*Editor’s Note* Mr. Coe had posted a comment on another article posted at the Black Bear Blog about the ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the legality of Congress attaching a rider to a budget bill that effectively removed grey wolves from the Endangered Species Act list in Idaho and Montana, while at the same time shielding that rider from legal scrutiny. I contacted Mr. Coe and asked him if he would take the time and put his thoughts together in a more formal format in order to present them as a guest post on this blog. Below is his work.

Winning the Battle, Losing the War
By Barry Coe

Last week everyone in the wolf wars, were either delighted or disappointed in the fact that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals returned a verdict on yet another wolf lawsuit, upholding the delisting budget bill rider for wolves in Idaho and Montana.

The truth of the matter is, no one should be surprised, as the courts rarely ever side with the constitution, and this speaks to a much larger problem we face in this country. Collusion among the three branches of government is exactly what our constitution was supposed to avoid, and what this lawsuit was actually about. Now, there are many reasons this has come about, and those I will not delve into here, but I would hope that both sides step back and realize none of this is about wolves or endangered species in general.

The entire Endangered Species Act(ESA) is truly unconstitutional, yet it too has held court muster to fulfill a bigger agenda, it is the foundation of collusion, the animals are just the tools.

Wolves are one tool that have seriously worn out their welcome, both in the states they were dumped in and in government where they are tired of this animal not moving along the conveyor belt of corruption. It has been so diligently and thoroughly abused by environmental “gang green”, that it has threatened the entire program. People are now waking up to the reality of the ESA and demanding changes. That demand has very serious threats to the larger agenda, so the wolves have been cast aside to protect the agenda, much to the dismay of gang green and to the delight of the people who actually have to live with this species.

But, I have to ask. At what cost? Do we really want to sell our souls and allow precedence to be set that permits congress, with a simple rider, to remove active cases from the courts that are supposed to hold congress in check? Of all the wolf lawsuits that were based and won on an unconstitutional law, this one was based on the constitution itself. In every case, the court rulings went against the foundations of personal freedoms and liberties, supporting the unconstitutional ESA and now directly undermining the constitution itself.

My belief is, they’ll let us have this battle, because it sets up a situation that will allow bigger crushing blows down the road. Do not be surprised when you see a rider to a budget or other bill that makes the personal mandate in Obamacare exempt from judicial review.

And people actually think this is about wolves.

A growing chorus of hunters, dog owners, ranchers, and rural residents of all stripes are becoming aware of the magnitude of the enthusiasm and support for predators from wolves and grizzly bears to coyotes and cougars. While this enthusiasm is seen as a core belief by environmentalists and animal rights radicals intent on destroying animal ownership, hunting, fishing, trapping, grazing, public land use, natural resource management and use, rural economies, and a long list of impediments to their national hegemony like state and local governments and private property rights; the existence of this veritable predator worship among “scientists”, “experts”, University faculties, and government bureaucracies is surprising many, especially rural Americans.

Long lists of predator “studies” – cited to “prove” that predators don’t depress prey species, or that large predators are not dangerous, or that predators are not vectors for deadly diseases, or that non-lethal protections for humans threatened by predators work, or that if individuals and communities simply adjust their lifestyles living with deadly and destructive predators will result in some sort of pre-human Eden – all baffle rural residents whose daily experiences expose these lies being used to pass laws to control, regulate, and adjudicate them and their families and lifestyles out of existence. The questions, “How can they believe this stuff?” and “Why do the politicians and courts and bureaucrats accept these lies and their truly evil purposes?”, are heard increasingly as wolf, grizzly bear, coyote, and cougar protection, population increases, range increases, and damaging effects spread like a snowball rolling down the long and steep national slope.

I believe that growing numbers of citizens are coming to understand the various self-serving agendas of those responsible for the growing list of deadly attacks, property destruction, and rural mayhem being perpetrated by these predators:

- Environmentalists use the “native species”, “balance of ‘naychur’” and “endangered” myths about predators to get laws passed that advance their blitzkrieg campaign to totally control every inch of rural America.

- Animal rights radicals use the myths about predators to justify destroying game herds and bird flocks that support hunting and trapping. The widespread killing of dogs discourages animal “ownership” (just like diminishing hunting decreases public support for the 2nd Amendment) thus reducing objections to eventual elimination of private property rights in animals. Livestock depredations increase costs to livestock owners forcing bankruptcies and small herds as seen in central Asia where livestock production is a tiny, local, and more subsistence thing. Human attacks discourage not only hunting, fishing, camping, and other outdoor activities; they discourage rural residency and thus private property owners in rural areas slated for radical/government acquisition and (cheaper) easements to employ land control that is but another key to people control.

- Politicians love to “pass” warm and fuzzy laws to “restore the ecosystem” and “save the environment”. Predators are romantically portrayed via an environmentally-friendly media in anthropomorphic caricatures beloved by urban children, urban elites, and moneyed powerbrokers – none of whom live with, raise families near, recreate near, or struggle to make a living near these very destructive predators. The result is a hard-core predator constituency that votes enthusiastically and supports expensive lobbying for more and more and more predators. This is why the increasing predator/human interfaces are more and more costly due to prohibitions against killing them as only an unjustifiable last resort in favor of catch-and-release processes that merely transfer the problem that more often than not returns to the scene of their original, sighting or crime – take your pick.

At this point I would like to take the liberty of “lumping” the rest of the predator lovers into one herd. I know that this leaves me open to charges of not “celebrating diversity”, but so be it.

Most University faculties, in addition to their personal interests in reaping the 30+ year bonanza of federal grants and professorial benefits attendant to “findings” confirming radical/government self-serving claims, have an even more visceral “love of predators”.

Most federal and state bureaucracies over the last 30+years preferentially hired and promoted women and other urban government-designated minorities (the majority of whom were at least uncomfortable with and at most unalterably opposed to hunting, fishing, trapping, logging, grazing, rural lifestyles, local governments, etc.) as they eliminated the legally-designated purposes of their agencies and the lands they acquired. The agencies that were once respected authorities have become little more than politically “responsive” roosts for political sycophant employees that support this visceral “love of predators”. Hence the lies about wolf impacts, the disinformation about grizzly bear’s presence in settled landscapes, the claims about how human behavior is responsible for human deaths, the encouragement for wandering cougars and wolves to settle in places like Iowa, Wisconsin, etc. (where they do not belong) and how “they were here first” chirping from government employees regarding a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum to the very citizens that pay their salaries and retirements.

There are, in my opinion two basic reasons why Universities and government bureaucracies “love predators”.

1. The gradual perversion of the study of natural resources and applied methodologies resulting from such studies over the past century.

