wolf management will cost $2.3 million in 2013? What will the cost in tags be with less hunting?
"MOOSE & WOLVES"
The Minnesota moose population “free fall” noted on your front page (8,840 in 2006; 4,900 last year; and 4,230 today) coincides with the steady rise in the number of wolves in the state and the past two decades of wolf dispersals N, E, & S from the overpopulated Minnesota wolf habitat. Despite “Upper Midwest” “scientists” claiming that wolf predation on moose is not the “culprit” while cleverly admitting that “wolves do eat moose”; wolves are widely recognized to currently be:
- Reducing moose populations in Alaska
- Reducing moose and elk populations in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Alberta.
- A primary limiting factor on moose in Asia.
- Limiting, to the point of extinction, caribou in both the Lower 48 States and sections of Canada.
Both State and federal bureaucrat “scientists” have a stake in downplaying the many bad effects of their continuing wolf programs. Wolves, like your dog, learn and adapt. That Minnesota wolves learn where moose calves are to be found each year as increasing numbers of wolves compete for decreasing food is not surprising. That the “Bull-to-cow” ratio is “at the highest level since 2006” while maintaining a “consistent 80% pregnancy rate” only indicates that many pregnant, nursing, and protective (to calves) moose cows are sharing the cruel and ugly demise suffered by their calves.
Ask your favorite bureaucrat how they measure calf predation the next time they tell you, “parasites, possibly linked to summer heat spells” are causing the moose decline or how Native harvests are reported as including the laughingly accurate “six or so female” moose? All the other bunk about “wolves can be a moose’s best friend” and how Michigan moose on the U.P. (a few years behind Minnesota’s wolf population expansion and big game impacts) won’t be hunted because “If you don’t have a moose season now is not the time to start one” are simply bureaucratic public relations diversions intended only to muddy the waters.
Minnesota moose and Minnesota moose hunting are indeed in “free fall” and headed “toward zero within decades.” The problem isn’t just the wolves killing moose: the problem is government perfidy and public gullibility. Minnesota natural resources are being managed like children’s cartoons and the adults are pretending not to recognize it..
Jim Beers
28 March 2012,
