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To assist in the management of the gray wolf population in the state, the IDFG allows any hunter with a wolf tag to harvest, by both hunting and trapping, 15 wolves per year.
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If someone was killing my pets, while paying me reasonable compensation, I would also be pissed off at the arrangement. Some things money can't buy.
Which is like pissed off that an alligator ate your dog when you took your dog to swim in alligator-infested waters. How dare nature be.... natural! Let's kill all the alligators!
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100,000 years of human history would disagree on your pathology diagnosis. Humans have been killing for sport, for food, and for war, since before we were humans. We are literally the best hunters in the known universe. Its not a pathology.
By what metric are we the best hunters? I'm no animal expert, but eagles, sharks, lions, etc. seem pretty good it!
From NPR: "After more than 45 years as a listed species, the gray wolf has exceeded all conservation goals for recovery," said Interior Secretary David Bernhardt And who is this Secretary judging biological metrics? A former coal and oil industry lobbyist and lawyer, no biological training. He was on the board at CESAR, which is a purportedly "scientific" organization that takes huge donations from fossil fuel and co…
> In 2013, the Obama administration also proposed to delist gray wolves, saying that the species had rebounded to the point where they were no longer at risk of extinction and should be managed by state and tribal governments
Do you have an attack to make against Obama's interior secretary too?
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You could also open up more elk tags. Plenty of hunters more than happy to take down a bull and have a packed freezer. Lottery systems to pull tags are not easy, especially for out of state folks.
The difference is that wolves tend to take the weaker members of the herds which strengthens the herd overall, but hunters tend to focus on the stronger members.
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> why we don't just pay the ranchers for livestock killed Ah ha. A HN thread close to home (I live within earshot of wolves in Montana). So...we do [1], [2]. Ranchers (generalizing, of course) just don't like wolves. It's a really deep cultural thing. So if you as president want to take some step that will cause a bunch of folks in ranching areas to high five, you'd delist wolves. That they may not in fact be impacte…
In Norway we pay ranchers for sheep which are taken by wolves. They still really hate wolves. More sheep are taken by wolverines, lynx and bears yet the ranches are still keen on full extermination of the wolf population.
I don't know how that would work with the existence of dogs though, so maybe not.
Yeah this is a bit premature. I dunno why we don't just pay the ranchers for livestock killed (it's pretty rare) and everyone goes home happy? Apex predator reintroduction is a good litmus test for how much conservation we can stomach, so I think it's important that we get this right.
Why should we even pay? There's no constitutional right to be able to leave your livestock basically unprotected on vast tracts of land where they're vulnerable to predators. I mean, if it makes it more palatable it's probably worth it to pay farmers... but I viscerally dislike the idea that any industry has the right to: 1. Destroy the environment for their convenience 2. Be indemnified by the government for their i…
Second, it hardly "destroys the environment for their convenience". Where I live the cattle graze down the grasses and prevent fires from spreading. In return, they leave manure which is super useful as a natural fertilizer for gardens and such.
Third, ranching is about food security. The areas where cattle are grazed are typically not much good for food crops, and it's a far more humane way to keep cattle. They got to roam around some pretty vast tracts of land, and you have a really healthy source of locally-sourced protein.
Finally, cattle are property. The idea that you shouldn't be allowed to protect your property is nutty. There are plenty of other wild animals for wolves to prey on, and there's no good ecosystem argument for why they should be permitted to slaughter cattle willy-nilly. Allowing ranchers to shoot wolves threatening their cattle would result in surviving wolves being much more reticent about going after cattle in the first place.
See: why bears and cougars rarely attack humans, even though their populations are healthy enough to be on the "hunt all year round" list for property owners in many areas.
There is a large population of wolves where I live, in Idaho. Wolves are a controversial subject amongst hunters, who believe that they are a reason for the decline in big game (elk/deer) in the state, especially in remote locations. To assist in the management of the gray wolf population in the state, the IDFG allows any hunter with a wolf tag to harvest, by both hunting and trapping, 15 wolves per year.
As I discovered, they also allow the thousands of out of state hunters that come in with OTC elk/deer tags to harvest a wolf (or black bear or mountain lion) instead.
Predation of big game is a planned for event and IDFG in Idaho and equivalent agencies in other states work to find a balance because at the end of the day - conservation is the goal.
This isn't necessarily how hunters and trappers have been historically portrayed in the media but I think we're at a turning point. For any readers that are interested in learning more about how hunting and trapping as a crucial component of conservation. Do read up on the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.[2[
PS: Idaho is beautiful!
[1] https://www.livingwithwolves.org/2020/03/03/wolf-hunting-rul... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Model_of_Wildli...
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In Norway we pay ranchers for sheep which are taken by wolves. They still really hate wolves. More sheep are taken by wolverines, lynx and bears yet the ranches are still keen on full extermination of the wolf population.
It's not unreasonable. Wolves are among the few predators that can and will attack humans . That the wolves, themselves, now have a deep-set fear of humanity and would only dare to do so if they're desperate and starving... is a distant second to that same deep-set cultural fear of wolves. Unpopular Opinion Time: The ecosystem damage from not having apex predators is large enough that it might be worth a few human li…
Well...I live in a place where we have (in my back yard, except for Bison) all the megafauna present since the ice age. In order of practical danger (most to least), they rank like this: Moose, Bear, Cougar, Snakes, ... Wolves. People are regularly attacked by Moose and fatalities have occurred in the past few decades. People are eaten by bears every few years and injured by bears annually. Cougars present a real danger but they're pretty wary of humans so attacks are more a theoretical risk we hear about from reports concerning mountain bikers in Los Angeles. I never heard of anyone being attacked by a wolf nor anyone being concerned about being attacked by a wolf. Same for Coyotes and Foxes.
I don't hear people suggesting that Moose be killed on sight.