Jere­mi­ah: Wind’s right, but he’ll just run soon as we step out of these trees.

Bear Claw: Trick to it. Walk out on this side of your horse.

Jere­mi­ah: What if he sees our feet?

Bear Claw: Elk don’t know how many feet a horse has!

A talk about wolves giv­en in Dor­ris, Cal­i­for­nia at a Town Forum on 18 May 2014
A “Q” & “A”:

“Q.” WHO and HOW MUCH TO BLAME?

1. When a wild rabid fox descend­ed from gen­er­a­tions of wild fox­es in your area bites a kid?

2. When a wild rabid coy­ote either descend­ed from gen­er­a­tions of wild coy­otes in your area or nat­u­ral­ly repop­u­lat­ing your area kills your cat or bites a kid?

3. When a “wild” hog descend­ed from escaped domes­tic hogs ruins your gar­den or attacks a kid?

4. When a new arrival in your town lets his dogs or wolf-dogs loose and they kill your dog, threat­en your kids and cause your fam­i­ly to stay indoors and lead fear­ful and stress­ful lives?

5. When gov­ern­ment forcibly inserts wolves into your com­mu­ni­ty (after they were pur­pose­ly erad­i­cat­ed decades ago for sound rea­sons by local res­i­dents) and pro­tects them despite stren­u­ous local objec­tions as the wolves kill your dog, your calves, your sheep, the big game you once hunt­ed; spread numer­ous dis­eases and infec­tions affect­ing your fam­i­ly, your dogs, your domes­tic ani­mals and your wild game ani­mals; and threat­en your safe­ty, your fam­i­ly, your children’s free­dom and your very “domes­tic Tran­quil­i­ty” and Way of Life?

“A.”  Re: 1 and 2 – Your Coun­ty offi­cials and State fish and wildlife agency for not killing those ani­mals with rabies and for not main­tain­ing those ani­mals at low­er lev­els and den­si­ties.  The mag­ni­tude of such blame is real­ly min­i­mal due to the dif­fi­cul­ty of always accom­plish­ing such con­trol on wild ani­mals that the com­mu­ni­ty­choos­es to allow in their midst or finds severe con­trols too cost­ly or imprac­ti­cal to con­tin­u­al­ly apply.

Re: 3 – The farmer that might have released them or through neg­li­gence let them escape though any­more that is impos­si­ble to deter­mine beyond the first gen­er­a­tion of such escaped animals.

Re: 4 – The new arrival’s dogs can be blamed and euth­a­nized.  The new arrival can be sued, fined and even jailed.  Blame is clear and the mag­ni­tude is con­comi­tant with the dam­ages caused.

Re: 5 – Not the fed­er­al bureau­crats that put them there and that “pro­tect” them.  Not the fed­er­al politi­cians that passed the laws and fund those bureau­crats that put them there.  Not the State bureau­crats and politi­cians that either coop­er­at­ed with or showed only token oppo­si­tion to the forcible inser­tion of fed­er­al wolves.  Not the rad­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions like the “Defend­ers” of Wildlife or the media or the rich, urban donors that worked with the politi­cians, bureau­crats and courts to enable the forcible inser­tion of the wolves.  Those respon­si­ble for this wolf trav­es­ty, that caus­es the most dam­age and ruina­tion to the far greater areas and human pop­u­la­tion and that thus calls for infi­nite­ly far greater account­abil­i­ty and blame, are BLAMELESS!  In oth­er words, those per­pe­trat­ing the great­est dan­gers, dam­ages and stress to the great­est num­ber of US cit­i­zens bear NO respon­si­bil­i­ty for what they wreak!

Let’s explore how this happened.

Who is behind the Wolves?

-Most­ly urban teach­ers, media reporters, bil­lion­aires, actors, nature pro­gram pro­duc­ers and oth­ers that equate humans with wild ani­mals and pro­pa­gan­dize about “Native Species and Native Ecosys­tems” as super­sed­ing both human rights and US Con­sti­tu­tion­al jurispru­dence.  They prey on mod­ern guilt about civ­i­liza­tion harm­ing our nat­ur­al sur­round­ings and offer as the only solu­tion human pop­u­la­tion reduc­tions and a shrink­ing of the human pres­ence and liv­ing stan­dards in the world to be replaced by “more” ani­mals that they claim were “here first” and are “nec­es­sary.”  They pro­scribe a human world pop­u­la­tion in num­bers and loca­tions, as well as liv­ing stan­dards they man­date based on the com­plete­ly sec­u­lar moral­i­ty and val­ues they hold and wish to impose on others.

-Fed­er­al politi­cians that passed and now refuse to sig­nif­i­cant­ly amend or repeal the Endan­gered Species Act.

-Fed­er­al bureau­crats (espe­cial­ly in the US Fish & Wildlife Ser­vice) that write, mod­i­fy and enforce the increas­ing­ly unjust reg­u­la­tions under the ESA.

-Fed­er­al bureau­crats in the BLM, USFS, NPS, Recla­ma­tion, and oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies and Depart­ments that use USFWS reg­u­la­tions, oper­a­tions and prece­dents to obtain more author­i­ty, big­ger bud­gets and more land.

-State politi­cians that see how the ESA is harm­ing their res­i­dents, com­mu­ni­ties, economies and qual­i­ty of life yet turn a blind eye claim­ing they are helpless.

-State bureau­crats, espe­cial­ly of the F&W/DNR vari­ety that have most­ly become syco­phants to fed­er­al coun­ter­parts and grow­ing nation­al and inter­na­tion­al environmental/animal rights Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Orga­ni­za­tions and their hid­den agendas.

-Influ­en­tial, rich and pow­er­ful nation­al envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions such as the Defend­ers of Wildlife, Nation­al Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion, Wilder­ness Soci­ety, The Nature Con­ser­van­cy, Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil, Cen­ter for Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty and oth­ers plus their sub­sidiaries and chapters.

-Rad­i­cal and rich nation­al Ani­mal Rights orga­ni­za­tions such as The Humane Soci­ety of the US, Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front, Ani­mal Defense League, Ani­mal Rights Net­works, Friends of Ani­mals, Coali­tion to Abol­ish the Fur Trade plus oth­ers and their sub­sidiaries and chapters.

-Inter­na­tion­al, rich and pow­er­ful envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions such as The World Wildlife Fund and the myr­i­ad environmental/wolf groups, anti-hunt­ing groups and pop­u­la­tion con­trol groups through­out Europe that have all-but absolute con­trol of Euro­pean Union politi­cians and bureau­crats at the expense of nation­al gov­ern­ments, local gov­ern­ments, local com­mu­ni­ties, rur­al economies, rur­al fam­i­lies and rur­al lifestyles; just as in the US today.

-Many of the “Unlim­it­eds” and “Fore­vers” and “Foun­da­tions claim­ing to rep­re­sent hunters and fish­er­men.  Also the “Asso­ci­a­tions” and “Bureaus” claim­ing to advo­cate for cat­tle­men and farm­ers and oth­ers are often as not act­ing out agen­das in Wash­ing­ton that are ulti­mate­ly not in your best inter­ests.  They all share time and space with fed­er­al agen­cies in Wash­ing­ton where they each “scratch” each other’s backs while lob­by­ing and look­ing for fed­er­al jobs as feds simul­ta­ne­ous­ly look for retire­ment jobs with them.  Go to any annu­al meet­ing of fed­er­al and state man­agers and the buf­fets and break­fasts and recep­tions will find them all at the wine and cheese table pro­vid­ed by peo­ple that “under­stand” and “tol­er­ate” wolves where you live.

-Lawyers work­ing both for and against the groups men­tioned above.

-Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sors, “sci­en­tists” and oth­er “experts” that ben­e­fit from gov­ern­ment grants that cre­ate tenure and bonus­es as well as fame from sup­port­ing orga­ni­za­tions men­tioned above in return for “sci­ence” and “research” that sup­ports their agen­das and ideologies.

