I know from firsthand experience how the elk and deer herds have been decimated in that region of the country, and in fact have been cut by more than 50% in the region I've hunted over the past decade. This dramatically shortens the season for us and also means we haven't been able to take any females for years now. We've also been tracked and surrounded by them on a few occasions, and I challenge anyone who enjoys watching them on YouTube to feel the same way after you've heard their chorus of howls completely surrounding you in dark timber. I'm talking about deep instinctual fear . . . it's sobering.
I think the article does a poor job of describing the hunting process, it's not like you just kill wolves and tell Fish & Game about it later. You have to hunt in season using certain weapons or traps and you have to apply for tags beforehand. The success rate is extremely low, I know the first year it was open in Idaho the projected rate was 20% but the actual rate was 0.3%. Turns out wolves are extremely hard to hunt.
Having them off the list is a huge improvement though because the ranchers and hunters are working in cooperation instead of opposition to the authorities. There used to be a real S.S.S. attitude among the old timers (Shoot, Shovel, Shut up), now they are going to be giving good data back to the authorities who will be better able to adjust the numbers in favor of all the species that share the ecosystem.
For context, the first wolf killed during the legal season in my area was stuffed and mounted in the local sporting goods store . . . 7 feet nose to tail and probably north of 140#. Not what you want to meet in the woods, and especially not when there are two dozen of them.
The idea that they will hunt down, stalk and kill humans is laughable. I know first-hand the primal fear one feels when within close proximity to a large predator (I had a scary encounter with a bear myself when hiking in California), but let's not spread FUD.
There were close calls in our hunting range before they came off the list, panicked hikers running and just encouraging them to be chased. They got more and more aggressive every year. Even though less than 10% of the hunters I know are actually going after wolves, that stalking behavior has ceased since the delisting and they keep a very healthy distance.
For the record, running from wolves is always a bad idea. Wolves run faster than humans and have a strong instinct to chase anything that runs from them.
I don't know about Yellowstone, but I'm in Montana and bears are hunted. If I see on one my land, cool, it will move on. When they become a problem in town a hunter with a permit will "remove" it. Are they a problem? Not really, but they do need to be managed. Some schools get put on lock down because of criminals. Ours was on lock down until they got the bear.
Depends on what the scientists say. But if they deemed it was appropriate to balance the other herds, sure, and I'd pay a pretty penny for a lotto drawing on that tag. That's a lot of stew and sausage from one animal, it would feed a lot of families throughout the year.
Maybe - what is the situation with bears. Are there too many for the ecosystem or not. This needs to be handle on a case by case basis.
Man has greatly changed the ecosystems of the world. (this is ongoing). Some of it has been for the worst, but we have been correcting things too and some of our corrections have gone too far (or perhaps reached an end of their useful life?)
RMNP has to cull elk because they like hanging out where they can't be hunted and overcrowd the local ecosystems where hunters cannot reach them. They are very intelligent and they know the seasons and the regions where they can be preyed upon by man. You'd think the world was covered in elk the week before rifle season starts, then they go to ground.
I agree traps aren't as humane, that's why we practice our marksmanship with "high powered rifles with optics" so that our shots land true and there is minimal pain and suffering.
RMNP has to cull elk because we lost the natural top predator in the ecosystem (the wolf). With this comes the chronic wasting disease (which has now spread across the west).
We don't have wolves because of the rancher and hunter lobby. The majority of the public in Colorado supports wolf reintroduction.
Fortunately, this is going to change, whether they want it or not: the wolves travel large distances and have already appeared in Colorado. I would not be surprised if somebody would actually transfer or release some sanctuary animals. The Wind Rivers has wolves, then it's 100-150 miles to Snowy Range and then the Front Range is right there. Just give it time and protection.
Between the Wind Rivers and the Front Range of Colorado is the Great Divide Basin - it's a very difficult region for animals to simply migrate across - especially animals specific to colder, wetter climates - and most especially without any great reason.
People can, and do release wolves into Colorado in hopes to reintroduce them. I believe that's where most of the sightings are coming from. Many times these wolves are wolf/dog hybrids. I've had complete strangers admit to as much. I very much suspect any sightings of wolves in CO though, almost as much as I do grizzly bear.
