Wolves and Oil
By George Wuerthner, 7-13-10
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| (c) George Wuerthner | |
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Recently we heard how courts in Louisiana reversed the Obama administration’s moratorium on deep water oil drilling. Some suggest that the judge’s decision was not completely unbiased due to his personal investments in oil company stock. And investigation of the federal judges in this region shows that the majority of them have investments in oil companies.
This calls into question whether any judge in the region can render a fair judgment regarding whether public values that may be destroyed by risky oil development will be given fair consideration when judges deciding these cases have a financial incentive to promote oil development.
Just as the financial interests of the judges in the Gulf Coast region may distort and bias their ability to make fair judicial decisions regarding issues surrounding the oil industry, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks agency has a similar financial conflict of interest when it comes to management of predators. A conflict that the department does not publicly disclose.
However, all state wildlife agencies depend on license fees to fund their bureaucracy. If there is a decline in huntable game, or even the perception of less game that reduces the sale of licenses, this will have a direct negative financial effect on the agency.
In addition, since predators sometime attack livestock, there is also a strong incentive to kill predators to appease the ranching community—a community that controls a lot of the huntable terrain in Montana, and a group that the MDFWP does not want to antagonize, least they make less land available to hunters.
Though MDFWP is one of the most progressive agencies in the West, it still can’t buck a system that rewards killing predators. So it’s not surprising that MDFWP Commission approved expansion of Montana’s wolf killing quota from 75 to 186 animals. The department has a strong financial incentive to reduce the wolf population in Montana because wolves are perceived as a threat to hunting and the ranching industry.
But is it ethical to allow an agency and/or a business whose direct financial well-being is at stake to make public policy? In California voters were persuaded that Fish and Game agencies could not scientifically manage cougars, and that hunting created more problems than it eliminated. Voters took authority for hunting away from the agency by banning cougar hunting.
Since the ban on hunting in 1991, cougar populations have grown significantly. But surprising to some, California now has far fewer cougar incidents than other western states that have fewer cougars, fewer people, but permit cougar hunting. The only control that California exerts on cougar populations is the strategic removal of individual cougar that are deemed a safety threat to humans.
The reason for these unexpected results has to do with the social ecology of large predators. Killing of large predators like cougars (wolves) can skew populations towards younger animals. Younger animals wander more widely where they are more likely to encounter humans, and they are less experienced hunters. As a consequence they are far more likely to attack livestock, and in the case of cougars, even attack people rarely.
Hunting wolves has many of the same consequences. Wolf populations with a high percentage of younger adults that are less experienced hunters are more likely to attack livestock. Hunting of wolves can also contribute to smaller packs that have fewer adults to help raise pups—such packs are also more likely to attack easy prey like livestock.
Smaller packs often kill as many elk and deer as larger packs because they are unable to consume an entire elk in one feeding, leaving the carcass behind for scavengers to consume, thus forcing them to locate and kill another elk or deer.
Managing predators to reduce their impacts upon ungulates like elk and deer also guarantees that predators do not have the full ecological benefits that result from top-down predation. Everything from reducing herbivory effects on vegetation to changing the age structure of elk and other prey to increases in carrion for scavengers are among the many benefits associated with predators that state wildlife agencies ignore.
Though I can understand how difficult it would be for the commission to do anything else other than authorize more predator killing given the hostility that many hunters have to predators, like the judges deciding the fate of the Gulf of Mexico’s natural communities that may be destroyed by oil spills, it behooves us to question whether anyone with a direct financial interest in the outcome of a decision should be permitted to determine public policy.
Indeed, the best management of predators is exactly what California has done with cougars—eliminate all hunting of predators, except for those which pose a direct threat to human life and/or livestock. With regards to livestock we should require changes in animal husbandry practices to reduce conflicts such as immediate removal of carrion, use of guard animals, among other practices. Then and only then the only animals that should be killed are those that are habituated livestock killers.
George Wuerthner is an ecologist, and former Montana hunting guide.
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Comments
george states a few items that seem to miss the point, such as:
1) "However, all state wildlife agencies depend on license fees to fund their bureaucracy. If there is a decline in huntable game, or even the perception of less game that reduces the sale of licenses, this will have a direct negative financial effect on the agency."
truth: This is not a perceived loss, with the introduction of the wolves in combination with the grizzlies and cougars the region has been beset with so many keystone predators that all the browsing prey has suffered.
I quote from By T. R. Mader, Research Director from his paper on mountain lion fact sheet:
In Montana there has been an increase in lion kills due to the presence of wolves. Biologists have found that wolves will often chase a lion off its kill and consume it. Thus, the lion is forced to make more kills than usual. (Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, Helena, Montana) We call this "predation compounding." However, there have been few studies, if any, to document the actual increase in predation due to such competition among predators.
The mountain lion population is increasing over most of its current range. This is due to two factors:
1. Food availability.
2. Lack of predator control. This population increase has a short-term benefit, but could create long-term problems.
The short-term benefit is that with more lions around, perhaps more people will have the pleasure of seeing them. The long-term problems are:
1. Decline in wild game populations due to uncontrolled predation.
2. Economic hardship - loss of hunting revenue, increase of livestock and pet losses.
3. Spread of disease by predators.
4. Attacks on humans.
Decline of wild game populations: In Presidio County, Texas, near the Rio Grande River, deer were found everywhere ten years ago. In those ten years, the lion population has increased dramatically. Today, there are areas where no deer can be found that were plentiful just a few years ago. Lion predation is a major factor in the deer decline.
full research paper is here
http://www.aws.vcn.com/mountain_lion_fact_sheet.html
george went on to say:
Smaller packs often kill as many elk and deer as larger packs because they are unable to consume an entire elk in one feeding, leaving the carcass behind for scavengers to consume, thus forcing them to locate and kill another elk or deer.
this shows a real lack of knowledge on the feeding style of wolves, especially at the late stages of cow pregnancy. most often to the determent of both cow and calf elk where the cow will be killed and the calf ripped from the uterus, consumed and then they move on to the next pregnant cow never to return. like this episode here:
http://www.wolfcrossing.org/images/photo-ElkIDFetus1.jpg
this is an all to common occourance
personally i would much rather have a judge who is familiar with the situation sitting on the case than one who truly has no idea what a wolf is let alone what one can do to the wildlife in an ecosystem.
It's all a matter of degree. In other states, the policies are often worse. In general Montana has some rather progressive policies--for instance, no stocking of rivers (which is detrimental to native fish). It works hard to maintain access to rivers.
You state exactly what top predators do in some places: they lead to a decline in ungulate abundance, giving vegetation a rest from persistent grazing pressure. From an ecological perspective, the occasional decline of game species in some places at some time is what is to be expected, and what most ecosystems evolved with.
Even though MT, ID and WY all have cougars, bears, and wolves, most hunting districts have near record or record abundance of animals, meeting objectives. In other words, even though there are declines, the declines shift over time and place.
In the first comment here, Pronghorn give some examples of their lack of progressiveness. Let's add.. the unreasonable lion quotas, trapping in known Lynx habitat, spring bear hunting, lack of studies on ecosystems post apex predator removal, and no program for the non-consumptive user of wildlife.
We all know the root of wildlife management in Montana is "all about the livestock industry".
(I'm fully aware that oil is being used as one many tools to destroy America) Shucks man, off the record of course..
I'm sure its a wet dream for a fair number of state F and W people to be just like their federal compatriots...glorified zookeepers freed from any need to lower themselves to something as prosaic as, gasp, hunting or fishing for food and fun.
Fact is, wolves and other predators are destroying the resource that sportspeople have paid to preserve for all these years. Some people are okay with that, like George. I'm not.
i must disagree with this statement:
"You state exactly what top predators do in some places: they lead to a decline in ungulate abundance, giving vegetation a rest from persistent grazing pressure. From an ecological perspective, the occasional decline of game species in some places at some time is what is to be expected, and what most ecosystems evolved with. "
this is not a some places issue, this is what happens EVERYWHERE you place to many top predators in an area. this has been born out not only in the u.s. but canada as well.
their is now some question as to whether the grazing pressure and giving vegetation a "rest" is truly a viable argument for allowing ungulate decimation as the areas under case study are showing less recovery than earlier predicted. in fact it is now being surmised that the drought conditions that have existed in the wyoming, montana area are having a larger effect on vegetation than the ungulates ever could. in laymens terms, when the grazers are pushed out or killed off by the predators, the vegetation is not recovering like everyone thought it would. this is not to say that their was not enough feed since the all the ungulates prior to wolf reintroduction was excellent. it just means there was no over grazing pressure, even with a drought on. the university of kansas is doing a study on this at present and it should be published in 2012.
what is being promoted by you as an occasional decline of game species in some areas is in truth the understatement of the year.
most wolf infested hunting districts do NOT have near record or record abundance of animals. In fact as reported A 2007 study by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department found that of eight elk herds in wolf-occupied areas, four suffered "significant declines" in juvenile survival rates of between 24 and 36 percent. In the other four herds, wolves didn't appear to be causing any significant decline. Meanwhile, of 13 elk herds studied in areas without a significant wolf presence, only five herds showed significant decrease; five wolf-free herds saw a population increase or a major reduction in elk decline.
http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_a2a2bf6e-1458-533f-9570-cf6b1dd82602.html
it seems george that althou you are quite a writer, you are refusing to open your eyes to what is actually happening in wyoming and montana, i personally would still rather have a judge who is from the area and can see both sides of the issue and be familiar with both the ecologic makeup of an area and be wise enough to see that what is best for the wolf, may not be best for the rest of the ecosystem.
When wolf recovery was proposed in 1988, Congress appropriated monies to study the proposed experiment. Congress instructed those who made the request to introduce wolves that: hunting should not be hurt, the local economy should not be hurt, and the Grizzly Bear should not be impacted. With these marching orders from Congress, a team of 15 PHD’s [Delphi 15], who specialized in Predator/Prey biology, came back and published “Wolves for Yellowstone? A Report to Congress and the Department of Interior Vol. 1” in 1991.” They said the 250 square miles in and around Yellowstone could hold 78-100 wolves at full capacity if it was done over a 10-20 year period. This esteemed body of scientists insisted in 1991 and again in September 1995, because no one knew for sure what impact a new keystone predator would have on the unadapted prey species, that intensive monitoring of the prey should be done, otherwise the Yellowstone Ecosystem would be forever and irreparably harmed. (See P.11 Peterson, Gassaway & Messier report to DOI dated 9/95) America deserves to know who authorized the wolf recovery team to ignore the Delphi 15. Yellowstone Park and the wolf recovery team admitted in the Bozeman Chronicle in the winter of 2000 that these studies were not done each year citing bad weather, lack of funding, lack of equipment, and lack of qualified personnel.