-Final­ly, UN bureau­cra­cies and bureau­crats that cater to and coop­er­ate with all of the above by joint­ly draft­ing Con­ven­tions and Treaties to (just like US and Euro­pean coun­ter­parts) grow their pow­er and influ­ence as well as to increase their bud­gets, pay and retire­ments under the guise of Agen­da 21, Con­trol­ling Inter­na­tion­al Trade and oth­er Stalk­ing Hors­es like Glob­al Cooling/Warming/Climate Change.

What do they obtain from Wolves?

-Grow­ing areas where ranch­ing becomes pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive and stress­ful and ranch­ers go out of busi­ness just like log­ging and log­gers were put out of busi­ness by spot­ted owls, red-cock­ad­ed wood­peck­ers, ghost­ly (and extinct) Ivory-billed wood­peck­ers and oth­er rur­al area evac­u­a­tions have been based on ESA biol­o­gy fan­tasies from Delta smelt (farm­ers) and Sage grouse (ener­gy devel­op­ment) to Snail Darter (Dam) and Flori­da Pan­ther (land devel­op­ers and sug­ar cane farms).  These lands then become ripe for fed­er­al clo­sures, fed­er­al land pur­chase and fed­er­al land ease­ments by prof­i­teer­ing front-orga­ni­za­tions like TNC and its many subsidiaries.

-Grow­ing areas where near­ly all human uses and soci­ety cease just like Wilder­ness Dec­la­ra­tions and the cat­a­stroph­ic fires they create.

-Grow­ing areas where more and more new­ly dis­cov­ered “habi­tat needs” for wolves can be claimed to jus­ti­fy less and less human activ­i­ty and pres­ence just like BLM uti­liz­ing faux con­cerns for desert tor­tois­es where graz­ing has occurred for over a cen­tu­ry while ignor­ing near­by gov­ern­ment-fund­ed solar-pow­er farms that erad­i­cate all tor­tois­es and as the same agen­cies plan releas­es of “free-roam­ing” buf­fa­lo that are far more destruc­tive and dan­ger­ous to humans and rur­al Amer­i­ca than any cat­tle have ever been.

-Jus­ti­fi­ca­tions to claim that cat­tle or sheep are “incom­pat­i­ble with wolves” so there­fore the live­stock graz­ing allot­ments and land man­age­ment have to go (where?)

-Erad­i­ca­tion of big game herds (Min­neso­ta moose, Ida­ho elk, Mon­tana moose, etc.) to destroy big game hunt­ing by destroy­ing any “har­vestable sur­plus” of big game herds and the state and local rev­enue it generates.

-Prece­dents for fed­er­al juris­dic­tion and author­i­ty over more and more (for­mer­ly) State respon­si­bil­i­ties such as hunt­ing, fish­ing and trapping.

-Prece­dents for forc­ing wolves on local com­mu­ni­ties and then “return­ing wolves to state man­age­ment” as dic­tat­ed by fed­er­al over­seers and fed­er­al “require­ments” there­by mak­ing state res­i­dents and tax­pay­ers pay for the cen­sus­es, com­pen­sa­tion, law­suits, and all-but impos­si­ble man­age­ment and con­trol of the wolves.  This would be laugh­able if not so sad and serious!

-Prece­dents per­mit­ting the gov­ern­ment to intro­duce and pro­tect wild ani­mals that kill dogs (pri­vate prop­er­ty) and live­stock with impuni­ty with­out any fed­er­al or state respon­si­bil­i­ty for the dam­age and loss­es despite vehe­ment local protests.

-Prece­dents and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for suc­ceed­ing dan­ger­ous fed­er­al gov­ern­ment assaults on rur­al Amer­i­ca like the recent pro­pos­als to intro­duce and pro­tect “free-roam­ing Buf­fa­lo” in Ari­zona and Mon­tana; protest­ing bor­der enforce­ment neces­si­ties because of jaguar habi­tat claims in S Ari­zona over local protests, and fed­er­al con­trols on hunt­ing, trap­ping and preda­tor con­trol meth­ods and magnitude.

-Prece­dents for bureau­crats to take pri­vate prop­er­ty with­out com­pen­sa­tion in direct con­flict with the 5th Amend­ment as in Texas where brush land could no longer be devel­oped because of Crit­i­cal Habi­tat claims for a war­bler with­out com­pen­sat­ing owners.

-Prece­dents for stop­ping pub­lic works projects, pow­er projects, roads, inter­changes, chan­nel main­te­nance, pipelines, pow­er lines and oth­er need­ed devel­op­ments meant to ben­e­fit rur­al Amer­i­cans and the Amer­i­ca Economy.

-Prece­dents for “cre­ative sci­ence” and “romance biol­o­gy” to sway courts and gen­er­ate pub­lic opin­ion for the ben­e­fit of rad­i­cals and bureaucrats.

-An increas­ing­ly bam­boo­zled pub­lic becomes increas­ing­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to such pro­pa­gan­da (to para­phrase GK Chesterton’s famous obser­va­tion about athe­ists) “it is not that they believe in noth­ing, it is that they will believe in anything.”

-Prece­dents for using dead­ly force and ques­tion­able enforce­ment tech­niques on fathers, work­ers, hunters, ranch­ers and oth­ers pro­tect­ing their fam­i­lies, prop­er­ty and very lives from fed­er­al­ly intro­duced and pro­tect­ed species like griz­zly bears, wolves and buffalo.

-Prece­dents for fed­er­al bureau­crats to steal, with impuni­ty, excise tax­es intend­ed for state hunt­ing and fish­ing pro­grams to fund fed­er­al efforts to destroy those very pro­grams with­out either pun­ish­ment or replac­ing the stolen funds.

-Prece­dents for fed­er­al bureau­crats to avoid any respon­si­bil­i­ty or account­abil­i­ty (indeed one could say they were reward­ed hand­some­ly) for using stolen funds to fund and accom­plish activ­i­ties that the US Con­gress refused to autho­rize or fund like intro­duc­ing wolves into the Upper Rock­ies and open­ing a new fed­er­al office.

-Prece­dents for fed­er­al bureau­crats to be secre­tive and lie about where they get cer­tain intro­duced ani­mals; or to even com­plete Impor­ta­tion Doc­u­ments like they would pros­e­cute (a felony) you or me for not fil­ing; or if the wolves they import­ed had been vac­ci­nat­ed; or if they know what dis­eases or infec­tions that they car­ried; or inform­ing the pub­lic about the dan­gers of dis­eases and infec­tions they are capa­ble of trans­mit­ting to humans, domes­tic ani­mals or wildlife; or the spe­cif­ic genet­ic, DNA descrip­tions of intro­duced wolves or spe­cif­ic reg­u­la­tion descrip­tors of what genet­ic make-up of a Canid qual­i­fies as “endan­gered” (i.e. a wolf) and what oth­er DNA make-up def­i­n­i­tions are for unpro­tect­ed preda­tors (i.e. a coy­ote) or domes­tic pri­vate prop­er­ty ani­mal (i.e. dogs.)  This entire skull­dug­gery is car­ried out by fed­er­al and state bureau­crats with impuni­ty and with­out any con­cern for account­abil­i­ty or responsibility.

-All of the above wolf effects are (just like the effects of suck­ers in the Kla­math, smelt in the Delta, sage grouse in the Upper Rock­ies, black bears and pan­thers in Flori­da, etc. etc.) caus­ing eco­nom­ic dis­rup­tions and ulti­mate­ly vacat­ing more and more of rur­al Amer­i­ca as jobs dis­ap­pear, local tax rev­enue and local gov­ern­ment pres­ence dwin­dles, and lifestyles are increas­ing­ly restrict­ed and prop­er­ty val­ues decrease accord­ing­ly.  Chil­dren no longer can play unat­tend­ed, dogs are in con­stant dan­ger, live­stock must be attend­ed 24/7, dis­eases and infec­tions become both more com­mon and unde­ni­able, old folks are wor­ried when check­ing mail at far-off mail­box­es and chil­dren must be trans­port­ed to and from school bus stops that are cages in which they must wait to be picked up and dropped off; all this where the wolves are estab­lished and that were the rea­sons, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, why our fore­fa­thers went to all the pre­cious time and expense to erad­i­cate the wolves through­out almost all of the increas­ing­ly set­tled land­scapes of the Low­er 48 States as they were set­tled and devel­oped for human benefit.