I understand that certain issues can get our temperature up, but that doesn't give us permission to violate the guidelines by posting like this. Please don't.
I'm just a runner, not a hunter. A couple years ago, I was out on a run when I was quickly set upon by two adolescent German Shepherds. I was on the opposite side of the street, but they left their property (they were out playing fetch with their owner). Before I knew it, they were circling me and then one took a bite of my thigh.
To this day, I'm astonished by how quickly it happened. I'm virtually certain that even if I'd had a weapon, I would not have been able to use it in time.
These dogs were not attacking me either. The bite was playful, from a poorly trained adolescent dog.
I'm pretty sure that even with a gun, I'd be scared of a pack of wolves. A canine can move very quickly and violently.
The person I responded to was talking about hunting. So, it stands to reason he had a rifle. Wolves are scared of humans. They recognize the apex predator.
Edit: I suppose I should mention that domesticated dogs can be trained to be all sorts of aggressive (esp. German shepherd). Domesticated dogs have none of the lessons taught to them that a wild wolf would learn from their mother. Wolves avoid humans at all costs.
These aren't packs of feral chihuahuas we're talking about, the adult (american) grey wolf mean weight is 88 Lbs, they can weigh up to 180. Imagine an animal almost as large as you, who's very purpose for existence is to predate mammals much larger than itself. Now imagine being surrounded by 20 of them and aware of the fact they have evolved to hunt cooperatively, to take down ungulates that can weight 5-10 times what they do. You are going to maybe get 1, 2 (if god himself intervenes) shots off with your bolt action 30-06 before they swarm you and literally tear you to pieces. If you had your back to a cliff and a M134 Minigun, you might have a chance. Luckily they mostly choose not to hunt humans, but it ain't because they wouldn't be successful. They just have easier prey most of the time.
I have hunted and been an outdoors man all my life.
This is total nonsense, one shot and they would all be running. Wolves are deathly afraid of guns, and what predators fear is confrontation. Its easier to run away and go after something that isn't going to result in you dying.
They are animals, with a strong desire for self preservation, not a mindless army of killing machines out for human blood.
If it was truly this dangerous hundreds of people would be dying a year.
Your hyperbole adds nothing but disinformation to the conversation.
Its a one off situation, any number of things could have been at play, the pepper spray could have been a dud, he could have missed in a panic or been too far away, etc.
People going into environments like that need to carry guns, and they need to understand that running away, especially in a panicked manner makes things worse. I'm not saying they aren't dangerous animals, they clearly are. That's why people need to understand how to handle them, its no different from being prepared to climb a mountain.
But hyperbole about needing a mini-gun or you are surely going to die to a pack of wolves is just utter, complete bullshit.
This is what I was talking about elsewhere in this discussion about city people ready to believe there are packs of wolves out hunting humans. 95% of the time in the back country (over 25 years in the rockies) when encountering these large predators, I only see their backside as they run away.
> The Wolves he says always burrow underground to bring forth their young and though it is natural to suppose them very fierce at those times yet I have frequently seen the Indians go to their dens and take out the young ones and play with them I never knew a Northern Indian hurt one of them on the contrary they always put them carefully into the den again and I have sometimes seen them paint the faces of the young Wolves with vermilion or red ochre
Most modern hunting rifles have 2-3 rounds loaded. Even if you were rolling around with a 30 round magazine you could only try and shoot the ones that you could see.
We had a camp member stalked by a pack while walking between two campsites one night, he was not armed. He heard them and we checked the trail in the morning, the size and number of the prints made our blood cold. Same guy was charged by a mountain lion several years ago and he was lucky to get one shot off that dropped it at his feet, claws out. It ain't Disney out there folks.
I'm sympathetic to the ranchers as its costly to lose animals, but in a lot of ways I still think a simple economic solution would have kept this from getting that far. If the wolves are technically owned by the federal government, then they could have paid for each animal the wolves eat (at final market price). Frankly, a Fish & Wildlife person driving out with a check would have solved quite a lot of this at a much cheaper price.
The North American wolves are not their European brethren in body count (far from it).
