Wolves 2015 -
EUROPE
Wolves are reaching dense populations from Finland to Spain and Italy.
French shepherds verified nearly 10,000 sheep killed last year in France and large demonstrations by the Eiffel Tower in Paris where dead sheep were dumped before government building have taken place.
Italian shepherds are identified by WWII Enfields slung over their shoulder as they tend their sheep.
Spanish shepherds are devastated by losses to wolves.
Easter Europeans and Finns are being continually infested by wolves expanding westward from dense Russian wolf populations.
Dogs are being killed in large but downplayed numbers.
Shepherds are going out of business to uncertain futures with no prospects of them or their sheep being replaced.
Shepherd’s and their families report alarming rates of stress and mental problems affecting their communities in many ways.
Wolf hybridization with dogs has been and continues to be far more widespread than imagines as DNA analyses are conducted.
Wolf packs were attracted to the presence of human remains at the scene of the recent Lufthansa air crash and had to be harassed by police guards.
National governments (like US States) claim they are helpless because the European Union (EU) government in Brussels (like the US federal government in Washington, DC) protects the wolves and bears from controls, management and hunting except in exceptional circumstances.
Environmental and animal rights organizations are entrenched with government “partners” (the same ones found in the US); rich, famous and urban worthies from actresses and politicians to retirees and students clamor for the wolves “out there”.
Donations to radical groups and urban political support for worshipping wolves remain strong.
English and Scottish radicals are pressing for wolf restoration in Scotland from which they will spread like the wolves from Yellowstone.
Hybridization between wolves and dogs is very common in Europe and the expanding occurrences of such interbreeding are very likely leading toward the extinction of pure wolves. However, like human deaths from wolves in the US and other negative wolf effects like disease, the extent of livestock destruction and the loss of hunting opportunities and hunting revenue; European wolf/dog hybridization facts are denied, go undocumented and are not covered or explained in the news media.
Like in the US, hidden agendas and intrigues abound. Last month I was invited to speak in Germany before a “coalition of wealthy German Hunters” about wolves in the US based partially on my US government experience opposing an EU move to destroy the international fur market and trapping 17 years ago. I was tasked with suggesting some solutions to this European problem that is (like in the US) reducing hunting opportunities, big game herds and animal husbandry in Europe (just like in the US). Shortly before the Conference, I found out that the real sponsors of the Conference were the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). These two international environmental extremist (anti-private property/anti-wildlife management and use/anti animal husbandry) organizations are fellow travelers of the Defenders of Wildlife, Humane Society of the US, and PETA et al. My speaking at their conference would have been like delivering a Christian sermon in a Mosque. Something I avoid as I discovered the hard way years ago when opposing EU efforts to destroy the fur market and trapping as a US Fish & Wildlife Service employee. I withdrew from the Conference when I found out. While I had enthusiastically looked forward to participating in that conference and had even begun formulating my paper, I learned long ago that attempting to seek solutions when such groups are in charge is a futile effort. Their agenda is to discredit persons like me, not to engage in honest dialogue in search of solutions. This sort of subterfuge and deceptiveness is typical of the lying and propaganda (think wolves as disease vectors) surrounding wolves in the US for the past 3 decades by such international groups and their’ American counterparts.
ASIA
Wolves in
Northern India are widespread. Death and injuries to children and the elderly
are common, just like human deaths from cobras and tigers from nearby
“Sanctuaries” are tolerated by government as international funding flows into
the country and the only ones harmed (like the US??) are poor, rural people
viewed socially as at the bottom of the ladder.
The “stans” (meaning, “the place of”) like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan (with a very robust wolf population), Uzbekistan et al support wolves in varying numbers depending on plant cover like deserts; forests; food availability like sheep, goats and wildlife; and the availability of guns for local villagers, shepherds and other rural residents .
Chechnya, Georgia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia are saturated with wolves.
Siberia has wolves from end to end.
N. China and Mongolia have lots of wolves but, like in Mexico, Arizona and New Mexico they travel singly or in small groups in that semi-arid, open country where food is scarce and native people often hunt them with large eagles from horseback.
In all of the above, citizen protection or reasonable control of wolves are frustrated by remote and non-caring governments, lack of both rural political power and gun availability for those living with wolves. Periodic crash wolf control efforts by offering large bounties, or providing temporary government guns and government hunters (all of which tend to be ineffective and temporary placeboes) occur after the not uncommon outbreaks of human deaths from wolves or unsustainable losses of livestock to wolves.
Despite their comparative “backwardness” compared to a “developed” nation like the US, Asians are almost universally committed to keeping dogs out of homes and of cleaning homes rather thoroughly if a dog gets in. They have been aware for centuries of the very dangerous diseases and infections that dogs and wolves carry and are exposed to; and how they can infect whole families and even villages. Simultaneously, Americans and their veterinarians deny or bury their heads in the sands about such matters being deceptively politically correct about wolves and thus Americans still unwittingly let dogs sleep with children and lick them in areas where wolves frequent yards, playgrounds and walking trails.
Concerns about hybridization between wolves and dogs are little noted or of concern in Asia. Rural Asians of all stripes realize hybridization happens, but why it should matter to them whether the Canid that just killed ten sheep and bit the shepherd and his dog and probably infected both with rabies; is ½ dog or ¾ wolf? Such trivia is no more than something they can only laugh about as being important only to those with too much time on their hands. As a Siberian biologist once remarked to me while shaking his head during a conversation about wolves in the US many years ago, “how did you ever win the Cold War?”
The “stans” (meaning, “the place of”) like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan (with a very robust wolf population), Uzbekistan et al support wolves in varying numbers depending on plant cover like deserts; forests; food availability like sheep, goats and wildlife; and the availability of guns for local villagers, shepherds and other rural residents .
Chechnya, Georgia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia are saturated with wolves.
Siberia has wolves from end to end.
N. China and Mongolia have lots of wolves but, like in Mexico, Arizona and New Mexico they travel singly or in small groups in that semi-arid, open country where food is scarce and native people often hunt them with large eagles from horseback.
In all of the above, citizen protection or reasonable control of wolves are frustrated by remote and non-caring governments, lack of both rural political power and gun availability for those living with wolves. Periodic crash wolf control efforts by offering large bounties, or providing temporary government guns and government hunters (all of which tend to be ineffective and temporary placeboes) occur after the not uncommon outbreaks of human deaths from wolves or unsustainable losses of livestock to wolves.
Despite their comparative “backwardness” compared to a “developed” nation like the US, Asians are almost universally committed to keeping dogs out of homes and of cleaning homes rather thoroughly if a dog gets in. They have been aware for centuries of the very dangerous diseases and infections that dogs and wolves carry and are exposed to; and how they can infect whole families and even villages. Simultaneously, Americans and their veterinarians deny or bury their heads in the sands about such matters being deceptively politically correct about wolves and thus Americans still unwittingly let dogs sleep with children and lick them in areas where wolves frequent yards, playgrounds and walking trails.
Concerns about hybridization between wolves and dogs are little noted or of concern in Asia. Rural Asians of all stripes realize hybridization happens, but why it should matter to them whether the Canid that just killed ten sheep and bit the shepherd and his dog and probably infected both with rabies; is ½ dog or ¾ wolf? Such trivia is no more than something they can only laugh about as being important only to those with too much time on their hands. As a Siberian biologist once remarked to me while shaking his head during a conversation about wolves in the US many years ago, “how did you ever win the Cold War?”
AUSTRALIA
Australia
does not have wolves but they do have dingoes. Dingoes are medium-sized wild
dogs that have inhabited that continent for thousands of years. They travel in
groups, they kill mammals of all sizes including livestock like sheep,
kangaroos and others, and they attack and often kill unattended children (at
least 2 in the last 10 years).
Dingoes are of such concern that a 3500 mile fence has been maintained for decades to, ostensibly, keep dingoes out of the SE ¼ of the continent to protect sheep and make those settled landscapes reasonably safe for people and their animals.
Dingoes; like coyotes, dogs and wolves; interbreed readily when possible and they all, in whatever mix, produce viable offspring that can then pass on the genes of the hybridizing parents to succeeding generations. In other words, wolf/dingo/coyote/dog hybrids produce offspring that are equivalent to Doberman/Golden Retriever/Pointer/St. Bernard puppies of mixed parentage sharing the colors, size, features and temperaments of the parents in varying percentages. Remember this the next time you are told how “important” the “red” wolf or the “Mexican” wolf are to Mother Nature.
