Mud, Dust, Smoke & Snow: Don't throw common sense to the wolves
I don’t hate wolves like I hate coyotes. Maybe it’s because wolves hate coyotes just as much as I do – enemy of my enemy kind of thing – but probably not for the same reasons.
Wolves hate coyotes for the same reasons deer and elk hunters hate wolves. Competition, and it is competition on a primal level. I’d fit ranchers in the same rationale corral.
We learned that lesson by the time we were two steps out of the cave, maybe even by the second foot on the ground.
I’ll say again, I don’t hate wolves. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think we ought to shoot ‘em.
I’ve written a fair amount about wolves. Mostly I’ve taken to the middle ground.
There really isn’t any other rational position to take on wolves, I think, except the middle ground. That doesn’t mean the middle ground is the one held by most people. In my experience it’s just the opposite.
Most people sit way out on the ends of the wolf teeter-totter.
But it’s not as hard as people make it, really, if you take two logical positions.
One is that wolves have a right to exist. If you disagree with that statement, I’m sorry to inform you of this, but you are an extremist. Your position is irrational. And it is held by only a tiny minority in this huge democracy of ours. You are so far outnumbered you make Custer’s odds look good.
It doesn’t mean you are wrong, and you have a right to your opinion. You don’t have a right to get your way, however, and as a matter of fact, you aren’t going to. Not a chance.
If I were you, I’d stop being “right” and start being smart.
The other position is that wolves should not be managed at all. And by management, yes, I absolutely mean monitoring their numbers and killing them to keep their numbers in check to reduce impact to ranchers and ungulate populations... and their constituents.
If you take that position, I’m sorry to inform you of this, but you are an extremist. Your position is irrational. And although it is held by more people than the other extreme position, most of the people who share that romantic vision of nature suffer from hyperopia. Farsightedness. Up close you can see the human tool marks all around you, the radio collars and the leg bands. From afar the deer and the blue birds can all speak English.
From a macro point of view the ecosystem of the lower 48 states is all highly subject to human activity. It is, all of it, “managed” whether intentionally or not or to good ends or bad.
If you don’t deny a human cause to climate change, and that it affects every corner of the globe right down to the most “natural” of natural states, then I don’t see how you can see it any other way, right?
Still, here in the middle, we like our nature to be as natural-like as possible. That’s why I don’t mind wolves. Or even healthy populations of them. Not having wolves where they ought to be seems as absurd as not having elk or mule deer.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is working on a wolf management plan. They have submitted three options: Option One (the one I call the Gifford Pinchot plan), Option Two (the buy-off-the-rancher-and-screw-the-hunter shell-and-pea plan, also known as the cat-and-rat farm plan) and Option Three (the John Muir plan). Here’s a hint: the one in the middle isn’t the one in the middle.
Option Three is just unworkable. It is havoc institutionalized. It’s like taking both hands off the wheel of a speeding car, covering your eyes and hoping nature takes it course. Which it damn well will do.
Option Two, the “preferred alternative” is perfidy disguised as compromise. It literally throws deer, elk, sheep, hunters, outfitters, rural communities and big game management to the ... uh... you know. All in the hopes of mollifying ranchers into agreeing to the wolf feed. It’s a wedgie.
As noted in last week’s MVN, Option Two promises that “Ungulates would receive a healthy boost through habitat improvement, harvest management and reduction of illegal hunting. Where wolves are not meeting recovery objectives and prey availability is a limiting factor, harvest of ungulates would be managed to benefit wolves.”
Translation: We’re going to promise to do what we ought to be doing now and will give wolves first dibs on hunting permits and whatever’s left over hunters can claw each other’s eyes out for.
Option One is really the one in the middle, the one between wipe out the wolves and let them run amok.
It protects wolves. It allows their populations to grow at a pace that doesn’t radically conflict with other natural resources users. It doesn’t turn over the apple cart on rural economies. It is the one that embraces the two critical points: wolves get to be here, and they should be managed like everything else.
Patrick McGann sneers at coyotes from his home near Twisp. His column appears monthly.
http://methowvalleynews.com/opinion.php
