Wolves as Endangered Species

Timber Loftis · 10-18-2002, 01:57 PM

I'm posting this here as a new topic, because it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the sniper post it was originally posted on.

But, to quote the discussion so far:

quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Sir Taliesin:

quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Neb:
You hunt wolves? Why? They're peaceful and beautiful creatures
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not if your a farmer, or cattle/sheep rancher! They find penned up livestock easy pickings. I would assume Canada has a season on wolf hunting. I think the State of Alaska has one or if they don't then the State hunts them to keep the population down. Much like the African countries thin out their Elephant herds.

JEEZ! We got WAY with this!!!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd rather let a couple of wolves devour a few sheep/cows than shoot them. Even if the livestock were my livelihood. Wolves are in my opinion so intelligent and beautiful that I'd be tempted to put a ban on killing them if I was in power, unless of course their numbers were threatening the populations of other creatures dramatically.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
See
http://www.nywolf.org/pdfs/wolfrestore.pdf

This article addresses wolf restoration projects in the USA, not just in the Adirondaks as the title suggests. It also addresses the treatment of the wolf under the Endangered Species Act.

Sir Krustin, our intrepid wolf-hunter, is from Canada. I think there it is legal to hunt wolves. In fact, this has created an issue regarding endangered wolves whose habitat is along the Maine/Canada border because they are protected in one spot of their habitat but not in another. Too bad we can't teach the wolves how to see political boundary lines in the snowy terrain.

In the USA, AFAIK, wolves are protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and "endangered" ("threatened" is the lesser protection classification of the ESA's 2 types of protections). As a listed species, it is illegal to "take" wolves, which the courts have interpreted to include the "taking" of habitat (i.e. cutting down their forest to build your home on your property).

Many landowners think having an endangered species on their property is great. It automatically makes the land protected from development. Some landowners However often are NOT happy to find there is an endangered species, as the now cannot develop their land. This leads to a practice that we refer to in environmental law as "Shoot, shovel, and Shut Up."

If you do hunt wolves in the USA, please be wise and keep your mouth shut about it. If you do it elsewhere, IMHO, you are killing a noble creature whose entire species is threatened and, again IMHO, deserves to live more than you or I.

Redblueflare · 10-18-2002, 02:03 PM

Yes that thread was getting way off topic wasn't it? And after repeated protests too... [img]tongue.gif[/img] Anyhow wolves are great. They are intelligent as they take down much larger creatures in packs, they have this noble look about them, and they're howling sounds damn cool! [img]smile.gif[/img] So Neb if your cattle were being slaughtered by a pack of wolves you wouldn't do anything about it? Not even *attempt* to just scare em off? [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img]

Neb · 10-18-2002, 02:07 PM

Possibly scare them off, but I would NOT kill any of them.

Timber Loftis · 10-18-2002, 02:19 PM

I'm pulling this quote by Ronn_Bman from the other thread too:
--------------------------------
They wouldn't devour a "few" caged animals, they would devour them all. This would threaten the population of the caged animals "dramatically"...
---------------------------------

All I'll say is that ultimately we are shooting ourselves in the foot when we kill predator populations, as it disrupts the ecosystem in undeniable ways. Wolf populations are a fraction of a fraction of what they once were. Search online - it won't take you more than 5 minutes to find gruesome pictures of the genocide inflicted on these animals at "wolf hunts" all over the continent of North America. There's nothing like seeing a pile of wolf carcasses hundreds deep. We can put up with the few that are still around.

An undeniable assumption of the ESA: there is no single more valuable resource than that of a species-being. Once you extinct a creature, you lose all genetic information and related benefits it had. For instance, deforestation was pretty rampant and hectic in Madagascar over the past 20 years. After serendipidously finding a certain species of flower indigenous only to Madagascar, litterally *minutes* before it became extinct, scientists determined it had the "formula" for a plant derivative medicine that has become one of the few worthwhile treatments for blood cancer, such as Lupus (which my Aunt died of, BTW).

After this discovery, the USA sent *teams* of scientists to race ahead of the bulldozers and catalogue new species. Luckily, the flower at issue has everything in its genetic code (we have samples of the flower) to allow for the production of the medicine. However, that is not always the case, and sometimes you need the actual species itself present.

Species preservation is at the same time the most selfish, most compassionate, and wisest thing we humans can be bothered to do.

Redblueflare · 10-18-2002, 02:26 PM

This remind me of the hunters paradise. Hunters kill off all the wolves in a forest, thinking that the deer population would rise dramatically. Yeah it dad, and unfortunately those *genuises*

didnt' know about something called overpopulation. Pretty soon there were much less deer than there were to begin with. So predators like wolves are needed!

Good for you Neb. I was wondering how you could be so heartless to your *poor* sheep. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Ronn_Bman · 10-18-2002, 02:29 PM

I wasn't advocating the destruction of the species

While all animals, even non-favorites like rats and snakes, hold an important part of the balance of nature, I was merely pointing out that you can't allow them to eat livestock...lol!

Ronn_Bman · 10-18-2002, 02:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Timber Loftis:

If you do hunt wolves in the USA, please be wise and keep your mouth shut about it. If you do it elsewhere, IMHO, you are killing a noble creature whose entire species is threatened and, again IMHO, deserves to live more than you or I.

Exactly why would a wolf deserve life more than any other creature?

Nachtrafe · 10-18-2002, 02:54 PM

CUT/PASTING MY MINI- [img]graemlins/rant.gif[/img] FROM THE SNIPER THREAD

Quote:

Originally posted by Nachtrafe:

quote:
Originally posted by Neb:

quote:
Originally posted by Sir Taliesin:

quote:
Originally posted by Neb:
You hunt wolves? Why? They're peaceful and beautiful creatures

Not if your a farmer, or cattle/sheep rancher! They find penned up livestock easy pickings. I would assume Canada has a season on wolf hunting. I think the State of Alaska has one or if they don't then the State hunts them to keep the population down. Much like the African countries thin out their Elephant herds.

JEEZ! We got WAY [img]graemlins/offtopic.gif[/img] with this!!![/QUOTE]I'd rather let a couple of wolves devour a few sheep/cows than shoot them. Even if the livestock were my livelihood. Wolves are in my opinion so intelligent and beautiful that I'd be tempted to put a ban on killing them if I was in power, unless of course their numbers were threatening the populations of other creatures dramatically.[/QUOTE]OK...Going WAY [img]graemlins/offtopic.gif[/img]

[img]graemlins/rant.gif[/img]
Wolves are NOT "intelligent and beautiful" animals. They are savage pack predators that are quite willing and able to kill an entire herd of sheep, cows, horses, chickens, pigs, or just about any other form of domestic livestock they can find convienently penned up. And they're not adverse to taking an unattended human infant/toddler or attacking a lone adult in a lean season. A good friend of mine and his roommate were rock climbing in rural Idaho a few years ago and they were attacked by half a dozen of your "intelligent and beautiful" predators. My friend almost died! Fortunately they were both carrying pistols and my friend's roommate managed to make it to the top of the rock formation before my friend was killed. He shot and killed one wolf and together they managed to wound and drive off the others. They had to be air-lifted out because my friend's leg was so badly savaged. And no, they weren't near a den, or 'encroaching on the wolves habitat', they were climbing a sheer rock face and when my friend got to the top and was resting he was jumped from behind.

So you'll have to forgive me if I feel no sympathy for the "intelligent and beautiful" wolf.
[img]graemlins/rant.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]

Nachtrafe · 10-18-2002, 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Timber Loftis:
If you do hunt wolves in the USA, please be wise and keep your mouth shut about it. If you do it elsewhere, IMHO, you are killing a noble creature whose entire species is threatened and, again IMHO, deserves to live more than you or I.

HUH?!?!?!?!?

Are you serious? You're saying that some snarling, drooling four-legged killing maching deserves to live more than you do? Dude...if you want to nobly sacrifice your life for some damn wolf, more power to ya...Me, I think you're seriously off your rocker with this one.

Thoran · 10-18-2002, 03:33 PM

We've got some extreme positions on this issue so far... I think this is going to be an interesting "debate" [img]smile.gif[/img] .

Wolves are indeed Intelligent creatures, but they live by rules that we in our comfortable suburban lives have all but forgotten. Natural law is very often brutal and ugly, but it is also logical. The apparently pointless destruction of livestock (apparently illogical behavior to kill so much that there's no hope of ever eating it all) might be a misfiring of some natural behavior. In the wild the only time a wolf (or dingo... which do the same thing) would get the opportunity to kill LOTS of something at once would be in a severe overpopulation situation, in which case the wolf behavior would be akin to increasing the hunting limit to try to bring a population down to safe levels (just a theory on my part there).

I think a lot of our love for wolves comes from the fact that dogs have been our companions for an amazingly long time, and both humans and canines have benefited greatly from the association (except for the abuse of the breeds by that disgrace of an organization called the American Kennel Club... but I'll stay off that high horse for now). I think however that we need to temper our desire to protect the animal with the need to control them. In areas where the wolf population is healthy, efforts to limit their impact are not an evil thing to contemplate. I'd prefer to see catch and relocate programs as opposed to destruction, but many wolves simply don't allow themselves to be relocated, returning time and again to their origonal range (an amazing feat). In those cases more drastic actions need to be taken... especially if the wolves in question have shown a predisposition to approach inhabited land. These are animals who usually do poorly in captivity, so that's not usually an option. I don't think ranchers should be able to shoot them out of hand... but there needs to be methods for dealing with wolves that get too comfortable around humans and domestic livestock.

