Wander With Wild Things

Field season and the associated exhaustion have left this blog sadly without update. My apologies.

But I had to pop in and share a rather triumphant bit of news, should anyone actually read it.

If you followed the stories about the plight of the grey wolf, I am ridiculously overjoyed to tell you that the court ruled, and rightfully so, that the delisting actions taken by the US Fish & Wildlife Service in regards to the wolf populations in the Northern Rockies were UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

All packs are now returned to full endangered status. And all small-minded misinformed trigger-happy jerks can crawl back under whatever rock they emerged from and LEAVE THE WOLVES ALONE!

Thank you, NRDC, DOW, and all others who fought the good fight and who refused to let might triumph over right. Carry on, carry on.

I have been remiss, wanderers, but I have not forgotten you.  However, spring is here and with it comes the increased demands of field work.  I shall be back with more posts for you, I promise, but in the meantime, several action items to keep you busy:

Do not spend a single dollar of your money at the major outdoor retailer, Cabela's.  They have decided to be a corporate sponsor for grey wolf-killing derbies in the northern Rockies.  No company that supports misinformed and propaganda-fueled slaughter should be allowed to profit.  You can read past posts on wolves and their plight and their role as scapegoats of the west here.    

Around 100 wolves have already been killed in the Montana and Idaho wolf slaughter (previous posts here). The famous and much studied Yellowstone Cottonwood pack has been wiped out, leaving only pups who will starve without the support of the adults. These wolves did nothing to earn their fate. They never preyed on livestock or harrassed anyone. They were helping increase the health of elk herds and native vegetation communities through the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Their thanks is a bullet.

Science? Ignored. Predator-prey dynamics? Dismissed. Ecosystem function? Unvalued. Thousands of years of evolution and history? Trashed.

Propaganda? Saluted. Untruths and misleading fearmongering? Rampant. Selective reasoning? Celebrated.

Call. Write. Be heard.

Find your senators and representatives here. At the same website, you can also find out how to contact the governors and representatives from Montana and Idaho, who have purposely targeted wilderness and backcountry wolves, quite the opposite of what the proponed to do.

Tell Secretary of the Interior (ex-rancher) Ken Salazar exactly what you think of his actions selling out to the ranching lobby and backwards thinking, ill-informed state governments.

Ken Salazar
Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240
202-208-3100
feedback@ios.doi.gov

Support Defenders of Wildlife any way you can, they are pulling out all the stops and have already garnered 80,000 signatures on a petition to Secretary Salazar in just a few days.

These are your resources and my resources, they are not the property of the states or the ranchers or the small-minded, testosterone-driven hunters. Don't let this illegal and unethical activity continue unchecked.

Yesterday, a federal judge agreed with the case of these twelve filers:

Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, The Humane Society of the United States, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Friends of the Clearwater, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Western Watersheds Project, Wildlands Project

The suit asserted that the delisting of the Northern Rockies population of grey wolves was illegal (which it was) and demanded an injuntion on the wolf hunt in Idaho and several other states, including helicopter-rifle-hunting in Oregon.

Bad news: The injunction was denied on the grounds that the filers could not provide "sufficient" proof for irreparable harm to grey wolves. Apparently science is not good enough for courts. I'd say death and population collapse qualify as irreparable harm, wouldn't you??

Good news: The judge agreed that the claim of illegal action under the Endangered Species act was legit, which means that prospects improve that the courts will rule for the relisting of this wolf population.

I'm trying really hard to be happy about that but it's hard when I can see guffawing rednecks with rifles putting wolves in their crosshairs right this very minute. I can only hope for a disproportionately high number of misfires...

I've been following the fight to protect grey wolves closely for you. This is an endangered species, reintroduced into the northern US and still working towards meeting recovery goals as framed under the Endangered Species Act.

Today is the 8th day of the open season on grey wolves in Idaho. You can read more here.

Personally, I am so angry that I really have no words. There is simply no way to plumb the depths of outrage and of sorrow for the selfishness, no, the wrongness of these events. The "justification" giving for the slaughter of these wolves is based on nothing but fiction. One look at the science will tell you that the only thing overpopulated is human ego.

Please call, email, write, click anywhere you can find. Talk to legislators, the media, let them know that this is not acceptable. Emotions aside, this is bad wildlife management at its worst and a state that believes it can bully its way past the rest of us while destroying resources that are in the trust of the ENTIRE North American public.

It's cliche but I cannot say it better than this right now: JUST SAY NO! Speak loudly, because the voices of the wolves themselves, the song in which the notes of this pup are only part of the rich melody, the language of the ecosystem in which the wolf plays a vital and irreplaceable role -- that is being ignored.

In the ongoing fight to keep grey wolves protected (I talked about it in these posts), today brought us a new partial victory. The Great Lakes wolves in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin are now once more protected.

The northern Rockies wolves though, are still unprotected and vulnerable to slaughter from trophy hunters, which in my mind are equivalent to the worst kind of human being. Conservation groups have a case in court battling hard to protect these incredible animals who are still at risk for extinction if their numbers are reduced yet again by illegal delisting actions pushed through by the ranching lobby and a powerful minority group of predjudiced and fearful people. You can go to my January 16th post in the list linked above to find a link to the Natural Resources Defense Council, who along with Defenders of Wildlife are fighting to help these animals regain protection. Any support you can offer will be invaluable, calling or emailing your representative or sending financial support. Normally, I don't endorse giving money, but both of these organizations are well-run and do excellent work, spending that money to realize on the ground change.

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.

