Today is a dark day in the USA (wolf hunt)

[PepperElf]

In some areas wolves haven't been endangered for well over a year now.


The problem isn't that the poor little wolves need protection, but rather that they've overpowered the rest of the ecology.


THIS is what happens when a natural predator is regarded as a cute pet-like animal. People get offended by the truth, that it's no longer in danger and the herds need to be culled just like deer.

Politics should stay the fuck out of ecology.

[Andara Bledin]

Wolves need to be culled?

We've got deer starving and spreading disease because there aren't enough predators, and you think that the wolves are the ones that need to be thinned out.

Are you having the same conversation as the rest of us?

Google News results for deer overpopulation, with various things, including the possibility of going out and using contraceptives on the deer to cut down on their breeding.

Wolves are not the ones "overpowering the rest of the ecology." Usually, that's us. Good old mankind. Destroying ecology for the betterment of... well, sometimes us, but sometimes merely the detriment of everything around because we're too stupid to actually do a risk analysis before we jump on the next knee-jerk "solution" to a perceived problem.

For a little perspective, here's the Google News result for wolf overpopulation. Yeah, I can see that's a major concern for the nation, there.

If you have a different truth, I'd love to hear it. Citations would be nice, too.

^-.-^

[PepperElf]

Are you having the same conversation as the rest of us?

same convo, different opinion.

i'm sure wolves taste just fine.


yes some will think i'm heartless (let them) but fuck it. i'm pretty tired of the bullshit about "o the poor *whatever animal*" when it gets to the point that the animal is so protected that in some regions it fucks up the rest of the ecology.

People get so accustomed to the cute wolf shirts and zoo animals that as soon as you suggest killing their precious mascot they have a knee-jerk reaction that you're evil and heartless and just want to hurt the poor widdle animals.

evil? no? Heartless?... just realistic. the only animal i truly mark as "off limits" is the bald eagle cos it's the national symbol. and really hasn't bounced back.


my only difference in this conversation is that i suggested that politics was behind the anti-hunting ideas rather than realism.

[AdminAssistant]

While I don't completely agree with Pepper, I personally don't see the problem with species going extinct. I mean, the vast majority of species that have lived on this spinning rock are no longer here. Species change, evolve, and adapt. Or die out.

That said, I do think that there need to be measures to fight urban sprawl in general. Sprawl is bad for more than just ecology.

[PepperElf]

you're right about that

http://www.endangeredspeciesinternat.../overview.html

today, 99.9 percent of all species that have existed on Earth are extinct.

The thing is... I don't mind having animals on the endangered list.

I just have a problem with animals on the list being regarded as pets. Once you start doing that, emotions get in the way of real ecology. People hate the thought of their pets being killed. So once you start equating endangered species as pets... when they're no longer endangered, a lot of people get very emotionally upset when they find out that their pet species can legally be hunted.

When that happens, it won't matter if the "pet species" hurts the ecology - it won't even matter if they run unchecked through the wild and decimate herds of other animals. Those other animals don't have "pet status" so they don't matter as much.

[mikoyan29]

It depends on who you talk to about wolves being "pet status". To the ranchers out west, they are menace and should be destroyed. And given the amount of clout they have, that is exactly what happens. For the most part, wildlife management is mostly about managing the species that bring dollars to the state (for instance, here it is deer). They want to make sure that there around enough of that particular species that people will come to whatever state.

And for all the love that is heaped on wolves, there are a number of other predators that aren't.....the wolverine for instance.

[Andara Bledin]

You know what? Put up or shut up.

I'm tired of hearing all this unsupported blather about how wolves are such a threat. Let's have a citation or two to back up such claims.

Here's a report from 2008 about human-wolf interactions.

Some excerpts:

Both are, according to Howard Golden, a wildlife biologist with a specialty
in research of fur-bearing animals who works for the Alaska Department of
Fish and Game. Wolves were never hunted to the point of extinction in
Alaska, and between 7,700 and 11,200 of the 100-pound canines thrive there
today.

"Certainly, over the years, there have been interactions that weren't
positive for people," Golden said. "That said, it's pretty remarkable how
few encounters there are, considering how abundant they are. We haven't had
many issues with them compared with bears."

He compiled the cases of 80 wolf-human encounters in Alaska and Canada. The
stories range from a wolf that bit a 12-year-old boy in the face to packs of
wolves approaching campers in their tents and chewing on their belongings
after the animals had been fed leftovers. He also points out that there
were no human deaths attributed to wild, healthy wolves since at least 1900.
The report was published in 2002.

Three years later, authorities say, Canada had its first documented wolf
death in more than a century.

Geist agreed that wolf attacks are rare and fatalities even rarer. But the
scene quickly changes if wolves don't have plentiful game or livestock to
feed on, and if people don't have firearms to protect themselves, he said.

"Wolves can be a threat. They have sharp, pointy teeth and can be a
potentially dangerous animal, just like a dog can," said Jessy Coltrane,
wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Anchorage.

But they're much more likely to go after a pet dog or cat than they are to
threaten a person - even a child, she said.

The problem isn't that wolves "devastate" herds of large game. It's that they reach an ecological balance with the game available and take it away from human hunters.

I have no problems with people defending their own territory against wild animals. That's as it should be. But I do have a problem with people going out and taking out random wolves without any real consideration of the impact on the local ecology beyond, "Oh, hey, less wolves means we can go shoot more dear next season." Nevermind that the a season or two after that, all the dear will be underfed and sickly and spreading things like Lyme disease because humans can't manage their populations properly. Nobody really wants to think that far ahead because cause and effect is difficult.

^-.-^

[draggar]

You know what? Put up or shut up.

I'm tired of hearing all this unsupported blather about how wolves are such a threat. Let's have a citation or two to back up such claims.

Here's a report from 2008 about human-wolf interactions.

Nice selective quoting (from you and the article) and the actual report is over incidents from 1900-2000. Let's look at the actual report:

http://fwpiis.mt.gov/content/getItem.aspx?id=10996

Cases 1-14 illustrate agonistic behaviors toward people. Most involve habituated or food-conditioned wolves, but one case (Case 7) illustrates a low-lvel threat behavior by a nonhavituated wolf.

Also, let's look at the Yellowstone insider:

http://www.yellowstoneinsider.com/is...-on-people.php

A reasonable source for information is the world-wide study of wolf attacks on humans done by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) in 2002. The finding of the report was that during the 100 years of the 20th century there were between twenty and thirty attacks in North America (including Alaska and Canada, which have relatively high populations of wolves). Of these, three were fatal, all because of rabies. No attacks have been recorded in Yellowstone since the reintroduction of wolves more than a decade ago. For comparison, during the 20th century there have been 71 fatal grizzly (brown) bear attacks in North America. Each year in the United States, 16-18 people die from dog attacks.

The numbers don't support that wolves are highly aggressive plus it seems like a large percentage of the wolf "attacks" are because of human stupidity (feeding, leaving food out, etc.) and not true aggression.