Wolves As Indicator Species

Indications are everywhere.  They remind us where we've been.  They tell us
where we are.  Often, we believe they tell us the future.

Abortion, euthanasia, and "a life worth living"; like our policies to force
Africans and Indians and other "native" people to coexist with deadly snakes
and crocodiles and tigers and wolves tells us much about our perceived value
of human life and true equality.  "Gay marriage" and the correlation between
widespread availability of pornography and the incidence of formerly
unimaginable sex crimes likewise tell us much about our concept of morality
and the purpose of our lives.  The "hourglass" decline of every measure of
academic quality in our schools; while environmental and animal propaganda,
campaigns by teachers (increasingly abusing students) and administrators to
indoctrinate values (trips to Planned Parenthood Abortion Centers and
Mosques) and programs to destroy parental rights (sex-ed of every
conceivable aberration and the "right" to provide birth control and abortion
services without parental knowledge or notification to children) explode
across the national landscape is an indicator of some very disturbing future
developments for a nation facing the challenges of our world.

Biologists, in the past thirty-five or so years, have been fond of coining
new and catchy phrases to disguise their "New Age" dream of a world given
over to Mother Nature with "biologists" and approved "partners" serving as
"Mother's" witch doctors and enforcers.  As outdated definitions (does
anyone remember when "species" simply meant animals or plants that could
successfully reproduce themselves?) were "deep-sixed"; new terms such as
"Keystone", "Invasive", "Threatened", and "Endangered" "species" emerged and
were only definable by "experts" using "best available science".  Old terms
like "Native Ecosystem" suddenly became a fixed and revered mix of plants
and animals rather than a touchstone to gage what mix of plants and animals
previously existed under different conditions (human societies, weather,
roads, trails, farms, cities, villages, human populations, etc.) as
comparisons for present day management of the plants and animals in our
environment in 2007.  In this milieu of Orwellian wordsmithing the term
"Indicator Species" materialized as yet another word to be used only by
biologists and other approved "experts" to explain why yet more freedoms and
rights of American citizens needed to be subsumed into an all-powerful
central government guided by environmental and animal rights mavens.

Indicator species was a sort of all-purpose term with an elastic meaning
useful at hearings and meetings and in newspaper articles and lawsuits as
well as in school propaganda sessions.  Want to shut down farms or stop
logging?  How about, "these three-legged frogs are 'Indicator Species' of
pollution in the ecosystem"?  Want to form children's attitudes to favor
very harmful actions by government?  How about, "grizzly bears and buffalo
are 'Indicator Species' of a 'healthy ecosystem' and therefore 'must' be
reintroduced"?  Want to sue the government to stop a road or other project?
How about, "more study is needed to 'prove' that this mouse will not be
harmed since it is a bellwether 'Indicator Species' of the health of the
ecosystem"?  Want to close a certain Forest to use or access?  How about,
"'Indicator Species' such as the hairy-fringed grama grass and the
glossy-leafed blueberry bush are declining as a result of human activities
that therefore must be restricted until this decline can be studied and
reversed"?  Now three-legged frogs may or may not have something to do with
recent environmental factors; free ranging grizzly bears and buffalo no more
belong in 90% of the US today than do saber-toothed tigers or tyrannosaurus
rex; mice no more "indicate" environmental "health"(whatever that means)
than does the routine eating of African children by crocodiles indicate a
"balanced" ecosystem; and last but not least any species can be called an
"Indicator" of something so even common species like grama grass and
blueberry bush are used with impunity and are incontrovertible because they
are without meaning.  In each example however, the words "Indicator Species"
give a scientific and friendly appearance to a knife thrust disguised as a
handshake.

The "Indicator Species" I would like to mention is the wolf.  You might
assume that the wolf "indicates" a "native ecosystem", or a "necessary
niche", or a "needed function", or a more powerful central government, or a
threat to ranchers and hunters and dogs and livestock and rural residents,
or a boon to bureaucrats and politicians but none of these are the most
significant effect that I believe wolves "indicate".  I believe that wolves
"indicate" the coming demise of the environmental and animal rights
movements as we have come to know them.  Wolves are probably the most
important "Indicator Species" of the coming return to sanity regarding the
way we "live with" animals and which plants and animals we will choose to
live with.

I am rereading and underlining practically everything in Will N. Graves'
excellent book Wolves in Russia .  I know you are all busy and that even
reading short articles is often impossible but, buy Will's book and read it.
Anyone concerned about or harmed by environmental or animal rights
activities needs to understand the depth of the betrayal of Americans
perpetrated by this wolf debacle.  When you understand what is ahead for
children and the elderly and rural America as well as anyone unfortunate to
blunder into wolves at the wrong moment, you will not only call for the
repeal of the Endangered Species Act; you will call for the punishment of
every bureaucrat, politician, and professor that profited from fulfilling
the wishes of the environmental extremists and animal rights radicals that
manipulated them like Burr Tillstrom did Kukla, Fran, and Ollie in the early
days of TV.