Livestock kills are an oft-cited excuse for the execution of our aforementioned plantary co-habitors, the grey wolves. Of course, it only takes a little time observing or learning about wild canines versus domestic ones to realize something doesn't quite add up. Everything about a wolf in relation to human presence is aloof, secretive, held separate, always choosing to retreat into the soft quiet of a wood or mountain over the noisy vibration of domesticated areas. Something in our gut shakes its head with the knowledge that only a desperate wolf would choose our altered space over his natural one.


Well, it looks like there's a new show in town: CSI:Pastureland. A new paper from Sweden published in the journal Conservation Genetics shows that the scapegoat should really be called the "scapedog." Using DNA from saliva recovered from the bite wounds on sheep, scientists were able to conclusively determine that the murder was executed in the pasture with the fangs by Professor Fido. That's right, a domestic dog. Previously, wolves had been blamed for these kills. Despite the genetic similarities between dogs and wolves, DNA tests are still able to differentiate and finger the guilty party. Hopefully, inspectors worldwide can begin to set things to right and clear the murky reputation that has unfairly settled about the thick fur of the grey wolf. No more taking the fall for Feral Fluffy. Perhaps this will also bring more attention the problem of abandoned and unsupervised dogs...

Wander and hope, my friends!

Just a quick note of good tidings! Barack Obama has put a freeze on all last-minute Bush decisions, or crimes, as the case may be. This includes the delisting of grey wolf populations that I wrote about a couple entries ago.

So clap your paws, wanderers -- they're not relisted yet, but we are moving back in the right direction!

Press release of January 14th: in the few remaining hours of a presidency that seems like it will never end, the US Fish & Wildlife Service has again delisted the grey wolf (pictured right).

Details here: Natural Resources Defense Council News

IDIOT!!! (that is directed right at you, Secretary Kempthorne -- I'd use a stronger word, but you may not understand it, given that the rudiments of ecology escape you completely)

Even if you are completely backwards and hate wolves and blame them for everything from lack of profits in ranching to your burnt toast, this action is 100% illegal. Federal courts already ruled that the FIRST delisting, which resulted in over 100 dead wolves, was illegal. WHY ON EARTH ARE YOU STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IT A SECOND TIME???? It's nothing but a parting "screw you" to the citizens of this country (or at least any of them with half a brain or a quarter of a conscience).

Because grey wolves are listed under the Endangered Species act, in order to be legally delisted, the species must meet the goals listed in the Recovery Plan, a document put together at the time of listing which details how many populations and sometimes individuals there must be before the species' status can change. Here's a big surprise: those goals have not been met.

So why should you be pissed off that this is going on? For one, we need predators to keep our ecosystems healthy and that includes public lands that you have paid for. Ever since grey wolves have been reintroduced to Yellowstone, elk herds have been healthier and more controlled in numbers, which means there is less overgrazing by rampant elk, which means that native plant communities are rebounding, which means the bugs are happy, which means the birds are happy.....you get the picture!! All of this is not possible without the top predator, the grey wolf. (And what the bloody hell is with the logic "hey, we reintroduced the animals and were so proud of it, but eh, we're tired of them now, let's go back and shoot 'em all." Dear god, people make my head hurt.)

We have precious few top predators left in the US and it is easy to see what fills the vacuum. White tailed deer taking over every nook and cranny they can fit into, so overpopulated that thousands starve to death every winter. Smaller predators like raccoons and possums multiplying like rabbits with nothing to keep them in check. Native plant communities and landscaping alike devoured to the nubs by deer and rabbits who also enjoy breeding like, well, rabbits! The cascade of effects is long and it is all a result of our own paranoia and fear when it comes to predators.

Wolves do not hunt down and attack people and children. They will go out of their way to stay as FAR from you as possible and have ZERO interest in interacting with civilization unless they are starving and desperate. There are somewhere around 20 recorded wolf attacks in modern history. Most of those were instigated by humans seeking out and harassing these secretive animals.

Wolves do not massacre huge amounts of livestock (or anything for that matter). The average wolfpack is successful at killing an elk 1 out of 15 times it tries. Confirmed wolf-livestock kills are so small in number that wolves don't even warrant their own category in reports -- most canine kills or harassment are a result of stray dogs. Often wolves do not even kill their own prey but will scavenge gut piles left by hunters or the kills of other predators, much like a coyote will.

Ok, I could probably go on about this for a very long time, but I will be no less outraged by the end of it. Some backwards western lobby has some senators and probably our beloved *insert dripping sarcasm here* Mr. Kempthorne in their pocket and is not only trying to push through illegal government activity, but is trying to destroy a part of our natural heritage as well.

Maybe you'll never see a wolf, maybe you'll never hear how magical a howl sounds after sunset. Maybe you'll never feel that thrill of knowing a truly wild thing is alive and fulfilling its crucial role in keeping the system in balance, is trotting across a snowy field in the dark living in a world of sounds and smells that we will never know. Maybe you feel like all of this is far away from you and you're not sure what value it all has.

But I can tell you this and you can know it to be true: everything in the world is part of a huge web, a system that is so complex, I don't believe we can ever completely understand it. You start pulling strands and species out of that web and soon enough, it's going to fall in around your head and what you find after the dust settles is not going to be any kind of place you want to live.

What is at the heart of what is happening in this situation? The government is trying to help a handful of small-minded, uninformed, misled, and backwards-thinking people exterminate a species. And if they have some success with one species, you can bet you will be kissing goodbye to a lot more after that. Which one will be the one that brings it all down? What kind of dark and damaged place will be left for your children to grow up in and for their children to live in?

I will close with the wisdom of a man who was one of the world's greatest naturalists and explorers, William Beebe, who said in 1906, over 100 years ago, as he saw already how human greed and selfishness mowed down the very world they depended on:

"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."