In 2014 four out of every five wolves inhabiting their historic evolutionary homeland in the northern Rockies did not have a negative encounter with a domestic non-native cow or sheep. And of those that did, the vast, vast majority of encounters involved only a couple of predation incidents per animal, said Mike Jimenez, who oversees wolf management for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Meanwhile, thousands upon thousands of cattle and sheep perished from inclement weather, disease and misadventure having nothing to do with predators, such as lightning, drowning, falling off cliffs or being struck by vehicles. A year ago in South Dakota, 20,000 cows died in a freakish early-autumn snowstorm, along with 1,200 sheep and 300 horses. The news of those losses was buried in the pages of most newspapers, yet today if just a single calf or lamb dies due to wolf predation it is likely to make the front page of local rural rags. In his recent, excellent book “Wolfer,” Carter Niemeyer chronicles the warped bias against Canis lupus. Niemeyer worked for both the Fish and Wildlife Service and the federal agency known as Wildlife Services, and he killed more wolves than anyone else in modern history. For the majority of ranchers in the northern Rockies, wolves are a nonissue, he says. The same can be said of hunters who overwhelmingly enjoy high harvest success rates. In most locales there are far more elk in abundance and distribution across Wyoming, Montana and Idaho than there were a generation ago.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 00:26:16 +0000
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