THE DRAFT OREGON WOLF CONSERVATION AND MANAGEMENT PLAN:
The old saying about how you never really know someone until you have gone
through a stressful situation with them is one of those truisms that
policemen and soldiers know all too well. I suspect that the people of
Oregon are similarly seeing the true nature of their State Fish and Wildlife
Department as they grapple with the wolves starting to come over their
horizon.
Reading this Plan, tells me that the Oregon State Fish and Wildlife
Department has become an instrument of those who would abandon big game
hunters, ignore ranchers, and generally look the other way as rural
residents and communities are depressed by the coming wolf packs. As a
Virginian that has observed State fish and wildlife agencies across the
nation for years I am not surprised by this fact. The Plan exudes the
values that recently drove a vote in Oregon to ban the only two effective
hunting methods used to control cougar populations. Today, Oregonians, like
their southern (California) cousins that prohibit all management of cougars,
prohibit hunters from using dogs or bait to hunt cougars and again like
Californians cover up the cost, reasons, and numbers of cougars that are
killed annually by Federal government hunters paid in part by all the
taxpayers of the United States. The Plan clearly is intended to likewise
mask and ignore where possible the depredation of wolves on big game,
livestock, and other animals. State funds and increasingly Federal funds or
the funds from the quasi-governmental partners are and will in the future be
inadequate to keep pace with the approaching storm of depredations as the
wolves populate Oregon and surrounding states.
The Plan downplays rural residents concerns with safety with the attitude of
the Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels who believed that public opinion was
the responsibility of government and that disagreement by citizens was
merely a failure of citizens to behave properly. The two paragraphs devoted
to this topic on page 71 are a disgrace.
The misinformation about big game impacts is especially bad. Buried in the
blizzard of "science" in the Plan is the excuse the State and Federal
bureaucrats will use when ranchers and big game hunters are gone and wolves
endanger both rural and urban communities. To wit (on page 56), "Much has
been written in the scientific literature regarding the interaction and
effects of wolves on prey numbers, but few common conclusions have been
drawn." Need more be said? Wolves in Oregon will cause all the harm they
have in Montana and they will learn to behave in ways that NO ONE CAN
PREDICT in different situations. Wolf behavior in Alberta or Alaska was no
predictor of wolf behavior in the US Rockies and wolf behavior will be
different in Oregon just as it is in Wisconsin or Asia. We are talking
about large and smart wild dogs, do you think pit bull behavior predicts
golden retriever behavior? Do you think an urban rottweiller used as a
guard by drug dealers predicts how a dachshund will behave in a
schoolteachers' home in Redmond? Remember that no wildlife biologist nor
any piece of "scientific literature" predicted that wild turkeys could live
behind Iowa barns or chase mailmen in Boston suburbs. No one predicted that
Canada geese could live on bluegrass, raise their young in mall parking
lots, and remain resident in the millions across the northern US year
around. NO, the turkeys needed "virgin forests", the geese "only nested in
the far north", and wolves only behave like such and such. Those who
believe this stuff should stay away from Brooklyn or they will wind up
"owning" a bridge.
Finally, the Plan reveals the State bureaucrats intention to mimic Federal
bureaucrats regarding wolf protection. Given the harm wolves will wreak and
the danger they pose, the penalties of up to one year in prison and a $6,250
fine for a first offense and a 5 year, $100,000 fine for a second offense
are disgraceful. They will do just what the US Fish and Wildlife Service
and the Defenders of Wildlife intended, scare the H--- out of rural families
and ranchers. Surely someone will be made "an example" and then wives will
tell husbands to look for work in the city and people will stay in town and
there will be fewer rural activities. Then guess who will buy the land?
Guess who will close down more land and more uses, and impose more on
private landowners because there will be fewer and fewer people who know or
care or resist? If you guessed the same folks dumping the wolves and giving
them the status of mistletoe under the druids or some Pacific volcano on an
island populated by pagans, you get the prize.
Jim Beers
15 November 2004
http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org/wolves/wolfplanningbeers111504.htm