When I first began reading about wildlife and nature in the 1950’s there was a subtle undercurrent regarding “predator control”. It was often “unnecessary”, “ineffective”, and the advocates of predator control were often characterized as “uneducated” rural rubes simply tolerated out of necessity by the college-educated elites that ran the agencies. Predator control administrators that were once equal administrators that moving around and moving up in the agencies, were increasingly isolated in their control specialty where grades and responsibilities were less than the more “modern” branches proliferating in the agencies. Control agents were often called “killers” and were detested by the environmentalists, animal rights radicals, and New Age hires referred to above. From a premiere section of the federal bureaucracy that emerged under Teddy Roosevelt 100 years ago, predator control was unceremoniously and quietly moved to the US Department of Agriculture in the 1990’s where it was hoped that established agriculture priorities would lead to the demise of this despised activity.

When I went to college in the 1960’s predator control was recognized by some professors and dismissed by others. Very much like political discussions today, predator control v. anti-predator control discussions became heated matters that were irresolvable and only evoked recrimination and personal animosities.

When I went to work for the federal government I came to understand that since the time of Teddy Roosevelt there evolved the common-sense attitude toward natural resources v. the romantic attitude toward natural resources. Forests were either lands that produced timber, fish and wildlife, grazing lands, revenues, jobs, recreation, etc. for people and the Nation; or they were “Wilderness”, “Roadless”, “Closed”, “Preserved for their own sake” sacred lands to be kept inviolate ad infinitum. Wildlife management was either the preservation, control, and use of species supportive of human societies and landscapes or it was the “Native species” or “Native Ecosystems” or “necessary Apex Predators”, etc. to be protected, never interfered with, lived with or avoided by moving to urban areas. Similarly grass lands were either grazing lands or agricultural lands to be developed in line with American rights and principles or they were lands that must remain in “Native” grass, lands that should be let burn whenever the fire is “natural”, and only used by free-roaming buffalo or whatever “native” species that government designates based on the “science” bought and paid for by government and radical groups.

From all this in the 1970’s the federal bureaucrats were wearing hats that read, “Save The Dirt” and there were increasing calls for “more” federal authority over “ALL” Waters of the US, increasing conversions of National Forests, National Refuges, and the uses of other federal lands from the Bureau of Reclamation to the Bureau of Land Management from traditional uses and management to non-use and “let ‘naychur’” take care of it non-management.

Throughout the above scenario, predators and their effects were romanticized and distorted by “science” and “scientists” that basically wanted to lift their image from Middle Ages Gamekeepers providing desirable species for those that employed them, to “Einsteins” of the Natural World deciding what will go where based on their knowledge that a befuzzled public would never understand or much less appreciate.

2. As a result of the foregoing (#1.) there has arisen a pervasive disenchantment with and growing disdain for US Constitutional government among Universities and bureaucracies that see themselves as representing not humans and their needs but a romanticized notion or plants and animals that need to be restored where people have “taken” their habitat from them. US Constitutional government represents the people that formed the government and people are the enemy of those thinking of themselves of serving this higher good of reducing the human presence to favor the plant and animal presence of their choice.

For those familiar with my essays, I have written and spoken at great length about how the US Fish and Wildlife Service stole $45 to 60 Million from state fish and wildlife agencies and used it to introduce wolves, an action that Congress had previously refused to fund. I have detailed a dozen serious violations of federal law involved in this theft. See my talk “Criminal Activities by Federal Bureaucrats and Others Involved in the Introduction, Protection and Spread of Wolves in the Lower 48 States” given in Bozeman, Montana for The Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd in May of 2010. The result was that no one was ever prosecuted. The Director at the time went on to a high-paying job with the Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation. The political hire that was in charge of the funds at the time is now the Director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Finally, the State fish and wildlife agencies NEVER requested that the funds be replaced. So much for what everyone likes to deny exists: environmental extremism is eroding the rule of law and our limited government from beneath our feet.

As this “love of predators” more and more perverted wildlife “science” and as Universities, state bureaucracies, and federal bureaucracies merged like some biblical plague of locusts into a single form destroying Constitutional government beneath it, other things became impediments to their agenda:

- Private property rights were peppered like shooting targets that were not replaced. Whether it is livestock, dogs, or rural homesteads, predators are a wedge to government dictation of how and where we live and what we will be allowed to eventually “control” but not own at government sufferance.

- Local governments’ representation of local communities becomes irrelevant as such governments are stripped of tax sources and federal courts set one precedent after another about such government’s irrelevance in this New Age.

- State bureaucracies more and more depend on federal funds. State bureaucrats; like politicians, federal bureaucrats, and political staff employees; look to future job enhancements among these entities as retirement transfers and hiring become payoffs enabled by recent laws and the elimination of hiring standards and requirements have become the norm. There is no “credible” opposition as all recognized expertise resides with those adopting the new normal. Local communities are at the mercy of federal overseers that not only ignore them but actually work to remove them from the landscape.

- Authority and jurisdiction over “ALL Water of the US” instead of the Constitutional “Navigable Waters of the US” is seen as necessary if full land use and land management authority is to be taken from private property owners and State governments are ever to be placed under federal hegemony.

- Guns, whether for hunting or self-defense, are viewed by the “predator lovers” as dangerous to their agenda, dangerous to the predators, and dangerous to enforcers.

- Government land use and management that is anything other than contributory to government plans are problems to be dealt with and eliminated.

- Hunting, fishing, trapping, livestock, recreation, etc. advocacy groups must be shredded as grazing is shut down here, as timber management is shut down there, and as hunting et al disappear like stars one at a time as when the sun casts its first light on a night sky.

We are all starting to realize how these agendas are all one. The protection, spread, and introduction of these deadly and destructive predators is a major part of this movement. The disinformation about these predators is not only lies intended to attain evil objectives, the myths masquerading as “science” concerning predators is a deeply imbedded tenet of a belief system inimical to the rest of us that see and know the truth. Such beliefs are as hard to root out as some carbuncle on the national derriere.

The irony of all this is beyond current comprehension. If wolves, grizzly bears, coyotes, and cougars are ever to be tolerated in and persist in the rural Lower 48 States, four things are absolutely necessary:

1. Local (where the predators exist) support and tolerance.

2. Efficient, swift, continual, and lethal control measures.

3. Affordable controls by citizens as opposed politically vulnerable and expensive government programs.

4. State governments with ultimate predator jurisdiction that protect the interests of rural residents from both national and urban majorities’ whimsies.

Consider that these are precisely the things being destroyed as I write. One needn’t be a swami to see that if the predator pendulum is not reversed, either rural America will eventually be akin to some central Asian dictatorship where the pernicious effect of these animals are everywhere or rural America as we knew it during the height of American prosperity will begin to be slowly rebuilt for our children and their children.

The choice is ours.

