Posted on 12/05/2001 2:42:40 PM PST by B Knotts
BEND, Ore. (AP) -- Ranchers and environmentalists may soon find themselves battling over gray wolves again because federal officials expect the wolves to travel from Idaho into Oregon as early as this spring.
Many ranchers say they fear wolves will kill their cattle, while some environmentalists say wolf preservation should take priority in national forests and wilderness areas because cattle should not be allowed to graze on public lands.
La Grande rancher Sharon Beck said most ranchers will strongly oppose wolf repopulation.
"Wolves are gone for a good reason," Beck said. "That is because they couldn't coexist with cattle."
But environmentalists insist that wolves be allowed to return to their native range to improve the ecosystem.
"For wolves to come back completes a niche," said Brooks Fahy, executive director of the Eugene-based Predator Defense Institute. "It puts things back in balance. Otherwise you have a vacuum, a man-made situation where, throughout the United States, a very important predator has been eliminated."
The wolves, meanwhile, are flourishing in western Idaho so the animals are likely to disperse to territory unclaimed by other wolves, leading them to Oregon, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Jerry Cordova said.
Lured by large tracts of national forest and wilderness areas inhabited by large game, wolves could thrive in the Eagle Cap wilderness, the John Day wilderness, in the Umatilla National Forest and more, Cordova said.
The wolves will naturally head for the forests and high desert of eastern Oregon, and eventually into the Cascades, he said.
"Even if Oregon decided we didn't want wolves, we are going to have wolves. That is the bottom line," Cordova said.
The wolves heading toward Oregon are descendants of Canadian wolves that were released in Idaho in 1995 as part of a plan to prevent their extinction in the continental United States.
The wolf population has increased to more than 500 in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, said Joe Fontaine, a leading wolf biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
When wolves mature at about 2 or 3 years old, individuals leave the pack and wander until they find a mate, Fontaine said.
Cordova has formed a working group to provide infrastructure that will be used to respond to wolves -- including $18,000 in funding to buy tracking equipment, wolf traps, educational material, and to provide wolf training to state and federal biologists.
Fontaine warned that poaching or using poison bait to kill wolves could bring up to five years in prison and fines of up to $100,000 for a conviction.
But ranchers and environmentalists say problems are inevitable.
"Wherever you have cattle on public lands, you are going to have a conflict," Fahy said.
Come visit us at Freepathon Holidays are Here Again: Let's Really Light Our Tree This Year - Thread 6
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Could someone with more knowledge, please prove that the reintroduction of the wolf is beneficial to homosapiens?
Rather than someone's conjecture and opinion that the environmental community is advocating.
And how about the parks in San Francisco near the Sierra Club headquarters?
Hey, everybody...look here! A real, live people-hating envirowacko!
So, if children are eaten, it's A-OK with you? Because they are "dumb enough not to watch out for themselves" while in their back yard?
Shoot
Shovel
Shut up
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