Wolves - Wow, it's successful!

By Jim Beers
for eco-logic/Powerhouse

February 1, 2006

"Who'd have 'thunk'?"

For more than ten years now, wolves have been forcibly increased, and spread throughout the Northern Rocky Mountain States, the desert Southwest, and the Great Lakes States. The mongrel (wolf/coyote/dog) "hybrids," called red wolves, have been introduced into North Carolina, and some pups just had their picture taken in the caring arms of the ubiquitous young female uniformed government employee, on Saint Vincent Island National Wildlife Refuge in the Florida panhandle, where they are now being raised. Why, a judge has even told the federal government to get busy and force timber wolves into the New England states. One is forced to ask, "How is it going?"

State fish and wildlife agencies (with one exception, where they still work for the Governor) have lined up behind federal mandates for wolf futures. What has always, heretofore been a state matter was federalized by the Endangered Species Act. Only a few disgruntled rural bumpkins are known to still reject the government-ordered "Brave New World" that wolves are helping to create. Most newspapers report, immediately, any warm and fuzzy or beneficial wolf-related tidbit, while assiduously avoiding or ridiculing those who question, or object to what is happening.

The former Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, when it stole millions of dollars from the state fish and wildlife agencies and the hunters and fishermen, now directs the Defenders of Wildlife. The Defenders of Wildlife (an anti-hunting/trapping organization) was given a primary "partnership" role in the wolf program, during that Director's tenure. It is the Defenders of Wildlife that allegedly "compensates" cattle and sheep owners for stock lost to wolves, but that is a lie, that is never questioned, when newspapers parrot U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Defenders' news releases.

Elk and deer populations are decreasing steadily, where the wolves are spreading. Guard dogs, hunting dogs, and pet dogs are dying at steep, but unreported rates, where wolves now occur. Centuries-old reports (churches, papers, archives, writings, etc.) of high rates of human life lost to wolves in Europe, Asia, and North America are ignored, demeaned, and rejected by bureaucrat biologists, and all their "partners" in Universities and the media. State fish and wildlife agencies see no hope of opposing federal programs enforced by federal agents, while smelling the "benefits" of acquiescence (federal funding for new programs, the "friendship" of federal agencies, and the environmental/animal rights radicals). Wolf numbers are purposely and routinely underestimated, to make association with growing depredations and game animal disappearances all but impossible. A gullible "general public" laughingly questions the sanity of our Forefathers (and other societies, like Britain and Ireland) that exterminated wolves, and current societies such as Russia, that continue to kill wolves, when and where possible.

As I write this, elk herds, moose, and bighorn sheep numbers sufficient to support annual hunting are disappearing in the Northern Rockies. Academics and state bureaucrats say it isn't the wolves, that "research" is needed, and that Parvo (a disease of domestic dogs) has killed all the wolf pups around Yellowstone. This latter is totally unproved, unlikely, and likely a convenient lie of the moment, to divert blame for the demise of hunting on the wolves. Coincidentally, domestic sheep numbers are decreasing, because the federal wolves and the federal grizzly (similarly dangerous, harmful, and forcibly introduced) are killing too many of the flocks to allow ranchers to make a living. Likewise, cattle ranching is becoming less and less able to support ranch families, due to the losses of cattle.

In the Great Lakes states, the wolves are also killing livestock, decreasing deer herds, and killing dogs. Again, wolf numbers, and the magnitude of the damage they cause, are routinely underestimated by state bureaucrats and wolf-loving volunteer counters, to forestall any objections to the federal mandates.

The story is the same in the Southwest. The only difference, in New England and the South, will be that the presence of millions of privately owned land parcels will make the inevitable and coming clamor for controls, and (I believe) eventual re-eradication even more problematic. Aerial hunting bans, poison bans, and trapping bans alone are all but impossible impediments, when faced with landowners who forbid control – control of wolves becomes an impossibility.