America deserves to know why the mandated studies were not done. We in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming have jumped through hoop after hoop trying to get the wolf delisted from the List of Endangered Species so we can manage this destructive predator and prolific breeder ourselves.
if a federal judge that was KNOWLEDGEABLE were to sit on the bench and make decisions based on other than just what was good for your friend the wolf then i would have no gripe. but he/she needs to consider the other species ( not just the elk) when making these decisions. wolves at any cost is a cost to high
Wolves kill indiscriminately, humans have to kill their game in regulated seasons, with limited numbers of animals harvested to sustain the population.
Wolves were reintroduced by humans and need to be managed by humans.
We do not need unchecked wolf populations, Mr. Wuerthner is a good writer ,however his opinions and his writings are extremely skewed to the side of having unchecked wolf populations throughout the west.
The gray wolf is far from being an endangered species, there are high populations in Alaska( which is still part of the U.S. last time I checked) and Canada. The gray wolf is not endangered in the U.S. and the Feds should leave wolf management up to the states.
The people include hunters.
In short, the resource that sportspeople supported alone for so long was "discovered" and then pretty much stolen by those such as yourself.
The sad truth is, many sportspeople, including myself, were okay with having a closely-managed population of predators in a well-administered mix. We actually thought the line about "old-and-weak" was being given to us straight. It wasn't.
There are those who feel that predators should have the dominant, and preferably only, role in population dynamics. You are clearly one of those and are entitled to an opinion, wrong as it may be.
Never in my wildest imaginations did I ever consider that policies would depart so far out of the realm of common sense, into criminal insanity...
The entropic cascade. Wonderful.
But he seems to have forgotten the 19th Century market hunters...
"But he seems to have forgotten the 19th Century market hunters..."
The market hunters never hunted elk, and if it wasn't for a hunternamed Teddy Roosevelt, there would have been no Yellowstone NP for wolves to have been reintroduced in in the first place.
and wrong, Mr. Mountain hunter . ( oxymoron )
Market hunters very definitely decimated the elk herds , and Teddy Roosevelt did not become President till 29 years after Ulysses Grant signed Yellowstone into existence...1872 vs. 1901.
teddy R headed up the conservation effort of the time during his presidency. basically the had been run like a glorified zoo with no regulation to protect it's boundaries. Roosevelt started his efforts to preserve Yellowstone National Park as early as 1894 when he as president of the Boone and Crockett Club (a hunters' organization comprised of eminent scientists, lawyers and politicians) worked the Secretary of the Interior to enlarge the park and improve its governance. The resulting legislation provided new levels of protection from commercial development and "ecological destruction". Conservation of natural wonders and natural resources became TR's legacy. In 1903, President Roosevelt came to inspect Yellowstone.At the urging of Gifford Pinchot, a college-trained forester who argued that the natural resources of the West required scientific management to prevent their depletion by private developers, Roosevelt seized on the 1891 Forest Reserves Act, which empowered the president to set aside public lands as national forests hence the dilemma we have now.
although dewey is technically right on only one point ( yes grant signed to paperwork) it is mountain hunter who nailed it. teddy made the park what it is today. now as far as market hunters preying on elk, very little elk were taken by market hunters, they were mostly hunted by those in the west trying to feed their families, the market hunters were far more interested in buffalo hides than elk or deer.
seems like dewey is the Revisionist Historian, or should i just say simply uninformed historian
Teddy R came late to the Yellowstone party , and elk were very definitely in the peep sights since the late 1600's. I should have expanded my assertion to more than market hunters to include any game slammer for any reason. Market hunting itself took many forms, some of which included wildlife eradication to make forage available for imported cattle.
Before the Europeans colonized America ( that would be us ), there were 10-12 million Elk .
Today there are maybe 800,000 , and that after a hundred years of your so-called " conservation ". The estimated total elk population in the Lower 48 at its low point was somewhere south of 250,000. Which means we Euro-centric types killed >98 percent of them, from New England to California. THAT's what I'm referring to here....the wholesale taking of 11 million elk , 60 million Bison, the virtual extinction of other species including Woodland Caribou which used to range from Yellowstone to the Pacific there are presently maybe 30 animals in the Selkirk Range of northern Idaho...that's it ).
It was NOT the hunting community and those gilded clubs that deserve the major credit for restoring the wildlife. They were a part of the equation...the part that still shoots them , by the way. Please don't give them more praise than they deserve. No individual or group that spends 50 weeks a year " conserving" an animal so it can spend the other two weeks killing it can be so praiseworthy. Please don't delude yourself that Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation , Safari Club, Boone & Crockett , SFW et all are the great wildlife conservators of our time.
The greatest elk conservator out there is Canis lupus , if we would only allow him to do the tasks.
It's nothing but fluffy mythology that hunters and their glee clubs are responsible for increased game numbers...that's propaganda that you'all obviously have swallowed whole. They've done their part. But their part is not nearly so great as you believe , or want to believe. Don't even get me going on cattleman and sheepmen.
One of the Dirty Little Secrets about Elk conservation in Wyoming is hunting licenses fees and all the revenue from elk hunting en toto don't even come close to paying for Wyoming Game and Fish managing the elk herds. It's a losing proposition.
Who pays for Elk conservation in Wyoming ? If anyone, it's the put-of-state Fisherman buying temporary fishing licenses. THAT's where Wyo G&F;gets the money it needs to sustain an elk hunt every year. Fishing pays the 2/3rds of Wyo G&F;income not from grants or appropriations.
Archibald A. Anderson of the upper Greybull River in Wyoming was the one who convinced Teddy R to establish the Yellowstone Fprest Reserve, the first of what was to become the National Forests, and became its first Supervisor. It was Anderson who began the crackdown on the livestock interests that were ruining wildlife habitat in the 1890's.( That's from one of the two northwest Wyoming hardbound history books I produced, by the way.) Too bad Anderson was not more successful in putting the Wyoming Stockgrowers and sheepmen in their place. Teddy was the facilitator ; the delegator. He relied on others to steer him along the way. Many others. Including the true preservationists.
As to market hunters not taking elk , the large photo legacy of Montana frontier photographer L.A. Huffman would differ, if you need it some indisputable evidence of the near elimination of big game herds by 1890, by hunters and skinners.
first lets get the time line straight.
Q) who are considered the first white men into the greater yellowstone area that were not passing thru as explorers or the occasional trapper or hunter that had adopted the indian life style.
( hint: they came to the area in 1811 and were forced off the lewis and clark trail by indians, they are referred to as the "Astorians"
A) The very first invasion of the true white man was the party of 65 men under the leadership of Wilson Price Hunt. In 1810 John Jacob Astor in an attempt to gain control of the fur trade of the upper mississipi sent a ship named the tonquin to the mouth of the columbia. Hunt and his band of 65 abandoned the lewis and clark trail and headed south following the powder river to the clear fork ( or as it is called today clear creek) near present day buffalo. after finding little game except antelope and rabbits and a few mule deer they decided to proceed to astoria.
Q) How many years lingered until another European attempted to access the wyoming territory and what was the name of the nationality this location was named after.
(hint- for whatever reason the name of the nationality of the trader has been in dispute but the name of the location remains the same)
A) When the Astorians left, wyoming did not see another european untill 1834, 23 years later. Antonio Montero was an employee of the american fur company in the 1830's . In 1833 Antonio transferred from the employ of the fur company to Captain Benjamin L. E. Bonneville and became the leader of the Bonneville's Brigades. More can be found here about the PORTUGUESE HOUSES.
http://www.mman.us/MonteroAntonio.htm
Q) After the portugese houses were abandoned and the country turned back to the indians who and when was with Jim Bridger when the Next Europeans reached far enouph into the west to revisit the houses and how were they recieved ??
( hint) Please take note that the records are very clear on how few elk were found on this expedition, also take note that jim bridger was the guide becouse no one else knew the way as he was the only white man to have ever visited that far and beyond and keep his hair.
A) In 1859 Captain W.F. Reynolds was being guided by jim bridger into the unknown north west wyoming territory and upon making it to the portuguese houses found them in deplorable condition as no one had made any effort to come into the area and maintain a presence.
Q) how many years were Fort Phil Kearney and Fort McKinney under siege by the indian Attacks basically stopping any european advancment into the North West wyoming and montana areas via the bozeman trail.
Bonus point- how many men were killed at fort reno during it's short duration from lack of game to forage due to lack of supplies from for laramie
well, good luck and remember, Europeans may not have had the influence you think they had
Those 11 million Elk that were present in our beloved T'is of Thee before Jamestown and Plymouth and St. Augustine all shot themselves ?
you stated:
"elk were very definitely in the peep sights since the late 1600's"
points of reference here are that in the 1600's only europeans that were truly prevalent were the spanish and some french and the british. And neither of these were around the yellowstone area, in fact we had not even whipped the british yet for our independence. that occoured about the latter 1700's if my high school history is still correct :)
You also stated that:
Market hunting itself took many forms, some of which included wildlife eradication to make forage available for imported cattle.
i am sorry but this is an outright falsehood. True their was trapping of beaver pelts by the European mountain men that made it to the west around the 1830's. but they were few in numbers and the heyday of the mountain man only last a brief 15 years. they also never ventured near yellowstone until well after jim bridgers first scouting of the area. and this i dare say was way after the 1600's. The wildlife eradication you speak of was during the indian wars of the 1850's in an attempt to remove food sources from the native americans, not to provide room for cattle.
Buffalo were shot by the thousands financed and supported by the government along with many other game animals. hides were sold on the market for extra money, but the mainstay was to force the indians to end their war with the whites.
You also claim:
" Before the Europeans colonized America ( that would be us ), there were 10-12 million Elk .
this is an interesting number to be thrown around since the records dating back even to the lewis and clark expadition say that game was although plentiful, not overly abundant. even the reports of the Astorians on their trek thru the area indicate that the need to move on from clear fork was because of limited game.
Perhaps you were including canada in that head count. and if so they surely were not shot because long guns were truly a rarity in the american west until after 1851.
you also stated:
"Today there are maybe 800,000 , and that after a hundred years of your so-called " conservation ". The estimated total elk population in the Lower 48 at its low point was somewhere south of 250,000. Which means we Euro-centric types killed >98 percent of them, from New England to California.
in 1609 explorer Henry Hudson reported seeing Indians clothed in robes and moccasins made of bison skins when he landed on a small, wild island now known as Manhattan. But elk was essentially only garnered by trade with indians from the west and south, true their were a small band of eastern elk that were a subspecies of what we know today, but by 1905 they had declined to almost extinction. it is probable that packs of roving canadian wolves finished off any chance they had of recovery by 1896.
