Posted on 08/27/2013 5:08:29 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
The record Mackenzie Valley Wolf, the subspecies (re)introduced into Yellowstone, weighed 175 pounds. Males weigh from 120 to 170 pounds.
The Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf subspecies, the one extirpated in the Yellowstone region, is on average somewhat smaller, weighing generally 75 to 135 pounds.
If they were available, I certainly think they should have reintroduced the original subspecies.
Non-native Canadian wolves were introduced into Yellowstone Park and the surrounding areas.
They are much larger, they pack hunt and like any excitable predator they will in large numbers kill in a frenzy.
Ranchers and older hunters will tell you that prior to this entire devastating debacle there were still Rocky Mountain gray wolves to be seen from the Yellowstone Park border all the way to the Canadian border.
The introduction of outside wolves was just another romantic, expensive, destructive, highly bureaucratized disaster from the federal government and its friends on the hard left.
Where on earth did you get the idea that 3,000 elk is the "natural" number of elk for the area? From the government? Did your government-provided info packet also tell you why federal, state and local authorities are now panicking, and are drastically increasing the hunting and trapping of wolves and, in Idaho, shooting wolves from aircraft and even (surreptitiously) poisoning them?
How does that fit into your concept of "natural" and, for that matter, of government expertise in this area?
Two points: One, I was in Montana at the very beginning, and listened to federal officials give their version of what was going to take place with the wolves, and also to the version predicted by the ranchers and hunters and outfitters on the ground.
One version was an out-and-out lie, and continues to be until this day. The other was dead (so to speak) on.
I will let you guess which was which.
Two, people like you, experts, opiners, "nature" lovers, government employees and pro-government "fixers," never want to talk about one crucial fact: PEOPLE LIVE HERE NOW. People live here in greater numbers than the "natural" days you so pine for.
With people here in the present numbers--and guess what? an unholy number of them are "nature" lovers just like you--the wildlife are going to have to be managed, just as they have been forever, in one way or another. And the management can be done wisely, or foolishly, politically and vindictively, as it is now.
As regards the question at hand, the choice is simple: you can either allow the wolves to kill off the region's elk, moose and bighorn sheep populations (as well as drive countless ranchers and outfitters out of business) or you can set about killing a hell of a bunch of wolves.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Six in one, half the other. The result is the same...a rancher is out 176 sheep because of two wolves. Had it not been for those two wolves, those sheep likely would not have died.
Whether our elk have been killed off or displaced, the result is the same...elk are getting scarce in Idaho, whereas once upon a time you drive almost any highway in the state and see them roaming up in the hills.
Wolf reintroduction has been a disaster for Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, and now they're spreading to Oregon, Washington, and even California. They need to be re-eradicated.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Here's another great website to open people's ignorant eyes about what Canadian Gray wolves are doing to Idaho's ungulate population, and what they're capable of doing wherever they spread to.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Your tax dollars at work. Now let’s re-introduce 19th Century buckskinners to the area.
First feeding, She’d have been back for more.
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