"Four of them milled about, wagging and playing. The big male stood watching, and snarled when they stumbled close. Soon, they wandered on, vanishing one by one into the falling snow.
That may have been the only time I truly saw the wolf, during three long winters of field work. Yet in that moment, it was clear that this animal doesn’t need our stories. It just needs us to see it, someday, for what it really is."
yes, in 3 years he saw 4 wolves and is now some sort of expert.
and this garbage:: "This bitterness has led a vocal minority of Westerners to popularize their own myths about the reintroduced wolves: They are a voracious, nonnative strain. The government lies about their true numbers. They devastate elk herds, spread elk diseases, and harass elk relentlessly — often just for fun.
All this is, of course, nonsense. But the answer is not reciprocal myth making — what the biologist L. David Mech has likened to “sanctifying the wolf.” The energies of scientists and environmental groups would be better spent on pragmatic efforts that help people learn how to live with large carnivores. In the long run, we will conserve ecosystems not only with simple fixes, like reintroducing species, but by seeking ways to mitigate the conflicts that originally caused their loss."
This article and others like it make me sick. My family homesteaded the back hills of the Lolo pass area, where I spent many a summer as a child. The moose, deer, and elk which frequent our land have become less and less over the past few years. Land that generations have worked on wildlife management is now being overrun and ruined by this predator which should have a natural competitor..US HUMANS! These wolves are eating OUR FOOD which we have a natural birthright to eat. These wolves are destroying OUR PROPERTY which we have an inalienable right to defend.
What these wolf lovers dont think about is that for every elk killed by a wolf, now that protein package must come from elsewhere, when 1000s or 1000000s of elk are being killed every year, that protein loss must be made up for somewhere, and what other habitat is available for millions of free range wild protein packages? Do they think more large corporations should close off 1,000,000s more acres to ranching? Or would they prefer we all eat tofu, usually coming from genetically modified soybeans which require private land, megatons of poisons and are possible dangerous.
I for one love the idea that my food grows on shared land for all of us, be it mushroom picker, hiker, biker, fisherman, etc....we all share our ranchland and our animals, and weve brought back elk and deer numbers in the last 100 years to sustainable levels.
At the heart of this rhetoric is an anti-human rights agenda, anti-population, and a malthusian culling idea that some humans have the right to "farm" or "manage" other humans.
If sometimes there are too many elk or deer in yellowstone, open up a bow season till the numbers are back in check, allowing people to harvest healthy wild meat from a natural setting as close as possible to the way our creator intended things. To me, these things are just common sense.