You also said:
"It was NOT the hunting community and those gilded clubs that deserve the major credit for restoring the wildlife."
i hate to even respond to this tripe as it is so easily researched by anyone with a desire to learn. But it does does much to show that you are in a camp who believes the old lie that nature will preserve it's own, which has been disproved over and over.
now lets take a look at this jewel:
"The greatest elk conservator out there is Canis lupus , if we would only allow him to do the tasks."
if this were even remotely true then why don't ecologists promote it as such. the wolf by his very nature is not a conservator, he is a predator. He does not count how many elk are struggling to survive his presence, nor does he look at the other predators in the ecosystem and try to find a balance so they to can survive. his only driving force is to eat and breed. ( not unlike myself in my younger days). he wanders the countryside as an opportunist, he cares not whether he is depriving another predator of sustenance. in fact his prevalence for sport killing young elk is well documented and is not to be admired in any fashion.
here is the first part of a two part pearl of wisdom:
"One of the Dirty Little Secrets about Elk conservation in Wyoming is hunting licenses fees and all the revenue from elk hunting en toto don't even come close to paying for Wyoming Game and Fish managing the elk herds. It's a losing proposition."
ahhhh, i see where your going now, since you cant drag yourself into the 21st century and find the money trail then it's not worth doing, ok i got ya now. your right we should simply throw our hands in the air and put all available funding into wolf preservation, even if it costs us the last of our elk, now why didn't i think of that.
And the second part:
"Who pays for Elk conservation in Wyoming ? If anyone, it's the put-of-state Fisherman buying temporary fishing licenses. THAT's where Wyo G&F;gets the money it needs to sustain an elk hunt every year. Fishing pays the 2/3rds of Wyo G&F;income not from grants or appropriations.
ahh well lets see, the list is long but here are a few just so you know......
The Wyoming legislator allotments,usgs,wyoming hunters and fishermen,Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation,Boone & Crockett, wyoming boys and girls club, out of state hunter and fisherman,u.s. dept of agriculture program assistance,Wyoming f.o.e., wyoming game wardens association, and the list goes on...
are you still wondering if we want to save the elk of wyoming ??, this is just a small sample of the folks here that care about what happens when wolves are allowed to decimate elk.
Now ill keep the next part as brief as possible, i sure you will agree ( ok maybe not but maybe it will make you search a little deeper into your history before you write your next book) as far as the great Mr. Archibald A. Anderson is concerned.
in your efforts to give Archie some credit of convincing Teddy R to establish the Yellowstone Forest Reserve i must point out that rumbling were already in the ground to do so before your buddy Archie began jumping up and down and waving his arms to get attention. It is a well known fact that Mr. Anderson was a self promoter of the first order. he was never shy about trying to thrust himself into the spotlight and take credit for something when he seen the chance, and in truth he was no more than a bit player in what transpired, but he pronounced how important he was so often people began to believe him, and since it was not hurting the cause no one seen fit to point out his errors.
if you will dig into history a little deeper you will see what i mean.
the last point is here:
As to market hunters not taking elk , the large photo legacy of Montana frontier photographer L.A. Huffman would differ, if you need it some indisputable evidence of the near elimination of big game herds by 1890, by hunters and skinners.
as pointed out earlier much of the destruction of the game during the 1851-1890's were promoted by the federal goverment in an attempt to bring an end to the indian wars, the normal settler had no need to go out and devastate the game in his area, but with government bounties and other efforts to eliminate food stocks for the indians, to try and lay that at the everyday settler/hunters door is pretty irresponsible.
In the 5 years reported ( 2004-2008 seasons) , between 57,000 and 60,000 Elk licenses were sold in Wyoming each year. The 5-year gross of sales was $ 39.9 million , but the expense of managing the Elk hunting program was $ 57.1 million , a deficit of $ 18 million , or - 32 percent. Hunter success was hovering in the 40 percent range.
( Pronghorn are the only big game that pay their own way. )
Further, in last year's Budget, the total of all Third party grants and funding---such as your wildlife groups and habitat groups, Boys & Girls Clubs ( where the heck did THAT come from ???) ,etc---did not go above $ 1 million , out of a total budget of $ 59.7 million
The direct Federal Aid to Wyoming Game & Fish was $ 13.2 million, with strings attached . The State appropriation was $ 3.6 million with chains and steel cables attached. The revenue contributions from Conservation Stamps, Boat fees, and nonrefundable application fees etc was pretty small, too....only $ 3 million total ( and dropping from year to year...hunting is losing popularity ).
Bottom Line: Elk hunters are NOT paying their own way, and Wyo G&F;relies on non-license revenues to make ends meet, especially federal dollars. Habitat programs , sportsmen's guilds, and conservation fees are not the panacea the sportsmen propagandists would have us believe.
Kinda blows your "Hunters are doing the heavy lifting on Game Conservation funding " belief out of the water....in Wyoming, anyway.
p.s. On July 11, 1835 the only literate mountain man who kept a written diary, Osborne Russell, was camped near the head of the South Fork of the Shoshone River above my town of Cody in Wyoming, 175 years ago. He recorded seeing "thousands" of mountain sheep at one time in the present day Bliss Meadows area. Pre-market hunting and pre-livestock days. I used to guide for elk and sheep around there in the late 1980's...never saw more than 30 sheep at a time in summer and fall, rarely more than 5-6 rams.
the boys and girls club in Powell does fundraisers, as do so many other organization in and around our little park county, they do not show their monetary support directly to the game and fish since the game and fish is a government entity., but they do help as much as they can in other indirect ways, but of coarse i am sure you knew that. in truth hunting is losing it popularity due to the rising cost of fees to hunt and a lack of game to hunt as you can well see on any outing into crandall, by the way, where did all the moose go ??
in any event if you will take the time to re read what i actually wrote you will pleased to discover i never once claimed hunters did the heavy lifting.
AHHH HAAAA.... IT MUST HAVE BEEN OSBORN RUSSEL WHO HAD ALL THOSE ELK IN HIS SIGHTS AND KILLED THEM. sorry dewey i simply could not resist resist. seriously thou it was my understanding that osbourn was not at the southfork untill 1834 or after, but i might be mistaken on that one. one thing is clear thou when jim brider reported to captain reynolds that upon traveling thru to the stinking waters on his 1830's reconnaissance that the game was only plentiful from the west rise of the elephant back mountains to the west and in order to make it that far with a garison in tow the would need to bring along support supplies at least that far. we are fortunate that the captain paid attention because even thou bridger was as likely as not to tell a tall tale when given a chance,
not to get off the subject but why the heck did bridger report heart mountain on the wrong side of the shoshone river anyway ??
oh well, never mind, it's not important.
anyway, if his reports were accurate and i assume they were otherwise the captain would have recorded otherwise you are exactly right, where osborn was seeing sheep would have been about where bridger claimed the game was becoming plentiful. i had actually wondered about this a little as i guided in johnson and park county as well from 75 to 81.
in any event on this count i must tip my hat to you as being correct as all reports i have seen and read confirm what you are saying is spot on.
oh, by the way, they are called antelope, pronghorn are for eastern dudes, sort of like the snow fence is a grand stand for the rattle snake races :)
There aren't any Buffalo or Lions, either. This helps explain why wildlife issues are so exasperating in Wyoming , and elsewhere. A much too large segment of the public has a much too small grasp of the most basic knowledge concerning wildlife. Vocabulary is a smoking gun , too.
All they know is they want to go out and kill something...
the point where your argument begins to wander is directly related to the fact that you are obviously out of touch with the very nature of the community you are living in.
to prove my point wander down to the irma and ask any local if their are any antelope between cody and greybull, of coarse you will get a silly look (everyone knows there are) but everyone sitting at the table will know exactly what you are asking. you know why, because that is what they are referred to here in the great state of wyoming.
this brings us back around to the point of the article, a federal judge sitting and adjudicating a case concerning the wolf issue should be familiar with not only the local issues and customs, but be wise enough not to get led astray on these pointless excursions into history where sentiment seems to run full bore. the facts of todays wildlife issues trump anything from the 1600's thru to the 1930's and what European immigrants did or didn't do is pretty much irrelevant. the year is 2010, the damage the wolf is doing is being done today and is easly documented and proven. period.
It's fine to argue how many or how few white men were west of clouds peak due to indians, it's even ok to point out that you could not answer the relevant points in the Q and A session, but what is not ok is to try to hold the wolf up and say " see, this makes it relevant to the wolves because of what was done before"
the fact of the matter is that the elk deserve a chance as well, whether it's a losing effort in your eyes or not, and in the year 2010 thats what is really important.
to my knowledge The federal government has classified wolves as a ‘non-essential experimental species’. Using this classification, the government can then claim that only 100 wolves and 10 breeding pair in the entire state are necessary to maintain the survival of this species, thru bureaucratic legal wrangling we have been forced to far exceed these numbers. all the while burdening the state with moneys spent that could have been put to far better use elsewhere. the sad fact is the wolves need regulated and need regulated now.
Hardly. I'm the 4th generation of my family to live in Cody, and I've never called anywhere else home except Meeteetse for 60 years.
"to prove my point wander down to the Irma and ask any local if their are any antelope between cody and greybull, of coarse you will get a silly look (everyone knows there are) but everyone sitting at the table will know exactly what you are asking. you know why, because that is what they are referred to here in the great state of wyoming."
Please don't ask me to explain or apologize for my fellow citizens and their shortcomings. I spend way too much time apologizing to the rest of the world for Wyoming and it's various shortcomings. Those " Scholars" at the Irma are Exhibit A of Wyoming's educational indictment , generally speaking. I call for remedial 7th grade science courses being mandatory before awarding those baccalaureate degrees in barstool biology.
"this brings us back around to the point of the article, a federal judge sitting and adjudicating a case concerning the wolf issue should be familiar with not only the local issues and customs,"
...uh. Sorry . Judges do not rule on quaint customs and local rhetoric , or any matters colloquial. They interpret the Law. You cannot bend the Endangered Species Act to fit local custom and culture...round peg square hole...familiarity breeds contempt among the anti-wolfers, and the Judge should hear none of it. You might actually spend some time reading the ESA and the 1994 EIS for the wolf recovery program instead of wasting both our time here. ( You can find them at http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/wolf/ )
"the year is 2010, the damage the wolf is doing is being done today and is easly documented and proven. period."
So---prove it. Please. If it's so easy , then document it for us. There's plenty of free space here. Where is all the carnage and the destruction by all the wolves in northwest Wyoming ? What are the dollar losses? Who's suffering here ? Whose job and livelihood and property are being rent asunder by marauding wolves. Please be specific.
Here's what I know. To date, in 2010, only 10 cattle out of 1.4 milion have been taken by wolves in Wyoming, and only 24 sheep out of (roughly) 450,000 in Wyoming . That's statistically closer to zero than not. [ It's 0.00007 percent in the case of cattle lost to wolves. And never mind that domestic dogs kills 13 to 17 times as many calves and lambs as wolves. ] On the other hand, Wildlife Services has eradicated 19 wolves this year , which is nearly 10 percent of the wolves outside Yellowstone.
" the elk deserve a chance as well, whether it's a losing effort in your eyes or not, and in the year 2010 that's what is really important."
