Our World and Everything in It

In honor of Native American Wolf Moon Month our Federal Fish and Wildlife Service “made it much easier to kill wolves in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Rockies region — even while they remain protected under the Endangered Species Act,” according to Defender’s of Wildlife. Nice tribute to our heritage huh?

Defenders went on to say that Secy. Kempthorne changed a rule that makes it easier to kill wolves in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming and allows the slaughter of wolves in the region of Yellowstone and the Northern Rockies. All the states need to do is PROVE that wolves are a MAJOR CAUSE of the inability for elk and deer to meet state management goals. Goals include how elk herds move about or behave. So wolves can be trapped or shot by wildlife officials if elk or deer move about differently. That’s a pretty big weight to hang around a little ole wolf neck and if the officials hang around the perimeter of Yellowstone long enough surely a wolf will stick its neck out and get it shot off.

I’m interested in the part that says PROVE. Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming should have a really hard time proving wolves have lowered the numbers of elk in those states since Idaho’s Fish and Game reported elk populations at all time highs, 20% above management objectives for 2006. Wyoming’s elk numbers were 9000 over the state’s objective in 2006. In 2004, Montana had an elk population of over 100,000. So if herds are down, who’s the culprit?

On Ralph Maughn’s Wildlife News website, Bob Hoskins commented Sept. 4, 2006: “The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has been making a concerted effort to reduce elk numbers through late season, cow-calf hunts over the last decade to bring the herds down to objective. In most herds in western Wyoming, these targeted hunts have been successful. When you hear in the press that wolves are killing Wyoming elk by the score, recognize that the claim is absolutely false. Worse, Wyoming G&F knows that it’s false. The fact is Wyoming’s hunters have been killing elk by the score in these late season hunts, by design. Many late season hunts will continue this coming hunting season.

He went on to say there is nothing wrong with the reduction program but quit blaming disappearing elk on the wolves. It’s a lie! This story is repeated in a USA article where biologist John Vucetich of Michigan Tech University in Houghton says wolves have been wrongfully blamed for a decline elk populations around Yellowstone in Montana. They studied weather, hunting, and wolves as factors.  Yellowstone has seen 7 years of drought and 1997 winter that killed many elk. They found the weather and hunting to blame for elk decline. Another biologist, Canadian Mark Boyce of the University of Alberta, and colleagues reached the same conclusion. They have an upcoming paper reporting that: “Montana increased the ‘hunter harvest’ quota on elk that leave Yellowstone grounds, issuing a higher-than-ever 2,882 hunting permits in 2000. A decline in the elk herd was thus guaranteed, Boyce says, even if wolves were not present.

So the poor wolves play the fall guy in all of this. Government officials and hunting lobby groups are the real menace. And all of it is unnecessary. Local ranchers partnering with Defenders of Wildlife to “expand their use of non-lethal wolf control measures” experienced no wolf-related livestock losses at all this grazing season. They believe “practical, inexpensive and non-lethal methods help reduce losses and conflicts while promoting better cooperation between ranchers, state and federal land managers and wildlife conservationists.”

According to Friends of Animals, Idaho’s Fish and Game Service “based the plan for the aerial gunning of wolves on a “trend count” in the Clearwater region, relying on astonishingly unscientific data in which eight cows were reportedly killed by wolves in the area.” The Dept. of Agriculture’s very scientific study of “collared” wolves living on the perimeter of cattle fields resulted in only 8 cattle kills total over 3 years time. Hmm?

Government officials are officially caught in lies again. None of the state’s involved have proof that wolves are lowering their elk populations drastically. They’ve been caught over-hunting and blaming the wolves. Ranchers have non-lethal alternatives that are affective and have been reimbursed for their losses by charitable organizations anyway. So there is no reason whatsoever for these wolf hunts especially aerial killing. You know with a war going on I’ve got to wonder the waste of energy for aerial hunters just looking to kill something. They need redirection. Know what I mean?

Check out the latest video of a disgusting wolf aerial hunt at: http://www.defenders.org/newsroom/ads_and_psas/tv_ad_to_stop_aerial_hunting.php.