I've got pet rats, and had a pet snake once... the rats are great pets, affectionate and intelligent... non-favorite indeed. [img]smile.gif[/img] (the snake... well he just ate and slept... snakes don't make great pets even though I think they're beautiful animals)

[ 10-18-2002, 03:37 PM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

10-18-2002, 01:57 PM	#1
Timber Loftis 40th Level Warrior Join Date: July 11, 2002 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 11,916	I'm posting this here as a new topic, because it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the sniper post it was originally posted on. But, to quote the discussion so far: quote: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Sir Taliesin: quote: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Neb: You hunt wolves? Why? They're peaceful and beautiful creatures ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not if your a farmer, or cattle/sheep rancher! They find penned up livestock easy pickings. I would assume Canada has a season on wolf hunting. I think the State of Alaska has one or if they don't then the State hunts them to keep the population down. Much like the African countries thin out their Elephant herds. JEEZ! We got WAY with this!!! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd rather let a couple of wolves devour a few sheep/cows than shoot them. Even if the livestock were my livelihood. Wolves are in my opinion so intelligent and beautiful that I'd be tempted to put a ban on killing them if I was in power, unless of course their numbers were threatening the populations of other creatures dramatically. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- See http://www.nywolf.org/pdfs/wolfrestore.pdf This article addresses wolf restoration projects in the USA, not just in the Adirondaks as the title suggests. It also addresses the treatment of the wolf under the Endangered Species Act. Sir Krustin, our intrepid wolf-hunter, is from Canada. I think there it is legal to hunt wolves. In fact, this has created an issue regarding endangered wolves whose habitat is along the Maine/Canada border because they are protected in one spot of their habitat but not in another. Too bad we can't teach the wolves how to see political boundary lines in the snowy terrain. In the USA, AFAIK, wolves are protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and "endangered" ("threatened" is the lesser protection classification of the ESA's 2 types of protections). As a listed species, it is illegal to "take" wolves, which the courts have interpreted to include the "taking" of habitat (i.e. cutting down their forest to build your home on your property). Many landowners think having an endangered species on their property is great. It automatically makes the land protected from development. Some landowners However often are NOT happy to find there is an endangered species, as the now cannot develop their land. This leads to a practice that we refer to in environmental law as "Shoot, shovel, and Shut Up." If you do hunt wolves in the USA, please be wise and keep your mouth shut about it. If you do it elsewhere, IMHO, you are killing a noble creature whose entire species is threatened and, again IMHO, deserves to live more than you or I. __________________

10-18-2002, 02:03 PM	#2
Redblueflare Galvatron Join Date: May 9, 2001 Location: The backwoods in Georgia sigh Age: 39 Posts: 2,151	Yes that thread was getting way off topic wasn't it? And after repeated protests too... [img]tongue.gif[/img] Anyhow wolves are great. They are intelligent as they take down much larger creatures in packs, they have this noble look about them, and they're howling sounds damn cool! [img]smile.gif[/img] So Neb if your cattle were being slaughtered by a pack of wolves you wouldn't do anything about it? Not even attempt to just scare em off? [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img] __________________ <br /><br />\"If you ever need me just whistle, and i\'ll come running. I promise. <img border=\"0\" title=\"\" alt=\"[Smile]\" src=\"smile.gif\" /> <br />Kupo, Kupo! A man can\'t get a sword if he can\'t dance! <img border=\"0\" title=\"\" alt=\"[Big Grin]\" src=\"biggrin.gif\" />