The Elk have had a chance for 75 years since the wolf was eliminated. The elk became their own worst enemy by becoming overpopulated and genetically degraded in the absence of their complementary apex predator. Then the trophic cascade of unbalanced ecology took its toll almost everywhere else that elk resided, among other things allowing the Coyote to become the dominant predator It's not...coyotes are mesopredators, the same classification as skunks, raccoons, red fox, snakes, spiders, etc. But it got promoted to top tier in the absence of wolves. Big mistake. Did you happen to ever see the many thousands of starving elk they used to winter in Sunlight Basin before 1965 ? Do you recall the Gardiner Firing Line when paid riflemen shot hundreds of starving elk inside Yellowstone and the carcasses that couldn't be given away to the Tribes were bulldozed into mass graves ? 1962-64? Again , all because the wolf had been removed from the ecological equations ? That was the wildlife equivalent of Auschwitz or Dachau, and I'm sure we do not want to revisit that scenario. Yellowstone is just now getting down to a good elk number and better fitting carrying capacity and healthier range, for many reasons but the wolf fully withstanding among them .
Elk and wolves are meant to coexist . It's the law. Natural Law. What is unnatural is poorly managed elk hunts, terribly skewed limited quota elk seasons, and managing elk for money and commercialization of wildlife management. It amounts to little more legalized market hunting, or "put and take" elk harvesting. Wyoming Game & Fish is managing NEITHER wolves or elk for wildlife ecology. That truth hurts , doesn't it ?
And by the way , you are not entitled to an elk. You are privileged to have the opportunity to take one now and then , but the wolf is ahead of you in line.
" the sad fact is the wolves need regulated and need regulated now."
I fully support regulated hunting of wolves by hunters. Every environmentalist and ecologist I know agrees. What is not defendible is " shoot on sight" and " Predator Status " in the 85 percent of Wyoming outside of the buffer zone around Yellowstone, which is unregulated hunting.
George Wuerthner is absolutely correct when he states for the umpteenth time that no state game agency manages predators as essential ecological instruments. That is egregious in all ways.
this list is kinda long so i will haft to post several times so as not to trip the spam filter. these are in no particular order but the the findings are pretty clear. they are all within the greater yellowstone ecosystem
scroll down to page three:
http://wolves.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/wlfecon-impct.pdf
http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_5ff01772-938f-11de-9aca-001cc4c03286.html
http://missoulian.com/news/local/article_5ff01772-938f-11de-9aca-001cc4c03286.html
this one is a bit graphic
i think i posted this for you earlier, you must have missed it
http://www.cnrhome.uidaho.edu/default.aspx?pid=42865
most of this one is self explanitory, just scroll down to DO WOLVES LIMIT UNGULATE NUMBERS?
this one really should be all that is needed as it really sets your theory straight.
http://www.aws.vcn.com/mountain_lion_fact_sheet.html
feel free to past this onto your browser and then click the first link in the search engine and it will take you directly to it.
Cause-specific Mortality of Rocky Mountain Elk Calves
in Westcentral Montana
I've been around enough anti-Wolfers to know how easily they are reinforced by graphic photos of dead elk and fringe science studies. Some of that data is good and interesting, especially the Quigley-Akeson study of Wolves and Cougars, but it presents absolutely nothing new, and its conclusions are inconclusive. And stray from the point a hand
As for the rest of it, you've sent me nothing useful to read and I'll never have those 90 minutes back.
Any time an anti-Wolfer tries to foist a graphic photo of a wolf-killed elk carcass on me, I always ask for the complementary photo of his last elk gutpile or the photo of elk steaks being cremated on the grill in a ball of flame. Equally gruesome, equally meaningless imagery in other words.
Of course wolves kill elk. Tha's te whole idea.
What you have to get through your wild ragged cranium is the are not killing YOUR elk ,. they are preying on THEIR elk. You do not have any elk. None of you hunters have any elk. There is no bar code on your elk license that corresponds to the bar code on an elk's rump out there. What you have is a license to exercise a privilege towards a hunting opportunity, but the state of Wyoming ( Idahp, Montana) do not owe you an elk nor should you demand one.
That's the hardest thing have found in the Great Wolf Debate when it comes to hunters believing the wolf is killing "their" elk , because it is not nor has it ever been "your" elk . Ever. Even before the wolf was brought back.
That 120 sheep killed by wolves near Dillon...well, those people had previous problems with wolves and their sheep and did nothing either time. If the damn sheep are so valuable, you'd think they would be better protected. I'll grant you that much ---Wolves have a total weakness for domestic sheep. They will waylay them. To my mind, that is not a bad thing at all. The Sheep Industry has been a scourge in the Rocky Mountains. Domestic sheep do not belong anywhere near wildlife habitat, QED. Frankly I hope wolves keep hammering sheep flocks till their owners get the message. Most cattle kills by wolves are a result of poor or nonexistent care of the cattle by their owners, and I for one would not give any rancher a damn dime for a cow taken off a public graze allotment by a wolf. Not one dime. If the wolf comes on his place and threatens his cattle or sheep, by all means blast away . But don't put your stock out on public graze and expect the wolves to not be tempted when you go to town. Ranchers need to get real about their situation, too.
Wolves are paying a mighty high price in mortality for the removal of a scant few cows, but nobody's livelihood is threatened when 45,000 cattle die each year from all causes in Wyoming and only 45 of those ( 1/10th of one percent) were due to wolves.
To claim wolves are decimating hunter's elk opportunity and destroying rancher's bottom lines is utter abject crap. You hunters need to learn how to hunt better now that you have some serious professional competition and the elk are adopting new tactics of their own , and ranchers need to hire some cowboys . I have no advice for range sheepmen except to say good riddance. One of the two history books I produced was on the Wyoming sheep industry and a prominent family sheep dynasty . They were nice people but I came to loathe sheep ranching anyway . It's a pointless inappropriate endeavour in Wyoming which harms resources and waste's the public's tax dollar in subsidies and is based on faux economics, as is public land livestock production in general .
I'll gladly let the coyotes have all the sheep they can get away with , in the greater interests of Wyoming , so the wolves can do the important work of ungulate management and genuine wildlife conservation and ecological restoration
This is all about ideology. The perceptions by the average sportsman, their experiences and expectation, are for naught. Wolves are god.
Again, claiming that sport hunting is exemplary "Wildlife Conservation" is like claiming Hollywood is the real California. Or maybe Missoula is the center of the universe because Boone & Crockett and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation are hq'd there....
yeah , right.
You're a deep-ecology "ecocentric" and I'm anthrocentric.
But then, you just pretty much admit the problem with wolves: They hunt all year, without limits or point requirements, regardless of whether a particular herd can take it or not. It's worse than market hunting by orders of magnitude. Cool with you, not with me.
Sportspeople as a whole have been mostly willing to comply with the edicts of agency staff regarding harvest levels, probably the first social group to become aware of "sustainability" in any meaningful sense. Never mind the concept of the greater collective good, of delayed gratification. After all, the agency wanted to keep the show going, too.
Now, what the heck. As Geo implies, the money issue is basically biting the hand. He, and you, clearly would like to see wildlife agencies "freed" from the evil, corrupting influences of evil, corrupt hunters who have the GALL to expect some kind of return for their endeavor.
Yet return for endeavor, or value given for value received, is the concept upon which America is based. And it's not only fiscal returns.
I just wish there was a way that wolfies had to pay for the elk and other goodies their pets snarf. I ran the numbers once and seem to remember that it was at least high five figures in opportunity cost per existing animal, maybe it was mid-low six figures. It was a crazy number -- irrational, just like wildlife policy has become now that "conservation biology" is the fad doo jooer.
Just a dirty shame.
Please don't not try to tell me that money makes good in wildlife circles. For every dollar of good it is or has done, has come at a far greater cost and negative value by many multiples .
Skinner, you cannot decry those X hundreds ( not thousands) of dollars that failed to be inserted into some cash register somewhere because an elk went unharvested. Elk are not a cash crop. That is the Supreme Failure of your logic and belief system. You conserve for conservation's sake , not to stock the woods with targets for your ego and gullet.
The are not my wolves, and certainly not my pets . I totally resent that and your condescension . Wolves are wildlife. They need to be managed as wildlife, coexistent wit their prey. Instead of griping and condescending on these web pages, you should be taking a home study course in ecology and pay extra attention to the chapter on Predator-Prey relationships. ( And pay a LOT less attention to website spawned by like-minded flakes wingnuts.)
If you were a true conservationist and a genuine sportsman , you would welcome wolves into your realm. You are entitled to your opinion and even your condescension if it makes you feel good , but you don't own the facts . Good elk habitat is good wolf habitat . The same habitat. On a much broader landscape down to a microscopic level that you look at every day but never seem to see. You and every other hunter out there who claims to be a conservationist should be working both sides of that equation, because Cervus canadensis and canis lupus need each other, but they really don't need you if all you want is horns and bragging rights and maybe a little meat. .
They might need me, though. I'm trying to improve YOUR elk hunting opportunity by fully restoring wolves into the matrix. Until you can see through to that , you and your elk ilk will remain a greedy narrowminded capitalist bloodsport nonessential experimental population, the Elk Wasters, the Greedblasters. You'all are (maybe) doing the right thing for the (certainly) wrong reasons if you honestly believe that shooting an elk or deer every autumn is your ordained right and great gift to conservation at the same time. Wrong, and wrong.
Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation , Boone & Crockett and Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, et al, and you, should be the very first people in line to support wolf recovery, in the best interests of all. That they are not speaks volumes .
Bottom Line: Predators are wildlife, too, and deserve their own opportunity. The wolf is your hunting buddy , not your sworn enemy...
We are actually pretty luck i think thou that we can recognize his responses for what they are and move on, i respect the fact he has something to be passionate about but lets face it, his blind beliefs really mean very little when he can not recognize that not all losses due to wolves are simply money bases, many are ecological based and that is the point where his religious support for the wolf ideology falls flat. you cannot change his mind on this because his belief system make him think he is doing something noble, regardless of what the facts tell him. He has found a few others i suspect that also share his fervor and i suspect they are their own little support system. Lucky for us it's a case of the blind leading the blind and they usually are just feeling their way around in the dark :)
Anyone who continues to cite Troy Mader of Gillette WY as having anything useful to add to the wolf debate must not know he was throughly discredited about 12 years ago and dropped off the radar. Mader was a private investigator who was somewhat of a paranoid fellow who chased down equally paranoid conspiracies. Even before the first wolf was caught and released in Yellowstone he had a heaved a gaggle of conspiracy theories out there. He never was a researcher . He's a wingnut. His so-called " Abunmdant Wildlife Society" was a model of junk science advocacy and rhetorical circle jerks. His service to the wolf debate was to alert the genuine scientists and adovcates of the coming mongol horde of wolfhating halfwits, with guns. For which he deserves the faintest of praise. You stand solidly in the craters of his legacy, I might say.
