Posted on 04/14/2007 7:32:16 PM PDT by george76
There are now at least 1,300 wolves prowling Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, far more than anyone imagined when the species was reintroduced in the Northern Rockies 12 years ago.
The wolf population has, on average, grown by about 26 percent a year for the past decade. The latest estimates, which summarize counts completed at the end of 2006, show they aren't slowing down.
"I keep thinking we're at the top end of the bubble," said Ed Bangs, wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "I can't see that there's room for any more, but we'll see."
As the wolf population has grown, so have the reports of cattle, sheep and other livestock being killed...
It's no surprise that wolves are thriving following reintroduction in 1995 and 1996 in Yellowstone National Park and in central Idaho. Wolves are skilled predators, fast breeders and able to live in different environments.
The fastest-growing area for wolves last year was in Wyoming outside Yellowstone National Park. The number of wolves jumped by 31 percent...
With that increase, 123 cattle were reportedly killed by wolves, more than has ever been recorded in Wyoming since the reintroduction...
In Montana, the number of wolves grew by 19 percent...
The number of elk, which are wolves' primary winter prey, has declined 50 percent in the area since 1995...
The Fish and Wildlife Service said the wolf population has, for seven years, met basic recovery goals of 30 breeding pairs distributed across Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.
The agency has recommended removing wolves from the endangered species list. But the process has become mired in a conflict between the federal government and the state of Wyoming.
(Excerpt) Read more at casperstartribune.net ...
“the wolves were trucked in to satisfy some inner need of enviros to control other people’s lives. We were told we had to have 30 packs/300 wolves, well of course it turns out that there was no intention of honoring that.
The whole idea is enough wolves to chase folks off their ranches...”
for you shyla
“....And the sheepherder said,’Son, you don’t seem to understand. The wolves ain’t screwing our sheep, they’re eating them.’”
That is a great joke.
Thanks.
Huh, so man tampering with nature hasn’t turned out so well. Gee. What were the odds.
Trust envirowienies to screw up the balance of nature. I'd much rather have an over polulation of elk than an over population of wolves. Elk are much more useful and worthwhile to hunt. A good sized elk fills a good sized freezer for a year. Time to open up wolf hunting.
When will "THEY" start a program to reintroduce Elk into the region...
Too true, but the enviro whackos are vegans, so they don’t mind the decrease in elk.
‘They’ would love to spend our tax money on another program.
No problem … global warming is about to wipe all life on earth out anyway.
I don’t know if it was the same area, or how reliable the information was, but I heard a report that there was an overpopulation of elk which was causing overgrazing along streams and damage to water quality and fishing or something like that. Does anyone know more about that story. The bottom line was that reducing the elk population and discouraging eating along the streams was good for the overall ecosystem, according to the story.
Sounds like another Sierra Club created urban myth ?
This has happened because the envirowhackos have not allowed hunters to thin the herd.
Maybe it will take one of the whackos children to be bit or eaten before sanity returns.
S.S.S.
Even Ed Bangs admits that the federal government met their 30 pack goal years ago.
The USFWS gets paid to ‘manage’ the Canadian wolf introduction mess.
and spend more of our tax dollars...
I was raised by a pack of wolves. Sheep are tasty.
The weather is improving. There may be some opportunities to visit some prairie dog towns as well. It's varmint season.
I'm not worried about "global warming". That cycle has repeated many times over millions of years. It happens just fine without any intervention. It even happens without SUV's or "carbon credits".
The only vaguely interesting development recently is the honeybee colony collapse observation. There isn't a good explanation yet. The best prospect so far is extreme sensitivity to "neo nicotinoid" pesticides. I'm less impressed with the Ed Dames theory of blindness due to high levels of UVB. Whatever the explanation, it is a phenomenon that threatens our agricultural industry.
Some of the elk problem is lack of feed because of the drought.
Horse sh**! Anyone with a brain knew it would get to this point. Consequently, the only elk I've seen in the last two years are the ones on elk farms.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
A while back I read that wolves and coyotes were cross breeding in the eastern US. At the time, this impressed me as creating an extremely intelligent and dangerous animal.
But I haven’t seen anything since about it.
For those of you not familiar with the behavior of either, wolves have about the same intelligence as a 5-year-old, but with advanced social skills; and coyotes are excellent tacticians, developing, communicating with each other, and executing complex schemes.
In some Native American traditions, wolves are placed about on par with humans, and coyotes are synonymous with tricksters, both crafty and ingenious.
A mix of those two animals might be something incredible.
I’ve seen a number of elk herds in SW MT over the last 12 mo.
You’re the closest to the actual issue.
Can’t wait to see a couple pick of some kids camping at Yellowstone.
Well since they can interbreed and have offspring that aren’t sterile, they should be classified as the same species. As currently classified, gray wolves are Canis Lupus and coyotes are Canis Latrans. I’m not a biologist, so I can’t tell you why that is the case.
Anyways, it is possible that different genes give wolves their intelligence and coyotes their tactical senses. If that is the case then you fall into the two intelligent parents trap where the offspring is rarely as smart as either of the parents. Then again, it might be the same genes that are responsible for both behaviors in which case their location and lifestyles cause those specific traits to be expressed.
Actually, it seems to have turned out great for the wolves.
Please let me know how it goes.
