An article at Pioneer Press, TwinCities.com, has blubbering about what is to be done about wolves, if anything, on Isle Royale. Here’s the link.
I’ll make a brief comment and then lastly will be followed by Jim Beer’s perspective on what the article actually is saying.
From this bit of information found in the article:
A debate is raging in the scientific community, the public and among Park Service officials on whether humans should intervene to rescue an isolated wolf population that some experts say appears doomed due to genetic inbreeding that’s causing physical deformities that are affecting wolves’ life expectancy.
Others say climate change might have a major impact on the island’s wolves, and the Park Service has formed panels of experts to look at genetics and a warming climate to evaluate their effects on wolf numbers.
Park Service officials have said they have three basic options: doing nothing; waiting for the wolves to die off and then reintroduce new wolves; or introducing new wolves soon while some wolves still are present.
I think other options are not listed and I think the options should be based on what the brain trust decides to finger as the reason wolves have disappeared on Isle Royal and not on the mainland and moose have increased on Isle Royale but decreased on the mainland. For example, climate change. If the special interest “scientists” on the panel that will decide the cause, opt for climate change, not only will they have some explaining to do for their decision but there is little reason to do anything about wolves until they have solved, as gods, the climate change issue. Let me explain further.
If it is decided climate change is the reason, or at least a substantial contributing factor, by their own fake standards, then the same people need to explain why, then, the moose population on Isle Royale has exploded to 1,000, as the wolf population has disappeared, while at the same time climate change has been fingered as the cause of the reduction of moose in Minnesota (Isle Royale is part of Michigan but the island is closer to the Arrowhead of Minnesota than any part of Michigan mainland including the Upper Penninsula.)
Using the same logic and faux science as those thinking climate change is the major factor in a dwindling moose population, and now wolves, why rush into wasting taxpayer money to introduce more wolves if an unresolved, man-caused, climate change issue has not been resolved?
I am of the opinion that the reason that we have not seen more wolves “crossing on the ice” (like they did in 1949 – wink, wink) to repopulate the island is because too many people are watching too closely.
My opinion: Don’t waste my dime on fake science that contributes nothing to the realities of wildlife management outside of a rare closed, incomplete ecosystem.
Jim Beers Perspective:
WHAT IS REALLY BEING SAID by Jim Beers
1. “A debate is raging in the scientific community, the public and among Park Service officials on whether humans should intervene to rescue an isolated wolf population”
The “public” and the “Park Service” are what they are but consider that “the scientific community” is supposedly pure and composed of incontrovertible facts and experts that justify every manner of government intervention. If a “debate” “rages” there: on what basis does it revolve? The answer here as elsewhere in government plant and animal machinations is that “science” and “scientists” are ideologues and advocates every bit as much as the urban animal “rescue” lady or the lawyer working for The Defenders of Wildlife. They are as worthy of the deference shown them in court or their argument-settling role as some Conscientious Objector wearing his Dad’s Service uniform and medals is worthy of consideration in setting Defense Policy in the Pentagon.
2. “Others say climate change might have a major impact on the island’s wolves”.
Minnesota DNR bureaucrats and “scientists” have told docile Minnesotans that “climate change” was the leading factor on the steady demise of the moose population in the State. Twice each year in prominent newspaper articles the State bureaucrats and scientists asked for more money to investigate how “climate change” explained why moose were disappearing. Every such article characterizes those who say, “If moose are disappearing as wolves have been and continue to increase, what about predation of wolves on moose?” as red-necked, jack pine savages that probably flunked out of grade school and lead an alcoholic existence in some trailer back in the North Woods somewhere. So how can “climate change” decrease wolves on Isle Royal while wolves increase on the mainland? How can “climate change” be responsible for the decline of moose throughout Minnesota while their numbers are exploding on Isle Royal? Is there a scientist in the house?
3. “Allow public discussion on wolf management on the island, a designated federal wilderness area.”
