A guest blog by Barry Coe –

Having been born and raised in Idaho and as a lifelong sportsman of this state, I have had many issues with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) over the years. I have witnessed their actions on several issues that have directly lead to diminished fish and wildlife, and diminished sporting opportunities. In attempting to be involved and to protect our culture and interests, I have had one very consistent attitude and response from the agency that has become very proficient at taking whatever position they seem to think will best further their own agenda. That attitude is pure and raw contempt. And no other issue has exposed and proven this contempt more than the Canadian wolf introduction has.

IDFG has attempted to take the ‘we hold no blame’ position concerning wolves in this state. I feel it has been well proven that they, in fact, hold a large percentage of blame. A prior director actually wrote support letters to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and drafted an illegal permit that allowed the Canadian wolves to be dumped into this state in a blaring contempt for Idaho state code. It was so contemptuous that the Idaho state legislature actually reacted to the action, although they failed to implement accountability. Yet those were the days before the Internet and the ability to transfer information quickly and thoroughly throughout the population. Those were the days of running under the radar and outright collusion between state and federal agencies. There is little doubt in my mind, and I suspect anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of this issue would agree, that outright collusion between IDFG and the USFWS did, and continue, to take place. Wolves, grizzly bears, soon to be wolverines and all other claimed endangered species are a vast source of federal dollars and we all know, IDFG loves nothing like they love the federal dollar.

In a recent article, Jim (salt shaker) Hayden (IDFG Panhandle Regional Wildlife Manager) made yet another revealing comment. In this interview “Salt Shaker” Hayden seemed surprised that about 50% of the wolves harvested in this current wolf season have come from areas that IDFG didn’t even know contained wolves. Now, on the surface this comment may seem unimportant, yet when one considers the past 16 years, it’s importance is almost undefinable.

I have to ask this question of Mr. Hayden. Just exactly how can you manage a declining elk population when you obviously have no concept of the level of predation impacting those elk?

For years IDFG took the politically correct avenue of clinging onto the obviously and intentionally low official numbers of wolves. As hunters and outdoorsmen screamed from the rafters that those numbers were so far off it was incredible, IDFG turned a blind eye and a deaf ear. After all, the federal bucks were rolling in and the hunters were still buying licenses and tags. All was well and good at IDFG. Biologists were being hired (most directly out of the wolf introduction program) and the rumblings were contained to a small population of people who never knew how to get the truth out, especially in the face of IDFG and green eco-groups. The old tactic of ignoring and marginalizing was rolling along just fine.

It was only in the last year or two that IDFG was forced to admit that, ‘well, golly, okay, so our wolf population is around 1000 wolves’. Again the sportsmen and sportswomen of Idaho claimed that number was also an intentional down playing of the actual number of wolves in Idaho. As we witnessed the great elk herds disappear from first hand observation, IDFG still clung to the deceit that all was fine. They twisted a few numbers here, changed a few “objectives” there, rewrote a few algorithms, adjusted some seasons and continued to play both sides of the fence. After all, this has always been the status quo for this department. The level of contempt IDFG obviously has for anyone outside of the department or the federal system is amazingly apparent.

Wolf math just is not that hard. They breed like rabbits, yet have no predators. The lie just became too hard to cover up anymore and so, the science changed – I use science here with my tongue stuffed soundly into my cheek. For a decade we had manipulated science stuffed down our throats that exonerated their revenue generating wolves from any cause of any problem we were experiencing anywhere in the state they inhabited. When it became obvious that the truth was coming out, and that delisting was imminent, in spite of the department’s best efforts to keep them listed, and even drafting and submitting an illegal wolf management plan, they decided to flip over. In typical IDFG fashion, the wolves were now the cause of it all! Boy, aren’t we happy that they finally have seen the light! After all we have been telling them this for 10 years.

But, they now face a wiser and more connected sportspeople. We’re not buying it and they know it. We are now very informed and politically connected; we have communication outlets and media connections. But again, in true IDFG fashion, they have decided to try another avenue to generate their revenue. They want nothing worse than to have the hunters of this state out of the equation. We no longer forget past actions or play in the manner they want us to, paying more for less. They now turn to the tactic of pandering and collusion.

In what seems on the surface to be a politically correct action of seeking information concerning wildlife management in the state of Idaho, they have committed a few obvious mistakes that exposed their true intention. Their highly publicized ‘Summit’ was rolled out as that meeting. Conducted DURING hunting season, and with invitations extended to several anti-hunting, eco-green groups, and a group of actual past and present IDFG employees, IDFG now wants input on wildlife management. And, they want that input from everyone that doesn’t pay for it or expect the department to do anything other than perpetuate predators and sustain their job at all costs.

Rumor has it that this little summit has caused a rift in the ranks. It seems to have been generated right from the new director Virgil Moore; or at least that is where all the fingers are pointing. It seems that this long-time employee of IDFG, and new director, is attempting to return to the status quo of ignore and move forward. Instead of moving in the direction of attempting to get out from under the wolf issue, he now seems to want to change gears and get back in bed with the green, wildlands agenda, and he wants their money. Public input on management? How quaint! If only it didn’t reek of corruption, contempt and collusion. If, in fact, this is the brain child of Mr. Moore, he just flatly needs to go; it is far past time to get a director that is not a long time member of the IDFG’s good old boys club. We have flatly had enough! I suspect if our legislature is not willing to overhaul this department, the time has come to turn to the citizen and the ballot box. We have one very powerful tool at our disposal; initiatives, which are binding if passed and can be used to circumvent a lack of appropriate action by those in government. They do have the ability to change this department in ways that will both form the department in a manner the citizens of Idaho want and to also bring accountability to this long-time rogue department. The good old boys club must be dismantled.

