1.  What does the fact that wolves "in the valley" or "along the river"
or "north of the highway" have gone "up' or "down" indicate about what
wolves are doing or have done in the areas to the west or wherever wolf
densities, distributions or numbers are steady or are changing?  Does one go
up when the other goes down?  Do other areas mirror what happened locally?
Is the food availability comparable?  Do wolves similarly kill-off elk and
moose and then move on or do they shift to lambs and cows and dogs and?? or
do they move over "there" to kill female wildlife and their young before
returning to kill wintering wildlife or pastured livestock?  Do all wolves
move the same distance to "find food"?  Do all wolves "adapt" equally to
rural garbage and rural town edges or rural home-sites to find food?  Even
in Alaska (AND Russia, Canada and central Asia too truth be known) wolves
will move into urban areas and behave far more boldly than their more rural
cousins that get food more frequently without encountering humans more
prepared to "take care of the problem". 

2.  If you tried to gather all these local guys knowledge of local past
and current wolf numbers it would (rightly) be immediately suspect.  There
are different levels of wolf knowledge among these guys.  There are
different ways of estimating what wolves are doing and how their
distribution and numbers are varying.  These guys are more likely than "the
general public" (and with good reason) to be "anti-wolf".  No one would even
bother to get some such rural wolf-counters together much less using what
they know, after all they are uncontrolled and not "recognized" but most
importantly they would be immediately dismissed by the state/federal
bureaucrats, media, Universities, and the radical group organizations that
support them.

3.  The government trappers' estimates would be worthwhile but you will
never get them.  These guys are all under and evaluated by government
overseers that will tell them what to say and what to report.  The USFWS,
state fish and wildlife agencies, and even USDA/APHIS are not only
infiltrated by but also largely run by environmental and animal rights
activists that have no moral compunctions about their "ends" justifying
their means.

 

4.  The "official" USFWS and state fish and wildlife agencies' wolf
counts are worthless because they are designed and summarized merely to give
an impression of reliability.  As the wolf numbers from
Government-Introductions (GI WOLVES) have increased and their distribution
throughout the Lower 48 spreads like an ink-spot from a spilled inkwell,
there are only an infinitesimal number of wolves collared so even getting
some sort of fix on movements and concentrations is impossible.  The lies
and contortions going on in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and
elsewhere today regarding wolf numbers and distribution are simply
inventions meant to deny wolf impacts and the future of living with wolves
that is becoming more and more apparent to rural Americans each and every
day.

5.  If there is no fix on where many wolves are located or how much they
are moving or reproducing, how can you count them?  Wolves do not go to
certain areas annually (like elk or deer or spawning fish, etc.) so how can
you count; much less obtain some sort of index on their numbers?  While you
can count some wolves from the air, how do you know what percentage of the
wolves you see this year?  Last year? How can you compare "counts", much
less estimate populations?

6.  What does the fact that for the last 2 years wolves ate and killed
wintering deer "over there" (where they were "counted") but this year
shifted to calves and ravaging rural home-sites and dogs 30 miles away mean
to counts?  Since the Lower 48 is not one big woodland or plains like Alaska
or rural Canada aerial counts (that are impossible to do thoroughly) based
on a certain amount of affordable transects mean NOTHING about "total"
numbers.

7.  How do we account for what wolves do when the "low-hanging fruit"
(i.e. pregnant big game, big-game giving birth, calves and fawns, and
wintering big game in deep snow or thick cover like downed trees)
disappears?  Do they always go away?  Do they always just dwindle in numbers
and distribution?  Do they discover dumpsters?  Do they turn to rural
home-sites to kill and eat whatever is available?  Do they hang around bus
stops or start shadowing kids walking home from rural bus stops?  Do they
turn to sheep? Cattle? Dogs? Horses? Llamas, emu's, chickens, etc.?  If 45
lb. Eastern coyotes are increasingly trying to drag of unattended 2-year-old
kids from backyards to feed their pups: what will 125 or 150 lb. wolves take
down to feed their pups?  6-year-olds? 12-year-olds?  20-year-olds?   If you
don't kill problem wolves and give them contraceptives, what do you do with
them?  Where do they go? If you "scare" them off, where do they go and what
do they do?  Do wolves live-trapped and released into some sterile
government "Wilderness" stay there or return or get killed by other hungry
wolves or starve to death or all of the above?  How do you know that the 15
wolves you just "counted" from the plane aren't part of the 17 you "counted"
yesterday in the other valley?

