Wolf research project. (Sources?)

[Pigfuz]

Hello everyone, I am doing a research project for my English 102 class about wolves.  It is an argumentative research paper and I am taking the side that wolves need to be strongly regulated and controlled to prevent the harm to our elk herds and livestock like they have in other states.  If you know of any reputable sources of information that you think may be good for my research I would love to know about them.  Thanks for your time.

Craig

[dreamunelk]

Is this college level English class?  Being it is English and not a research paper you will be graded more on the writing then quality of sources.  If you want a valid argument then you should start researching pear reviewed papers from the science journals.  Your library should have all the resources you need.  Ask for help.  Journal of Wildlife management is where I would start.  Also check USFW reports and papers available on the web.  You will find that you will need to replace "strongly regulated and controlled" with managed.  There is a lot of information out there that supports management.  Look into the WDFW action on the wedge pack.  This was supported by science. 

Don't bias yourself.  Always look at it from the other side.  Check out a book on critical reasoning and use the rules to argue. 

[nwwanderer]

Look at world wide sources, this subject has an ancient history with volumes of information.  A quote from some Asian goat herder several thousand years old might be useful.  And the wolves are still eating the early goats descendants.

[O. hemionus]

Is this college level English class?  Being it is English and not a research paper you will be graded more on the writing then quality of sources.  If you want a valid argument then you should start researching pear reviewed papers from the science journals.  Your library should have all the resources you need.  Ask for help.  Journal of Wildlife management is where I would start.  Also check USFW reports and papers available on the web.  You will find that you will need to replace "strongly regulated and controlled" with managed.  There is a lot of information out there that supports management.  Look into the WDFW action on the wedge pack.  This was supported by science. 

Don't bias yourself.  Always look at it from the other side.  Check out a book on critical reasoning and use the rules to argue. 

The best (and easiest) place to find credible, peer reviewed articles is on scholar.google.com. JWM is a great publication, but you may have trouble finding the full text for articles. If an article has the full text available, there should be a .pdf link to the right of each google hit on the google search page. As dreamunelk stated, you should also be able to access your school's online database or articles (which may or may not have more full text articles than google - it all depends). If you are looking for something a little less technical but still pretty objective journalism, Douglas Chadwick wrote a very good article titled "Wolf Wars" in National Geographic a few years ago. I suggest taking a look at it. If you are looking for some statistics about wolf populations, depredation, and wolf recovery, I highly recommend the "Idaho Wolf Recovery Program" yearly summaries put out by the folks at the Nez Perce wildlife guys. I know them personally and worked on some of their wildlife projects in the past.

And make sure you follow dreamunelk's suggestions about being biased, critical reasoning and arguments.

[Pigfuz]

Thanks for all of the advise.  It is very helpful and I have already started using it.  It is funny that you mentioned the Article "Wolf Wars" because that is actually my first source of information so far.  Any other Articles or Documentaries would be greatly appreciated.

[Special T]

Just look up posts by Wolf Bait on this site. he has posted so many artilces its scary!

[villageidiot]

There are 3 very good video documentaries on wolves.   Most recent is  "Wolves in Government Clothing",   Then another is "Yellowstone is Dead"  One more is "Crying Wolf". 
  You can watch these and decide for yourself what is true.  They interview many people that have been severely impacted by the wolf introduction.    Be careful believing the science put out by the government.  They will not confirm a wolf until it is actually photographed multiple times themselves or shot and delivered to them.  By that time the pack has exploded and even split into more packs. 

[Special T]

I will warn you that topics like these lead to lower grades. In my college English class I wrote a paper on gun rights... I got a C on the paper. It was a sea of red marks not all of which were clear to me. Just for fun i wrote another paper on Abortion but on the pro side. I made sure to include the same number of spelling and grammatical errors, Guess what I got an A.

IMO i would only use "neutral" or left leaning papers as sources. I also like the idea of  wolf documentation from other countries..  I would stay away from those documentaries. I like them, however I think they only really sell to those inclined to agree.