Posted on 03/19/2008 6:18:09 PM PDT by george76
Montana’s wolf population increased 34 percent over the past year, to an estimated 422 wolves in 73 packs...
The wolves are nearly equally distributed between northern and southern Montana...although the bulk of the population growth was in northwestern and far western Montana...
Wolves are still listed under the Endangered Species Act. Delisting was set for late March, but lawsuits are expected to delay that.
As for conflicts with ranchers, the FWP reported an increase in the number of confirmed cattle deaths due to wolves, from 32 to 75, and an increase in the number of sheep deaths, from four to 27.
Two llamas and three dogs also were confirmed killed by wolves...
“We know Montana’s wolves inhabit places where people live, work and recreate,” Sime said. “We expect and try to anticipate conflicts and gear much of our wolf-management work toward helping landowners reduce the risk of livestock depredations.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service planned to delist the gray wolves in the Northern Rockies n Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and parts of Washington and Utah on March 28.
The recovery goal, at least 300 wolves for three consecutive years, was reached in 2002 and has been exceeded every year since...
(Excerpt) Read more at bozemandailychronicle.com ...
Excerpts only. It was fascinating, and depressing, just like listening to urban "conservatives" whose knowledge is limited to the eco-drivel they've read.
There's not one benefit wolves do for habitat that humans cannot simulate more humanely.
Life imitates art.
PETA & the Wolf
©2000 by Mark Edward Vande Pol
Republication by permission only
People have an odd sort of affinity for the wolf, born out of a sense of the frailty of civilization, that thinnest of veneers restraining the animal within us. It is that slightness of difference between the fiercely wild and the faithful domestic that is so reflective of our perilous spiritual journey between violent hedonism and peaceful civility. The wolf is an archetype of the internal turmoil of life, vicariously lived in spontaneous freedom.
As you are probably aware, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is engaged in a program to reintroduce the Mexican Gray Wolf throughout the Southwest. As you might suspect, it has been no surprise to anyone that this has been a controversial exercise. Wolves can do a lot of damage, the results of which can be pretty gruesome, sometimes even dangerous to witness. They eat a lot, and that to do that, they kill things. Wolves enjoy killing things, especially when they run away.
Ranchers, farmers, and townspeople had this programme shoved down their throats along with all sorts of civic promises that have yet to materialize. They were promised full compensation for lost livestock, and were met with a pittance after a series of ridiculous bureaucratic loops. They were promised that the wolves were shy and would avoid human settlements, which hasn’t proven true either. They were told the wolves would remain within a limited range as long as there was adequate food, and they have strayed for many miles instead. They were told that the wolf would improve the herds of elk, and instead the population is crashing. The government promised all these things without accountability, and it is time it should be properly affixed. The technology already exists.
The citizens of the Southwest should demand that the government develop shock collars triggered by the Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to keep the wolves on their range. GPS is already used for tracking their movements. If the wolves wander off government land, they would be nailed by the collars until they turn back! The US Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service employees that love these wolves so much can then spend their time running after the wolves changing batteries on shock collars or else face a lawsuit for gross negligence when a child is eventually attacked and killed in a schoolyard. Only when they think they have solved the problem, will they discover…
The Law of Unintended Consequences .
Let’s leap forward in time with a flight of fancy, and see how it all worked out.
After a number of years of repeated battery changes, the wolves of the Southwest had figured out that they sort of liked the effects of being shot in the haunches with phenobarbital. They started hanging out nearer and nearer human settlements, further from their game and risking increasing numbers of shocks; just to get nailed again with a dart gun full of warm and numbing stupor.
PETA sued USFWS and demanded sensitivity training for all USFWS employees and a research programme to end the use of drugs, demanding rehabilitation and drug treatment for the wolves. To reduce the incidence of human interaction, the reintroduction programme area would have to be expanded to include all of Texas and connect through Colorado to the realm of the Northern Gray. The labor union for the Immigration and Naturalization Service sued the USFWS because the wolves were hindering illegal immigration, displacing jobs, and not paying dues.
Because of the expanded scope of the programme required to treat addicted wolves (and fourteen years of general recession), the USFWS was still complaining to Congress of a lack of university-trained and certified wolf-psychologists. The effort to retrain former INS agents as canine drug-counselors was also suffering from a lack of funding. The drug manufacturers worried about the liability and raised prices on tranquilizer darts dramatically. There was no domestic supplier. Without a guarantee of indemnification, and tired of late payments on the now insurmountable trade deficit, Sandoz and Novartis (the Swiss suppliers of tranquilizer darts) refused to deliver their usual shipments without cash payments from the American government, up front.
Deprived of their regular fix, the wolves became strung-out and violent. Some of them suffered seizures and convulsions from barbiturate withdrawal. In a fit of such rage, one alpha male, instead of maintaining pack-discipline with a normal correction, attacked an innocent bitch with abandon, getting hooked into the shock-collar of his dying victim. This noble animal himself subsequently died of starvation nearly seventy miles away from the original incident after over a month of unbelievable cruelty, unable or unwilling to feed off the carcass of its fallen mate. The National Geographic cover page brought home the graphic evidence: the futility of humans arrogantly presuming to manage the wild.