Conversely , you steered me to one pretty good site that tried to put wolves in context wit their main competitor Cougars, the Akenson study for Hornocker. You obviously never read it yourself. If so you would have seen the conclusion was they could not conclude anything:
(quote) We found biological and social cougar responses that could be explained by interspecific
competition with recently established wolves. Unfortunately, with confounding factors which
can also affect cougar population dynamics - such as a declining prey population, high hunter
harvest, large-scale environmental change from forest fire - it is difficult to assess the relative
contributions of each factor in causing the observed decline in the cougar population and its
productivity during the 1999-2002 study period. ( endquote)
Which I might inject here that wolves interacting with cougars isn't even the topic at hand , and the assertion does nothing to advance your hollow arguments anyway. It simply says wolves and cougars living around one another and utilizing the same prey base will have conflicts...DUH! And your point is.........?
Your condescension which I can add to Skinner's diatribes is that my wolf advocacy is religious. Nothing could be further from the truth , but since you don't see truth easily let me just say I am totally agnostic about all religions and especially agnostic about wolves. was supporting wolf reintroduction for years before it was approved , based entirely on the need to restore wolves and the science that backed it up as a remedy for some mighty misguided and arrogant " management" of wildlife in Yellowstone and the surrounding region.
Back then I was a supporter of Wyoming Game & Fish and the manner in which it managed elk hunts and other big game species, but they went over to the dark side because of funding and politics, and made a Faustian bargain with the Wyoming Legislature which has resulted in some very poor hunting management and abrogation of their stewardship of state wildlife in lieu of having to please ranchers and politicians. It's why I gave up hunting and guiding in 1989, because it had become commercialized and totally money driven , against all accepted norms of wildlife conservation principles and biology . Which I think is what Wuerthner is trying to tell us here. Money and politics have no place in wildlife management. The senseless waylaying of predators ( especially wolves) in a hugely disproportionate response to their percieved impact on hunting opportunity and livestock is so blatant that the deaf and blind can see it and hear it. What's your excuse for not seeing it or hearing it ?
The last good elk hunting was in the mid-1980's. Even without wolves, the elk hunting in Wyoming would be just as negatively impacted today. Many negatives in the health and abundance of elk herds are entirely due to poorly managed hunts and a general disregard of genuine conservation and wildlife ecology. Wolves will go a long way towards correcting that .
There are plenty of elk out there for both man and wolf . ( And cougars, etc.). The arrogance of humans in demanding to be put in charge of the entriety of the landscape and natural order is beyond the pale. Hunters are the pawns in a larger issue of Manifest Destiny that has been more destructive than not towards wildlife ever since the firs pair of blue eyes crossed the Mississippi heading west with a musket in hand. That continues to this day.
Hunters are not the solution for restoring and conserving and recovering wildlife . They are part of the problem. Exhibit B: your posts here. Exhibit C: the damage done to Wyoming herd balance by an excessive take of mature trophy bulls year after year without corresponding hunter reduction of the rest of the population. That exhibit can also be termed" Great White Hunter Ego", and it is the poorest form of wildlife management and conservation in this playing field at current herd quotients. Decades in the making, too. The same decades when the Wolf was absent and the Grizzly nearly eliminated outside Yellowstone
Yes, you and Skinner and your elk hunting ilk will likely lose some numerical hunting opportunity in the near future if you are of the belief the wild elk are out there exclusively for your primary benefit, above and beyond all other needs or considerations. Sorry , but You are going to have to re-learn how to hunt now . Because a more skilled professional wildlife conservator is now on the job , 24/7/366 doing what Man cannot or would not do : the selective and proportionate taking of elk as subsistence herbivore prey yearround. That professional wildlife conservator should have never been eliminated in the first place. There are still plenty of elk for all. Wyoming's elk herds, even in the wolf ranges, are well above their population objectives. The just arent standing out in the middle of a meadow acting fat dumb and lazy like they were before they got whipped into shape by their new personal trainer, Canis lupus.
One last thought: without a gun and a knife, we humans in Wyoming are 7th down the food chain. And that is as it should be.
Or let me use your own style of bombastic rhetoric backattya: Do you poach Burger King Whoppers ?
Wolves eat elk.
And they are not your elk, either. The wolves cannot take from you that which you do not possess in the first place.
And we wonder why the wolf debate is so inane......
http://wolfcrossing.org/2007/03/19/spree-and-sport-elk-kills-by-wolves-in-idaho-lewis-photographic-report/
...and your point in publishing the link to those lovely photos is....what ?
Again, where are the photos of elk gut piles ? Quartered elk ? Bull elk with their antler crowns sawed off ? The pix of cutting bloody meat on the kitchen table ? Grinding scraps into hamburger ? Steaks cremated on the grill ? Where's the photo of the deer mashed flat by a Dodge Ram truck ? Where are the pix of the Pronghorn strangled and bled out in a bad barb wire fence ?
Wolves kill and eat elk . It's never pretty by human standards, but our opinion on the aesthetics are of no value. Not when we do the very same thing with our choice of instruments. Get over it.
Please, zbiker, no more crap, OK ?
( Do I need to publish my photos here of ritual killing of water buffalo from Toraja Indonesian funeral ceremonies , so the spirit of the buffalo can convey the spirit to heaven ? The more buffalo slaughtered the better. It represents status. The funeral I attended only killed sixteen , a modest number. )
"By Dewey, 7-20-10
Skinner---wolves aren't unregulated poachers" the "junk" you refer to is a very prominent part of the wolf dichotomy, wolf are not simply killing elk to survive, they are by their very nature preditors with a tendency for spree and sport killing of all game. by your theology there is nothing wrong with this behavior.
their is a vast difference between someone harvesting an elk,and sticking it in the freezer to feed their family, and someone killing 4 or 5 elk and taking the liver and leaving the rest, especially when the elk was a pregnant cow that was mere months from calving out. the wolf is the only predator in the Yellowstone eco system that exhibits this behavior. it matters not to the wolf whether he is hungry or not. if it sees an opportunity to kill it will do so. this effect not only the elk, but every other predator and ungulate within the eco system. just because a wolf eats a percentage of the elk he kills does not make it ok. what you call junk is proof positive of the one thing you don't want to admit, too many wolfs will be detrimental to a herd simply become of their killing habits. when man kills in this fashion it is called poaching.
What you and most all the wolf-haters do not grasp is the fundamental fact that it isn't just about wolves vs. elk or just wolves vs. cattle, it's all about wolves playing a key role in an ecologic system that begins at the below the single celled level and goes up all the way up through both sides of the plant and animal channels to the apex predators and old growth forest canopy, then on into the sky. Wolfhaters key in on a very tiny sliver of that process and magnify it beyond belief. And in doing so, distort it. The signal to noise ratio of the anti-wolf brigade is huge, as you so capably demonstrate.
Only in the short narrow closed uneducated minds of humans ( yours) is an untended wolf kill seen as a travesty . It's really not.
Wolves ( 'wolfs' as you ignorantly pluralize them ) are not poachers . That's a human legal concept, for lawyers judges and game wardens. . Doesn't apply here. Get educated before your next fusillade of posts. I'm probably gonna sign off this one because I realize for the umpteenth time that wolfhaters cannot be reasoned with if their public education failed to open up the neural pathways..
their in lies the problem dewey. these sport and spree kills are well documented in all three states. they are mentioned numerousness times in biological studies in idaho and montana. and i have already furnished their findings for you.
no one is asserting that they should eat it all in one sitting. what we are concerning ourselves with here is when they simply kill the cow elk, rip the fetus free to eat and then move on to kill another cow elk. the wolf as mentioned before is the only animal in the ecosystem that exhibits this behavior. and as discussed in the idaho game and fish dichotomy paper, they do it quite often.
when this type of behavior goes unchecked how long do you think a herd of any size will be able to sustain it's self ?? especially in the late winter when the wolfs are at their best feeding advantage.
It happens a lot more than you are willing to admit dewey. simply waving off study after study of college academics and state biologists and calling their finding fraudulent because you don't want to admit it is a problem does little to shine the light of truth on the matter.
For wolves, there are no rules, only whether or not they get caught.
Granted, they provide carrion for other critters, but that carrion is more than likely available anyway from a larger base population of ungulates. There's less overall ungulate "biomass" in the system when wolves are present. Yeah, I understand "trophic cascades," too, so don't try to shovel that pile, either.
Oh, gee, I almost forgot CBD's new petition to have wolves run the show nationwide. Somehow, I hope they are "successful" and wolves get rammed down the throats of all who romanticize the concept in somebody else's backyard. That should finally rile up enough irate VOTERS to get some substantive ESA reform, eh?
oh i am not trying to deny it donny, i am simply trying to understand why you think this is so beneficial when a wolf pack kills for a number of elk for sport. are the rest of the animals having such a difficult time finding food that they need to wait for wolves to go on a "spree" to feed themselves ??, is the coyote that usually works a field for mice and rodents finding it impossible to find his normal food source ??, is the raven not finding enough to feed it's young and resorting to following wolves around so they don't starve ?? nothing in nature truly goes to waste except action.
" Faulting wolves for the way they kill is ignorant on your part. Any time a predator eats another animal, it isn't a pretty site. You have to be an ignorant person to fault any predator for how they kill animals"
Ignorant donney, you obviously have not read the jan 2010 idaho elk survey, here let me help you out
http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/apps/releases/view.cfm?NewsID=5332
please note this section:
"The rate of this decline in just four short years should help people understand there is an urgency to manage for a balance in this area."
somehow i don't think it's ignorant to see what is happening to not only the elk but the rest of the eco system by the killing style of an over populated preditor. what is ignorant is trying to fault someone for trying to bring it to your attention.
" You cannot blame an animal for the way it kills. You are not using logic, you are using emotion"
funny i don't feel emotional, maybe a little saddened by your lack of foresight and your blind faith in the belief that the wolf way is the only way, open your mind to the possibility that your theory may be flawed, maybe it's not but you will never know unless you keep an open mind and do your own research, read what other experts in the field are saying. the university studies and game biologists research papers are all their for the reading, just imagine " what if i am wrong".
" What about all of those human hunters who engage in sport killing? It's alright for them to do it, but not wolves correct?"
what all hunter doing sport killing??, last i knew it was illegal to take more than one elk per tag, plus when you kill your elk you must claim the whole animal, not just the fetus. your not allowed to simply take a little and leave the rest to " help feed the other animals " if you do so you will be arrested and lose your hunting privileges. how is this even remotely close to what the wolves do when they sport kill 4 or 5 head of elk ??
-the hue and cry that wolves kill for thrills is mostly isolated cases misinterpreted by the untrained observers , or unsubstantiated altogether. Untrained observers have websites. So they show us a gruesome photo of a freshly killed elk adn say the wolves dunnit for sport, but the blood is still fresh . How would these observers know if the wolves never came back ? Once the humans meddle with the carcass, the wolves very likely will not return. So they are fouling up their own observations and seeing only what they want to see. Not only is it not science, it isn't even good observation.