Australia is mimicking the US and Europe in beginning to publish “science” (what I call “Romance Biology”) that claims dingoes benefit grass, lizards, water quality and even fend off climate change, much like US wolves are reputed to “change rivers”. Also, like Europe, DNA analyses availability is revealing a far greater hybridization between dogs and dingoes than previously imagined. Whole, large areas of Australia are now colored as being primarily or all, dingo/dog hybrids.
The Australian central government has vacillated between banning all guns and permitting some guns as well as whether to respond to urban imaginings about wildlife or to support rural Australians struggling with the everyday presence of animals such as dingoes and dingo/dog hybrids. The Australian State governments have little input into these matters; therefore the rural disadvantage in overall political representation, as in the USA, points to a growing disadvantage for rural Australians over time as the central government responds to the (urban) majority and marginalizes the (rural) minority (again just like in the US and Europe).
Dingoes are of such concern that a 3500 mile fence has been maintained for decades to, ostensibly, keep dingoes out of the SE ¼ of the continent to protect sheep and make those settled landscapes reasonably safe for people and their animals.
Dingoes; like coyotes, dogs and wolves; interbreed readily when possible and they all, in whatever mix, produce viable offspring that can then pass on the genes of the hybridizing parents to succeeding generations. In other words, wolf/dingo/coyote/dog hybrids produce offspring that are equivalent to Doberman/Golden Retriever/Pointer/St. Bernard puppies of mixed parentage sharing the colors, size, features and temperaments of the parents in varying percentages. Remember this the next time you are told how “important” the “red” wolf or the “Mexican” wolf are to Mother Nature.
Australia is mimicking the US and Europe in beginning to publish “science” (what I call “Romance Biology”) that claims dingoes benefit grass, lizards, water quality and even fend off climate change, much like US wolves are reputed to “change rivers”. Also, like Europe, DNA analyses availability is revealing a far greater hybridization between dogs and dingoes than previously imagined. Whole, large areas of Australia are now colored as being primarily or all, dingo/dog hybrids.
The Australian central government has vacillated between banning all guns and permitting some guns as well as whether to respond to urban imaginings about wildlife or to support rural Australians struggling with the everyday presence of animals such as dingoes and dingo/dog hybrids. The Australian State governments have little input into these matters; therefore the rural disadvantage in overall political representation, as in the USA, points to a growing disadvantage for rural Australians over time as the central government responds to the (urban) majority and marginalizes the (rural) minority (again just like in the US and Europe).
NORTH AMERICA
Canada
has a robust wolf population. While most rural Canadians support wolf controls
when human attacks or livestock and big game losses begin to mount, the strong
Provincial government power and the existence of mostly rural and relatively
wealthy Provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Manitoba
frustrates many urban attempts to impose fantasy wolf values on rural communities
that know what wolves, especially too many, can do to human tranquility,
livestock, big game, dogs, the health of humans, and wildlife exposed to
wolves.
Canadian First People or Native People share in this basic understanding and generally neither oppose wolf controls nor work with radicals to undermine sensible wolf controls. This contrasts with the USA where tribal lands have been used as federal wolf release points in states opposing the releases or in Minnesota where tribal lands prohibit any wolf management.
In such matters, the central or federal government of Canada has not manufactured for itself, as in the US, a role of taking property or dictating what animals will be where to the detriment and disregard of rural people and rural communities. This has remained an understood responsibility of Provincial governments that have proven more protective of such prerogatives than their US State counterparts in recent years.
Alaska has robust wolf populations. Periodically, either a decline in big game (especially the highly valued moose) or human attacks will generate more robust wolf controls than the ongoing and persistent management of wolves both statewide and where complaints or damages require narrowly construed controls. Alaskan wolves have so far evaded the faux “honor” or claim to be “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act. Alaskan wolf management is therefore a constant target for American environmental/animal rights radical groups working through the federal bureaucracies that they, for all practical purposes, control. Never-ending lawsuits and threats making specious claims and suing about wolf controls are grist for more than one lawyer’s career. Their most ominous moves however, involve an always receptive federal political/bureaucracy that constantly lusts for more power, votes, contributions, support and increased budgets that result from “more” responsibilities as they define them. All of this is available to federal politicians seeking votes, bureaucrats seeking power and radical groups seeking influence and money by beating up on Alaskans who have few votes and little power in the National scene and whose land most urban Americans view like Yellowstone, that is a Disneyesque National Park they all own and have every right to tell people there how to live. In one very real sense, Alaska relates to the federal government like rural Illinois residents living in the shadow of Chicago or rural Minnesotans living in the shadow of the Twin Cities.
Alaska and Alaskans are constantly threatened by federal actions like threats to outlaw aerial shooting (a very efficient control method); dark-of-the-night Wilderness Declarations Orders from the White House and other federal land closures (recently for federal political benefit or as a diversion from other federal matters) to, among other things, impede wolf control; and the rapacious actions of federal elected officials (ironically sworn to uphold the US Constitution) to ban and confiscate all guns everywhere. This latter is of particular importance to rural Alaskans living isolated lives in often perilous circumstances.
Canadian First People or Native People share in this basic understanding and generally neither oppose wolf controls nor work with radicals to undermine sensible wolf controls. This contrasts with the USA where tribal lands have been used as federal wolf release points in states opposing the releases or in Minnesota where tribal lands prohibit any wolf management.
In such matters, the central or federal government of Canada has not manufactured for itself, as in the US, a role of taking property or dictating what animals will be where to the detriment and disregard of rural people and rural communities. This has remained an understood responsibility of Provincial governments that have proven more protective of such prerogatives than their US State counterparts in recent years.
Alaska has robust wolf populations. Periodically, either a decline in big game (especially the highly valued moose) or human attacks will generate more robust wolf controls than the ongoing and persistent management of wolves both statewide and where complaints or damages require narrowly construed controls. Alaskan wolves have so far evaded the faux “honor” or claim to be “endangered” under the Endangered Species Act. Alaskan wolf management is therefore a constant target for American environmental/animal rights radical groups working through the federal bureaucracies that they, for all practical purposes, control. Never-ending lawsuits and threats making specious claims and suing about wolf controls are grist for more than one lawyer’s career. Their most ominous moves however, involve an always receptive federal political/bureaucracy that constantly lusts for more power, votes, contributions, support and increased budgets that result from “more” responsibilities as they define them. All of this is available to federal politicians seeking votes, bureaucrats seeking power and radical groups seeking influence and money by beating up on Alaskans who have few votes and little power in the National scene and whose land most urban Americans view like Yellowstone, that is a Disneyesque National Park they all own and have every right to tell people there how to live. In one very real sense, Alaska relates to the federal government like rural Illinois residents living in the shadow of Chicago or rural Minnesotans living in the shadow of the Twin Cities.
Alaska and Alaskans are constantly threatened by federal actions like threats to outlaw aerial shooting (a very efficient control method); dark-of-the-night Wilderness Declarations Orders from the White House and other federal land closures (recently for federal political benefit or as a diversion from other federal matters) to, among other things, impede wolf control; and the rapacious actions of federal elected officials (ironically sworn to uphold the US Constitution) to ban and confiscate all guns everywhere. This latter is of particular importance to rural Alaskans living isolated lives in often perilous circumstances.
LOWER 48 STATES
Great
Lakes States are hosting dense and expanding wolf populations across the
Northern halves of Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
The moose on Isle Royale National Park, a large island in Lake Superior, recently reached the lowest levels in decades and the wolves that came to the island after a long walk over ice in the 1950’s have likewise become nearly extinct on the island once again due to a lack of wolf food and wolf inbreeding.
Minnesota Moose hunting has been closed for several years now for lack of moose that “biologists” blame on ticks and global warming.
Minnesota and Wisconsin deer kills and deer licenses have been and are plummeting. Biologists and DNR supporters blame weather, past kill distortions and poor census conditions. As with moose, high wolf numbers have, of necessity shifted to deer where they are additive to the other deer mortality factors at work. Wolves need to eat and when the moose decrease, wolves must shift to deer, cattle and dogs or starve. The results are reduced deer and moose herds and reduced or no moose and deer hunting. Like pheasant hunting and walleye fishing; the future is not bright for moose and deer hunting.