Jim Beers
5 November 2011

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

A Woodland Incident
by Dave Miller

Two days ago as I was driving on the Bowtown Road near Basin Mountain, Pierce Pond TWP [Maine] a friend and I found an unusual incident had occurred. A Great Blue Heron had been caught and killed by three coyotes. The tale of what had happened was in the snow, as no other vehicle had yet driven on the road.
For about a mile we observed three sets of coyote tracks in the road, then all of a sudden one had taken off with a burst of speed, bounding through the snow. Up ahead we saw feathers and blood in the snow. As we drove up to the spot the size of attack lead us to assume it was likely a turkey, but as we looked at the feathers it was evident they were not of a turkey. They were slate gray and part of a wing including two large and long connected bones confirmed that it was not a turkey. It appeared to possibly be that of a Great Blue Heron. The attack took place in a flooded area on the left side of the road. A few hundred yards up the road we discovered the head and part of the neck of the Great Blue Heron. It was possible our arrival had scared off the coyotes as all the sign was fresh.
It is evident that the coyote not only has damaged our deer herd and snowshoe hare populations, but is taking many other species of wildlife that we all love.

Dave Miller

After hearing reports of no elk and lots of wolves in Yellowstone Park, we decided to go look for ourselves. During the week of August 25 – 30, 2011 we packed our binoculars and spotting scopes and left Nevada headed for Yellowstone Park.

In January 1995, U.S. and Canadian wildlife officials captured 14 wolves from multiple packs east of Jasper National Park, near Hinton, Alberta, Canada. In March 1995, the 14 wolves in two packs were turned loose in Yellowstone.

Seventeen additional wolves captured in Canada were released into the park in April 1996. Officials believed that the natural reproduction and survival were sufficient to preclude additional releases. According to the National Park Service, at the end of 2010, at least 97 wolves (11 packs and 6 loners) occupied Yellowstone National Park. The Druid Pack in Lamar Valley, at one time, had over 30 wolves running together in a pack.

The main reason, according to the National Park Service, that these Canadian wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone was researchers suggested that the elimination of major predators from the Park had allowed the elk population to explode and they had over-browsed the aspen and willows thus causing damage to stream sites from erosion and loss of beaver and songbird habitat.

In 1973, the grey wolf was listed as an endangered species. From this original Canadian wolf transplant in 1995, the wolves have multiplied throughout Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana and have reached into Oregon, Washington and beyond. It has been found that an expanding population of wolves may increase 30% a year.
Mortallity factors influencing wolf population since 1995 are mange, in-fighting between packs, road kills, and wolves killed by Animal Damage Control in response to confirmed livestock kills. According to National Park Service reports, it appears that the wolf population has stablilized in Yellowstone in 2010.

Let it be understood that the Canadian wolves (Canis lupus occidentalis) that were introduced are a different sub-species than the grey “buffalo” wolves (Canis lupus irremotus) that were indigenous in the United States and some came from as far north as Fort St. John, British Columbia. The Canadian wolves are as much as 30% larger animals and they tend to run in larger packs. This makes them much more successful in taking down large prey such as bull elk and adult bison. Canadian wolves tend to a solid black or grey color. They can weigh up to 150 pounds. They have very large feet, the average being 4 inches wide by 5 inches long. They can run up to 35 miles per hour for a short distance. Pack territory size varies with location. In the US it is between 25 and 150 square miles.

So, what did we see in three days in Yellowstone? We saw very few elk. We heard no elk bugle. We saw one calf elk and no elk with horns. We saw no deer, no moose, no pronghorns, no bighorn sheep, and three coyotes. However, we did see two packs of wolves (7 in each pack including pups and several adults). We saw two bunches of elk. One herd came out of the trees at about 10:30 am running for their lives out across a sagebrush meadow. We did not see the wolves that were chasing them but there is good chance that is why they were running away. The other herd was milling around on high alert in an open meadow with a herd of buffalo in mid-afternoon on the edge of Teton National Park.

We did see a large number of buffalo. The wolves had killed an adult buffalo near Canyon and we saw wolves feeding on this kill the next day when we got there.

There was talk that the wolves are killing more buffalo because the elk, deer, moose, and bighorn sheep numbers continue to decline. The US Fish and Wildlife service says that elk comprise up to 92% of the winter diet of Yellowstone wolves, and estimate the overall kill rates of Yellowstone wolves on elk to be 22 ungulates per wolf annually. Grizzly bears are following the wolves and taking over their kills. Wolves evidently cannot fight off the grizzlies at a kill, leave, and go on to kill again. Grizzly numbers have reportedly increased to over a thousand individuals in the Yellowstone Park ecosystem. During our trip, a grizzly killed a lone hiker five miles from the trailhead west of Hayden Valley. When you see more wolves from the road than coyotes, there is a good chance you may have more wolves than coyotes!

After three days of looking and glassing, we came out the south entrance of the Park and continued on to our friends’ ranch south of Moose, Wyoming. When we drove onto the ranch there were five large bull elk lying in the hayfield next to the main house. We asked our friends how long these elk had been here. They said, “Oh, they have been here all summer. They never go far.” Why do you suppose these large bull elk were camped near the house? I would guess to stay alive and keep away from the wolves.

If you think for one minute that the introduction of Canadian Wolves was simply to protect aspens, stream banks and songbird habitat, guess again. These introduced wolves are being used to end sport hunting and livestock grazing as we know it throughout the west. There a number of organizations such as Western Water Shed, Defenders of Wildlife, etc. that are against sport hunting and livestock grazing. Why not use the wolf to help put an end to sport hunting and grazing by increased wolf depredations upon livestock and depletion of our big game herds?

What is the answer to this large problem? There is none. In a period from 1883 to 1917, more than 100,000 wolves were killed for bounty in Montana and Wyoming. All types of control tools were used during this period and wolves were killed in Yellowstone Park as well. Now we are down to hunting with a rifle, no hunting in National Parks, and more rules and regulations than you can read. Looks like the wolves will have it their way from here on out. If you put together all of the livestock owners, outfitters, motel owners, grocery stores, etc, that the 1995 wolf introduction has had an impact upon, it would be a large list and it is growing. As one old timer said when the wolves were put in the Park, “This is like putting mice in a cheese factory.” Well said!

Here is Dr. Geist’s letter.

August 9th 2011

Dear Colleagues,

Re: wolves. There are three issues that one needs to be aware of and provide guidance in, in the short term, the taxonomy of wolves, to clarify especially if there are one or two species of wolves in the mid-west. I consider the latter unlikely, in fact highly unlikely, but there needs to be discussion and consensus as there are legal implications involved. This is an unhappy topic in which we have to be aware of potential advocacy masquerading as science.

Secondly, we need to be involved fostering an understanding of American wolves, as there is currently a paradigm shift underway, bringing our recent North American experiences with wolves into line with historical evidence as well as the global experience with this predator. We need to foster a new general understanding about wolves to counter deliberate political misrepresentations and promote effective wildlife conservation let alone management.

