Posted on 11/10/2002 6:27:17 AM PST by SLB
Grantsburg - It starts after sunset with howls echoing from the black woods at the edge of the pasture.
Then the cows begin to moan.
It is the return of the endangered timber wolf. And for the Fornengo family, there is nothing remotely romantic about it.
These beef cattle ranchers in northwestern Wisconsin say nighttime wolf raids cost them 92 calves last year alone, and they expect similar losses when the cattle are finally tallied for this year.
They say they are being driven out of business - and practically out of their minds - by a wildlife recovery program run amok. When they think of wolves, they see red.
Blood red.
They've found calves with their hindquarters shredded, still alive and trying to suckle. They have stumbled upon a pregnant cow ripped open and her fetus torn out. They have seen calves with crushed throats - dead without losing a drop of blood. Killed, they believe, simply for the thrill.
"You see pictures of (wolves) looking all pretty in the winter, but you don't see pictures of what they do," says Cortney Fornengo, 19. She says wolf numbers have increased so much in the past two years that she no longer will walk alone in the woods around their ranch. "There is a reason the farmers made (wolves) extinct before, and this is probably the reason," she says.
Reviled for their uncanny ability to make life hell for farmers, wolves were shot, trapped, poisoned and eventually eradicated in Wisconsin by the late 1950s. Now, three decades of federal and state efforts to restore the species to the state are starting to pay off - in a big way.
Just over a decade ago, the state was home to less than a few dozen of the deer-loving carnivores that had roamed over from Minnesota's northern timberlands. Today, packs are breeding here with abandon, and their numbers easily top 300.
"I don't know if we ever thought we would be at this point. We figured 100 or 150 wolves may be as many as the state could hold," says Adrian Wydeven of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
In Wisconsin's North Woods, the wolves have reclaimed their spot as the top carnivore, but the federal government has yet to formally acknowledge that success.
The wolf in Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula is still listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, and that means each animal, no matter how problematic for a farmer, is still protected and cared for as if it were worthy of a berth on Noah's ark.
Most wolves live off deer, though some develop a taste for livestock. So as wolf numbers climb, so do problems for some farmers. Last year alone, Wydeven says 17 hunting dogs were also killed by wolves.
Now even the staunchest wolf advocates agree it is time to reclassify the animals as "threatened," which would allow government workers to kill problem animals. Minnesota wolves have been classified as threatened since 1978.
The federal government first proposed the switch for Wisconsin and the U.P. more than two years ago, but the papers have yet to be signed - thanks, basically, to a tangle of red tape in Washington, D.C. One of the problems is that Wisconsin's reclassification is lumped in with a proposal to change protection levels for wolves in the West. That is a highly emotional and political issue, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is proceeding cautiously.
Still, the reclassification should come before year's end, and most expect the species could be listed as officially recovered within a couple of years. That could open the door to limited wolf hunts.
Meanwhile, trapping and relocating problem animals are the only options to help people such as Cortney Fornengo's father, Tony. He says the process is too slow, and there is no guarantee problem wolves won't return in a couple of days.
When it comes to wolves, Tony Fornengo can be an emotional and sometimes foul-mouthed fellow. Some wildlife workers just shake their heads when his name comes up. But people do agree he has a problem that could be fixed with the stroke of a pen.
"I'm frustrated by the slow pace of the (reclassification) process probably just as much as the folks out there with wolves in their pastures," says Ron Refsnider, regional endangered species listing coordinator for U.S. Fish & Wildlife in Minnesota.
Probably not.
As Fornengo pilots his big black Dodge turbo diesel pickup truck across one of the muddy pastures on the family ranch that stretches over more than 2,000 acres and straddles the Wisconsin-Minnesota border north of Grantsburg, he looks past his herd and off into the woods. He knows there are yellow eyes staring back.
He believes government wildlife officials secretly and illegally reintroduced the animals to Wisconsin, something DNR officials say is nonsense. "It's a (expletive) nightmare around here," he says. "Start shooting the bastards, or let us kill them."
He hears howls at night and gets so mad he can't fall back asleep.
