WOLF REINTRODUCTION -
BAD NEWS FOR WOLVES TOO!
By: Cate Cook

Wolf reintroduction is based on the distorted and wrong Endangered Species Act (ESA), because proponents could discount wolf populations in Canada, across an artificial border that wolves happily ignore.  Even discounting the 50,000-plus wolves in Canada, Alaska has populations approaching 10,000, and Minnesota alone has some 2,000 wolves, according to biologists.  Wolf recovery is costing the American taxpayer millions.  When it is de-listed and management turned over to the states, it will become ever more of a burden on the citizen in those states, as well as cutting income from sportsmen as the wolves pressure ungulate herds.  Without de-listing, however, the Feds will continue to blissfully waste taxpayers’ dollars on “management” that allows unchecked expansion and the destruction that surely accompanies wolf packs. 

This doesn’t even address livestock kills.  The widely publicized reimbursement program for livestock kills is little more than grand-standing self-promotion by the Defenders of Wildlife (DOW), the group that funds the plan.  It is wholly inadequate to answer the problem, because it requires “confirmed kills,” often made nearly impossible by stringent requirements, remote country, scavengers, and decay.  Because confirmed kills are often less than ten percent of actual, ninety percent of  livestock kills won’t be covered by this program.  Its is also as short-term fix, intended to end when the wolf is removed from the ESA.  When the wolves reach more significant numbers and are more likely to cause livestock destruction, there will be no compensation.  It would appear the Defenders of Wildlife planned a program in which they have little to lose and a lot of promotion to gain for their agenda.  Hank Fischer, representative of DOW states:  “The purpose of the compensation program isn’t to make ranchers happy or gain their support╔the purpose of the program is to develop enough of a political and economic comfort level with the public so as to allow wolf recovery to proceed unimpeded.”  This has worked well for them, but how does it feel to be thought so simple-minded, so easily duped by your government, so completely separated from your tax dollars?
Other than being the poster-species that certain groups can use to further their anti-hunting and land control agendas, the wolf is no celebrity in this turmoil.  He may be promoted for tourists and photo ops, but there is a price.  First-hand witnesses report extraordinary inhumanity in tracking, relocating, and even killing the wolves.  In one report from Idaho, Unites States Fish and Wildlife Services (USFWS) personnel had to capture two wolves that had been killing calves in 1999.  For six days, several people chased the wolves by airplane, then helicopter, chasing the smaller of the two up a steep slope in deep snow, until he collapsed from exhaustion and went into shock before he was darted from the helicopter.  It took three hours for the team to retrieve him; by then, the pursuit, tranquilization, shock, snow, and resulting hypothermia had taken its toll.  When they finally recovered the wolf, biologists found its body temperature to be over ten degrees below normal.  A horrific smell emanating from the creature was identified by the game biologist as infections from the radio collar rubbing constantly on the animal’s neck (this diagnosis was made without checking, an indicator that this is normal).  You, the taxpayer, footed the bill for a week’s lodging and feeding for five or six SUFWS personnel, along with wages, vehicles, and hiring aircraft and pilots.  Despite “official reports” to the contrary, everyone who witnessed this debacle figured the tortured young wolf died.  The larger wolf, the one likely to be the offender in the livestock kills, was not collared, so he could not be tracked or captured.

Perhaps it is not “The Big Bad Wolf” we need to be most concerned about, but a “Big Brother” government out of control.  Through faulty laws such as the Endangered Species Act, our federal government, and certain environmental groups with which they are too closely involved, operate a bigger agenda designed to steal rights and property.  The wolf is just a pawn in this, and a loser, too.

Wolf reintroduction is based on the distorted and wrong Endangered Species Act (ESA), because proponents could discount wolf populations in Canada, across an artificial border that wolves happily ignore.  Even discounting the 50,000-plus wolves in Canada, Alaska has populations approaching 10,000, and Minnesota alone has some 2,000 wolves, according to biologists.  Wolf recovery is costing the American taxpayer millions.  When it is de-listed and management turned over to the states, it will become ever more of a burden on the citizen in those states, as well as cutting income from sportsmen as the wolves pressure ungulate herds.  Without de-listing, however, the Feds will continue to blissfully waste taxpayers’ dollars on “management” that allows unchecked expansion and the destruction that surely accompanies wolf packs. 

This doesn’t even address livestock kills.  The widely publicized reimbursement program for livestock kills is little more than grand-standing self-promotion by the Defenders of Wildlife (DOW), the group that funds the plan.  It is wholly inadequate to answer the problem, because it requires “confirmed kills,” often made nearly impossible by stringent requirements, remote country, scavengers, and decay.  Because confirmed kills are often less than ten percent of actual, ninety percent of  livestock kills won’t be covered by this program.  Its is also as short-term fix, intended to end when the wolf is removed from the ESA.  When the wolves reach more significant numbers and are more likely to cause livestock destruction, there will be no compensation.  It would appear the Defenders of Wildlife planned a program in which they have little to lose and a lot of promotion to gain for their agenda.  Hank Fischer, representative of DOW states:  “The purpose of the compensation program isn’t to make ranchers happy or gain their support╔the purpose of the program is to develop enough of a political and economic comfort level with the public so as to allow wolf recovery to proceed unimpeded.”  This has worked well for them, but how does it feel to be thought so simple-minded, so easily duped by your government, so completely separated from your tax dollars?
Other than being the poster-species that certain groups can use to further their anti-hunting and land control agendas, the wolf is no celebrity in this turmoil.  He may be promoted for tourists and photo ops, but there is a price.  First-hand witnesses report extraordinary inhumanity in tracking, relocating, and even killing the wolves.  In one report from Idaho, Unites States Fish and Wildlife Services (USFWS) personnel had to capture two wolves that had been killing calves in 1999.  For six days, several people chased the wolves by airplane, then helicopter, chasing the smaller of the two up a steep slope in deep snow, until he collapsed from exhaustion and went into shock before he was darted from the helicopter.  It took three hours for the team to retrieve him; by then, the pursuit, tranquilization, shock, snow, and resulting hypothermia had taken its toll.  When they finally recovered the wolf, biologists found its body temperature to be over ten degrees below normal.  A horrific smell emanating from the creature was identified by the game biologist as infections from the radio collar rubbing constantly on the animal’s neck (this diagnosis was made without checking, an indicator that this is normal).  You, the taxpayer, footed the bill for a week’s lodging and feeding for five or six SUFWS personnel, along with wages, vehicles, and hiring aircraft and pilots.  Despite “official reports” to the contrary, everyone who witnessed this debacle figured the tortured young wolf died.  The larger wolf, the one likely to be the offender in the livestock kills, was not collared, so he could not be tracked or captured.

Perhaps it is not “The Big Bad Wolf” we need to be most concerned about, but a “Big Brother” government out of control.  Through faulty laws such as the Endangered Species Act, our federal government, and certain environmental groups with which they are too closely involved, operate a bigger agenda designed to steal rights and property.  The wolf is just a pawn in this, and a loser, too.