by Jim Beers
The legal authority for this wolf invasion (again the correct word) is The Endangered Species Act. The two subjects of this Act (i.e. “Endangered” and “Species) no more apply to wolves in fact than they apply to Norway rats or domestic cows.
Wolves (like Norway rats) are circumpolar and ubiquitous throughout Asia, Alaska and most of Canada. Wolves also occur in Northern Africa and are currently infesting Europe under a protection and spreading regime imposed by European Union politicians and bureaucrats using tyrannical methods much like those employed in the United States. Labeling them as “Endangered” is a cruel and profane joke.
Wolves (like domestic cows) are merely one breed or race of a larger true “species”. Wolves, again like domestic cows, breed with and produce fertile offspring with coyotes, domestic dogs, jackals (Africa) and dingoes (Australia). Offspring of such cross-breeding, again like domestic cows, display characteristics of each parent and will transmit the blended characteristics (from physical characteristics to behavioral traits) to their subsequent offspring. To expand the classification biology of this animal to a “Species” as “Species” has been historically defined (i.e. a unique animal group capable of producing fertile offspring) or as “Species” was defined or intended in an ESA that would “save” bald eagles and elephants is a travesty.
To further, as has been done, “spin” traditional classification biology of wolves (“gray” ones here,” timber” ones there, “coastal” ones like this,” desert” ones like that, etc.) into “Red” populations, “Mexican” populations, etc. was little more than a ploy using contrived “science” to justify federal programs to forcibly introduce “endangered” wolf “species” in every state based on baseless “historic” wolf numbers and distributions. (NOTE: Although federal “wolf experts” say what wolf belongs where because it is “native” to that state: when it came time to put wolves in Yellowstone Park the “experts” went to Alberta and the Yukon for wolves. Evidently what is good for the goose –i.e. the states- is not necessarily good for the gander, i.e. the feds.)
That paid “scientists” assert that once (100 years ago?, 250 years ago?, amidst an undeveloped land mass?, among primitive societies?) X numbers of wolves existed here and there and therefore must be “restored” elevates a travesty to high dudgeon. To further complicate this essentially straightforward circumpolar animal into artificial “subspecies”, “races”, and “breeds”; in order to “define “populations”; in order to invent population “segments”; so that you might claim something called a “DISTINCT” “population segment” in order to completely baffle the public and courts as you seize state authorities is on a par with French phrenology (skull measurements that reveal “smartness and criminal tendencies) and German Racial Classifications that define Slavs, Jews, Aryans, etc. That is to say complete bunk.
All that said, this is not about classification baloney, excuse me “science”. This is about Ebola and bats in Africa.
The November 2012 Smithsonian magazine has a fascinating article titled The Hunt for Ebola (in Uganda). Long story short: Ebola emerged in 1976 in Zaire in Central Africa. It is a highly contagious and lethal disease that has killed at least one thousand Africans since that time. Several outbreaks since then in Sudan and Uganda have enabled doctors from Europe and the US to work with local governments to develop protocols to contain outbreaks and spread of the disease but the source of the outbreaks has proven elusive. The US Centers for Disease Control has worked for years and spent millions to identify the source of the outbreaks.
What they found is that Ebola is a Virus that infects human cells. The Virus is widely distributed in Ethiopian epauletted fruit bats that often reside in African dwellings. These bats are referred to as “viral reservoirs” (passive carriers of pathogenic organisms that occasionally leap into human beings). The virus can be transmitted in bites or in urine or in feces or even in saliva. During the course of these ongoing investigations a similar deadly viral disease (called a “sister virus”), Marburg bleeding fever, that similarly resides in Egyptian fruit bats was investigated. Both diseases can be transmitted by bats to other animals (like monkeys) that are termed “amplification hosts” and that in turn can also infect humans by a wide variety of means down to simple contact with their infected tissue.