8.  Wolves are not like pheasants or ducks or rabbits.  That is to say
the number of times you see them on the roads each spring or summer is not
consistent so mailman counts or flying the same transects at the same time
every year (as with pheasants or ducks) means Nothing.  You can't rely on
how many get killed by vehicles along certain roads each year (like rabbits)
to suggest any sort of population index or numbers.  Wolves are not hunted
each year like big game or birds so that "success" can be measured from year
to year to suggest population trends.  Wolves are different from game
animals in that they "learn and adapt" quickly.  Methods of take that are
good for big game or birds year after year are not consistently useful for
wolves.  Wolves are also unique in that, unlike those other "sly" canids,
the fox and the coyote, wolves move in groups and witness things that
hunters and trappers do from time to time to kill or capture other wolves.
Additionally, unlike "wily coyote" and "bre'r fox, wolves move long
distances and do not spend their lives in local areas (home ranges) where
they were born and will die.  This last means greater exposure to
interfacing with humans and capitalizing on various food sources and
situations. In other words, wolf "counting" is impossible after the first
couple of years after they are forced back into areas they were purposely
eradicated from for years and proceed to re-establish themselves in a place
like the Lower 48 states in the early 121st century.  They belong in such
places today even less by a long shot than they did 100 years ago.

9.  Since wolves are not being consistently hunted or trapped, there is
no consistent supply of carcasses to examine for certain characteristics
like what they have been eating or how old they are or what condition they
are in, etc.  So any claims about wolves now, as compared to last year or to
some imaginary future date are baseless.  Wolf numbers and distribution,
like their diets and behavior are changing all around us and it is shameful
that in this day and age we are treating it like ancient witch doctors that
prescribed throwing more virgins into some volcano as a remedy.
All of the foregoing points to the absolute delight that wolves provide for
bureaucrats, biologists, politicians, veterinarians, "field" (whatever that
means) technicians, lawyers, judges, radicals, and other such scalawags.
Like "Native Ecosystem Restoration"; wolf counting is an unending,
unverifiable, ever-more costly task with no measurement, evaluation or
endpoint.  It is a bureaucrat/politician/litigant's dream job - It is
whatever the biggest liar wants it to be and there is NO way of disputing
it, measuring it, or proving it!  It just becomes "fact" because the
government confirms it!  Unlike game management where you are hired, paid,
and rewarded for so many elk or so many ducks or so many days in the
pheasant season or such and such limit; wolf "counting" and Native Species
"work" are simply unending tasks that justify more and more budgets to do
more and more unverifiable and worthless things forever.

So the next time you hear one of these hucksters using wolf "numbers" as
anything other than to confirm what you just saw, just laugh and walk away.
Like the old Soviet reports and forecasts about fantastic food production,
wolf numbers have become the American joke of the day.

If I didn't have the First Amendment to protect me, I might just have
described all this wolf "counting" nonsense in a hushed-tone joke like might
have been overheard in the "Old USSR".

"Comrade, how many men does it take to count all the wolves?"

"That is a good question, Boris.  How many does it take?"

"Actually Comrade, it is a trick question.  While you might think it takes
many pilots and biologists and field technicians and satellite operators and
veterinarians and recorders and data analyzers and cooks and drivers and
suppliers and clerical staff: the answer is ONE!"

"ONE?  Boris, how could only one man count all the wolves?"

"It only takes one apparatchik appointed by the Commissar to sign off on the
report that tells the Commissar what he wants to hear."

Jim Beers
14 March 2011

Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist,
Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow.
He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and
Washington DC.  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western
Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands.  He has worked for the
Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security
Supervisor in Washington, DC.  He testified three times before Congress;
twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60
Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to
expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He resides in Eagan,
Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting at   jimbeers7@comcast.net