Wolves have and are taking a high toll on dogs across N Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where deer have also declined and rural animosity toward wolves’ mirrors N Minnesota and Wisconsin rural attitudes. Hybridization is widespread with dogs and coyotes but the implications of controlling coyotes and owning dogs and protecting wolves as all 3 wreak rural havoc or snuggle in at night with the kids while looking so much alike that only some remote government “laboratory” employing government-paid technicians utilizing government-approved DNA standards is not only downplayed but objectors to the entire affair are vilified like racists or extremists that refuse to bake cakes for same-sex weddings.
Wolves have crossed into the Lower Peninsula of Michigan where they are increasing. Wolves are trickling down the Mississippi River valley into Iowa, Missouri and overland into N Illinois and Indiana. When they reach S Illinois or S Indiana, the substantial woodland connections S, SE and SW will provide cover and food for a wolf breakout into the old Confederacy to do what the “red” wolf was released to do but has failed to do by the same federal overlords and radical groups. The difference will eventually be the continuing influx of wolves from the North into the South (shades of the Civil War) much like Minnesota’s persistent flow and influx of wolves from the woodlands of Manitoba and Ontario.
Currently a judge took away the vaunted “state management of wolves” that like “compensation” is only another lie with a twist in that states had to manage wolves just like the feds and the urban American public demanded AND PAY THE BILL as well. The feds posture throughout was creating the illusion of helping the states to be granted wolf “management” while they colluded with the very radicals that sue and will never be satisfied by any wolf management. This is little more than a warning shot to state bureaucrats and rural residents that they no longer have ANY say and in the future they better go along or simply be swept aside.
The State wildlife agencies around the Great Lakes represent the interests of their rural residents about like Russian occupiers recognized the rights and interests of Hungarians and Poles during the Cold War. Substitute Washington for Moscow and Wisconsin and Idaho for Hungary and Poland and you have a picture of what federal control of Rural America is becoming. State bureaucrats have evolved into federal subcontractors and urban-environmental sympathizers that see their future dependent on federal employment; employment with radical or former hunting organizations; or on the benevolence of federal and state politicians sustaining a new tax flow of dollars to replace the loss of revenue as hunting, fishing and Excise taxes on banned arms and ammunition disappear. The lies and propaganda from state bureaucrats have taken on all the exaggerations and intensity or the federal lies and propaganda of the past 45 years to obtain passage, write regulations and enforce everything from the Endangered Species Act, Wilderness Act and Animal Welfare Act to EPA authorities, Heritage Area Designations, Easement Grants and Commissions to environmental organizations for acquiring eventual federal land acquisitions and obtaining key easements to both control and prohibit future Rural improvements.
Southern States experienced federal imposition of “red wolves that from the get-go in the 1980’s were and remain an odd mixture of coyote, dog and wolf genetic material.
Initial red “wolf” releases in South Carolina disappeared into the coyote/dog gene pool and the gun sights of rural hunters, dog owners and rural residents.
A second release in North Carolina has been a similar debacle. In addition to the usual suspects noted in South Carolina, North Carolinians have banded together and cobbled together a coalition of the state Wildlife commission, state political leaders and federal North Carolina elected officials. The determined rural residents have uncovered not only consistent arrogance but also lies, cover-ups and serious law violations involving federal bureaucrats. They have been stonewalled while getting a Hearing and publicity in the US House of Representatives involving the Secretary of the Interior. They are offering a reward for information about a wolf killed by a suspected federal bureaucrat and they have evidence of about 60 wolves released on private lands when the ONLY federal release authority was for releases on federal lands. There is much to learn from this sort of determined resistance to far-off tyrants much like Colonial reactions to English impositions 240 years ago in this country.
Southwestern States have been a battleground between Local Rural Americans forced to live with wolves for over 20 years and the urban Americans and federal bureaucrats that have imposed the wolves. Arizona and New Mexico even formed a Coalition of Arizona and New Mexico Counties (think about the significance of that for a moment) in reaction. In that desert country the wolves are smaller (a common phenomenon in mammals that occupy large areas from far northern cold climates to far southern warm climates), NOT because of the silly “red” v “Mexican” v “”timber” or “gray” titles favored by environmentalists and government bureaucrats. Also, large packs of these hybrid Canids do not form in the South or in deserts as food (wild and domestic) is more scarce and widespread. Wolf depredations in the SW on cattle and sheep have been serious; dogs have been attacked, killed, and bred in significant numbers; and incidents of wolves in yards and bus stops have spawned the infamous school bus stops built by parents that are cages where school kids are dropped off and picked up by adults.
Despite the failure of the wolves to take hold, more wolves over a greatly expanded area of Arizona and New Mexico are slated for introduction by federal “planners”. Wolf releases with our “Mexican partners” are simultaneously slated just below the Big Bend National Park on the Rio Grande (i.e. the border) in Mexico where it is expected that they will scoot into Texas and US federal protection before our erstwhile “partners” kill them or they starve to death in the criminal chaos that is the deserts of that stretch of Mexico.
As if this were not enough, there is a persistent and growing movement to introduce Jaguars (an “endangered” species complete with “Critical” Habitat) into the Arizona, New Mexico border lands. This will complement the Borderland “Wilderness Declaration” in Arizona that is a little-mentioned desert trail for illegals and drugs where federal enforcement is restricted due to “environmental” concerns in a “Wilderness”.
Livestock husbandry, an always tenuous matter in those desert dry lands tends to be smaller operations that have become toxic for many. While some operators have simply closed down, at least one has committed suicide and another was killed on his front porch by an illegal “visitor”. Like other western states, federal roads, grazing and logging is being closed down by bureaucracies increasingly employing environmental activists in league with radical Non-Government Organizations that actually work with and benefit financially from bureaucrats utilizing taxpayer dollars. Government bureaucrats sing duets with radical environmentalists that the ranchers and hunters and loggers don’t “belong there” anymore while increasingly ignoring Local governments whose revenue streams are being constricted like a deer wrapped up by a python.
Northwestern States are something I need not tell you about. US Fish and Wildlife Service stole millions from State Wildlife funds in the mid 1990’s to capture, transport and release wolves into Yellowstone. No State Wildlife Director ever even asked for the money to be replaced by Congress which is a clue as to how deeply state bureaucrats were in the federal pocket 15 years ago. Congress had previously refused to fund such a release but when the General Accounting Office verified the theft in an Audit Report to The US House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee in 1998, the Congress understood that the wolves were all over by then, there was a Presidential Election coming up, and nothing was to be gained (by Congress) by smearing an august agency and fine bureaucrats appointed by The President of the United States, all engaged in the Lord’s work of “saving the environment”. Shades of today!
State wildlife agencies in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and now California have been shown to be federal subcontractors to federal bureaucracies just like in the Great Lakes States. When big game disappears and hunting success plummets they lie and befuddle their rural constituents. When incontrovertible evidence of wolves as serious vectors of diseases and infections deadly to and destructive to humans, livestock and other wildlife were presented; state biologists and veterinarians were about as evident as Chaplains in the Soviet Army. When ranchers cite livestock losses they are told to put up electric fences and fladry and hire more employees to sit with the stock 24/7 and buy guard dogs (or bitches-of-the-evening for wolves as the case may be) if they expect to stay in business. When hunters that use dogs complain or quit hunting, as one Minnesota non-fan wrote me yesterday, “hunters with ‘good’ bird dogs that stay close will be OK but dogs that range too far or that run rabbits, coyotes, and bears will be fair game for wolves”. Is it any wonder that the former positive attitudes of rural residents toward “their” state wildlife agency have turned increasingly sour and negative? The once respected wildlife employee in the community or “in charge” at Headquarters has become just another untrustworthy bureaucrat that respects neither you nor your property.
Federal and State bureaucrats have touted “compensation” that was inadequate, never produced, impossible to qualify for, or only spoken of until the wolves were no longer controllable. Federal “compensation” administration was immediately given to (??) The Defenders of Wildlife (an anti-Rural American radical group) by the USFWS Director when the money was stolen and who later became the very high-paid leader of that very same organization.
State bureaucrats, like their federal counterparts, told rural audiences about the need for wolf “control” and “management” (while maintaining distance from government and private animal control agents) and telling the urban audiences what they wanted to hear about “Native” species, “Native” ecosystems and how eventually there will be a “new normal” for Rural America where hunting, ranching, timber management, private property and local entrepreneurship will be things of the past.
