Replies

I am not a liberal, and I'm not an environmentalist, however, I'd like to suggest one correction (flame away all)...It isn't that wolves frequent areas populated by humans, it's that humans frequent areas populated by wolves...i.e. wildlife.

Mistake #1. This is our planet, and anyone who starts a discussion with a presumption that we are trespassing on "wolf territory" starts from a very wrong place indeed.

Come on folks. If you would simply do a few minutes of research you will see that human fatalities in the United States due to wolves are zero.

This isn't just an issue of human fatalities (although, the human fatalities due to cougars don't seem to bother people who think like you, either). This is a question of the effect these creatures have on other species that *deserve* our protection (ie dogs, farm animals, etc) because of special service rendered to our own. These poor creatures, I tell you. They are our American Wilderness and would probably be extinct if they hadn't been placed on the endangered list.

30 years ago when there were no wolves, the American wilderness did just fine. There are no more Sabre-tooth tigers, and the wilderness does just fine. Let wolves, cougers, etc go on the endangered species list. Humanity suffers nothing from the extinction of large predators.

The folks in Yellowstone might beg to differ with you, actually. Without the wolves, the Yellowstone elk have been overpopulating the place. Ecosystems work best with all the natural players.

And it's funny when you look at the statistics kept by the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Do you know what the number one predator of livestock is? The answer, in fact is the coyote. And the #2 predator? I don't think you know the answer to this one because it's actually our beloved domestic doggy. Dogs, in fact, killed more livestock in 2005 than all other predators — cougars, wolves, bobcats and bears — combined.

So..........before you continue to pick on the big, bad wolf, your Fido should be eradicated first by your own logic.