For the past 150 years Russian church records, newspapers, government
reports, and magazines have recorded thousands of attacks by wolves on
Russian citizens from the Baltic and Carpathians to the shores of the
Pacific.  The untold number of incidents that went unrecorded or were
unknown, I leave to the imagination of readers.  Ukrainians, Kazaks,
Russians, Siberians; it made no difference to wolves.  Children in the
village or herding livestock or playing by a stream were equally vulnerable.
Winter or summer, woodsman or washerwoman; running a chainsaw or picking
mushrooms: death or disfigurement whether weeks later from rabies or found
hours later half eaten - wolves were and are up to the present day, equal
opportunity dispensers of death, disease, and destruction.  Heavy snow years
or war years when guns were all being used elsewhere only increased the
intensity of the mayhem.  Wolves ate the dead after big battles and dug up
and ate freshly buried bodies just like Fido does with buried bones in your
backyard.  Diseases like brucellosis, rabies, anthrax, and foot and mouth
are transmitted by wolves as are intestinal parasites of many varieties.
Thousands of livestock in one year in but one area are lost to wolves.
Wildlife populations are reduced dramatically and kept so by high wolf
densities.  Wolf control is very problematic as Russians use cars and planes
and poisons and bounties and government hunters and trappers and techniques
that would make US urbanites' hearts race.  Accounts of wolves trotting into
villages and being mistaken for dogs as they proceed to attack children to
drag one off or just begin biting people and animals indiscriminately as
they spread the rabies that is killing them will send chills down your
spine.

Fifty years ago there weren't any coyotes East of the Mississippi .  The last
twenty years has seen coyotes establish themselves all over the East.  So
this small (20-40 lb.) cousin of the wolf that seldom comes together in a
pack and does not wander (preferring to live and die in the area where it
was born) now attacks children on Cape Cod and in New Jersey backyards.
They devour untold numbers of pets (has the Connecticut "pet detective"
found that cream colored dachshund yet?).  You can be sure that state fish
and wildlife employees minimize any such occurrence when they can in order
to avoid "bad" publicity or any calls for coyote controls.  Like my Virginia
county (Fairfax) when faced with Lyme Disease of almost plague proportions
and hundreds of deer/auto collisions (several fatal annually and many
accredited to "falling asleep" or "driver error" when no deer is hit in
un-witnessed fatal accidents); government's response is to "hire a wildlife
biologist to explain to people how to 'live with' wildlife".

Unlike coyotes, wolves are very hard to hunt successfully because they
wander far and wide, do not come to bait, and are extremely dangerous to a
hidden hunter trying to call them in.  Today the US prohibits poisons and
aerial hunting.  Dogs are outlawed as hunting tools in more and more state
voting initiatives.  Predators like mountain lions and bears are, like
marine mammals and sharks, more and more treated like sacred animals that
must never be killed no matter how many people they kill or maim or how
devastating they are to American property or interests or even other
desirable animals.  The "eye candy" news announcers on cable news "ooh" and
"ahh" daily over some Pennsylvania black bear returned to a Pennsylvania
"wilderness" from some town for the third time with the comment that she
"hopes the bear will stay there".  California "animal wardens" (i.e. some
uniformed lady with a dart gun) are photographed from a helicopter chasing a
mountain lion in back yards with all the thoroughness of some felon pursued
by an armada of police cars.

Speaking of ladies (is that all right after all their older "sisters" spoke
about all of us "guys" for years as they sought, got, and maintained their
preferences?), notice the next time one of these predator "dramas" unfold
how often the state "predator" or state "unique" or state "native species"
Coordinator is a lady.  Dare I say that the majority of ladies in these
roles bring a preconceived attitude to "the table"?  Their (we are talking
averages here) reactions and solutions (like the professors profiting from
Endangered Species or the animal rights "biologist) are almost always
prefaced on "saving the individual animal" and figuring out how to
ultimately move the people rather than kill the animal before it harms
someone.  This isn't just a sex thing, many veterinarians and school
teachers likewise will no more accept killing an animal than they will
accept the rationale for the 2nd Amendment or the need for the US Marine
Corps.

So the wolves are spreading.  Like their coyote cousins, as they increase in
densities and become accustomed to people and as they come down with rabies
(remember they ARE THE SAME SPECIES AS DOGS and they don't get "shots") and
as they get hungry in winter as kids wait for rural school buses or as they
need to feed pups in summer as kids play outdoors: they will attack people.
They will periodically decimate livestock in goodly numbers for food or
pleasure or just to teach their young how to tear the throat of a sheep for
a quick kill.  They will practically eliminate deer and elk herds to the
point where hunting is no longer possible.  Rural Americans will soon be
living in fear as our forefathers did and as Russians continue to do as wolf
attacks become very real even to the soccer moms and their daughters (the
ones that were tickled to successfully eliminate horse slaughter in the US)
boarding their horses in rural settings and finding their foal eaten and
their mare with chunks of flesh torn out of her hind quarter one evening.
When wolves get into anthrax areas (there are several in the US ) they will
spread this deadly disease as they are doing in Russia .  When chronic
wasting disease occurs in wintering elk or deer herds or when mad cow breaks
out somewhere and wolves are present: veterinarians and bureaucrats will do
all they can to downplay and pooh-pooh any of the real effects of the wolves
in spreading these diseases to other wintering yards or livestock pastures
but it will not be possible to do so for long.