Grizzly bears (an extremely dangerous, deadly and destructive animal that no more belongs in settled landscapes of the Lower 48 States than do free-roaming buffalo or Asian carp) have been introduced, spread and protected just like jaguars are slated for the SW. Whether it is specious claims of “critical habitat”, or losses of cattle, or kids killed on trails, or young girl campers killed in sleeping bags, or cattle losses, or dog losses, or mentally-stressed rural residents with grizzlies around homesteads that make life one continuous worry, grizzly bears plus the wolves make the demise of rural America both quicker and more sure.
The evil lies about these things must be especially apparent to you here in NE Washington. Here you have these “endangered” caribou that were used by the feds and radicals for years to generate restrictions and grow government powers; and then voila, wolves and grizzly bears are needed for the latest radical imaginings. The fact that each eats caribou and caribou calves (Canada is exterminating two wolf packs as I speak to “save” the caribou) and will thus reduce those formerly “precious” endangered caribou or even wipe them out is simply, like wolves as disease and infection vectors, an inconvenient truth for some professor to be hired to write some new “Romance Biology” (like how wolves change rivers) and “prove” how good “occasional” caribou meat in wolf and grizzly bear stomachs benefits them all and is “vital” for a “functioning native ecosystem”.
The moose on Isle Royale National Park, a large island in Lake Superior, recently reached the lowest levels in decades and the wolves that came to the island after a long walk over ice in the 1950’s have likewise become nearly extinct on the island once again due to a lack of wolf food and wolf inbreeding.
Minnesota Moose hunting has been closed for several years now for lack of moose that “biologists” blame on ticks and global warming.
Minnesota and Wisconsin deer kills and deer licenses have been and are plummeting. Biologists and DNR supporters blame weather, past kill distortions and poor census conditions. As with moose, high wolf numbers have, of necessity shifted to deer where they are additive to the other deer mortality factors at work. Wolves need to eat and when the moose decrease, wolves must shift to deer, cattle and dogs or starve. The results are reduced deer and moose herds and reduced or no moose and deer hunting. Like pheasant hunting and walleye fishing; the future is not bright for moose and deer hunting.
Wolves have and are taking a high toll on dogs across N Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where deer have also declined and rural animosity toward wolves’ mirrors N Minnesota and Wisconsin rural attitudes. Hybridization is widespread with dogs and coyotes but the implications of controlling coyotes and owning dogs and protecting wolves as all 3 wreak rural havoc or snuggle in at night with the kids while looking so much alike that only some remote government “laboratory” employing government-paid technicians utilizing government-approved DNA standards is not only downplayed but objectors to the entire affair are vilified like racists or extremists that refuse to bake cakes for same-sex weddings.
Wolves have crossed into the Lower Peninsula of Michigan where they are increasing. Wolves are trickling down the Mississippi River valley into Iowa, Missouri and overland into N Illinois and Indiana. When they reach S Illinois or S Indiana, the substantial woodland connections S, SE and SW will provide cover and food for a wolf breakout into the old Confederacy to do what the “red” wolf was released to do but has failed to do by the same federal overlords and radical groups. The difference will eventually be the continuing influx of wolves from the North into the South (shades of the Civil War) much like Minnesota’s persistent flow and influx of wolves from the woodlands of Manitoba and Ontario.
Currently a judge took away the vaunted “state management of wolves” that like “compensation” is only another lie with a twist in that states had to manage wolves just like the feds and the urban American public demanded AND PAY THE BILL as well. The feds posture throughout was creating the illusion of helping the states to be granted wolf “management” while they colluded with the very radicals that sue and will never be satisfied by any wolf management. This is little more than a warning shot to state bureaucrats and rural residents that they no longer have ANY say and in the future they better go along or simply be swept aside.
The State wildlife agencies around the Great Lakes represent the interests of their rural residents about like Russian occupiers recognized the rights and interests of Hungarians and Poles during the Cold War. Substitute Washington for Moscow and Wisconsin and Idaho for Hungary and Poland and you have a picture of what federal control of Rural America is becoming. State bureaucrats have evolved into federal subcontractors and urban-environmental sympathizers that see their future dependent on federal employment; employment with radical or former hunting organizations; or on the benevolence of federal and state politicians sustaining a new tax flow of dollars to replace the loss of revenue as hunting, fishing and Excise taxes on banned arms and ammunition disappear. The lies and propaganda from state bureaucrats have taken on all the exaggerations and intensity or the federal lies and propaganda of the past 45 years to obtain passage, write regulations and enforce everything from the Endangered Species Act, Wilderness Act and Animal Welfare Act to EPA authorities, Heritage Area Designations, Easement Grants and Commissions to environmental organizations for acquiring eventual federal land acquisitions and obtaining key easements to both control and prohibit future Rural improvements.
Southern States experienced federal imposition of “red wolves that from the get-go in the 1980’s were and remain an odd mixture of coyote, dog and wolf genetic material.
Initial red “wolf” releases in South Carolina disappeared into the coyote/dog gene pool and the gun sights of rural hunters, dog owners and rural residents.
A second release in North Carolina has been a similar debacle. In addition to the usual suspects noted in South Carolina, North Carolinians have banded together and cobbled together a coalition of the state Wildlife commission, state political leaders and federal North Carolina elected officials. The determined rural residents have uncovered not only consistent arrogance but also lies, cover-ups and serious law violations involving federal bureaucrats. They have been stonewalled while getting a Hearing and publicity in the US House of Representatives involving the Secretary of the Interior. They are offering a reward for information about a wolf killed by a suspected federal bureaucrat and they have evidence of about 60 wolves released on private lands when the ONLY federal release authority was for releases on federal lands. There is much to learn from this sort of determined resistance to far-off tyrants much like Colonial reactions to English impositions 240 years ago in this country.
Southwestern States have been a battleground between Local Rural Americans forced to live with wolves for over 20 years and the urban Americans and federal bureaucrats that have imposed the wolves. Arizona and New Mexico even formed a Coalition of Arizona and New Mexico Counties (think about the significance of that for a moment) in reaction. In that desert country the wolves are smaller (a common phenomenon in mammals that occupy large areas from far northern cold climates to far southern warm climates), NOT because of the silly “red” v “Mexican” v “”timber” or “gray” titles favored by environmentalists and government bureaucrats. Also, large packs of these hybrid Canids do not form in the South or in deserts as food (wild and domestic) is more scarce and widespread. Wolf depredations in the SW on cattle and sheep have been serious; dogs have been attacked, killed, and bred in significant numbers; and incidents of wolves in yards and bus stops have spawned the infamous school bus stops built by parents that are cages where school kids are dropped off and picked up by adults.
Despite the failure of the wolves to take hold, more wolves over a greatly expanded area of Arizona and New Mexico are slated for introduction by federal “planners”. Wolf releases with our “Mexican partners” are simultaneously slated just below the Big Bend National Park on the Rio Grande (i.e. the border) in Mexico where it is expected that they will scoot into Texas and US federal protection before our erstwhile “partners” kill them or they starve to death in the criminal chaos that is the deserts of that stretch of Mexico.
As if this were not enough, there is a persistent and growing movement to introduce Jaguars (an “endangered” species complete with “Critical” Habitat) into the Arizona, New Mexico border lands. This will complement the Borderland “Wilderness Declaration” in Arizona that is a little-mentioned desert trail for illegals and drugs where federal enforcement is restricted due to “environmental” concerns in a “Wilderness”.
Livestock husbandry, an always tenuous matter in those desert dry lands tends to be smaller operations that have become toxic for many. While some operators have simply closed down, at least one has committed suicide and another was killed on his front porch by an illegal “visitor”. Like other western states, federal roads, grazing and logging is being closed down by bureaucracies increasingly employing environmental activists in league with radical Non-Government Organizations that actually work with and benefit financially from bureaucrats utilizing taxpayer dollars. Government bureaucrats sing duets with radical environmentalists that the ranchers and hunters and loggers don’t “belong there” anymore while increasingly ignoring Local governments whose revenue streams are being constricted like a deer wrapped up by a python.
Northwestern States are something I need not tell you about. US Fish and Wildlife Service stole millions from State Wildlife funds in the mid 1990’s to capture, transport and release wolves into Yellowstone. No State Wildlife Director ever even asked for the money to be replaced by Congress which is a clue as to how deeply state bureaucrats were in the federal pocket 15 years ago. Congress had previously refused to fund such a release but when the General Accounting Office verified the theft in an Audit Report to The US House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee in 1998, the Congress understood that the wolves were all over by then, there was a Presidential Election coming up, and nothing was to be gained (by Congress) by smearing an august agency and fine bureaucrats appointed by The President of the United States, all engaged in the Lord’s work of “saving the environment”. Shades of today!
