Tag Archives: Idaho

Wolf Hunters Are Guilty of Hate Crimes

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It occurs to me that the killing of wolves by those who detest them qualifies as a hate crime. By definition, a hate crime is: a crime, usually violent, motivated by prejudice or intolerance toward a member of a social group.

Well, you don’t get a much more social group than a wolf pack—and you don’t find any greater prejudice or intolerance than among wolf-haters and hunters.

In an effort to defend his wolf hunting, wildlife snuff-filmmaker Randy Newberg presented the following shocking testimony to the court of public opinion (via NPR News), “Having these hunting seasons [on wolves] has provided a level of tolerance again.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming state game departments and, most shocking of all, Yellowstone wolf biologists, are all going along with this line of thinking. But allowing wolf haters to have their fun by giving them a season on the object of their disdain is akin to letting the Clan get away with murder once in a while, believing it will “provide a level of tolerance again.”

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2012. All Rights Reserved

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2012. All Rights Reserved

Killing Wolves Provides “a Level of Tolerance”?

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Yep, you read it right, according to Randy Newberg, who hunts wolves and makes hunting television programs, many people who live in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho don’t like wolves and hate that the federal government forced their recovery on them, “Having these hunting seasons has provided a level of tolerance again.” Newberg told NPR News that wolf hunts are easing the animosity many local people feel toward the predator. And Yellowstone biologist, Doug Smith, adds, “To get support for wolves, you can’t have people angry about them all the time, and so hunting is going to be part of the future of wolves in the West. We’ve got to have it if we’re going to have wolves.”

So, let me get this straight, in order to placate and appease good ol’ boys and get them to put up with the presence of one of North America’s most historically embattled endangered species, we have to let them kill some of them once in a while? Wolf hunting and trapping are just a salve—a bit of revenge-killing for them–why not let them have their fun? By this logic, they should also be entitled to shoot an Indian every so often (like their forefathers who tried to wipe them out), to help promote tolerance and cultural acceptance.

Excuse me, but why should we care what wolf hunters think they need to get them to go along with the program—those people are sick, end of story. Just look at their evil, gloating grins and smug, satanic smirks plastered on their faces whenever they pose with their “trophy” wolf carcasses. But don’t bother telling them that they’re vacuous, malicious little goblins, apparently they enjoy being hated by wolf-lovers—otherwise they wouldn’t pose for the camera and spread their gruesome images around the internet whenever they make a kill.

In the spirit of promoting tolerance, it only seems fair that wolf advocates be allowed a season on them in return for all the losses they’ve endured. I don’t know if it would really engender a feeling tolerance, but it can always be justified as a way of “managing” or “controlling” them, and thinning their numbers.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2012. All Rights Reserved

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2012. All Rights Reserved

Wolf Hunters Prefer an Imbalance of Nature

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First, a reminder to hunters who might happen upon this blog: please don’t bother commenting in support of your sport. Pro-hunting comments don’t get posted here. There are plenty of other forums for that sort of thing. Though your arguments may be “heartfelt” and well thought out, all pro-kill comments end up in the round file. Readers here have heard you sportsmen’s rationalizations ad nauseum and instinctively know the truth about hunting. Anyone wanting to hear hunter rationalizations can visit any number of sites dedicated to the disemination of hunter propaganda–this is not one of them.

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Now back to today’s sermon:

In a recent discussion on wildlife issues with some longtime friends, I felt a little out of place to learn they were all against the reintroduction of wolves to places like Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. No, they weren’t a group of hunters selfishly seeking authority over nonhuman life; these good folks were understandably upset because the wolves are being killed in horrible ways, ever since their removal from the federal endangered species list left them at the mercy of state game department policy makers. While I share their outrage and the urge to end the suffering of wolves, I have to argue that at least the ones “that got away” will go on to fill a gap in biodiversity.

The point of recovering endangered species should be to bring back and/or protect enough diversity to allow nature to function apart from human intervention. The presence of predators like wolves can help to restore a sense of natural order and nullify the claims by hunters that their sport is necessary to keep ungulate populations in check.

Wolves in Yellowstone have been keeping elk on the move enough to allow willows to thrive once again in places like the Lamar Valley. Newly emerging willow thickets in turn provide food and shelter for an array of species, from beavers to songbirds. The loss of each thread of biodiversity brings us one step closer to a mass extinction spasm that would wreak more destruction and animal suffering than the Earth has seen in some 50 million years.

Hunters want their cake and eat it too. Out of one side of their mouth they declare that there are too many elk and that they do the animals a favor by killing them to prevent overgrazing. Yet when wolves spread out and successfully reclaim some of their former territories, hunters resent the competition and call for every brutal tactic imaginable to drive wolves back into the shadows, thereby restoring the imbalance that hunters depend on to justify their exploits.

Now more than ever we need to counter the hunter agenda at every turn, for the sake of a functioning planet. It’s high time to put an end to the notion that wildlife are “property” of the states, to be “managed” as they see fit. The animals of the Earth are autonomous, each having a necessary role in nature. Only human arrogance would suppose it any other way.