And the bot­tom line; the vacat­ed lands are pur­chased or eased by fed­er­al bureau­crats and their sur­ro­gates (TNC, your local “Land Trust”, the sweet-named “con­ser­va­tion” group, etc.) for a song uti­liz­ing fed­er­al or pass-through funds intend­ed to close the lands to any future human uses or pres­ence as men­tioned in UN AGENDA 21 documents.

How did we get here?

In the 1960’s/1970’s there was a nation­al orgy of fed­er­al “envi­ron­men­tal” leg­is­la­tion (ESA, MMPA, CWA, NEPA, EPA, AWA, Scenic Rivers, His­toric Areas); UN Con­ven­tions and Treaties (Endan­gered Species, Inter­na­tion­al Wet­lands, Inter­na­tion­al Places of Con­cern); expan­sion of US Bird Treaties and species they cov­er with new Nations; restric­tions on whal­ing; strength­en­ing of fed­er­al laws on eagles, cor­morants, hawks and owls; and expan­sion of fed­er­al pow­ers over fed­er­al­ly owned and con­trolled lands.  Fed­er­al bureau­crats and “con­ser­va­tion­ists” were all pleased and delight­ed as their pow­er and the fund­ing avail­able to them increased expo­nen­tial­ly.  Near­ly all of this orig­i­nat­ed under Pres­i­dent Nixon and a Demo­c­rat Con­gress while Pres­i­dent Ford only tin­kered with it and Pres­i­dent Carter built on it.  To those believ­ing that either Liberal/ Democ­rats or Conservative/Republicans are your friends in all this, I sug­gest that right down to the present, both polit­i­cal par­ties have built this house of cards while arguably at a dif­fer­ent pace.  One needs look no fur­ther than the recur­ring Earth Day hon­or­ing of (Saint?) Sen­a­tor Gay­lord Nel­son (D) and the envi­ron­men­tal pub­lic indif­fer­ence to and even hatred of Pres­i­dent Nixon ® to explain the way both par­ties vie for environmental/animal rights’ votes by Democ­rats remind­ing them of long-time con­cern and Repub­li­cans assur­ing them of sound sup­port for all envi­ron­men­tal “pro­tec­tions” cur­rent­ly in place.  Like Oba­macare and the Cold War; Envi­ron­men­tal Extrem­ism, we are told by “our” polit­i­cal lead­ers, is a fait accom­pli and will nev­er go away.

At this point I wish to con­vey to you the well-wish­es of a good friend, for­mer head of the Cal Fish & Game under Gov­er­nor Rea­gan, and for­mer Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Fish, Wildlife & Parks in the Inte­ri­or Depart­ment under Pres­i­dent Rea­gan.  Ray Arnett said to say hel­lo when he heard I was com­ing here to speak.

When Ray was placed in charge of the US Fish & Wildlife Ser­vice in the ear­ly 1980’s, all of my cowork­ers in USFWS went nuts. “Who did he think he was, telling us to reduce ‘our’ reg­u­la­tions, or to spend the funds we had more wise­ly before we asked for more?”  For sev­er­al years he was the butt of not only some pret­ty nasty jokes but very bit­ing and off-col­or com­ments in offices and on cof­fee breaks. The USFWS work­force was begin­ning to change in those days.  Pres­i­dent Carter and his Con­gress had passed an Equal Oppor­tu­ni­ty Law and as it was imple­ment­ed and fed­er­al boss­es had their large bonus­es tied to “hir­ing, pro­mot­ing and trans­fer­ring” per­cent­age quo­tas of “women and minori­ties” edu­ca­tion and job expe­ri­ence “require­ments” dimin­ished and dis­ap­peared.  This – and make no mis­take about this – opened the door for USFWS, USFS, and BLM to actu­al­ly begin “hir­ing, pro­mot­ing and trans­fer­ring” women, minori­ties and white males that were unal­ter­ably opposed to log­ging, graz­ing, hunt­ing, fish­ing, trap­ping and ANY use or man­age­ment of Renew­able Nat­ur­al Resources.  With­in a decade, Uni­ver­si­ty cur­ricu­lums and pro­fes­sors that were for­mer­ly For­est, Range and Wildlife Man­age­ment-ori­ent­ed shift­ed to Cli­mate Change, “Native Ecosys­tems” and the “Pro­tec­tion” and “Sav­ing” of all plants and ani­mals by restrict­ing human uses and human pres­ence.  But when Ray came to Wash­ing­ton, this “Green” inva­sion was just get­ting under­way: those 1980 bureau­crats just hat­ed him because he ques­tioned “our” grow­ing pow­er and had the audac­i­ty to tell us we were account­able to the Amer­i­can pub­lic.  Things would only get worse.

In the late 1980’s and ear­ly 1990’s USFWS intro­duced pen-raised “red” wolves (that were large­ly dog and coy­ote DNA rep­re­sen­ta­tives) into the Car­oli­nas.  They intro­duced pen-raised “Mex­i­can” wolves into Ari­zona and New Mex­i­co.  Both of these vari­eties or breeds (like Dober­man or Ger­man shep­herd) have had severe prob­lems from pub­lic hos­til­i­ty and dis­ap­pear­ances to cross-breed­ing with domes­tic (hunt­ing, shep­herd­ing, watch, pet, etc.) dogs and abun­dant coyotes.

Also in the 1990’s after a mori­bund (ESA-wise) HW Bush Pres­i­den­cy, Pres­i­dent Clin­ton took office with the first Repub­li­can House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in over 40 years.  New Speak­er of the House Gin­grich imme­di­ate­ly elim­i­nat­ed a super­flu­ous but pow­er­ful Mer­chant Marine and Fish­eries Com­mit­tee that was a hotbed of envi­ron­men­tal rad­i­cal­ism.  USFWS, USFS, BLM and NPS employ­ees were stunned.  The Chief Demo­c­rat Staff Direc­tor on the Com­mit­tee was out of a job.  In a mat­ter of weeks he popped up in USFWS in a new slot in charge of the Mil­lions of annu­al Excise Tax­es col­lect­ed for dis­tri­b­u­tion to state fish and wildlife pro­grams based in their size and the sale of hunt­ing and fish­ing licens­es.  He was under USFWS’ 2nd Lady Direc­tor (the 1st Lady Direc­tor had just died in office)

The Direc­tor and the Demo­c­rat were turned down for fund­ing wolf intro­duc­tions in Yel­low­stone Nation­al Park and for a new office in Cal­i­for­nia to work “clos­er” with West Coast environmental/animal rights orga­ni­za­tions.  In 1998, a Gen­er­al Account­ing Office (their name was lat­er changed to Gen­er­al ACCOUNTABILITY Office in line with how they were no longer made up of Accoun­tants like USFWS was no longer biol­o­gists or USFS made up of foresters or BLM made up of range man­agers) Audit sub­mit­ted to the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ Resources Com­mit­tee revealed the following:

In 1994 and 1995 USFWS stole, divert­ed, reas­signed, used — choose what­ev­er term you are com­fort­able with — $45 to 60 Mil­lion from the Excise Tax­es col­lect­ed sole­ly for state fish and wildlife pro­grams to 1.) Intro­duce wolves cap­tured in Cana­da into Yel­low­stone and on an Ida­ho Indi­an Reser­va­tion, 2.) Open the “envi­ron­men­tal” office in Cal­i­for­nia, and 3.) Use the left­over (about 15%) to give bonus­es to favored man­agers that had no right to such funds at all since they had no involve­ment in man­ag­ing those funds. This result­ed in:

–       The wolves you and your neigh­bors are faced with today.

–       The USFWS mak­ing the recent­ly hired (at a senior lev­el) child of a pow­er­ful Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor that they had recent­ly hired the office chief in the new Cal­i­for­nia office thus head­ing off any chal­lenge to the office.

–       State Fish and Wildlife Direc­tors (ALL of them) nev­er made a peep or even asked the US Con­gress to replace the stolen money!

Where are they today?