State wildlife agencies in Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and now California have been shown to be federal subcontractors to federal bureaucracies just like in the Great Lakes States. When big game disappears and hunting success plummets they lie and befuddle their rural constituents. When incontrovertible evidence of wolves as serious vectors of diseases and infections deadly to and destructive to humans, livestock and other wildlife were presented; state biologists and veterinarians were about as evident as Chaplains in the Soviet Army. When ranchers cite livestock losses they are told to put up electric fences and fladry and hire more employees to sit with the stock 24/7 and buy guard dogs (or bitches-of-the-evening for wolves as the case may be) if they expect to stay in business. When hunters that use dogs complain or quit hunting, as one Minnesota non-fan wrote me yesterday, “hunters with ‘good’ bird dogs that stay close will be OK but dogs that range too far or that run rabbits, coyotes, and bears will be fair game for wolves”. Is it any wonder that the former positive attitudes of rural residents toward “their” state wildlife agency have turned increasingly sour and negative? The once respected wildlife employee in the community or “in charge” at Headquarters has become just another untrustworthy bureaucrat that respects neither you nor your property.
Federal and State bureaucrats have touted “compensation” that was inadequate, never produced, impossible to qualify for, or only spoken of until the wolves were no longer controllable. Federal “compensation” administration was immediately given to (??) The Defenders of Wildlife (an anti-Rural American radical group) by the USFWS Director when the money was stolen and who later became the very high-paid leader of that very same organization.
State bureaucrats, like their federal counterparts, told rural audiences about the need for wolf “control” and “management” (while maintaining distance from government and private animal control agents) and telling the urban audiences what they wanted to hear about “Native” species, “Native” ecosystems and how eventually there will be a “new normal” for Rural America where hunting, ranching, timber management, private property and local entrepreneurship will be things of the past.
Grizzly bears (an extremely dangerous, deadly and destructive animal that no more belongs in settled landscapes of the Lower 48 States than do free-roaming buffalo or Asian carp) have been introduced, spread and protected just like jaguars are slated for the SW. Whether it is specious claims of “critical habitat”, or losses of cattle, or kids killed on trails, or young girl campers killed in sleeping bags, or cattle losses, or dog losses, or mentally-stressed rural residents with grizzlies around homesteads that make life one continuous worry, grizzly bears plus the wolves make the demise of rural America both quicker and more sure.
The evil lies about these things must be especially apparent to you here in NE Washington. Here you have these “endangered” caribou that were used by the feds and radicals for years to generate restrictions and grow government powers; and then voila, wolves and grizzly bears are needed for the latest radical imaginings. The fact that each eats caribou and caribou calves (Canada is exterminating two wolf packs as I speak to “save” the caribou) and will thus reduce those formerly “precious” endangered caribou or even wipe them out is simply, like wolves as disease and infection vectors, an inconvenient truth for some professor to be hired to write some new “Romance Biology” (like how wolves change rivers) and “prove” how good “occasional” caribou meat in wolf and grizzly bear stomachs benefits them all and is “vital” for a “functioning native ecosystem”.
WOLVES AND RURAL
AMERICA
Wolves are but one of many things steadily eroding local families, local businesses, local communities, local governments, and local culture in Rural America. Wolves are perhaps the most glaring threat to Rural American life of all the threats facing Rural America. Wilderness Declarations, federal and state land acquisition, federal and federal “partners” taking easements on land, federal government taking of private property with and without compensation for other that public use, reduced local government revenue, federal Heritage/Scenic/Historic Area designation requirements and mandates, closure of government lands to management and use, federal water claims, overly-aggressive regulatory enforcement, severe penalties for violating any of thousands of federal regulations, dictatorial federal insertion of deadly animals like grizzly bears strongly opposed by those coerced to live with them, federal water claims that give a fish preference over drought-ravaged communities and irrigation users, federal refusal to remove dead trees that create massive fire fuel, federal imposition of costs on rural communities and local governments for federal mandates, unlimited federal powers to say what animal goes where and which are to be exterminated, federal anti-hunting programs, federal anti-trapping attempts, federal zoning along designated Scenic/Wild river/highways, federal anti-gun efforts, federal wildfire damages to private property, federal coercion of state and local enforcement officers and programs, unaccountability of federal bureaucrats for deaths and destruction caused by federal actions, federal refusal to pay for damages or take responsibility for the costs caused by the animals they force on local communities, federal elimination of clean and efficient power from coal in favor of expensive and unreliable subsidized wind farms that not only kill millions of birds each year but are also granted permits to kill up to and including eagles and other birds that you or I would go to prison for even attempting to take are but a few of the problems eroding Rural America.
Wolves are but one of many things steadily eroding local families, local businesses, local communities, local governments, and local culture in Rural America. Wolves are perhaps the most glaring threat to Rural American life of all the threats facing Rural America. Wilderness Declarations, federal and state land acquisition, federal and federal “partners” taking easements on land, federal government taking of private property with and without compensation for other that public use, reduced local government revenue, federal Heritage/Scenic/Historic Area designation requirements and mandates, closure of government lands to management and use, federal water claims, overly-aggressive regulatory enforcement, severe penalties for violating any of thousands of federal regulations, dictatorial federal insertion of deadly animals like grizzly bears strongly opposed by those coerced to live with them, federal water claims that give a fish preference over drought-ravaged communities and irrigation users, federal refusal to remove dead trees that create massive fire fuel, federal imposition of costs on rural communities and local governments for federal mandates, unlimited federal powers to say what animal goes where and which are to be exterminated, federal anti-hunting programs, federal anti-trapping attempts, federal zoning along designated Scenic/Wild river/highways, federal anti-gun efforts, federal wildfire damages to private property, federal coercion of state and local enforcement officers and programs, unaccountability of federal bureaucrats for deaths and destruction caused by federal actions, federal refusal to pay for damages or take responsibility for the costs caused by the animals they force on local communities, federal elimination of clean and efficient power from coal in favor of expensive and unreliable subsidized wind farms that not only kill millions of birds each year but are also granted permits to kill up to and including eagles and other birds that you or I would go to prison for even attempting to take are but a few of the problems eroding Rural America.
These problems
several common factors:
1.) They originate in federal legislation passed in the US Congress and the federal regulations written by bureaucrats to “administer” and enforce these federal laws.
2.) Rural Americans and Rural American Communities bear the brunt of these new and constantly emerging abuses of power.
3.) In the USA as a whole, there is a growing belief that whatever the majority wants should be granted by government, period. That is to say we are becoming the true democracy so feared by the Founding Fathers that constructed a Constitutional form of government called a Republic specifically to avoid abuse of minorities and the chaos we see growing in America today in many other dimensions.
4.) Consider for a moment those Red/Blue election maps displayed after each Presidential Election. Those scattered, tiny Blue areas are the big cities and they have far more legal voters than those vast Red areas that identify the much smaller voter population of legal voters in the much greater vastness of Rural America. In other words, the cities have the votes and as with money, “control the green”.
5.) Americans are simultaneously farther and farther removed from “the land” and reality of wild and domestic plants and animals while they exercise their demands to make Rural America into a sort of imaginary playground where no animals are dangerous or abused; where no trees or grass are disturbed other than by favored, unmanaged and unused animals; and where roads and towns are seen as travesties on land intended ultimately and once again intended as home for only a few a few non-Europeans, rich people and the plants and animals imagined as being there on 12 October 1492 AD when one of Christopher Columbus’ lookouts first spotted land on the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean.
6.) Rural Americans are increasingly reeling from this avalanche of federal tyranny ever since it began a little over fifty years ago with Nixon and an America reeling from war protestors, “free” love, drugs and environmental hysteria.
