Gray Wolves to Be Removed from Endangered Species List
npr.org
npr.org
Apex predator reintroduction is a good litmus test for how much conservation we can stomach, so I think it's important that we get this right.
Not saying the policy will ever be correct, but this is why you introduce thresholds, limitations, and requirements. For instance, using donkeys in the pasture to combat predators should be required. Promote smart farming, not just a pocketbook.
Great Pyrenees dogs are amazing defenders as well. I've seen those put the brakes on some prowling coyotes and put a chase on them so hard that they defy physics to get over a fence. Exceptionally friendly to humans, and other dogs, outside their pastures. One of the good boys used to visit for pets and treats. :)
Presumably this is a joke?
Rasmussen has the highest right leaning bias of any major pollster accounted for in Five Thirty Eight's pollster ratings:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/pollster-ratings/
Beyond their biased election polls the site seems tailor made to provide links presenting cheap talking points as majority percentages. I won't bother linking anything else on their website.
And given my own biases, I'm not surprised about the results. The Works Progress Administration built a lot of infrastructure we still depend on today with unemployed people. Until we get to the point where all our roads, bridges, airports, etc are looking as good as the ones you find in other parts of the world, underpaying healthy people to run asphalt machines for 20 hours a week (or whatever), or provide childcare, gives us a return on the basic societal need to keep people from starving.
Why is it weird for someone to resent regulatory conditions that necessitate dependence on a handout?
Then isn't is obvious that people with a political philosophy of limited government would demand a higher payout to abandon the idea of limited government? And that people who favor government involvement would go along with government involvement even if they end up footing the bill?
It's the specific phrase and label of wealth redistribution/socialism that the US is allergic to the policies are generally individually pretty popular if they're broad based.
I mean, if it makes it more palatable it's probably worth it to pay farmers... but I viscerally dislike the idea that any industry has the right to:
1. Destroy the environment for their convenience
2. Be indemnified by the government for their inability to run an environmentally compatible business
Wolves remove wild grazers increasing the amount of pasture available for cattle. Wolves clean scabies in deer, lyme disease, and bovine tuberculosis in wild boars that would otherwise end in the cattle or the farmer. Wolves reduce the coyotes population. Reduce the car accidents against deer crossing the road. Wolves protect trees and allow forests to grow. Without mention that wolves provide huge and easily measurable economical benefits to tourism.
Maybe you didn't search enough
https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/doSearch?...
The argument would go: the government does not want the rancher to actually protect his cattle because that would involve shooting the wolves. That's why the wolves on the list in the first place.
If don't want cattle put in a barn all day, then you get cattle out in the fields.
So you have a group with common interests who are ready to act as an obstruction to the greater social good because it's going to financially harm them. You _can_ tell them to shove it, but that has political consequences and might backfire and undo your whole conservation effort. Or you can help them out financially while they transition to doing business in this new normal where wolves still get to exist.
Departments of game and wildlife tried to address this by issuing more hunting permits for whitetail. Didn't work. There are only so many hunters, and they hunt all they can. More permits doesn't do anything for them when the population is booming. They're not hunting anything that exists, they're looking for trophies at this point, and taking the best of the gene pool. A group of vehicle insurance companies were organizing events, leasing hunting land, and paying bounties in a couple counties due to the rampant whitetail population.
Wolves were reintroduced there to much benefit making for a healthy population of whitetail. Also, because the whitetail overpopulation has been curtailed, game law violations dropped in that rural part of the world. It takes a dedicated hunter to actually 'hunt', but attracts any idiot with a rifle when game in an area is rampantly overpopulated.
"Leopard suspected of eating 15 people in Nepal" https://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/03/world/asia/nepal-leopard-...
To put the farmer's perspective another way:
Everyone has a right to self-defense if you are being harmed. But imagine if the government says "actually, if the person harming you has blonde hair, then you can't defend yourself because we are protecting people with blonde hair right now. But don't worry we will make it worth your while if you just let the blonde person hurt you."
