Re-introducing gray wolves is one of the options being considered."

How long has Yellowstone Park been in place?  Over a hundred years and it is
much like this other old western, mountainous National Park.  Now suddenly
the "elk population" is "nearly double what biologists say it should be"?
Based on what?  The other animals?  The vegetation?  Erosion? Disease?
Truth be told it is none of these.

Today, when you hear "biologists say" that is governmentese for "we are
going to do this and since you are too dumb and too powerless to do anything
about it you better sit down and shut up or else".  In other words, as
Malthus says about "sound science" in Chapter 2, Verse 24 "that man (or
woman) should never get in the way of wilderness or wolves or anything else
"biologists say (it) should be".

We know there aren't too many elk for hunters.  Ranchers and other neighbors
may think there are too many elk but since when did any "biologist",
especially a National Park Service employee, give a hoot in Hades about such
folks.  We know the National Park Service and the US Fish and Wildlife
Service never advocated any control of elk or deer or bison in these Parks
for decades no matter that they carried diseases or knocked down fences or
ate winter hay or denuded entire hillsides or creek bottoms, no the Park is
and must always remain "sacred ground".

Hunting could have been adopted at any time the Park Service tinker belles
and US Fish and Wildlife Service "biologists" would have pushed it with
Congress but they never made a peep.  Hunting would have maintained the
herds at any level (increasing or decreasing them and keeping them in better
health with strong reproductive rates) and generated REVENUE for state
conservation programs and Federal Park operations and maintenance while
protecting Park plants and minimizing erosion and overgrazed valleys and
stream banks.  But hey, some guy would take along his kid and enjoy himself.
The meat would be eaten.  Hides would make moccasins and gloves and hats.
Teeth would decorate watches and hair would grace turkey calls and hats.
Local economies would have benefited ten times more than the lies currently
being publicized about "wolf economic benefits". Better that urban
imaginings be catered to in order to keep the Federal dollars and power
increases flowing to the bureaucrats.

So suddenly these anti-rural Federal overlords conjure up an elk problem
and, well what do you know, they will consider "Re-introducing gray wolves".
How wonderful, how fortunate we are that our benevolent overseers are
seeking to "protect" our National Parks that they ignored for so long.  And
what a fortuitous coincidence that wolf introduction is suddenly an
available option.  I will just have to sit down and write a poem about our
good fortune and read it at the next "Wolf Conference", golly!

This is as transparent as Saran Wrap.  It is all academic anyway.  The wolf
infection of the Rockies will get there soon enough but this will just
justify more money and Federal (synonymous with radical NGO) authority in
the meantime.  So "they" can promise to delist wolves or approve Lower
Slobovia's Wolf Plan as soon as wolves fill (pardon me reach "optimal" or
"sustainable" levels in) Oregon and Washington and Colorado and Nebraska and
Colorado and now (drum-roll please) the Rocky Mountain National Park where
they will be embarking on this much-needed and highly important elk
reduction effort (as the wolves pour out of the Park into the surrounding
area and reproduce much more than anyone will be able to "prove" while they
decimate livestock, dogs and big game hunting and soon more people).

The really great thing that goes unmentioned is that Defenders of Wildlife
can hire more boys and girls (with NPS or FWS grant money) to "partner" with
the State and Federal "biologists" to convince everyone that their eyes are
deceiving them and that things are getting better as they deteriorate all
around.  All the hunting conservation organization staff folks can likewise
apply for the jobs it will create to "measure" and "monitor" impacts and
give Power Point Presentations that say nothing) and the State fish and
wildlife staff guys can all go to seminars, paid for with hunting and
fishing excise taxes, on how to look interested but never say anything
except to murmur while always keeping your shoulder with the patch on it
turned toward the guy with the camera.

If you made this stuff up, who would believe it?

Jim Beers
10 April 2006