Wolf Working Group
Review Draft
Alternative 2. Revised Preferred Alternative
Draft Wolf Conservation and Management Plan
For Washington
by JIM BEERS
This is nothing more than a sub-document of the USFWS wolf program. The charge is stated succinctly that “no wolves, is not a viable option”.
The state agency will “promote the public’s coexistence with the species” (i.e. wolves). There is repeated platitudinous nonsense (Note “nonsense” is not a cheap shot, consider the word –“non” “sense”) such as:
- “Minimize livestock losses” (i.e. to wolves) “while at the same time not negatively impacting wolves”.
- Establish wolves while maintaining an “ample harvest” of ungulates (i.e. big game).
Although the “PLAN” is 295 pages long, everything after p. 133 is bureaucratic “wadding” like “Goals”, Funding Priorities”, “Economic Analysis”, and “Literature”. All of these are based on the specious assertions in the first 133 pages. Goals are merely a too-long list of things to be used for future budget requests. Funding Priorities are nothing more than rehashed goals that can be rearranged when useful for obtaining state funding, federal funding, or “private” (i.e. Defenders of Wildlife, Ted Turner, etc.) funding. Literature is a 30 page ad nauseam list of everything written in the past century, but it is all fluff since they mention 2 books by Young on Wolves of North America but they don’t mention his references to human attacks where appropriate in the PLAN.
The work group that made up this report is an amalgam of the “usual suspects” from Mech and Bangs and Niemeyer and Jimenez of USFWS to Simes of Montana, Morgan of Oregon, and Wydeven of Wisconsin. Along with the expected Washington participants there was at least one USFWS Administrator whose affiliation was unidentified. The point here being that with only one exception the working group and reviewers are the very same state, federal, and radical NGO representatives responsible for and Kamikaze pilots for wolves nationwide. What can you expect?
The PLAN is laced with numbers. Numbers of wolves present, numbers of wolves in this region and in that region, numbers expected in X years, number of dogs to be killed by wolves, expected livestock losses, numbers of big game left after wolves, and even the number of big game whose health and reproductive ability (old ones left like me) will be “improved” by all those young ungulates killed by wolves. It is all c-r-a-p. Counting wolves is not a science, it is a very expensive art that isn’t worth spit but when babbled by a bureaucrat in court carries the weight of Einstein commenting on the space/time continuum. Ask anyone that hunts big game in Montana or Idaho what the state and federal “biologists” forecast and then what has happened. One of the tables in the PLAN shows the nonsense dressed up in tables and charts. A forecast about what different dog killing would occur in a given “habitat” with different wolf densities went like this:
Wolf densities: 50 100 200 300
Dogs killed/yr.: 1-2 2 2-3 1-4
“Go to sleep now boys and girls and I will read another fairy tale tomorrow night.”
Elk decimated by wolves in the Northern Yellowstone herd were merely a crash due to a herd held “artificially high”. Elk that disappeared in the Gallatin herd simply “dispersed” (where to and why didn’t the wolves follow them?) Elk calf survival is “not affected” by wolves.
There is all manner of nonsense about how wolves “reduce” elk and moose herds (only certain elk evidently since they don’t reduce whole herds like the N Yellowstone or the Gallatin) to the great benefit of certain plants (ooohhh!, even though this is farce). Then somehow miraculously beaver increase due to wolves and suddenly bird habitat for neotropical birds explodes and voila, the din of rare birdcalls becomes a cacophony! (Right.)
There are many charts about “reported” kills of livestock and big game versus the “confirmed” losses to wolves. Fortunately the herd of “group workers”, “commenters”, “reviewers”, and “contributors” that wrote this PLAN is packed with the very government workers and radical animal rights workers that made the judgments on which few kills were caused by wolves and how all the rest (many times more than those confirmed) were due to “unknown” causes or somebodies Rottweiler.
“Human Safety” and “Disease” are not mentioned until pages 120 to 126. Humans have nothing to worry about unless they misbehave and don’t “puff up” or they “look away” or “turn and run”: other than that, no to worry. Although they cite several books in the Literature that clearly belie this very dangerous lie, here is what is reported from just one about this area (Northwest US) where the wolves are all tame and one would expect that “all the children are above average”. Young and Goldman report in Wolves of North America five wolf attacks in what was then the Oregon Territory:
1812 Ross Cox encounters a wolf near Walla Walla that blocks his way and howls while feinting an attack but then leaves.
1813 An Indian widow narrowly saves her two babies nearly taken by wolves.
1835 John K Townsend is attacked by wolves near Fort Vancouver.
1840 Elizabeth White is treed by wolves then saved by relatives in the Willamette Valley.
1920 Webster reports the treeing by wolves of Charles Morgenweth near Port Angeles Washington.
Worldwide wolf attack history in the PLAN is a cleansed account of a falsely benign nature of wolves as European and Asian history is carefully distorted. Human attacks by wolves that kill hundreds in recent history are glossed over and the documented carnage periodically due to diseases like rabies or bad winters or the need for meat for pups is not mentioned.
Diseases such as rabies, hydatid disease, and distemper are only mentioned as not limiting the health of wolves. There is no attention given to the human health hazards or threats to pets and livestock from rabid wolves or wolves carrying brucellosis, 13 flea and tick diseases, Neospora caninum, hydatid disease, foot-and-mouth, Mad Cow, anthrax, distemper, or Chronic Wasting Disease. Humans, as is apparent in more and more such government documents these days are simply other “equal organisms” that government agencies will convince (one way or the other) to “coexist” with wolves whether they, i.e. the rural public to be thus saddled, like it or not.