Thirdly, as wolves are not compatible with settled landscapes, there needs to be a fundamental re-assessment of wolf conservation. How, for instance, can we protect wolves in such a fashion, that they retain their genetic integrity, as in close proximity to humans they are bound to continually hybridize with dogs and with coyotes. Wolves need a large amount of diverse prey to thrive away from human contact. How can such be best provided?

The North American Wolf Paradigm

The cherished North American conception about wolves began to unravel with the death of Kenton Carnegie, a 22 year university old honors student, killed by wolves on November 8th 2005 at Points North in Saskatchewan. It led to thorough investigations as well as a coroner’s hearing, in which the jury determined unanimously that wolves had killed Kenton Carnegie. Unfortunately, the coroners inquiry would not deal with policy, and consequently it did not become public knowledge that Saskatchewan’s legislation pertaining to wolves was in good part responsible to Kenton Carnegie’s death. Under British Columbia legislation, so my conclusion, this tragedy would not have happened. Legislation affecting wolf management and conservation, in addition to a scholarly understanding of wolves, is thus not irrelevant to any positions on this subject.

Flaws in the then current North American conception are that wolves are utterly harmless to people, although a rabid wolf might be dangerous, that wolves killed pretty well only the old, sick and lame and thus acted to sanitize prey populations, that wolves killed only what is needed, that territoriality by wolf packs prevented wolves from seriously depleting game herds, that diseases carried by wolves are too insignificant to warrant attention, and that all historical evidence could be safely disregarded as it arose for primeval prejudice and ignorance, unsupported by modern science, as illustrated in the Brothers Grim fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood. This was advanced by highly respected senior scientists, based in good part on enthusiasm over limited new findings, an inability to read other languages, a limited understanding of historical scholarship, and an over rating of personal experiences with wolves as reported on in North America. Highly influential proved to be a then unpublished manuscript by a renowned Canadian wildlife scientists C. H. Doug Clarkei which examined wolf predation on humans in France focusing on the famous case of a pair of Gevaudan wolves in the 18th century. Clarke concluded that wolf attacks were all done by rabid wolves, and falling back on his own experience with wolves in the Canadian wilderness, concluded that healthy wolves were harmless. I must hasten to state here that reading the subsequently published essay in full shows peculiar contradictions which should have been picked up by his colleagues. For instance the wolves of Gevaudan were not rabid. In short, Clarke’s conclusions are thus open to questioning.

A second source of misinformation about wolves was the deliberate cultivation of an image of harmless wolves by the Communist Party of Russia. It censored information about wolf attacks on humans in order to suppress demands for arms by people affected, as well as to cover up hugely embarrassing matters happening during the imposed Ukrainian famines of 1921-23 and again 1932-1933, when packs of wolves and dogs consumed the dead and dying. This was abetted in East and West by the hugely popular book of a gifted Canadian author, Farley Movat, Never Cry Wolf. I consider it a literary prank, the very best of the 20th century, a prank that fooled the literary establishment completely, despite competent book reviews and exposure by Canadian scientists. It continues to cause mischief.

The Russian Communist party deception was exposed by the Russian academician (senior scientist) Mikhail P. Pavlov in his 1982 book The wolf in Game Management, in Chapter 12 “The Danger of wolves to Humans”. A Norwegian translation of this chapter caused environmentalists to to rise in boiling opposition, in which they succeeded having the translation withdrawn and destroyed. Illegally, I might add. The translator, riled by events, made a Swedish Translation and published it a s bookii. An English translation by Valentina Baskin, wife of well-known Russian biologist Leonid Baskin and Alaska biologists Patrick Valkenburg and Mark McNay, found none willing to publish till it was made Appendix A in Will N. Graves 2007 Wolves in Russia. Please note that American scientists meeting Russian scientists at international meetings could have heard only the party line from the Russians.

The problem with the conventional North American conception of wolves was that it had failed to take into account and critically integrate the global experience with wolves. In the meantime publications to the contrary, old and new, were accumulatingiii, including a book on the Russian experiences with wolves as compiled by an American intelligence officers stationed in Moscow. I edited his manuscript and brought it into publication with a Canadian publisher. It’s Will N. Graves 2007 Wolves in Russia (Detselig, Calgary). This book was quickly translated in Finland, where, with additional information it is on it’s second edition. I also wrote a number of essays which were published, except that they lacked the vital reference sections. I hasten to add that the original versions and other information about wolves can be obtained by contacting me via e-mail at kendulf@shaw.ca.

Of interest is the fact that European environmentalists adopted the flawed American position and pushed through legislation protection wolves on that basis. That mirrors North American legislation based on false assumptions.

Here are a number of conclusions

1. Wolves are not compatible with settled landscapes, as they destroy wildlife, then habituate, and focus on livestock and pets, and eventually on humans. Simultaneously they spread diseases such as hydatid disease (dog tape worm, Echinococcus granulosus), Neopspora caninum (which brings about abortions in cattle) and rabies (which in wilderness areas appears to periodically bring down wolf populations). This is not merely a matter of wildlife management, or livestock protection, but also one of public health.
2. The introductions of wolves into Yellowstone and Idaho, heralded as a conservation success, I consider a serious failure in wildlife conservation. It exposed flaws in conservation legislation and – Judge Molloy’s latest ruling not withstanding – is mired in a morass of legal matters, daunting, so I understand, even for legal minds.
3. Wolf introductions have hit some individual ranchers severely, well documented, for instance, by Jess Carey (3trees@gilanet.com) and his lawyer Ron Shortes in Catron County, New Mexico. An important development: ranchers which have been hit by wolves, and which want to sell their ranches, cannot find buyers as long as there are wolves on the property. And we are dealing with only 50 wolves! What can we do to generate some justice to individuals affected by wolf introductions?
4. The direct and indirect effect of wolves on ranching have been compiled, but need to be brought together. Similarly, the effects on wildlife populations, and on public health.
5. Intolerable is the spread of hydatid infected wolf feces on lawns, driveways etc within suburbs and hamlets by wolves hunting deer and elk who have taken refuge in human proximity. That was something I did not anticipate in my address (appended) to a committee of the Montana legislature.
6. We need to understand the disease issue. In my judgment this matter has been handled in a less than satisfactory manner by Idaho and Montana authorities. The bottom line: what needs to be prevented is the spread of hydatid disease to dogs, which would defecate infective feces all around homes (ditto for infected wolves and urban coyotes) where the infective eggs can be carried indoor on a continuous basis leading to multiple infections of the residents. Mark well: hydatid disease is a dreadful disease, and the medical costs are staggering. In Idaho a lady was recently billed $63,000 to remove a large hydatid cysts from her liver. Multiple infections of children from hydatid eggs being transported into the house by shoes or by sticking to the fur of dogs would lead in about a decade to nightmarish consequences. Please see my appended presentation to a committee of the Montana legislature.