The silly business about The Defenders of Wildlife (that now employs the
former US Fish and Wildlife Service Director when $45 to 60 Million was
stolen from state fish and wildlife agencies and never repaid and who during
her tenure reintroduced the wolves into Yellowstone without Congressional
approval to start this whole sordid affair) paying for "wolf damage" was
always a temporary sham to quiet opponents of wolves.  Government "control"
of "offending wolves" was also but a temporary sham.  As we run out of
"collared" wolves and as wolves proliferate we will learn as our forefathers
did that nothing short of every means and every technique imaginable coupled
with a determination for the long haul (something in short supply in
American affairs in the past few decades) will REDUCE much less eliminate
wolves when the public consciousness is awakened.  Think of how your dog
"learns" and "adapts his behavior" as circumstances warrant: wolves do so in
spades.

Not only can you no longer use poisons or hunt from planes, consider all the
rich absentee landowners or the billionaire retirees or the old couple that
will not allow any "control" on their land.  Don't forget the Indian
Reservations that will prohibit controls in order to disrupt nearby rural
economies that they look to covetously as do the radical groups and
government bureaucrats as future lands to claim.

The future is not pretty.  Russians shake their heads everywhere about
western gullibility in swallowing that 1980's movie about Canadian wolves
eating only rodents.  I remember a dinner conversation with a Russian
biologist from Magadan in Eastern Siberia while at a meeting in Brussels
years ago.  When I mentioned American attitudes toward wolves in the mid
1990's he just shook his head and looked at me and said, "How did you ever
defeat us?"

The Defenders of Wildlife, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the UN, the
Congress, and all the professors at all of the Universities will not be able
to affect the coming catastrophe.  We will hear about growing numbers of
attacks.  Like the pampered grizzlies and the un-hunted mountain lions
wolves will attack the camper and fisherman and rancher fixing his fence.
When the child is dragged from his or her tent or the bus stop there will
soon be no dogpacks trained to track and reveal the whereabouts of the
offending animal and wolves are some of the worst to track since they will
successfully kill the dogs.  Hunters will be fewer and fewer as the skills
and experience dwindle like the ability to train dogs or trap animals.  No
one will take ownership of what happens; not The "Defenders", not the
Federal "coordinators", not the "Coalitions", not the professors or the
state fish and wildlife agencies.  They will all point elsewhere as they
retire and move into other "positions".

As the death toll mounts and as increasingly those isolated urban do-gooders
know someone that was killed or disfigured or that dies from rabies or just
disappears (does anyone really believe that things like shark attacks and
lion attacks on isolated individuals are known, much less reported, much
less "tracked" as papers imply every time such incidents are reported as
"the only time" or "fewer than last year"?) or they lose their own horse or
golden retriever: support for all this "take it back to the wilderness
unharmed and at great expense" will be in short supply. There will be an
outbreak of reality to rival what our forefathers knew and what Russian
peasants have known for centuries - wolves do not belong where people live
and struggle to make a living and raise families.

Along with the backlash against wolves, other questions will be raised and
discussed.  Why are we spending all this money on sedating and moving bears
and cougars that get into towns?  Why aren't we developing hunting methods
to reduce urban deer herds?  Why aren't deer seasons and deer limits and
hunting methods more "liberal"?  Why shouldn't rural people be able to carry
handguns or rifles or shotguns in vehicles?  Why aren't we encouraging
hunting and trapping (to save tax expenses, to generate revenue for
conservation, and to year-in and year-out control animal numbers and
distribution)?  Why aren't bears and lions and wolves (like coyotes) liable
to being killed by any licensed hunter if they occur at any time in
designated heavily populated counties?  If killing predators is acceptable,
why are we advocating laws that prohibit horse slaughter, or cropping a dog's
ears, or bobbing a dog's tail, or the fighting of cocks by owners, or the
management of marine mammals by harvest, or the use of dogs for hunting: in
other words we will have to face up to the reality of wild animal
distributions and impacts and the property status of domestic animals.

During the last century the United States came up with the greatest wildlife
management system ever devised by man.  It was coincidentally the most
egalitarian use of wildlife any civilization ever developed.  This has all
been trashed by the environmental mania of the past four decades.  Common
sense and the lessons of history suggest that when the US populace begins to
understand the lies and perfidies behind the return of wolves by government,
the entire environmental and animal rights agenda will become more than a
cutesy one-minute piece on the nightly news.  It will become a real matter
with real discussions about real solutions and it won't be with the cute
boys and girls that have dominated these matters in the past.

So my vote for the "Indicator Species" of 2007 award is the wolf.  Get a
copy of Will N. Graves book Wolves in Russia from  www.wolvesinrussia.com
Read it and let me know if you don't agree with my assessment of what lies
ahead for the US and for the radical movements that have seen their day.
There may just be a light around the corner.

Jim Beers
19 June 2007

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- 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 Centreville ,
Virginia with his wife of many decades.