In the midst of all this, the states of Idaho and Montana trumpet that they have "signed an agreement" with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to manage their wolves. While it is heartening to know that a rancher can now kill a wolf trying to kill his livestock (it shows how far we have come, that this reasonable and justified act by an American citizen is a publicized "favor," granted by the federal government to a state government, to parcel out to certain state residents) – it is a mirage. If the next President is "green," some politicians need votes for the next election, or a President needs some "caring and sensitive" publicity to divert us from some matter, the "agreement" can be erased in a New York second. A challenge by federal bureaucrats (for favors from radicals) or a lawsuit by the radicals before a friendly court is all it takes. This entire wolf travesty is based on flawed law (the Endangered Species Act), and anyone who thinks dancing with federal bureaucrats, believing in the word of outfits like Defenders, or some political appointees of a past administration trumps law, is smoking something. As long as the law stands, as written, things will only get worse.

Don't believe that wolves aren't every bit as dangerous as depicted in lurid old novels. When the elk and deer are gone (or greatly diminished), what will the more numerous wolves eat (especially in the Winter), mice? Remember, wolves are all but impossible to hunt casually, and real control of strong populations takes determination and commitment way beyond what Americans will tolerate today. If you have ever believed about danger from free-roaming breeds of dogs, like pit bulls or rottweillers, ask yourself why you think their wild, far larger, and far more powerful cousins are not a far more dangerous threat. To this day, attacks by wolves on humans are occurring in the Ukraine, across Siberia, in Central Asia, in India, and even, recently, in Saskatchewan. The fact that no one mentions them, does not mean they do not occur.

As our wolf populations "mature," and increase in the midst of the American countryside, from the most isolated areas to suburbs, human attacks and harms to increasing numbers of non-urban residents will occur. Believing that wolves will magically die off when they exhaust their current food supply, is like believing that seals disappear when salmon decrease (they don't), or killer whales disappear when they depress seal populations (they start eating sea otters).

The cumulative effect of all this will be closed school bus stops, reduced rural recreation, financially strapped rural communities (think spotted owls and Oregon lumber/sawmill communities), stressed rural residents (think grandparents and grandchildren), dead dogs (why do you think British dog owners put spike collars on their dogs hundreds of years ago?), increased government land ownership, as ranchers and others sell out. I could go on here. For instance, think about the loss of hunting and fishing revenue to states, and the millions they will have to spend on wolf complaints.

So folks, it worked. "It" was never about wolves, "native ecosystems," "natural processes," or even "restoring a lost world," anymore than the spotted owl was about "saving" an owl.

"It" was always about eliminating one more chunk of hunting (big game, hunting with dogs, hunting alone, etc.), eliminating sheep and cattle ranching on both public and private land, eliminating rural dog ownership, rural homesteads, rural communities, rural school bus stops, and rural land ownership (except for the very rich). Oh, and one more thing, the power of the federal government and the subservience of state powers to federal mandates. This latter has always meant more money, employees, and power to bureaucrats, and votes for "concerned" federal politicians as well as state politicians that "get more federal money" (So our state taxes don't get raised? How dumb is that?).

So, all the pups are warm, and well fed. The state bureaucrats, the state politicians, the hunting organizations (unmentioned, because they have been unheard from), the professor biologists, the federal politicians, the federal bureaucrats, and the ultra-rich landowners (who will keep their "estates," and buy up cheap adjoining parcels as people move away) are a litter of pups suckling on the bitch. The bitch is all the environmental/animal rights radicals being fed on the carcasses of ranchers, hunters, dog owners, parents, and other rural residents, who are being forced off the land by radicals who want a people-free-and-closed rural countryside, with a controlled urban populace that lives where and as they direct.

It must be part of the American fall, in relation to other nations, regarding academic test scores across various grades. We are getting dumber, and we will apparently disbelieve what our eyes tell us, if some "expert" tells us to. With destruction and havoc all around us due to wolves, and not one single positive benefit (hearing a wolf howl or seeing one at the expense of your neighbors' livelihood, dog, or our system of Constitutional government is not positive) – we ignore the coming calamity.

Like I said, "Who'd have 'thunk'?"