The Lady Direc­tor had numer­ous “secret” meet­ings with environmental/animal rights rad­i­cals while in office and after hours, this was while there was still the pub­lic illu­sion of state and fed­er­al wildlife agen­cies abid­ing by the US Con­sti­tu­tion and con­sid­er­ing humans as supe­ri­or to all ani­mals.  Since she had appoint­ed the rad­i­cal Defend­ers of Wildlife to be in charge (???) of wolf dam­age to live­stock com­pen­sa­tion (LOL) when she was USFWS Direc­tor, when she had to resign when Pres­i­dent Bush came into office, she could not go to work for DOW for 3 years.  By a stroke of luck the Nation­al Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion picked her up on a 3‑year, high-pay­ing posi­tion near her home.  Then after 2 years she was let go, report­ed­ly with a sig­nif­i­cant “gold­en para­chute” (i.e. sev­er­ance pack­age), but mir­a­cle of mir­a­cles, about a year lat­er she was select­ed for a top-dog job (cur­rent­ly Pres­i­dent) with the Defend­ers of Wildlife where she “serves” today.

The Demo­c­rat was made a “Sci­ence Advi­sor” under the Bush the younger Admin­is­tra­tion.  He kept a nice office in Head­quar­ters for 8 years and when Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was elect­ed, he was made Direc­tor of the USFWS where he still “serves” today. (“You take care of me and I will take care of you.”)

I was remind­ed of all this recent­ly when BLM unleashed snipers, assault weapons, dogs and tasers to kill cat­tle and intim­i­date a Neva­da ranch­er, all with­out a Court Order.  When we were then told the BLM Direc­tor was a high­ly expe­ri­enced and respect­ed (by every­one in BLM) pro­fes­sion­al, I was sur­prised I did not rec­og­nize his name as I had rid­den in a BLM car­pool in Wash­ing­ton for many years.  Imag­ine my sur­prise when I dis­cov­ered he was in his 30’s and had been a polit­i­cal advi­sor to US Sen­a­tor and Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Har­ry Reid!  Doing the math (sub­tract­ing the years of “advis­ing” and school­ing and get­ting select­ed and then appoint­ed and then con­firmed by the US Sen­ate plus becom­ing “respect­ed” by all in the BLM), why he must have grad­u­at­ed from col­lege and got­ten hired right out of grade school to get all of that “expe­ri­ence” and “respect.”

Liv­ing with wolves!

DANGERS-

Wolves have attacked, killed and eat­en humans through­out his­to­ry.  Ancient fables and para­bles intend­ed to warn chil­dren and oth­ers about the dan­gers of wolves to espe­cial­ly chil­dren, the injured and the elder­ly are borne out annu­al­ly in Asia where they killed over 30 vil­lagers in one recent year in India alone, as well as recent­ly a young jog­ging school­teacher in Alas­ka and a young mine work­er in Saskatchewan.  Injuries from wolves are numer­ous from a camper in my home state of Min­neso­ta only last sum­mer to numer­ous accounts in his­to­ries of the set­tle­ment of North Amer­i­ca.  Dogs are not only vul­ner­a­ble to wolf attacks even on a leash or in a yard; Euro­pean and North Amer­i­can research on hybrids is indi­cat­ing a com­mon “truce” in these wolf attacks when ANY wolf, coy­ote or dog bitch comes into “heat” and is not accom­pa­nied by a male to deter coitus from any wolf, coy­ote or dog encoun­ter­ing her.  This sur­pris­ing­ly wide­spread mix­ing of genet­ic mate­r­i­al and the sub­se­quent skew­ing of arbi­trary and unmen­tioned-in-reg­u­la­tions DNA Analy­sis Stan­dards cre­ates even more dis­cre­tionary enforce­ment author­i­ty and cit­i­zen intim­i­da­tion. Set­ting some mys­te­ri­ous “Stan­dard” and ask­ing for some vague “deci­sion” based on ques­tion­able “Stan­dards” for a pros­e­cu­tion is far dif­fer­ent than estab­lish­ing that it is Joe’s DNA on the weapon that killed Sam like on a TV show.  ANY wolf and ANY dog and ANY coy­ote can breed and pro­duce viable (capa­ble of repro­duc­ing) off­spring.  Are they there­fore ONE SPECIES?  It is laugh­able to read and hear all this local hoopla about “OR‑7” (that sounds sci­en­tif­ic) “look­ing” for a mate when he will “mate with any dog or coy­ote “in heat” that he encoun­ters and in addi­tion to his wan­der­ings, the smell that will set him off goes many miles giv­en the right wind and land­scape.  When is a wolf, no longer a wolf?  When its uncle is a Ger­man shep­herd?  When its Great Aunt was a coy­ote?  Can such ani­mals be said to have pre­dictable behav­ior or iden­ti­cal (to the par­ents) off­spring?  If not, what indeed makes any group a species?  When con­front­ed with a 30 to 100 lb. Canid (dog, coy­ote or wolf) attack­ing your dog or your live­stock prop­er­ty or fre­quent­ing your kids’ play area or the school bus stop or the path to the mail­box where grannie goes dai­ly to check the mail or that sud­den­ly appears in your rifle­scope as you try to kill the “coy­ote” that has been killing your sheep, is it:

A.)  A pro­tect­ed wolf for which you could go to prison or face a large fine or have your prop­er­ty seized and nev­er again be able to vote or even hold a gun?

B.)  An unpro­tect­ed coy­ote whose demise could bring you sat­is­fac­tion and the thanks of your neigh­bors, fam­i­ly and friends?

C.) An escaped or semi-wild dog owned by some­one who may sue you or take revenge on you for killing his dog?

D.) A recent mix of wolf, coy­ote and dog parentage?

E.)  Some mix of the fore­go­ing that only a lab test by who­ev­er the gov­ern­ment choos­es and pays could deter­mine your fate?

F.)  Under fed­er­al (wolf), state (coy­ote), or local (dog) jurisdiction?

Dis­eases-

Wolves, just like dogs and coy­otes can con­tract and spread a wide spec­trum of dead­ly dis­eases and infec­tions.  What makes wolves par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous dis­ease and infec­tious car­ri­ers is that they: 1.) wan­der rou­tine­ly over a much wider range than oth­er preda­tors; 2.) are curi­ous and thus eat, stick their nose in, mouth and roll in every man­ner of ani­mal mat­ter and detri­tus from fresh­ly-killed and recent­ly-killed to rot­ting mat­ter and things they find inter­est­ing; 3.) pick up, drop and car­ry the widest pos­si­ble vari­ety of fleas and ticks; 4.) move, eat and live in close prox­im­i­ty (like bats) with oth­ers such that what one gets they all get.

The fol­low­ing list of dis­eases car­ried by wolves, while not total­ly com­pre­hen­sive, rep­re­sents over 30 infec­tions that have been cred­it­ed to wolves.  Those that can infect humans are fol­lowed by an (H) and those that affect oth­er ani­mals are fol­lowed by an (OA).