7.) Support for this destruction of Rural America includes but is not limited to Environmental Extremists like The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club and Wilderness Society; Animal Rights Extremists like the Humane Society of the US, Defenders of Wildlife, National Wildlife Federation, and PETA; Lawyer for-profit groups, like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity; an uncounted gaggle of Chapters, Societies, and Trusts formed to remove dams; close more land to use, access and management; stop developments; eliminate livestock and meat-eating; many hunting and fishing groups; many of the lobby groups for ranchers, farmers, dog owners, and others duped into memberships that present the illusion of Washington “influence” by hiring ex-bureaucrats and ex-elected officials; plus a hodgepodge of urban feminists, union workers, teachers, TV documentarians, and others living in urban crowds and yearning for some imaginary Utopia nearby; UN bureaucrats and international fronts for the wealthy and international opponents of America’s way of life; professors and University staffs seeking grants, tenure, graduate students, higher salaries and fame; federal politicians fishing for votes; federal bureaucrats angling for more laws to write more regulations resulting in more power, more pay, higher grades, increased retirements and public recognition; State bureaucrats seeking federal jobs, job security tied to federal funding and a share of the imaginary booty of the Brave New World ahead when Rural America is no more.
8.) There is nobody that seems competent or capable of assisting Rural Americans in confronting these forces that are destroying their communities right before their eyes.
Three Necessary
Reforms and what they are based on
I have worked for the US Navy, the State of Utah and the Minneapolis Police Department.
I worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service for 32 years, the majority of which were in Washington, DC as a law enforcement officer, biologist, and program analyst.
I know wildlife, range and forest management techniques, science and management.
Fortuitously, my long work experience in Washington, DC covered from the passage of all manner of such laws in the early 1970’s to 1999 when I became a whistleblower and exposed the theft of millions of dollars by federal bureaucrats from state wildlife programs. Among other results, I have no second thoughts today about long lost friends or misplaced allegiance to the myth of pure federal motives and federal actions.
I spent a year as a Congressional Fellow in the late 1970’s where I attended Political Science classes, worked five months for a Congressman from Minnesota and five months for a US Senator from New York, plus I spent two weeks as a guest of Canadian Parliamentary Fellows becoming familiar with the Parliamentary system of government.
After 15 years of speaking and writing about federal environmental and animal abuses I recommend the following three Reforms as vitally necessary if Rural America is to have any hope of surviving as we know it. It is probably the result of that year as a Congressional Fellow more than any other item in my resume’ that accounts for these recommended reforms. They are important whether the liberals or conservatives are in power, whether the President respects Constitutional government or not, and whether you live in a rural State like Wyoming or in an urban enclave State like Massachusetts or in an urban–dominated State like Illinois or New York. Rural America must achieve these reforms if they are to ever have anything more than short-term temporary relief in the long slide they are experiencing as I write.
1. Federal Reform
Rural America has lost ALL representation in the federal government. Since 1913, rural representation has steadily diminished until it has all but disappeared Because of this; Rural Americans have become helpless before the federal leviathan and all those listed under #7 above have steadily capitalized on this and developed increased power for the federal government until today they control it for all the reasons and more listed by their names and their own purposes.
The Rural American representation I speak of is not the simple diminishing of rural voters and the increase of urban voters. It is something much more basic and correctable than that.
The Constitution established a federal government that authored all laws, authorized all spending and basically provided the interpretations of Constitutional wording called laws that the Supreme Court judged Constitutional or not and that (until recently) circumscribed the power and actions of the President. This system of “Checks and Balances” protected Rural America for 137 years or until 102 years ago.
Built into the structure of the US Congress was a House of Representatives composed of currently 435 voting Members representing approximately equal numbers of voters. Each represents a District drawn up by State Legislatures. Essentially the House is pure democracy in that each of us is equally represented and we elect or defeat our Representative based on whether or not he or she does what we want. In this environment, the outnumbered rural resident is represented but when the urban Representatives want something, they have the votes and Rural American interests are not powerful.
Everything the House passes (laws, budgets, etc.) is sent to the US Senate where Senate ratification approves it and forwards it to the President or it is rejected or simply buried as happened frequently in the last US Senate under Senator Reid. The US Senate has even more power than the House. The US Senate alone confirms or rejects Presidential appointees, all high judges of the land, and all Treaties. The US Senate and US Senators are very powerful. But these once-bulwarks of Rural American interests are no longer what they once were and were specifically created to be.
The US Senate is composed of two Senators from each state for a total of 100 Senators. Why is that? It is because they were designed to be equal protectors of each State’s Rights down to and including the rights of the rural residents of the state. But that responsibility is currently gone with the wind. Why?
In 1913 Progressive federal politicians passed a Constitutional Amendment (the 16th) authorizing a federal income tax (previously the federal government was financed by and was thus constrained by Excise Taxes mainly from alcohol). At the same time they passed a second Constitutional Amendment (the 17th) that changed the way the US Senators were created.
For the first 137 years of this Nation, US Senators were “chosen by the Legislature thereof” (sic the Legislature of their State) for a six year term as defined in the US Constitution. In 1913 that was changed to “elected by the people thereof”. Now after we get over that warm, fuzzy feeling about “the people’s voice being heard” and 102 years of this dramatic change in the nature and role of US Senators and the US Senate, let us focus on what this 102 year experiment has meant to Rural America.
US Senators no longer represent “their” State. US Senators now represent (just like US Representatives and the President for that matter) THE VOTERS AND ORGANIZATIONS THAT ELECTED THEM AND THAT THEY EXPECT TO RE-ELECT THEM. For instance, I live in the Progressive state of Minnesota where urban voters control the state. “We” have elected two US Senators that are, no surprise, very Progressive.
Imagine that you are a rancher losing cattle to wolves; or a moose hunter that realizes your sons will never again have the opportunity to hunt moose in Minnesota; or a rural Minnesotan that has lost dogs to wolves that frequent your yard and the President is rumored to be about to outlaw handguns; or you are a cabin owner worried that the blowdown trees from a severe storm three years ago on adjoining federal property present an extreme fire hazard to your property; or the federal government just bought more land in your county and took it off the already strained tax rolls. What would you imagine the reaction of those two Senators would be if you appealed to them for help or asked them to propose legislation to stop these things?
Remember they were elected by urban voters like unmarried professionals, unemployed college graduates, hardcore Progressives, academics, government workers, etc.,: all of whom desire the exact opposite of what you do. In fact the two Senators, even if they were Conservatives from a Conservative State would be under enormous pressure from their fellow Party members nationally to not “rock the boat” for the rest of them by allowing the Progressive party to label them as gun-crazed enemies of the environment and a pristine ecosystem. Thus I will get the run around from “my” Senators because I and my issues only endanger their political future and power. You will get “Response Letter # 36” and a sweet young girl will sympathize with you on the phone before she goes to lunch in the cut-rate cafeteria in the basement.
The two most common questions I get as I travel and discuss these issues are, “How could ‘my’ Senator pass such a law?” and “How can I get ‘my’ Senator to stop this?” In answer to both questions, imagine two kinds of Senators; one the brand-spanking new sort of Senator ELECTED BY THE PEOPLE who we will call Pretty Boy, the other is the cranky old-fashioned Senator APPOINTED BY THE STATE LEGISLATURE TYPE who we will call Henry Clay.
Imagine further that a federal law to expand the Endangered Species Act or to condemn millions of acres of private property to make a new “Wilderness Park” is up for a vote.
- You call ‘your’ Congressman but he tells you he is only one vote in a small minority that will oppose these bills and they will probably pass the House since the environmental lobby and urban Districts are wildly in favor of them.
- Under the current system you call one or both of ‘your’ “Pretty Boy” US Senators. Their staff tells you he is “considering” it and he really values your input and thank you so much for calling (or writing) to share your view. Then when they come up on the floor of the Senate, he votes for them. You are outraged and when you call or write him you are politely dismissed this time by the boy in the office or sent “Response Letter #67”. When you talk to your Local government or your state government, they just shrug and tell you there is nothing they can do about a powerful and august US Senator. Thus are so many of these RURAL abuses created because the US Senators that no longer represent RURAL interests because they are a minority of the votes needed to keep them in POWER and the erstwhile and uncaring urban majorities think all this stuff is good and the environmental/government media combine pays for the science and publicity to give it a patina of legitimacy.
- Under the old system, you call or write Henry Clay and explain how the proposed laws will harm your community, your business and your family. HE LISTENS, why? Because you and people like you might, just might, pressure and force the State Legislature to not re-appoint him. This is something that is impossible to imagine under the current system where the Senator is simply a powerful and glorified US Representative representing a District that elects him solely because he is the race of the majority in the District or a union man or an environmental activist JUST LIKE THE VOTING MAJORITY THAT ELECTS AND RE-ELECTS HIM. Almost universally, the urban voting majority is coming to believe in the righteousness of ultimately vacating Rural America and turning it into a federal wilderness as the highest sort of secular morality.