There are pages of “science” propaganda about “trophic cascades” and “apex predators” meant to baffle judges and make rural bumpkins feel inferior. There is continual stress about how wolves everywhere else and now in Washington inhabit “federal” and “state” lands and are therefore somehow immune to objections from disappearing rural inhabitant of “private property” most of which is under easement or will be soon. Tribal lands are mentioned as well to further show the futility of any objections from the dwindling “private sector’ European settler offspring. There is even a fascinating bit about how all this fits into some Progressive state program of “Connected Landscapes” that must be Washington state’s bid to pander to the UN Agenda 21 or US “Wildlands”, “Treasured Landscapes”, et al funding source.
Furthering this “you better sit down and shut up” theme is the frequent mention of how 75% of Washingtonians want wolves and ONLY 17% are opposed. Interestingly, 54% of Washingtonians report they “would travel” to hear wolves while only 2% felt “they wouldn’t need to. Further skewing this BLUE v. RED confrontation 45% of Washingtonians want wolf damage compensation to be paid from “hunting license revenue” and 40 % want it paid from “tax revenue”. This suggested use of hunting license revenue is simply one more nail in the coffin of hunting being driven in by these state and federal bureaucrats on behalf of their radical supporters from Defenders of Wildlife and HSUS to CBD and NRDC but no one wants it even mentioned. Again, what we have here is a state microcosm of what the federal government has spawned. By encouraging unaffected majorities - like Chicago in Illinois, Boston in Massachusetts, Portland and Eugene in Oregon, LA & San Francisco in California, NYC in New York and nationally all of these BLUE urban enclaves; to believe it is American or Constitutional to endanger human lives and destroy rural economies and traditions TO HEAR a wolf howl maybe, someday: this should be totally abhorrent to all Americans. Wolves do not belong in nor should they ever be considered for introduction into any COUNTY that does not want them. States were conceived to protect this right and the federal government was conceived to protect the existence of the states to nourish the local rights of all Americans. What we are witnessing here with federal wolf programs, federal power, and supine state pandering is the exact OPPOSITE of the principles on which this country’s founding was based.
Washington is bound to follow what is happening in the Upper Rockies’ and the Great Lakes’ states. Big game hunting will dwindle, cattle will die, ranching costs will make ranching prohibitively costly and dogs (hunting, watch, working, pets, etc.) will die. People will be bitten and some will die. Diseases will increase but vets, biologists and pathologists will both deny and ignore the role played by wolves. Children and the aged will be prime targets of wolves and things like going to far off mailboxes and taking out garbage at night will cause stress and fear. Children will no longer play alone or camp or fish by themselves. We will remember old tales pooh-poohed by wolf experts, as we hear winter wolves howl near our homes or trot down the road our kids walk to and from the school bus stop. Bird hunting with dogs like bear hunting or cougar hunting with dogs will disappear as will the dogs themselves and the men that knew how to train and use them when other people are killed. Rural peace, domestic tranquility, and economic growth along with land values will decline.
There is constant and repeated mention in the PLAN about how funding is “vital” and “if funding is available”. No kidding. Then there is the reference to “partnerships” with “state, federal, and private partners” that should send chills down everyone’s spines. The radicals run the federal agencies today and the federal agencies run the state F&W agencies. Consider money. Is Washington or any state financially able to assume and maintain wolf compensation payments, wolf “censuses”, wolf enforcement, wolf research, wolf “coexistence” training of bumpkins, wolf management, wolf education, wolf control, etc., etc. in today’s fiscal climate? With no revenue from wolves? With mounting and escalating wolf damages and complaints? When the first girl or old lady is killed? When the tax loss from crumbling rural tax bases is no longer deniable? What are these people, and all of us for that matter, smoking? Just as nationally as all this comes home to roost and we see how it is really destroying culture traditions and tax revenue – it will be too late. Arguments about how the wolves “belong” or how “they were here first” or how trapping is “cruel” and denning is “inhumane” (interesting how this word “in’ “humane” is used with animals isn’t it?) will delay things even longer as we go for each other’s throats over what these wolves are doing.
Finally, the PLAN mentions how wolves were “extirpated”. There are no truthful modifiers like “purposely” or “with justification” or “with good reason”: no just “extirpated”. Don’t fool yourself that men and women 100 to 200 years ago went through all that work and spent all that time while they were on the verge of death to kill off the wolves. Don’t look down on Europeans and Russians that think we are nuts for putting wolves purposely where they had been exterminated: because they are right. Mark my words that sometime in the not too distant future wise men and women will read this PLAN and remark, “what were they thinking?” Reading this PLAN was like wondering WHY Hitler invaded the Soviet Union and why Stalin invaded Poland and why they were fighting; and being handed a War Plan by a “group” of generals that says “Invade, that is an order” and the Generals sharing their Invasion “PLAN”. While interesting, it tells you nothing except that bad orders given to those that seek to profit from them, always result in bad ends.
Jim Beers
6 June 2011
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This article and other articles written by Jim Beers since January 2009 can
be found at http://jimbeers7.blogster.com (Jim Beers Uncommon Sense)
Articles by Jim Beers written from March 2006 to January 2009 can be found
at http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)
Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.
Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting at jimbeers7@comcast.net