senators, nearly two hundred tribal leaders, about sixty conservation groups, and more than eight hundred scientists. Among those who asked the White House to re-list wolves, on an emergency basis, were twenty-one U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had embarked on a yearlong review of whether gray wolves-which have been moved in and out of federal protection for decades-required renewed safeguards. Reports of an impending “massacre” reached the White House and Congress. They assumed that sportsmen would quickly reduce Idaho’s wolf population to the conservation minimum that had long been in place-fifteen breeding pairs and a hundred and fifty wolves. Opponents of the legislation framed it as a chilling mandate to exterminate ninety per cent of the state’s fifteen hundred or so wolves. Over all, these populations were holding steady. The state’s intensifying embrace of wolf hunting was based, in part, on the misconception that wolves were decimating elk and livestock. Night-vision goggles, silencers, snowmobiles, A.T.V.s-all legal, though such tactics pose ethical concerns about “fair chase.” Sportsmen could now use motorized vehicles to pursue wolves to the point of exhaustion, or simply run them over. Trappers could operate year-round on private property. For the first time, sportsmen could kill an unlimited number. But last spring the state legislature dramatically broadened opportunities to target wolves. Of the Western states, Idaho has long had a reputation as the most hostile toward the gray wolf, a once endangered species it’s legal to slay pups in their dens there. Idaho has plenty of cattle and elk, both of which generate a lot of profit: the cattle industry is worth nearly two billion dollars, and the state collects about six million dollars a year in hunting fees-about ninety thousand people hunt elk. In 1634, a tract called “ New England’s Prospect,” by William Wood, described the animals as “the greatest inconveniency,” noting that there was “little hope of their utter destruction, the Countrey being so spacious, and they so numerous.” Livestock producers and big-game hunters have considered wolves an existential threat since Colonial days. A wolf that cannot find its favored meal may turn to cattle and sheep. The gray wolf prefers to eat fleet ungulates-elk, deer-but when Europeans arrived in America with livestock its menu expanded. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |