Posted on 12/13/2008 6:27:25 PM PST by george76
Wolves in Idaho have killed 325 cattle, sheep and dogs so far in 2008, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game says.
"You can't just keep stuffing wolves on top of each other,"
(Excerpt) Read more at idahostatesman.com ...
“It’s not a national park. We live here,”
The eco’s would love to convert most of the American west into a national park with no people.
That line jumped out at me too. The enviro wackos have no idea what it’s like to live in the wild.
They kill for pleasure.
That is why they were nearly exterminated.
Well researched and well said.
The animal-predators are needed in the wilderness and near-wilderness areas of the northern states and Canada.
Northern farmers and federal game and land-management regulators have been trying for years, recently, to strike a balance between domestic live-stock protection and protecting the plant-life from over-grazing by over-populated herbivores.
When wolves could be hunted and killed at will, the Elk and Deer flourished so greatly that a high % of baby Aspen trees were eaten before they ever matured. In some areas there had not been new Aspen growth at all in a generation. That fact radically changed everything in the areas where it occurred the most; from soil erosion, to fewer small scrub plants and grasses, to fewer small animals and fewer fish in nearby streams and rivers.
The big predators keep the Elk and Deer populations at a lower, yet stable level; one that does not allow them to graze their plant-food-crops into extinction.
The sacrifices of the ranchers must be balanced with the needs of the whole environment around them.
Yes, humans should be allowed to hunt Wolves, to a certain extent; just not at a rate that reduces their population below a level at which some of their largest animal-food-sources - like Elk and Deer, become over populated in the wild, due to having no natural predator enemies.
Large Herbivores will graze an area into a plain or a desert, if by excess population, and restricted area, they are allowed to. When Wolves could be hunted without any limit in states like Idaho and Montana at one time, that is exactly what happened in some areas. One of the primary trees in some areas - the Aspen - was eaten in its childhood to such an excess that in some areas there had been no new Aspen trees in a generation. The severe depletion of the Aspen totally changed the flora and fauna, creating a resource-depletion-chain that reduced the variety and number of plants and animals in the affected areas.
Now, land and animal management regulators in the northern states and southern Canada are trying to strike a balance between protection of humans and their livestock and keeping a balance between natural predator and prey in the wilderness that abuts where humans have settled up there.
In places like California, human settlement has nearly eliminated, when not at least vastly reduced, most all major natural animal-food-sources for large predators such as Mountain Lions and Wolves, except in some limited areas. It is a very different situation than what one finds in the areas of the states and provinces along the U.S. Canadian border, especially in the west.
Maybe in some future era if human population in that area is equal - in a per-square-mile sense - to places like California, there will be a need to hunt Wolves to near-extinction (not total) - for human safety. We are not there now.
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