“The top photo……from a paper by Ripple and his colleague Robert Beschta, was taken in 1991; the photo below is from 2002 and illustrates the recovery of streamside cottonwoods after just seven years of wolf presence.”…Todd Palmer and Rod Pringle
October 9, 2013
“Wolves are being slaughtered left and right but that’s not enough for the wolf haters. They still find it necessary to visit this blog and spew their anti wolf dogma. The main talking points are centered around the sub species of wolf reintroduced in 95/96. The story goes that Occidentalis is the big, bad Canadian wolf who replaced the sweet, loving Irremotus. That of course is BS. Yes, Occidentalis was the sub species reintroduced to Yellowstone and Central Idaho..but the myth that they are super wolves is absolutely ridiculous. Wolves are wolves, apex predators who are vital to healthy Eco-systems.
Unlike human hunters, who kill the strongest and genetically sound animals, wolves select out the weak, sick, old and yes sometimes the young, which helps control ungulate populations. Wolves don’t hide behind AR-15′s, they go toe to toe with their prey, that’s fair chase. Human hunters use heavy firepower, traps, snares and every sneaky trick in the book to torture, abuse, maim and kill animals. Trophy hunters have nothing to be proud of. NOTHING! They wouldn’t be such big, brave “hunters” if they were limited to using their bare hands. Fair chase my a@%.
Canus lupis Irremotus are very similar to Canis Lupus Occidentalis, who are a bit heavier but still both sub species are wolves. They live in packs, hunt cooperatively and put family above all else.
“Canis Lupus Irremotus…..This subspecies generally weighs 70–135 pounds (32–61 kg) and stands at 26–32 inches, making it one of the largest subspecies of the gray wolf in existence. It is a lighter colored animal than its southern brethren, the Southern Rocky Mountains wolf, with a coat that includes far more white and less black. In general, the subspecies favors lighter colors, with black mixing in among them”…..Wiki
Occidentalis has always lived on both sides of the Northern Rockies US/Canadian border, since wolves know no boundaries. Anyone who believes otherwise is living in a fantasy world. The idea that Occidentalis is foreign to American soil is absurd. They’ve been crossing back and forth across that “border” for tens of thousands of years.
The burning question I have for the professors of wolfology is if Irremotus was loved so much, why the hell did their wolf hating forefathers try to wipe them out? Of course attempting to reason with the unreasonable is an exercise in futility, so I don’t expect a cogent response to that question.
The other favorite talking point of wolf haters is the Yellowstone elk herd. Wolves are accused of decimating the elk in Yellowstone, when in fact it was the feds who were killing Yellowstone elk for decades, in the wolf’s absence, due to the damage elk were wreaking in the park.
“Once the wolves were gone the elk began to take over. Over the next few years conditions of Yellowstone National Park declined drastically. A team of scientists visiting Yellowstone in 1929 and 1933 reported, “The range was in deplorable conditions when we first saw it, and its deterioration has been progressing steadily since then.” By this time many biologists were worried about eroding land and plants dying off. The elk were multiplying inside the park and deciduous, woody species such as aspen and cottonwood suffered from overgrazing. The park service started trapping and moving the elk and, when that was not effective, killing them. This killing continued for more than 30 years. This method helped the land quality from worsening, but didn’t improve the conditions. At times, people would mention bringing wolves back to Yellowstone to help control the elk population. The Yellowstone managers were not eager to bring back wolves, especially after having so successfully ridding the park of them, so they continued killing elk. In the late 1960s, local hunters began to complain to their congressmen that there were too few elk, and the congressmen threatened to stop funding Yellowstone. Killing elk was given up as a response, and then the population of the elk increased exponentially. With the rapid increase in the number of elk, the condition of the land again went quickly downhill. The destruction of the landscape affected many other animals. With the wolves gone, the population of coyotes increased dramatically, which led to an extreme decrease in the number of pronghorn antelope.However, the increase in the elk population caused the most profound change in the ecosystem of Yellowstone after the wolves were gone.”.…..Wiki
Elk numbers had swelled to over twenty thousand while wolves were away…a very bad thing for Yellowstone. As Aldo Leopold so eloquently states in Thinking Like A Mountain:
“I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.
“I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dust-bowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.”
Do your homework wolf haters and stop parroting talking points drilled into your heads by the hunting and ranching cabal.”
**Special thanks to “Howling for Justice” for providing this information! (http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/more-stupidity-from-the-fringe/)
The Wolf Preservation Blog 