I know this sounds like a crazy example, but if you have ever spent time around farmers who deal with this issue, it feels exactly as crazy to them.
Empty slogans like "Build the fence" only work for politicians and activists.
Second, it hardly "destroys the environment for their convenience". Where I live the cattle graze down the grasses and prevent fires from spreading. In return, they leave manure which is super useful as a natural fertilizer for gardens and such.
Third, ranching is about food security. The areas where cattle are grazed are typically not much good for food crops, and it's a far more humane way to keep cattle. They got to roam around some pretty vast tracts of land, and you have a really healthy source of locally-sourced protein.
Finally, cattle are property. The idea that you shouldn't be allowed to protect your property is nutty. There are plenty of other wild animals for wolves to prey on, and there's no good ecosystem argument for why they should be permitted to slaughter cattle willy-nilly. Allowing ranchers to shoot wolves threatening their cattle would result in surviving wolves being much more reticent about going after cattle in the first place.
See: why bears and cougars rarely attack humans, even though their populations are healthy enough to be on the "hunt all year round" list for property owners in many areas.
Cows with calfs can join together and be defensive and pretty letal also if upset. If there is a bull protecting the whole herd wolves had nothing to do.
Wolves are a problem for sheep and goats, but will be need to be really desperate for attacking a group of healthy cows. The races of cows able to pass months alone in the mountain are perfectly able to hold their ground against a wolf.
People that claims to lose 600 sheep, year after year, (this guys have really bad, bad luck) are receiving 24.000 euros/year for the privilege of doing -nothing- to protect their assets. Why? Is the meat free?
Is: "pay me a ransom of 2 million euro each year... or I could start killing a protected species... or burning the forest, or burning your house, maybe your family also". Everybody giving money to a few people so they agree to respect the law is an interesting concept for sure. Is plain mobster blackmail. Each country that tried to appease criminals with money has deeply regretted it in the end.
We don't cover hotels by their loses when jellyfishes appear in a beach. Should we?
https://www.humanesociety.org/sites/default/files/docs/HSUS-...
I’ve also seen it said that wolf populations do two positive things for livestock: keep grazing wildlife to manageable levels (so that fields are replenished for livestock) and outcompete coyotes, who are more likely to prey on livestock than wolves.
Ah ha. A HN thread close to home (I live within earshot of wolves in Montana). So...we do [1], [2]. Ranchers (generalizing, of course) just don't like wolves. It's a really deep cultural thing. So if you as president want to take some step that will cause a bunch of folks in ranching areas to high five, you'd delist wolves. That they may not in fact be impacted by wolf activity is moot.
[1] https://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/montana-makes...
[2] http://liv.mt.gov/Attached-Agency-Boards/Livestock-Loss-Boar...
More sheep are taken by wolverines, lynx and bears yet the ranches are still keen on full extermination of the wolf population.
That the wolves, themselves, now have a deep-set fear of humanity and would only dare to do so if they're desperate and starving... is a distant second to that same deep-set cultural fear of wolves.
Unpopular Opinion Time: The ecosystem damage from not having apex predators is large enough that it might be worth a few human lives to avoid.
Unpopular Opinion Time the Second: But there are other apex predators, such as the lynx, which can take much the same role without being nearly as dangerous to megafauna like humans.
Though that's only a decent solution if you don't have problems with megafauna like elk.
The wolves didn't make any difference to the deer population.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/scientists-debun...
It still amazes me how often people think that biologists are stupid
Wolves return to Yellowstone has being ruminated, and I say ruminated, by scientists for 70 long years
All the possible results were examinated, there were lots of reports evaluating the project and all the benefits and cons were studied for decades, by lots and lots of well trained people. The effect of wolf in environment and its role as key species is described in conferences monographs and books.
