Interview with Yellowstone wolf bio

[bearpaw]

  

[jackmaster]

here is a dumb question! WHAT IS A RANGE RIDER? is it someone who gets paid to ride around on a horse and protect cattle and sheep ranches from wolves? if it is, how do i get a job doing that? holy snaught bubbles, what a job that would be.... that would probably be an even better job for RTSPRING

[bearpaw]

here is a dumb question! WHAT IS A RANGE RIDER? is it someone who gets paid to ride around on a horse and protect cattle and sheep ranches from wolves? if it is, how do i get a job doing that? holy snaught bubbles, what a job that would be.... that would probably be an even better job for RTSPRING

Yes, to put it simply, you check the cattle daily and through your presence you discourage wolves from eating them.

[KFhunter]

here is a dumb question! WHAT IS A RANGE RIDER? is it someone who gets paid to ride around on a horse and protect cattle and sheep ranches from wolves? if it is, how do i get a job doing that? holy snaught bubbles, what a job that would be.... that would probably be an even better job for RTSPRING

Yes, to put it simply, you check the cattle daily and through your presence you discourage wolves from eating them.

Theoretically Dale,  theoretically.

[jackmaster]

here is a dumb question! WHAT IS A RANGE RIDER? is it someone who gets paid to ride around on a horse and protect cattle and sheep ranches from wolves? if it is, how do i get a job doing that? holy snaught bubbles, what a job that would be.... that would probably be an even better job for RTSPRING

Yes, to put it simply, you check the cattle daily and through your presence you discourage wolves from eating them.

what does a job like that pay and how does one go about getting a job protecting those poor defenseless wolves   

[Special T]

I'm sorry but i can't take this guy seriously. His own words contradict themselves.

How can he say that ALL wolves are the same? Skull size has NOTHING to do with how they act. Here is some evidence from his OWN WORDS

MP: What were the main characteristics that were different between the wolves from Canada and the wolves that pre-existed here in Yellowstone, say 150 years ago? Is that known?

DS:Wolves are stopped by nothing. They will cross mountain ranges, rivers, even pack ice. That's how good this animal is at moving around. So what we have is this constant intermixing of genes that prevents them from becoming really different subspecies

MP: Were the wolves introduced into YNP significantly different physically or behaviorally from the wolves that were here?

DS: The short answer is no. Wolves are ecological generalists....    .....In fact, the much smaller southwestern Mexican wolf brings down elk. The elk the Mexican wolves prey on in Arizona and New Mexico originally came from Yellowstone, as did the elk in Canada. The optimal number of adult wolves necessary to bring down an elk is only four, but a pair of wolves can also kill an elk.

MP: Would the 1994 population of gray wolves that lived in Montana have naturally recovered, given the protection of the Endangered Species Act?

DS: That was a big opinion-based debate by wolf biologists at the time, led by Bob Ream of the University of Montana. In his opinion, wolves would have recovered given enough time—50, 60 or 70 years....  .... We have documented them coming from Idaho, but that's a lot closer and the linkages are better, primarily in the Centennial Mountains. Wolves don't do well over huge landscapes dominated by people. By introducing wolves they were legally not a fully protected species under the Endangered Species Act. People wanted to be able to shoot them when they got into livestock, which they could not have done if they were a fully protected species.


 So given his statements  How have wolf populations exploded in 20 years if it was debated that it would take 50-70 years for the MT wolves to?

He states that the "Mexican" grey wolves come from YNP, and the YNP wolves come from BC, Canada & MT... How the  can they be a Mexican sub species when HE states there is NO real difference and they COME from those 3 different places?

WHY would you bring in wolves since some were already here? He states that wolves cannot be stopped by ANTHING yet they cannot move through landscape with people. Funny the Rocky Mountains HAD lots of prey and there is very few people in a large continuous swaths of land.


IMO there is plenty of other evidence that this guy is wrong, however if you use ANY common sense questioning HIS words they don't add up.

[buckfvr]

Studies are driven by special interest groups.....this is just another example. 

[jon.brown509]

  Nope not a member of that i'm just a pecker wood that lives in the hill's and owns too many guns 
and wants to know how to fix what the hell is happening to the northwest with the return of the Apex predator.