He says he is about to adopt a wolf-management policy he says some others in the area already embrace. It's called shoot, shovel and shut up. "It's gotten to the point where I'll take care of it myself," he says.
Warns Refsnider: "There is a risk. A very big risk."
The maximum federal fine for killing an endangered wolf is up to $100,000 and six months in jail.
Wildlife officials acknowledge illegal killings are on the rise. In a recent 12-month period, 15 wolves were found killed in Wisconsin. This fall, four turned up shot in the U.P.
"In the past, we'd probably have one or two shot per year," Wydeven says.
Fornengo insists he is left with little choice but to take the endangered species law into his own hands.
The bleeding, he says, has spilled out of his pastures and into his ledgers, and he is not sure how long he can keep operating the ranch his father purchased in 1953. He says the wolves claimed $50,000 worth of livestock last year alone.
State policy provides for Fornengo and other farmers to be reimbursed for livestock lost to wolves, but state wildlife managers question Fornengo's numbers. Only nine of his losses last year could be confirmed. Fornengo says wolves are such voracious eaters that they often leave no trace of their kill on his expansive ranch lands, which are home to more than 1,200 head of cattle. State biologists remain dubious, but they did agree to pay for about one-third of the family's reported losses last year.
Fornengo sent back the check, hired a lawyer and has vowed to sue.
"I'm just trying to make an honest living," he says.
Back from oblivion
Before he will talk about the issue, Fornengo wants to know one thing: "Are you for the wolf, or against the wolf?"
He divides people into these two camps. His side is by far the underdog.
The wolf enjoys overwhelming support across America. Maybe it's because the creatures have been gone for so long they no longer seem so big and bad. Maybe it is because people today have a greater appreciation for all aspects of the environment, even the messy business that goes on at the top of the food chain.
Maybe it's because the closest most people ever get to one of the beasts is a glossy magazine photo.
Sitting on a bar stool in the North Woods city of Spooner, well driller Chris Lindstrom says it is simply a matter of respecting Mother Nature.
"We have coyotes. We have fox. We have fishers. We have a lot of predators in this area," he says. "It's nice to have the wolf around . . . you've got to have balance."
Not everyone is so tolerant. Gilman's Lawrence Krak has fought wolf recovery for years. He doesn't believe the species ever was endangered, given its numbers in Minnesota and Canada. He considers the recovery a make-work project for federal biologists. As for the wolves themselves, he says, "We got along just fine without them."
For others, the animals have become, quite literally and simply, a matter of fact.
Asked what she thinks about the creatures, Radisson gas station attendant Amy Rynda replies, "They're around. That's all."
It is a testament to a wolf recovery program that has been, by most accounts, a wild success.
The wolf was among the first protected following passage of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, and not long after that, they began to roam over from northern Minnesota and slowly began to recolonize Wisconsin forests.
Today biologists count 323 animals inside state borders, and the actual figure likely is higher. The U.P. has a similar number.
The key to the recovery?
"Just quit shooting them for a while, and let them do their thing," says Martin Smith, a biologist for the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife.
Perhaps their natural return is the reason so many people in the northern Midwest have been so willing to make room for them.
It was a different story out West.
In 1995, the federal government embarked on a controversial program to capture Canadian wolves and drop them in the wilds of central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park.
Network television news loved the story, but many Westerners saw the reintroduction more as a chance for the federal government to flex its muscles than as an attempt to save a species.
It didn't take long before some of the animals started turning up dead with bullet holes in them.
Now, almost eight years later, populations in both Yellowstone and Idaho continue to grow. While rules do allow problem wolves to be killed, hard feelings about the transplant linger.
Stanley, Idaho, hunting guide and outfitter Ron Gillett opposed the reintroduction but says he decided to give the wolves a chance when they first arrived. Their population in Idaho has since blossomed from a handful to hundreds, and he says it is ruining ranching and killing the elk hunt upon which his business depends.
He has sympathy for people such as Fornengo who are trying to cope with a creature Gillett refers to as a "land piranha."
"If I ever go to jail, it will be because of wolves."
Fur flies
Wildlife officials like to say that understanding the science behind an environmental problem and finding a solution to it are the simple parts. Problems occur when that science collides with human interests.