Teams of scientists studied the populations of each single big mammal and bird in Yellowstone, before and after wolves. You can find their conclusions in the libraries of all universities specialized in ecology and animal management.
The results were even better than expected, but this was a big success because it was based in a entire life of previous hard work.
We talk about reviewed, easily verifiable and painfully verified facts, not about a pulp novel written on a weekend or somebody tossing a coin. Do you really think that somebody could just upload a fakebook video linking to a fake scientific article in this field without being detected and disclosed immediately?
I had some critics or a different opinion != widely disputed;
holy moly fakebook video != science;
You have found an internet link != I must read it ASAP;
Yellowstone: How Not To Manage A National Park https://kottke.org/15/01/yellowstone-how-not-to-manage-a-nat...
"By 1934, the Park Service acknowledged that whitetail deer, cougar, lynx, wolf, and possibly wolverine and fisher are gone from the Yellowstone.
What they didn’t say was that the Park Service was solely responsible for the disappearances."
It's very rare but it happens.
One guy was dragged out of his tent by a wolf while camping with his two kids and wife. That's extremely rare.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/wolf-attack-rampart-c...
There are also hunters that go missing in areas where there aren't known to be other predators. Some of those cases might be wolves.
There are also cases where we find the remains of a hunter surrounded by dead wolves that he'd shot in a savage fight to the death that he lost.
Again, it's rare. The most dangerous large mammal apart from us in North America is deer, because of people killed hitting them in cars or swerving to avoid them. More wolves might improve that.
"The first fatal attack in the 21st century occurred on November 8, 2005, when a young man was killed by wolves that had been habituated to people in Points North Landing, Saskatchewan, Canada[46] while on March 8, 2010, a young woman was killed while jogging near Chignik, Alaska."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks_in_Nort...
We might be afraid of them but that fear isn’t grounded in reality.
Well...I live in a place where we have (in my back yard, except for Bison) all the megafauna present since the ice age. In order of practical danger (most to least), they rank like this: Moose, Bear, Cougar, Snakes, ... Wolves. People are regularly attacked by Moose and fatalities have occurred in the past few decades. People are eaten by bears every few years and injured by bears annually. Cougars present a real danger but they're pretty wary of humans so attacks are more a theoretical risk we hear about from reports concerning mountain bikers in Los Angeles. I never heard of anyone being attacked by a wolf nor anyone being concerned about being attacked by a wolf. Same for Coyotes and Foxes.
I don't hear people suggesting that Moose be killed on sight.
Virtually every adult killed by snakes in America was asking for it. Rattlesnakes sure as shit know they can't eat humans and would never attempt it. They are named for the mechanism they use to scare us away and bite when that fails. A huge number of rattlesnake bites are to the face or hands because it happens when some moron ignores the rattle and picks up the snake.
Wolves, unlike rattlesnakes do sometimes deliberately attack humans with 'malicious' intent. Rattlesnakes never do.
They will often strike without warning. It’s important to pay attention where you put your hands and feet when you’re in rattlesnake country.
In the past 20 years in America, 30 men have been killed by snakes, vs 6 women. Dudes trying to be macho by fucking with snakes explains most of this gap; many of them were bitten on the hands and the circumstances of many of the cases make it pretty clear the snake was being fucked with. Only a handful of incidents were likely genuine accidents.
I was bitten on the ankle as a teenager (luckily as you said, it didn't use venom), at the time I was pretty surprised it was silent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_animals...
(The Holocene is the period after the glaciers last receded)
They're usually more specialized than wolves, especially in terms of prey, and so the populations of species they don't prey upon are left unchecked.
I don't know how that would work with the existence of dogs though, so maybe not.
Spain has 2000.
-Wolves won't go extinct anytime soon.
-There's no reason to think farmers would pick another "enemy" if they would.
-Livestock is actually important to farmers. No hidden agenda.
Some things money can't buy.