Actual wolf numbers? Let’s return to Jim “Salt Shaker” Hayden for a few moments. I have heard sportsmen and women, who spend an immense amount of time in the outdoors, claim the wolf numbers in Idaho are at least double what IDFG claims. It now seems “Salt Shaker” Hayden has validated those claims. And in that claim, his statement speaks volumes. It is very sad that a department that is charged with the management of Idaho’s wildlife have failed so miserably, and stayed the course of ignoring sportspeople to the extent they have. There are but a few explanations for this miserable failure: Corruption, Collusion or outright incompetence. I will leave it to you to decide which it is or how much longer you are going to stand for it.

Barry Coe
Save Western Wildlife

Guest post by Jim Beers

NEWS ITEM:

“Non-native northern pike are high-impact predators of many other fish,” said John Whalen of The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. “We’re increasingly concerned about future impacts to native trout and other species, including salmon and steelhead.”

QUESTION:

What is the difference between Northern Pike from Canada (that got them from Idaho and Montana) eradicating “native trout and other species, including salmon and steelhead” fishing; and wolves transported by government from Canada eradicating elk, moose, and big game hunting as well as diminishing ranching profits, human safety, rural “Tranquility” (a Constitutional term), and the lives of untold numbers of domestic animals from cattle and sheep to dogs of all types?

ANSWER:

To answer that one (the wolf) is “Native” while the other is not or that it (the pike) is “Invasive” is meaningless. Pheasants and chukars are invasive or non-natives that were purposely introduced and are highly-sought and contributing members of the Washington economy, environment and ecosystem. Would Washington residents or the government they employ eradicate pheasants and chukars because they are non-native or invasive? I would think not.

To answer that ones’ (the wolf) destruction must be tolerated simply because government declares “it was here first” means that other dangerous and destructive animals that “were here first” like grizzly bears such as Ursus horribilis bairdi (Merriam) will likewise be imposed on rural Washington residents. Do any Washington residents or Washington state employees really intend to restore grizzly bears into a settled landscape such as Washington? I certainly hope not.

To answer that one (the pike) will diminish or eradicate “native trout and other species” is somewhat disingenuous. Approximately half of Washington’s game fish (Eastern Brook Trout, Tiger Muskie, channel catfish, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, brown trout, tiger trout, and Atlantic salmon) are not “native” species. Further how do you distinguish the loss of such fisheries to northern pike as intolerable when the loss of elk hunting, deer hunting, hunting in general (due to human and dog safety concerns), loss of ranch revenue, and the loss of rural domestic “Tranquility” to wolves is to be endured by rural Washington residents by government fiat? Is the trout fisherman or the bass fisherman’s interest in fishing paramount to and infinitely of more importance to the state than the interest of safety for rural children, elk hunting, deer hunting, ranching, recreation, or rural dog ownership?

On the one hand we are to be alerted to a newly arrived sport (in the majority of states) fish as an Armageddon that (undoubtedly) the state fish and wildlife agency will either A) need more money and people to combat or B) should be exempted from inexorable cuts down the road as Washington is forced to tighten its belt. On the other hand the state fish and wildlife agency abandons the rural residents of Washington to ally itself with national environmental/animal rights radical agendas, federal bureaucrats, and the unaffected urban voting blocs of Seattle by introducing (by not controlling), protecting, and spreading wolves despised by and objected to, to no avail, by those rural Washington residents that are to live with them. Thus are Washington residents to fear the pike ( a “voracious species” advancing “toward the Columbia River”) while welcoming (at least avoiding at all costs due to threatened Draconian government reprisals) wolves that are equally “voracious” but are described as necessary for the Washington countryside by state bureaucrats. Like rubes at a Carnival, we are asked to keep our eye on the wrong shell and to quietly surrender our money when we lose. The only difference here is Washington state residents pay this agency to fleece them and like the old definition of insanity, expect a different outcome than before each time.

Northern pike in the Pend Oreille River are, short of a massive and unlikely poisoning of the River in both nations, on their way to the Columbia. Increasingly scarce fishery dollars should not be wasted on a show-program that at best delays the inevitable. How ironic that the state agency wants to mount a massive pike intervention while simultaneously treating far more destructive wolves like forest fires of late, i.e. “whatever they do and whenever they do it, ‘it’ is natural and therefore above reproach by anyone, no matter the costs”.

Wolf numbers and distribution in Washington should be a decision made by and for rural (County) residents of Washington. State government should be the protector of rural families, rural communities and rural economies: not their incremental destroyers. The State government should represent those that will live with and be directly affected by the presence of wolves and not:
1. Federal agencies,
2. Questionable federal legislation like the Endangered Species Act,
3. Urban and International values imposed politically, and
4. Radical environmental and animal rights agendas hostile to rural America.

This is the answer that few people want to hear.

