Current Issues

Wolf Re-introduction into Idaho.

I wrote, copyrighted and published the following two articles on wolf reintroduction.

The Burgdorf Massacre

On a night in mid-September 2003, in the Payette National Forest, on a ridge off Forest Road 325 near Burgdorf, Idaho, a pack of wolves attacked a herd of sheep and killed at least 55 of them, and another 30 are reported as missing. Mick Carlson, owner of Carlson Livestock, with his granddaughter Emily and one of his sheep herders, met with myself and several members of the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition and led us over dirt roads barely more than a rough fire trail to the scene of the massacre. Once devastated by forest fire years ago, it required a 20-minute hike over rough terrain and dead fall to get up the side of the ridge to the scene.

Long before we got close, there was an overbearing stench of death. As we approached the first kills, there was a flurry of activity as the scavenging birds fled a few yards away to another batch of carcasses, the cacophony was tremendous as the birds fought over the scraps. The killings had occurred 5 days before and the carcasses have since been subjected to the elements, birds, a few coyotes, a bear or two and legions of insects.

Neither the odor nor the visuals were tolerable for long. I had come with 10 rolls of 35mm film and 15 disks for the digital camera, but I only took a single roll and 3 disks worth of photos, for the carnage was just too disturbing, and I abandoned my plan to photograph each and every one of them in their silent death masks, now crawling with maggots and flies. Initially, I had planned to help treat this for what it was, a crime scene. My intent was to mark each corpse with my GPS unit, and use yellow caution tape around each to visually indicate the extent of the killing field when photographed from the adjacent ridge, however, the wooded area was too thick and I had brought far too few rolls of tape. A light snow a couple nights before melted the hundreds of wolf tracks, degrading them so much as to render them useless for making plaster casts, but not so much that a layman could not identify what creature made them.

The killing field was probably 1,000 yards long and a few hundred yards wide. The wolves chased the herd downhill killing as it went until the remaining hapless creatures reached the creek at the bottom of the canyon. I did not go all the way down, I did not, as I had wanted to do, photograph each and every carcass, for I had had quite enough in the first three or four hundred yards. As a avid hunter, I am not squeamish, but it was pointless, each victim looked much like the last, attacked at the hindquarter, abdomen and on the shoulder near the throat. Most never eaten, just killed and left. The wolves had eaten just a couple so now it was to be the work of the scavengers to clean up the mess.

Some of the struggles must have been epic, hundreds of tufts of wool littered the track from the point of attack to the final resting place, usually some 20-odd feet or so. The earth disturbed by cloven hoofs and clawed paws bore silent testimony to the violence of the attacks.

The sheepherder named Chuck told me that on the day after the attacks were discovered, he, while searching for the missing sheep, blundered into an area where the over-full marauders had lain down in the sun to nap. Catching his scent, they awoke and arose, he wanted to flee, for he knew these were the killers, but he also knew that if he did run, the wolves may well add him to the menu. He backed away slowly, while still facing them.

We wore gloves and dust masks (to keep the flies out of our mouths) but still needed to shower for an hour after getting home, the scene left one with a sickly, sticky feeling of something filthy dirty, like having just toured a WW-II concentration camp death-house.

Government trappers killed one wolf the next day and trapped another (he radio-collared and released it - hopefully it will lead him to the rest of the pack, believed to be much larger than what the sheepherder saw) he is still working the area, searching for surviving sheep and still counting the dead. The photos he took and those Mr. Carlson took immediately after the slaughter, which show how few were fed on, have yet to be developed and the Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition hopes to present them in a press conference to be held in a week or so. Some of the sheep that had survived the slaughter died a few days later of the bite wounds.

Upon investigating this event, it was learned that several other livestock companies in the region had suffered even greater losses this year, but the media was largely silent on these, The Spokesman-Review being the only media of any note that even bothered to write anything, and at that just a small article earlier this summer.

The killings had been presaged by the killing, and partial devouring of a herd dog in early spring. Later, in the Nez Perce National Forest wolves killed 20, and later 30 of Carlson's sheep. This slaughter however, is sure to bring national attention to the plight of livestock companies that suffer losses of approximately $100 per sheep. It was explained that the private conservation fund that had been compensating ranchers was now running out of funds.

There used to be wolves in Idaho, the ones that they never could get rid of due to the rough terrain, even with some 100 years of bounty hunting. But in 1995, the Federal Government, in eager concert with environmentalist movements, has brought in the Canadian Gray Wolves and the state of Idaho is beginning to suffer for it. According to "Of Wolves And Men" by Barry Holstun Lopez (Charles Scribner's Sons, NY, 1978), Lopez notes that Taxonomist Edward Goldman identified 23 sub-species of wolf in North America. This may lend credence to the Anti-Wolf Coalition's claim that the wolf that has long roamed Idaho was likely Canus Lupus Irremotus (Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf) rather than the Canadian Gray Wolf that the Federal Government imported into Wyoming and Idaho over protests of the governments and peoples of those states.

