Editors note: This is the first in a two-part essay about the proposal
to remove wolves from the federal Endangered Species List.
Preparing for life on the De-List?Well,
it sounds like those ranchers in Wyoming who shot and killed the
(“misbehaving”) wolves that (allegedly) killed their livestock (and
immediately posted photos to prove what mighty hunters they are), and
others of their ilk are going to get their way. There is a move afoot
with the feds to remove wolves from the Endangered Species List before
they even get the opportunity to enjoy roaming free in Oregon.
Even
with President Obama’s call for “good science,” it may just be that he
picked the wrong guy to run the Dept. of Interior. Secretary Ken
Salazar, a rancher turned politician from Colorado, wants to follow the
flawed Bush Bunch and keep the “Big Bad Wolf” syndrome alive.
If a “wolf season” follows, it will bring every predator hater and trophy hunter from around the world to the glorious West. Big game guides will follow wolf packs year round, learning their habits and assuring that hunters in their charge will be successful.
With the help of telemetry, baiting, howling, predator calls and winter tracking, killing 500 wolves won’t take long. Shucks, ten or so could be wiped out on one elk kill. It will be a sad day if that happens…
Wolves, coyotes, and rattlesnakes occupy the same sad place in the fantasy world of a handful of misinformed humans.
Way back in the early 1800s, people who moved into the wilderness with their sheep had the wool pulled over their eyes and couldn’t see anything but the Big Bad Wolf. And why not? They were given free reign to graze their sheep anywhere they wanted.
People who have studied wolves over the years will tell you that wolves cannot just, “get out of here,” or move in with people, it’s not in their way of doing things. That, Oh Best Beloved, was the beginning of the clash, and with strychnine, steel traps and shooting it didn’t take long to exterminate the wolf from its happy home in the lower U.S. of A.
What the shooters, trappers, and poisoners didn’t take into consideration (or even have a glimmer of) is that the wolf is the natural controlling agent of coyotes. Once the wolf was gone, coyotes thought they’d died and gone to heaven. All that prey was theirs, including the sheep. Why bother to hunt rabbits, ground squirrels and mice with all those sheep underfoot? It was like Les Schwab’s Free Beef promotion but “free lambs” instead.
Every killing tool you can think of was employed to kill coyotes – poison, shooting, snaring, digging out dens and killing pups; people used axes, gasoline, shovels, pitch forks and sledgehammers. The favored tool, however, was poison, it wasn’t labor intensive like traps that had to be reset, just put it out and what eats it dies. Oh, if a few eagles died, so what? What’s wrong with collateral damages anyway? And those badgers that keep digging holes that my horse falls into? Let’s get them too.
In the early ’40s, however, it became obvious that coyotes were not going to just go away, they began turning up in places they had never been before, like downtown LA. “What’s going on?” A few people asked, but no one knew for sure what was happening, or even cared. Then in the ’50s coyotes appeared on the Oregon Coast and the population increased in the Willamette Valley. And guess what they were doing? Why, eating sheep, of course. The government’s rat chokers taught them to eat sheep. But that wasn’t all… they were headed for Maine too.
Back in the ’50s I became a thorn in the side of the rat chokers here in Central Oregon, because one day a coyote died in the Brothers schoolyard. It crept into the schoolyard frothing at the mouth and died biting the flagpole. (Fitting, I think.) The local paper ran a front-page story, “Coyote Dies of Rabies in Brothers School Yard,” or something to that effect. But when I followed up on the story, I found the coyote didn’t die of rabies, but of 1080 poisoning.
Turns out 1080 is a weapon manufactured by the U.S. military during World War II to poison the enemy’s water supply. The problem was the chemists who dreamed up the God-awful stuff apparently didn’t have a big enough budget to come up with an antidote. But so what, use it anyway…
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2009.
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Well shucks, what will be next. The deadliest beast on the face of the planet is the human. They have killed more people and animals than all of animals put togeher. So, with what our so called leader is proposing, to take the Wolf off of the Endangered Species List, then why don’t we put the humans on the over populated list and make them open season for elimination.
I understand that they eat the sheep and that is the livelyhood of the Rancher. They are also claimed at a loss (money wise).
Why is our answer always to kill something rather than to relocate them or find another way.
You know what, other countries don’t have to worry about destroying us. The American Indian has known for a long time that we will destroy ourselves.
We have something beautiful in living in this world but only the animal can see it and live in it to it’s true nature.
Oh, and we are so worried about wolves and are going to put all of that money into it, so that tells me that all of crime has stopped, no more need for the Mental Health Departments, drugs are gone, etc.
I would say that we are the Wolves but I wouldn’t insult them like that.
I Say remove them from the endangered species list!! Hopefully before too many more get into Oregon, don’t kid yourself, they are here!! If you think cougars are bad, go visit a area that has a wolf problem. Unfortuneately they don’t eat just rabbits. Also, they don’t bait animals to kill in Oregon, it is illegal. Our elk and deer population will disapear.I think the author of this article should go talk to people that have a problem with the wolves in areas such as Montana etc. before writing this article, unless you talk to someone that has a problem with them and has to deal with them your article doesn’t hold water! Look at the cougar problem in Bend, they are right in town, what are you going to do when the wolves show up, and they are much worse to deal with. Also, how do can you possibly compare wolves to coyotes, give me a break. I don’t know about you, but I have coyotes everywhere around my place, I have had them take my cat right off of my porch, I have had them in my yard in the middle of the afternoon trying to get my pets, and when this happens, I shoot them!
I disagree with your cry wolf stuff.
First, coyotes killed 274,000 sheep in the USA in 2008. Divide that by the number of coyotes and you will find that they would starve if sheep was their favorite meal to enjoy. Coyotes kill mostly samll rodents, cats and small dogs which are easy prey in cities and towns. We lost 9 cats to coyotes in a 6 month time frame in Coure d’lane, Idaho and 3 to owls. Coyotes are normally not a threat to humans, just a big bother. Wolves on the other hand have no fear of people with no major preditor other than us. They travel in packs which increase their strength and danger. When they were first reinterduced in Montana, within 4 months they were in Idaho. A personal friend lost two dogs to the wolves within a two week period. We no longer could walk freely through the forest without a gun for fear of these preditors. They can move up to 200 miles or more a day. Two forest wolf attacks were confirmed on people within 6 months of there arrival. They are not afraid of anything. They don’t belong with humans and I would rather go see them in Canada or Alaska at a distance than meet one (or a pack) in our forests. Having a controlled hunt has not hurt deer populations as there are more deer now than at the turn of the century. A controlled hunt will not stomp out the wolf. it may lower the chance of meeting one face to face which I would be grateful for.