I'd be a touch less sympathetic, the 800 animals lost to wolves a year out of a population of over 1.6 million is infinitesimally small, if anything it shows wolves are not a notable threat to herds grazing on public lands.
TLDR: Hunter kills a horse in a creek, fouling it for the local residents who rely on it & making them boil their water so its drinkable (very expensive to do).
Said hunter used dead horse to kill the majority of one of the most well known wolf packs out there, this hunter successfully fucked over the locals water supply, and gave the National Parks Service hard data that getting rid of the buffer zone was bad (as these wolves were part of their study.
Seems ridiculous to allow people to shit all over state & federal lands, creating serious health hazards and killing tourism.
Every head of cattle is still a lot of money for those ranchers. If its only 800, then the government should have no problem getting the money for a cheap solution.
Using one idiot to brand all ranchers is pretty reprehensible especially because waving that bloody shirt has no part in the argument I put forward.
Why should the government subsidize ranchers? Seriously, the fact that ranchers got away with unrestricted grazing and nary a threat from other wildlife for decades was a gift, and if ranchers thought the government would allow them to continue to trample their local ecosystems unimpeded indefinitely, then they were really off their rocker.
Also, I'm not branding ranchers here, just idiots with guns calling themselves "hunters", which the asshat in the aforementioned article is far from being. Idiots like him have caused public sentiment about hunting to turn negative, which is bad for the rest of us as that means more restrictions & rules.
The government isn't subsidizing ranchers, its paying for the damage caused by something it basically owns. If a bison left the national park and rammed your car, you might fairly believe you were entitled to some compensation. I can tell you from experience that talking to your insurance company will be non-fun.
What association should I draw from your response with that story to my proposal? He was an idiot, but there are idiots everywhere.
If a bison left the national park and rammed your car, you might fairly believe you were entitled to some compensation.
What, seriously? That sounds absurd. A bison is a wild animal; why would it ever be reasonable to expect any human or group of humans to take responsibility for its behavior?
There is a group of humans who will take financial responsibility for damage wild animals cause to cars: car insurance companies. In the US, "comprehensive" car insurance covers most kinds of damage or loss other than crashing the car while driving it, including damage caused by animals. It is usually inexpensive.
I actually did hit a cow on the road with my car, once, on a moonless night in the middle of Nevada, ninety miles from nowhere. I lived, my passenger fractured a rib, the jeep recovered, and the cow died; but in the sixteen years since, I can't say it had ever occurred to me that any person other than myself might have any liability for the damage.
In Washington state, ranchers are subsidized. They are allowed to graze their cattle on public land for free, and when wolves kill their cattle, Washington state Fish and Wildlife uses helicopters to kill the wolves at over $1,000/hour cost to taxpayers.
They are killing the Profanity Peak pack as we speak because a rancher refused to not let his cattle graze unmonitored right next to their den. Why should I have to pay because some rancher refuses to move his cattle to some other land he also doesn't have to pay to use?
That is completely insane, I can't believe us taxpayers in Washington State are massively subsidizing these ranchers. Letting them graze their cattle for free on public lands is a huge giveaway, but then to kill part of the environment cause they wanna graze without supervision is a massive wrong.
If a bison left the national park and rammed your car, you might fairly believe you were entitled to some compensation
I cannot fairly comprehend the entitled mentality needed for me to ever think that. Shit happens, quit whining. No matter, it's a poor analogy. The government is subsidizing ranchers because the government said, "can't shoot 'em." "Well, WTF are we supposed to do, then?", say the ranchers. So the government pays per carcass.
If an rancher's cow hits your car then the rancher is liable. I am just applying the same rule to the government. It fits in with the whole "how to get the ranchers not to shoot the wolves". It applies a rule in a fashion equal to the rancher's responsibilities in the situation.
If an rancher's cow hits your car then the rancher is liable.
No, the rancher is not. That's what those yellow diamond "entering open range" signs mean. In fact, you hit a head of cattle in open range, you're paying for the ranchers loss.
As an aside, how is a cow supposed to "hit my car" in the first place? They might exceed 20 mph if spooked, otherwise it's like saying that a pedestrian hit your car. The fact that said pedestrian weighs upward of 1200 lbs. does not absolve you, pilot of the 70 mph 4000lb. box of steel.