Even if I get good money as compensation, I'd resent it, and much prefer to have my possessions left in peace.
Weird thing to play with a bunny and eat it couple of months later. First lessons in the circle of life.
How dare nature be.... natural! Let's kill all the alligators!
They're not pets. You've just described livestock farming.
One of the main reason farmers hate wolves is because it's madness. A wolf kills 14 sheep in one night and only eats one, partly. That doesn't make it a very sympathetic animal.
The Netherlands is very densely populated. Everyone was doing fine without the wolf. Now a couple of environmentalists use public money to try to reintroduce wolves in habitat that isn't able to support them. They got subsidies based on reports that promised no livestock would be harmed. Wolves would just limit themselves automagically to wildlife when there is enough wildlife to support them. This claim is demonstrably false. It's fraud.
On top of that, the environmentalist arrogantly call everyone who doesn't love the wolf stupid, uninformed bigots.
Like that helps.
Taking in mind how well we are doing in the last years, maybe would be wise to stop making fun of the environmentalists for a while.
I'm still expecting the other part proposing a single valid solution that is not based in 'pay me because I'm unable to understand how to use a shepherd dog'.
Shoot the wolves is a single valid solution. But you don't want to hear it.
And I think you don't know how shepherd dogs work. Otherwise you would have dismissed that as a valid solution too.
> You don't know how shepherd dogs work
Sorry but the facts speak loudly.
Last month I had personally visited the area of Europe with a biggest density of wolves (excepting maybe Chernobyl). We tried, and failed, to see a single wolf. There were cows munching all around. There was deer scattered all around the valley. I walked the oak forest alone without any problem.
In this area a single human with a few dogs manages routinely 300 sheep without losing a single one by wolves. Not a single attack reported in the entire year. Humanity has being doing the same for 4000 years. Is perfectly possible.
You really think farmers should go back to being sheep herders.
You really think that’s viable.
Wow.
It’s Europe. The sheep herders you mentioned are heavily subsidized, either by the government or by NGO’s. That’s not a viable solution for farmers at all.
Until today, nobody has managed to teach sheep how to milk themselves in a machine and send the product by certified mail.
I think the answer is that while there is not currently a federal program, many states already do pay ranchers for animals killed by wolves. Searching for "wolf depredation reimbursement" pulls up many details. Here's a High Country News article on the topic: https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.12/wolves-when-cattle-go-missi....
This path has been explored in Europe and is a mistake.
1) Killing a few wolves increases, not decreases damages (by altering the social structure of the pack). More paradoxical, killing all wolves in an area increases the attacks to small cattle in that area (even if there is not a single alive wolf anymore).
Because wolf attacks are a very special case. There is not a single wolf in UK. Despite that, they still suffer 40.000 attacks to small cattle each year. By abandoned pet dogs, the same species as gray wolf. When government starts paying wolf attacks, suddenly, each stray dog attack (non paid) will be automatically assigned to wolves (paid) and will appear in the newspapers. This creates 'ghost wolves' and panic in the population, and increases the pressure against the environment (that is exactly the opposite that you are paying for).
2) Is an incentive for local corruption. People learn that if they cry wolf receive free money. They became insatiable and will try to game the system again and again. We had documented cases of the same cow "dying" two times, four times in four different places in Europe. By wolves that for some reason always start "eating the cattle tags". We had documented cases of cows dying by a natural accident and being blamed to scavenger wolves visiting the area four days later.
3) Is bad for the real farmers. Losing a cow is not a problem, destroying the cow market with a flood of easy money is. Meat prices are disbalanced by outsiders that release old or diseased cattle in a ranch to die at zero cost and then bill the state for wolf damages. At the end the real farmers figure out that letting the cows die is more efficient than producing meat. Or their activity is destroyed by the spread of new cattle diseases, and are replaced by fake farmers living in a big city.
4) It quickly turns into a sort of acquired right also. People gets upset if you try to stop it (and poison appears).
