A once-proud conservation group has lost its way

Exposing the Big Game's avatarCommittee to Abolish Sport Hunting Blog

  • Ron Wolf

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Recently, the family of Olaus J. Murie demanded that the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation cancel the organization’s Olaus J. Murie Award. The surprising reason? The foundation’s “all-out war against wolves is anathema to the entire Murie family.”

I sympathize with the family’s position for several reasons. In 1999, while working for the Elk Foundation, I created the Olaus J. Murie Award, with the coordination and the approval of the Murie family. The award recognized scientists working on behalf of elk and elk habitat and was given in the name of Olaus J. Murie because…

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1 thought on “A once-proud conservation group has lost its way

  1. They never found their way. They have been lost since inception. They are founded in the Nort American Model of Wildlife Management, a hunter focused, consumptive model that subscribes to the hunter mythology of kill wolves and other predators so they have more elk to kill, scientifically unsubstantiated. They have always believed in distorting wildlife ecology for themselves. They really started going off the rails when wolves returned. Elk numbers and hunter success is up, way up since wolf return. WY and MT have had record years of elk and hunting success. Hunters kill 7-8 times more elk than wolves, even in wolf territories.

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