I watched a bison (juvenile) hit a parked car. On a twisty road we lost a motorcycle driver to a bison that had got out. A bull will attack a car. Cows can panic too.
IANAL, but what you linked directly contradicts what you stated about ranchers paying for the damage (assuming the case of signed grazing areas). And with that, I'm done with the armchair lawyerin'. May neither of us discover the truth of liability the hard way.
Signed grazing area is not a contradiction, its very specific. I have discovered the liability as I had to help with the bison case. So I guess I was fortunate it wasn't my car.
In most of the west the inverse is true. If you hit livestock, under any condition (if it got loose and was wandering the highway), you are liable. Livestock always has right of way.
What the fuck? No, if I run into a bison or it rams me, that is a risk I took and I carry insurance to cover that. Same if a deer jumps out in front of my car again and totals it, in no reasonable world is the government going to take on unlimited liability for every animal inside its borders.
You may be incorrect:
"In fact, hundreds of wild bison freely inhabit hundreds of square miles of valley floor, sometimes coming in contact with private cattle (and human golfers at the Jackson Hole Golf & Tennis Club) without incident."
"Save for occasionally colliding with motorists on the highway, goring a horse at guest ranches, moving through fences or tramping upon manicured landscaping, bison presence in Jackson Hole does not connote the political calamity it does in Montana."
I'm surprised that livestock guarding dogs were not mentioned in the article. Some breeds are known to prevent attacks by merely displaying aggressive behavior toward predators without actually harming neither the wolves nor themselves.
It wouldn't really be a Cobra Effect. In the Cobra Effect, the net number of Cobras (which were trying to be eliminated) was increased instead of decreased. If farmers start breeding livestock intentionally to be eaten by wolves, it's hard to see how this would have a net negative effect on the wolf population.
Maybe you're suggesting the wolves would forget how to hunt because they are constantly being fed by ranchers? This might be possible.
Either way, the key to implementing a policy like this would be testing it out with a small subset of Wyoming and measuring it's effects. Also, one should be careful not to over incentivize ranchers towards feeding wolves, but compensate them justly.
The other difference from the Cobra effect is that feeding wolves would result in a whole lot of problems for the rancher (as in life and limb to family). Those problems are enough of an incentive not to do those things. You really, really don't want a predator to learn free meals are on your land. You already have to manage the land use when ranching.
Yes, I wasn't suggesting an increase in the wolves population but rather that this solution could worsen the rancher's problem (of the ranchers) by educating the wolves to feed on livestock rather than hunt elks and deer.
Strictly speaking, under ideal condition wolves live longer, so an increase in population is also possible.
Could, but I doubt it. I can almost see some older milk cows or breeding animals going that way, but there is a bit of difference between the cost of raising cattle and cobras. Raising cows for wolf food has all sorts of side effects that ranchers would understand to be bad.
Indemnification doesn't seem to deter farmers from complaining. Where I live (France) we have a totally anecdotic number of wolves and bears (there are so few bears that they are almost all descended from a single male), and the state is paying for killed animals at or above market price, yet opposition to their reintroduction and lobbying for their killing persists.
It made news today that a single wolf has been photographed on a road in a small town (La Ferrière) and already the mayor is taking the opportunity to ask for "regulation", claiming that sightings of the animal occur every day in his town (one might wonder why, if that's the case, a blurry photo of a single individual makes national news...).
Yeah, different state, but too slow, too painful, and not quite enough money. The government needs to pay above the final sale price because of the inconvenience. The premium and quick delivery are worth it to protect the wolves.
No, it really won't. I'm talking a simple charge mostly to cover the additional expenses of dealing with a carcass and contract problems (some cattle are under contract). I'm not talking double or even a high percentage, just enough so we won't hear serious b_tch_ng about the price. Sometimes failure to deliver and disposal causes its own problems.
If a rancher gets above sale price for a steer, even a pitiful 5%, then that rancher is going to find ways for this steers to get killed by wolves (for example by having them graze on public lands next to a den of wolves).
