You have to find out exactly what he likes or he won’t appreciate it.

• It sticks in an AR like a clip and is a fan that cools off the barrel faster.

• Here’s a cool one. They attach to your cellphone and you can attach them to your binoculars or spotting scope to take pictures of animals way off.

• All outdoorsmen could use these.

Large items

• They have a lot of great options, and they just came out with four new folders.

• They have a lot of selections but check out the Elk Hunter or Pronghorn.

• I like XGO

• I love their pants.

• They have a million options. The Benjamin Steel Eagle is a good break-action and their Marauder is a great PCP.

• I use Otis products.

• Check out the selection from Rise Fishing Co.

• Check out Leupold’s Mojave BX4 Pro Guide Binocs.

• I like their HP7R

• makes great tents, sleeping bags and sleeping pads

• Lodge makes the best

• makes a hearing protection device that also amplifies your hearing plus it is cellphone compatible.

• To get where we want to hunt/fish/backpack, it takes sturdy boots.

• The Bushnell Solar Panel 400 is good for backpackers.

• They’re lightweight and easy to carry.
• I need a new varmint rifle. I’m looking at a

• or their

• .

Really big item — Home run deal

n Give him a coupon stating that you’ll go hunting or fishing with him in 2018. I love it when Katy goes with me.

Stocking stuffers

This is where you can really hit a home run and not spend much.

• Invaluable gift! Buy him one of my Amazon Kindle books

• or

• Check out flydealflies.com

• It’s a Cajun seasoning and I love it.

Here’s a cool idea. What if you bought him a backpack and hung that up instead of a stocking?

Another twist you could do is to tell them to give you a list of 10 items. Then you can pick what you want to buy off that list and that way it’d be a surprise. Or grab his favorite catalog and have him mark some items. That way you can select one in your price range and still know that he’ll love it.

Today is my anniversary. I better whip out an anniversary list right fast!

Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Outdoor retailing giant Patagonia on Wednesday joined a flurry of lawsuits challenging President Donald Trump’s decision to chop up two large national monuments in Utah could finally bring an answer to the much-debated question of whether presidents have the legal authority to undo or change monuments created by past presidents.

Until that question is answered months or years from now, the fate of the contested lands in Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments will remain unresolved.

Proclamations signed Monday by the president allow lands no longer protected as a national monument to be opened up in 60 days to mining, but conservation and tribal groups will likely try to keep that from happening.

Mark Squillace, professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado-Boulder, said he doubts the federal government would permit mining so quickly after Trump’s announcement because it would be bad politics, especially as the legal battle mushrooms.

California-based Patagonia filed its lawsuit on behalf of several other organizations to block Trump’s reductions to Bears Ears. The California-based company said in the lawsuit that Trump’s proclamation shrinking the monument by 85 percent exceeds the president’s authority and strips much-needed protections from sacred tribal lands.

Patagonia also replaced its usual home page with a stark message, “The President Stole Your Land.”

The post drew a strong rebuke from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke who called it “nefarious, false and a lie.”

Three lawsuits already had been filed involving Utah’s monuments. And more are expected — especially if Trump follows Zinke’s recommendations to shrink two other monuments — Gold Butte in Nevada and Cascade Siskiyou in Oregon.

Supporters of Trump’s move welcomed the fight, saying it will answer longstanding questions about presidential power involving the protection of land.

“Hopefully, we can have some closure on what the president can and cannot do,” said Mike Noel, a Republican state representative in Utah who was on stage with the president during his proclamation signing in Salt Lake City.

Past presidents have trimmed national monuments and redrawn their boundaries 18 times, according to the National Park Service.

Legal experts disagree on whether the 1906 Antiquities Act — allowing presidents to create a monument — also lets them reduce one.

The question has never been settled in court, but conservation and paleontology groups and Native American tribes launching lawsuits are preparing to argue that Trump doesn’t have that authority and his move jeopardizes a wealth of Native American artifacts, dinosaur fossils and rugged spaces.

“Gee whiz, it sounds like there are going to be a lot of attorneys making a whole lot of money,” quipped Noel. “For every organization, there’s a lunch ticket for a group of attorneys to exist.”

Noel plans to intervene himself, filing a court brief to show support for the president’s actions.

Donald Kochan, a professor of natural resources, property and administrative law at Chapman University in Orange, California, believes Trump’s action is likely legal and the separate lawsuits allow each group to show supporters they’re speaking up.

Squillace said the lawsuits will likely be merged into one case for each monument.

He thinks a court will try to focus on the overall question of whether Trump has the authority to reduce the monuments — something Squillace doesn’t think the president has the legal authority to do.

While the legal battles play out, Utah Republican Rep. Rob Bishop, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, has introduced a bill that would prevent presidents from designating monuments larger than 85,000 acres and give states and local officials the power to veto a monument larger than 10,000 acres.