Sincerely,

Valerius Geist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science

July 2011

It is now very apparent that when plans were first being made to bring wolves back into the Northern Rockies, knowledgeable “wolf scientists” must have been extremely rare – and extremely far and few in between. When one takes the time to mull over the so-called Northern Rockies Wolf Recovery Plan, and especially the long and drawn out 1994 Environmental Impact Statement filed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, drafted before the first wolves were released into the Greater Yellowstone Area in 1995, and compares the “facts” within those two documents with what we now know has happened and continues to happen, it becomes very clear that the chosen experts knew little if anything about wolves.

In those days, the team of wildlife biologists, managers, ecologists and environmentalists pushing to “reintroduce” wolves into the Yellowstone ecosystem and throughout the Northern Rockies definitively established that to achieve a recovered wolf population it would take 100 wolves, with a minimum of 10 breeding pairs, in each of three states – Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. And that goal was achieved in 2002. At that time, according to the “Recovery Plan” and the 1994 EIS, management was supposed to have been turned over to the state wildlife agencies. But, it was not.

Although the team of “scientists” and “wildlife biologists” who drafted both of these official documents signed off on the recovery goal numbers well before the first wolves were released, intervening environmental groups, including the Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity, began filing lawsuits to prevent wolf management hunts. And this is even though the wildlife agencies of these states had voluntarily planned to insure a minimum of at least 15 breeding pairs in each state. And that battle continues to this very day.

By the time wolves had reached the agreed upon recovery goal in 2002, it was already evident that those scientists who drafted the plan and EIS had missed their predictions, their claims and their promises to a concerned public by a country mile. Hunting is not just a recreation in the Northern Rockies, it is a way of life, with many families relying heavily on the harvest of elk, deer and other big game to supplement how they keep their family fed. It is also big business. In fact, in Montana alone hunting is an annual $230-million-plus boost to the state’s economy. And well before the first 17 wolves were released into Yellowstone National Park in 1995, Congress proclaimed that the planned project was to “not hurt hunting”, to “not hurt ranching”, and that the release of wolves in the Northern Rockies was not to threaten any other endangered species – i.e. the grizzly bear.

Wolf impact on other wildlife resources was realized by 2002. One of the first elk herds to be severely impacted by wolf depredation was the Northern Yellowstone elk herd. In 1995-96, when the first wolves were released, that herd numbered between 19,000 and 20,000 – and as wolf numbers quickly grew in and around the park, elk numbers dwindled quickly. That summer when wolves reached their recovery numbers, this herd was already down to 12,000. Currently, the Northern Yellowstone elk herd numbers right at 4,000 animals.

The so-called wolf experts who contrived the Recovery Plan claimed that the average wolf would kill around 14 big game animals yearly. Subsequent research, observing what was actually happening once the wolves had far surpassed the recovery goals, established that the average wolf was killing between 20 and 30 big game animals annually – for sustenance. Likewise, they were killing nearly the same number – simply for the sport of killing, eating nothing. That meant the average wolf was killing between 40 and 60 animals each and every year. The “scientists” who drafted the plan failed to even address what is now referred to as “sport killing” or “surplus killing”.

These same wolf specialists also failed to address other aspects of wolf impact that just may prove to have an even greater impact on elk, moose, deer and other big game populations – and that is the stress the wolves put on pregnant females. With the reintroduction of the wolf into the northern U.S. Rocky Mountains, the spring calf to cow ratio has nose dived. In many areas where the survival rate was once 30 to 50 calves per 100 cows, it is now down into the single digits – 6 to 9 per 100 cows. Elk biologists realize that it takes at least 30 to 35 calves per 100 cows to sustain a hunted elk herd. Just to sustain itself without being hunted, a herd must realize an 18- to 20-percent calf survival.

Wolves, mountain lions and grizzlies all account for a high rate of calf loss during late spring and early summer calving. However, where wolves very likely make the biggest impact on the calf-to-cow ratio is through the winter, prior to calving time. Wolves put continual pressure on its prey base during the lean months of December, January, February and March. Constantly kept on the move, there is little time for elk to fatten up for the harshest weather of the year. And as cow elk become heavier with a calf fetus inside, the stress of that constant pursuit is now causing a high number to abort the fetus. And this is an impact factor that our wolf “scientists” either purposely ignored, or were not knowledgeable enough about wolves to even realize.

Another oversight was just how this would affect the overall health of big game herds, especially elk. When USFWS brought in the first Canadian wolves into the Yellowstone area, the Northern Yellowstone elk herd averaged 4 to 5 years of age. Due to the excessive loss of calf recruitment, the herd has gotten much older on the average – now between 8 and 9 years of age. Many cows are now reaching an age where reproduction becomes biologically impossible.

Math is an integral part of science, the part which can be most easily manipulated. That can now be witnessed with the “guesstimated” wolf populations that now roam the upper two-thirds of Idaho, all along the western half of Montana and in the northwest quadrant of Wyoming – and which are now moving into Washington, Oregon and Utah. Our experts claim the region is now home to around 1,700 wolves – even though the wildlife agencies in these states do not have the technology or the manpower to accurately assess. The hundreds of thousands of sportsmen who spend most of the year in the outdoors say that number wouldn’t even account for half the wolves in the Northern Rockies. And one of the most respected wolf scientists in the world, Dr. L. David Mech, of Minnesota, tends to agree with them.

Mech was deposed as an expert witness for the 2008 wolf delisting hearings, and in his declaration he established that even with natural death losses, and wolves culled by hunters and animal control officers, the Northern Rockies wolf population was, then, more than 3,000. Today, the number is more like 4,000 – with as many as 1,500 to 1,600 in Montana alone. Still, the wolf specialists with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks continue to downplay the wolf numbers, claiming there are “at least” 566. Next door in Idaho, wildlife managers also tout a number far below the real number, generally claiming 800 to 900.

The “science” Dr. Mech presents that scares the daylights out of those who continually push for more wolves is the level of reduction it’s going to take in order to stop the destruction of other wildlife populations. In that same declaration, he stated that to just stop the growth rate of depredation could mean eliminating upwards of 50-percent of all wolves in the Northern Rockies. To pull big game populations out of what is referred to as a “predator pit” situation would require culling 70-percent or more of existing wolves.

Plaguing the science of the Northern Rockies Wolf Recovery Project even more is the wolf which USFWS chose to transplant from north-central Alberta, Canada as the replacement wolf for the “reintroduction”. It is not the same subspecies as the wolf that was native to the region. Prior to the importation of those non-indigenous Canadian wolves (Canis lupus occidentalis) , the native wolf of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming was a smaller subspecies (Canis lupus irremotus) . Many residents of the region have stated there were still several small pockets of the native wolf in remote areas when USFWS began bringing in the larger and more aggressive non-native Canadian wolves – and that those native wolves were soon eliminated by the invasive species.

