I have just read a book review of a book by Wayne Pacelle, the president of the United States Humane Society. I will allow the book’s title to go unmentioned as I have qualms about publicizing either the book or the author.
The review was written by Fred Barnes, the executive editor of the Weekly Standard. His fellow editor and the magazine are fanatical supporters of the political status quo in Washington; and fierce opponents of any challenges aiming to reconstitute the Republican Party into an opposition Party. When you recognize the narrow urban orientation of so many similar political pundits in Washington, just like the national media commentators and reportage from Fox to CNN and the WSJ to the NYT; and then add into it the commitment to maintaining the status quo; one is forced to consider how any reforms of all the hostile laws, regulations and bureaucracies that are destroying Rural America can ever be accomplished. Animal “rights” as practiced by Mr. Pacelle and his mega-rich cooperators are but one facet of the “endangered” laws, “wilderness” declarations, government land acquisitions and easements, expanding federal jurisdictions, expanding bureaucracies, public land closures and land management constrictions, disappearing state jurisdictions, romance biology about “native” ecosystems as raison d’etre (reason for being or existence) for new and more restrictive laws that are strangling Rural America like an ever-tightening necklace of cubic zirconia chips on a wet leather cord slowly drying and shrinking .
Despite my being dismissive of Fred Barnes’ understanding of rural matters from wild and domestic animal matters to property rights, rural economic losses and disappearing Local governments; much less his grasp of animal “rights”; I read the book review as a matter of curiosity of both a book by such a person and a review by such a person about something that affects Rural America and rural Americans.
One particular bit of propaganda caught my eye as Mr. Barnes’ review treated Mr. Pacelle as a modern blend of the Pied Piper of Hamlin and Francis of Assisi:
- “He has intervened to protect wolves—only 5,000 or so survive in the lower 48 states—and insists that they aren’t a threat to humans: “Of America’s big predators, wolves have proved among the least menacing—with no documented fatal attacks by healthy wild wolves on people in the lower forty-eight states in the last century.”
What is being said here and how truthful is it?
There are certainly far more than “5,000 wolves” “in the Lower 48 States but that is a niggling point not worth wasting your time while I explain it. Suffice it to say, wolves are increasing in numbers, in the total size of the areas they inhabit and in their densities in areas they have moved into.
It is a gross misrepresentation to describe all the current wolves (with the exception of a few hundred that did “survive” in Minnesota upon passage of the Endangered Species Act in the late 1960’s thanks to tolerant Minnesotans that lived with and controlled Minnesota wolves) as “surviving”. All of the wolves currently present in the Lower 48 States were forcibly imposed by federal fiat, federal force and federal chicanery from stole funding to distorted biology bought and paid for by federal funds. NO state had any say in or authority to do anything other than comply with whatever federal bureaucrats and federal courts directed them to do or not do concerning wolves. To describe the current and expanding wolf numbers and densities in the Lower 48 States as “surviving” is like Russia invading Poland and Hungary tomorrow and then propagandizing about how Russian culture had “survived” all those years of freedom and European cultural integration. Wolves did not “survive”; they were imposed by threat of force, intimidation and imprisonment without any say by Local communities, Local governments, State governments or the rural families trying to make a living and raise families where wolves are and will soon be.
Saying, “Of America’s big predators, wolves have proved among the least menacing”; is like asking us to believe that being conquered by Russia would be better than being conquered by Iran because Russia is “the least menacing”? Are we to accept mandated rattlesnakes because they are “the least menacing” compared to cobras or boa constrictors? Wolves; just like the more deadly, dangerous and destructive grizzly bear (another federally concocted and forcibly-imposed predator in “the Lower 48 States); are deadly, dangerous and destructive. Using the word “menacing” to describe either is like describing Al Qaeda as the Lakers and ISIS as a “JV Team”!
When our two worthies assert “with no documented fatal attacks by healthy wild wolves on people in the lower forty-eight states in the last century” it is important to skewer this romance biology canard that has had more sequels than those Frankenstein movies:
- ”No documented fatal attacks”? What about the two lady day-hikers in the Craters of the Moon National Park and were autopsied many Counties removed from where they were found and the results never released? What of the Wisconsin lady bar owner found partially dismembered in the woods and again the autopsy never released? Federal bureaucrats and state employee federal-wannabees are quite adept at smothering “documentation” from Benghazi and Lois Lerner to Fast and Furious and all those e-mail records lost in that fetid basement in New York. American history is replete with hundreds of reported (documentation was only available for a few because in early America reporting was limited; verification was non-existent; people disappeared all the time; and until surrounding land was settled and permanent residents with invested community obligations existed – few people cared enough to begin extirpating the wolves that threatened settlers and their families) wolf attacks and deaths in Indian villages, forts, travelers and early isolated settlers.
- “No documented fatal attacks by healthy wild wolves on people in the lower forty-eight states”? This is rich. Only five days ago, I was in a USFS campground on the North Shore of Lake Winnibigoshish in N Minnesota. About three years ago a young camper was grabbed on the head by a wolf as he was sleeping by his tent in that campground. Luckily the young man and his family drove the wolf off and he got off with many stitches on his scalp. State and federal (they are joined at the hip in some states) bureaucrats reportedly found the (?) wolf (they are common in the area) and upon autopsying the wolf and releasing the results (something we are too delicate to see regarding those ladies in Idaho or the one in Wisconsin) - VOILA! – the wolf had a “deformed brain” thereby enabling one more life (like a cat) for this canard about only “healthy wild wolves” being “menacing”. For the record, the news about the “deformed brain” of the wolf got media coverage on par with a Vikings victory in December.