 

[jackmaster]

  Nope not a member of that i'm just a pecker wood that lives in the hill's and owns too many guns 
and wants to know how to fix what the hell is happening to the northwest with the return of the Apex predator.

 

if you want to know how to fix it, its pretty simple to figure out, learn from those who came before us, use what has happened in other states as a model, use common sense, if you boil all of this down in a pot, you will be left with is a big bowl of stop the wolves before its to late soup     

[JLS]

I'm sorry but i can't take this guy seriously. His own words contradict themselves.

How can he say that ALL wolves are the same? Skull size has NOTHING to do with how they act. Here is some evidence from his OWN WORDS

MP: What were the main characteristics that were different between the wolves from Canada and the wolves that pre-existed here in Yellowstone, say 150 years ago? Is that known?

DS:Wolves are stopped by nothing. They will cross mountain ranges, rivers, even pack ice. That's how good this animal is at moving around. So what we have is this constant intermixing of genes that prevents them from becoming really different subspecies

MP: Were the wolves introduced into YNP significantly different physically or behaviorally from the wolves that were here?

DS: The short answer is no. Wolves are ecological generalists....    .....In fact, the much smaller southwestern Mexican wolf brings down elk. The elk the Mexican wolves prey on in Arizona and New Mexico originally came from Yellowstone, as did the elk in Canada. The optimal number of adult wolves necessary to bring down an elk is only four, but a pair of wolves can also kill an elk.

MP: Would the 1994 population of gray wolves that lived in Montana have naturally recovered, given the protection of the Endangered Species Act?

DS: That was a big opinion-based debate by wolf biologists at the time, led by Bob Ream of the University of Montana. In his opinion, wolves would have recovered given enough time—50, 60 or 70 years....  .... We have documented them coming from Idaho, but that's a lot closer and the linkages are better, primarily in the Centennial Mountains. Wolves don't do well over huge landscapes dominated by people. By introducing wolves they were legally not a fully protected species under the Endangered Species Act. People wanted to be able to shoot them when they got into livestock, which they could not have done if they were a fully protected species.


 So given his statements  How have wolf populations exploded in 20 years if it was debated that it would take 50-70 years for the MT wolves to?

He states that the "Mexican" grey wolves come from YNP, and the YNP wolves come from BC, Canada & MT... How the  can they be a Mexican sub species when HE states there is NO real difference and they COME from those 3 different places?

WHY would you bring in wolves since some were already here? He states that wolves cannot be stopped by ANTHING yet they cannot move through landscape with people. Funny the Rocky Mountains HAD lots of prey and there is very few people in a large continuous swaths of land.


IMO there is plenty of other evidence that this guy is wrong, however if you use ANY common sense questioning HIS words they don't add up.

He said the elk the Mexican wolves kill came from YNP, not the Mexican wolves.

[Special T]

If you state that all wolves are the same and it doesn't matter if they came from BC mckensy valley or MT then how can you use that some line of reasoning to say there are MEXICAN wolves?

[bearpaw]

If you state that all wolves are the same and it doesn't matter if they came from BC mckensy valley or MT then how can you use that some line of reasoning to say there are MEXICAN wolves?

This is one of the problems with the whole introduction fiasco. The USFWS has classified wolves to suit their needs for reintroduction. I'm pretty sure there were over 20 subspecies of wolves, but to avoid problems introducing Canadian wolves they reclassified numerous subspecies as gray wolves. However, to facilitate putting pen raised hybrid wolves in New Mexico, they chose to call them gray wolves. 

certainly a double standard that reeks of corruption 

[KFhunter]

 

Wish I could find that article that discusses the dispersing wolf/s heading to the panhandle of AK and far eastern side of BC,  they were worried the bigger more aggressive wolf from here would taint the DNA of the smaller subspecies there.

[JLS]

http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/61670/1/Biogeography.pdf

[Special T]

JLS thank you for posting that.

It does not cut and paste but the summary states that wolves ARE different because they Tend to live in areas similar to where they were raised.  That is supported by thier DNA analysis....

So what this means is that you can't have it both ways. EITHER you can have "GREY WOLVES" OR "MEXICAN WOLVES"

IF we had indigenous wolves there would NOT be an explosion in numbers. This explosion is NOT logical. The only way to explain this explosion is to have an animal that was NOT part of the ecosystem.