-the Lolo elk counts are a bit of a red herring for several reasons, not the least of which are a steady assault on the area by year after year of forest fires, and the fact that Idaho Fish and Game didn't do any aerial counts there for several years. ( zbike should read the lengthy discussions on the Lolo elk-wolf situation at Ralph Maughan's Wildlife news site. ). But what the heck ...one quite small area of elk-wolf anomalies can't possibly speak for the entirety of the Rocky Mountain 3-state wolf recovery program , can it ? Do the hunters of the Lolo similarly represent all the elk hunters in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho ? Does every elk herd unit with a complementary wolf pack behave exactly like every other wolf-elk unit everywhere in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. No, they don't. They are all unique . And for the most part, elk populations are growing, not shrinking, in areas where there are also wolves. The three big Cody WY herd units were censused at 11,000 elk and Game and Fish only wants 6500 elk, and all those elk herds have wolves. Just look at the Elk/Wolves in Sunlight Basin Wyoming compared to the adjacent elk sub-herds and associated wolfpacks in Crandall and the Absaroka and back over the divide just inside Yellowstone . The aren't even close to resembling one another in dynamics. zbiker and his ilk are trying desperately for a "one size fits all" condamnation , and it just ain't so.
(quote)
Wolves make few unnecessary elk kills, study says
Wapiti tend to stay on Gros Ventre feedgrounds during attacks.
By Cory Hatch, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
April 28, 2010
A multiyear U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study of wolves in the winter in the Gros Ventre drainage shows they rarely kill more than they need to eat and do not prey on moose in excess, researchers say. The as-yet-unpublished study also shows that most elk tend to stay on feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre drainage during wolf attacks. The research comes as Wyoming Game and Fish Department wildlife managers and local outfitters express concerns about the impact of wolves on elk populations, especially in the Gros Ventre drainage, where calf/cow ratios have dropped below levels some experts consider necessary to sustain herds of the ungulates.
To get the data, researchers followed wolf tracks to ungulate carcasses and examined the remains, determining the type of prey and its age, gender and physical condition. Researchers also used radio collars to study movements of elk when wolves killed on feedgrounds. During the study period – from 2000, when reintroduced wolves from Yellowstone National Park first found their way to the Gros Ventre drainage, to 2007 – researchers examined the remains of 320 carcasses. Of those, researchers say, wolves killed 15 elk in so-called “surplus killings,” instances when wolves killed multiple elk and did not feed extensively on the carcasses. Five instances of such killing occurred in 2002 and two instances occurred in 2007.
Mike Jimenez, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wyoming wolf management project leader, called the low incidence of such killing “surprising.” He released highlights of the study to the News&Guide;on Monday. “We thought if there is ever a place you would document surplus killing, these feedgrounds would be the spot,” he said. “To us, what was surprising was we just did not document it that often.”
Jimenez said instances of wolves killing more than they needed to eat were difficult to measure accurately, because some wolves tended to abandon carcasses that were disturbed by humans. “Some wolf packs, if we messed with the carcass at all, they’d never come back,” he said. “Some wolf packs [couldn’t] care less.” One trend researchers did notice about surplus killings is that they tended to occur in late winter, when wolf pups are getting big enough to make kills on their own, and when elk health, even on feedgrounds, tends to decline a bit. “All the cases were in March or late February,” he said. “That coincides [with] pups right when they become yearlings. They’re coming into their own.”
In the study, elk calves comprised 49 percent of kills, while cows comprised 46 percent and bulls 5 percent. Wolves killed 66 percent of prey on native winter range and 34 percent on feedgrounds. Jimenez said wolves are good at sorting out inexperienced or unfit elk. “They clearly go after calves because they’re inexperienced,” he said, explaining that cow predation is also high because cows are more abundant. “When you look at the numbers, they go after older cows and young calves. And they do go after bulls, but bulls are not [as] available on feedgrounds.” On native winter range, Jimenez said, the percentage of bull elk killed might go up to 20 percent, in part because bulls are more abundant and also because they are weakened by the rut and don’t have supplemental feed to hold them over until spring.
The researchers say the species breakdown of ungulates killed was 89 percent elk, 9 percent moose, 1.5 percent mule deer and 0.5 percent bison. Jimenez said the low percentage of moose killed in the Gros Ventre drainage comes as no surprise, because wolves tend to key in on elk feedgrounds. “They kill what’s available and what’s vulnerable,” he said. “What’s available in this neck of the woods is elk.”
The researchers also looked at how radio-collared wolves affected 292 locations of radio-collared elk on the three feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre drainage. During wolf attacks on elk, the elk stayed on the feedground 79 percent of the time, left the area but returned within three days 14 percent of the time and gathered in larger herds on adjacent feedgrounds 7 percent of the time. “When wolves made a kill on the feedground, surprisingly ... elk stayed on those feedgrounds almost 80 percent of the time,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll scatter them and they’ll stay away for a few days. [Sometimes] they’d all en masse go to one feedground. Is that really a problem? Who am I to say? If you’re trying to feed elk, that becomes a problem.”
Researchers tried to determine the condition of the elk killed by looking at the bone marrow, where mammals store their last fat reserves. The bone marrow data wasn’t conclusive, because elk tended to stay in good condition on feedgrounds, he said. While the Gros Ventre study occurred during a long-enough period and the sample size was big enough to give a good picture of some aspects of wolf predation on elk, Jimenez said it has limitations.
...
I have to admit it is one of my favorite times of the year just before Judge Malloy is about to make his decision on this years wolf season. The angry enviros attack hunters, name call, froth at the mouth and show what jerks they really are; hunters rationally defend their position.
Bottom line, wolves are here because of you enviro-nuts and now they will be, must be controlled. This year several hundred wolves will be hunted and killed. Just like in the Disney movies, pups will be orphaned, mates will be torn apart by the hunter’s bullets. Oh, the humanity of it all.
And you want to blame the hunters. Good Gawd enviros are you so naïve to think wolves would never be hunted?
Which is more than we can say for the general level of support we are getting from the greater part of the hunting public for real wildlife conservation work.
It has been my direct observation - starting with these very pages ( your comment ) and working outwards - that hunters and their ilk are just as presumptuous in attacking enviros, name calling, frothing at the mouth and showing what jerks they are ---the very same traits you vilify of enviros. In fact , they are much more likely to engage in such lowball behaavior. It must be part of that huge hunter ego burning thru.
A genuine conservation sportsman would welcome wolves, as genuine necessary wildlife and a huntable specie. Genuine environmentalists are supportive of hunting and quite often hunt themselves. Comments such as yours only denigrate the sportsman's bloc, greatly. There's entirely too much name calling, disinformation , and bigotr in the wolf debates y , and by far the greater part of it is on the anti-wolf side . You demonstrate that splendidly.
Do you have anything constructive or enlightened to add to the discourse here ?
The assumption that top predators need to be controlled is not scientifically documented--indeed, the opposite appears to be true that top predators self regulate themselves. Typically long before they reach the biological limits imposed by food supply, social interactions contribute to a lowering of populations. Should that not happen, than food is always the limitation.
Geo.
We do not and cannot police every thread so if you see something that you think violates our policy, give us a shout.
-"-the hue and cry that wolves kill for thrills is mostly isolated cases misinterpreted by the untrained observers , or unsubstantiated altogether. Untrained observers have websites. So they show us a gruesome photo of a freshly killed elk adn say the wolves dunnit for sport, but the blood is still fresh . How would these observers know if the wolves never came back ? Once the humans meddle with the carcass, the wolves very likely will not return. So they are fouling up their own observations and seeing only what they want to see. Not only is it not science, it isn't even good observation.-"
(the point of the photos is to show that spree killings do happen, and that if these " untrained experts" can find them so easily then there is a good chance they are happening everywhere wolves have pups to train to hunt. note also that in another report the wolves had already moved off to the east into drainages that held fresh prey rather than returning to these carcases)
-"-the Lolo elk counts are a bit of a red herring for several reasons, not the least of which are a steady assault on the area by year after year of forest fires, and the fact that Idaho Fish and Game didn't do any aerial counts there for several years. ( zbike should read the lengthy discussions on the Lolo elk-wolf situation at Ralph Maughan's Wildlife news site. ). But what the heck ...one quite small area of elk-wolf anomalies can't possibly speak for the entirety of the Rocky Mountain 3-state wolf recovery program , can it "-
(actually i did read this on ralphs site, thats how i became aware of the severity of the problem. i also noted that many of the posters expressed remorse that their was not enough information provided for them to pick it apart. it is my understanding that game should flourish after a wildfire events as the feed grounds are opened up for native grasses to reestablish, what idaho is finding is that although the area is now in condition to support an elk recovery, the wolves are making it difficult if not impossible.)
-" By Cory Hatch, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
April 28, 2010
A multiyear U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study of wolves in the winter in the Gros Ventre drainage shows they rarely kill more than they need to eat and do not prey on moose in excess, researchers say. The as-yet-unpublished study also shows that most elk tend to stay on feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre drainage during wolf attacks"-
( this is pretty much standard prey behavior, deer,elk heck even domestic livestock will remain in the feed ground after the initial chase is over thinking that the danger is over now that the pressure is off)
-"By Cory Hatch, Jackson Hole, Wyo.
( i notice you quoted from cory's writing in the jackson hole news & guide article, i am unsure why you left these parts out thou
quote:
-The study does not, for instance, tell researchers much about the impact of wolves on the overall number of elk. Wolf predation could be compensatory, meaning that the predators are killing animals that would die during the winter anyway, or additive, meaning wolves are taking additional animals out of the population. Factors such as snowpack, precipitation, forage and other predators confound such calculations.
“The answer is we don’t know,” Jimenez said, explaining that the results are also site specific, especially because of the presence of feedgrounds. “These predator-prey systems are very complicated. They don’t have a simple cause and effect answer.”
"The question it brought up to me is what the role of human disturbance and unnatural conditions at elk feedgrounds is playing in limiting the role of wolves from carrying out their ecological role as a keystone predator,” he said.
B.J. Hill, a Kelly-based outfitter who has advocated for hunting wolves, said he agrees with some of the findings but has problems with some of the conclusions on moose predation and surplus killing.
“That’s all fine and dandy, but we’re down to five moose licenses in the Gros Ventre and we used to get 75,” he said. “We’ve literally lost that moose segment up there.”
Hill pointed to several instances when wolves have killed large numbers of domestic sheep and said the same thing could happen to elk under the right conditions, such as deep snow with a thick crust.
“Those wolves can run on top,” he said. “[If] they happen to catch a little group of elk that are falling through, they could literally kill them all.”
“If you get them weak, I think [wolves are] going to whack them,” Hill said. “I think the winter range elk are taking a thrashing.”
actually there is a lot that you didn't mention
http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/article.php?art_id=5917 )
April 28, 2010"-
Dewey, whether you noticed or not I was late to enter this fray so you faux outrage at being called an enviro-nut falls on deaf ears considering it was you and your ilk being reprimanded and having your posts removed. You proved my point.
I can hardly wait for the full-page enviro-nut anti-hunting page in the NYT. How’s that boycott thing working for ya?
