So the bartender says to the vertically-challenged guy on the stool …

A guest post by Jim Beers:

Although I enjoy a good joke, I don’t generally share them with a wide audience but this is an exception.

* After 30 + years of Minnesota “scientists, bureaucrats and self-righteous environmentalists” warbling incessantly about the marvelous wonders of nature’s “apex” predator (i.e. the wolf) REDUCING the moose population on Isle Royale National Park since the wolf’s vaunted passage across an 18 mile “ice bridge” on Lake Superior from Minnesota 50 years ago.

* After constant annual newspaper articles about how vegetation has “returned” and “recovered” and blossomed (so to speak) on Isle Royale since the wonderful wolves REDUCED the moose and thus relieved the pressure on the plant life that was never quite so important or desirable that hunting to MAINTAIN the desirable numbers, distribution and density of moose (as well as support other wildlife management on the Park and in the State) to achieve the highly stupendous plant communities that are so touted from sea to shining sea.

* After 15 + years of explanations by “scientists, bureaucrats and self-righteous environmentalists” in annual newspaper articles about how there was ABSOLUTELY NO RELATIONSHIP between the steady disappearance of moose on the Minnesota mainland and the steady increase of protected wolves throughout the range of the mainland moose until the recent permanent closure of moose hunting in Minnesota.

* After 10 + years of “scientists, bureaucrats and self-righteous environmentalists” out West in Yellowstone Park and Idaho/Montana surroundings copy-catting this scam by denying wolf numbers they found politically-incorrect; inflating elk and moose numbers with lame excuses about census-affecting weather anomalies, changing migration patterns and bad Karma; denying vehemently that the simultaneous loss of elk and moose hunting that coincided with the introduction, protection and spread of wolves were related.

* After 5 + years of watching Minnesota, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and Washington wildlife bureaucracies claim “slightly increasing”, “steady” or “declining” wolf populations as hunters, ranchers, dog owners and rural residents’ screams and objections have reached crescendo levels it is becoming evident that “trust” is not a word to be mentioned when discussing “scientists, bureaucrats and self-righteous environmentalists’ and “wolves”. Keep in mind that even estimates of annual changes for (notoriously hard to count) wolves are only slightly easier to generate than “counting” the field mice in the state, much less to fabricate these”nine-hundred and eighty-THREE” or “three thousand eight-hundred and sixty-two” wolf “count” placebos for friends and foes.

* After all of the above being conjured up as “science” to bamboozle hunters, befuddle ranchers and generally flim-flam rural Americans and their political representatives AND NOW as “some of the people some of the time” seem to be waking up about the disappearing Minnesota moose and now deer, and the loss of elk, moose and deer in states where wolves have become ubiquitous in the West: along comes this fortuitous “discovery” that:

1. Moose “COME BACK” after being decimated by wolves. So quit whining hunters and admit the “scientists, bureaucrats and self-righteous environmentalists” were right. Take up curling and TV for a couple of years and everything will be back the way you once had it. We’ll call you when it happens.

2. Wolf numbers decline and STAY LOW. So shut up you ranchers, dog owners, parents and rural residents and recreationists: you don’t know what you are talking about! Either take the easements we offer and live as we say or move elsewhere.

3. Soon, wolves and moose (and elk, deer, wild and domestic sheep , goats and cattle, et al?) will be “in balance” and everyone will be happy.

Those wolves and moose on Isle Royale are as comparable to mainland American, Canadian and European wolves and their impacts as are articles about Russian landowner/peasant relations in the Middle Ages relevant to modern US college athlete lawsuits to unionize college athletes for pay and collective bargaining rights from University administrators.

Isle Royale wolves have no – deer, elk, horses, foals, cows, calves, dogs, domestic sheep and lambs, bighorn sheep, rural garbage pits, nighttime rural town and residence yards and outbuildings, school bus stops, sleeping campers, etc., etc. to shift to when the clearly vulnerable moose cows and moose calves get scarce (due to??). The answer is “wolf predation”. They also do not have constant genetic infusions from dogs, coyotes and every manner of Canid attracted to females in estrus from miles and miles in every direction as do the wolves on the mainlands.

Articles like the one below are so absurd as to be humorous. They are probably written by activist government employees and writers that moonlight under nom de plumes of romance novels written for young girls and what sailors once referred to as “skin books”.

I recommend you dismiss such romance propaganda but if you read it, read it for the unintended humor it contains and imagine Jay Leno or Jimmy Fallon explaining it. Remember all this as deer and elk disappear and wolves get more and more “bold” around settlements and dogs become liabilities and ranchers reduce herds and rural towns decline further. Remember Isle Royale and laugh.

*Link to the article in reference*

Jim Beers
3 April 2014

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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.