Sportsmen are now seriously questioning how USFWS chose to bring in an entirely different wolf to repopulate one of the richest wildlife ecosystems in the U.S. They tend to feel that bringing in that subspecies would be no different than if the agency arbitrarily chose to truck a few thousand pronghorns from the plains of Wyoming down to Mexico to supplement the endangered Sonoran pronghorn, or to help out the endangered Florida Keys Deer by transplanting noticeably larger whitetails from the Midwest. Then there are Idaho’s extremely endangered woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), will USFWS come to their rescue and transplant Central barren ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus) from the Canadian Arctic? Is this science…or playing God?

More and more, people who live in the Northern Rockies are accusing USFWS of actually violating the Endangered Species Act by introducing, not reintroducing, a wolf subspecies that never lived in the region. And that those non-endangered Canadian wolves have destroyed any chances of ever truly re-establishing a population of the native wolf. The manner in which USFWS, with the encouragement of environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife, pushed for such an accelerated recovery project of wolves in and around Yellowstone National Park has many residents suspecting their agenda has much more to it than re-establishing a wolf population. More now claim it is all a part of the spurious “Wildlands Project” (now called the Wildlands Network) and the United Nation’s “Agenda 21″ – with goals to greatly reduce human utilization of rural lands.

Recently, one prominent NASA scientist, James Hansen, was accused of illegally accepting more than $1.2-million from well funded environmental groups to support their “Stop Global Warming” agendas. The manner in which some state wildlife agency biologists now seem to be favoring the “let nature balance itself agenda” has many sportsmen, who are the primary financial supporters of these agencies, wondering if the “selling out” problem has now come much closer to home. In the same light, many overly radical environmental professors who are teaching our future wildlife scientists are now under public scrutiny.

A new area of wolf-related science that is just now surfacing is the threat of the Echinococcus granulosus tapeworm – which close to 70-percent of all wolves tested in the Northern Rockies now carry – and spread widely during their long ranging hunts. Every pile of scat left by these wolves could deposit thousands of the tapeworm eggs, which can result in cystic hydatid disease in elk, moose, deer, livestock – and even humans. The eggs of this parasite can cause health and life threatening cysts on the lungs, the liver and on the brain. Once contracted, detection of hydatid disease could take years. Having the cysts surgically removed presents a new danger. They are filled with a cloudy liquid, filled with tiny tapeworm heads, and should one burst, either during surgery or on its own, leads to a severe allergic reaction, called anaphylatic shock – and possibly death. When a cyst does burst, it can spawn the growth of multiple new cysts, making surgery a tricky procedure.

As wolf numbers continue to grow in the Northern Rockies, so will the chances of contracting the disease. It already has many outdoor oriented people afraid to enjoy harvesting and eating wild berries and mushrooms, which could be covered with microscopic tapeworm eggs. Several cases in humans have now been reported, and a growing number of hunters are finding the cysts on the lungs and livers of elk, deer and moose harvested.

Science is a wonderful tool when it is used for the right reasons. But when it is used to lie and deceive, to cover up what’s really happening, and to support a radical agenda, perhaps it should be handled as a criminal offense. Montana resident Robert Fanning, the founder and C.E.O. of the group known as the Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd refers to the science used throughout the Northern Rockies Wolf Recovery Project as “scientific fraud!”

The evidence says he’s right. – Toby Bridges, LOBO WATCH

Note: Robert Fanning is one of many who feel that the Northern Rockies Wolf Recovery Project is the greatest wildlife disaster of our lifetimes, and definitely not a conservation success story. He believes those who are responsible should be held accountable. He points out that Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd has carefully preserved it’s standing to sue and expose this criminal scientific fraud.

Harvey Mansfield’s amusing truism, “Sociology and Other ‘Meathead’ Majors”, about how sociology, economics, gender studies, and other humanities have become simply promulgations of debatable values as opposed the “facts” dealt with by “science” is based on one false assumption. It is a false assumption to postulate that modern University “science” deals with “facts”. Modern science incorporates such value-laden pursuits as “Native Species Restoration” and all manner of fictitious rationales to justify closure of public lands, diminishment of rural American life, and the cessation of all management and use of renewable natural resources nationwide.

Take wolves (please) justified as scientifically “necessary” for rural America. Wolves carry over thirty diseases deadly to humans and other animals; wolves roam over vast areas in packs and alone; wolves kill dogs of all kinds; wolves kill livestock such as cattle, sheep, and horses; wolves decimate big game herds and big game hunting, as well as attack and consume humans. Introduced wolves frequent school bus stops, rural yards, campgrounds, rural communities where prey species take refuge, and have stopped rural women from walking dogs and checking rural mailboxes on foot as well as eliminating rural kids’ fishing and camping activities.

All of the foregoing is trumped by University “scientists’” pronouncements in today’s world that wolves “belong” here and that they are “necessary” to “the ecosystem”. Such prattling rationalizations given the patina of “science” are every bit as fatuous and “value”-laden as the most airheaded “gender-studies” professor or sociology study that ever came down the pike.

Jim Beers
31 May 2011

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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

THE SILENCE OF THE VETS*

(*Veterinarians that is.)

31 May 2011, Page 2 of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press:

“Hepatitis C cousin found in dogs”.

“Some of them (infected with the virus) will suffer cirrhosis, liver cancer, and even death.”

“Hepatitis C belongs to an entirely different virus family that includes diseases like West Nile fever and yellow fever.”

“Identifying the species reservoir of hepatitis C – one of the most common and deadly of all viruses – has been something of a holy grail in studies of viral evolution.”

“Scientists have gotten an important clue, finding a close relative in an unexpected host: dogs.”

“They swabbed the noses of dogs sick with respiratory disease and searched for viruses”. They “found that six of nine dogs in one outbreak and three of five in another shared the same unknown virus”, “closely related to the hepatitis C virus.”

HHHMMMM?

If dogs transmit it, what about wolves and coyotes? Aren’t wolves “just big dogs” according to the recently retired federal wolf program coordinator?

Can’t wolves or coyotes carry the virus and transmit it to domestic dogs? Is it transmitted in saliva? Is it transmitted when an infected wolf or coyote sneezes into a kennel or on a kennel fence as they threaten a dog? Can an infected wolf sneeze on a stick or old bone and leave the virus for a sniffing dog to pick up? For how long? Is it transmitted to a dog on an object mouthed recently by an infected wolf or coyote? Can it be transmitted in a bite? Should rural dogs be allowed in the house? In the kids’ beds? Should kids be allowed to “love” dogs or get licked by dogs? Can sneezing dogs spread deadly viruses in homes? Is it therefore still prohibited to suggest that wolf presence should be a local matter to be decided by local citizens and that wolf numbers should be determined based on human health hazards and not on idealistic urban dreams that scientists are being paid to fulfill?

