Taking Wolves off the Endangered list in the US is a BAD move in my opinion!

Great Debates
1

This article outlines Idahoans who are going to vote on getting the re-introduced wolves off the endangered list so people can hunt them once again. There are an estimated 1200 wolves in the northern rockies with 46 breeding pairs. The Governor of Idaho C.L. “Butch” Otter says he wants to hunt the wolves down to 100 and that he wants to purchase the first tag to be able to hunt them.

So Butch, F-You and the friggin horse you most likely rode in on. Take your wild wild west attitude and grow some cerebral functioning! Killing off the wolves down to 100 so you can protect a few cattle is not going to solve anything but expanding your massive ego and killing off a population of a species you know nothing about.

In my opinion taking the wolves off the endangered species list will accomplish nothing, except for getting them back on it in a few years.

They do not decimate cattle herds or Elk herds, if anything they augment the health of a herd by weeding out the sick an injured animals. They’ve done it for millennia. Did they ever bring an elk population to extinction? Doubt it.

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… There a people that think this is a good idea?

sigh

3

First of all, consider me shocked to learn that it was even up to the people to do this; I thought a species’ inclusion on the endangered list was purely a matter of population size and not of public opinion. Furthermore, I don’t know how to read the numbers. I can’t tell if 1200 wolves in the northern Rockies is a lot or a little.

That said, I think wolf population is the key to whether they will be voted off or not here. If there are enough wolves destroying enough private property to cause enough people to want to take them off the protected list, then there are probably enough wolves in the area for this to be a good idea. If not, then people probably won’t care enough to remove the wolves’ protections, and it probably means that the wolves still need protecting.

In a general sense, I personally believe citizens should have every right to protect their property and themselves, even if they have to shoot pandas and California condors in the process. However, I’m fully behind restricting or forbidding the hunting of endangered (in the population size sense) species.

P.S. 100 does sound like a really small number, Butch. I guess wolves aren’t cute and cuddly like pandas and whatnot, so people don’t care about protecting them.

4

Its very little considering the millions of square miles we are probably talking about…and comparing it to the probably millions of cattle in that area (not to mention the millions of people there).

I asked a similar question to this in a related thread not to long ago. I would LOVE to see someone produce some good statistics as to how much damage these 1200 wolves are possibly causing in such a vast area. How many cattle are we really talking about here that can be directly attributed to wolves (rather than, say, misadventure, disease, etc)? Free ranging cattle after all, died all the time BEFORE they re-introduced wolves. I imagine that even if every wolf out there ate a cow a week that compared to the population of cattle in the region that this would be pretty much statistically insignificant…unless there are a hell of a lot less cows out there than I think there are.
I agreement with the OP if it wasn’t clear…this is really stupid.

-XT

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I’;ve been up in the region they are talking about. Anaconda Montana, Northern Idaho. Put it this way, a small ranch can have 10,000 head of cattle… A small ranch.

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That doesn’t add up. Even allowing that only the alpha male and alpha female in any given pack are allowed to breed, the average size of a pack is only six or seven wolves. Putting that figure at six for simplicity, 1200 wolves ~= 200 packs = 200 breeding pairs.

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That’s what I read in the article…

8

I don’t know enough about the situation to comment. It sounds as though nobody in this thread has enough knowledge to comment. And since nobody has any facts all opinions expressed are based entirely on emotion. Never a good thing.

One point I can comment on:

This is an extremely weak argument, and that’s putting it politely. Elk were not confined by fences, competed with by introduced grazing animals and otherwise placed under constraints by humans for millenia. Wolves were not given free food from human hers and human refuse dumps for millenia. The idea that what happened prior to 1900 is in any way indicative of what should be happening now is ridiculous.

As for the idea that wolves “augment the health of a herd”, I once again don’t know enough about the situation to comment, and in that I am in the same position as everyone else. What I can do is point out the problems that wolves are causing in Europe to try to highlight why such simplistic Walt Disney views of the “natural” world are often harmful if we don’t know the facts.

Wolves are regularly culled in Europe and have been for millenia. The primary reason for this for the past hundred years has not been to protect livestock but to protect populations of game animals. Wolves in Europe do not “augment the health of a herd by weeding out the sick an injured animals”. They exterminate herds of deer as well as game birds, pigs and other animals.

That might seem strange if we have a view that “they’ve done it for millennia”, but of course they haven’t done it for millenia. The problem is that for millenia wolf populations were regulated by game populations. When game populations became too low the wolve starved, allowing game to recover. Today we supplementally feed wolves. When deer populations decline wolves switch to sheep or cattle or garbage. That allows wolf numbers to remain high perpetually and continue to put pressure on game. If this continues unchecked for decades the wolves will cause the extinction of any and all local game species.

