I want to make a HUGE point here than needs to be made.....and I really do not care if government biologists, or those in the mass media agree with it or not. The news about OR 7s arrival and now the fact that there are pups should not be that big a deal. It truly should not. We have had wolves here all this time in Southern Oregon. They have been out there. I have seen them, dozens of others have seen them. There likely are many others who have seen them that I am unaware of. Still more have heard them howling or found their tracks. All OR 7 did was to make the presence of wolves here official. Thats it. For those of you so deeply fearful of what wolves will do to our big game herds, did you have this same level of fear last year? Two years ago? Ten years ago? Or, did you just naively believe that we had no wolves here just because the government said so and also because you had not seen them, heard them, or found their tracks? For those of you so severely romanticizing the wolves, you also need to come to reality. While I love that the PR for the wolves has significantly changed the perception away from the image of the big bad wolf, (which was not ever justified any way), we have taken this animal into a position of near sainthood. That is also a completely irrational place for them to be. This is not a gentle loving animal that needs to be left alone. The wolf is as ruthless a killer as has been portrayed by its opponents. Have you ever seen an unedited wolf kill? The process is horrific. Wolves many times are eating their victims alive. A wolf kill is a gruesome thing to behold. This animal can pose a threat to you under the right circumstances and it will think nothing of slaughtering your pet right in front of you. It is an animal fully capable of destroying a ranchers or farmers animals and doing serious financial harm to them. This is an animal that does need to be carefully, carefully controlled. Because no matter how bad the environmentalists want it to happen, you are NEVER going to take farmers and ranchers and their livestock off the land ever again. At the same time, hunters and those in agriculture have got to learn that we will never again see support for eliminating wolves. That will not happen either. For the record, I support this animal. It does have a place here. I am thrilled that we do have....and always have had wolves here in Southern Oregon and Northern California. It helps make our part of the world even more special and unique. OR 7s arrival and the establishment of his pack changes nothing at all. But what must change is the ability to properly manage them so that we continue to have no major problems from wolves being here. Problem wolves killing livestock and or posing a threat MUST be removed. They must be. Ranchers and farmers must be given the ability to kill wolves posing a direct threat to livestock on their own property. I am not talking about protecting animals that are free ranging on public lands. I am talking about animals that are on private property. It borders on the criminal that if a rancher sees a wolf attacking his livestock that he cannot do a thing to stop it legally. If it is any other predator they can. This must change. At the same time, wolves doing nothing at all to anybody or anything on public lands should not be killed just because. If the number of wolves here should ever reach a point where their numbers are impacting the ecosystem in a negative way, then there is nothing at all wrong with doing hunting as a means to control the overall numbers of them. Well regulated hunting of them will provide the balance point we need to keep all things in balance, especially the human factors. I may be blissfully naive myself in some way for believing that we can have it all. But, to this point here in Southern Oregon and Northern California we have managed to have just that. The only thing that has changed now is the deniability factor. If you were able to deny that we have wolves here before, you certainly cannot now. Good, bad, whatever the consequences of that will be remain to be seen. But, going forward in this new reality, we must find the happy medium here that has eluded Idaho, Wyoming / Yellowstone, and Montana. We must. We owe it to ourselves, and we also owe it to the wolves.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 13:18:13 +0000
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