The foregoing questions and many more apply to the 30+ diseases and infections carried and spread by wolves. None of them were even mentioned, much less answered in the federal wolf introduction documents. Even worse, all of THE State Wildlife Veterinarians and State Agricultural Veterinarians have been AWOL on this very important veterinary matter for decades. Add to this the almost total absence of any private Veterinarians commenting on wolves as disease vectors and we see one more degenerating sector of American society.

I could take cheap shots about vet schools being in the pay of governments or grinding out radical graduates that want to “love” and “protect” animals as if they were human, but what do I know? I could speculate about private vet practices being very competitive and being in jeopardy if customers thought the Dr.” so & so” was “anti-wolf” or “pro-trapping”: vets have families to raise as I once did. THE State Vets, be they “wildlife vets” or “livestock vets” are bureaucrats: politically incorrect actions, like my “whistle-blowing”, have nasty consequences as I found out. Besides, they just found out about this hepatitis C virus, didn’t they?

Over twenty years ago the federal government began dumping and protecting wolves in three corners (they have saved the Northeast Progressive Citizen Prey Base for last) of the nation and in four disparate locations. Clearly the intent and result will be wolves in every state eventually.

In this time the topic of wolves as vectors of disease has been denied and avoided by the bureaucrats’ whose retirements we now fete AND ALL the Veterinarians and Universities we all have such warm respect and affection for. So who needs to listen to all those NON-Veterinarians like Will Graves, Dr. Val Geist, and yours truly? What could ANY NON-Veterinarian possibly know?

Take those questions about Hepatitis C at the beginning of the article and just apply them to the diseases and infections I testified about before the Oregon State Legislature Agriculture Committee last year. Then consider the Silence of the Vets since wolves were proposed for and then dumped all over this great nation.

Here are those diseases and infections:

“The following list of diseases carried by wolves, while not totally comprehensive, represents over 30 infections that have been credited to wolves. Those that can infect humans are followed by an (H); those that affect other animals are followed by an (OA).

1. Rabies (H) (OA)
2. Brucellosis (H) (OA)

Hydatid Disease:
3. Echinococcus granulosis (H) (OA)
4. Echinococcus multilocularis (H) (OA)
5. Anthrax (H) (OA)
6. Encephalitis (H) (OA)
7. Great Lakes Fish Tapeworm (H) (OA)
8. Smallpox (H) (OA)
9. Mad Cow (BSE) (OA) (H)
10. Chronic Wasting Disease (OA)

From Ticks Carried by wolves:
11. Anemia (H)
12. Dermatosis (H)
13. Tick paralysis (H)
14. Babesiosis (H)
15. Anaplasmosis (H)
16. Erlichia (H)
17. E. Coast Fever (H)
18. Relapsing Fever (H)
19. Rocky Mtn. Spotted Fever (H)
20. Lyme Disease (H)

From Fleas:
21. Plague (H)
22. Bubonic Plague (H)
23. Pneumonic Plague (H)
24. Flea-Borne Typhus (H)
25. Distemper (OA)
26. Neospora caninum (OA)
27. 2 Types of Mange (H) (OA)
28. GID (a disease of wild and domestic sheep) (OA)
29. Foot-and –Mouth (OA)

Of the 29 diseases and infections listed, 24 affect humans and many of these are deadly. Whether it is a child ingesting tapeworm eggs from a ranch house floor rug or a jogging soccer Mom encountering wolves as a schoolteacher did recently in Alaska that resulted in a horrible death, the fact that these human health hazards have been given short-shrift by wildlife agencies and their veterinarians is nothing short of scandalous.”

We can now add one more deadly infection to the scandal!

Jim Beers
31 May 2011

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

Guest blog by Jim Beers

The Obama administration says it is taking 5,500 wolves off the endangered list in eight states in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes” and “The move will turn control over the predators to state wildlife agencies”. Really?

Can any state now reduce wolf numbers overall drastically (and maintain them for a decade or more) to recover big game herds to pre-wolf levels? I don’t think so.

Can any state say there will be no wolves East of a certain highway or South of a certain river? I don’t think so.

Can any state set wolf population targets lower than what USFWS or DOW or NRDC or CBD declare? I don’t think so.

Will state wolf counts (in spite of the fact that wolf counting is a very malleable art and NOT a science or reliable technique) have any legal standing when the foregoing nefarious characters say they are “too high”? I don’t think so.

Will any state be allowed the full range of control methods (trapping, snaring, aerial shooting, M-44’s, etc.) to quickly and certainly regain or gain control of highly overpopulated wolf packs and wolf-infested areas? I don’t think so.

Will citizens be “allowed” to kill any wolf at any time near homes or campgrounds, or in livestock pastures, or threatening watchdogs or hunting dogs, or near towns or schools or school bus stops? I don’t think so.

Will federal agencies, federal employees, and a bad law be any longer responsible when rural residents are killed and maimed after they (the feds) relinquish “control over the predators to state wildlife agencies”? I don’t think so.

Will federal Pittman Robertson Fund administrators approve funding applications for state “research” projects to determine what level of wolves are compatible with current livestock operations?; with big game populations and harvests of 10 years ago?; with current rural domestic dog populations?; with the safety of rural residents as they live, work, and recreate in rural America? How about “research” projects on techniques and methods to “manage” wolves or ways to finance state wolf “management” programs in a period of state economic instability? I don’t think so.

Will state efforts to offer bounties or participate in wolf fur sales or other schemes to finance management and control of wolves be allowed? I don’t think so.

Will urban and radical Americans, federal bureaucrats, and federal politicians that have all imposed these wolves on rural America by force, pay for maintaining and intervening on behalf of all these wolves that they are unaffected by but that they insist on continuing to impose on rural American families, economies, and communities? I don’t think so.

The radicals, the federal bureaucrats, the state bureaucrats, and certain federal politicians were scared by the last election. They were even more scared by the almost-successful Congressional run at defunding all federal funds for National Public Radio (NPR) and the world’s biggest abortion provider – Planned Parenthood.

(Note: NPR is designed like Nazi/Communist Government media propaganda arms and Planned Parenthood is the “fruit” of Margaret Sanger’s 1920’s campaigns to rid the world of “inferiors” and breed a super race. Like government-media and government population control, Endangered Species concepts spring from Nazi dictates about “Pre-Roman Plants and Animals” and the desire by a few to control the rest of society. These three Progressive cornerstones rose together and could logically die together in a swarm of popular disgust. The radicals like DOW, HSUS, NRDC, TNC, CBD, et al and their federal and state enablers are scared stiff that if there are real federal budget cuts that NPR and Planned Parenthood could go down with their erstwhile and similarly disguised partner, The Endangered Species Act. Just as the NPR denies it is a progressive propaganda machine and Planned Parenthood denies it kills humans at their earliest and most vulnerable stage of life; so too does the ESA machine deny it is about destroying Constitutional guarantees, property rights, animal ownership, hunting, fishing, oil drilling, dams, farming, ranching, rural economies, logging, public land management and use, and Judaeo-Christian concepts of the relationship of man and his environment.)

