4 thoughts on “Victory! Federal Judge Reinstates Protections For Wyoming Wolves!!!!”

1. Asinine Wolf Killing Called Management
   Wolves never should have never been de-listed from protection by political maneuverings and now politically managed by states and or ignorantly managed in western states that are hostile toward them and by agencies that have traditionally been hostile to them in particular as well as other predators. Western and midwestern states are going very far against hunting ethics or anything that resembles fair chase to cull wolf populations down to marginal numbers. Now, in Montana and other states we are even having extended trapping/hunting seasons, and even more drastic measures, such as allowing MT landowners or their agents to kill up to 100 “threatening” wolves which is a carte blanche for wolf killing. Basically, this majestic, apex animal is being treated as a varmint by sportsmen, ranchers, state and federal wildlife agencies. Hostile western states cannot responsibly manage the wolves or even other predators. Wolves are a very healthy factor in wilderness ecological systems. Man is not. We need man-management more with regard to man’s long traditions of blood sports and war on wildlife.
   Managing wolves by hunting and trapping is asinine, cruel, barbaric and unnecessary, and poor management strategy, and terrible public relations. It does not work well. It is bad public relations for Montana and other western states. It is vendetta, anti-wolf hysteria, pushed by self-serving hunters, trappers, ranchers, and wolf hating yokels, with a mindset of anti-wolf folklore over the centuries, supported by rancher politicians and rancher government officials and agencies. If Montana and other states have to hunt, why not stick with a short (normal) fair chase season and then call it good no matter what the outcome. Spare us the perverse arguments of need for management by trapping, extended hunt seasons, bounties, more than one kill ticket, use of calling devices, need to drive down the population, or use of other barbaric measures of unneeded control. Hunting and trapping are barbaric “blood sports” and a war on wildlife, not legitimate management tools. We do not do near enough or do enough about non-lethal means of control or management, which would work much better and be true wolf management and conservation.
   Actually, hunting wolves is asinine. A hunt and trap season is indiscriminate in killing. Wolves causing no problems are killed. Alpha males and females are killed. Wolves are a very social family with special roles assigned. Families are disrupted. Juveniles are left to learn on their own. Wolves are family units. Younger wolves spend up to 25% of their younger years being schooled by the adults. Wolves and packs that are leaving humans alone are killed. Animals are wounded and not killed. Many hunters and trappers take a sadistic pleasure in how they kill. Hunting and trapping disrupts families and leads to more breeding. Some younger wolves are not given the opportunity to learn from adults to stay away from human domains and how to hunt their natural prey. Wolf packs are fragmented and de-stabilized. Wolves do not need to be managed by hunting or trapping at all. They will fill up wilderness niches and limit their own populations relative to prey and territory as they have in Yellowstone Park. Montana, Idaho and Wyoming are giving themselves a black eye with the rest of the nation with an anti-tourism, anti-science, anti-wolf hysteria.
   Trapping is cruel even if done legally, even if it is a tradition, even if seen as a management tool. Traps are cruel. It should be banned for the public, allowed as necessary for wildlife officials who use it vastly too much with a pervasive kill attitude of their own. Why should animals suffer for private economic gain on fur sales or to artificially farm (boost), a mistaken notion, elk herds (elk farming)? In the USA over 4 million animals are trapped each year for “sport” and millions more for “management” and millions more as collateral damage. Hunters worldwide kill over 100 million animals annually. USDA Wildlife Services sees killing animals, for control or management, as their mission. USDA Wildlife Services kills 3-4 million animals a year.

   The western states are locked into a mindset of quotas or no quotas and attempting to marginalize wolf populations by hunting and trapping and other lethal methods. Quotas for delisting were based on outdated figures for sustainable wolf populations. Wolves have not harmed game populations or significantly harmed stock populations (statistically zero, .0029%), contrary to repeated and repeated anecdotal opinion. Elk populations are up, from around 89,000 in 1989 to over 140,000 plus in 2014. Hunters have great seasons on killing ungulates in Montana and Wyoming with a 20-25% success rate. Elk numbers are generally up, 100 to 127% per MT FWP (March-April Montana Outdoors). Wolves regulate their own populations as they have in Denali National Park and Yellowstone. Problem wolves and problem packs may have to be “managed” but usually not always by lethal means and not by hunters and trappers and free wheeling ranchers. Wildlife agencies seem only to have a kill mentality wanting to control predators by hunting and trapping and other lethal means. Wolves belong in the wilderness and are good for the ecological systems. Wolves are natural parts of the wilderness ecology for millennium, good for it and belong in the wild. Man creates an unhealthy distortion of ecology by his (additive) sports and management killing. Hunters, trappers and ranchers and their state wildlife agencies are leading a war on wildlife.