What incentive would a rancher ever have for preventing the wolves from killing the steers? If the wolves don't kill a steer, well then there's the hassle of taking it to market and getting market price. If the wolves kill the steer, then they get market price plus 5%, and don't have to even find a buyer.
No they won't, because of the dangers involved with bringing a predator into the fields. You risks your family, pets, and business. Its just not worth 5%. Time and keeping the wolf off the ranchers land. You don't want them hanging around. Many cattle are already contracted, plus you are going to need to spend time dealing with it.
There is a serious danger in feeding wild animals and ranchers are smart enough to know it.
POCATELLO — The family of a teenage boy sprayed by a cyanide explosive that killed their dog is outraged they weren’t told the device was planted near their home.
M-44s are spring-activated devices that release cyanide when they are activated through upward pressure or pulling. The US Department of Agriculture uses the devices to control coyotes and other predators.
Multiple scientists have also challenged ideas about wolves’ positive impact on Wyoming ecosystems. In a 2009 study, the ecologists Scott Creel and David Christianson contend that elk’s reduced consumption of willow trees “was more strongly affected by snow conditions than by the presence of wolves.” The scientists Matthew Kauffman, Jedediah Brodie, and Erik Jules also refute the notion that wolves played a central role in helping Yellowstone aspen trees to recover in their 2010 article. That study also concludes that “aspen are not currently recovering in Yellowstone, even in the presence of a large wolf population.” (Other scientists have gone on to disagree with Kauffman, Brodie, and Jules’s findings, publishing scholarly refutations of that study.)
Science: A more civil version of the internet refutation "That's just your opinion, man!"
Born and raised in Idaho. Dunno if anyone will read this, but many of us here are against the hunting of wolves (or any other large predator like mountain lions etc).
The reason is very simple at its core - do humans know better than the natural world? The answer is clearly no, so there must be unintended consequences to hunting animals purely for sport or human constructs like competition. Without wolves, herds grow too large and overgraze streams and generally wreck ecosystems.
I recognize that hunters want to succeed at finding game but humans are the top predator. We already have full control, so I find arguments that we are competing with wolves to be rather sophomoric. People just want that feeling of having total control, which is at odds with the natural world. It's a macho thing, not a pragmatic thing.
Highly recommend life below zero on Netflix. If my family ever ends up living off land I will now know how to do it a little bit better than I knew before watching. The best hunter, 5ft lady, chased down a running wolf and shot it from long distance. Great show! Alaska is amazing.
I don't know the particulars of the Wyoming project, but I can speak about this issue in depth from a firsthand perspective regarding the gray wolf reintroduction program that started in my tiny mountain town in Arizona in 98.
First, I have to say I generally understand people wanting to preserve a species and help an ecosystem. I really do. I have seen very little good science to back up the purported reasons for the reintroduction program though. Supposed benefits, ignoring the "tourist economy", such as elk and deer grazing habit changes for waterways, have not held up, and even if they did, were miniscule benefits that could be handled in other ways. (For example, instead of hoping wolves will hunt beaver which cause damage (but also help in ways), they could increase beaver tags. Right now the White Mountain Apache reservation is having a wild horse problem. The wolves aren't nearly numerous enough to even put a dent in it.
I have witnessed firsthand the kind of destruction that results in freshly minted PHD's showing up in a forest they've never been to and insisting they know better than the families that have lived on that land for 100+ years. The primary example of this for me was the large forest fires in the area. The old timer loggers were saying they should be allowed to thin the forests out, and that they should be allowing natural burns to go longer and be doing more control burns. The PHD's at the forest service insisted against this, and then the pine beetle infestation hit, and then a flame and poof... twice, more than 400k acres up in flames. This has created distrust in the locals.
I also question some of the shock value statistics being thrown around to villify or negate ranchers concerns. I've heard from people that they are increasingly restricting and disallowing public grazing... so how can decreases of livestock attacks really be trusted when there aren't nearly the same amount of livestock in the first place?
I haven't even mentioned how badly the actual reintroduction program was handled. They started by cage feeding pairs and releasing them as a pair. The wolves were way to reliant on being fed and way too unafraid of humans. Now they are trying to put cage born/fed pups into already wild packs...
