re: Call of the Wild--But Maybe Not for Much Longer

popslashgirl — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:22:36 GMT

So, I'm guessing this is how it would go.

We kill all the wolves. Coyote populations go up. So do elk, deer, and bison populations--after all, no one's eating them. Greater occurrance of tick-borne diseases, as there are now that many more ticks. Animals start to starve as they overgraze their environment. Coyotes start to invade more urban areas due to competitive pressures. The population of pronghorns goes down. So do the population of small rodents. Hawks and eagles can't find enough to eat.

So we kill the coyotes. After all, they're almost as bad as wolves, right? And they might eat young livestock too, if they had to. Pronghorn populations go back up. Rodent populations explode. Deer, bison, elk, and pronghorns start eating all our livestock's pasture and snack on our hedges.

That means we now need to kill all those excess elk, deer, bison, pronghorns, and assorted rodents (prairie dogs, ground squirrels, marmots, etc) because they're overpopulated, diseased, invading urban areas, or starving. That's if their high numbers don't cause a spontaneous population crash. Bubonic plague goes up, because coyotes aren't eating the mice that carry it. Forests are choked with uneaten undergrowth. Fire seasons are memorable.

Unless I'm missing something, wouldn't it be simpler to just leave the damn wolves be?

And--you're kidding me. Wolves killed seventy-five cattle? Out of, what, twenty million head that we've got in this country? And a whopping twenty sheep? Gosh. I hardly feel safe in my own bed.

re: Call of the Wild--But Maybe Not for Much Longer

Blue Porcupine — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:14:58 GMT

It seems like the key here is defining what constitutes a non-endangered population. If it takes 300 animals in Wyoming and 700 in Idaho to ensure a healthy population, one should only allow hunting that reduces populations in excess of that number, otherwise the population would fall back into the endangered area. If the two states remove 500-700 animals between them as the article suggests, the wolf population would hardly be thriving or impacting the ecosystem (deer, elk, coyotes, etc.). Of course, the re-listing would take years to put in place again,and the hunting would continue. One could even envision the animals becoming extinct in the interim. This may suit the economic interests of the ranching community, but not necessarily those of the public. It seems to me that like the predatory losses hardly justify such a mass slaughter of wolves. Raising cattle especially in areas of Montana and Idaho has to be difficult at best, even without wolves, so perhaps more should be done to persuade the ranchers that raising cattle in these marginal areas makes little sense. Perhaps some of the money used to support the wolf program could be used to buy up ranches instead.