Also, grazing cattle outside is desirable for better land use (usually grassland isn't good for much else) and keeping the current state of ecosystems (without grazing, bushes and trees will take over). Also, regions where cattle is grazed are typically also tourist hotspots, but cattle frequently scared by wolves is much more aggresive towards hikers. So basically, wolves screw over a lot more than just the few cows they eat...
Other people are telling farmers to get rid of all sorts of fences and just use ditches and hetches, because they like to see that on their Sunday stroll.
The amount of criticism and conflicting opinions that farmers face is unbelievable.
This is complete nonsense. Cattle grazing has been devastating North American habitat for a couple of centuries, and current BLM practices just continue the same abuse. The Texas Hill country is badly damaged from overgrazing, this had led to loss of topsoil, massive loss of groundwater, and completely altered habitat for native species.
It might be different in North America, it might not. I'm not really convinced that there should be much of a difference just because it happened over the last few centuries instead of millenia ago. Just preserve some small parts of the previous ecosystem, ignore the rest. The whole planet has been terraformed already anyways, undoing human presence is pointless to try...
[0]: https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Proposition_114,_Gray_Wolf_...
Sometimes it's not livestock. Many have horses or donkeys, or goats and sheep that they don't turn into meat.
Also it's about the rights of your own land. If wolves kill the lives you take care of, they cannot be allowed to continue. The fact they are killing your animals means they're not finding other prey and are overpopulated at that location.
The US has around 18,000 wild wolves. And another 60,000 wolves in Canada. In comparison, all of Scandinavia has maybe 400 or so. IOW, US+Canada has 200x the wolf population in 17x the land area (human population density is roughly the same). While apx 80,000 wolves does not seem enough to be considered "thriving" IMO, they're in no danger of extinction anymore. So while some care should be taken to maintain populations, it seems reasonable to take them off the endangered list.
There are also 10's of thousand mountain lions, 10's of thousand bears, and millions of alligators in the USA. The USA/Canada is not exactly lacking in dangerous apex predators.
We've gone so far down in wild species and areas, and these are things that we absolutely cannot get back when they are gone.
we have way too many deer in new england.
In Idaho a wolf tag is 11.50 and you can legally harvest 15 wolves a year. You can even get wolf bounties of up to $1,000 per wolf in some areas, $500 in any area! You do have to be a member of the foundation for wildlife management, though. Idaho Department of Fish and Game is partially funding these bounties.
So, you have online folks (urbanites and suburbanites you mentioned, I assume) fighting to keep them on the endangered species list. All the while you have state government departments that 100% exist to manage wildlife paying hunters to harvest them. What a contrast.
I have a hard time understanding why anyone but ranchers would object to having wolves around at all. They don't prey on people.
Wolves fear humans because humans kill them. If we weren't doing so, they would lose their fear within a few decades at most and hunt humans. Coyotes have never hunted humans, they're too small.
Real nature is not happy fluffy bunnies and cuddly wolf pups. It is heartless and uncaring. And majestic, awe inspiring and wonderous.
Right, which is why I like it.
I don't live on the east coast because I'm afraid of wolves or nature. I've done a lot of things in my life that were far more dangerous than living near wolves.
To all native wild species. Very big difference. This combined with a larger budget to fight invasive species and plants would be amazing.
https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Proposition_114,_Gray_Wolf_...
It would be much less of an issue if the wolves were also introduced into the county forests and state parks in the southern half of the state where the wealthy urbanites and suburbanites live. However, the southern Wisconsinites like the idea of having a wolf population but do not want to actually have to deal with the risks and hardships that come with them.
This is a class issue because most of the state's wealth is located in the southern half of the state and it is mostly the southern half of the state that is forcing an unwanted wolf population on the northern half of the state.
Google seems to indicate they are simply migrating.