This is further exacerbated in Europe because herd animals are routinelly house dinside in winter, forcing a large, well nourished wolf population to turn to a struggling deer population as its only food source. The deer population is decimated in winter, the fawns are decimated in spring and then come summer the wolves supplement their diet with sheep. The next winter the situation is repeated… worse.

I have no idea if this sort of situation is occuring in the Rockies, but it’s entirely possible. We need to stop thinking about what wolves have done for millenia, it’s irrelevant. The only issue is what they are doing now. Since we don’t know what’s happening now we really ought to stop slinging insults at people with differing viewpoints and try listening to their arguments.

I don’t know why but for some reason many people, even on this board, seem to think that everyone has an intuititive and acurate view of ecology and conservation that doesn’t require any sort of eductaion or rational thought. It’s not true. Ecology isn’t simple. Wildlife management isn’t simple. What you believe happened for thousands of years is usually inaccurate and is almost always totally irrelevant to the real world today. Sometimes it is necessary to kill furry animals, including wolves. Sometimes the best way to achieve those culls is to declare an open season (ie remove all legal protection). You may not like it but those are the facts.

I repeat, I have no idea what the situation is in Idaho, but I do know enough, and I have enough experience, to know when people are constructing emotive arguments based on an idealistic Walt DIsney view of how the “natural” world operates.

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Well…I wouldn’t call the management plan you mentioned widespread and it’s not really comparable to what the folks in Idaho want to accomplish.

The only place I can find where hunting is allowed in northern or western Europe is northern Spain. It’s in eastern Europe that you find more actual game seasons ( or simply a lack of legal status at all ).

But Europe ( excluding Russia ) is unusual in the denseness of its population and its limited wildlands. I’m not sure it is really comparable. Romania has maybe the very approximate to twice the density of wolves ( depending on which numbers you use and comparing relative mountainous areas - Carpathians and Rockies, where both populations are concentrated ) and something like 15x the population density, yet they aren’t looking to cull the population to a tenth its size.

  • Tamerlane
10

I’m not sure what you mean by “not widespread”. AFAIK all wolf populations in Europe are controlled via human culls, in addition to which in western Europe any wolf killing livestock outside of very tightly defined areas will be relocated or killed. IOW to the best of my knolwdge the management plan I described is universal.

I never said European wolves were culled by commercial/recreational hunting. The fact they are culled by park rangers/EPA officers/veterinarians doesn’t make them any less dead.

Culling is almost always necessary for wolf populations in or adjacent to commercial land. Often the best way to achieve this cull is to allow commercial/recreational hunting. There is nothing intrinsically unsound about using hunting to generate capital for wildlife management and achieve population control at the same time. All those points are in apparent contradiction to the OP.

Of course it’s not geographically comparable. The point of comparison is that wolf populations do sometimes need to be managed or they have the potential to extreminate game populations. The precise nature of that control depends on a great many other factors. All participants in this thread are to date totally ignorant of these factors as they pertain to Idaho. I certainly am. As such we shouldn’t be making comments that people suggesting control measures should get fucked because wolves haven’t exterminated game aniamals for the last 10, 000 years.

That is my point.

When someone has some facts about the damage caused by wolves in Idaho and projections of sustainable elk numbers with increasing wolf populayions then we can start telling people to get fucked … maybe. Until then this is just an exercise voicing our ignorance.

Try this simple test:

How many wolves are sufficient for Idaho? How many are too many? How many are too few? How many are environmentally sustainable? How many are economically sustainable? Are the current numbers higher or lower than the sustainable numbers?

If we can’t answer all of those questions with reference to reputable scientific research then we have no place telling anyone to fuck off, much less saying that wolves don’t do any environmental damage.

Could that be because they have had an annual cull equivalent 1% of the population size for the past 90 years? And is such a regular small cull a better or worse option than a periodic massive cull? And why?

Again, I don’t now the answers to those, and I suspect that you don’t either. That’s the point. It’s hard to have a meaningful debate when nobady has any facts to hand. The facts we do have say that wolves do sometimes need to be culled and they do indeed sometimes exterminate prey species regardless of what may have happened 10, 00 years ago. The real debate here should be whether this is the case in Idaho and if so how the cull should be achieved.

Unfortunately so far the debate largely seems to be based on an assumption that wolves can’t exterminate prey species, do negligible economic damage and should not be culled, and certainly should never be culled by hunting. Yet no one has presented any actual facts either way in regard to those contentions. There is no debate to speak of. Just opinions.