1.            Rabies (H) (OA)

2.            Bru­cel­losis (H) (OA)

Hydatid Dis­ease (2):

3.            Echinococ­cus gran­u­lo­sis (H) (OA)

4.            Echinococ­cus mul­ti­loc­u­laris  (H) (OA)

5.            Anthrax (H) (OA)

6.            Encephali­tis (H) (OA)

7.            Great Lakes Fish Tape­worm (H) (OA)

8.            Small­pox (H) (OA)

9.            Mad Cow Disease(BSE) (OA) (H)

10.         Chron­ic Wast­ing Dis­ease (OA)

From Ticks (10) Car­ried by wolves:

11.         Ane­mia (H)

12.         Der­mato­sis (H)

13.         Tick paral­y­sis (H)

14.         Babesio­sis (H)

15.         Anaplas­mo­sis (H)

16.         Erlichia (H)

17.         E. Coast Fever (H)

18.         Relaps­ing Fever (H)

19.         Rocky Mtn. Spot­ted Fever (H)

20.         Lyme Dis­ease (H)

From Fleas (4) Car­ried by wolves:

21.         Plague (H)

22.         Bubon­ic Plague (H)

23.         Pneu­mon­ic Plague (H)

24.         Flea-Borne Typhus (H)

25.         Dis­tem­per (OA)

26.         Neospo­ra can­inum (OA)

27.         2 Types of Mange (H) (OA)

28.         GID (a dis­ease of wild and domes­tic sheep) (OA)

29.         Foot-and-Mouth (OA)

30.         Par­vo (OA)

Dam­ages-

Wolves are killing thou­sands of sheep annu­al­ly in Europe as I write this.  Wolves killed 70 sheep in one night, in one flock recent­ly in Ida­ho.  Wolves kill domes­tic calves and cows every­where and always.  Wolves dec­i­mate preg­nant moose, preg­nant deer and preg­nant elk and they are very effec­tive killers of the calves and fawns of these ani­mals that they wide­ly pre­fer.  Wolves kill dogs from hunt­ing dogs and watch dogs to herd­ing dogs and fam­i­ly pets; they kill them in yards, on leash­es, and in the field.  Wolves dec­i­mate rein­deer herds and domes­tic flocks and herds through­out Asia; plus they strike fear in rur­al peo­ple all too famil­iar with hun­gry wolves in win­ter or with pups in a near­by den or rabid wolves sud­den­ly appear­ing and wreak­ing tremen­dous hav­oc.  They have known of the wolf dis­eases for cen­turies and that is why dogs are not wel­come in Asian rur­al homes.  The promis­es to pro­vide “com­pen­sa­tion” by gov­ern­ment or the rad­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions when wolves arrive are hol­low excus­es intend­ed only to buy time for the wolves to get estab­lished.  Com­pen­sa­tion for live­stock is nev­er total due to the require­ments for “proof” and there is NEVER enough mon­ey ini­tial­ly and soon enough there is NO mon­ey from either state or fed­er­al or pri­vate cof­fers as the ini­tial “rush” of help­ing rur­al bump­kins rav­aged by wolves is for­got­ten for oth­er “feel-good” pro­grams du jour.  This same con scheme is being played out in Ger­many today as wolves infest the coun­try and are expect­ed to be every­where in five years or less.  Either suck it up or move!

The cur­rent true annu­al wolf dam­age costs to ani­mal prop­er­ty from wolves in Europe, Asia and North Amer­i­ca is eas­i­ly in the many, many Mil­lions of dol­lars.  There is no esti­mate of the annu­al Low­er 48 States dog deaths from wolves but it is undoubt­ed­ly in the many hun­dreds if not thou­sands.  With only one excep­tion, dogs killed by wolves are con­sid­ered the prob­lem of the dog own­er, peri­od.  Wildlife loss, espe­cial­ly to big game herds and hunt­ing is in the hun­dreds of mil­lions annu­al­ly includ­ing license rev­enue for DNR’s and dol­lar loss­es to local economies, sport­ing goods deal­ers, guides, motels, restau­rants, taxi­der­mists, Excise Tax­es for fish and wildlife pro­grams, proces­sors and many oth­er rur­al res­i­dents to whom such rev­enue is very important.

How do you esti­mate the dam­age to rur­al lifestyles?  In a rur­al Amer­i­ca where par­ents are loath to let chil­dren fish or hunt or hike or camp; where is the “domes­tic Tran­quil­i­ty” our Con­sti­tu­tion charged the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to “insure”?  In a rur­al Amer­i­ca where work­ers and par­ents are afraid to pro­tect their prop­er­ty for fear of dra­con­ian gov­ern­ment enforce­ment; where is the “gen­er­al Wel­fare” our Con­sti­tu­tion charged the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to “pro­mote”?  Where are the “Bless­ings of Lib­er­ty to our­selves and our Pos­ter­i­ty” charged to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in our Con­sti­tu­tion in a once-vibrant rur­al Amer­i­ca wracked by unem­ploy­ment and aban­doned ranch­es, farms, com­mu­ni­ties and dis­ap­pear­ing local governments?

COSTS-

Con­trol­ling estab­lished wolf pop­u­la­tions to pro­vide a lev­el of dam­ages and dan­gers tol­er­a­ble to Amer­i­cans liv­ing in the set­tled land­scapes of The Low­er 48 States is VERY expen­sive and nev­er-end­ing.  Wolves are wide-rang­ing and learn what to avoid, how to hide, and adopt new behav­ior as they are harassed.  Tak­ing 25 % or less (gen­er­al­ly speak­ing) annu­al­ly does exact­ly what big game hunt­ing har­vests do: it sim­ply sends few­er adults into the next year in bet­ter con­di­tion (less food com­pe­ti­tion) and fre­quent­ly stim­u­lates repro­duc­tion and sur­vival of the young there­by assur­ing as many or more indi­vid­u­als the fol­low­ing year. Con­trol of wolves caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant dam­age involves, as a rule of thumb, killing 60–75% of the wolves for 5+ years and then tak­ing 35–45% of the remain­der ever after.  Add in what we all know, that wolves move into food-rich envi­ron­ments from sur­round­ing areas and the mag­ni­tude and cost of the con­trol aspect becomes even more expen­sive and dif­fi­cult quick­ly.  Now think about this in an atmos­phere of NO HANDGUNS and impos­si­ble-to-obtain per­mits required for all guns (look to prim­i­tive Asian soci­eties or tight­ly con­trolled Russ­ian soci­eties and the annu­al death and injury tolls from wolves on UNARMED wolves they are forced to “live with”) and con­sid­er the rur­al Amer­i­ca you are leav­ing your chil­dren and grandchildren. .

Do not be fooled by “stud­ies” about his­toric guess­es about num­bers or dis­tri­b­u­tions of wolves, or cur­rent Nir­vanas like Isle Royale Nation­al Park in Lake Supe­ri­or.  That island sto­ry and all the romance biol­o­gy about pre-Euro­pean North Amer­i­ca reput­ed­ly demon­strat­ing that wolves decrease when their “prey” decreas­es is NOT applic­a­ble in The Low­er 48 States.  True, when moose almost dis­ap­pear on Isle Royale, the wolves decrease because there is no longer FOOD since there are no deer or oth­er large mam­mals on the island.  Remain­ing moose require too many calo­ries to find and kill and wolf inbreed­ing as food decreas­es, like inbreed­ing dogs from the same lit­ters, cre­ates few­er sur­viv­ing pups or able adults but The Low­er 48 States are no island!  Guess­es about pre-Euro­pean wolf pop­u­la­tion and range changes before Euro­peans began set­tling North Amer­i­ca are sim­ply guess­es most­ly by folks that have an agen­da to ful­fill and a pro­pa­gan­da sto­ry to cre­ate.  Today’s Low­er 48 States are a Cor­nu­copia of wolf food.  Cat­tle and Sheep v. Wolves will ALWAYS cre­ate a his­to­ry just like human war­fare. Wolves get used to fladry, they learn how to divert guard dogs and shep­herds, they quick­ly become noc­tur­nal, they learn to dig under or jump elec­tric fences, and they even kill your dog and then use your place more fre­quent­ly.  They go after moose, elk, and deer; and learn how, when and where to find them through­out the year.  They pre­fer the unborn and the young so when those ani­mals dwin­dle they can shift (like coy­otes) to prong­horns or (like cougars) to lamb­ing moun­tain sheep in high moun­tain mead­ows.  Like your dog they will get into your garbage and dump­sters in town and behind The Piz­za Hut along the high­way.  They will roam through your place at night look­ing for any­thing (like your dog and coy­otes they are omniv­o­rous) to eat and this rais­es more fre­quent sur­prise encoun­ters by kids and unarmed per­sons where watch­dogs or pets are no longer present.  They will always find food and to say they will not is either wish­ful think­ing or a lie.  As they do all this, expo­sure to the many dis­eases and infec­tions will increase not only for humans but for their live­stock and dogs as well.

