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Aldo Leopold believed wolves were a good thing for the country. Maybe, where humans are unable or unwilling to predate the female deer, he was right. Maybe hunters interested in the quality of their deer and elk herds should not bregrudge the wolf a share.
Paul, your opinion is one worthy of printing because it represents the opinion of many who do not have to live with wolves. First, ahh...Aldo Leupold {January 11, 1887 – April 21, 1948} did not have personal experience with the death struggle with wolves, he spoke from fantasy ignorance due to the fact that wolves were nearly {but not totally...there were always some here} wiped out of the Lower 48 States out in the early years of his life. He benefited by their extirpation and in fable-like, pipe-dream, mysticism yearned for their return, NOT HAVING PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF THEIR DEPREDATIONS. He did not understand his parent's and grandparent's generation's dread and hate of wolves in the same way the Generation Gap has impacted all people. Leupold lived during a time of increasing game populations...populations increasing as a direct result of the previous wolf extirpation efforts of the prior generations!
As for the rest of what you say, indeed, almost verbatim, your opinion is lockstep with that of millions of Americans who do not have to live with them. As Ed Bangs, the Northern Rockies Wolf Coordinator for the USF&WS {the man that ran the introduction program and dumped wolves on us} says about wolves; "Everyone loves wolves...unless you have to live with them".
As for game management, wolves are virtually un-manageable by anything approaching "fair chase" methods. Federal Judge Donald Malloy referenced this fact in his Fall statement. Ungulates are far more manageable. Regardless, wolves are not and never have been in danger of being extinct in North America. Alaska and Canada have and have had large populations of approximately 40,000 to 60,000. This fact goes unmentioned frequently in debates on the subject of wolves in the Lower 48. Indeed, the Canadians aren't wildly in love with them either, but there are larger areas of both Alaska and Canada that are unpopulated by humans where wolves roam and cause less threat to culture and property and game species utilized by people. But the Canucks are the Canucks, and not the US, so if they in their country want them extirpated, that is fine by me. THEY have to live with them so I will not impose my feelings on them. It is their choice.
In effect, the only way to control wolf numbers so they do not destroy game species viability here is to declare full war on them. Given the limited legal options all efforts to reduce their numbers will still not eliminate them. We need legalized expanded methods of take here, and we will be addressing that fact soon. Stay tuned.
Though wolves may be symbolic bad guys in the Bible, threatening the Good Shepherd's flock, I don't recall a direction to anihilate them all. If God made all the critters he would have had a couple on the Ark - so he must see some place for them, too.
Well, one of the blessings of obedience to God's commands in the Bible was to be able to sleep safely in the forest at night. Here we now do not even let our kids play outside unattended anymore due to wolves prowling around homes and play areas. If you care to, do a word search/study of predators, wolves, "wild animals", etc in the Scripture and I think you might see a different picture than you are identifying here. The simple reason is common sense, really; those cultures which are relatively poor and rely on natural resource economies to survive, take a vastly different view of wolves {and other large predators for that matter} than those who live wealthy, distant and protected in the cities do.
Paul, for example, if you had to modify at great expense and effort your stock raising activities, and sleep with one eye open continuously as we do here, you would understand. The threat is not a joke. It is not Little Red Riding Hood. It is there destroying {without compensation} both the property and culture we fought so hard to gain. Wolves cost hundreds of millions of dollars. How can we justify such staggering cost?? {...and by the way, where do you suppose the notion of Li'l Red came from? How about millenia of cumulative human experience of the depredations caused by wolves!}
Keep the wolves under control with a bit of hunting, sure, but I don't see why we should wipe them off the map just because they are a danger to our deer, cattle or even children. If that were justifiable, we would have to applaud the extermination of tigers, lion and leopards, too. I would love to be able to hunt all of those species but I'd hate to see a world without them.
"A bit of hunting"? This is the best line of all. Seriously, I'm glad you wrote here because you speak for many who have utterly no idea what it takes to find and kill wolves in country such as ours.
Now, for some Wolf Math. Please follow me;
Wolves kill for sustenance {estimates vary} between 16 to 30 ungulates per year per wolf. Add sport killing and the number rises to something like 36. Let's for the sake of discussion and my poor math skills use 20.
10 human hunters in our country will have something like a 25% success rate on elk, and slightly higher, about 35% success rate on deer per year. So, for discussion, let's call it 33% for both and say they will kill 6 ungulates per year {high estimate since not all elk hunters hunt deer, etc.} So we are being very generous when we say that:
10 North Idaho Hunters Kill 6 Ungulates per year.
Wolves?
10 wolves will kill 200, and THAT is being conservative.
In TEN YEARS???
10 HUMAN HUNTERS; 60 UNGULATES.
10 WOLVES; 2,000.
AND IN OUR AREAS WE DO NOT HAVE 2,000 TO GIVE UP!!!
The numbers of wolves in the State?
Estimates vary but adding 28% to last year's admittedly low figure of 846 and subtracting the hunting success, that is about 922, for a total of 18,457 ungulates killed by wolves . And THAT is using the known low figure of 800 to start. More likely we had as many as 1,500 to start with some biologists estimating as high as 2,000. If it was even 1,200, you see, we are looking at the loss of 27,520 ungulates killed by wolves .
No, our ecosystem cannot sustain these annual losses. Yes, elk are finished as a resource driving indistry in Idaho unless an ELK RECOVERY plan that includes serious wolf reductions is established.
This is precicely why in areas of low carrying capacity {such as here} wolves are simply not compatible with humans {and I've only begun to discuss the hunting issue...disease, stock depredation, threats to children all are other issues yet...} and it explains exactly why wolves have decimated ungulate herds in vast areas of Idaho since the dumping of these animals here in the mid-90's.
We know our elk are finished. We are now fighting for our economic lives as we lose woods working immigrants, small business people, professionals and others who moved in to our areas for hunting opportunity and now go elsewhere.
When I say that the existence of wolves in our County is not compatible with human life I am not joking. I am dead serious and only restating the same facts that motivated our ancestors to rid the State of them 100 years ago. They knew what we are relearning; Wolves are a scourge, a disease, a catastrophe for the West.
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Re: Hunting Wolves