Jim Beers
14 December 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

*Editor’s Note* The link to this report was sent to me by Susan Wolf of the North Carolina Responsible Animal Owners Alliance (NCRAOA)

According to Physorg.com, new DNA evidence establishes what those involved in the study believe to be evidence that coyotes migrated east.

In a new study, published Oct. 17 in the Journal of Mammalogy, researchers from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics used DNA from coyote scat (feces) to trace the route that led some of the animals to colonize in Northern Virginia. The researchers also confirmed that, along the way, the coyotes interbred with the native Great Lakes wolves.

The study claims coyotes migrated along two main corridors, one in the northern United States and one in the south. Along the northern route, coyotes encountered Great Lakes and Canadian wolves and inbreeding took place. It is believed these inbred coyotes continued to push toward the south along the Appalachian Mountains.

While the DNA testing may have proven that coyotes migrated east, nothing in this report (I don’t know if it’s included in the full study) gives any indication or conclusions as to why the coyote migrated. Some are describing this migration as “natural”, but is it? Probably that debate will never be settled. Natural or not, it is equally as important to expand this study to determine why the migration.

Was the migration an exodus or better described as an expansion of the species due to overcrowding and/or reduction of prey, disease, encounters with growing populations of wolves, etc. etc.?

We cannot fully understand these creatures’ habits until we are willing to examine the entirety of their actions and the circumstances that exist that cause changes in their habits. And be willing to accept that evidence.

Tom Remington

It will be three years in March that newly elected President Barack Obama claimed to America he would, “restore the scientific process to its rightful place at the heart of the Endangered Species Act”. He went on to blame previous administrations for using political coercion and manipulation to achieve specific goals.

It was a mere 8 months after this announcement by the President that we began to get a better idea of exactly what the President meant about “science”. While it may sound expedient to “return science to it’s rightful place”, nobody ever defines science, as shameful as it is that this becomes necessary. Of course there’s science and scientific study in the purest sense of the word, aimed at only finding truthful answers. However, that doesn’t exist anymore……does it? Now we use “science” to promote political agendas. In the end we all lose, of course.

I knew in March of 2009 exactly what President Obama meant by his rhetorical proclamation to restore science. When will any of us ever learn to stop listening to this blathering bovine excrement by politicians geared to appease the masses and lull them to sleep so they can continue their deliberate corrupting of this nation? Never I’m afraid.

However, nearly three years into this administration and it’s business as usual. Obama, like all previous administrations, uses his own pseudo science, contrived by his hand-selected radical zealots to achieve plans and programs that seldom are able to stand on their own merits. This mendacious manipulation of data and information results in some of the biggest frauds against the American people, and yet, most are numb to any of it.

Today, Fox News reports that some republican lawmakers have sent a letter to John Holdren, director of Obama’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, claiming that there have been repeat offenses of “scientific misconduct”. This falls on its face in so many ways.

Why now? In case you don’t know it’s campaign season. Nothing you hear or read is what it appears. Of course there has been “scientific misconduct”. When has there not? The only time some people think otherwise is when any scientific “findings” match their own narratives.

The republican congressmen shared their “concerns” in the letter they sent this way:

“Specifically, we are concerned with data quality, integrity of methodologies and collection of information, agencies misrepresenting publicly the weight of scientific ‘facts,’ indefensible representations of scientific conclusions before our federal court system, and our fundamental notions of ‘sound’ science,”

Sounds great doesn’t it. I mean who can argue with that? But when we see many of these scientific conclusions, regardless of which administration concocted them, end up in our courts, none of this talk of “scientific misconduct” amounts to a hill of beans.

Leaving the interpretation of scientific evidence up to a judge is ridiculous but that’s what we’ve created. Some judges go so far as to make their own scientific conclusions and thus rule accordingly. With judges being political appointments, what are we to expect? Doing so only gives presidents, like Barack Obama, the freedom to claim HE will put HIS science back in it’s rightful place. Science then gets preempted by political ideology.

Putting much credence in any hopeful speculation that a handful of politicians are actually going to achieve any sort of reformation of the scientific process is a wasted effort. When public money began to be used to fund “scientific research”, corruption escalated to a point that now politics and private agendas are so heavily entrenched into such a great part of our scientific community, it leaves many of us wondering if anything we hear anymore is believable.

Certainly not from a bunch of politicians in campaign mode.

Tom Remington

Has the air slowly leaked out of the save-Maine’s-deer balloon? Coming off the results of a historic campaign in Maine, with the appointment of a new commissioner for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW), many outdoor sportsmen got wound up about Maine’s Game Plan for Deer. Sportsmen were promised a few things and now it is time to begin reviewing those promises and see what has transpired.

The fifth of Five Elements of Maine’s Game Plan for Deer looks like this:

Public understanding of the Department’s deer management plan and public support for the plan is essential for it to be successful.
Strategies:
• the Department will enhance its public outreach on two fronts:
• better informing the public about the many aspects of deer management and updating the public on progress in deer rebuilding efforts, and
• better providing information on ways concerned individuals and groups can improve deer habitat
• MDIF&W will increase public understanding and support for it efforts to increase the deer population

How is MDIFW doing? Are you satisfied? If you’re not, don’t remain silent. We were promised better. Now ask yourself if you are getting it.

