"Science, Mythology, Hatred, and the Fate of the Gray Wolf"

Image source: My Barack Obama website

I have been posting for some time about the need to protect wolves in the Rocky Mountains. Today VERLYN KLINKENBORG has an editorial in The New York Times challenging the recent federal government decision to leave the protection of wolves in Montana and Idaho to state regulation, withdrawing federal protection of the populations there.

Klinkenborg writes:

C. L. Otter, the Republican governor of Idaho, has pledged “to continue our policy of responsibly managing wolves for a viable, sustainable population that can coexist with our ungulate herds, our livestock and our people.” The very first step in “responsibly managing” wolves will be a wolf hunt.

And Mr. Otter’s idea of coexistence between wolves and humans doesn’t bear examination. He has said he’d be the first in line for a wolf hunting license, and he has also said he favors reducing the wolf population in Idaho to 100, way below the current level of more than 800 and well below the number required by the state management plan.

When it comes to wolves, federal law has been protecting what is, fundamentally, a mythic species. And when it ceases protecting them, they will be exposed to the worst aspects of that myth — a deep, ancestral hostility to wolves based on ... nothing.

Wolves do not kill humans. They are responsible for a minuscule number of livestock deaths in the West — less than domestic dogs — and there are federal and state programs specifically designed to compensate ranchers who lose stock to wolves.

Comment: Sounds like we are putting the fox in charge of guarding the chicken coop. JAD