In summary, after years of research there is still no vaccine and the investigators have identified two species of bats as “viral reservoirs” repeatedly infecting humans that die from the disease, in as yet undetermined ways. The investigators express a concern that when they find “how” the virus is transmitted, “Some people here might say, ‘Let’s kill them all’ but that would be destroying a valuable ecological resource. Our aim is to mitigate the interaction”.
Wow, read that last sentence again. “Some people HERE”? Like wolves and their effects HERE in the Lower 48 States, these visitors, these folks from elsewhere, know what’s best for the people “HERE”. Frankly, if I were someone living with these bats; my home, my children’s play area and school, my workplace, and my wife’s home range would be and would remain bat-free henceforth regardless of their “valuable ecological resource” value to those living elsewhere.
Ah, but what about wolves? Wolves were eradicated (by those folks that lived “HERE” where wolves lived) for over 50 years from the Lower 48 States for very good reason. Small remnant populations and the occasional wandering wolf from Canada persisted with state acquiescence in northern States like Minnesota, Montana, Idaho and Washington. All of the wolves in the Lower 48 States today are federal wolves; introduced, protected, and spread by federal force. Thus we are neither remiss nor unfair to say that the federal government is RESPONSIBLE for what the wolves do.
The federal government is responsible for the cattle that wolves kill.
The federal government is responsible for the dogs that wolves kill.
The federal government is responsible for the loss of hunting opportunity, game animals and hunting revenue due to wolf predation on big game.
The federal government is responsible for any injuries or deaths caused by wolves.
The federal government is responsible for the increased dangers and loss of safety in rural living caused by wolves in yards or at school bus stops, etc.
The federal government is responsible for the economic losses in rural economies (animal husbandry cost increases, real estate losses due to safety concerns, etc. caused by wolves.
The federal government is responsible for the loss of freedom for rural children that can no longer camp, fish, hike, hunt, or even play with their dog alone where wolves are present.
Now the above are horrid effects of wolves that the federal government laughingly ignores because:
1. No one will or does hold them accountable. This is an extreme injustice in an increasingly unjust nation.
2. They are Political Ends that were intended all along. The bureaucrats, politicians and radicals responsible for this wolf travesty always desired and intended:
A. That hunting be eliminated.
B. That ranchers be run out of business.
C. That growing swaths of rural America come under federal ownership or easement control.
D. That Local Governments be eliminated.
E. That State governments and State bureaucrats become simple extensions (like contractors) of federal diktats.
F. That legal precedents be established for subsequent federal spread of harmful animals to expand federal land control as with free-roaming buffalo, grizzly bears, uncontrolled black bears and cougars, and even harmful exotic animals allowed to be legally imported by federal wildlife bureaucrats like pythons and Asian carp.
But there is one enormous effect of wolves that the federal government ignored and denies whenever it is mentioned. This effect has the potential to surpass all of the above combined. This effect is one that no one can explain because nothing is “proven” by the few “scientists” that might hazard an opinion. This effect requires scientific research (that should have been conducted before the first wolf was ever left out of its’ cage). This effect is the transmission and spread of deadly diseases and infections that affect humans, domestic animals, and other wildlife.
Consider, wolves:
- Host (in their bodies, on their fur, and in the ticks they carry) many diseases caused by bacteria, viruses and prions (deformed proteins) as well as tapeworms and their eggs.
- Eat and mouth guts, brains, bone marrow, organs, and body fluids of the domestic and wild animals they kill. Injured, sick, or dead animals or humans are also fair game and food when encountered by wolves.
- Visit human residences, towns, garbage areas, etc. as they utilize paths and roads of all sorts as they wander, especially at night.
- Leave saliva on things they pick up, sneeze, bleed, urinate, and leave feces in yards, by buildings, on paths and other areas frequented by dogs (leashed and unleashed), kids, and adults.
- When killing deer, elk or moose tend to frequent one such area after another as they pick up and carry diseases from one game area to another. The same applies to wolves killing domestic animals like cattle and sheep wherein pastures and like areas are frequented and any exposure to livestock diseases is carried to other livestock areas.
