Guest blog by Jim Beers

Part I – Wolf Country in 2010

It was 1974 when the wolf was “Listed” by federal bureaucrats as “Endangered” in the midst of an explosion of new federal laws and authority over everything from marine mammals to hawks, spotted owls, snail darters, and cormorants. Despite the superabundance of wolves worldwide throughout the Northern Hemisphere, their romantic status as a “symbol” of wilderness coupled with anthropomorphic “biology” from environmental and animal rights
radical organizations made any questions concerning the propriety of such a Listing both politically incorrect and an indication of someone completely out of step with the “New Age” biology sweeping the Nation.

Alaska and Canada have had robust wolf populations for centuries and damage by wolves to big game herds, livestock, dogs, and the ever-present danger of human attacks have been stressful factors of life there just as in Asia and
Europe where wolves are abundant. The following report concerns the disgraceful and un-Constitutional imposition of wolves by the federal government and a cabal of environmental, animal rights, anti-gun, and anti-rural America radicals and lawyers in the past 35 years.

The “Timber” or “Gray” wolves that were roaming northern Minnesota in limited numbers were the only wolves recognized in the Lower 48 States when the 1974 “Listing” of wolves as “Endangered” was pronounced. Immediately,
federal bureaucrats pre-empted all Constitutional State authority over wolves in Minnesota over weak protests by State government. Wolves were given complete protection and millions of dollars were spent to increase their numbers and range. Today, those wolves have spread into Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Livestock losses; loss of foals, goats, and other privately owned animals: loss of deer numbers and deer hunting license revenue; loss of hunting dogs, pets, and watchdogs; visible decreases in rural economies and land prices; and increasingly stressful rural life where wolf attacks and sightings have placed parents and grandparents in fear when kids ask to go fishing or to go to or come from rural school bus stops or to take out garbage: all of these things bedevil rural Americans where the wolves have become abundant and where they are now spreading like an infection to Lower Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa.

When government or radicals want to cite “science” about wolf “species” keep in mind the following. Wolves, like white-tailed deer and most mammals that exist from near the Equator to the Far North, are smaller in the South and larger in the North. Small-bodied animals do better in hot climates and large-bodied animals are better suited to cold climates. Prior to the Endangered Species Act, whether we called the large ones “timber” wolves or the little ones “Key” deer was a matter of biological curiosity. Key Deer from Florida can raise fawns when bred with big Saskatchewan whitetails just
as big wolves from the Yukon can breed successfully with “little” Mexican wolves (or coyotes, or dingoes, or dogs for that matter). So contain any emotion when told that “saving” this or that wolf “species” is “vital” to some obscure biological purpose. One thing is for sure; the “big” northern wolves were the ones plopped unceremoniously into Yellowstone Park 15 years ago and are now into 6 or more states.

In 1980, federal bureaucrats declared the “Red” wolf “extinct. In reality, the “Red” wolf is merely a “wolf” with an abundance of coyote and domestic dog genes. However, “Red” wolves (from “re-discovered” captive wolves) were
introduced to South Carolina in 1988 and later Tennessee where these small wolves have been killed by local people, and where they have bred with and were bred by all manner of free-roaming dogs, hunting dogs, and watchdogs.

In 1995, federal bureaucrats stole Millions of dollars from excise taxes collected on arms and ammunition for the exclusive use of state fish and wildlife agencies for hunting programs and wildlife land acquisition. The money was used illegally by federal bureaucrats to capture wolves in northern Canada and then quickly release them in Yellowstone Park. These wolves have, in just 15 years, all but eradicated the two largest elk herds in Montana (The Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd) and Idaho (The Lolo Elk Herd) and the moose in Yellowstone Park. The losses of livestock to these
wolves have been in the Millions of dollars just as the loss of state hunting license revenue (in this period of states “going broke”) attributable to the thousands of wolves now existing in these 2 states is being hidden and distorted by both state and federal fish and wildlife agencies that are increasingly seen as tools of the cabal mentioned in the second paragraph. These wolves are now becoming established and spreading through Oregon and Washington where livestock, wildlife, and domestic dog losses are becoming common and desperate rural residents and rural governments search for a solution in vain. Utah is beginning to get wolves and reports of wolves in Colorado have been filed.

“Mexican” wolves were introduced into Arizona and New Mexico in 1998. While a small wolf like the “Red” wolf, these wolves have caused high livestock, elk, and deer losses and additionally have begun stalking rural school kids as they go to, wait for, and return from school buses. (Alternative food sources are comparatively rare in that stark desert country.) This has gotten so bad that some school bus stops are cages to which children are driven and picked up by fearful parents.

While hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by state and federal bureaucracies to collar, “move”, and rarely kill offending wolves; such actions where wolves are abundant are akin to removing your hand from a bucket of water and expecting a “hole” in the water to remain. Today, state agencies admit they cannot “count” or “census” wolves so the question of numbers becomes a wolf-”hater” v. wolf-”lover” matter for lawyers and judges. Big game numbers are being “adjusted” by state agencies increasingly dependent on federal agencies for funding. Just as, for instance, Montana bureaucrats claim a Yellowstone elk herd of 6K and wolf numbers of a thousand; ranchers, hunters, and rural residents know the elk herd that was at one time 30K and was averaging 19K is now less than 2K mostly old non-breeders with a paltry 4 or 5 elk calves per 100 cows in a dying herd in the midst of many thousands of wolves increasing at rates of 35-40% per year. Hundreds of dogs killed and eaten by wolves increase annually and mostly go unreported, undiscovered, and ignored by newspapers and bureaucrats in the West as well as the Great Lakes States. Small towns are dying in the West, rural land prices are decreasing as wolves make rural living and working more tenuous, and stressed rural residents in “Wolf Country” increasingly resemble stressed New Yorkers in traffic jams on the BQE.

One ranch is being “studied” in central Idaho and the costs of wolves are astounding. Losses of calves and cows plus the loss in weight of constantly stressed steers sent to market is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. The time and work “reporting to and dealing with” government bureaucracies added to the work trying to avoid losses in the herds is hundreds of thousands per year. The stress on employees and the long hours necessary are leading more and more owners and their employees to ask “how can ranching persist” and “how can I keep doing this?”

While rural Americans are increasingly suffering and growing angry with federal and state governments run amok, the cabal cited in the second paragraph continues to indoctrinate children in schools and urban residents with false propaganda. When asked “Why wolves?”, the only answer is pagan babbling about “native ecosystem” (like Hitler’s “pre-Roman plants and animals”) or “the need for ‘apex’ predators” as if there were something desirable about uncontrolled killing of animals that complement human society and animal populations that are either overabundant or extinct due to factors that could and should be controlled for societal benefits. The truth is there is no good answer to the question “Why” when wolves had already been purposefully and prudently eliminated from the most successful
and desirable human society the earth has known.

The truthful answer to “Why wolves?” is:
To eliminate hunting.
To eliminate gun owner numbers by eliminating hunting.
To destroy family traditions like annual get-togethers.
To further emasculate rural economic activity and health.
To eliminate grazing on public lands.
To eliminate ranching on private property.
To create political-cover “science” to justify more Public Land closures from Wilderness and Road Closures to “Critical” habitats and Pagan Land Closures like “Corridors”, “Wildlands”, and “Commons”.
To eliminate the management and use of renewable natural resources like timber, forage, wildlife, and fisheries.
To replace the funding of state and federal agency budgets with revenues from hunting, fishing, grazing and timber cutting with increased federal funds from the National Treasury that is so “Broke”.
To make current residents of rural communities fearful and stressed such that they will move to cities where they must give up guns, ride public transportation, and live dictated lives where powerful government authority is unchallenged.
To reduce rural land prices as people move away, businesses go broke, and new residents no longer see business or retirement or comfortable living circumstances.
To make rural land prices ever cheaper as federal and state agencies “pick-up” parcels and Non-government profiteers like The Nature Conservancy profit from taking “Easements” and reselling parcels to government bureaucrats at a healthy profit.
To grow the power and budgets of federal bureaucrats and agencies as they claim more land and species that need “protection” (i.e. lock-up).
To assure re-election of “concerned” politicians as they brag at election time and get “support” from radical organizations for “saving” this, that, and the other environmental nonsense.
To strengthen the State/Federal fish and wildlife agency alliance at the expense of state government and rural state residents.
To create the future (immeasurable and never-ending) publicly-funded goal of “Restoring The Ecosystem” for state and federal natural resource agencies.
Finally, to please the imaginings of urban American voters (often a voting majority) that controls the national government and many state governments wherein the destruction of rural voters’ rights in the emerging democracy that is replacing our Constitutional Republic has become acceptable.

Thus far, wolves have been the result of urban voters’ acceptance of propaganda and misinformation about the havoc and ruin that wolves have been wreaking on “others”. The urban voters turn a blind eye to the loss of rural America and traditions and cultures that they neither know nor will miss. Urban voters and their children are told the lie that wolves are tolerable and that a few rural eggs must be broken to make an imaginary “ecosystem” wherein they may hear a wolf howl during some future but improbable vacation. For mentioning these things I am described as everything from a “lunatic” to an “anti-predator” extremist that just wants to “kill animals”. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

But all this is about to change. Read Part II, “Wolves, A Deadly Threat Coming to Urban America”. The wolves are no longer just for nameless rural Americans.

Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan,
Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting at jimbeers7@comcast.net

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