Soon, elk will be introduced in the county immediately adjacent to the west side of said refuge and there is nothing but forests connecting the refuge and the intended area where elk will be let free. How long do they expect those elk will live before they become feed for the wolves?
Even though Wisconsin introduced a hunting season for wolves, the allowable kill number is not anywhere close to keeping the population in check. Not saying that I applaud the idea but around here, it's “shoot, shovel and shut up”
So they are starting a wolf feeding program then.
There is a reason wolves were eradicated.
Thanks for your post.
I have hunted for years in the area north of Yellowstone Park where the elk herds once numbered 20,000 healthy animals.
One longtime rancher and hunting outfitter described that herd as one of the great wonders of the natural world.
Since Canadian wolves were introduced the resident elk herd is now closer to a few thousand, if that, and still falling.
Moose, mountain goats and big horn sheep are also greatly reduced in number (moose numbers especially are close to collapse).
And Canadian wolves don’t just kill. They harass, maim, slaughter for sport. They drag down cows and eat only the fetuses out of them, they run big bulls to death in the deep snow. A friend of mine has actually watched them run an elk herd up and down the sides of a canyon, again and again, until the elk begin to drop from exhaustion-—this is plainly not just to eat, because they could chase and drag down a few elk if they wanted to.
Many are the stories of elk seen wandering around with their hindquarters mostly ripped off, slowly bleeding to death, while the wolves have moved on to other “game,” so to speak.
It’s a bad, destructive, death-based policy, intended mostly to discourage ranching and to eliminate hunting. The introduction of the Canadian wolf to Montana has weird parallels to the Left’s obsession with abortion, so it seems to me.
They loathe humankind and they revel in death.
If deer, or elk, have no natural predators, they become over-populated, change the balance of the flora where they are most often and spread their range into bordering areas occupied by humans.
If wolves have no natural predators (humans), they will grow in population and they will gradually decimate their favorite prey so much they will go searching for more prey in areas bordering their primary habitat, occupied by humans.
Hunting is a tool that humans can use to help keep the wolf population down, but it too should not be used to completely decimate the wolf population, or the animals that are its natural prey will become over populated and present different sorts of problems to the habitat and to humans.
The process of human managed animal control should be one of seeking a balance of the natural animal environment, not “elimination” of “a predator”, because some predators also do the work of helping to prevent overgrowth and overpopulation of other species, that if not prevented has other consequences to the habitat.