Several months later, a PETA consultant was brought in to solve the problem. Together with a new infusion of FWS employees and former INS agents (now canine drug counselors), the PETA principal convened an evening séance around the campfire. While the swirl of various sorts of smoke infiltrated their Gnostrils, and as the sound of drums throbbed in their chests, the PETA infiltrators on the FWS were suddenly infused with an inspirational, consensus vision! They Gestalted that their spiritual kinship with the wolf, under the watchful eye of Gaia, would allow them to approach the wolves to change the batteries without the aid of tranquilizer darts! It was to be a spiritual test of personal self-control, to approach the wolves without fear, lest the scent of anthropocentric terror arouse the prey drive of their brothers. The humans howled with the call of communion and donned their lambskin blankets as a token of their peaceful community with their spiritual brothers. (The hides had been willingly surrendered by the local ranchers, as a penalty for having introduced non-native sheep. Curiously, they were only too happy to help. It was nice to see them so cooperative and cheerful for once.)
Upon their approach, the wolves startled from their sudden slumber. Amid the confusing aroma of sheeple and suffering the lack of their usual offering of tranquilizer darts, the wolves interpreted this event as both an impending fix and an offering of dinner. They responded entirely logically toward their PETA/USFWS benefactors. It was a hideous sight, the fury of the wolves and the cries of human death echoed in the silence of night in the desert, until suddenly, all hell broke loose with the sound of shooting.
Among the consensed was a young FWS ranger, a rather pluckish girl who had undergone a sudden attack of mechanistic thinking before breaking camp. She had spiritually fallen, questioning her ability to approach the canids fearlessly while smelling like lunch. After a liberal dosing of musk, she had donned her Kevlar flack jacket (usually reserved for negotiations with willing sellers) and slipped her standard issue 9mm Glock under her garment along with an extra clip in her boot. Upon the attack, she closed her eyes into her tears, and started to fire.
Although the slaughter she witnessed wasn't fatal to her, the destruction of the wolves, the loss of her comrades, and her shameful fear for such spiritual weakness, not to sacrifice herself to the bosom of Gaia, drove her to suicide. She was a single mother with two children. National mourning ensued for the wolves amid celebration at her spiritual contrition and self-sacrifice for her many crimes, chief among which was her darkest secret, now made public. She was a breeder. Pregnant with two kids - how unthinkable! She deserved to die.
The rest of the USFWS employees suddenly unionized with the INS agents, demanding safer working conditions and better batteries for shock collars. The now ravening and overpopulated wolves had attacked a Hollywood set, killing three little pigs during the on-location filming of the sequel to that Oscar winning eco-documentary, "BABE in the Woods". In a sympathy action the Grips walked off the set and demanded rabies shots. The Disney Company filed a complaint through the People’s Assembly to the UN Security Council.
Meanwhile, the former property owners in the Alamagordo internment camp who had been serving time for hate speech delivered to a FWS Battery Replacement Technologist, made bail when the recovered collar was found on the now, long dead canid. Their attorney, Alan Derschowitz discovered the key to breaking the government's case: proving that the battery terminals were indeed backwards. Thus the term 'backwards idiot', instead of a hurtful epithet toward a selfless global citizen, was intended to be a helpful suggestion regarding a poor career choice. PETA still demanded a retrial with the Death Penalty, complaining that the former property owners had gotten off on a technicality. The court conceded, giving the hapless landowners their choice of community service in lieu of execution: security duty in Zimbabwe, or census-taking in the South Bronx.
Facing certain death upon their “release”, and prior to the beginning of the sentencing phase of their new trial, INS-FWS union activists staged a breakout of the landowners. Together they high-tailed it en masse, for the nearby spas in Taos, NM to take hostages.
With the situation in New Mexico getting out of hand, the Michael Eisner Foundation had insisted that the UN hold a special collaborative summit at Taos. The spas had been recently commandeered as an attractive nuisance after the facility had been quietly bought up by a multimillionaire gay marriage counselor years before. The good doctor had diversified operations into the Universal Center for Political Consensus (UCPC). The stakeholders at the meeting were from the Department of Stake, the USFWS, and the INS. The facilitators were to be former President Clinton, and an anonymous party, a broad.
The harmonization of the convention was shattered by the sudden attack from the landowners and turned onto an ugly international incident when the, by then, starving wolves joined the fray. The Russian Ambassador met his Maker in a particularly cruel fashion when he tried to fend off a 70 kilo alpha male with a bust of Alan Gisburg (according to the coroner’s report, Mr. Clinton died of natural causes). Madeline Albright speaking from Prague, issued a statement to the effect that it was just a case of a bellicose Ambassador taunting a wild animal with the closing comment, "The wolves were there first." She demanded the Russians apologize by sending a supply of bears with which to augment the diversity of indigenous stocks and to control the marauding wolves. Meanwhile, a column of Chinese led Mexican regulars headed toward Taos.