That's when the fur flies. That's where the wolves could be headed as their numbers climb.
"We've built up a store of goodwill in this state toward the wolf," says Eau Claire wolf advocate Jim Olson, a retired college professor. "That is gradually eroding as we get more and more depredation kinds of issues."
State wildlife managers are scrambling now to keep a handle on the burgeoning species. With federal rules prohibiting killing wolves in all but the most extreme cases, such as when a human life is threatened, biologists are playing an elaborate game of musical chairs. Dozens of animals this year have been trapped and transferred around the state.
Recently, an entire pack was shipped to the Menominee Indian reservation located about 40 miles northwest of Green Bay.
"We're running out of places to relocate problem wolves, and we're starting to run the risk that relocated wolves could cause new problems in other locations," says the DNR's Wydeven.
Just last week, one of the wolves that plagued the Fornengo farm was relocated to central northern Wisconsin.
The DNR planned the release for late afternoon to lessen chances that someone would stumble upon the creature while it was in a drug-induced stupor.
The biologists were worried it might get shot.
Their worries were not unfounded. Their dream of restoring the wolf to the North Woods has been realized, but the fear exists that a public relations nightmare could be in store for the animal if the government doesn't move to strip its endangered status.
Some wildlife managers may not like Fornengo's feisty attitude, but they know he has a legitimate problem.
"It's way beyond time" to begin killing problem wolves in Wisconsin, says David Mech, a senior research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey and perhaps the world's foremost authority on North America's wolves.
"I worry," says Mech, who has worked to recover the wolf for more than three decades. "If we don't handle it right, and if the government doesn't respond to people's needs by delisting the wolf and by letting appropriate management tools be used, then there will be an increasing backlash."
That's the first thing I thought of when I read the article. "Shoot, Shovel and Shut Up." This was the advice from our game warden when we had a prob with beavers and asked him to trap them for us. There are also alot of exotic animal farms around our area... and I've seen puma and wolves roaming our property. The word is, that the owners of these farms will release animals when they have too many to care for and can't get rid of them.
If the greens want to hear howling and such, they can afford to pay to feed their performers. Else they should shut up when other folks fling lead at 'em. Seems all the pot lickers like to band together to protect their endangered enterprises.
It's NICE to have the wolf around? You numbskull!!
You obviously don't care for human life.
The guy I know who came upon a wolf munching on the still-warm remains of his 8-year-old son would probably disagree with you.
Politicians neighborhoods ---or the environmentalists. Let them have to keep their own kids locked up all day.
This article points out the danger when the greenies and the NGO groups ramrod BS down people's throats.
PETA & the WolfNow, to show you that life imitates art, this was posted in NewsMax.com.©2000 by Mark Edward Vande Pol
Republication by permission onlyPeople have an odd sort of affinity for the wolf born out of a sense of human frailty, over that thinnest of veneers, restraining the animal within us. It is that slightness of difference between the fiercely wild and the faithful domestic that is so reflective of our own, perilous spiritual journey between violent hedonism and peaceful civility. The wolf is an archetype of the internal turmoil of life, vicariously lived in spontaneous freedom.
As you are probably aware, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is engaged in a program to reintroduce the Mexican Gray Wolf throughout the Southwest. As you might suspect, it has been no surprise to anyone that this has been a controversial exercise. Wolves can do a lot of damage, and it can be pretty gruesome, sometimes even dangerous. They eat a lot, and that to do that, they kill things. Wolves enjoy killing things, especially when they run away.
Ranchers, farmers, and townspeople had this programme shoved down their throats along with all sorts of civic promises that have yet to materialize. They were promised full compensation for lost livestock, and were met with a pittance after a series of ridiculous bureaucratic loops. They were promised that the wolves were shy and would avoid human settlements, which hasn’t proven true either. They were told the wolves would remain within a limited range as long as there was adequate food, and they have strayed for many miles instead. They were told that the wolf would improve the herds of elk, and instead they are decimated. The government has promised these things without accountability, and it is time that the accountability should be properly affixed. The technology already exists.