You're right about relocations though, it's a class issue. The wolves that predate on livestock are often relocated. Normal wolf sightings though can be reported to the state to increase their coverage: https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/MammalObsForm.asp
Via https://dnr.wi.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/wolf/documents/Wolf...
“We found that state residents held attitudes toward wolves that were more favorable than unfavorable— by a small margin within wolf range; and by a larger margin outside wolf range.
- Survey respondents across the state endorsed six separate statements as reasons for sustaining wolf populations in the state (p. 25-26)
- For example, 84% of respondents outside wolf range agreed that wolves are “important members of the ecological community;” 67% of range residents agreed (p. 26).
- Also, 83% in non-range agreed that “wolves have a right to exist;” 69% of wolf range residents agreed (p. 26)
- On an overall wolf attitude index score that ranged from -12 (very negative) to +12 (very positive), wolf range residents averaged a score of 2.5 indicating a slightly positive attitude (p. 29).
- Outside wolf range, average wolf attitude index scores (mean=4.8) were significantly higher statistically than scores of residents within wolf range (p. 28)
- A relatively high percentage of respondents throughout the state (31% non-range, - Among the survey respondents within wolf range, “maintaining the same number of wolves” was the most frequently selected response (26%) for a statewide wolf population goal (p. 31).
- 17% checked “Don’t know” as their statewide wolf population preference;
- 15 % indicated that they wanted “more” wolves in the state;
- 15% wanted “fewer” wolves in the state;
- 12% wanted “many fewer” wolves;
- 11% wanted “zero”
- 4% wanted “many more.”
- 18% wanted wolf numbers “decreased” in their home county in wolf range;
- 15% wanted wolves “eliminated” from their county;
- 14% were “not sure
- People outside of wolf range—who reported less experience with wolves than rural residents of wolf range— were generally more positive toward wolves, perceived fewer risks from wolves, and were statistically more likely to favor maintaining (29%) or increasing (27%) wolves in the state than were people were people residing within wolf range.
- This finding is consistent with other research that finds people with less exposure to wolves tend to view them more favorably.
- Less than half of residents (43%) living outside wolf range counties have ever seen a wolf in Wisconsin, even while vacationing or recreating in parts of the state where wolves live; by contrast 62% of wolf range residents have seen a wolf at least once (p. 37).
- 28% of non-range respondents indicated “Don’t know” when asked for their statewide wolf population preference (p. 31).
- living and/or growing up in a rural area (p. 42-43)
- being a deer hunter (p. 48-52).
- Forty-seven percent of current rural, wolf range residents wanted to have fewer (33%) or no wolves (14%) in the state; 24% the same number of wolves; and 16% wanted more wolves in the state (p. 43).
- Among wolf range respondents who were raised in a rural area and continue to live in a rural area, 57% want fewer wolves in the state (p. 43).
- Among those wolf range residents who grew up in a rural area, willingness to have wolves living nearby drops to 40% and the frequency of those who would prefer to not live by wolves increases to 55% (p. 40).
- Two out of three people living on farms within wolf range were unwilling to live near wolves (p. 121).
- About half (49%) of all residents in wolf range said they are willing to have wolves live near them compared to 43% who are not willing (p. 40).Hunting is an important part of modern conservation, and human hunters are the only controllable element in the predation cycle. Hunting wolves in the way the gp is referring to would be a set season with a specific number of wolves of a certain sex and size in a specific area. These numbers are determined by conservationists in the USFS among others, in order to keep a reasonable and sustainable number of wolves.
We are literally the best hunters in the known universe. Its not a pathology.
hunting laws are actually designed to limit our ability to hunt because we are TOO good at it. There are limits on ammo size, on weapon types, on times of year you're allowed to hunt, etc.
It also helps keep the various wild herds/packs from exploding in size, reducing the number of wild animals that die from starvation.
