Wolf Toleration

[SFC B]

I would love to see who this was and what he said...can't imagine any legit bio coming close to making a statement like that?

He did it on the Michigan Out of Doors PBS tv show earlier this year. I watch it on Youtube. It was so bad and Michigan go so much crap for it they sent out a retraction and tried to say "it was just a simple mistake". It was not, he was pretty obviously trying to down play the impact of wolves on the deer herd. In the UP they face enough other challenges, no need to BS about this one.

 

[El Jason]

S.S.S

By your own admission, it sounds like you should be focused on the first S?

 

[Mustangs Rule]

Well there's a good question. I guess I don't see hunting as a competition against nature as much as an opportunity to engage with it. I want to experience all of it, not just parts. I have enormous respect for an animal that is smaller than me, yet can pull down a bull elk with its teeth. I find predators like falcons, lions, bears, etc. as exceptionally beautiful animals and particularly exciting because you glimpse them so rarely. I've hunted farms that have lots of deer and elk but no predators bigger than a coyote. That's fine, but it's weak sauce compared to a functioning ecosystem. I also don't believe the doom and gloom around predators. Finally, life is too short for the hate. I don't have time to hate wild animals for doing what wild animals do. I would rather just have fun. firsr

Rather interesting, nobody has yet brought up the roles that predators play in limiting wildlife diseases.

Here is a good beginning,

Ancient History of Lyme Disease in North America Revealed with Bacterial Genomes

A team of researchers led by the Yale School of Public Health has found that the Lyme disease bacterium is ancient in North America, circulating silently in

medicine.yale.edu

This article strikes very close to home for me having grown up in Connecticut, where Lymes Disease first was detected.

This article strongly blames the lack of wolves and the exploding deer population for this terrible disease epidemic. The Lymes disease bacteria sat quietly in New England for 60,000 years without spreading until deer as carriers had their population explode.

What needs to be added to this equation is the total lack of all predators, large medium and small. they having been nearly all trapped and shot off. I grew up in rural Connecticut on my family's dairy farm and saw this. Next comes the fact that Lymes' Disease is heavily carried by mice and chipmunks.

Also, of interest in this predator/disease relationship is the Mulchatna Caribou herd in Alaska. The herd numbered about 200,000 in the 1990's and is now down to 12,000. Constantly the Alaska Game and Fish Department keeps trying to save this herd by engaged in endless predator hunting campaigns. The more they do this, against the recommendations of their own biologists, the more the herd shrinks.

This herd has a staggering 30% Brucellosis rate, which dramatically reduces fertility and have caribou walking around on legs cribbled by this disease. They need a full predator guild on duty to dramatically reduce this disease and save the herd.

Regarding Chronic Wasting Disease, it is so often said that predators spread this disease. This is true to the 3.5% level only. Actually, a recent Colorado study feeding caged Mt Lions highly CWD infected parts of deer proved that their bodies defensive immune system chemistry totally destroys 96.5 % of CWD prions. The next day they poop out this minor 3.5% of active CWD prions.

That all predators large and small would have this immune mechanism would be a biological necessity for surviving and thriving.

Predators and scavengers, large, medium and small are natural CWD killing machines.

With all this new science-based knowledge researchers are working out formulas for what ratio of a complete predator guild is needed to fight so many wildlife diseases that have exploded without them.

How long would elk hoof rot exist, how long would elk go hobbling around crippled, in an ecosystem with a strong predator guild?

This genuine toleration of wolves and other predators, will continue in the direction of approval, not based on silly sentiment but based on what has been a solid biology rule known forever, even by Native Hunters, predators keep wild animal herds healthy by culling out the old and sick.

There is a entire new breed of wildlife biologists coming onto to scene, very unlike the old ones exampled by those that just managed for higher and higher herd numbers so hunters could have higher success ratios.

They are dealing with entirely new problems and searching for new workable answers.

In areas where it was possible to have sufficiently large and varied predator's guilds, the estimate is that 50% of CWD could be eliminated in 15 years, to get CWD down to single digit percentages would take a century, again, where sufficiently large predator guilds where possible.

Even the rates of humans getting Lymes Disease could be reduced by having the middle and lower level of rodent eating predators higher.

The valuable role of predators goes on and on. Recently there has been huge concerns about the crashing quail hunting industry in the prairies states. The research done says; varmint hunters are killing off too many medium level predators, which kill the smallest the egg/nest raiding predators.

In our dry Southwest, it was the small Mexican Wolf, coyotes and bobcats, that allowed Desert Bighorn sheep numbers to be high, without them the jackrabbit numbers skyrocketed, and they ate down the scare desert forage to the point where big horn sheep could not survive. No Desert Bighorn sheep relocation project has much of a chance with predator hunting going on.

Our entire predator control programs are, to use a more polite version of WW2 era term "FUBAR" = Fouled up beyond all reason!