My family jokes I'm half-Apache because I spent so much time in the forest when I was younger, but now we don't let friends or family go out to half our little secret spots without being armed. It's easy to say "wolves are more afraid of you" and spout all the things that PHD told you because he read them in a book, but when you are in the forest and hear a pack across the ridge at night... it has vastly changed the atmosphere of the mountains. Before the reintro program we really only had to worry about mountain lions and the occasional bear... both of which were much more scared of humans than any gray wolf is, especially in a pack. That being said though, I knew ranchers who have had more losses from the mountain lions than from the wolves, which is one of the reasons a mountain lion hunt is tradition in the area.
In the local population, this has created massive blowback, to the point that I openly hear people spreading the three S's when it comes to wolves. Shoot, shovel, and shhhhhhh. I never heard of anyone actually doing it, because the forest service put out a 50k reward for reporting such an action!
The bottom line is that at every turn I have seen phd environmentalists assume they know best and end up causing blowback that bites locals in the ass, while the forest service/blm will just move that person somewhere else and they never have to deal with the consequences of their actions. The locals are tired of this kind of federal over-reach.
New Mexico as I understand it currently has an injunction against the reintro program for just this reasons. I say good for them.
In all my years in the forest though, I only saw one up close and personal in the wild once. It was huge, beautiful, and majestic, and I'm glad I was in a vehicle. I simply don't see the real value of their reintroduction other than to make what my grandpa would call the "hippy tree huggers" feel good. In 20 years, they barely have the pop above 100.
edit: seeing lots of hate for ranchers. I honestly don't think people understand how important rachers are to the ecosystems, a thousand times more important than wolves. As for hunters, I generally have a lot of disdain for them. Locals bag one elk and share it. City-boy hunters who think they are country put on camo, sit in a stand all day and bag something mostly for the picture and the trophy, and that bothers me greatly. They also tend to have a lack of respect for the forest. Just saying, don't equate hunters or illegal hunters with the ranchers.
"I honestly don't think people understand how important rachers are to the ecosystems, a thousand times more important than wolves."
All right I'll bite. Where in Arizona? Mogollon Rim? Arizona Strip? The Kaibab?
Aside from these above Arizona is desert. The desert is fragile. The cows destroy the desert. The American West (deserts) are mountains of cow shit. Every stream, every spring, every alcove is fouled if the cows can get in. The cows are the biggest destructive force in the desert I have ever seen.
The saddest part is that the open range ranching in desert Southwest is not even profitable without large subsidies and support by the taxpayer. These ranches are "pretend cowboys" making a living by other means. A handful of cows they own does not really help anyone and the costs of us all are huge.
Now, to the forested parts of Arizona. The Kaibab and the Arizona Strip are essentially a park land. If not for cows, it would be a pristine wilderness. This is all federal land. We do not need cows there either. 6 months ago I went on foot from Bryce to Nankoweap. The cows on Kaibab wreck havoc just like everywhere else. The Kaibab is dotted by swaths of open areas made by ranchers years ago for grazing, still nothing grows.
What is really important for any ecosystem I am aware of, is to NOT have cows and ranching. We have enough developed and rich land in other places. Please leave the West alone! Please go to Texas where all land is private and raise your livestock there.
This said, fewer cows and higher beef prices would help in general as well.
Mogollon Rim is awfully big, but yeah. More specifically Apache-Sitgreaves/Gila national forest. I'm not talking about and don't know about the desert so those points are moot as are the ones about the strip and kaibab.
That's not to say you are wrong about them in particular, but our particular ecosystem it's different. However, the grazing on public land isn't all good. In chokepoints sometimes land destruction happens, for example.
That being said, the idea of leaving pristine wilderness that way for the sake of it fails the understand the bigger picture I am talking about here. For example, if we were to leave the pristine wilderness to do it's thing, we should let natural burns just do their thing. That's part of my original statement. The forest service was interfering with the natural process of burns in the forest and in the end caused more damage than benefit.
The livestock have helped keep underbrush down, and since the fires have helped to spread plant life and reinvograte the forest. The ranchers in tending the stock have also performed many of the duties that the forest service otherwise would do, and often don't have the time, manpower, or funding to get done. Honestly though I just happen to be a geek from the area, I don't know that much about the grazing system and I would have to ask the people who do know about it.