(Bias disclaimer: I don't hunt, but I live in a state where I'm a minority)
There's no evidence that wolf populations would explode if not managed by humans, so controlling them seems premature. There is plenty of evidence though that wolves help manage ruminant populations which do explode out of control without their natural predator, which just so happens to do a better job at it than us (see deer populations in eastern US).
Not solely. Humans have been hunting non-food targets for about as long as they've hunted food targets.
> There's no evidence that wolf populations would explode if not managed by humans
They (and other predaceous species) currently being managed by humans, just by the government and not hunters at large. The bureau of Fish, Wildlife, and Game has long set poison traps for the express purpose of killing wolves, coyotes, and wild dogs.
Sidenote => I also love to fish. I find it odd how much flak hunting gets over fishing. I guess people feel a stronger bond to an animal vs a tuna.
You don't eat wolves. No one you know grew up hunting them. Killing a (still) endangered species is not about conservation, in fact, it's closer to the opposite based on everything we know.
I'm talking about killing for sport, which is what wolf hunting is all about on an individual level (on a government level, it's about the political showmanship of protecting rancher interests).
And as a sidenote, I live in Montana; I am very familiar with hunting. To generalize hunting without considering the animal being hunted is disingenuous and entirely self-serving. Should we talk about hunting horses and dogs in the same breath?
See how this (aka life) works?
I have a fence around my garden/orchard. It is tall enough to keep the deer out, electrified to keep the bears out, netted to keep the birds out - but ground squirrels leave me no choice but to eliminate them from the area.
If they would stay away, I wouldn't have to "murder" them. At least they don't go to waste, there are plenty of hungry things out there to move them up the food chain!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA-QINoEEwQ
As detailed in the video, the endangered species act is built upon the idea that there is a clear line between species, but in the case of grey wolves there are a lot of coyote-wolf hybrids out there, which aren't well studied because the funding is mainly available for 'The grey wolf'. Nature is fuzzy while the law is less so.
What are the criteria for deciding whether to add a species to the list?
A `species is added to the list when it* the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range;
* overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes;
* disease or predation; * the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms; * other natural or manmade factors affecting its survival.
Sounds like gray wolves no longer meet the criteria. In particular, states that lack sufficient current wolf populations can protect them within the state (California and the northeast come to mind).
Personal bias: I'm glad they are part of the ecosystem. I'd like to see one sometime, but probably more comfortable while I'm in a car rather than a tent/hiking, though I understand they are still pretty wary of humans. I do miss seeing the Yellowstone elk herds that have become much more timid since the reintroduction.
To assist in the management of the gray wolf population in the state, the IDFG allows any hunter with a wolf tag to harvest, by both hunting and trapping, 15 wolves per year.
As I discovered, they also allow the thousands of out of state hunters that come in with OTC elk/deer tags to harvest a wolf (or black bear or mountain lion) instead.
Predation of big game is a planned for event and IDFG in Idaho and equivalent agencies in other states work to find a balance because at the end of the day - conservation is the goal.
This isn't necessarily how hunters and trappers have been historically portrayed in the media but I think we're at a turning point. For any readers that are interested in learning more about how hunting and trapping as a crucial component of conservation. Do read up on the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.[2[
PS: Idaho is beautiful!
[1] https://www.livingwithwolves.org/2020/03/03/wolf-hunting-rul... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Model_of_Wildli...
[1] https://idfg.idaho.gov/sites/default/files/seasons-rules-big...
What explains the variation in clout?
To your examples I’d say maybe construction workers are more analogous to butchers. Cement and steel manufactures more to ranchers. Farm hands again, workers where as big Ag certainly has clout. Immigrants mainly can’t vote and once again, further down the supply chain and without property, so interchangeable.
Not sure though.
"As someone who grew up in a wolf reintro zone I have a few comments and opinions to help others have more productive conversations.