The citizens of the Southwest should demand that the government develop shock collars triggered by the Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to keep the wolves on their range. GPS is already used for tracking their movements. If the wolves wander off government land, they would be nailed by the collars until they turn back! The US Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service employees that love these wolves so much can then spend their time running after the wolves changing batteries on shock collars or else face a lawsuit for gross negligence when a child is eventually attacked and killed in a schoolyard. Only when they think they have solved the problem, will they discover…
The Law of Unintended Consequences .
Let’s leap forward in time with a flight of fancy, and see how it all worked out.
After a number of years of repeated battery changes, the wolves of the Southwest had figured out that they sort of liked the effects of being shot in the haunches with darts full of Phenobarbital. They started hanging out nearer and nearer human settlements, further from their game and risking increasing numbers of shocks; in order to be nailed in the rump by a dart gun, to be followed by a warm and numbing stupor.
PETA sued USFWS and demanded sensitivity training for all USFWS employees and a research programme to end the use of drugs. They demanded rehabilitation and drug treatment programs for the wolves. To reduce the incidence of human interaction, the reintroduction programme area would have to be expanded to include all of Texas and connect through Colorado to the realm of the Northern Gray. The labor union for the Immigration and Naturalization Service sued the USFWS because the wolves were hindering illegal immigration, displacing jobs, and not paying dues.
Because of the expanded scope of the programme required to treat addicted wolves (and fourteen years of general recession), the USFWS was still complaining to Congress of a lack of university trained certified wolf-psychologists. The level of funding to retrain the former INS agents as canine drug-counselors was insufficient to run the programme. The drug manufacturers worried about the associated liability and raised prices on tranquilizer darts dramatically. There was no domestic supplier. Without a guarantee of indemnification, and tired of late payments on the now insurmountable trade deficit, Sandoz and Novartis, the Swiss suppliers of tranquilizer darts, refused to deliver their usual shipments without cash payments from the American government, up front.
When deprived of their regular fix, the wolves became strung-out and violent. Some of them suffered seizures and convulsions from barbiturate withdrawal. In a fit of such rage, one alpha male, instead of issuing a normal correction and maintaining the usual pack-discipline, attacked an innocent bitch and instead got hooked into the collar of its dying victim. This noble animal subsequently died of starvation nearly seventy miles away from the original incident after over a month of unbelievable cruelty, unable or unwilling to feed off the carcass of its fallen mate. The National Geographic cover page brought home the graphic evidence: the futility of humans arrogantly presuming to manage the wild.
Several months later, a PETA consultant was brought in to solve the problem. Together with a new infusion of FWS employees and former INS agents (now canine drug counselors), the PETA principal convened an evening séance around the campfire. While the swirl of various sorts of smoke infiltrated their Gnostrils, and as the sound of drums throbbed in their chests, the PETA infiltrators on the FWS were suddenly infused with an inspirational, consensus vision. They Gestalted that their spiritual kinship with the wolf, under the watchful eye of Gaia would allow them to approach the wolves to change the batteries without the aid of tranquilizer darts! It was to be a spiritual test of personal self-control, to approach the wolves without fear, lest the scent of anthropocentric terror arouse the prey drive of their brothers. The humans howled with the call of communion and donned their lambskin blankets as a token of their peaceful community with their spiritual brothers. (The hides had been willingly surrendered by the local ranchers, as a penalty for having introduced non-native sheep. Curiously, they were only too happy to help. It was nice to see them so cooperative and cheerful.)
Upon their approach, the wolves startled from their sudden slumber. Amid the confusing aroma of sheeple and suffering the lack of their usual offering of tranquilizer darts, they interpreted this event as both an impending fix and an offering of dinner. They responded entirely logically toward their PETA/USFWS benefactors. It was a hideous sight, the fury of the wolves and the cries of human death echoed in the silence of night in the desert, until suddenly, all hell broke loose with the sound of shooting.
Among the consensed was a young FWS ranger, a rather pluckish girl who had undergone a sudden attack of mechanistic thinking before breaking camp. She had spiritually fallen to question her ability to approach the canids fearlessly while smelling like lunch. After a liberal dosing of musk, she had donned her Kevlar flack jacket (usually reserved for negotiations with willing sellers) and slipped her standard issue 9mm Glock under her garment along with an extra clip in her boot. Upon the attack, she closed her eyes into her tears, and started to fire.