So to summarize, my list of good things are: reduced wildfire risk, increased plant diversity, invasive plant control, and reduction of public funds needed for land management (I've seen estimates at over $750m saved per year by public grazing programs nationally).
I have to say a response like yours is exactly what I'm talking about. The kind of knee-jerk "save the land" response without considering the pragmatic reality of the situation. Ranchers alone, if done properly, could keep the pristine wilderness more pristine than if it was all just walled off and no-one ever went there.
Everything that I have seen on the ground makes me think that livestock can't be beneficial for an ecosystem, be it a desert or a forest. All I have seen from cows in the west is damage. The times have changed. The economy is different. The priorities of the country and people's attitudes have changed (conservation). It is time to get cows off public lands where it makes little economical sense.
BTW, in your case it is not grey wolf, but even a more endangered mexican wolf, correct? These are critically endangered, if I remember correctly.
The entire idea is a work of fiction (I live in the SW desert). diebir went on a hike and saw beautiful public lands being utilized by ranchers utilizing their public grazing (which they pay for, though perhaps not enough which is subjective). All cattle ranchers that I've ever seen in 25 years have their own land, but depending on the season they lease rights from the BLM.
It's very strange for people to live their whole lives doing some activity in a rural area, then some city person spends a couple weeks in the area, and suddenly these people are being attacked.
I'm not validating what the parent comments was saying. Just seeing if I could get examples of these kinds of operations, specifically in NM and AZ. I know of Ted Turner, but from what I could find most of these "well fare" ranchers aren't really ranchers. Instead they are people who made their money some other way and bought up a bunch of land. I know a few people who lease forest land ... I don't envy them.
I'm confused. You say they've "vastly changed the atmosphere of the mountains" and complain about the forest service making mistakes managing in the past, but you also say the wolve "barely have the pop above 100" and cite ranchers that have more losses from the mountain lions than the wolves. Are you arguing that the program is bad, or more of a no-op? I care far more about "demonstrated and sustained negative impact on ranchers' livelihoods" than I do about feeling a bit more abstractly apprehensive outdoors—I grew up in a different part of the boonies, but there mountain lions were the big threat, and I'd always carry a gun just because of the risk of them. Mountain lions seem far more scary/dangerous to me, personally.
> Are you arguing that the program is bad, or more of a no-op?
Really both. The thing is that out of 100 pop wolves, a few packs together can cover very large areas, so even in a wilderness it may sound like 100 isn't much, it's not as small as it seems. They did have major issues with the program in general, but the issues I am mostly talking about are independent of the population issues, and are more relevant to the humans living in the area.
Essentially, it would be like having a reintroduction program for mountain lions in your area, and putting say, 50 more mountain lions there. It sounds like you understand what that means.
I think I could find people to buy from in Colorado who are in favor of a reintroduction plan to build on the handful of wolves that have migrated into the state naturally. I also prefer bison or even yak.
I think you should ask him. If his lively hood solely depends on the livestock he raises I doubt he supports reintroduction. Same goes for the others ... it's easy to support something if there is no risk to you for doing so.
You make a good point, but I think that it's not really a life or death thing for any of these ranchers. Obviously if it was then there should be some mitigation in place (and probably for all of them regardless).
That would not have been my first thought after reading "the well-being of humans should be more important than an animal" - I'd've thought "oh shit, they just triggered all the urban dwelling armchair economists".
On the other hand, I suspect the trend you describe at least somewhat exists, and you're suffering from the human brain being an overactive pattern matcher in any given specific case rather than being entirely wrong about the general case.
I gave my guess as to who was downvoting and/or angrily replying to your post, as a counterpoint to bsder's guess as to who said people are.
I also meant to type "armchair environmentalists" but too much marginal revolution and too little coffee apparently made me braino.
Rural romanian sensibilities versus US urban dwelling archair environmentalist would totally explain the attacks on you to me - and now seems even more plausible than "labour versus capital" as the underlying cause.
The answer to the first question should be instantly obvious. The second is a little more nuanced, and I'm sure the above person's answer would be a little more abstract.