There is one thing I learned very early on in life when it came to public service as well as my own adventures in business – keep the people informed. This is the best money spent. There’s several things wrong with our government and a lack of communication is one of them. The other is communicating the wrong information. If those two things could be overcome at MDIFW, many of the other problems with public relations would go away. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. After all, we are talking about a government agency here, one that is no different than any other and fails are communicating effectively because they want to keep information from us.

Sorry if I’m stepping on someone’s toes here but that is the reality and until someone can show me differently, I certainly will not change my approach.

To give credit where credit is due, at least MDIFW and all those involved in creating the Plan, if there were others, recognized that it was important enough to include as one of their five elements of things necessary to accomplish in order for the plan to work. If that is true and they fully believed that, then I ask sportsmen again to ask themselves if they are satisfied with the information and the amount of it that MDIFW is giving us about our deer plan to restore the Maine herd.

I’m not and here are the reasons why. In early February, MDIFW began sending out Deer Progress Reports. What was planned to be a weekly report began getting scattered until the first part of April when it was announced that aerial surveys of deer ceased because deer were no longer restricted to deer yards.

Three months passed by and MDIFW sent out a “Summary” of the past progress reports which I’m not sure I would call it a summary of deer progress but more of an update of plans with no specific data to satisfy the masses of sportsmen.

Perhaps I am different than most sportsmen but nothing I received all winter and into the summer told me much of anything as it pertained to the condition and the status the deer herd. While each progress report included a report of any predation issues, mostly what we were subjected to were copy and paste reports like this:

Staff monitored winter conditions [temperature, snow depths, deer sinking depths, and snow profile characteristics] at 26 individual monitoring stations throughout the state to estimate the impact of winter conditions on deer mortality.

How difficult would it have been to provide that information? If staff monitor winter conditions do they record it? I’m assuming they record it because I was told by Lee Kantar, head deer biologist at MDIFW, that this information is used to come up with a Winter Severity Index. This index is used as part of their calculations to formulate an educated guess as to how many deer died from the bad winter and how many survived.

My point is, if it’s recorded, why can’t it be at least placed on the MDIFW web site where sportsmen can go look at it? I don’t see this as being a difficult thing to do for this and/or all other data collected. Is there something to hide or are we just being “protected” by the enlightened here?

Sportsmen can view this in any fashion they so desire. I’m not so naive that I don’t understand that certain things cost certain money. I am however, savvy enough to know that certain monies, invested the right way can pay big dividends. If MDIFW wants our help as they claim, that begins by helping us.

However, there is more to replenishing Maine’s deer herd than monitoring winter weather stations, doing winter aerial surveys and trying to figure out if coyotes are killing many deer in the deer yards during winter. Maine has four seasons. Do we ignore them?

There are two major issues that I would like to see reported in deer progress after the winter surveys are improved upon. At some point in time, the biologists at MDIFW arrive at a fawn recruitment rate or percentage. This is done by compiling data from several areas, including spring time observations in the field. It’s not complicated this part of it. You look in a field with deer and you count how many does and how many fawns and do some math.

We can talk about predation mortality until the caribou come back but the survival of the Maine deer herd is dependent on the number of fawns that survive to replace the adult deer that die off from various things. Simple math can show that if more adult deer die off than new deer can replace them, eventually you will achieve ZERO.

Also, it is not being passed on to the public that predators’ have great impact on new-born fawns in the spring. Black bears are up and about and hungry. They know, as do the coyotes, bobcats, lynx, etc., where the deer traditionally go to fawn. They kill new born deer. These same predators understand migration routes for when pregnant does leave the deer yards and head back to their stomping grounds. They lie in wait.

Do we ignore this and hope it goes away? Perhaps monitoring this event is more important than reporting on “reports” of depredation problems during winter. Let’s demand that we have an accounting. Let’s see if there is anything we can do as sportsmen to limit or reduce fawn mortality in the spring. Let’s demand an accounting from MDIFW of recruitment and fawn mortality.

Here are questions for readers: Do you know what the current estimated deer population is in Maine? Do you know what the total deer mortality rate is per year? Do you know what the adult male, adult female and yearling mortality rates are each year? Do you know what the fawn recruitment for Maine is? Do you know at what level it needs to be just to sustain a population? Do you know what the mortality rate is for vehicle deaths? Do you know what data MDIFW biologists collect at tagging stations? Do they test for any diseases and if so what? Do they test for age of deer? Do you know what the age structure is for Maine’s deer? Do you know why age structure is vitally important? Why can’t we have all this information made easily available to us?

The second thing is harvest data. I see few legitimate reasons why sportsmen can’t have first count data on deer and bear harvests without waiting 4 – 6 months for that information. Yes, for some of us it’s nice to have the full report and examine harvest data by town, etc. but the overwhelming majority of hunters would like to see preliminary numbers within days of the end of hunting season. Let’s demand it.

I’m sure there are tons more issues sportsmen would like to see addressed. Demand it. Make noise. Don’t let officials off the hook. They told us they were going to do a better job of communicating information to us. I’m not satisfied. If you’re not, demand more. It’s your investment.

Tom Remington

I decided to share this video here because it is extremely relevant to, not only our everyday lives, but the the oft discussed topic of science on this website. After all, science is the embodiment of life and life cannot be fully realized without freedom. Thus, can it not be also said that science cannot be realized with the freedom to explore it?

I have discussed often the unfortunate results and the future dangers we face when we are subjected to statements like those of Al Gore who claim: the science is settled. As is spoken of in this movie, nothing is ever settled or accepted unless it is answered properly. The freedom to explore science can direct us toward answering more questions.

