Not just a predator: Wolves bring a suprising ecological recovery to Yellowstone

Boston Globe ^ | 9/30/2003 | Nicholas Thompson

[ko_kyi]

Naw, but if I had a cat I would let another animal eat it.

[Elliott Jackalope]

I have coyotes all around my property. They leave scat at a couple of key locations, and my front lawn has three patches where their urine has killed the grass. Yet I don't hate them at all, I've just learned to co-exist. They serenade our valley every night. Their song says that they are here to stay. I can live with that.

[Kenny Bunk]

Sergeant, you are such a black-and-white kinda guy!

There is another, answer you know. Which is why I give $5 every week to a Green Party project that seeks to re-direct wolves' dietary choices. We train them to choose complex carbohydrates ... vegetables ... over that nasty bloody meat, which as you know all too well, can cause high cholesterol, bad breath, and aggressive behaviour.

Why don't you discuss this movement with some of those rough, but probably well-meaning chaps with whom you fish, hunt, and fondle firearms? We are making a difference and when Our Lady of Chappaqua, Hillary, becomes our President, we will have the support we need to go nation-wide.
Won't you join us, and convince others to do so?

[ko_kyi]

I am sure things are tough for the cattle, but the Milwaukee reporter was trying to create empathy for the cows. That said, cattle herds with castrated, de-horned bulls are mostly defenseless against wolves. I can see how a predator in full wild predator fashion could wreak havoc among what are essentially walking burgers and the ususal predator/prey arms race might not apply.

Unless there is a REALLY good reason to have the Feds manage wildlife policy, it seems to me that it should be done at the state level.

[gcruse]

I see dead coyotes laying by the road on a weekly basis. Even hear them from time to time.

How long you been hearing dead coyotes?

[sergeantdave]

Exactly. Local and state resource managers know the problems in their area better than a bureaucrat living thousands of miles away in DC.

In 1988, Congress proposed wolf recovery and instructed the bureaucrats that hunting should not be hurt, the local economy may not be harmed, and the grizzly bear should be protected.

Federal bureaucrats have ignored that congressional mandate. I believe these bureaucrats are completely out of control.

Last year a federal judge (I'm going on memory so I may not have this exact) slapped the federal bureaucrats and essentially told them that species may not be introduced on land without approval of state, county and tribal officials. Big win for local control. With locals involved in decisions, a balance can eventually be found.

[Rebelbase]

There was a thread here a while back that speculated about the excessive wolf population being a predicted result upon re-introduction and was permitted to happen as a planned attack on the ranching community around the park by key environmental elitists.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

[smack to forehead]

I mean I hear live coyotes (gotta get a grammar check and an editor).

[Kenny Bunk]

The answer is Highland Cattle, a beast with a long, shaggy, warm red coat AND a set of horns that belongs on a Texas pickup truck hood, or Rolls Royce. These babies look as though they could play catch with a wolf.

They are popular in Alaska bear country, so one or three of these wolves should pose no problem.

[Johnny Gage]

Spent 4 days out there back in June.

Beautiful, wonderful in all its natural glory.

Saw much wildlife, and goreous scenery.

[sergeantdave]

You're on the right track. I've got the local Amish choir working on a pack near me. If they can get those wolves howling "Home on the Range" each evening, that will bring a tear to my eye.

[Rebelbase]

I couldn't find the thread I referenced, but this one is along the same lines: Thrown to the Wolves - Wolves are being reintroduced to wildlands to drive people out ^

[Central_Floridian]

If other animals are any indication, I'd imagine the sound made with a dead coyote is "Thump" or maybe "splat".

[Central_Floridian]

Tony Martinez has not got much to think of if thinking about wolves brings tears to his eyes.

[gcruse]

Unless, of course, you freeze the body and cut it with a bandsaw, in which case it sounds like a cat. Meeeeeooooowwwwwwwwww.

[mtbopfuyn]

Total agreement. I'd add a lack of understanding of how many people fawn (no pun) over the extremely destructive white-tailed deer, which causes more property damage and loss of life yearly in America than any other animal.

