The beat goes on……La dee da de dee…..and the beat goes on. Drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain!

The New York Times published an opinion piece, a piece I assume was compiled by their editorial staff because there was no name attached to it, about the effort to cull the elk herd in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota.

You see the problem is there are too many elk. Over 20 years ago, a handful of elk were deposited in the park and today that number is approaching one thousand. Officials say there should be no more than 300 to maintain some semblance of balance within the ecosystem.

The argument has been how to kill off those 600-plus elk. Some have said a hunting season should be opened up to allow qualified hunters to do the job, while others think the federal government should pay exorbitant fees to hire sharpshooters to systematically slaughter the beasts. And let’s not forget that there are those who think we should let Nature deal with it and yes, some espouse bringing in wolves to do their bidding.

The editorial isn’t so much one declaring their preference of slaughter methods as it is a bundle of contradictions and bad information. Montana Senator Byron Dorgan proposed using hunters to do the job. Evidently the NYT has a problem with hunting.

To begin with, the proposal would legislate a management issue better left to the secretary of interior and the National Park Service. Worse, it would authorize an activity — public hunting — that is proscribed by the founding legislation for the national parks and their current management policies.

I wonder if the Times would think it a good idea to let the Interior Secretary make all the decisions, unchecked, if the Secretary’s methods ran contrary to their ideals?

The Times also believes that nowhere within National Parks is hunting allowed, even though they speak of the Grand Tetons Park “exception”. (There are others as well) The opinion thinks the model being used in the Rocky Mountain National Park to kill off too many elk is a better idea than utilizing hunters who will pay for the opportunity.

Rocky Mountain National Park provides a better model. There, hired sharpshooters have culled cow elk in parts of the park that are closed to the public. This is a safer, more efficient and less expensive way of reducing numbers than shooting bulls, which is what most hunters do.

Huh? For some odd reason, the NYT thinks there is some real humane difference between killing an elk using a hired gun than using a pay-to-play hunter. Could the staff please give us some facts to support this? And they think this method is safer. Once again, facts please.

Oh, but then we get to see a bit of what’s really behind the opinion. The NYT just hates hunting and hunters. The hired guns would obey the guidelines and hunt only cow elk and hunters would disregard that mandate and go kill only bull elk because why? Hunters are blood thirsty animals, only interested in mounting horns over our fireplace mantels?

And how does the NYT calculate that it is less expensive to pay out millions of dollars to hire sharpshooters, than to collect hunting permit fees to allow hunters to do the job?

And then there’s this:

How to manage, and ultimately cull, this North Dakota elk herd should be decided by the National Park Service, based on sound science, not by faulty, if well-intentioned, legislation. It is also critical not to create a broad precedent for public hunting in the national parks, which would undermine their protected status.

Because the National Park Service thinks hiring sharpshooters is the best way to go and it happens to be an anti-hunting move of which the New York Times agrees with, this decision is based on “sound science”? Is there really any “sound science” in deciding what appears to be an ethics and humane decision of how to slaughter a few hundred elk?

The idea of proposing legislation is to force the National Park Service to utilize a different method of managing the elk herd that might be in the best interest of the public, rather than pay ridiculous fees to harvest elk when it could be done for little or no cost to the taxpayers of this country. Again, I ask. Is there science behind making such a decision? Isn’t it the science that determines how many elk are needed in the Park to maintain an ecological balance? It appears “sound science” has already determined there’s too many elk. The question is how do we kill them?

And why is it such a bad thing that we “create a broad precedent for public hunting in national parks”? The opinion says such an act would “undermine their protected status”, meaning the elk I presume. It would be nice if the Times had offered its readers some form of substantiation to this claim. How does culling an elk herd in Theodore Roosevelt National Park, to protect the health of the herd and the rest of the ecosystem, “undermine their protected status”? Isn’t the idea behind this move to protect them in a responsible way?

It’s really quite clear. The Times, like most animal rights groups and anti-hunting groups, aren’t interested in the “sound science” of wildlife management, nor are they interested in the “humane” slaughter of elk. They just don’t want hunters doing what hunters do. They could have saved a bunch of ink and just said that.

Tom Remington

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