- But back to Henry Clay, what if he votes for these laws despite your strong objections? What can you do? You can tell your State Delegate and your State Senator that if they support Henry’s re-appointment you will personally run against them and see that they never get elected to anything ever again. You can hound them to form a coalition of other RURAL State Delegates and State Senators to bounce Henry from office when his term is up. You can tell the new coalition of Rural State politicians to support this and that you will support urban proposals in the State Capitol in return for urban Legislature’s support to send Henry back to the “think tank” enclave from whence he came. None of this and nothing even like this can be done today under the new Senatorial system of Pretty Boys (blown dry hairdos have been shown to generate votes) where they serve for 20, 30 and even 40 years while pillaging Rural America for urban votes. They, in fact, harm and abuse Rural America and Rural Americans for their own benefit and those being harmed have as much say about it as Irish or Scotch Rural Residents under British rule in the 1700’s and 1800’s who were likewise abused, their property taken and their families destroyed by force for the benefit of far-off and uncaring occupiers.
Unless the US Senate can be returned to a powerful body that protects THE STATES, meaning ALL of each State including the rural residents that are most often a minority of voters; the ruination of Rural American life, culture and society will continue at an increasing pace until it becomes an unrecognizable wasteland. The reason this is happening is because Rural American representation in the US Congress has disappeared. The historic defender of Rural American Rights was the US Senate for 137 years. 102 Years ago, the selection of US Senators was changed from appointment by the State Legislature to election by a Statewide election. This change effectively made Rural Americans and their concerns minorities that could be and are ignored and abused by US Senators that do not need their support for re-election. This abuse of Rural Americans, their property, their livelihood and their communities has become a phenomenon that appeals to urban voters for a wide variety of reasons. Unless Rural Americans can re-establish influence over the actions of their US Senators, federal laws, federal budgets and federal bureaucracies will increasingly pillage Rural America to garner favor with federal politicians seeking political support and for the personal benefit of the federal bureaucrats themselves.
There is no other known way to re-establish rural influence over US Senators than the original tried and true method initially established in the US Constitution. This approach of appointment of US Senators by the State Legislature created a means for Rural American concerns to be addressed, rural Americans to effectively lobby US Senators while additionally providing a check on federal overreach and federal abuse overall.
Therefore, Reform #1 is to Repeal the 17th Amendment. No other action is necessary. Repeal would revert the Senator Selection process back to appointment of US Senators by State Legislatures as laid out in Article 1, Section 3 of the US Constitution.
The last 50 years have demonstrated the importance of Local Government as federal overreach and federal claims have restricted and even abolished Local Government authority, jurisdiction, and revenue. The combination of federal laws and the federal regulation explosion coupled with activist lawyers both within the federal government and in all the myriad lobby groups that have become attached to federal growth like remoras attached to sharks cruising the oceans for victims has marginalized Local Governments and the Local citizenry that elects them and who they serve. This, in turn, opens the way for federal officials to fill the vacuum with the help of sympathetic activists in State government. This has left Rural America even more isolated and powerless.
My local Minnesota newspaper recently published an article that describes the problem much better than I can. In addition to all the foregoing described federal abuses, the State of Minnesota adds in an example of how the State alone can abuse Rural America just as badly as can the federal government. Minnesotans love taxes and 7 years ago passed an additional Sales Tax that supposedly dedicates 33% of the tax increase to, “restore”, “protect”, “habitat”, blah, blah, blah for “fish’, game’ and “wildlife”. It generates about $100 Million annually. The allocation is set by an appointed “Commission” that until recently was rubber stamped by a Progressive-controlled Legislature. We now have a Conservative (as understood in these Progressive corners) Legislature. The Commission wants to spend $2.2 Million to buy 2,000 acres of woods and meadows FOR AN INDIAN TRIBE. Minnesota Indians generally prohibit any harvest or control of wolves on their lands. (As an aside, a lone wolf crossed about 20 miles of ice to escape Isle Royale National Park Island in Lake Superior last winter because the food, i.e. moose, is too scattered to replace the calories it takes to find and take down a moose – there are no deer on the Island. The poor wolf landed on a Minnesota Tribal landholding where its’ beeper didn’t move for days. Federal investigators found the wolf dead from a gunshot wound. Further investigation showed it was killed by a Tribal member. Federal law Enforcers, DNR Law Enforcers, and Tribal Chiefs all agreed to forego prosecution.) But back to the $2.2 Million land purchase, the fight is between the appointed Commission who sees their role as some sort of Druid-like figures that should not be questioned and the Conservative State Legislature that opposes that purchase for several reasons but chiefly because IT WOULD REMOVE 2,000 ACRES FROM THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT TAX ROLLS. In this case a Conservative Legislature for political reasons and for reasons of showing what they stand for has picked this fight on behalf of Local Government but if this were the usual Progressive Legislature, the sale would go through and the land would come off the tax rolls and wolf control would be forbidden on 2,000 more acres in addition to the National Parks, State Parks, State Scientific Natural Areas, etc., etc.
So what can Local governments do to stop both federal and state treatment akin to Colonial Powers in Africa, India and The Americas 300 years ago?
The answer lies in Reform of Local government authority within the State.
- Some Local Governments control weeds. Either you control certain plants or the Local Government sends in a controller and bills the owner. If the owner fails to pay the bill, a lien is placed against the property that must eventually be paid. Why can’t predators like wolves, coyotes, bears be treated the same way?
- Counties in some Eastern states SET the length, weapons allowed, hours, methods allowed, and sex/age and numbers of deer taken daily, or throughout the season. The County decides, on behalf of its’ residents, whether deer hunting is for meat or recreation or trophies or to protect farmers and their crops. The state government has always accepted the role and responsibility or protecting and administering the kind of hunts and or controls desired by each County. It is not rocket science, nor do Counties need “biologists” to keep apprised of County desires like: “no more deer dogs chasing through my yard”; “switch to shotguns only”; let us kill more deer each season”; “deer depredations on beans are getting intolerable”; “limit weekend hunting”; “we want to see more deer”; etcetera.
- State wildlife agencies, almost without exception, reinforce and cater to urban fantasies that they live a “modern” life in their Brave New World where wild animals are cherished and released into “The Wilderness” when they are problems. These continuous releases of problem coyotes, bears, raccoons, skunks, wolves, etc. in rural areas already brimming with these animals, cause additional depredations, vehicle encounters, and safety (rabies, tapeworms, disease, etc.) issues for rural residents already overwhelmed with protected species like wolves and bears and a blizzard or restrictions by urban voters opposed to guns, hunting, trapping and methods like dog hunting aerial hunting and other efficient and economical (paid for by citizens that do it) methods.
- Counties in areas of high government land purchasing and land easement activity like continual federal land purchasing or easement purchasing by government agents; or radical group easement taking both with and without federal funding; “straw-man land purchases and easement taking for eventual turnover to federal bureaucracies (at a mark-up + commission); and even State purchases like the aforementioned purchase with State Tax dollars for an Indian Tribe have been forced to take drastic measures. They have established their authority as the Primary Approver of any land purchase or land easement or any legal property restriction or adjustment that removes any property from the Local tax rolls. In other words, The County government must approve and such land use and ownership adjustments including state and federal actions. Except in an emergency (?) the State sees its’ role as protecting this primary role for Local governments since Local Governments are the most responsive levels of government where the “rubber” truly “meets the road.” Nowhere is this more evident in how replacing Local rogue officials is vastly easier than replacing abusive State officials and certainly easier than the all-but-impossible task of replacing indifferent or dictatorial federal officials. County elected officials are the first line of defense for Rural Americans and therefore County Governments must be given the power and authority to fulfill this important and primary role if Rural America is to endure.
Therefore, Reform #2 is to review and adjust State laws and preferably the State Constitution to give the County Governments the power and authority to:
A. Designate – 1. What plants and animals are allowed in the County; 2. What plants and animals are to be controlled and/or eradicated in the County; 3. What means and under what conditions animals may be killed or controlled in the County; 4. What methods, hours and conditions are established for any animal hunting, trapping, fishing or animal control activities in the County.
B. Require that the State fish and wildlife agency, the State agriculture agency and all State veterinarians and scientists are to be available to consult with and/or make recommendations to County officials about the above matters if and when so requested by County officials.
C. Require that any federal agency, state agency or individual intending to release any wildlife in the County must have a Permit issued by the County for any such release. (Consider; A and C can be enforced by Sheriffs and Deputized Animal Control Officers.
