From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Montana Conservationist Accused Of Declaring War On Wolves            

Robert Ferris,

Published 5:36 am, Saturday, June 15, 2013

Many conservationists are furious over a recent proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service to drop the gray wolf from the endangered species list.

At least one group of conservationists [their word, not mine], however, also supports dropping federal protection for wolves. They are the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, led by hunter David Allen. …

Allen’s controversial stance has alienated some former supporters of the Elk Foundation, who accuse him of turning the conservation group into a pro-hunting lobby. The family of famed wildlife biologist Olaus J. Murie pulled money last year for its annual Elk Foundation award on account of the organization’s “all-out war against wolves,” according to the Montana Pioneer. …

Allen would like to see the wolf population in the Rocky Mountain region shrink: “We do feel like the number could be managed downward and not threaten the population overall,” he said. [How many individual wolves will suffer while they “manage” them “downward”?]

When asked by the Pioneer about the natural predator-prey relations, Allen said: “Natural balance is a Walt Disney movie. It isn’t real.”

The former marketer for NASCAR is not what you might think of today as a conservationist. [That’s because he’s not; he’s a fucking marketer for NASCAR and a trophy hunter]. Allen poses for photos in hunter camo, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has a page on its site called “The Hunt,” where users can plan their own elk hunts and get game recipes from the “Carnivore’s Corner.”

But he and his cohort maintain that hunters are the original conservationists [LMFAO]. They take inspiration from early American hunters and outdoorsmen like Theodore Roosevelt. [Oh, you mean that guy who wrote African Game Trails in which he lovingly muses over shooting elephants, hippos, buffaloes, lions, cheetahs, leopards, giraffes, zebras, hartebeest, impalas, pigs, the not-so-formidable 30-pound steenbok and even (in what must have seemed the pinnacle of manly sport with rifles) a mother ostrich on her nest?]

The proposal to delist gray wolves across the country and return management to the states comes less than two years after populations in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Utah, which cover the Northern Rocky Mountain region, were stripped of Federal protections.

Environmental activists who oppose taking gray wolves off the endangered species list argue that the population has not been restored to its historical range, which once extended across the much of the contiguous United States.

Considered a threat to livestock, the gray wolf was nearly hunted to extinction in the early to mid-20th century. Canadian-born gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s and the population has largely recovered due to conservation efforts. [True conservation, that is. Not to be confused with the warped perversion practiced by the self-serving Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.]