*Editor’s Notes* On or about the 17th of March, 2012 an article appeared in The Oregonian (I found a copy here.). The article was in reference to a dead dog found in northeast Oregon, weighing 97 pounds. Officials found the need to necropsy the beast and send for DNA testing to determine what kind of a dog it was. For those who are already lost in this conversation, they wanted to determine if it was a preciously, federally protected wolf, while at the same time attempt to determine if it was murdered by a human(s).
Approximately three days later, Jim Beers, retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, responded to that article with a letter of his own. That letter is published below.
Beers writes: “Wolf “biologists”, government bureaucrats, University professors (bought and paid for by government grants), and the “DNA Analysts” can set those chromosome definitions and limits ANYWHERE convenient. Want 5 “species”? No problem. Want 50 “species”? Just a minute, we can do that. It is “science” truly worthy of the “noble animal” tripe and hidden agendas of the entire wolf debacle.”
As has become the practice, the wolf, which is nothing more than just another dog, has been exalted to a level of nothing less than a Greek god or goddess. The same can also be said of the common coyote, again nothing more than a dog. All family pets are placed in a category all unto themselves, at times receiving better care than thousands of human Americans.
Much of the tragedy in all of this comes from the government-authorized setting of “chromosome definitions and limits” in order to fulfill political agendas.
While reading Mr. Beer’s piece, bear in mind how what he says has implications in where you live. Are there those suggesting and proposing the existence of yet another “species” of wolf, i.e. dog? Is your state protecting wild canines as though they were some “sacred” animal and yet the only way to tell the difference between all of these dogs is via DNA tests?
Consider the inanity of it all.
Here is Jim Beer’s letter:
It was with wry amusement that I (a retired federal wildlife biologist living in Minnesota) read in your paper about that 97 lb. “animal” found dead in the Grande Ronde Valley. To think that after decades of hoopla about how “important” wolves are; this “animal” in the custody of the august “professionals” of both the Oregon State Police and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife must be examined for DNA “analysis” (questionable at best) to determine if it is A. a dog, or B. a coyote, or C. a wolf, or D. a dog/coyote cross, or E. a dog/wolf cross, or F. a wolf/coyote cross, or G. a (this gets too confusing).
But wait, if all those Eastern and Midwestern cougar sightings of the past 30 years are any indication perhaps the “experts” in government will explain that dingoes or jackals (each of which enjoy “fertile unions” with dogs, coyotes, wolves and any of the infinite crosses therefrom) either A. escaped from a zoo, or B. were “pets” released by un-(federally)regulated pet owners to consummate an affair with some poor “Native” wolf or coyote or even some unsuspecting “Invasive” dog one evening. I wait with baited breath for their “findings”!
Truth be known, the classic understanding of animal “Species” is a group of animals that successfully interbreed and produce fertile offspring with characteristics of each parent. The difference between wolves, coyotes, jackals, dingoes, and (all) dogs is therefore the same as the difference between Chows, Chihuahuas, Dobermans, and Wolfhounds. That one (the wolf) is so “important” that killing one carries government sanction and that its destruction (humans, cattle, dogs, big game, etc.) must be endured by powerless rural folk is bad enough (actually monumentally bad): that this sacred wild and destructive animal can “only” be identified by “DNA analysis” completes the fairy-tale nature of the entire wolf “science” treated like some “Law of Physics”.
Wolf “biologists”, government bureaucrats, University professors (bought and paid for by government grants), and the “DNA Analysts” can set those chromosome definitions and limits ANYWHERE convenient. Want 5 “species”? No problem. Want 50 “species”? Just a minute, we can do that. It is “science” truly worthy of the “noble animal” tripe and hidden agendas of the entire wolf debacle.
I am reminded of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. If the “experts” find that some poor bumpkin is responsible for the demise of the “97 lb. animal” that only some secret laboratory can declare what it is; he will wind up like Alice in “Wonderland”. When the Queen cries “off with her head” and poor Alice mentions that she hasn’t been found guilty, the Queen (i.e. government) simply says, “first the sentence and then the verdict.”
Did Lewis Carroll write The Endangered Species Act?
Jim Beers