D. Establish the requirement that any government land purchase; any land use easement; or any land transfer that removes land from Local Tax Rolls or affects the Local Government Taxing Authority or Local Tax Revenue negatively now or in the future must be approved by the County Commissioners before it is recorded and validated in any way.
3. State Government Reform
After State and federal bureaucrats read or hear the #2 Reform above; the snickering, scoffing and laughing in government offices probably makes a chorus like frogs in a Minnesota wetland on a still and warm summer evening. They can’t imagine local rubes or some stuffy County Commissioner telling them what plants, fish and wildlife will be tolerated or controlled in their County. Why they are the “experts” and they dictate (the correct word) those things. Then to think that a state or federal bureaucrat has to ask for the permission of a lowly County official to buy, take easements on, or transfer whatever land they (the state and federal bureaucrats and appointees) select or choose to buy, ease, transfer or have some surrogate buy, ease or transfer: why what do they think this is, a Constitutional Republic where the rights of even minority citizen groups are heard?
If there is anything the past 50 years of federal abuse of Rural America has taught us; it is that State bureaucracies and bureaucrats can switch from State employees to radical, activist allies of federal/radical programs that harm the Rural Residents and Rural Communities of the State in a New York nanosecond.
State bureaucrats have become little more than federal subcontractors. State employees use their diminishing trust and reputation of yore to:
- Lie about wolves as disease vectors; wolf numbers; wolf effects on big game herds; wolf effects on cattle and sheep; wolf effects on dogs; and worst of all the danger wolves pose to humans, especially children and the elderly.
- Reinforce federal and radical lies about Fladry; shepherding; guard dogs; big game numbers; human safety issues; livestock depredation losses; wolf control impacts; and future expectations about evolving wolf habits, ranges and behavior.
- Ignore Local meetings and objections to proposed grizzly bear introductions, free-roaming buffalo desired by federal bureaucrats and other controversial matters.
- Shrug and say they can’t do anything about: smelt getting water during a drought depriving humans of water; or irrigation districts shut down for federal sucker claims; or plans to remove a power/irrigation dam; or federal destruction of the logging industry; or closure of grazing districts; etcetera.
State bureaucracies, like their federal counterparts, have become environmental and animal rights’ activist centers. Equal Employment Opportunity pushes beginning in the 1970’s opened the doors of federal employment to anti-hunters/anti-forestry/anti-range managers as well as vegans and PETA sympathizers to not only join the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Forest Service, the BLM, the EPA and associated federal bureaucracies: EEO promoted them faster and bureaucrats (enlarging their own bonuses) encouraged them to hire and promote more like themselves which gave them the illusion of “bringing things to the table” that previously were being denied. It was as if the Department of Defense was ordered to “hire, transfer and promote” Quakers for 40 years and after they saturated and controlled the Department and a war was declared, DOD told the President and the country “we don’t do that anymore because the majority of us do not believe in it.”
State bureaucrats look to federal employment as a “step up”. State bureaucrats look to radical groups and “conservation” groups for jobs and for after-retirement grants and short-term jobs. State bureaucrats look to federal bureaucrats for grants and back up when State politicians or State residents get uppity about State programs. State bureaucrats schmooze with feral bureaucrats and lobbyists routinely at annual get-togethers where buffets and career counseling are common. State bureaucrats look (foolishly) for federal and State tax dollars to eventually replace the Excise Taxes and License Revenue that will disappear with the inevitable (in their view) demise of hunting, fishing, trapping, logging and grazing that they see as inescapable. State bureaucrats will pillage their Rural Precincts with and/or on behalf of federal bureaucrats and radicals just like the killer in the Godfather movie that has been caught betraying the Godfather says as he is led out to be killed, “tell Michael it was only business, not personal”.
State bureaucrats have been complicit in the destruction of America and their power, influence and role in State government must be redefined and employees reassigned when their radical activism or federal subservience interferes with the job and responsibilities they exercise on behalf of the residents of the State. When viewed in consonance with the #2 Reform of Local Government above, each County will ultimately control what they must live after soliciting residents from Suburban soccer moms and Urban professionals to Rural ranchers, hunters, dog owners business owners and parents. This is hardly a novel or difficult position to take unless you think you should have the power to tell others how and where they must live despite what they think.
Therefore, Reform #3 consists of reviewing State laws, policies and the State Constitution to:
1. Reorient appropriate State bureaucracies to first and foremost support County management of the renewable natural resources in each County.
2. Reorient appropriate State bureaucracies to a mission of protecting County Government decisions about renewable natural resources in each County from external government or private threats to the jurisdiction and decisions of County governments.
3. Reorient State employees through training and various assignments to roles that they can fulfill with vigor and professional enthusiasm in support of County Government management of renewable natural resources, free from federal and private interest group influences not welcomed or invited into the County by County government.
There you have it, US Senators that you can hold to account and make listen to you; Local government that can influence plant and animal management, Land Control and Tax Revenue within your County; and State bureaucrats that once more work for YOU and not far flung radical ideas and federal bureaucracies that lust for your land.
“Three Necessary Reforms” to resolve the wolf issue and save Rural America. They are separable and can be accomplished opportunistically. At a fund raiser for a Presidential election or with a new Governor or when talking to a political operative about issues that would engender Rural support and even urban support if presented as giving the suburbs and outer urban rings more authority in dealing with plants, animals, and federal issues plus US Senators that are less Party ideologues and more the “what’s good for the entire State” elected officials they were designed to be.
These killers of rural “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, i.e. Endangered Species Act, Animal Welfare Act, Wilderness Act, federal regulations expanding these Acts, the Environmental Protection Agency, NEPA, elimination of resource management and human activities on public lands, Wilderness Act, Heritage Designations, federal funding of easements and Non-Government Organization Activities, etc. were spawned during a period of social unrest. President Nixon laid the garden by sponsoring much of this as the Vietnam War unraveled and protests, free love and drugs were rampant as anti-family bumper stickers and anti-government shouts of “Question Authority” were everywhere. Senator Gaylord Nelson harvested that garden of laws and agencies that we are dealing with today as “Earth Day” is upon us. Today Nixon is despised and Senator Nelson is give a “Column” of adulation like Admiral Nelson’s in Trafalgar Square in London.
We are now in a period of great social turbulence. An unpopular President, a moribund economy, decreasing incomes and employment and foreign threats (Islamic Extremism, a nuclear Iran, rebounding Russia, our banker China seizing islands and oil from their neighbors, etc.) that are arguably more severe than the Russia and China that threatened us while arming N Korea, N Vietnam and various other dictatorship from Cuba and Nicaragua to Iraq and Pakistan.
If those dramatic law changes of the 1960’s and 70’s were accomplished in that turbulence, maybe what we have seen here can be done by talking to federal and state politicians in office and running for office. If we could adopt a Federal Income Tax and change the way US Senators are created at the dawning of the turbulence of WWI: Reforming State and Local Governments and how US Senators are conceived, especially after the history of the last 40+ years, should not only be possible, it should be achievable.
Addendum –During questions after the presentation, one person asked (or rather stated), “If I had land to sell and I couldn’t find a buyer and the government offered to buy it and the County wouldn’t allow it, I would demand that they either allow it or pay for it themselves.”
Now that is a good question and one worth sharing for your consideration.
I answered that if the last 40 years have taught us anything it is that we (Rural America) are being destroyed by wicked (the correct word) forces using the raw force of federal power and significant financial resources to do a long list of things to remove rural people and human activities from the land. A major part of this effort is outright land transfer to federal overlords and land control of the remainder by new and expanding federal laws and the innocent-sounding taking of easements intended to make any remaining private property unusable as a primary means of income for any remaining residents. I asked him, “What would you suggest to stem this?” He responded that his property was his to do what he can or would with it. I said then there may be no hope and we should encourage our kids and grandkids to prepare for an urban existence and just forget Rural America.
While that was as far as it went at the time (3 days ago now) I have since wished I had thought to say that we are and have been losing Rural America to manipulated government coercion and tactics taken from Socialist and Communist tactics of the last two centuries around the world. These cannot be overcome and dismissed by timid processes and hopeful wishing. We need to come together and do what MUST be done to make Rural America and that man’s land once again profitable and more profitable each year instead of steadily losing value amidst communities that are steadily losing people, families, jobs and the social fiber that is and always was essential to building, growing and sustaining America.
If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.
Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & 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
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