Shoot­ing, trap­ping and snar­ing are dif­fi­cult to use con­tin­u­al­ly as wolves are very adap­tive and learn quick­ly because they often are mov­ing in groups and those that sur­vive LEARN.  Aer­i­al shoot­ing is effec­tive at cer­tain times in cer­tain weath­er and in cer­tain ter­rains but it is expen­sive with all man­ner of pur­pose­ly dif­fi­cult imped­i­ments placed by rad­i­cals and bureau­crats in laws and reg­u­la­tions.  Poi­sons are pro­hib­it­ed though they are effec­tive over time as demon­strat­ed by M‑44’s and coy­otes for decades.  The ques­tions of who does it and who pays are para­mount.  Hunters are not con­tin­u­ous­ly effec­tive and large ini­tial inter­est soon dwin­dles as hunters pay for a license and lose inter­est when they go long peri­ods with­out even see­ing a wolf.  Gov­ern­ment (fed­er­al and/or state) employ­ees are usu­al­ly the best when they spe­cial­ize in this activ­i­ty but they are expen­sive over time, and find­ing a sure and con­tin­u­ous fund­ing source is not real­is­tic giv­en the recent record of rad­i­cals get­ting politi­cians to restrict and elim­i­nate such pro­grams plus the deep hos­til­i­ty of the cur­rent gov­ern­ment bureau­cra­cies toward any such activity.

In per­haps the biggest para­dox of this affair, the rad­i­cals and their fed­er­al gov­ern­ment sur­ro­gates imposed wolves with ludi­crous­ly low tar­get pop­u­la­tions for each state they moved into.  Then, when the wolf pop­u­la­tions were 3 to 4 times the tar­get, they “returned wolf man­age­ment to the state.”  This was done with great fan­fare and cheer­ing, until real­i­ty set in.  If the state didn’t man­age wolves to lev­els and as the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment dic­tat­ed, fed­er­al con­trol would be rein­sti­tut­ed.  Count­ing wolves con­sis­tent­ly and with any accu­ra­cy is a hit-and-miss, “best esti­mate”, and “min­i­mum num­ber” mat­ter; and addi­tion­al­ly it is cost­ly.  The need for counts is vital because fed­er­al bureau­crats would glad­ly take back con­trol of wolves to please their “part­ners”.  Thus the law­suits and pro­pa­gan­da are based on unable-to-dis­prove lies about the wolves, their vic­tims, their impacts and the costs all this gen­er­ates to society.

There is also the mat­ter of law­suits.  Rad­i­cals are suing to force the fed­er­als to take back author­i­ty over wolves in Wyoming.  They are suing to pre­vent the use of dogs in Wis­con­sin to hunt wolves because it is “inhu­mane” for the dogs (these are the same Wis­con­sin dogs that for over two decades were being killed and maimed by wolves and NO ONE except their rur­al own­ers gave a hoot about!)  They are suing to pre­vent snar­ing and trap­ping.  They are suing to pre­vent har­vest quo­tas.  They are suing to chal­lenge wolf counts.  They are suing because of indi­vid­ual (“apex” this and wolf “social” struc­ture claims) wolf tak­ing by gov­ern­ment or a ranch­er or a hunter.  They are suing because of inad­e­quate enforce­ment to catch and “put away” who­ev­er killed “Willie” (they are fond of nam­ing or get­ting gov­ern­ment to name indi­vid­ual wolves or cer­tain packs with roman­tic human names to bol­ster their ani­mal rights agen­das.)  What is the cost to YOU?  You have to employ more state lawyers full time on this stuff.  Your state DNR/Fish and Wildlife have to count and mon­i­tor wolves by spe­cial­ists.  Your state bureau­crats have to enforce the laws and answer dam­age com­plaints and assuage res­i­dents and either live trap or kill indi­vid­ual wolves.  You have to do full-time pub­lic rela­tions about why there is no moose sea­son, and why we must live with wolves, and how wolf dis­ease threats are overblown, and how to keep dogs con­tained, and how there is no mon­ey for com­pen­sa­tion that was promised, and how it is your fault that wolves killed your live­stock, and how live­stock or dogs don’t “belong” where you live, and even why wolves fre­quent­ing where your kids play or wait for the school bus or where grand­ma has to walk to the mail­box is real­ly not a problem.

What you wind up with is:

-Your state fish and wildlife agency glad­ly divert­ing mon­ey from hunt­ing and fish­ing to wolves, this pleas­es the feds and the rad­i­cals whom the state folks believe will soon be the source of their employ­ment when hunt­ing, fish­ing and trap­ping are outlawed.

-Your state agency “fudg­ing” on big game num­bers due to “poor count­ing weath­er” or a bad win­ter, etc.

-Your state agency claim­ing more and more if they don’t get “more” mon­ey they will have to close that hatch­ery or that sea­son since they don’t have enough employees.

-Rad­i­cal groups increas­ing­ly appear­ing to “save” this or that wildlife (edu­ca­tion or research) project.

-Uni­ver­si­ty “research” con­firm­ing how wolves help this or that; how wolves are “desir­able” and “nec­es­sary”; and how an unman­aged envi­ron­ment is prefer­able to a man­aged envi­ron­ment.  – Think about that last one!

-High­ly pleased fed­er­al bureau­crats and fed­er­al politi­cians will­ing to give more “sup­port” (i.e. grants, jobs and recog­ni­tion) to state “coop­er­a­tors.”

-High­ly pleased wealthy rad­i­cals from The Defend­ers of Wildlife to the World Wildlife Fund that sim­i­lar­ly can favor state coop­er­a­tors with support.

This is a win/win for rad­i­cals (divert­ing hunt­ing funds from hunt­ing pro­grams to the bot­tom­less pit of wolf non-con­trol and non-man­age­ment); and a loss/loss for hunters, ranch­ers, local com­mu­ni­ties, local gov­ern­ments and Con­sti­tu­tion­al gov­ern­ment.  It is a clas­sic exam­ple of what Lenin planned when he observed that they (the Com­mu­nists) would hang the cap­i­tal­ists with the rope they bought from them.

WHAT MUST WE DO?

In his book, “Win­ning the Cul­ture War”, Dr. Peter Kreeft tells us, “To win any war, three things are nec­es­sary: Know that you are at war, know who your ene­my is, and know what strate­gies can defeat him.”

I believe you know that we are at war.  The fact that you are gath­ered here and are will­ing to pay for me to come here is proof of that.

I believe you know who your ene­my is:

-You can­not nego­ti­ate with those bureau­crats I men­tioned. But in truth, if you made me Pres­i­dent for 4 years and I replaced every­one one of them with peo­ple with your val­ues, the next Pres­i­dent could snap it right back to what you face today and make things worse and worse.

-You can­not “work with” the hunt­ing, ranch­ing, etc., lob­by groups in Wash­ing­ton.  Expect­ing them to be with you in a fight over wolves is like expect­ing the high school debat­ing team to be your back­up in a bar-fight or domes­tic call as a police­man.  They are nei­ther inclined nor trained to do it and if they tried they would only make things worse.

-You can­not “work with” those environmental/animal rights orga­ni­za­tions or the UN affil­i­ates.  They despise you and will con­tin­ue to do what­ev­er it takes to destroy (the right word) you and your fam­i­lies and your com­mu­ni­ties.  They cov­et your land and have all the respect for you that those Boko Haram ter­ror­ists have for those kid­napped Chris­t­ian girls, which is to say – NONE. This is not an exag­ger­a­tion.  This comes from one who has seen them up close and personal.

-You can no longer trust the major­i­ty of the “envi­ron­men­tal” research man­u­fac­tured in our Uni­ver­si­ties.  Like the hazy DNA-Species’ Spe­cif­ic Stan­dards, they are a house of cards con­struct­ed to imple­ment hid­den agen­das with gov­ern­ment mon­ey and gov­ern­ment coop­er­a­tion.  Addi­tion­al­ly, Uni­ver­si­ties, with few excep­tions, no longer pro­duce wildlife biol­o­gists, foresters and range man­agers despite those old titles on gov­ern­ment jobs.  They pro­duce ill-trained activists that would no more “man­age” renew­able nat­ur­al resources than a Quak­er would lead oth­er men in battle.