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “put wolves in Yellowstone Park” and created a recovery area 300 miles around the park, then “tied all the dollars to Yellowstone and openly admitted they knew wolves would leave.
There are also wolf dogs that are half wolf too.
After the family ranchers go broke...Ted Turner and his friends will buy up the ranch for santuary for their Hollywood friends and for ‘gentlemen’ ranching ...
My dog was acquired from a newspaper ad in the Seattle, WA area when I lived in Federal Way, WA. Wolf crosses are fairly common in the area.
Wolves will ravage the "coyote problem".
When the wolf population reaches a critical mass, folks are going to find out why there are so many tales about big, bad wolves.
Sure, they seem shy now. Wouldn’t you be, after being hunted nearly to extinction?
But wait until they expand their population base. We may find out that all those old tales were based on fact.
The enviro-whacko syndrome is an urban affliction. Thus the whelps of the enviro-whacko bunch will be a no risk of wolf appetitive behavior.
Repeal ESA!
“‘They’ would love to spend our tax money on another program.”
That IS their job description, isn’t it?
;-)
The worst part is that aspen are an ice age relect species, unable to reproduce by seed under present conditions. Therefore, aspen in Yellowstone reproduce via runners. What seems like a mountainside of aspen is actually ONE huge tree, all linked by underground runners.
If ParcMan’s bureau-scientists allowed the elk to eat to destruction all aspen in an area, no seeds will blow in.
Unfortunately, ParcMan so did.
When will the aspen return?
Probably, when the next ice age arrives.
If you have any sources about such cross bred animals, please let me know. Thanks.
In a Canadian park, a wolf tried to drag a child out of the tent where the family was sleeping.
The parents fortunately woke up and decided to administer a good rib kicking to the Big Bad Wolf. The wolf eventually dropped it’s face bite on the five year old boy and left.
I find it interesting that ParcMan and the enviro-whackos have not posted signs “interpreting” wolf behavior.
I would suspect that the well observed “hybred vigor” might just produce a smarter pest animal in the case of a wolf/coyote mating.
Speaking of wolves, but applicable to all large bodies predators, he wrote that wolves were a risk to man in Eastern Europe and Asia where wolves did eat men. He further explained that this was due to the fact the there, wolves were “hunted only rarely and then only by the Lords of the manor”.
In America, he said they soon learned to their great regret that nearly every man and boy carried a rifle.
Please note that the Constitution guarantees to all the right to life.
Nowhere is there anything in the Constitution requiring one to be wolf scat. Nor is there anything requiring one to quarter such beasts on one’s land.
If we could force King George to stop quartering troops on our land, we surely can force President George to stop quartering wolves on our land.
If urban Blue State socialists want wolves, let them keep a wolf pack in Central Park in the heart of the Big Sh*tty.
If nothing else, the resulting conflict between the two legged urban predator population of Central park and the newly introduced Central Park Pack should be interesting for the Big Sh*tty residents to watch from the safety of their apartments facing the Park.
Ancillary benefits of this Modest Proposal would be that druggie and mugger populations would soon be reduced and Central park users would only have to worry about being eaten.
Elk populations can be, and are, reduced by humans hunting them, thus providing meat and outdoor activities for many people, no need to introduce elk into the system. You can control how many Elk humans kill, you can't with wolves. On top of that the story is bogus, there are no over populations of Elk in the US.
So your theory is that when the wolves reach the correct number of Elk in the area that the wolves will simply stop killing them?(snicker). Here is the way it used to work, and still does with rabbits and smaller predators. The game animals would increase in number in any given area, then the predators would increase because there was more food available to them, then the prey animals would decline because of the increased predator population and a year later the predators would start to decline, this kept things in balance.
Now, however, it doesn't work that way with the larger animals because wolves and larger predators(mountain lions)have other prey they can feed on when their main prey starts to diminish, other prey meaning domestic animals. This allows the predators to increase in numbers even though their natural prey is declining in numbers, sooner or later ALL the natural prey will be gone because the balance doesn't work when you throw in the domestic animals as an extra food supply.
This unnatural cycle is evident now in the areas where the wolves were released and in areas where lions can't be hunted(CA with their several human deaths a year due to lions spring to mind). Unless the wolves are controlled, in other words thinned out by killing, they will eventually wipe out the Elk herd, perhaps to the point of no return, and devastate the local ranchers there for ruining the economy for that area and driving meat prices sky high.
The fish and game of Wyoming and other states know all these facts, so do the enviros. The enviros have a bigger agenda and don't care if the Elk and deer die off in any given region if they can cause the demise of the ranches in those areas.
Global Scamming is only going to wipe Capitalistic Life off the planet. It’s where all the enviro-watermelons have gone.
Pray for W and Our Troops
If elk are a problem, shoot them.
The deer in our suburban area are like pets. They hide out during the day in people’s backyards. ( literally). Then at night they go out an try to kill motorists. It’s like a Steven King novel.
An amusing article on Slashdot this morning pins it on cellphones and the like. But there are enough holes in that theory that it's quite unlikely.
I used to have a shepherd/coyote mix. Miss that dog...
“Wolf numbers continue to grow”
That’s a beautiful animal, so long as it isn’t killing you or your livestock.
“Can’t wait to see a couple pick of some kids camping at Yellowstone.”
Really? Looking forward to that are ya?
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