As for changing the laws making it easier to kill wolves, tell Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne that the rule change for hunting wolves is unacceptable. I personally would tell him more than that, and have.

https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=943&autologin=true&s_einterest=C3C4&s_Affiliate=savewolves_&JServSessionIdr004=4gy70ytnm2.app26a

About Idaho’s elk population and hunters: http://www.friendsofanimals.org/news/2007/july/help-stop-the-bush-a.html.

About Wyoming’s hunting laws and elk decline due to hunters: http://wolves.wordpress.com/2006/04/08/wyoming-elk-numbers-are-9000-over-states-objective/.

About the USA Today article and Canadian biologist’s report that hunters are to blame for elk population decline: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2005-11-21-elk-yellowstone-mystery_x.htm.
 

This is a very good documentary about wolves by researcher Shaun Ellis and also a good tribute to “Wolf Moon” month of January. Find out more about wolves and why we should stop the eradication of this species once and for all. A majority of people have spoken, but legislators, especially in Alaska, continue the sportless killing by helicopter and plane.

 Shaun Ellis doesn’t recite a documentary at you, he lives with the wolves. It’s good. Watch it. Learn.

Peace

In honor of this being Wolf Moon month and that the fate of wolves in our national parks, in Idaho, and in Wyoming hangs in balance with a Secretary of Interior that is oblivious to thousands of voices to spare the wolf, I thought I’d do a piece on dogs and wolves. I ran into this interesting page along the way.

The website page is: http://www.idir.net/~wolf2dog/genetic1.htm. There is a list of References for Wolf-Dog Genetic History. I started to read the summaries of a variety of books written about the genealogy of the dog. Dogs are direct descendants of wolves, all dogs, little bitty pocket dogs, hairy dogs, smooth dogs, hunting dogs, even Pekinese dogs. The DNA of dog and wolf is almost identical. The dog is not the descendant of the combo wolf/jackal as many used to believe. Our dogs are tame wolves basically.

So I kept reading the short synopsis of each entry, there must be 15 of them on this page, and one after the other: “Scientists believe that wolves are the direct ancestors of today’s domestic dogs,” and “…on the basis of a large number of skull measurements and examinations of the size and structure of the brain, blood factors, and numbers of chromosomes that all dogs, whether Pekingese, bulldogs or Alsatians, were descended solely from the wolf…[t]he domesticated wolf is the dog,” and “Although the subject continues to be controversial, most authorities now agree that all dogs, from Chihuahuas to Dobermans are descended from wolves which were tamed in the Near East ten or twelve thousand years ago.” There were some summaries more genetically oriented, but all of them concurred the dog, man’s best friend is really a wolf in pedigree skin. That is except for one entry

That one entry is odd because it’s about proving whether the canine carries wolf blood. They have the same DNA for Pete’s sake. Trying to ascertain whether the dog carries actual wolf blood, when their DNA is identical, looks like a technical way around relating man’s best friend to the wolf. And look from whom and where the study comes. The Wyoming Game and Fish Dept. contracted a New York lab to do this study and look whose questioning the ties between wolf and dog, the Idaho Fish and Game Dept. back when the Wolf Conservation and Management Plan was instituted there. It was stated “There is not presently a valid test that will guarantee analysis of whether a particular canine carries wolf blood. Certain DNA studies have been conducted by a New York laboratory under contract by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, but a much larger population study of wolf and dog breeds would have to be done before conclusive results can be obtained.” Jerry M. Conley, Director, Idaho Fish and Game Dept. From letter to Gov. Cecil D. Andrus, March 19, 1992.

Idaho and Wyoming have been gunning for wolves for years. It’s coming close to a head now. And it’s not about control of an untamed, voracious animal. It’s certainly not about maintaining balance in our ecosystems of which the wolf plays an important role.  And it’s not about killing livestock.  It’s about exterminating an animal that is the grandfather of our pet dog, so that man can hunt for sport instead. And sport hunting is about money. It always gets back to money.
 