-You can­not expect any help from “your” state fish and wildlife agency.  They (from Iowa to Ore­gon to Ari­zona to Mary­land to Con­necti­cut and back to Min­neso­ta) have been cor­rupt­ed by fed­er­al influ­ence and infil­trat­ed (again the right word) by rad­i­cal-ori­ent­ed employ­ees.  They no longer answer to you but to the agen­das of those entities.

-You can­not seek redress from 90% of the cur­rent fed­er­al politi­cians.  Most would not alter much less sig­nif­i­cant­ly change the Endan­gered Species Act under any cir­cum­stances (as long as it is YOUR kid or dog or calf of elk hunt­ing, etc. being destroyed.)  The rest of them (with a few excep­tions) and BOTH PARTIES will admit to do no more than “tin­ker around the edges” of the ESA such as “increas­ing trans­paren­cy” or “expand­ing deci­sion-mak­ing process­es” or “includ­ing more ‘part­ners’”, etc., etc.  That is to say, NO CHANGE.

NOTHING will or can change as long as our Courts, our Leg­is­la­ture, and “We the Peo­ple” allow or accept the ter­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion of allow­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to say what ani­mals will go where.  While the juris­dic­tion over that mat­ter tra­di­tion­al­ly and Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly has been the respon­si­bil­i­ty of STATE gov­ern­ments, if the last 40 years have taught us any­thing it is that any­more, the Pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty for that deter­mi­na­tion should lie with LOCAL governments.

When I was young I believed a smart per­son should be able to tell oth­ers not only what must be done, but also how to do it.  Was I ever proud and stu­pid.  In old age I have come to real­ize (like advis­ing your son what he “should” be) that I can only sug­gest what I think is best and leave it to your deter­mi­na­tion to do what you think best.

What we are up against is a group of peo­ple that are prof­it­ing from our increas­ing mis­ery.  Just like when con­fronting Com­mu­nist ide­olo­gies dur­ing the Cold War, today we are led by peo­ple who tell us envi­ron­men­tal­ism like com­mu­nism can­not be changed and that our only hope is accom­mo­da­tion to a supe­ri­or force and an inevitable phi­los­o­phy.  One could eas­i­ly com­pare that to the cur­rent pol­i­cy in some quar­ters toward Islam­ic ter­ror­ism.  Who could have pre­dict­ed the Fall of the Berlin Wall?  How did that hap­pen?  Who know what lies ahead between Islam and the rest of the world?  For that mat­ter, who can depict a clear strat­e­gy to resolve our wolf dilemma?

The cur­rent abus­es under the ESA and all the seri­ous prece­dents it is breed­ing can­not and will not stand.  If it and oth­er abus­es from polit­i­cal use of the IRS and EPA seizure of juris­dic­tion over “all waters of the US” and a cen­tral gov­ern­ment sys­tem of tyran­ni­cal manip­u­la­tion of ener­gy and Con­sti­tu­tion­al rights con­tin­ue, we are approach­ing an abyss.  Either we change course or we will find our­selves where Our Found­ing Fathers found them­selves in 1776.  If you think what I am about to tell you

is sim­ply impos­si­ble, con­sid­er how:

-The Sovi­et Union fell due to a Pres­i­dent, a Pope and a Prime Min­is­ter doing some­thing.  None of them was elect­ed with the slight­est hope of bring­ing about the fall of the Sovi­et Union.  No one believed for years before they did it that it could be done or much less that it would ever hap­pen, but it did.  The com­mu­nist tyran­ny was basi­cal­ly no dif­fer­ent than the cen­tral government/environmentalism tyran­ny we are facing.

-The Nether­lands is faced with an impos­si­ble assim­i­la­tion of Moslems exist­ing in a bub­ble of “mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism” that threat­ens to destroy the Dutch peo­ple and their soci­ety.  They are con­sid­er­ing as we speak, a bill to for­mer­ly reject “mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism” and make all leg­is­la­tion express­ly serve “the Dutch peo­ple.”  We are sim­i­lar­ly fac­ing an inter­nal threat that has grown thanks in large part to our def­er­ence and naiveté.  If the Dutch can forth­right­ly con­front absorb­ing and not cod­dling Islam­ic immi­gra­tion and its atten­dant issues in the midst of an increas­ing­ly all-pow­er­ful Euro­pean Union gov­ern­ment, the ESA and its atten­dant cohorts in the US are man­age­able by deter­mined State and local populaces.

-Like grow­ing US gov­ern­ment wolf out­rages, the Euro­pean Union is cur­rent­ly requir­ing any­one par­tic­i­pat­ing in Wolf Pol­i­cy devel­op­ments to sign a doc­u­ment that they accept the pres­ence of wolves. US gov­ern­ment demands to accept glob­al warm­ing or cli­mate change as a fact that can only be met with accep­tance of vast new gov­ern­ment pow­ers and loss of more rights and free­doms is sim­i­lar in that gov­ern­ment dic­tates and gov­ern­ment whims will brook no objec­tions: they are in fact evolv­ing into dic­ta­tor­ships before our eyes.  The ESA is a very impor­tant cog in many gears tak­ing us in this wrong and intol­er­a­ble direction.

-A recent news item that crossed my desk told of a woman that recent­ly died or rabies from a wolf bite in a city in Myan­mar (Bur­ma.)  I asked myself if there is any dif­fer­ence between that woman and a school­boy in New Mex­i­co threat­ened by a wolf near a bus stop oth­er than one is dead and the oth­er waits now in a cage for the bus.  The answer, I told myself, is that the woman and her ances­tors have been liv­ing with that wolf and its ances­tors for cen­turies, while the wolves in the West, Upper Mid­west and South­east US were pur­pose­ly erad­i­cat­ed at great cost of time and trea­sure by free Amer­i­cans to build a human soci­ety where wolf dam­ages and hor­ri­ble deaths from rabies were no longer com­mon.  Since free Amer­i­cans have meek­ly and qui­et­ly accept­ed gov­ern­ment-intro­duced wolves to be forcibly placed back in those areas I felt regret that the dead Burmese lady had nev­er been giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to live in a wolf-free area and thus had nev­er known the free­dom and safe­ty pro­vid­ed in such areas.  On the oth­er hand, the Amer­i­cans accept­ing wolves that destroy their very ways of life after decades of know­ing the ben­e­fits of their right to deter­mine what ani­mals would or would not be tol­er­at­ed in their com­mu­ni­ties had both drunk the drink of free­dom and under­stood the ben­e­fits of self-deter­mi­na­tion and yet let them slip right through their fin­gers.  One could say the Burmese lady died before ever know­ing bet­ter, yet she was as free as she ever knew.  The Amer­i­cans who knew bet­ter yet tol­er­at­ed hav­ing their rights restrict­ed, now live more as sub­jects of tyran­ny than that woman in Bur­ma, killed by a wolf.  Can such Amer­i­cans reclaim their rights and the “domes­tic Tran­quil­i­ty” of their for­mer­ly pro­duc­tive set­tled land­scapes?  Only we can answer that!

Here are 5 things that must be done.  Whether they are done by some reform­ers swept into office by oth­er issues as Rea­gan was after Carter or some polit­i­cal Par­ty is forced to stand tall by a reform move­ment or some such oth­er phe­nom­e­non, these 5 things are vital if we are to con­tain the wolf prob­lem and many of the oth­er agen­das that it is tan­gled up in:

1.)  Repeal the Endan­gered Species Act.  Note how we suc­cess­ful­ly repealed Pro­hi­bi­tion that sim­i­lar­ly bred cor­rup­tion and caused great harm to Amer­i­can life.  Con­sid­er the cur­rent debate about whether we should repeal or amend Oba­macare and how the num­bers of politi­cians on each side of that issue would prob­a­bly be sim­i­lar to those repeal­ing or amend­ing the ESA if they were real­ly forced to take a side or be replaced. Do not be afraid.

2.)  Repeal the 17th Amend­ment.  In 1913, the 17th Amend­ment was passed.  It changed the way that US Sen­a­tors were appoint­ed from “cho­sen by the (sic State) Leg­is­la­ture there­of” to “elect­ed by the peo­ple there­of”.  While this sounds “demo­c­ra­t­ic” it was the begin­ning of the end for State’s Rights as envi­sioned in the 10thAmendment, “The pow­ers not del­e­gat­ed to the Unit­ed States by the Con­sti­tu­tion, nor pro­hib­it­ed by it to the States, are reserved to the States respec­tive­ly, or to the peo­ple.”  Ask your­self why state politi­cians and bureau­crats have become such door­mats for fed­er­al abus­es like the ESA?