To some, this may appear to be a movie about intelligent design vs. evolution, and you can take that away from this movie if you so chose. I see it as more a revelation, supported by a preponderance of evidence, that the freedom to explore science to see where it will lead us, is being controlled by those not wishing to go there for myriad and disturbing reasons. There are, unfortunately, as you will see in this movie, consequences for the most simplest of actions to question the scientific industry that is working toward suppression.

I encourage all to watch this.

It doesn’t really amount to much to only present a video, done by the Public Broadcasting System, depicting wolves as harmless, loveable creatures that only a handful of people refuse to “understand” and “co-exist” with. The PBS presentation was biased (you need to pay attention to what is said and how things were presented), misleading, and contains several errors. Why I am going to spend the time to do this rattles my brain and really PBS doesn’t even deserve the attention. Regardless, here’s a closer look.

The reporter for PBS, Miles O’Brien, gives us, early on, an example of his biased reporting. This may have been an attempt at a bit of humor, although I am really stretching things here in hopes of giving him the benefit of the doubt.

The video begins with O’Brien introducing us to a rancher, Martin Davis, who can’t seem to locate half of his cows. O’Brien says: “Among ranchers like Martin Davis, the wolf is always guilty until proven, well, soon-to-be-guilty.” Note also in the way that Mr. Davis is portrayed in the video. Do you get the sense that he is being made out to look stupid? Inept?

This is biased and misleading. There are many ranchers who deal with various predators and grazing issues and not all ranchers are “always” pointing a finger at the wolf. I don’t think Mr. O’Brien knows anything of the struggles and countless issues that face ranchers. Dealing with predators such as the wolf is but a thorn in their side, albeit a costly one. The ironic part is that later in his piece, O’Brien spends a fair amount of time with his focus on some ranchers who are trying different methods to combat against livestock losses. Note again here how these ranchers are being depicted.

Rancher Davis makes reference that wolf numbers need to be reduced to help alleviate depredation of livestock. O’Brien, first, gets in a typical description used by wolf advocates for years by saying that wolves are “misunderstood”. He fails to explain just what that means and who is purportedly misunderstanding wolves or why that is so. The intent here is to wrongfully paint anyone who would like to see wolves controlled and properly managed as misunderstanding the wolf. This is a very inaccurate assumption.

While there is a fair amount of misunderstanding of the gray wolf that occurs at all levels of this debate, it seems more which “science” is injected into any wolf debate that stirs the most disagreement. It is this very explanation as to why this PBS television report is a bad piece of journalism. The reporter simply accepts as fact the information told to him and offers very little in the way of opposing views and differing scientific data. Everybody loses when this happens, but I argue that this is the intent of PBS, to mislead.

Perhaps intentional, perhaps not, O’Brien makes the following statement: “gray wolves returned 16 years ago after a 70-year hiatus.” They “returned”? A more accurate description here would have been “introduced”. However, later on Mr. O’Brien does allude to the use of “reintroduction” of the gray wolves to describe the presence of wolves in the Rockies today. Regardless, omitting the proper term is misleading.

He continues: “Starting in the early 1900s, they [wolves] were systematically poisoned, trapped and gunned into extinction in the Lower 48, a good riddance for ranchers, an unconscionable extermination for environmentalists.”

If O’Brien was intending to educate his audience to the truth of historical accounts – bearing in mind he was probably limited in how many minutes he had to present his puff piece – he could have slipped in a few words like; the wolves were poisoned, trapped and gunned with the eager assistance of the United States Government. I’m also confused here as to what message, if there is one, that O’Brien is trying to convey by saying that during the time that wolves were being extirpated, I doubt there existed very many, if any, “environmentalists” who opposed such mass killings. The environmental movement of “true believers” is a recent phenomenon and played no role in early Western settlement. Also inaccurate and again misleading is to point out that killing off all the wolves was only a benefit to ranchers. Mr. O’Brien should open up some history books and learn all the reasons wolves, in addition to other larger predators, were disliked and virtually all citizens wanted them gone.

If Mr. O’Brien, or any other readers, are seriously interested in historic accounts of what was transpiring during this poisoning, trapping and gunning down of wolves, coyotes and grizzlies, I have several articles with links and information from the writings of Charles Gordon Hewitt – here, here, here, and here. Or you can simply find Hewitt’s book, “The Conservation of the Wildlife in Canada“, here. (Don’t be distracted by Canada in the title. He covers both Canada and the U.S.) There are of course countless other documents readily available for research.

Mr. O’Brien then brings in Doug Smith, a controversial member of the Yellowstone Park Service, much involved in the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone and Central Idaho in the mid-1990s. O’Brien asks Smith: “Is this ideal wolf country?”

Here was Smith’s answer: “This is. Some people said before we reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone that this was the best wolf habitat in the world, and had no wolves.”

In addition to this O’Brien then makes the following comments: “The wolves are thriving here. They are, after all, at long last, home. What began with 31 individuals imported from Canada has blossomed into a population of more than 1,700.”