First, not all wolf reintro's are the same. Each ecosystem is different and the scientific justifications need to be done for each, and the papers for one do not necessarily apply to the other. The Yellowstone program may have been a success, but other places are not Yellowstone, and it is a mistake to use it as a way to handwave away criticisms. Also, sometimes the justifications are pretty weak, and could easily be made up with by increase in hunting tags or adjustment of hunting time windows and area restrictions.
Second, there are jurisdictional and public control issues at the heart of the matter. There are people who actually have to live in these areas and they are major changes. I strongly dislike the attitude of some that locals should have no say. The people in our area voted against the reintro program and it was done anyway, with the governor saying "I don't care what the people want, the reintro program is happening". That is a problem. I have also seen the effects of fresh Forest Department/BLM phd types ignore the locals wisdom and advice and pay the price for it, and the same "We know better than you back country bumpkin" condescension tends to be at play in the reintro programs. These things have real consequences. For example, as a kid my grampa who was a logger in the area in the 70's and many other loggers were saying the Forest Service needed to let the loggers thin the forests out and to do more control burns. I being young thought the old loggers were just old-fashioned and the PhD's knew what they were doing, until reality happened. The holier than though attitude of the credentialed people prevailed, then the pine beetle infestation hit, and within a decade we had two ~500,000 acre forest fires that the forests are still recovering from.
Third, there are often claims that wolves never attack humans, and those claims are blatantly false or are using very carefully selected statistics (North America only, etc) to craft a narrative. Beyond that, it vastly changes the safety profile of being in the forests, in a way that discourages people from experiencing it. Many locals from my area have posited that this is an intentional side-effect. Even more so when the rumors of a grizzly reintro program started floating around (I don't know if these are just rumors, but who can blame the locals for being afraid of an unelected unaccountable bureaucracy who already ignores them from doing something else against their wishes). We used to be able to only have to worry about bears or mountain lions, who both have pretty easily avoided confrontational profiles, but now locals don't go anywhere without being armed.
Fourth, the dismissal of the cattle ranchers is far overrated. Cattle ranching, especially in this day in age, is a science in itself, and in the forest is a vital part of forest maintenance. Silviopasture/agroforestry is also often studied by the kids of the old ranchers who then come back and apply that knowledge. Thoughts of the ranchers as dumb hicks is a foolish and insulting stereotype. Not only that, but often the forest service and BLM are underfunded and undermanned, and many of the ranchers who are paying public land leases do a good job assisting in maintaining the forest, and unlike the new kid who just got shipped in from across the country after getting a degree, they live there and have passed down local knowledge for decades if not longer.
I know it's easy to see something like a wolf reintro program and assume it's a great thing and just jump on the bandwagon, but maybe a perspective from someone who grew up in one and have heard out the locals on the issues might help color your view on the topic a bit.
Otherwise you just end up with a bunch of locals that around the campfire say "It's all about the three S's... shoot, shovel, and shhhhh"."
However, with all the concern expressed for the gray wolf, I have yet to see wolves re-introduced into the many acres of protected greenspace on the west side of the state.
I am sure the western side the Cascades can use more wolves to cut down the deer overpopulation and coyotes.
Washington State Dept of Natural Resources - Grazing (Leasing/Contracts) https://www.dnr.wa.gov/programs-and-services/product-sales-a...
Some Indian tribes (maybe just the Colville Confederated Tribes) have their own rules for range area management but they are similar to WA state rules.
And who is this Secretary judging biological metrics? A former coal and oil industry lobbyist and lawyer, no biological training.
He was on the board at CESAR, which is a purportedly "scientific" organization that takes huge donations from fossil fuel and conservative interests. CESAR is known to have funded climate denialism, and they seem to be intent on filing lawsuits against environmental causes.
Why is it that conservatives are so motivated to not conserve the nature they see around them?
> In 2013, the Obama administration also proposed to delist gray wolves, saying that the species had rebounded to the point where they were no longer at risk of extinction and should be managed by state and tribal governments
Do you have an attack to make against Obama's interior secretary too?