So is this how we celebrate the wolf in January 2008 America–slaughtering them as a species? President George Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secy. of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne, (former Gov. of Idaho), current Gov. Butch Otter of Idaho, and Gov. Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming, as well as, Gov. Palin of Alaska are advancing their plans to skip the threatened and endangered species list and eradicate wolves by aerial helicopter, plane, snaring, etc., in Idaho and Wyoming. Alaska is already obliterating wolves by aerial hunting there. Gov. Palin just wants to keep the carnage going.  I find it interesting that while Gov. of Idaho Kempthorne pushed to get state control over wolves and now he is in charge of Dept. of the Interior overseeing this latest wolf assault.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970314a.html

While Kempthorne heads the Dept. of Interior, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Research Center has current reports that wolves have restored much balance in the wild, keeping coyote populations down. Another 3-year study radio collared wolves in packs whose habitats surrounded the perimeter of cattle ranches. The wolves constantly crossed through cattle herds at night. In 3 years, wolves killed only 8 cattle. The National Geographic Channel aired a segment about Yellowstone’s wolves being a great success for the environment there. Why the rush to kill wolves after allowing them to flourish, especially if they are maintaining a balance among other predators?

This concept of wolf slaughter via aerial planes and helicopters is a hideous irony considering the American wolf is a major and honorable component in Native American history. Native Americans like the Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapahoe admired wolves for the way they “operated in packs, caring for each other and sharing food, as well as the strength, endurance and hunting skills displayed by the Native American wolf. These were the same qualities that would help to ensure the survival of the tribe, qualities worthy of emulating.” http://www.native-languages.org/composition/native-american-wolf.html.

Running an animal to exhaustion from a helicopter or a plane to shoot it with sighted high-powered rifles from above isn’t honorable hunting skills. It’s sacrilegious that our government officials are willing to hunt an animal in such a cowardly manner while Native Americans revere the animal for its hunting skills. Wolves are not rats. Many Native American Tribes believed wolves to be teachers and called their scouts “wolves” that were brave enough to be the first to venture out and bring their experiences back to the tribe as wolves do for their pack. Right now many Christian Americans embrace creationist theory for their origins. Native Americans have their own creationist theory that includes wolves, “… the Medicine Wheel atop Medicine Mountain in the Bighorns, [] the Massaum Ceremony, “the medicine dance of the ancients,” a beautiful and integral part of traditional Cheyenne culture in which the wolf, and the “Wolf’s Lodge,” is essential to creation, to life, and renewal in the spiritual and physical,” http://www.infohub.com/vacation_packages/3367.html.

And so here we are in 2008 allowing an already dubious administration to slaughter an icon of our heritage by cowardly if not sadistic means while we cry to other nations to stop clubbing seals, hooking dolphins, and killing whales for research.  This administration attempts to evoke a sense of patriotism in everything else they do; yet they overlook the wolf. Look at some of the names of the leaders of some of the greatest tribes that once ruled America.

“Little Wolf was the Native American chief of northern Cheyenne. Little Wolf, who led a military society called the Bowstring Soldiers, was a leader in the Northern Plains wars. He and Sioux and Arapaho warriors fought together in the War for the Bozeman Trail, which was also known as Red Cloud’s War, from 1866 to 1868. Little Wolf was a signer of the Fort Laramie Treaty in 1868,” http://student.britannica.com/comptons/article-9312204?

Among the signers of the Laramie Treaty were many native chiefs whose names included wolf: Of the Ogallalah band of Sioux chiefs there was High Wolf and Big Wolf Foot, of the Uncpapa band of Sioux chiefs was Wolf Necklace, and of the Arapahoe chiefs there was Spotted Wolf, Big Wolf, Wolf Mocassin, and Wolf Chief.
http://digital.library.okstate.edu/Kappler/Vol2/treaties/sio0998.htm.

There are many citizens interested in Native American culture that should embrace the seriousness of what is being proposed for wolf populations in these particular states. Out of heritage, patriotism, and humaneness for America’s wildlife, call or contact your congress people to stop this type of eradication process for living things once and for all. Contact the media for more coverage about wolves and their future in America.