Although the slaughter she witnessed wasn't fatal to her, the destruction of the wolves, the loss of her comrades, and her shameful fear for such spiritual weakness, not to sacrifice herself to the bosom of Gaia, drove her to suicide. She was a single mother with two children. National mourning ensued for the wolves amid celebration at her spiritual contrition and self-sacrifice for her many crimes among which was her darkest secret, now made public. She was a breeder. Pregnant with two kids - how unthinkable! She deserved to die.
The rest of the USFWS employees suddenly unionized with the INS agents, demanding safer working conditions and better batteries for shock collars. The now ravening and overpopulated wolves had attacked a Hollywood set, killing three little pigs during the on-location filming of the sequel to that Oscar winning eco-documentary, "BABE in the Woods". In a sympathy action the Grips walked off the set and demanded rabies shots. The Disney Company filed a complaint through the People’s Assembly to the UN Security Council.
Meanwhile, the former property owners in the Alamagordo internment camp who had been serving time for hate speech delivered to a FWS Battery Replacement Technologist, made bail when the recovered collar was found on the now, long dead canis. Their attorney, Alan Derschowitz discovered the key to breaking the government's case. He was able to prove that the battery terminals were indeed backwards. Thus the term 'backwards idiot', instead of a hurtful epithet toward a selfless global citizen, was intended to be a helpful suggestion regarding a poor career choice. PETA still demanded a retrial with the Death Penalty, complaining that the former property owners had gotten off on a technicality. The court conceded, giving the hapless landowners instead their choice of community service parole: security duty in Zimbabwe, or census-taking in the South Bronx.
Facing certain death upon their “release”, and prior to the beginning of the sentencing phase of the new trial, INS-FWS union activists staged a breakout of the landowners. Together they high-tailed it en masse, for the nearby spas in Taos, NM to take hostages.
With the situation in New Mexico getting out of hand, the Michael Eisner Foundation had insisted that the UN hold a special collaborative summit at Taos. The spas had been recently commandeered as an attractive nuisance after the facility had been quietly bought up by a multimillionaire gay marriage counselor years before. The good doctor had diversified operations into the Universal Center for Political Consensus (UCPC). The stakeholders at the meeting were from the Department of Stake, the USFWS, the INS, the facilitators were to be former President Clinton, and a an anonymous party, a broad.
The harmonization of the convention was shattered by the sudden attack from the landowners and turned onto an ugly international incident when the, by then, starving wolves joined the fray. The Russian Ambassador met his Maker in a particularly cruel fashion when he tried to fend off a 70 kilo alpha male with a bust of Alan Gisburg. According to the coroner’s report, Mr. Clinton died of natural causes. Madeline Albright speaking from Prague, issued a statement to the effect that it was just a case of a bellicose Ambassador taunting a wild animal with the closing comment, "The wolves were there first." She demanded the Russians apologize by sending a supply of bears with which to augment the diversity of indigenous stocks and to control the marauding wolves. Meanwhile, a column of Chinese led Mexican regulars headed toward Taos.
Upon receipt of the final report, the USFWS began collaborating with Lockheed under contract to produce a tranquilizer dart that holds enough Vodka to stun bears, but the program stalled in disputes over cost overruns and a lack of raw material for field trials.
When a Chinese auditor from the IMF found the vodka discrepancy on the books, President Gore offered him a free trip to Taos to investigate. The bean counter is now at Memorial Sloan Kettering undergoing painful rabies treatments due to an encounter with a renegade band of infected USFWS employees, apparently hanging out at the now deserted spa, convinced that they were themselves brethren of the Wolf.
China declares war.
Saturday May 27, 2000 12:51 PM ESTIt doesn't get any better than this.Federal Agents Help Ted Turner Round Up Wild Wolves
Jim Ridgeway, writing in his "Mondo Washington" column for the Village Voice, details "one of the sickest wildlife programs in recent memory."