All I will say about the “1,700″ gray wolves invoked here is that this is nothing more than a low-balled guesstimate used to politically appease and mislead the masses. The real truth is nobody knows how many wolves there are because, like most wildlife, models are used because no actual head counts are taken. Dr. David Mech, one of the lead guys with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service leading up to, during and after wolf reintroduction, in an interview for a documentary film “Elk in Peril”, said that there could easily be as many as 3,000 – 4,000 wolves in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.

Perhaps Mr. Smith is correct when he states that at the time of reintroduction, Yellowstone was good wolf habitat. I’m not sure it was the best in the world but we got the point. However, O’Brien conveys to viewers of his piece that “they [wolves] are, after all, at long last, home.” This misleads viewers of accurate history in this event. There have been years of argument and speculation as to whether or not the Canadian wolves brought down from Canada were the best choice for reintroduction.

I did a piece some time ago while researching and examining the historic documents of Teddy Roosevelt’s travels in and around the Northern Rockies in which he describes the wolves/prairie wolves and coyotes he witnessed and at times describes them in detail. He also makes reference to the bigger, more feared wolves north of the Canadian border.

We could spend forever discussing historic accounts, which brings me to a piece written by Dr. Charles E. Kay, “An Alternative Interpretation of the Historical Evidence Relating to the Abundance of Wolves in the Yellowstone Ecosystem”. (I have a copy on my desktop for anyone interested.)

Dr. Kay presents historical documentation that refutes the oft repeated claim that Yellowstone was some “paradise” for wildlife, that wolves, elk, deer, bear, and perhaps even a unicorn (just kidding) freely romped about the wilderness waiting for the destructive hand of mankind to interrupt their nirvana.

Kay examines the historic documents and accounts of 20 different exploration parties between the years of 1835 and 1876 comprising a total of 765 days accounted for in the field. Of that amount of time by that number of people, Kay writes: “no reliable observer reported seeing or killing even a single wolf, and on only three occasions did explorers report hearing wolves howl.”

Dr. Kay reports that a similar observance can be found as it pertains to ungulates, i.e. elk, deer and moose and that bison were a rare sighting.

It may make us all somehow feel better to simply believe the information all too often given that before Europeans arrived, the United States was “pristine” in its nature and landscape. Or we could question this belief, review our recorded history that hasn’t been purposely tainted, and gain a truthful understand of how things were, why and what really happened after that, in order to move forward from a position of fact rather than fiction. But I contend this doesn’t fit the narrative of those protecting wolves nor that of PBS. It’s a shame really.

Once the Yellowstone Park was opened, protected and managed, prey species and habitat probably became quite ripe for the notion of bringing in wolves. In its “natural” state, Yellowstone was not the best wolf habitat in the world.

Of all things, Mr. O’Brien brings in a lawyer to support his story about how wonderful the wolf introduction has gone and the “whoa is me” attempt at painting the Center for Biological Diversity as some helpless little organization trying to help save wolves. Bill Snape is an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

See what Snape says: “Using their political muscle, the ranchers got their members of Congress to put a provision in the federal budget bill that took the wolves off the endangered species list.” In the way this is presented, it sounds as though everything was fine and dandy with wolves, that they needed protection as have been since 1973, when the big bad ranchers used some trumped up “political muscle” to force Congress to allow them to kill all the wolves off again.

My point is, that how difficult would have been for O’Brien and his editors to have done a bit more work and presented at least just enough facts to counter the clear intended misrepresentation of the history of wolves and the statistics to back it up. The history of getting to this point in time for the people of Idaho and Montana, pertaining to gray wolves, is critical to any discussion that brings up the delisting process which he did. This is a huge mistake by O’Brien which detracts from any credibility of this report.

For instance, Mr. O’Brien states: “Since the wolves returned to Yellowstone, they have been linked to more than 4,500 cattle and sheep killings.” Just one more sentence or two here could have gone a long way to explain that 4,500 killings are “linked” to wolves doesn’t mean that’s all they have killed. It has been conservatively estimated that for every 1 livestock kill officially blamed on wolves, 3 go by without such a designation, simply because it can’t be proven by an eyewitness. There is substantially more private property loss than what protectors of predators want people to know about.

But here’s a claim by Mr. Snape that goes completely unchallenged by Mr. O’Brien. This makes it obvious that Mr. O’Brien went to do his story unprepared and failed to substantiate claims made by those he interviewed before presenting it. Snape says: “They want to shoot hundreds of wolves through a private hunting scheme that would decimate the pack structure and really change the dynamics of the wolves’ success.”

In an attempt to help discerning readers understand the text of this interview, I’ll point out, not simply to become nit-picky, that the text becomes confusing as to who Mr. O’Brien is referencing. Before he quotes Snape on the “private hunting scheme”, O’Brien is talking about ranchers and calling them repeatedly “they”. Whether he is confused or has no specific identity to lay his information in the lap of, I’m not sure. He says: “They claim the wolf population is now large enough to sustain hunting.” This coming in the next paragraph after talking about ranchers and referring to them as “they”.

This leads into his discussion about wolf hunts. So, I’m guessing O’Brien shifts “theys” in midstream and “they” become hunters? perhaps?