What New York Times full page ad ? Where the perdition did THAT come from ? And why . I'm confused.
p.s. have no ilk
From the NRDC website:
NRDC wants to run a full page forceful ad in the New York Times, to warn people of the killing of wolves in Montana and Idaho.
If this slaughter continues into next year, fully 500 wolves could lose their lives. Is this “wolf management based on science”or catering to ranchers and elk hunters?
This compelling message will surely put pressure on Ken Salazar and the Obama administration to reverse their misguided decision to delist gray wolves in the Northern Rockies!!
OMG!
I’ll tell you what Dewey, I’ll compromise with you. You adore, worship, take pictures of wolves six months of the year and let the hunters the other half, like last year.
Can you please provide the link and the date it was posted , etc ? I could not find it , except a brief mention from over two years ago from a woman commenting on a blog who was asking the NRDC there if she could pay for an ad personally . That doesn't seem to be the same thing you are alluding to here, and it doesn't sound like it ever came to pass.
so again ...where was this NRDC link suggesting a full page ad in the New York Times?
Again , I support regulated hunts of wolves. It does seem that Montana and Idaho's proposed quotas are a bit steep and hardly 'regulated'. They certainly don't qualify as ' wildlife conservation" or game management. More like state sanctioned genocide disguised as sport hunting disguised as something productive, IMHO. I think they will end up in the doghouse with Wyoming if they go down that road, and it won't be a New York Times backlash that sent them there. Just a hunch.
Where's the link to that NRDC-NYT thing again ?
http://m.trib.com/news/state-and-regional/article_398a16fd-b5d9-5dff-b4a1-08481bf9d13d.html
this should be fun to watch, especially back east where the largest percentage of the population is against hunting, i wonder how long it will take for the folks back there to change there pro-wolf stance once the population booms like has done here. I give them 6 or seven years after they are introduced.
yep, i can see it now........i say we petition to keep Massachusetts, new england and Virginia from being allowed to control the wolf population when it's their turn ha ha ha ha
Anyone who understands ecology would know that predator populations are limited by habitat and the populations of their prey base, in an equilibrium ( provided humans don't meddle too much. Unfortunately , they do ). When wolves are in a secure habitat without much competition from other carnivores and food sources are adequate, wolf packs will actually have fewer pups, not more. They produce larger litters and even resort to multiple alpha females when stressed to produce more pups for the pack's survivability. Conversely , they will not put themselves out of business in good times by overproducing litters. It's a myth that wolves multiply exponentially. They don't.
So it may come as a shock and surprise to guys like zbiker that the best thing you can do to keep wolf numbers at a steady and ecologically desirable level is LEAVE THEM ALONE , and see that they have enough elk and deer. Even when the wolves have taken their quota of ungulates, there will be plenty of elk and deer left over for regulated hunts. That's currently the snapshot, except that human hunters have not yet adapted to the new reality that elk a nd deer are no longer such easy pickings in the meadows and pastures. You'll actually have to get your fat arses off the truck seat and ATV saddle and hunt on foot or horseback in strange new places deeper in the woods. And that is as it should be.
A healthy wolf population will yield a healthier elk population . The numbers will be sufficient for both the human's and apex predator's needs. It's only when men go meddling and demand they get all the elk that things go haywire. We're about halfway to haywire now, because we have not yet adjusted our human hunting practices to better fit the available wildlife ( ungulate , ursid, and canid). But that happening ong before the wolf showed up. Hunters are spoiled rotten these days. There are no longer any " easy" elk in wolf country , so adapt. And good elk habitat is good elk habitat , because they are the same habitat.
It's what George was trying to tell us way back last week when this thread appeared...wolves need to be managed as carnivorous wildlife. Elk Deer and Moose need to be similarly managed as prey wildlife , NOT as a farmed crop at consistent unrealistic high yields. It's about ecology , not economics.
-----
note to zbiker: if you really feel like still venting your spleen about lost elk hunting opportunity ( a phantom menace) , shift your crosshairs to black and grizzly bears and untended cattle on public lands. Or doing something about climate change. The presence of wolves is a much smaller negative component of the hunting picture than you or most all the wolf haters would have us believe, and a larger positive component if it is possible to insert that factoid thru any available orifice...
Try this site:
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/please-show-your-support-and-help-wolves/
Make sure you got your virus scan on. When I logged on to it I got an alert.
Cheers
I " want" to run full pages ads in the New York times, too. But nobody is giving me the money, either. The minimum cost is $ 77,000 and the rate card says $ 148,000 for a one-time insertion.
That " howling for justice" pro-wolf blog seems a little shallow and weightless to me, and I certainly don't endorse it. Don't try to paint me with someone else's brush and tar, please, or presume for one minute that all wolf advocates are of like mind and on the same boat . That's stupid. But with way too many folks involved in the wolf debate it's always " either-or" , totally polarized and pigeonholed . Cripes---they are Grey wolves, not black and white....
BTW---Some Wordpress blogs have been flagged as security risks recently because Wordpress foolishly allowed their stuff to be mirror-hosted by a dubious server company that also catered to illegal bit torrent downloads and al-Quaeda , besides being infected by hackers. That's a good lesson why anything coming from the internet is not fully trustable unless you are extra diligent in checking the sources and the site has a relevance track record.
There's a lot of garbage floating in cyberspace. Too much of it is posted as gospel here....
dewey, i merely meant that we were well over the recommended 100 wolves with 10 breeding pairs recommended by the dept. of the interior.wolf count in wyoming now is 525 wolves, and About 6,000 wolves live in the U.S. outside Alaska, with most of those in the Great Lakes and Northern Rockies in a sense they have boomed since in wyoming there is no state population control used unless they have made themselves a threat to livestock, if this methodology is used in say states on the east coast, things may take a whole new turn as far as how wolves are proceeved by the unknowing general public.Wyoming, which has about 525 wolves understands this i am sure.
the problem with the "it all works to balance it's self out in the end theory" is being displayed for all to see in the lolo herd. the wolves did not destroy the herd, but they sure are holding the numbers down keeping them from recovering, and this can happen just as easily elsewhere.
We get way too fixated on numbers as it is , with wildlife. Recall that in the late 1950's there were nearly 30,000 elk on the Northern Range of Yellowstone, but they were in really bad shape from starvation. Today there are closer to 7000 and they are in good shape. In my own back yard of northwest Wyoming there is an overabundance of elk by the numbers, but they are out of balance , big time.
It's not about numbers, except when the numbers are so low that individual animals become very very valuable to the survival of the specie, as was the case when there were about 130 Yellowstone Grizzlies , only a few hundred surviving Bald Eagles, or a couple dozen Whooping Cranes and Condors.
When you cite Wyoming having 525 wolves, you are counting those inside Yellowstone. I do not count them , since they are subject to different rules and cannot be regulated by the states with hunting or any other tools. Wyoming's wolf population outside Yellowstone on December 31 was 229 in 32 packs , as near as anyone knew. Yellowstone had less than 200 wolves at the same time., including those whose ranges take them into Montana and Idaho on occasion.
Nuff said.
Were you possibly referring to the East and West coasts of the Yellowstone River in your rant ? Would you like some farm fresh eggs to go with those sour grapes?
fortunate for the state of wyoming nine of the delphi fifteen were asked to reiterate their findings in this last go round with judge malloy, the yardstick that a few of the biologists dismissed and argued against as being to slow a recovery is being reexamined as it is part of the brief that was presented. it is still a case of too many wolves to fast.
part of the reason the elk are so over abundant in the north fork drainages in the Crandall area is much of the accessible hunting is land locked by private land. heck don't even think about fishing on the two dot and hunting..... forget it. ever try to get up to the tree line from the northfork highway, good luck with that one as well.
actually the wolf numbers are a critical part of why we are having this discussion. remember the goal to have a few small sustainable breeding pairs and wolf packs as a non essential experiment, not to repopulate the plains with a keystone predator.
that is what congress ok'ed no more no less.
Wolves inside Yellowstone are NOT managed anywhere near the same as those outside. You cannot cite the exception and call it the rule there. Read the wolf status reports. The states are always detailed separately from YNP. That goofy lone wolf that was harassing people in Yellowstone was treated exactly the same as a goofy black bear or goofy marmot for that matter. Don't make it out to be what it is not. Your choice of analogies renders everything you say as being utterly skeptical.
( By the way , what are the delphi fifteen ? If you got that from the Black Bear blog, please go back to square one and do not collect any chits. )
Wolves are not overabundant on either North Fork or Crandall, but licensed outfitters might be. Too bad they won't allow images or .kmz files to be posted here...I FOIA'd the Shoshone Forest and Bridger Teton NF this past winter and got the precise locations of all the outfitter camps, which I then placed in Google Earth. There were about 79 of them. Almost as many outfitters' camps as known wolves , and several outfitter camps per wolfpack.
What you say about access in Crandall and North Fork and Two Dot just ain't so. There's plenty of access on foot and horseback for the motivated hunter. Motivated is the key word there. If you are griping about no ATV or 4WD access, tough crap piles to you , buddy. Get out and HUNT fercrisssakes. The Two Dot's game manager is former Wyo G&F;game warden and investigator Jim Oudin . Call him.
I used to snowshoe to timberline above the North Fork in the dead of winter . Surely you can hike a ridge in autumn if I can negotiate waist deep snow with a 60 lb. pack in January.
as for your assertions about wolf numbers, experimental nonessential , etc...read my first line again. Then go read the 1994 EIS and everything else at http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/wolf/
- start with everything under the lefthand column " Background Information" and work your way back to reality from there.
dewey i cannot believe you have been arguing your case here without having researched the delphi 15 ( i guess our educational system really has failed) and their initial findings along with their later reports given to congress as well as their findings now. without the delphi 15's research the wolf reintroduction program could never have progressed. i have their initial overview report they published thru the cooperative park studies unit of minnisota university. this was their initial finding based on the 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs for a 20 year period, their later warnings about introducing numbers over this range in a shorter period of time are in the congressional recommendations report. it has a lot more detailed information than what is presented here.
http://cpsp.cfans.umn.edu/Research/ResSum1-Wolf.pdf
dewey i think if look i said elk were abundent, not wolves
"part of the reason the elk are so over abundant in the north fork drainages in the Crandall area"
as far as hunting the two dot i had remembered that the ranch providing youth hunts, if things have changed great, it was long overdue. i had misspoke when i said the northfork had land locked nf's area, i meant the southfork.
as far as the site you posted it is far from complete, for a real education consider this instead, it gives a complete detailed accession of the standing how wolves are listed in wyoming and why. also note that on your sight wolves are classed as to boundary area populations differently than the dept of the interiors game biologists are listing now, i suspect becouse your information is from Thursday, April 2, 2009, wher as mine is current.
http://www.govpulse.us/entries/2009/04/02/E9-5991/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-final-rule-to-identify-the-northern-rocky-mountain-pop
ok dewey, just follow the sound of my voice, reality is over where the evidence is.
My point is a foolish environ-nut and his money are soon parted and little is done but to line the pockets of East Coast--West Coast celebra-causes and ambulance chasing slimeball lawyers, who take time and money from the govm't agencies in charge of the the amnals.
Nuff said.
although i fully agree with the slime ball lawyer description, the truth is the groups that jump to file lawsuits to fight delisting and hunting of the wolves are actually based a lot closer in most cases,and it is usually the same 14 that are at the forefront, using only a few lawyers.
here are the main instigators
DEFENDERS OF WILDLIFE, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL, SIERRA CLUB, HUMANE SOCIETY OF THE UNITED STATES, CENTER FOR BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY, JACKSON HOLE CONSERVATION ALLIANCE, FRIENDS OF THE CLEARWATER, ALLIANCE FOR THE WILD ROCKIES, OREGON WILD, CASCADIA WILDLANDS, WESTERN WATERSHEDS PROJECT, WILDLANDS NETWORK,and HELLS CANYON PRESERVATION COUNCIL
compliance with any provision of the Act. 16 USC § 1540(g). This
includes the prohibitions in 16 USC § 1538. See 50 CFR § 17.21
and 50 CFR § 17.61.
the thing to keep in mind that if it is only an economical issue it probably will be dismissed, but if you find that you or a group are being unduly harmed because you have wolves in your neck of the woods you are fully allowed to pursue legal action on your own or with a group to provide enforcement of the provisions and to challenge the enforcement of the endangered species act itself. and the best part is that their are no fees assessed due to court costs to you unless it is simply deemed a frivolous law suite designed to wast the courts time.
just thought it would be a good time to throw this info out there for anyone following along
Its early in the wolf op-ed season and we don't even have Malloy's ruling. He will probably allow the hunts to go on as scheduled. I think the gate is already open on that one.
Or we can let wolves multiply until we can shoot'em like coyotes for just being there. We already give livestock owners a somewhat approved open season. If the wolves get thick enough maybe they will start hiring professional hunters to protect their stock in a few years. This would coincide with my second retirement and I'll need a hobby. Room and board and a few bucks a day just like when I did summer work on the ranches around Lima.
There are two definitions for "predator" . One is biological, the other is a legal status. Wyoming has to go back to using the biological definition , not the lawyer's-rancher's insistence on the wolf being a protected trophy animal here , and a varmint over there. That's incredibly stupid. It's rancher driven , too. So there's your culprit if you want to bitch about current wolf litigation. I'm leaving sport hunting and commercial outfitting out of the wolf debate for now because frankly those groups don't have a leg to stand on in the wolf debate.
What enviros cannot support and in fact sued over this time around is Wyoming's reckless plan , or the excessive takes proposed by Idaho and Montana this time around, which are a lot less control and a lot more overkilling back to just above some artificial floor number of breeding pairs and total animals. And strangling any opportunities to disperse. Those original 1994 numbers are too low , but too many anti-wolfers claim they are written in stone like the 10 Commandments or something. After wolves had been present for a few years and established new domains and ranges, the 1994 population benchmarks for recovery turned out to be far to low given the dispersion and behavior of the new wolf packs. It's not about the numbers anyway.
The bottom line is the wolf hunts need to be done right by the states. Wyoming never did get it right with their plan , and Montana-Idaho's proposed new quotas have shown they cannot be trusted with the future of wolves as wildlife. Hopefully Judge Molloy will rectify that and the states will get their crap together. Otherwise, resolution of the the Great Wolf Debate will not happen for many years and many millions of dollars when the case finally reaches the Supreme Court.
Wuerthner's ongoing point is more valid than ever: the States will need to manage the wolf and all the other apex predators and even meso predators on strictly biologicial criteria, ahead of any deference to agricultural or economic or recreational constraints. The result will be plenty of elk to hunt for everyone---man and wolf---and better habitat all around. The ranchers and money-grubbing trophy hunters will just have to grow up , change their ways, and come into the 21st century. QED.
Wyoming drew a line in the sand, something the "conservation biology" crowd absolutely could not stand. I mean, how can we restore pre-Columbian ecotopian North America otherwise?
In fact, if you think about it, the Wyoming plan sort of complies with CB theories...Yellowstone is the "core area." Out to Meteetsee and 120 would be the dispersal corridor, and the rest, the mixed-use zone.
None of which is good wildlife management for any specie. When Wyoming begins to manage wolves as wildlife and not a nusiance animal like a skunk , I'll be the first person to bless anyone's limited quota regulated trophy wolf hunt. Somehow I feel that ain;t gonna happen any time soon. Montana and Idaho have OBVIOUSLY overreached in jacking up this year's hunt quotas beyond sustainability. Don't think for a minute that Molloy won't consider that. If that's "State Management of Wolves' , we'll be back to re-isting them as endangered in no time . Or late August , whichever comes first.
What are you going to say when Judge Molloy relists the Wolf in all three states, not just Wyoming, for these very same reasons? There's a better than even chance that is precisely what will happen.
Wyoming's plan sux.
So instead I will reiterate an earlier point: Elk conservationists--whether they hunt or not--- should welcome wolves alongside their local elk herds. That they do not pretty much requires them to quit calling themselves conservationists, and admit they believe their own mythology to be ground truth gospel.
Nobody is denying them any hunting opportunity. Opportunity is a license to try for an elk , not a Bill of Sale for one....
everyone already know even in good conditions you are only trying to harvest an elk, their are no guarantee that you will get one, and to insinuate otherwise is ludicrous. their is a reason they are called wild life, their very management is put to governmental agency control, this is commonly understood and the only people promoting the thought that hunters feel like they deserve an elk or own the elk herds are the folks who pushing a wolf agenda.
ever notice how someone hunting does not start calling their harvested animal theirs till the tag goes on ??
tommy asks what the folks in wyoming would say if 90% of the elk were to be killed off, this is pretty much a no brainer, the response would be identical to letting a keystone predator that has over populated run a muck. especially when you consider that the predator is able to range over a vast area (sometime over hundreds of miles) and damage populations of elk that may already be in trouble. the predator cares little if they bring the elk population down to unsustainable levels, when they run out of prey they will simply move on to where the hunting is better. so much for conservation by a thinking, planning wolf.
the bare truth is that eventually folks will be denied an opportunity to hunt, as the herds cow and calf crops keep dropping in critical areas, the management of elk populations by wolves will be unsustainable forcing the wolves to begin preying more and more on moose,deer and other ungulates bringing their numbers down as well. The wolf will not begin dropping their population till the ungulate numbers are all down and they cannot support the wolf numbers. then and only then will the wolf numbers come down to a reasonably level. buy this time hunting will haft to be curtailed and opportunities to hunt denied due to lack of game.
i am of the thought that things would be far different if the burden of managing the wolf was placed squarely on the shoulders of those groups that supported the wolf beyond the limits of the non essential experimental mandates that were laid out by congress rather than saddling the state with the burden and cost.
Imagine if you will every dime of cost accrued by the states to deal with the wolves put into a bill and sent to the wolf support groups with pay. leaving the people of the states (Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Utah and new mexico) free to put our financial efforts to maintaining other resources. after all, they want'em, let them pay for them. I am pretty sure they would wake up to the fact that keeping the wolves is an expensive burden to say the least. I am reasonably sure Wyoming does not consider the wolves in the same category as a skunk, one has the potential to make you smell bad or give you rabies, the other has the potential to do great harm to an entire species if given the opportunity.
what the enviros are suing over is to maintain the impression that the wolves are not recovered and need to be maintained even thou they are obviously reproducing and spreading, this in it's self is a rather curious turn, how can they be considered a small unsustainable population when in most places they are expanding at what is believed to be 27% yearly. far out-pacing their expected recovery numbers and overshadowing their main food sources ability to reproduce.
this is what judge malloy is considering, when to tell the enviroes enough is enough and can the states set the numbers to curtail their population expansion to MAINTAIN these numbers. not whether wyomings standing on preditor control is under question or not. here is what the enviros are asserting
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/northern_Rocky_Mountains_gray_wolf/pdfs/09-06-02-Complaint.pdf.
You also seem to conveniently forget that it was the State and various anti-wolf groups like the Farm Bureau and Mountain States ( the so-called Wolf Coalition) Legal that delayed wolf delisting and filed obstructive lawsuits, and caused great sums to be spent on lawyers. The State, not the enviros. The there was the big lawsuit where the State AND the enviros were both on the same team plaintiffs against USFWS.
If Wyoming had not drawn a line in the swamp and insisted above all else on that goofy "Predator Status" in the 86 percent of the state not in the Trophy Wolf zone near Yellowstone , then full delisting would've occurred 5 years ago. Since there is a 5-year probation built into any state management plan for the Feds to monitor how the states are managing the new delisted species, this year 2010 might have actually been the year when Wyoming got full unrestrained state control of its dispersed non-Yellowstone wolves. It would require the state to do managed limited quota hunts just like it already does with Cougar and Black bear. It really is that simple.
That Wyoming is still in the doghouse and wolves are still listed here is much more that state's own fault, not the enviros. About a 70-30 split. Really .So don;t even try to foist it all on the enviros. Wyoming has nobody to blame but itself for the wolf still being protected here.
Get your facts straight.
Wolves are Wyoming's scapegoat. For lots of things...
sheesh , zbiker...if wolves are decimating the elk, why do the elk herds in northwest Wyoming (especially the three Cody herd units) keep growing? They all have complementary wolf packs and guest packs....hmmm. Checked the last few year's herd counts lately ?
wow , where did you read that in my post ??
actually dewey, if you will be so kind as to check with, shawn Blajszczak there in cody he should be able to shed some light on what you are calling complementary wolf pack and " guest packs., i think he is in a position to shed some light on it for you, especially since the demise of the dynamics of the druid pack had on the area. i would explain myself but i am sure you would just try to argue some point. he is in a better position to explain it anyway.
as far as wyoming holding up the delisting , yep, thats the plan, has been from the start. this is not a bad point. as long as they remain listed under their present status and wyoming is unable to regulate them in the manner needed, might as well keep them listed and under the NEE statutes, that way if need be we can deal with a whole pack at a time if need be. It's almost as good as having them listed as a preditor over the majority of the state. eventually as the wolves expand and are dealt with and the costs continue to rise for the defenders of wildlife compensation fund.
No mind. I'm out of this thread . Wolf haters cannot be successfully re-educated.
Or as the German philosopher so adroitly said " Against ignorance even the gods struggle in vain..."
In Wyoming less than half the funding is from licenses. The rest is federal grants, appropriations from the state, and various other programs. You can read the entirety of budget expense and revenue numbers at the Wyoming Game and Fish website.
Of all the Big Game hunted species, only Pronghorn pays its own way with its own license revenues. All other game hunting programs must be subsidized from some other funding source. Elk are a big money loser for Wyoming. Tourists fishing in summer pays for a lot of hunting in Wyoming.