Hold on to your seat belts for this one.
Ridgeway reveals that you, the taxpayer, are forking over big bucks for a project to capture wolves that prey on cattle.
No cowboys riding horses and swinging lassos here.
According to Ridgeway, the wolves are "being rounded up by helicopters manned by federal agents armed with dart guns."
The story gets worse.
After the federal agents have "darted" the wolves, they are collected and sent "to media mogul Ted Turner's Flying D Ranch south of Bozeman, Montana, where they are to be fitted with electric shock collars."
Once fitted with such collars, the wolves are tested and put near the cattle. Anytime they go near the tasty cattle - zap!!! - they are hit with an electronic jolt. [Where are the animal lovers on this one? Sounds like a very cruel thing to do to animals.]
The Pavlovian belief is that wolves will "learn" to stay away from cattle.
If they don't "learn," the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and Turner plan on killing the wolves en masse. [This would make a great CNN special.]
Ed Bangs, who heads the project for Fish and Wildlife, tells Ridgeway, "We're going to try to teach these wolves that livestock aren't prey items."
Sounds great, but whose going to teach Uncle Ted and the feds the American taxpayer isn't easy prey either?
This wolf-threat could be the answer to all our problems in the inner city. Every rancher could have 10 gangstas and their Rottweilers, not to mention the loud radios.
In a few short weeks the troublesome wolves would either A) learn to stay away from cattle, B) Be deaf, or C)or die laughing. To head up this effort, I nominate Al Gore.
I believe the 2nd true story is actually more absurd than the 1st fairy tale. We have a government gone completely mad.
Wolves are another matter. The shoot, shovel and bury method works wonders.
Careful. If you shoot, either make sure the critter doesn't have a radio tag, or drop it off on some neighbor you don't like LOL
Toss it into a Fish and Game truck.
Quite right. What irks me about the animal right's activists... is that they put an animal life at the same or higher level as a human being. I love animals too... but the reality is that we have to set priorities in the scheme of life. God said that we are to have dominion over the beasts of the earth.....and to use them for work/food. I don't mean that we should slaughter everything else needlessly or neglect them.... just know their place in our lives. Except for opossum. They're fair game for target practice. *chuckle*
I'll never forget a blurb on the news I saw several years ago. Some wise-guy was going to make a public spectacle of smashing a live rat with some kind of invention he came up with. Several PETA members showed up and chased the guy down the street to KILL him. He took the rat to the shop where he'd bought it and ran away. Some flake who'd been chasing the guy... went in to the shop and bought the rat, then bragged he'd saved it's life...ya-dee-da. My question was...WHY didn't he buy the rest of the snake food that was in the shop? He could have saved a hundred! Good grief. Makes you wonder if stupidity has reached a new low.
Dogs, donkeys, or s/s/s are all options.
This compensation thing does sound awfully fishy. I know for a fact that dead cattle are often left out in pasture for the next storm so they can be claimed to insurance as lightning kills. Im sure the same is happening with this. Sounds a bit too much like the "gotta shoot dem loose dogs cuz dey chase da deer" mentality.
You are either naive or prejuciced beyond reason, but at any rate, you're really not qualified to broach the subject.
I've watched them attack and tear up a couple of dozen sheep in Canada (where this non-native species is being imported from) and maybe eat one or two and leave the rest to suffer long lingering deaths.
Too big a hassle to take my rifle to Canada, but here in the states, any wolf I see better get ready to be punctured!
If you like, I'll send you their tails.
"If you like, I'll send you their tails."
Oh, please do. Then i could give at least part of these poor animals the proper burrial they deserve.
Something that i've come to notice about many people much like you, is that you really don't take the time to get the facts straight.
You have opinion, and you base everything on that.
get the facts.
Have you actually watches such a thing occur? With YOUR eyes? Did you see if maybe the wolves were driven from the rest of their meal, and forced to leave them behind? Or maybe they returned, and finished it later.
Try to think through these things, because you're teaching a new generation an old set of lies.
I'm too speculative to hear these lies.
I won't turn out like someone who hunts animals under the incredibly mistaken impression that we are better than them.
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