Endangered Wolves Decision Symbolizes Green Costs of Democrats' Western Support
By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
One of the joys of watching Barack Obama's administration (if you don't have too much skin in the game) is seeing how it navigates among the various interest groups it courted, and promises it made, during the fall campaign. Now that he is in office, choices must be made.
In Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar's decision to stick with a controversial Bush administration policy, and take wolves off the endangered species list in Montana and Idaho and other Rocky Mountain states, some of Audacity's supporters won, and others lost.
The overarching theme of this particular tale is the Democratic Party's avowed intent and considerable efforts to be competitive in the West. It earned the Democrats a passel of Electoral College votes last fall, cheering liberals across the land. But it comes with some costs, as environmentalists discovered with the wolf decision.
Though pretty green by regional standards, Western Democrats like Salazar are not extremists. They know how to weigh the competing interests of energy firms, ski resorts, environmental groups, animal lovers, ranchers and the outdoors industry. You can't cheer, as a lefty blogger, when Democrats are competitive in the northern Rockies, without acknowledging there will be trade-offs in environmental policy.
And so the enviro groups and wildlife folks got stiffed by Salazar's decision to stick with the recommendations of the Interior Department scientists, and consign the fate of the (choose one: a) cute, b) livestock killing) wolves to state officials.
There's the other rub. You can't cheer, as a liberal, when Audacity announces that he's going to rid science of federal political and religious meddling without admitting that there will be times—as with the grey wolves—when the scientists come back with a verdict you won't like. Science is science, whether it's stem cells, or wolves.
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Tags: environment | animals | Obama administration
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Reader Comments
Wolves
I have hunted and tramped in a lot of Idaho backcountry for over 40 years. Wolves were never endangered here. Long before some environmentlists from back East thought to meddle with the mountain states, you could always find wolves in the backcountry. These are native wolves for the most part, not Canadian imports. Some Canadian wolves do wander south.
Because of these imports and no population control, we now have a problem with overpopulation of the wolves. Ranchers and people who live in the areas outside of towns and cities are encounting more wolves. Conflicts are now more likely to occur between people and these wolves.
I am a firm believer in protecting and improving the environment. But only when we actually can do something without causing other problems in the environment and not so arrogantly trampling on the rights of others. That taxpayer money spent on bringing nonnative wolves to the mountain states could have been spent more wisely. Projects that were thought out more thoroughly like helping the bald eagles make a come back are more bang for your buck and good for the environment, too.
Yuppies and Their Wolves
Its no secret that yuppies want their wolves crawling all over the west. Something less widely known is the fact that more and more sportsmen, the kind willing to fight for their rights, who won't give up their guns till they're in the grave, also want wolves all over the west again.
The kind who are sick of seeing public land grazed to waste, and would take a couple elk quarters over a side of beef any day. I spend four months out of the year on FS land, and I'm sick of the public being cut out of the public land equation.
I used to have the highest regard for ranchers in my younger days. But the more I learn about how the west was twisted and maimed for the sake of the uncompromising livestock industry, and the more I see the same level of ignorance today that tries to tell me that my God made a mistake by creating predators, the less respect I have for the rancher. They were designed to gaurd the land from overgrazing- cattle, bison, elk, deer, sheep: no exceptions. Time to let them do their job.
Its time to right that wrong.
Endangered Wolves
Salazar's decision was political, not scientific. He could not have reviewed such a complex issue in just a few weeks. The Northern Rockies contain three geograhically and biologically seperate populations of wolves, each with hundreds of animals, not the 1,500 Salazar claimed.
If you want science, here is some science.
VonHoldt and her colleagues, in their recent thorough study of the genetics of 500 wolves, has demonstrated unequivcally that there is no gene flow between these regions.
Conservation scientists have stated repeatedly that thousands, not hundreds of animals are necessary to maintain a biologically viable population. Michael Soule, the dean of Conservation Biology, has written that viable populations would be "several thousand or larger."
There is the science.
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