Personally I have no opinion on wolves, but I'm a city boy.
The notion that "city folk" have any idea how to manage anything out in the wild probably contributes as much to how people in WY and elsewhere perceive the wolf as any damage wolves may cause.
I don't understand - where in the article does it indicate to you that "city folk" are managing wolf populations?
And furthermore, if the people managing wolf populations are defined as "city folk," what about this definition makes them ineligible to manage wolf populations?
When I lived in Idaho, my neighbor found his dead dog draped over his mailbox because it wondered onto another neighbors land that had cattle. The law is on their side, and this issue goes back over 100 years, though the details differ.
In western states (like Utah) if you hit a cow on a highway you are going to pay for both, the car repairs and the cow. People die all the time: black cows, open road, after dark, the cows are invisible.
It's the type of story that city people (who spend 0.01% of their time in rural areas) seem to be astonished by because their lifestyles are so different. Trying to impose your will on people in an area you've barely lived seems quite arrogant to those that live there 100% of the time.
Oh. I hadn't found the story astonishing, sorry. To be honest, I feel like you're the one coming off as arrogant, to suggest that there's some impassible divide between those that live in rural communities, and those that live in cities. I don't believe this is the case.
So, no more input than someone living 1500 miles away, when the rancher lives right next to it and have longstanding usage rights there, in many cases? Maybe they should get to have a say in how Central Park or Golden Gate Park are managed. Maybe wolves should be reintroduced to those habitats, for example.
I never advocated for reintroduction, but I don't think ranchers should be able to do what they please. Why does it matter how long someone has been using a public good? I don't think it should.
Seniority and precedent are legal concepts from English common law. None of us alive had a say in that, but it is the way things work. Private property is a cherished concept in the US (and, especially, the western US).
Indeed, even the right to walk across private property on an established path is an ancient concept in common law. Plus, the American idea was always that the people owned all rights unless explicitly given to the government, which is quite different than the old monarchical idea that rights belonged to the king unless explicitly granted to the people. That idea has been eroded considerably in the last 100 years.
Lands are either public or private. The definition of the two and the basis of the attendant rights matters, since inability to agree on those things means no agreement on derivative matters can be reached and therefore further discussion is pointless. Not a popular position on internet forums, I readily concede.
It was public before anyone ever moved there. It wasn't "seized." (Seized from whom, btw? Native Americans?)
Ranchers get amazing subsidies from the federal government. If the government auctioned grazing rights like they did other public resources, there would be a lot less complaints. Someone who didn't mind the rules would just outbid the ones that did.
Wow, what an asshole of a hunter, to bait these wolves out, he kills a horse in a creek, fouling it for the local residents who rely on it & making them boil their water so its drinkable (very expensive to do).
Beyond killing the majority of one of the most well known wolf packs out there, this hunter successfully fucked over the locals water supply, and gave the National Parks Service hard data that getting rid of the buffer zone was bad.
Idiots like this should be forced to go back and clean up their messes, allowing them to shit all over state & federal lands is ridiculous.
The sad part is that wolves kill and eat the diseased deer for the most part allowing humans to get the health ones (diseased deer = slower). I remember a study done on caribou when the wolf population was devastated in Canada where the caribou started getting more diseases and dying themselves.
I think the article does a poor job of describing the hunting process, it's not like you just kill wolves and tell Fish & Game about it later. You have to hunt in season using certain weapons or traps and you have to apply for tags beforehand. The success rate is extremely low, I know the first year it was open in Idaho the projected rate was 20% but the actual rate was 0.3%. Turns out wolves are extremely hard to hunt.
Having them off the list is a huge improvement though because the ranchers and hunters are working in cooperation instead of opposition to the authorities. There used to be a real S.S.S. attitude among the old timers (Shoot, Shovel, Shut up), now they are going to be giving good data back to the authorities who will be better able to adjust the numbers in favor of all the species that share the ecosystem.
For context, the first wolf killed during the legal season in my area was stuffed and mounted in the local sporting goods store . . . 7 feet nose to tail and probably north of 140#. Not what you want to meet in the woods, and especially not when there are two dozen of them.