Upon receipt of the final report, the USFWS began collaborating with Lockheed under contract to produce a tranquilizer dart that holds enough Vodka to stun bears, but the program stalled in disputes over cost overruns and a lack of raw material for field trials.
When a Chinese auditor from the IMF found the vodka discrepancy on the books, President Gore offered him a free trip to Taos to investigate. The bean counter is now at Memorial Sloan Kettering undergoing painful rabies treatments due to an encounter with a renegade band of infected USFWS employees, apparently hanging out at the now deserted spa, convinced that they were themselves brethren of the Wolf.
China declares war.
Like I said - you don't keep an eye on something, don't be all surprised if and when it disappears.
These predators were eliminated by the people who sought to keep their homes, families, and means of making a living safe.
Yep, it was a shame when steel mills had to stop dumping raw waste into rivers and had their "means of making a living" taken from them. They adapted to the times, so should ranchers.
I truely believe there in lies the motive for encouraging the grizzly and wolf populations....the anti hunting people want hunting to cease and hunting of deer and elk will cease if there are no animals, or if conveniently, deer and elk herds are decimated and hunts are severely restricted...
.."Next it becomes impossible for people to venture into the wilderness"
and this is the second motive.....if you are a filthy rich Hollywood type buying up all the nice land in Montana or Idaho or Wyoming, you don't want all those silly peasants taking hikes or picking berries in YOUR domain....keep those little people out of Sherwood forest!
I wonder if they’d eat ecoterrorist carcasses?
These critters aren't emitting anything inorganic, and certainly nothing herds of buffalo that 'stretched as far as the eyes could see and took three days to pass' did not, even if it comes from a different brand of grass-fed sphincter, and in much smaller quantities a herd of buffalo that size would.
If anything, decent range management has made sure that the 'effluent' is at sustainable levels, and that pastures are not overgrazed by moving the herd around to different pastures. That takes a lot of land, decent management, and often is not in a location where you can sit up all night and babysit. These are range cattle, not a dairy farm, you would take more weight off of them driving them in from pasture and back than they would put on eating. Not to mention the amount of time involved, which could be used elsewhere doing other work while the cattle are eating and getting fat.
If you want wolves, "reintroduce" a species which never lived here in your back yard. Maybe folks in your neighborhood would be OK with that, and then everyone could be happy.
Assume that you have a small herd of 100 cattle and, at a formula of 30 acres of rangeland to support one cow, those 100 cattle are spread out over 3000 acres (approx. 4.7 square miles), how many ranch hands should a rancher hire to 'keep an eye' on 100 cattle 24 hours a day, 7 days a week...?
i.e. you don't have to shovel the sh**.
Not to mention the amount of time involved, which could be used elsewhere doing other work while the cattle are eating and getting fat.
OK, you are saying it's uneconomic to have to watch them, but Buffalo could live out there because they defend themselves on their own.
LOL!
Not only do you not have to shovel it, it would be a lot of work just going from pile to pile. Chances are you could walk across the pasture without stepping in any--and not be paying attention.
Just more fertilizer...
Besides, ranching Buffalo is not only much harder, the fences have to be substantially stronger, and the ornery critters are generally far more dangerous than cattle.
I have a lot of respect for any people who took these with bow and arrow or lance from horseback.
And I’ll bet it’s mighty tasty, LOL!
We have one Canada goose left in the freezer. We’re right in their flight path between two lakes, so we can pretty much stand in our drive and swat them down with a broom. :)
Canada geese are protected here. We're not even allowed to nudge them out of the driveway with a broom if we want to back the car out! (And anyway, they'd attack us!)
But hold on, these same authorities, wildlife and electeds, don't want us to have guns to defend ourselves or even to hunt!
In all seriousness, these authorities should be held responsible for MURDER if any humans are killed by these predatory animals -- wolves, bears, mountain lions.
lolololol, first laugh of the morning. Thanks -- & I'm saving that one!
Grandpa used to tease me with that when he’d help me with my Math homework.
I still haven’t figured that one out. ;)
Thanks! Good stuff.
Reintroduce them in Ohio and Michigan - those places are overrun with deer.
They just don't migrate anymore and we have to have 3 seasons on them to try to shoo them south for a few months.
Four wolves from Big Timber area pack shot after depredation
Associated Press - March 20, 2008 10:05 AM ET
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - The four wolves that made up the Moccasin Lake pack in Montana were shot by federal wildlife officials Wednesday after more livestock kills were confirmed south of Big Timber.
The wolves killed a calf in the area on Saturday and harassed livestock on Sunday. On Wednesday, a landowner reported a lamb and ewe had been killed.
State wolf coordinator Carolyn Sime said the pack had a previous history of livestock depredations. One wolf was killed last year after the pack killed a calf.
Wolves in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho are still listed under the Endangered Species Act. Delisting was set for late March, but lawsuits are expected to delay that.
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