While they are all (radicals, bureaucrats, and politicians) worried about their own futures, they are creating this illusion of “hearing the public” and showing how they can “get along”. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consider the questions posed at the beginning of this article and ask yourself, how it is possible to not be able to eradicate a wild animal population (especially a deadly and very harmful animal population) in any state while simultaneously trumpeting that said “state wildlife agencies” “will have control over the predators”? The sad fact is that the “state wildlife agencies” will dance to the federal/radical tune and the residents of the state will pay the bills.

Before you say, “so what?” or say this is all academic, consider one last point. The radicals and bureaucrats are currently crying all over the newspapers and internet and magazines about how this “precedent” (of Congress delisting wolves by state in but a handful of states as a “quick fix as a Budget Bill Amendment) is “unscientific” and dangerous. Au contraire!

When the US Senators and Congressmen crafted this little bit of chicanery of delisting certain wolves in certain states they really did 2 things. They saved their hides by “responding to their constituents” in a way that could be just as quickly be reversed when opportune AND they gave the radicals and their bureaucrat enablers a precedent for when The Tea Party and The Debt and Joblessness et al miraculously disappear and they are safely back in control. Why not have Congress “List” that bogus Lizard in Texas that is supposed to shut down the oil rigs? Why not have Congress “List” Eastern Cougars or Jaguars to further evacuate rural America and destroy hunting? Why not just have Congress “List” Free-Roaming Buffalo”? Urban voters would love all this “very important” stuff and open the spigot of election funding and international support and volunteerism to guarantee lifetime political careers and rich, retired bureaucrats, radical “Directors”, and lobbyists!

This quick Congressional “fix” is a two-edged sword. I thought about this as the current President’s approvals jumped with the Osama affair. Something as unforeseen as the death of Osama or an earthquake in China or some other such incident could result in Democrats or RINO’s (call ‘em Country Club Republicans or whatever) keeping or regaining control of federal power. Say what you will, both of them or either of them are advocates and enablers of the radical movements that have imposed and strengthened this ESA behemoth. They accept money from them, enable their agendas and will respond to UN or World Wildlife Fund et al claims of why states and Constitutions are irrelevant and why central governments need to reclaim all rural American lands to make inviolate Nature sanctuaries (i.e. outdoor churches attended only via satellite and TV).

As long as the ESA stands, like the Sword of Damocles, none of us are safe.

Jim Beers

5 May 2011

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

Human babesiosis is an important emerging tick born disease. Cattle are the most common agent of human babesiosis in Europe. In the U.S., babesiosis microti, a babesial parasite of small mammals has been cause of many cases of human babesiosis since 1969, resulting in mild to severe disease.

Babesiosis was first found in Romanian cattle in 1888. The first identified infection found caused by babesia in a human was in 1957 in the former Yugoslavia. The first in the U.S. was in 1969 in Massachusetts. The patient was found to have babesia microti. Since then, more and more cases of human babesiosis have been reported. In the U.S., babesiosis is endemic in the Northeast. Additional cases have appeared in the Midwest and West Coast.

Babesiosis is a zoonotic (mammal to human) disease, requiring transmission from an animal reservoir to humans via a tick, the same as Lyme disease and HGE/HGA (as discussed in my previous article on those tick borne disease).

Of more than 70 species worldwide in the genus Babesia, human infections are largely due to the rodent strain B-microti (found in the U.S.) and cattle strain B-divergens and B-bovis (found only in Europe). Several cases in Washington State and California have been described from a hitherto unknown species of babesia, designated as WA-1. This strain is closely related to B-gibsoni, a canine pathogen (bacterium or virus). A fatal case of babesiosis recently occurred in Missouri from a strain (NO-1) that was closely related to the B-divergens strain. Test for B-microti do not detect infections due to these other strains of Babesia.

In the north east U.S., a black legged deer tick (lxodes scapularis) is the principle vector for transmitting
B-microti. This is the same tick that transmits Lyme disease. Babesia species from rodents, primarily the deer mouse, but also field mice, vole, rat and chipmunk, are transmitted to humans during tick bites in endemic areas. Understandably this is more prevalent during the periods of tick activities in the spring, summer and fall. The tick has 3 developmental stages, lava, nymph and adult, with each stage requiring a blood meal for development into the next stage. As larva and nymph, the tick feeds on rodents, but as an adult, the tick prefers to feed on the white-tailed deer. Female ticks are impregnated while obtaining their blood meal on the deer, with the formation of up to 20,000 eggs.

Human infection is primarily produced by the bite of the infected “nymph” during a blood meal. Curtailment of deer hunting has caused increased deer herds in some areas. The proximity of deer, mouse, and the tick create the conditions for increased human infection. The incubation period after a tick bite usually is 1-3 weeks, occasionally maybe as long as 9 weeks. Because the nymph (primary vector), is only 2mm in diameter when engorged. Most patients do not recall a tick bite.

Babesia species in the host vary in size. These are pear shaped, oval or round. Their ring form and peripheral location in the red blood cells of the host frequently lead to their being mistaken for a similar appearing malaria parasite.

Babesiosis is rarely acquired through blood transfusions. In transfusion- associated cases, sources of babesiosis have included platelets and frozen erythrocytes. The incubation period in transfusion- associated disease appears to be 6 – 9 weeks. Transplacental (immunization) transmission has also occurred in rare cases.

The spectrum of disease manifestation is broad, ranging from a silent infection to malaria like disease, which results in severe hemolysis (dissolution or disintergration of red blood cells) and, occasionally death.
The precise mechanism of hemolysis is unknown. The spleen offers a critical host defense against this infection, as suggested by higher incidence and greater severity of babesiosis in asplenic patients.

The spleen traps infected red blood cells, and their ingestion by the macrophages (cells that consume foreign bodies) follows. The disease itself alters cellular immune function.

In the U.S. infection with B-microti in otherwise healthy individuals generally remains sub clinical; however, symptomatic infection is common in patients who are asplenic, older patients, and those with underlying medical conditions, including human immunodeficiency virus infections. Disease manifestations range from asymptomic infection in healthy individuals to severe illness and death in those who are asplenic, elderly, or immunocompromised ( ).

Patients with clinical illness and intact spleens are usually 50 years of age or older, suggesting that age plays a factor in the severity of the clinical response. Previously healthy individuals with babesiosis generally are older than 60, than are patients with babesiosis with antecedent medical problems. Symptoms begin gradually and are nonspecific. Most common symptoms reportedly are fatigue, malaise & weakness, fever, shaking chills and diaphoresis. Physical findings vary. Babesiosis has been associated with shock and acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Dave Miller
Lexington TWP

Dave Miller is a Maine resident, an outdoor writer and a member of the Carrabassett Valley Trappers Association.