   References Wolves
   http://earthjustice.org/news/press/2014/victory-for-wolves-in-wyoming

   http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/state-delays-decision-on-wolf-management-stamp-after-hunters-protest/article

   http://thoughtsfromthewildside.blogspot.com/2014/03/killing-wolves-hunter-led-war-against wildlife

   http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/mailbag/wolves-essential-to-montana-landscape/article

   https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2014/07/15/did-the-hunters-get-your-wolves-elk/

   http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/mailbag/wolves-essential-to-montana-landscape/article

   http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2014/07/10/montana-sets-wolf-hunting-trapping-season/12482565/

   http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/fwp-commission-works-out-details-of-landowner-wolf-killing-allowance/article_629112e4-b01c-567b-9c66-2f8034cbe5d7.html#.U77_Ap0TJlQ.email

   http://missoulian.com/news/local/state-sets—wolf-hunting-trapping-season/article_ae436f7a-0863-11e4-97a1-001a4bcf887a.html#.U77-mFOwknM.email

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2. “Hunters Led War on Wildlife”: And I would add ranchers and wildlife agencies: Hunters and trappers have been calling themselves conservationists lately a lot it seems. They cite early conservationists and early efforts to save game species (birds and ungulate herds) and fishes and on-going efforts to save game animals (killing targets for sportsmen). Some early “hunter-trapper conservationists” of considerable note were early pioneers in conservation: Teddy Roosevelt was one but he also founded numerous national parks and wildlife refuges to protect wildlife from hunter-trapper sportsmen. Aldo Leopold was one, hunter and naturalist, who became more enlightened about protecting the wolf and other predators and their place in the ecology. George Grinnell was one and also founded national parks including Glacier. I have met and know some hunters that like a balanced ecology of predators and prey, a true wilderness in which to hunt, and who disagree with trophy hunting and are even disgusted by it– and one who compares killing wolves to shooting his neighbor’s German Shepherd. But such hunter-sportsmen are far from often on the landscape; most have a very irrational, uniformed, visceral hate of wolves in particular and predators in general and want to minimize, marginalize, or exterminate them and essentially farm ungulates and game birds. Some even hate raptors who take “their” birds and their fish, as they view ungulates as “their” elk or deer. Most sportsmen and state wildlife agencies, it seems, want to marginalize the main predators (wolf, lion, grizzly). Nebraska only has about 70 cougars yet is embarking on a vigorous “management” campaign, as is SD with only 170 cougars. Alaska is killing wolves just outside national parks; Denali National Park has loss 2/3 of it’s’ wolves negatively affecting wolf watching opportunities. Since wolves have been turned over to state “management” 2700 wolves have been killed plus another 3435 by the rogue USDA Wildlife Services which kills a million animals a year in the name of control. Organizations of sportsmen such as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has money, recently $25,000 to MT FWP for wolf “management”, has offered bounties and cooperative agreements with agencies for wolf killing and the Montana Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife recently donated $15,000 to Wildlife Services USDA, a renegade killing wildlife agency that kills (shoots, traps, poisons) over a million animals annually. Sportsmen organizations are silent on predators if not unashamedly hostile but loud on protecting and farming game species. There are wildlife killing contests going on all over the USA and in some places, like TX, weekly. Hunters even call these killing contests conservation, killing coyotes for instance to save deer. States like ID-MT-WY-WI-MI have vigorous unscientific, political drive-down-the-wolf-population policies, trapping, extended seasons, and liberal kill policies year around. Much of this wildlife killing is done by trapping, a barbaric, horrendous way to kill and mostly unjustified. Trapping on public land is mostly done for “recreational” sports killing, the fur trade, trophies, with little regard for ecology and the interests of the general public, wildlife viewing, safety of the general public, and it takes a large toll in collateral damage to non-targeted animals, and is overly touted as need to control. There is some need for handling “nuisance animals” but the notion is abused by too little hesitation to evaluate the need, too little scientific management, too little nonlethal means used; basically trapping is a quick draw response and such a barbaric, inherently cruel means of “management” it should be under tight scrutiny with a public panel oversight and used only by wildlife agencies sparingly. There are around 7000 trappers in Montana alone doing it mostly for the fur trade and recreational killing.

   References:
   http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/state-delays-decision-on-wolf-management-stamp-after-hunters-protest/article

   Don’t Silence The Howl!

   https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/gray-wolves-in-the-crosshairs/
   https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/?tag=sportsmen

   http://thoughtsfromthewildside.blogspot.com/2014/03/killing-wolves-hunter-led-war-against.html?m=1

   https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/wildlife-denali-wolf-packs-hammered-by-hunting/

   https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/whither-the-hunterconservationist/

   https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/sportsmen-donate-15000-to-wildlife-services

   http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/local/2014/05/30/rocky-mountain-elk-foundation-donates-25000-to-fwp-for-wolf-management/9768067/
   https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/rmef-opposes-congressmans-call-for-yellowstone-wolf-buffer-zone/

   http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrdc.org%2Fwildlife%2Fanimals%2Fwolves%2Fpredatorcontrol.asp&ei=Vm8cU8mrB43koATLsIGwAg&usg=AFQjCNFMOpGmVCcBkLO7uo7inKHveszrlA&bvm=bv.62578216,d.cGU

   “To look into the eyes of a wolf is to see your own soul.” Aldo Leopold

   “Whenever and wherever men have engaged in the mindless slaughter of animals (including other men), they have often attempted to justify their acts by attributing the most vicious or revolting qualities to those they would destroy; and the less reason there is for the slaughter, the greater the campaign for vilification.”

   ― Farley Mowat, naturalist, conservationist and author of Never Cry Wolf

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   • AMAZING “comment,” Roger. ☺
     Thank you for all the effort and research put into it.
     Couldn’t agree more.
     And as a wolf (all animals) advocate/lover, my heart bleeds as the ignorance, greed and unjustified cold-blooded murder of these magical creatures continues.
     May I add another of my favorite thoughts:

     “We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be ~the mythologized epitome of a savage ruthless killer ~ which is, in reality, no more than a reflected image of ourself.” *~Farley Mowat, *Never Cry Wolf*

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3. Nice!

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