Wander With Wild Things

I wrote about issues surrounding America's grey wolf populations here and here. I had high hopes that the new administration which claimed to value science would actually LOOK at all the good studies out there on apex predators and their vital role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. Without a top predator, you cannot HOPE to have healthy prey populations (and healthy prey animals are usually what is desired by both the hunting and viewing public) and by trickle-down effect, healthy plant communities.

Much as I hate to use Yahoo news as a source, this is the first place I saw this AP release about a formal rule released by DOI (Dept of Interior, which the US Fish & Wildlife Service is in) and Secretary of the Interior Salazar. This does nothing more than condone and encourage unjustified slaughter in states whose trigger fingers have been itching for decades. It unethical and illegal, not that either of those has ever stopped Sarah Palin, or should I call her Redneck Barbie. She tries to claim her wolf genocide is "predator control" that will provide more moose and elk for hunters. Which is about the biggest load of bullshit that has ever been dished, as wolves are successful at pulling down large game perhaps 1 out of 20 tries and more often scavenge. On top of that, wolves never attack or kill animals that hunters want to shoot; they always pick the weakest link and as a result, actually stregthen herds, a fact which has been borne out among Yellowstone elk herds. Maybe Palin's gun will misfire and knock her into the ocean somewhere off the coast of Alaska and she will just disappear...

CURSE YOU ALL!!! *shaking fist*

I am too angry to continue right now... If you have the opportunity, write, call, sign petitions, I don't care, just tell Washington that this is UNACCEPTABLE, UNJUSTIFIED, and has ZERO basis in science or ethics.