10-18-2002, 02:19 PM	#4
Timber Loftis 40th Level Warrior Join Date: July 11, 2002 Location: Chicago, IL Posts: 11,916	I'm pulling this quote by Ronn_Bman from the other thread too: -------------------------------- They wouldn't devour a "few" caged animals, they would devour them all. This would threaten the population of the caged animals "dramatically"... --------------------------------- All I'll say is that ultimately we are shooting ourselves in the foot when we kill predator populations, as it disrupts the ecosystem in undeniable ways. Wolf populations are a fraction of a fraction of what they once were. Search online - it won't take you more than 5 minutes to find gruesome pictures of the genocide inflicted on these animals at "wolf hunts" all over the continent of North America. There's nothing like seeing a pile of wolf carcasses hundreds deep. We can put up with the few that are still around. An undeniable assumption of the ESA: there is no single more valuable resource than that of a species-being. Once you extinct a creature, you lose all genetic information and related benefits it had. For instance, deforestation was pretty rampant and hectic in Madagascar over the past 20 years. After serendipidously finding a certain species of flower indigenous only to Madagascar, litterally minutes before it became extinct, scientists determined it had the "formula" for a plant derivative medicine that has become one of the few worthwhile treatments for blood cancer, such as Lupus (which my Aunt died of, BTW). After this discovery, the USA sent teams of scientists to race ahead of the bulldozers and catalogue new species. Luckily, the flower at issue has everything in its genetic code (we have samples of the flower) to allow for the production of the medicine. However, that is not always the case, and sometimes you need the actual species itself present. Species preservation is at the same time the most selfish, most compassionate, and wisest thing we humans can be bothered to do. __________________

10-18-2002, 02:26 PM	#5
Redblueflare Galvatron Join Date: May 9, 2001 Location: The backwoods in Georgia sigh Age: 39 Posts: 2,151	This remind me of the hunters paradise. Hunters kill off all the wolves in a forest, thinking that the deer population would rise dramatically. Yeah it dad, and unfortunately those genuises didnt' know about something called overpopulation. Pretty soon there were much less deer than there were to begin with. So predators like wolves are needed! Good for you Neb. I was wondering how you could be so heartless to your poor sheep. [img]smile.gif[/img] __________________ <br /><br />\"If you ever need me just whistle, and i\'ll come running. I promise. <img border=\"0\" title=\"\" alt=\"[Smile]\" src=\"smile.gif\" /> <br />Kupo, Kupo! A man can\'t get a sword if he can\'t dance! <img border=\"0\" title=\"\" alt=\"[Big Grin]\" src=\"biggrin.gif\" />

10-18-2002, 02:29 PM	#6
Ronn_Bman Zartan Join Date: March 11, 2001 Location: North Carolina USA Age: 57 Posts: 5,177	I wasn't advocating the destruction of the species While all animals, even non-favorites like rats and snakes, hold an important part of the balance of nature, I was merely pointing out that you can't allow them to eat livestock...lol! __________________ [img]\"http://home.carolina.rr.com/orthanc/pics/Spinning%20Hammer%20Sig%20Pic.gif\" alt=\" - \" />

10-18-2002, 02:07 PM	#3
Neb Account deleted by Request Join Date: May 17, 2001 Location: . Age: 38 Posts: 8,802	Possibly scare them off, but I would NOT kill any of them.

10-18-2002, 03:33 PM	#10
Thoran Galvatron Join Date: January 10, 2002 Location: Upstate NY Age: 56 Posts: 2,109	We've got some extreme positions on this issue so far... I think this is going to be an interesting "debate" [img]smile.gif[/img] . Wolves are indeed Intelligent creatures, but they live by rules that we in our comfortable suburban lives have all but forgotten. Natural law is very often brutal and ugly, but it is also logical. The apparently pointless destruction of livestock (apparently illogical behavior to kill so much that there's no hope of ever eating it all) might be a misfiring of some natural behavior. In the wild the only time a wolf (or dingo... which do the same thing) would get the opportunity to kill LOTS of something at once would be in a severe overpopulation situation, in which case the wolf behavior would be akin to increasing the hunting limit to try to bring a population down to safe levels (just a theory on my part there). I think a lot of our love for wolves comes from the fact that dogs have been our companions for an amazingly long time, and both humans and canines have benefited greatly from the association (except for the abuse of the breeds by that disgrace of an organization called the American Kennel Club... but I'll stay off that high horse for now). I think however that we need to temper our desire to protect the animal with the need to control them. In areas where the wolf population is healthy, efforts to limit their impact are not an evil thing to contemplate. I'd prefer to see catch and relocate programs as opposed to destruction, but many wolves simply don't allow themselves to be relocated, returning time and again to their origonal range (an amazing feat). In those cases more drastic actions need to be taken... especially if the wolves in question have shown a predisposition to approach inhabited land. These are animals who usually do poorly in captivity, so that's not usually an option. I don't think ranchers should be able to shoot them out of hand... but there needs to be methods for dealing with wolves that get too comfortable around humans and domestic livestock. I've got pet rats, and had a pet snake once... the rats are great pets, affectionate and intelligent... non-favorite indeed. [img]smile.gif[/img] (the snake... well he just ate and slept... snakes don't make great pets even though I think they're beautiful animals) [ 10-18-2002, 03:37 PM: Message edited by: Thoran ]

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