I live in Minnesota, we have far more wolves than you have and while there are pockets of depredation problems there are also places where there are no problems. I find it hard to believe that your wildlife is being wiped out by a handful of wolves.
Here we go again. Having to educate an another uneducated hunter that is living a long ways from the continental US west.
This is going to be a long battle with education coming one person at a time.
It's easy to objectify what's happening to someone else when it's not happening in your own backyard, isn't it? Might you have a different tune if the deer hunting wasn't so good right where you lived?
If we as hunters can't even agree on the issue at hand in the west, how are going to unite enough to fight this thing. Dig man, dig for good information as you won't get it through the typical channels.
Swamphunter, did you take the time to read through or listen to the video links supplied in this thread reprinted below?
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Same species or not the wolves that were already here were very differnent, and the most salient point, they ACTED very different than that ones you and I as hunters paid (robbed) for to be introduced here.
Carefully read through the points that detail the difference in habits/actions between these two very different types of wolves in this email link below again from one of the people most involved in documenting the existence of the wolves that were here before the non-native, invasive Canadian Grey wolf was introduced:
Native Rocky Mountain Wolves v. Introduced Canadian Gray Wolves - Black Bear Blog
The information is this email is and should be a major sticking point in this issue in my (albeit fallible) mind.
The Feds helicopter net gunned a very different wolf from not too far over the Canadian border, brought it back south across the 49 parallel and suddenly it's 'endangered'.
Think about that. The whole thing is a complete farce.
Dr. Val Geist is quoted as saying that 50% of a given wolf population would have to be killed every year for years to have an appreciable effect on increasing elk populations in the same areas. See below link:
Removal of West Fork Wolves Unlikely to Help declining Elk Populations
From above article: "Renowned wolf biologist, Dr. L. David Mech told me in a recent interview that removing wolves from the West Fork region would probably have little to no effect on restoring elk numbers. Wolves have a high birth rate and new wolves are likely to quickly claim territory opened by killing the current wolves. Dr. Mech believes we would have to remove far more wolves than the Federal Government will consider allowing to have any chance at helping the elk population."
This is a serious issue, made much more serious because of the kind of animal introduced. You have to really wonder about the mindset of the folks in the USFWS that were willing to rob 60 million+ dollars from the Pittman-Robertson fund to illegally introduce a non-native invasive sub-species/variant wolf in 1994ish--my money and your money from excise taxes on firearms ammunition etc. set up in 1936, I believe, largely to be given back the the states to manage their wildlife. Watching this interview with Jim Beers, who came out of that organization and saw for years what was going on, sheds some light on this:
[ame=http://vimeo.com/28939194]Crying Wolf - Jim Beers: The Demise of Conservation on Vimeo[/ame]
I'd encourage all to watch this and contemplate a bit.
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Reprinted quote from the OP's last post:
"Historically, the wolf populations originally native to Yellowstone were classed under the subspecies C. l. irremotus. When the issue of what subspecies to use for the introduction was raised, park service representatives stated that the taxonomy of grey wolves had been revised numerous times, and that C. l. irremotus was not a distinct subspecies, but a geographical variant. Three publications were made on the appropriateness of using a founding population of Canadian wolves: Brewster and Fritz supported the motion, while Nowak determined that the original Yellowstone wolves were more similar to C. l. nubilus, a subspecies already present in Minnesota, and that the Canadian animals proposed by Brewster and Fritz were of the subspecies C. l. occidentalis, a significantly larger animal. The rationale behind Brewster and Fritz's favour was that wolves show little genetic diversity, and that the original population was extinct anyway. This was contradicted by Nowak, who contested that Minnesotan wolves were much more similar in size and shape to the original population than the proposed Canadian wolves, though he conceded that C. l. occidentalis was probably already migrating southward even before human intervention. The final use of Canadian wolves for the reintroduction was not without criticism: the American Society of Mammalogists criticized the project's lack of deference to the principle of Bergmann's rule, pointing out that the wolves used for the introduction were larger than the original park wolves, and were adapted to colder climates."
Now you read the above quote and then read the first link I supplied above and you start to wonder why didn't the Feds agressive work to reintroduce the wolf subspecies/variant that was already here? Why on earth would you agressively, knowningly introduce a non-navtive, invasive subspecies/variant when there was a known quantity of native wolves in the area?
We are fighting a philosphical/political battle here as these wolves were not introduced because of good science and the ESA was horribly abused in the process. If you knew as much about this as you should before making the grand statements you have you would've realized that the wolves you have in your backyard are characterized to be much more like what was (now extinct at the hands of the introduced Grey wolf and ultimately at the hands of the Feds--ironic to consider, isn't it?) native to the Rocky mtn west than the Canadian Grey wolf.
That's right. If the Feds had gone to your back yard and brought some of those wolves over to the west, they would've been more similar in habits/size/genetics than the Grey wolf introduced from Canada. There's links in this thread above that speak to this directly. So, why didn't they do just that? Think about that. Like I said, we are fighting a deep rooted philosophical/political battle. This is not, unfortunately, about the best science. The philosophical bent of the Feds at USFWS and even many state game agencies (again, listen to the Jim Beers video above) is clearly in mind.
The is a serious bent towards anti-hunting, anti-second ammendment, anti-access, anti-ranching, anti-grazing on federal lands. What particular variant of wolf can knowingly solve all of these issues for these folks with out them having to hardly lift a hand, especially with the backing of the ESA and certain know activist Federal judges? Hmmm...?
Apparently the wolf variant in your back yard didn't quite fit the bill, even though it is known to be closer in nearly every way to the original canis lupis irremotus sub-species variant that was here.
Little sidebar here, but this kinda gets me but also goes to a much deeper philosophical issue that Len clearly does not want discussed here, and so I try to hold my tongue. If folks don't otherwise realize it, technically, aside from the obvious mechanical issues, every dog on earth could mate with any other dog. There is a dog kind an many scientists agree that that what we have now in the world of dog originally came from a very small population of dogs. Sound familiar?
The point is, there is incredible genetic diversity in the dog 'kind', all of which had to be encapsulated in the 'original' dogs. Most of the domestic dogs are just a result of a very human interfering process where folks over long periods of time, bred dogs for certain traits and then these end result variants came about.
The point is that, genetic diversity aside, (which there really isn't that much in the sense of reproduction anyway if successful reproduction could technically occur between any two male/female dogs--really, humans are have 98% genetic similarity to watermelons, so that 2% difference must be important, huh?) the point is that the Canadian Grey wolf (occidentalis) and the Rocky Mountain wolf (irremotus-now truly extinct) LOOKED and ACTED much differently, just like the rest of the dogs in the dog 'kind' do.
So, to say that one kind of wolf if is genetically close to another kind of wolf is not a valid argument in and of itself. They are all very close genetically. But the small difference to genetics (due to population isolation and other factors) results in some huge habit/action/size factors that greatly affect kind of preferred prey, hunting styles and many, many other things.
