On to Other Important Issues

It’s Election Day and you’re probably on pins and needles waiting to find out which lucky candidate will be the next President of the United States. But I want to talk about something more important.

I don’t have anything in particular in mind. It could be the weather (or more specifically, how the weather is changing because of global warming). Or, it could be the rhino poaching problem in Africa, the dolphin slaughter going on right now in Japan or the perilously low numbers of big cats left on the planet. Or how, for some people, attitudes towards wolves haven’t changed since the barbarically backwards days of dark ages past.

The point is, no matter how this hyped-up human election turns out, there are other important issues going on at the same time that aren’t getting the media attention they deserve.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

I Call Horse Pucky on That!

As I believe I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the mainstream media is often full of shit—especially when reporting on animal issues. It’s not necessarily that they knowingly or willingly distort the truth, just that they keep re-hashing the same old bovine excrement that they pick up off the AP or some other newswire, without first checking out the facts for themselves.

For example, I can’t count how many times I’ve seen the following statement in papers over the past few days: “Washington Fish and Wildlife officers confirmed on Friday that two more cattle had been killed by Wedge Pack wolves in northern Stevens County.” If I were of a mind to trust the news—or Washington’s Fish and Wildlife officers for that matter—I might think there’s a reason the game department is resuming their lethal “removal” (read: sniping and trapping) of four more pack members.

But a little digging revealed these interesting details: Of the two carcasses found on Diamond M-owned land this Wednesday, one was intact, the other eaten. “We marked ‘confirmed’ on both individuals,” said the agency’s wolf policy coordinator Steve Pozzanghera this morning, “recognizing that there will be some question about confirming on an entirely consumed carcass.”

Damn right there’s “some question,” in fact there’s practically no way of knowing how a calf was killed after it’s been “entirely consumed” by hungry carnivores and/or scavengers!!!  Pozzanghera said at the end of the day, WDFW considered it a kill rather than a calf that had died of other causes and then was subsequently fed on by wolves…

I’m sorry, but if that’s how these “wildlife officers” go about determining whether an animal has been killed by wolves or not, I don’t have any faith in their decision that any calves or cows were ever killed by the Wedge pack. It all seems awfully coincidental to me that an outspoken wolf hater would suddenly start having problems with wolf depredation. It’s a little too reminiscent of when Washington’s first confirmed wolf pack, the Lookout pack, started hanging around convicted poacher Bill White’s ranch—just a mile out of the town of Twisp—of all places. I lived fourteen miles from the White’s place—fourteen miles further up the Twisp River, in a remote setting surrounded by the Lake Chelan Sawtooth Wilderness Area—and I never had a problem with wolves.

After a lengthy and costly police investigation (which resulted only in a measly slap on the wrist for the wolf poachers), it was determined that Bill White and his son set out deer carcasses as bait to attract wolves to the traps they had set for them. As ranchers, White claimed not to want wolves around, yet he lured them onto his property with bait.

How do we know that the folks at the Diamond M ranch aren’t luring in wolves with carcasses of calves who have died of one of the many other causes that cows naturally die from? We don’t. Unfortunately, we can’t count on our Wildlife officers to reveal the truth either. And don’t bother checking the local media; they’re too busy recycling horse pucky to get to the bottom of it.

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson

 

Leave Wolves the Hell Alone

Northeastern Washington cattle rancher Len McIrvin has made it clear: he really hates wolves—especially members of the local Wedge pack. Though the rancher way of life depends on government handouts and write-offs, he’s been unwilling to accept compensation for the cows he claims to have lost to wolves, fearing it would legitimize protection of the natural predators.

It may not be fair to compare him and his son to poachers Bill White and son, who illegally killed most of the Lookout Pack (Washington’s first confirmed wolf pack to return home from Canada), since the McIrvins appear to operate above board by deferring to the state game department to do the dirty work for them. But they are all cut of the same cloth—cattle ranchers who think wolves serve no Earthly purpose and should be eliminated (once again).

It’s no wonder some ranchers feel they can get away with murder, so to speak. They’ve gotten used to having everything handed to them, ever since the government paid for the cavalry to wage war with the Indians and bankrolled bounties and poisoning campaigns against wolves to make room for their private ranches—and ensure “Manifest Destiny” (the doctrine or belief prevalent in the 19th century that the United States had the God-given right to expand into and possess the whole of the North American continent). But Western ranchers aren’t satisfied with keeping cows on their vast tracts of private land (possibly given to their ancestors free of charge back in the homesteading era); they want the Feds to throw in a few thousand acres of cleared national forest land so they can expand their claim out into the neighboring wildlife habitat.

The US Forest Service contends that grazing fees bring in funds as part of their “Multiple Use” policy, but ranchers contribute only about $1.35 per “Animal Unit Month” (a detached, depersonalizing term for a cow and calf pair feeding for four weeks on public forests). According to a 2005 Government Accounting Office report, that paltry one dollar and thirty-five cent fee covers only a tiny fraction of the grazing program’s administrative costs, making this in essence just another a subsidy program in disguise.

Still, McIrvin feels entitled to prevail upon his buddies in the game department and local politicians to do whatever they can to make the entire Wedge pack disappear. He recently told the Capital Press that the only compensation he’s interested in is a dead wolf for every dead calf, copping a Bill White-like attitude: “This isn’t a wolf problem, we always could take care of our own problems,” adding that the only acceptable option is trapping and poison. Now he’s at it again, making extreme statements in any paper that’ll print them. Yesterday he showed his hand by making this fanatical comment to the Seattle Times: “Wolves have never been compatible with raising livestock.”

Okay, so you want to be an extremist, eh, rancher? (I’m doing the Clint Eastwood talking to a chair bit now…) Go ahead, punk, make my day. Two can play at that game; I’ll show you extreme. Hows about you damned cattle barons gettin’ your cows off my national forest and leavin’ my wolves the Hell alone. The wolves were here first and your poor cows don’t want to be livin’ out on some steep, brushy clearcut anyway. In fact, maybe it’s time you got outta cattle-ranchin’ altogether and started growin’ some healthy, organic crops insteada turnin’ your introduced livestock out into the woods to tempt the wolves and compete with the native deer, elk and moose who belong there.

Text and Wildlife Photography © Jim Robertson