- Far more than any other wildlife from coyotes and bears to skunks and raccoons, travel over vast areas routinely as they forage for food. From one day to the next they can move miles unlike big game animals or other wildlife. Thus wolf exposure to diseases is far greater and the areas they might contaminate are vaster by far.
- Carry, sluff, and pick up a much greater number and diversity of ticks as they move about thereby increasing their exposure to tick-borne diseases and mixing tick populations and diseases to a greater degree.
- Like bats, move, sleep, and feed in groups such that what one is infected with, others likely pick up.
- Do not lend themselves to mandatory, quick, lethal controls in areas of disease outbreaks from rabies and foot-and-mouth to Mad cow and Brucellosis. While more local animals can be poisoned and shot to contain the spread of infections, a pack of wolves or a lone wolf moving through a pasture infected with anthrax or a deer winter yard infected with Chronic Wasting Disease at 2 in the morning and then four miles away by sunup is unlikely to be traced as the disease or infection is transmitted.
Here is a list of what unvaccinated dogs and wolves are known to carry and transmit. It is not as comprehensive as might be found in the research files (were they to exist) of honest researchers concerned about human health, human safety, livestock industry, hunting, game populations, dogs of all stripes, rural economies, rural families, private property, and limited government. Frankly, such “researchers do not currently exist.
1.PRION-CAUSED diseases carried by wolves, remembering that prions can exist for weeks on grass or on boots or on carpets or on fur or between toes as well as in bodies where they can re-infect other animals:
Mad Cow Disease
Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (the deadly human form of Mad Cow)
- Associated PRION-caused human diseases like Type II Diabetes, Artherosclerosis, Cataracts, Cystic Fibrosis, a type of Emphysema, Dementia, Alzheimers, and others.
Chronic Wasting Disease
2.BACTERIA-CAUSED diseases carried by wolves and/or the ticks they carry:
Bubonic Plague
Anthrax (A Bio Warfare agent)
Brucellosis
Undulant Fever (the human variant of Brucellosis and Bio Warfare agent)
Lyme Disease
Typhus
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
Relapsing Fever
Erlichia
Anaplasmosis
Babesiosis
Tick Paralysis
Dermatosis
3.VIRAL-CAUSED diseases carried by wolves:
Foot (Hoof)-and-Mouth
Rabies (55K die annually from this worldwide)
Distemper
Parvo
Encephalitis
4.TAPEWORM DISEASES (deadly and debilitating) that wolves carry:
Echinococcus granulosis
Echinococcus multilocularis
Neospora caninum (causes abortions)
GID or Sturdy that infects brains
5.MITE-CAUSED diseases carried by wolves:
Three kinds of mange or scabies.
This short list, composed by a retired wildlife biologist, is certainly incomplete yet it contains 28 separate diseases and infections. Most of these affect humans and all can infect domestic dogs that; like work boots, dogs or other objects can bring Prions, Bacteria, and Viruses into homes where children will be exposed to infected carpets, dog tongues and other things, much like the mysterious ways that Africans “get” Ebola from bats. – Only there won’t be any US CDC spending millions to figure out where the infection came from or how the kid or grandma came down with it before dying.
Even if someone did figure it out, just like the Ebola researchers, the US investigators would think first of the “valuable ecological resource”, i.e. wolves and how to avoid any contact in the future. Only just like “Fladry”, “Noisemakers”, “recordings”, night watchmen, and moving the remaining people elsewhere by totally destroying their communities; nothing short of the way our wise forefathers “managed” wolves will ever work. They might even, out of respect for Gaia (the Nature God they are being taught to worship), ignore the evidence and look elsewhere (more career-compatible) for the source.
You see, wolf “science” was and is tailored to achieve political ends and Americans that get in the way are just as expendable as those Africans that have the misfortune to live where bats infected with Ebola call home!
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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. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net