Assuming so, Snape says “they” (hunters?) want to shoot hundreds of wolves “through a private hunting scheme”. I’ll address the rest in a moment. A private hunting scheme? In O’Brien’s ignorance he is clueless about questioning Snape’s referral to a claimed “private hunting scheme”. There is nothing private about the wolf hunting season. It has been put together lawfully by both the state’s of Idaho and Montana and is open to the public for anyone wishing to buy a hunting license and a wolf tag. If Mr. Snape is making implication that this perceived “political muscle” of the ranching community has created some “private hunting scheme”, he is delusional. His choice of words, left unchallenged by the reporter places hunters and ranchers in Idaho and Montana in the light of being something other than lawful citizens and going against the laws of the land to become wolf vigilantes.

But Snape also says that: “Montana will grant licenses for hunters to kill 220 out of about 600 wolves. Idaho has 1,000 wolves and will allow hunting until the population drops to 150.”

Again, this is extremely misleading. Remember, I’ve already educated you to the fact that there are far more wolves than what is “official”. Snape wants viewers to believe that simply because there is a wolf hunt season, the landscape will be running red with wolf blood. O’Brien also fails in presenting the facts behind wolf introduction and the plan by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove wolves from federal protection once wolf populations reached 300 across three states. He never mentions either that it was Snape’s organization and others that were successful in convincing the courts that at least 5,000 wolves were necessary before they would survive. Is this somehow no longer important evidence?

Nearly two years ago, I spent hours researching and crafting a four-part series called, “To Catch a Wolf“. Utilizing historic accounts from around the world, including the United States, and information contained in the work of Will Graves’ in his book, “Wolves in Russia: Anxiety Through the Ages“, one can read this. Just follow the link provided and learn for yourself the near impossible task of hunting wolves to extinction.

In the early 1900s it became possible only after the government became involved and it became financially motivational to go and kill wolves. Nothing of the sort will ever happen in Montana or Idaho, regardless of the image people like Snape want us to believe. What is hoped to happen is to haze wolves to gain a better understanding that man is also a dangerous predator and to reduce wolf numbers to ease the threats of property losses and public safety concerns.

To listen and view attorney Snape in this video piece one would think the end of the world had arrived. Perhaps his fear is his cash cow will dry up.

The rest of the report is spent making every effort to show that everybody wants to live with wolves and that the wolf is some kind of magical beast that “balances” nature, which science clearly refutes and that which Dr. Valerius Geist refers to as “intellectual garbage”.

While the overwhelming majority of people who watch this piece will go away, once again, thinking that the ranchers and hunters are bad, which is clearly the intent of the piece, efforts to educate remain difficult. To further fortify the indoctrination they have been forced to swallow for decades, organizations like PBS continue to present one-sided, misleading and biased “puff pieces”.

What is never mentioned in this report is the biggest crime of all. This reporter never even hints at the fact that little in this report would be possible if it hadn’t been for the efforts of the sportsmen who have forked over hundreds of billions of dollars over the years to grow and protect wildlife. We are the greatest conservationists on this planet and we are scoffed and demonized and ridiculed.

Had it not been for the effort of these sportsmen, this “world’s greatest” wolf habitat in the Yellowstone ecosystem would never have been possible. And what do we get for it? Pissed on.

PBS has tons of resources at their disposal. Had they used some of them, they could have put together a factual narrative to go with the video clips. Clearly, this was not their intention. I am just one person, working from my office at home, with a computer and a telephone, and I can provide the information this report should have had in it.

It’s all quite a shame.

Tom Remington

Like everything with politics, words get preempted. Even a domestic turkey, while not having enough brains to know to get out of rising water, understands that a politician never answers a question truthfully. But they do like to annex word definitions in order to meet their needs.

This morning I was reading an article I found in Townhall by Debra J. Saunders. In her title she asks if scientists are becoming priests. While I don’t think scientists (the real ones) are becoming priests, I do believe that some forms of science (not the real kind) have become a religion and with any religion you get tons of idiots who want to become priests. Yes, we even have some politicians who are faithful worshipers of their faux science and through their nauseating actions to steal votes and keep their constituency stupid, they become priests of sorts.

Saunders cites statements made by GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman who said, “”I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.” Huntsman is crazy as an advocate for science (the real kind) because, like the majority of Americans, he cares not enough to actually read up on both topics in order to make an honest assessment. Or does he? Remember, he is a politician and went to school to be one. We may never know what he really believes but for his purposes, he preempts “science” and uses it to his political advantage.

I’m not picking specifically on Jon Huntsman. He’s certainly not alone.

When Washington and the Media invoke the word science, they speak of their creation, complete with its own parameters and definition. You see, the real scientific world is too busy being, well, scientists to bother wasting their time pandering to Washington and the Media. This is why it has become necessary for politicians, et al, to sequester the word “science”. They must convince the people of what THEIR “science” is without letting them know the truth. And they’ve done one hell of a good job.

To state, “I’m trusting science”, is a cop out. But that’s what politicians do isn’t it. Few people are even aware of science (the real kind) and so when people like Huntsman or others, say they trust science, what they really mean is, “I think it will get me more votes”.

Remember the statement John McCain made during his campaign to be the next president of the United States in 2008? To paraphrase, he said he wasn’t sure if global warming, as presented by pope Al Gore, was real or not but what harm would it do to do everything we can to reduce carbon dioxide. That’s beyond a cop out and even to the domestic turkey is stupid.

Science (the fake kind) is like ice cream. It has hundreds of different flavors, all made with artificial ingredients in which most consumers don’t know the difference and could care less.

If you follow one rule of thumb it might save you in the future. Everything coming out of Washington and the Media is a lie. You are not allowed the truth, only what they deem you shall have.