Bishop’s bill is awaiting a vote on the House floor.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this report.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. officials said Wednesday they’ll review the recent lifting of protections for Yellowstone-area grizzly bears in light of a court ruling that retained protections for gray wolves in the Great Lakes.

About 700 bears in and around Yellowstone National Park lost their threatened species status on July 31, opening the door to future trophy hunts in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

Just a day later, a federal appeals court in Washington D.C. said in the wolf case that wildlife officials needed to give more consideration to how a species’ loss of historical habitat affects its recovery.

Like wolves, grizzly bears have seen a strong recovery over the past several decades in isolated regions of the U.S., but remain absent from the vast majority of their historical range.

In its response to the appeals court ruling, the Fish and Wildlife Service said it’s now seeking public comment on the potential implications for Yellowstone bears.

The animals will stay under state jurisdiction and off the threatened species list while the review is pending, said Fish and Wildlife spokesman Steve Segin. The agency plans to release its conclusions by March 31.

Grizzlies remain protected as a threatened species outside of the Yellowstone region and Alaska.

Other species could be affected by the ruling, Segin said, adding that it likely would have to be under similar circumstances where a decision was being made on just a segment of a species’ entire population.

Andrea Santarsiere with the Center for Biological Diversity said Wednesday’s announcement was an attempt to paper over what she called “fatal flaws” in the decision to lift protections.

“Yellowstone’s grizzly bears remain at risk and no amount of bureaucratic jujitsu by the Trump administration will change that fact,” Santarsiere said.

The question in the Great Lakes wolf case was whether some members of an animal population can meet the legal definition of recovered even as the species struggles or is nonexistent elsewhere.

A three-judge panel concluded federal officials erroneously considered the status of the Great Lakes population in a vacuum, leaving wolves elsewhere in the country in “legal limbo” after wolves in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota lost protections. Those protections later were restored by a federal judge.

Yellowstone’s bears make up one of the largest populations of grizzlies in the Lower 48. They’ve been isolated for decades from other concentrations of bruins, including an estimated 1,000 grizzlies in northwest Montana.

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Follow Matthew Brown on Twitter at www.twitter.com/matthewbrownap .

BOISE (AP) — Idaho officials are challenging a federal court order to destroy information collected from tracking collars placed on elk and wolves obtained illegally by landing a helicopter in a central Idaho wilderness area.

Idaho Department of Fish and Game Director Virgil Moore on Tuesday requested a stay of the judgment in U.S. District Court in Idaho pending the agency’s appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled in January the U.S. Forest Service broke environmental laws nearly two years ago by authorizing Idaho Fish and Game to put collars on about 60 elk by landing helicopters in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, where engines are prohibited.

Idaho also collared four wolves in an action the Forest Service didn’t authorize. Fish and Game blamed miscommunication with a helicopter crew.

Winmill wrote that it was such an extreme case “the only remedy that will directly address the ongoing harm is an order requiring destruction of the data.”

Specifically, Fish and Game is seeking to stay the court’s order to destroy data and to stay the court’s prohibiting the agency as well as the Forest Service from using that data.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game “agrees that as a condition of such stay, IDFG would not use any live radio collar placed during the January 2016 helicopter project in the Frank Church Wilderness to locate wolves for lethal removal,” the document states.

Western Watersheds Project, Friends of the Clearwater and Wilderness Watch sued the Forest Service in January 2016 when they learned of the helicopter flights. Tim Preso, an attorney for Earthjustice handling the case, said the groups will continue to seek to force Fish and Game to destroy the data.

“The problem is they’ve now got almost two years of data that tells them wolf pack locations and where focused activity is and their seasonal movements,” Preso said. “It makes it very easy for them now to target those packs.”

The 3,700-square-mile (9,600-square kilometer) mountainous and inaccessible River of No Return is considered a sanctuary from which young wolves disperse in search of new territory. Idaho officials have previously targeted that population by sending in a state-hired hunter in 2014 that killed nine wolves.

State officials have been concerned wolves are having a detrimental effect on elk populations pursued by sport hunters. But environmental groups contend wilderness areas are specifically set aside to allow for natural prey-predator dynamics free of human interference.

In late 2016, Fish and Game said three of the four collared wolves were alive. An adult female died in May 2016 near the middle of the wilderness because of unknown causes. The other three wolves from three different packs were at the time still roaming the wilderness area.

The collars give the location of the wolves once every 12 hours. It’s not clear if the three wolves are still alive or if the collars are still working.

Mike Keckler, Fish and Game spokesman, said the agency isn’t discussing the court case or the data. Some of the documents in the case filed on Tuesday are sealed and unavailable to the public.