I truly believe deer are the dumbest animals on the face of the earth. Feed them to the wolves.

[Plutarch]

Eventually mammals made extinct by the introduction of human hunters to North America 10,000 years ago can possibly be brought back by DNA cloning techniques from tissue found in glacial remains.

Just think what ecological diversity benefits Giant Sloths and Woolly Mammoths could bring to Yellowstone!

[nightdriver]

"Wolves are to Yellowstone what water is to the everglades," said Doug Smith, the National Park Service's director of the Wolf Restoration Project."

What a bunch of B.S! Such a statement is not even worthy of comment.

[judywillow]

The belong there. People hate them. That doesn't mean they don't belong there. They're part of the ecosystem. . I have never understood the virulent hatred people have for wolves...

You'd only have to have one of your own kids killed by them in order to understand...

[protest1]

reintroducing wolves will inevitably lead to also reintroducing the killing of women and children by wolves as happened historically. Why do you think we killed them off in the first place?

http://www.glasgowzoo.co.uk/articles/carnivores/histwolvesscot.php

The wolf killed in Morayshire in 1743 had apparently killed two children, but before the ruling Laird, of MacIntosh could arrange a hunting party for it, his appointed stalker MacQueen had done the job for him. "As I came through the sloch by east the hill there, I foregathered wi the beast. My long dog there turned him. I buckled wi him and kirkit him, and syne whuttled his craig, and brought awa his countenance for fear he might come alive again, for they are precarious creatures!" [10].

Macqueen of Pall-a-chrocain died in 1797. A man great stature and of corresoinding strength, Macquenn kept the best deer-hounds in the country. One day, in the winter of 1743, he received a message from the chief of clan Mackintosh, that a large wolf had on the preceding day killed two children, who, with their mothers, were crossing the hills from Calder. Macqueen was consequently invited by the chief to attend a "Tainchel", or gathering in the forest of Tarnaway, in Moray, and to bring with him his dogs. On the morning of the tryst, Mackintosh waited eagerly for Macqueen, but he only arrived at noon. As Mackintosh was about to complain of his delay, Macqueen raised his plaid, and drew from under his arm the bloody head of the aggressor. "I met the bit beastie," said Macqueen, "and this is his head.". Mackintosh expressed his admiration, and rewarded his vigorous kinsman with the lands of Sean-a-chan for "meat to his dogs." []

The Hunted and Hunter Die
The Rev. Dugald Campbell, minister of the Parish of Glassary writing the New Statistical Account for the Parish [9] tells of the last wolf of that area:

It is said that the wolf was, till a late period in the British history of that animal , an inhabitant of these houseless wilds, and that it was usual to fortify the roofs of the solitary huts and shealings against his depradations by wattlings of strong brushwood. It is told that the last of them which was seen in this parish followed the track of a female who was crossing the country from Lochawe to Lochfyneside. She was seen ascending the hill above Braveallaich with confidence, and, after passing through the moor, had almost obtained the road which leads to Inverary, at the mill of Craleckan, but was found close by it, on the Glassary side of the stream, a corpse. Her right arm was protected by an apron which she had rolled around it, and her hand grasped a knife which she had lodged deep in the heart of a wolf that lay dead beside her. It was supposed that when she discovered the animal on her track, she had fled in the hope of reaching the houses that were nigh at hand; but that being unable to escape, she had assumed the defensive in despair, and died terrified and exhuasted by the effort which left her nothing to fear.

Wolves Threaten Sheep
In "Scotland as it was and as it is " the Duke of Argyll cites that sheep were not allowed to graze by themselves among the Highland mountains in olden days. "The breed was a poor one with thin hairy wool, and considered so delicate that they were habitually folded even at night. Indeed, this was an absolute necessity, for the mountains were haunted by wolves, and among the Statutes of the Baronial Court of Glenurchy there is one expressly enjoining the regular manufacture of weapons for the destruction of this savage animal. Their ravages must have been formidable indeed when at a date so late as 1622 we find that a case came before the Baronial Court respecting three cows 'whilk were slain by the wolf'." [3]