A.)  US Sen­a­tors for the most part ignore rur­al Con­stituen­cies because they get elect­ed by urban vot­ing blocs.  When you are elect­ed and re-elect­ed by (unions, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, fem­i­nists, anti-gun advo­cates, new­ly-arrived immi­grants with immi­gra­tion prob­lems, minori­ties with desires for more gov­ern­ment largesse, etc.) these blocs, your sym­pa­thy for rur­al issues, the rights of rur­al Amer­i­cans not only leads you to ignore these cit­i­zens; you are sore­ly tempt­ed to abuse them fur­ther to please and main­tain urban vot­ers seek­ing their demise.

B.)  US Sen­a­tors today do NOT rep­re­sent their state; they rep­re­sent those vary­ing vot­ing coali­tions (most­ly urban) that elect and re-elect them.

C.) The Con­sti­tu­tion gives EACH State 2 Sen­a­tors because, whether it is Rhode Island or Texas, EACH State has two Sen­a­tors equal­ly wield­ing the awe­some pow­er of that small body AND Rat­i­fy­ing Treaties AND Con­firm­ing Judges and Appointees to high offices on behalf of Each State.  Why 2 equal­ly to each state? Because they were intend­ed to rep­re­sent EACH STATE and NOT vary­ing coali­tions they cre­ate and cater to.  In oth­er words they are sup­posed to rep­re­sent the STATE GOVERNMENT and that is who should appoint (or recall) them.

D.) Rur­al Amer­i­cans take note: US Sen­a­tors are, next to the Pres­i­dent under the cur­rent set-up, prac­ti­cal­ly bul­let proof when they per­pe­trate or ignore rur­al harms like ESA or EPA or wolves or gun con­trol schemes.  While US Con­gress­men are more vul­ner­a­ble to replace­ment by angry rur­al con­stituents, the more numer­ous urban Con­gress­men are most­ly igno­rant of or dis­mis­sive of rur­al prob­lems. State Gov­er­nors and State Leg­is­la­tors are even more vul­ner­a­ble to rur­al wrath so when the State Leg­is­la­ture appoints US Sen­a­tors that ignore or even sup­port such egre­gious things as wolves, a Gov­er­nor or State Leg­is­la­tors threat­ened with replace­ment by unit­ed rur­al vot­ers (in many states) can and will recall a US Sen­a­tor like too many today that act like one of those auto­crat­ic pow­dered-wig Mem­bers of King George’s Par­lia­ment that we reject­ed 225 years ago.

3.)  Elect State, Fed­er­al and Local Politi­cians that sup­port you.  It goes with­out say­ing that you should work hard to get com­mit­ted per­sons to run for gov­ern­ment offices.  You should vote for the good ones and work to defeat the bad ones.  Elect good Local offi­cials and then get the best to fill State offices and then select the best of them to go to Wash­ing­ton.  Nev­er for­get Local offi­cials are more respon­sive than State offi­cials and State offi­cials are more respon­sive than fed­er­al offi­cials. If you let some candidate’s promise to give you MORE of some­thing cloud your judg­ment or your vote; shame on you.

4.)  Reform State gov­ern­ment.  Elect state offi­cials that under­stand they serve YOU and YOUR Local gov­ern­ment.  They should pro­tect you and help you to lead free, fruit­ful and pro­duc­tive lives.  State offi­cials should pro­tect you from fed­er­al and oth­er threats.  State offi­cials should work WITH YOU in every­thing and not like far-off politi­cians or bureau­crats or urban Non-Gov­ern­ment Orga­ni­za­tions.  State gov­ern­ments should not allow fed­er­al bureau­crats to abuse Coun­ties and local com­mu­ni­ties any more than they should dump prob­lem cougars, coy­otes and bears willy-nil­ly in rur­al Coun­ties from urban precincts where the mys­te­ri­ous removal of such ani­mals to some remote “wilder­ness” helps to main­tain the fables and fic­ti­tious lies of rad­i­cals that lethal ani­mal con­trol and man­age­ment (preda­tor con­trol, dis­tri­b­u­tion and pop­u­la­tion con­trol, hunt­ing, trap­ping, etc.) “Aren’t nec­es­sary.”  State offi­cials should appoint agency heads (like your DNR/F&G) that respect local deci­sions and staffs the state agency with per­sons that treat rur­al res­i­dents with the same respect and def­er­ence as they do the urban residents.

5.)  Restore Local Government’s Author­i­ty, Role and Rev­enue.  After the last 4 decades of fed­er­al abuse and state ret­i­cence; Local com­mu­ni­ties and their gov­ern­ment should be the first and pri­ma­ry author­i­ty over what ani­mals and in what num­bers and dis­tri­b­u­tion are tol­er­at­ed in the Coun­ty.  If the Coun­ty wants to tol­er­ate elk hunt­ing up to a cer­tain lev­el, the state should man­age in line with that pur­pose.  If the Coun­ty wants to min­i­miz­er elk; dit­to.  Like­wise, if a Coun­ty wants wolves, so be it.  If a Coun­ty wants NO wolves with year-around shoot­ing, trap­ping, snar­ing and aer­i­al shoot­ing; so be that.  If a Coun­ty wants wolf dens cleaned out and closed and an own­er refus­es or the Coun­ty wants to elim­i­nate any remain­ing wolves and a landown­er refus­es, the Coun­ty should be able to hire a con­trac­tor to do it and then bill the landown­er and put a lien on the prop­er­ty until the bill is paid: wolves are like this­tles (nox­ious plants) in this regard.  The state should sup­port these things and not be an imped­i­ment to local desires that do not con­flict with the US or State Con­sti­tu­tion.  If the State Con­sti­tu­tion is in con­flict, push to amend it.  You don’t force cobras or pythons on urban dis­tricts and such urban dis­tricts should not have the where­with­al to force wolves on you. Recent years even sug­gest to me con­sid­er­ing Coun­ties equal­ly in State Leg­is­la­tures (State Sen­ate) based on Coun­ties just as the US Sen­ate is based on States.  Oth­er than that, I am at a loss about how to curb grow­ing rur­al oppres­sion by bank­rupt or cor­rupt cities des­per­ate­ly in need of more mon­ey as they con­tin­ue spend­ing to main­tain their his­toric pow­er struc­tures in the hands of the same cabals.

How you do these things are your busi­ness in your Coun­ty and State.  You do it in Wash­ing­ton by elect­ing and appoint­ing strong fed­er­al politi­cians. Give them a mis­sion and then hold them account­able.  The same goes for State and Coun­ty offi­cials.  Pub­li­cize and make known to all what is hap­pen­ing to your com­mu­ni­ty and your fam­i­lies and your lives.  Get teach­ers on your side or replace them.  Talk to friends, neigh­bors, cowork­ers and fam­i­ly about what is hap­pen­ing and what is need­ed.  You know what you can do best: do it.  There is no sil­ver bul­let and it takes each of us doing all we can, day in and day out.

As for me, I am remind­ed of the famous Roman Sen­a­tor Cato the Elder.  In the Sec­ond Cen­tu­ry before Christ, Romans were dom­i­nat­ed on the Mediter­ranean Sea by Carthage.  Carthage was both a threat and a great wor­ry to all Romans.  Dom­i­nance of the Mediter­ranean not only con­tained Rome, it made an attack by Carthage almost con­stant­ly pos­si­ble.  No one was sure if Carthage could be elim­i­nat­ed as a threat or how it could be done, but done it even­tu­al­ly was.  Up to the final and total destruc­tion of Carthage by Rome in 146 BC, Sen­a­tor Cato the Elder had for many years end­ed every address he made to the Roman Sen­ate with the cry, “Carthage must be destroyed!”

I there­fore end this talk with the cry, “The Endan­gered Species Act must be destroyed!”