Many Idaho elk hunters have noted increased difficulty in successful hunts, and may rightfully be blaming the wolf. Five years ago, Idaho Hunting Zone 28 had 500 cow elk tags available, four years ago there were 400, and so on, reduced by 100 each year until now there are no cow tags anymore. The viable cow-calf ratio for a herd of elk to be viable is believed to be 25 to 29 calves per 100 cows. In that area, zone 28, observers report just 3 to 6 per 100.

Lopez's book notes that: "In 1973 well-meaning people in New York and Los Angeles urged that the Eastern Timber Wolf should be classified an endangered species. The law was passed and the same people scoffed when Minnesota complained that it had too many Eastern Timber Wolves. Afforded full federal protection, the Minnesota wolf population grew larger and larger and without simultaneous control on the number of human deer hunters, the wolf's primary food source declined and many wolves died of starvation." The implication is that we ought sacrifice man's right to hunt for the wolf's. Something has got to give in order to achieve balance, and those who govern such matters are more likely to regulate away the hunter's rights, as they are fewer in number than the well-meaning city-folk who command a greater share of the body politic. The danger is that some government bureaucrats with designs may seek to exploit the situation in order to expand their own power and control.

The elk and the deer and the sheep will be but pawns in the greater picture, they will suffer more than man, for earlier in his book's introduction, Lopez states: "...wolves do not kill just the old, the weak and the injured. They also kill animals in the prime of health. And they don't always kill just what they need; they sometimes kill in excess. No one-...-knows why wolves do what they do."

Copyright 2003 by the Author, T. Allen Hoover.

Reproduction by any means prohibited without the written permission of the author.

All rights reserved.

Idaho Statesman article:

Intent to Diminish
(The Idaho Statesman re-titled this article ' Editorial unfairly demonizes foes of wolf re-introduction' when published August 20, 2003)

By T. Allen Hoover

Wednesday’s editorial “Bounty hunting in court” is “Yellow Journalism”. To use “lynch mob” as the description of those seeking to file a class-action lawsuit to remove the Canadian Gray Wolf from Idaho is an intellectually dishonest misnomer. The Oxford Dictionary defines “lynch” (of a mob) to put (a person) to death without a legal trial, so clearly then, this group cannot be called such, for it exactly a trial they seek. Of this the editors may be keenly aware, preferring to play the wordsmith to demonize, and to enhance and promote that social dementia known as “Political Correctness” (a concept coined by Chinese Dictator Mao).The legal profession appears impugned (or perhaps signaled) alluding an attorney who dares to take the case would be a “bounty hunter”, after “Idaho Wolves”.Idaho Wolves? The group wants to sue to remove Canadian Gray Wolves. Canadian wolves imported into Idaho do not get naturalized by the INS, nor do their offspring automatically become “citizens” just as African Elephants do not bear American Elephant young.

Are we to rename the West Nile Virus as the West Mississippi Virus? Mislabeling in pharmaceuticals or foods is a crime, and certainly ought to be in a highly influential media. Alas, here we see the flaw of the 1st amendment. “Tweaking” the facts is, unfortunately, protected speech. n “intent to diminish” is displayed by the liberal automatic presumption of superiority in “It’s ridiculous, based on some the-west-ain’t-big-enough-for-the-both-of-us assumption that doesn’t square with reality”. This seeks to put words in their mouths, portray the group in a pseudo-macho light and paint them with colors they are not. The editorial claims they want to return to the “bad old days” when the government tried to manipulate the West, but is not the current wolf effort also a government manipulation? Why has hunting zone 28 seen cow tags drop from 500 just 5 years ago to 0 this year? Reduced sales of non-resident licenses and tags negatively affect Idaho’s economy. If this predator population is to be made viable here in Idaho, ought not other life-forms also be allowed to become viable in their own natural habitats?

Should the government re-introduce endangered Polio or other life forms into urban populations? If efforts to eradicate smallpox and anthrax were good ideas, and those diseases are now considered weapons of mass destruction, we must rethink the wolf re-introduction. Either we re-introduce harmful species and live with it, or we tightly control species that cause us harm. The government tried to eradicate the Idaho wolf, but, despite a century of efforts, Idaho wolves survived. This paper’s Pete Zimowski wrote an article on a wolf attack back in 1978, nearly two decades before the reintroduction, and in another article Fish & Game officer John Gahl noted that where there is one, there are more. The Canadian and Idaho wolves appear to differ and may be separate sub-species, just as certain Idaho species of snails and fish considered separate species. Neither the government nor the wolf recovery participants really know how many wolves there are, official claims say there are less than 300.

As humans tend to act in their own best self-interest, we are not likely to see any internal discord over the actual number, for whistle-blowers and dissenters might lose their precious pension. Does the government ever make mistakes? Managerial decisions gave us two shuttle disasters, and discounted an alert FBI agent’s warnings about those taking flight lessons months before 9-11, and the list goes on. The wolf experiment is a mistake in progress.

T. Allen Hoover has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Political Science, Public Law and Political Philosophy from Boise state University.

Copyright 2003 by the Author, T. Allen Hoover.

Reproduction by any means prohibited without the written permission of the author.

All rights reserved.