- “In the last century” has all the gravitas of the music from Victory at Sea or those WWII documentaries so popular on the TV. From ancient times down to the current day, wolf attacks, wolf-caused fatalities and wolf destruction of livestock, desirable wildlife and rural “Tranquility” have occurred and been reported in the thousands. Children, old people, hunters, travelers, isolated residents and even a man running a chainsaw have died and been maimed by wolves with rabies or hungry, aggressive, protecting something or just plain surprised by someone inadvertently (the lady in Wisconsin?). During “the last century” these attacks have occurred unabated in Asia from India to Siberia and westward to Eastern Europe. Depending on wolf numbers, wolf control, wolf damage (spurring increased controls), food availability and associated factors, “documented” deaths are still as high as 30-50 or as low as 20 per year. In Alaska about six years ago a lady schoolteacher/jogger was run down, killed, dragged into the woods and partially consumed by wolves on the Alaskan Peninsula. Shortly before that a Saskatchewan college student was attacked and killed by wolves while hiking in the snow. A Canadian singer was attacked and killed by several coyotes in an Eastern Canada Park; something far more unlikely than being attacked and killed by their bigger and far more dangerous and aggressive wolf cousins.
But what of the vaunted “last century” “in the lower forty-eight states”? Wolves were and are spreading into new habitats – habitats never before available to babied, coddled and forcibly-protected wolves. Habitats full of calves and lambs. Habitats full of dumb and vulnerable moose, deer and elk. Habitats full of garbage cans, Dempsey dumpsters and dogs (wolves eat dogs). Habitats full of towns and rural buildings offering all manner of food to nocturnal visitors like wolves that cover many miles in a 24-hour period. Habitats that seem to always offer new areas as packs increase and young and vanquished wolves seek new territories. Habitats full of people that never shoot or trap or snare or harass wolves thereby making wolf life less stressful. In short wolves are living the good life and their destructive nature has actually been minimalized, but it is only napping.
But what happens as deer, moose and elk disappear? What happens when livestock operations go out of business? What happens as new territories to explore disappear? What happens when the dumpsters and garbage cans are all made by Mosler and Hamilton Safe?
Wolves will (just like coyotes) probe suburban and then urban areas by night. Wolves will be hungry and less likely to retreat than their smaller coyote cousins. Wolves will (just like dogs and coyotes) learn to eat and find anything to eat. As this is taking place, “Lower 48 States wolves” will be bumping up against all manner of ceilings just like their Asian and North America (sans “the Lower 48 States) cousins have done for “centuries” – then we can expect to begin seeing the “good old days” before “the Lower 48 states” became settled landscapes complete with the wolf attacks, deaths and disappearances that Messer’s Barnes and Pacelle dismiss so blithely in their book and book review.
“The last century” in the Lower 48 States” was and remains an anomaly. 150 years ago, all Americans spent rare cash and time to eradicate wolves because of their inarguable destruction of property and danger to human life and social comity. “The last century” is merely a modern smokescreen for our urban-oriented and rural-ignorant “betters” in the Washington “establishment” to act like Soviet Commissars whether they are foisting wolves on us as they scheme to disarm us or as they dictate what our religious teachings are to be as they secretly place thousands of “refugees” in our midst from lands where the residents largely hate and kill people like us as I write.
This sort of factual distortion and propagandizing is saturating our schools thanks to profitable self-promotion by lobbyists like Pacelle, his rich “partners” and urban worthies like Barnes and his associates. They are stealing our children spreading this biolitical garbage as surely as the Pied Piper of legend stole those kids that disappeared in the old fable. They have corrupted our elected officials and they are the main wall and anchor around what we call “the establishment”. They are the original “why can’t we get along” crowd after they incrementally get what they want and rest to plot their next step. They are the creators of the Tammany Hall (D-R) political gang in Washington made up of both Parties that is dragging far more than rural America down the rabbit hole. Whether you call it animal “welfare” or animal “rights”; the soft word “welfare” is merely a precursor, a silk glove over the iron fist of animal “rights” that surely lies ahead if this isn’t stopped.
I can only guess that, in addition to a very lucrative business, Pacelle is overjoyed about the disappearance of hunters, fishermen, trappers, ranchers, dog owners, meat eaters, animal users and rural American property owners in general (except for himself and his “partners” of course). The Fred Barnes’ of the world are most likely overjoyed about being part of something “good” and using the status quo to make a better world as appreciated by the majority that imagines things that “do not affect their style of living” (to quote an old bachelor Mainer quoted long ago in National Geographic when asked what he thought about people trying to outlaw trapping).
But, how you stop any of this with rioting urban minorities, hateful Middle Eastern “refugees” (one such kid tried to whack me with a grocery cart in the vegetable aisle two days ago) cropping up overnight, gun control, government record burning without consequence and attacks on police, etc. – is beyond me.
If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.
Jim Beers is a retired US Fish and Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.
Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting.
You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net
No comments:
Post a Comment