Originally posted by Dave Bulla:
A little common sense will go a long way with this one.
Dave,
I agree with almost all of what you wrote, and especially your concluding line. Unfortunately, I tend to despair because I think there is little, if any, likelihood that common sense will be allowed into the discussion. There appear to be far too many zealots on each side - sort of like the rest of American public debate at the moment. I may be delusional but I think I remember a time when reasonable men could disagree, sometime vehemently, and still treat each other with respect. This time, however, doesn't seem to be it - if it ever existed.
I fully support wolf reintroduction. I also fully support the right of ranchers, etc. to be compensated for stock they wouldn't have lost had the reintroduction not been done. I also firmly believe that the people who determine what killed the livestock should err as much as is even reasonably honest, on the side of the ranchers, etc. Farming/ranching is a hell of a lot of work and generally seems to earn enough to stay just shy of complete poverty.
From what I've read and studied, not that I claim to be an expert, wolves generally don't kill more than they can eat, but that's only true if you see it from the wolf's perspective.
They'll kill far more than they need right at that moment, but will continue to come back to the kill, assuming they're not pressured by humans and their kill hasn't been taken by bears, to eat for several days. They will, of course, as will most dogs, happily eat meat that has decayed far beyond anything any human would touch - to them maggots are just more protein. But in the end, everything they kill will be eaten, if not by them, then by other animals, all the way down the chain to bacteria.
The Plains Indians did essentially the same thing - they killed far more buffalo, for example, than they needed at the time, but cured the meat and saved it so that at least most of them would not starve during the coming winter.
It's also been reported that the reintroduction has had a beneficial effect on the northern Wyoming pronghorn herd, mostly because they've controlled the coyote population that was over-killing the fawns to the point that too few of them matured and that by pushing the deer and elk so that they can't just stand at stream beds and eat all day they've been responsible for the resurgence of willows and several other plants along Yellowstone streams.
I also believe that as a matter of "rights" the wolves have as much right to the game as we do. We control our harvest with licenses, etc. - at least for those of us who don't poach - and to me poaching does not really include someone taking a deer, elk, etc. when the other choice is that his family will go hungry - it's the guys who don't need the meat, are going after out of seasons trophies and just generally don't give a damn about anything but themselves that I consider poachers.
Now, given that there's no way to get wolves to buy licenses, tag their kills, etc. their populations have to be controlled at least in part as a matter of giving the prey a fighting chance at maintaining healthy levels. I also believe that hunting is probably the best way to do that, because it will control the population to a reasonable extent, and reintroduce, where it's been lost, the wolves "normal" desire to avoid human contact.
Part of what seems to get in the way of any rational discussion is competing views of wolves - they're either nature's noblemen or the devil's dogs. In fact, they're neither. There is no moral component to a wolf. Discussion of good and evil are silly. They impute human concepts to animals that have no idea what they mean and wouldn't be interested if they did. They kill to eat, to teach their pups how to survive and to stay strong enough to continue to reproduce. When they can't do that anymore, they die - and not in some peaceful rest home for old retired wolves, they die either slowly and painfully of disease and starvation or of injuries when, for example, they get too slow to get out of the way of the elk hoof or whatever defense mechanism their prey has. Occasionally they get lucky are killed quickly. And, of course, the same is true of their prey.
Someone I read in Grays Sporting Journal once pointed out that compared to what wild animals face from nature and each other, even the best of us hunters is a minor nuisance in their lives.
Part of what we really need in this discussion is a realization that the Disney movies have made too many people think that animals are humans in furry suits.
I think we need two things. First, we need to get the imputed to animals morality out of the discussion and make management decisions based on what creates a reasonable balance between human needs and animal needs. Second, we need to get past the notion that because we can, we have the right to wipe out a whole species. We can't create them so in my opinion we don't have the right to eliminate them.
Thanks for listening/reading.
Topic: Wolves attack sheep in my bowhunting unit (Read 1293 times)