Tom Remington

I received an email a few days ago that contained a link to another study. Why is it I am getting to the point of losing interest in even glancing through the latest study? Could it be that they are all mostly lacking in credible science and either agenda-driven directly or indirectly? Or is it simply bought and paid for by someone eager to provide “scientific evidence” to support their agenda, casting their corrupt money on greedy scientists?

The article that contains information about the study can be found at Royal Society Publishing. I’ll just give you the link where you can find the free version of the text of the article. If you so wish, you can navigate from there and find other information.

The study, in which scientists were interested in learning what effects poaching had on the recovery on endangered species, took place in Scandinavia. The study, for whatever it’s worth, claims to show that “cryptic poaching”, (I presume meaning the secret kind of poaching? What other kind is there?)severely hinders recovery of larger predators such as endangered wolves.

Our simulations suggest that without poaching during the past decade, the population would have been almost four times as large in 2009. Such a severe impact of poaching on population recovery may be widespread among large carnivores.

Thank God for “cryptic poaching”!

I could actually care less about this study. It’s just another study. I have little interest in poaching and wasting my time giving the criminals more attention to the matter than any of them deserve. I am however interested in exposing the criminal enterprise behind wolf reintroduction in this country and the actions of the useful idiots who unwittingly perpetuate the crime.

We must first understand one thing before we move on. If you can’t grasp this concept, you’ll struggle with the rest I’m about to share. Scandinavia, like Russia, Germany, Italy and many other parts of the world, have a history of dealing with wolves that far exceeds that of ours in the United States. I am always wondering how much American elitism plays a role in refusing to believe in historical facts from other lands? More than we may know.

The United States has a two-part history of wolves and both eras are short as historical eras go. The most modern era of living with wolves lacks the completion of even one chapter.

Ignorance causes people to state wolf history incorrectly. They achieve their ignorance through a lack of doing any kind of research on this issue. There’s lots of historical documentation of how hunters, trappers, and settlers dealt with wolves. Contrary to the repeated mantra of never having had a wolf attack on humans in the U.S., history is loaded with examples. No, really! Go look……if you dare.

Americans fail miserably at learning and retaining history. Much of that comes from deliberate cover-ups in order to more easily promote agendas. And we also blunder wretchedly in learning from our foreign friends and neighbors who have dealt with wolves far longer than this country.

The article I linked to above states that if “cryptic poaching” didn’t exist, the number of wolves in the Scandinavian Region would have been 4 times higher in 2009. I’m sure most citizens in Scandinavia also thank God for poachers.

But instead of focusing on how poaching is bad and all the more wolves we all could be miserable with, why not examine the reason why people poach large carnivore predators?

We learned from Will Graves in his book, “Wolves in Russia: Anxiety Through the Ages“, that the Russian people didn’t poach. Instead, they had all their rights to possess weapons that could have easily protected themselves taken away from them. If given the means, they would have killed as many wolves as would have been necessary to live in peace and save their properties.

Years ago, the same as here in the United States, there wasn’t the bureaucratic nightmare to deal with simply to protect yourself and your property. In the U.S. we had guns, we had traps and trappers, baits and poison and a government that paid to kill the nasty predators. Today the same government goes out of their way to protect the wolves at the expense of all the things humans fought to protect. And this is progress? The same anger toward these wolves still exists today as it did 70 or so years ago. But today, those wolves are protected by bureaucratic red taps and lawsuits.

The study referenced above says that poaching of predators such as wolves, “are particularly vulnerable to effects of poaching” and that wolves, “are killed because of conflicts with human interests, such as competition for game, depredation of livestock and threats to human safety”.

This is exactly true and when you have a corrupt government whose aim is to promote the very agenda that infuriates humans, why wouldn’t they shoot, shovel and shut up?

In an email exchange, Will Graves writes: “I’ve hunted in both Sweden and Norway, and when honest hunters become “fed up” with all the red tape etc about controlling wolf numbers, even honest men will sometimes [use] the sss approach.”

We know that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) failed unbelievable with their wolf reintroduction criminal enterprise. The Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the reintroduction of wolves was a sham. When you examine the EIS, many things come to light. The USFWS states that, “The presence or absence of wolves will influence perceptions of people about the Yellowstone and central Idaho areas”. And yet, the USFWS essentially ignored all written comments made by organizations and individuals who claimed introducing wolves would anger, not only the hunters, but livestock owners and citizens in general. All USFWS attempted to do was drum up some distorted and poorly examined figures about how much money a wolf in everyone’s backyard would bring the area – more than enough to pay for the introduction.

In short, the USFWS forsook the American people and went ahead with their plan anyway while failing to take seriously things such as social acceptance, the local economies and dangerous diseases. Now it is getting time to pay the fiddler. Americans being subjected to the undesired affects of gray wolves are getting angry. As Will Graves says, they’ll become “fed up” and take matters into their own hands, i.e. SSS.

Rational thinking would lead a person to ask why would the USFWS and the wolf supporters jeopardize their efforts by insisting that the people get so “fed up” they resort to “cryptic poaching”? Beyond anything that might appear obvious, isn’t the intent of the Government, particularly this administration, to incite Americans to anger so that they will do things outside of the usual comfort zones? Somehow, this justifies predator protection?

Tom Remington