11

The article gives 700 wolves in the state with 46 breeding pairs. 1200 is the number “in the region”. Numbers are still a little off, but perhaps being recently reintroduced skews the sex ratio or pack size somehow.

From here (probably not a impartial site, but the numbers sound belivable and they cite the USDA)

Also, out of curiousity:

Has there ever been a report of a wolf attacking a human in the US in recent times?

12

I couldn’t find any reference to voting in the OP’s article. I think it was just a town meeting type thing, without any actual ability to influence beyond lodging a protest vote.

Indeed, and if the reintroduction program is successful one would assume that culling would be necessary at some point. But decisions about ideal population size/need for culling/etc should be made by the federal FWS using scientific data, rather then paranoid locals who feel the need to carry guns to ward off non-existant wolf attacks and the governors with rudiculoulsy matcho nicknames that pander to them.

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Many. We had a recent GQ thread on exactly this topic. The short answer is that wolf attack on people are startlingly common in the US given the rarity of wolves. The old saw is that wolves haven’t killed anyone in the US, That doesn’t mean they haven’t attacked and injured numerous people.

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I agree. I’m not sure however if that is the case here. Do you have any evidence that the FWS has conducted such research, or what the findings were? Do you have evidence that locals are in fact paranoid? Do you have nay evidence that the wolf attacks are in fact non-existent. One local claims that his dog was attacked and wolves are certainly capable of attacking people. Any evidence that these attacks are non existent?

If what you say is true then I agree entirely. The decision should be made based on science and economics, not on an oversentimental view of nature and not on some paranoid delusion of the dangers posed by wolves. To temper that though, I have seen too many cases where nobody did the necessary surveys until after the locals started complaining or conducted unauthoirised culls, and the studies then confirmed that culls were required. I have also seen cases where nobody conducted studies until the organisations repsonsible were swamped with calls saying that the target species had locally vanished and needed protection.

The take home message being that this isn’t an exact science, and we shouldn’t be discounting these people just because they can’t afford to do the surveys themselves. They may be right (although they probablyt aren’t). Is anyone doing the surveys necessary to determine wolf densities and effects in their particular region? If so where can we find a copy?

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That’s because it is unwise to mess with Romanian wolves. :wink:

“Children of the night! Vhat music they make!”

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Interesting thread. It certainly proves that its not completely unknown (though I didn’t see any mention of an attack in the US in the cites in that thread), but it also seems to support that its extremely rare (and one cite that says there is a total of 12 documented cases of attacks in N America in the last hundred years). Mike Keithly (from the OPs article) can probably put down his gun when going down the road to the convience store, anyways.

No absolute proof, but between my cite above and the thread you linked to, I’m convinced that attacks against livestock are very rare and against people vanishingly so. But again, I admit those cites aren’t perfect, so perhaps wolves in Idaho have suddenly developed a much greater taste for cows and humans for some reason.

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You should follow Colibri’s link to a fatal attack in the US. The you can read Charlie Tan’s post and follow up the references. Wolves certainly do attack people in the US fairly regularly. At least one documented attack cauisng injuries every decade and more attacks that are fended off or don’t cause serious injuries.

Depends if he has his dog with him I guess.

Well it’s certainly not impossible but I wouldnt; credit it without evidence. It’s also possible that they are decimating Moose numbers even if livestock predtaion isn’t common. Livestock carcasees and town refuse are all sufficent to maintain unsustainable wolf populations.

Point being that once again we have no facts.

18

Wolf attacks, though on the increase, are still rare. There have been only twenty- seven documented cases of wolf attacks in North America. There has been one documented fatality in N.A. in the wild and that was in Canada.

Cite

What is commonplace is wolf hybrid attacks.
__

“We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be – the mythological epitome of a savage, ruthless killer – which is, in reality, no more than the reflected image of ourself.” – Farely Mowat, scientist, naturalist and author

19

I was under the impression that it was already legal for ranchers to kill wolves preying on their stock, so long as it occurs on private property. I also expect that attacks by domestic dogs cause way more injuries in Idaho than wolf attacks, yet I doubt the Governor will be demanding that the number of dogs in Idaho be culled to 100. He’s probably struggling with unresolved childhood trauma from being named “Otter.”

It may be that some Idahoovians are overreacting slightly; it’s been a long winter, and there’s no longer the imminent threat of Communist invasion to occupy one’s thoughts and focus the mind.

I also recommend that Gov. Otter’s nickname be culled immediately, and replaced with the nickname “Fluffy.” He can only have his old nickname back if he leaves the wolves alone.

20

Yep.
Cite:

For the record, and from the same article:

I just hate the thought of getting recreational wolf hunting started in this country again. To me it’s like hunting horses or dogs – even though wolves are never domesticated.