This is a “two-fer”. First, I wish to humbly thank the Park Service for their kind offer to “allow public discussion”. For such august bureaucrats to deign to “allow” the rest of us to publicly discuss such matters is so benevolent that I for one can merely express my eternal gratitude. Think about that folks, think about how low the American citizen vis-a-vis his government has sunk. Second, I thought NOTHING could be “managed” in a “federal wilderness area”? Does this mean that downed timber or fire-hazard brush can be removed or burned safely? Can firewood be cut with a chain saw or water scooped from a stream to fight a fire or uses like logging, grazing, vehicle travel, be considered on the (formerly?) precious “Wilderness Areas” at the sufferance of federal bureaucrats? Inquiring minds would like to know.
4. “Isle Royale has a long-standing history of broad ecosystem management,”.
This is gobbledygook. They aren’t even supposed to “manage” wilderness. Ecosystem is a maligned term that has been perversely mangled over the past 45+ years into a meaningless word alone and a word that can mean everything in the ear of the listener or the eyes of the reader. That these insular bureaucrats claim, and the media validate, that their personal work to pander to powerful radical organizations for their own benefit is “broad” ecosystem management is simply ludicrous.
5. “It’s believed that moose first swam to the island in the early 1900s and for decades thrived with no predators. Wolves are relatively new to the 45-mile-long, 143,000-acre island complex, having crossed Lake Superior ice to get there in 1949.”
And wolves that have been somewhere only for 61 years are what: “endangered”, “vital”, “native”, “keystone sp.”, what? Why aren’t they (bureaucrats and scientists and their financier-enablers) treating these moose and wolves that are such recent arrivals (radicals call them “Invaders”) to Isle Royal like they treat pheasants, Hungarian Partridge, Brown Trout, Great lakes Salmon, and all the other dreaded “non-natives” and “introduced” species they want to eradicate, that is to say with contempt? The vast majority of these desirable “non-natives” (radicals call them “Invasives”) have been in place and benefitting human society far longer than these moose and wolves on this Island.
6. “Wolves are no longer performing their function as predator on the island,” “There just aren’t enough to have any real impact on moose.”
So, let me get this straight: wolves on Isle Royal “perform a function as predator” on moose on which they are expected to have a “real impact”. Simultaneously, in the rest of Minnesota (yes Isle Royal was once widely considered to be part of Minnesota until federal controls and hegemony became so powerful that everyone believes the federal estate to simply be separate and distinct from States and Local Communities despite their window-dressing “allowing” of “public discussion”) moose decline as wolves increase and we are instructed to not listen to those fools that say there is a connection between the two. This stuff belongs on Prairie Home Companion.
7. “The situation is so unusual that it’s affecting other species on the island”.
Oh my word! Attention, “species” are being “affected” somewhere. You mean like elk and moose disappearing when wolves are forced into rural enclaves that do not want them? Aren’t “ecosystems” supposed to be like “climate” in that any (well not quite any) change is an emergency that only more government, more spending, more laws and more regulations can control before we all die? Actually, if bureaucrats and radicals want wolves or grizzlies somewhere they haven’t been for a century that is OK: if the same suspects want to eradicate wild species or domestic animals from somewhere that is OK: only if you or I want a landscape and rural environment safe and productive in which to live comfortably and safely raise our families and this is at odds with an all-powerful government acting as a shill for radical organizations –that is NOT OK! My God, “species” go up and down from moment to moment and saying that it is government’s job to intervene with no more cause than that things will be different is an abuse of government power for an unachievable purpose that could drain the world’s debt and GDP’s combined.
8. “It will be up to the National Park Service to decide”.
Unless you are one of the few that think of the Park Service or Fish and Wildlife Service or Forest Service (curious that word “Service” as in who or what do they “SERVE?”) as in your pocket, such common words these days should send a chill up your spine and heartburn down your throat.
9. “With wolf numbers so low, moose numbers on the island have exploded, more than doubling in recent years to more than 1,000. That’s the opposite trend from moose in Minnesota, where numbers have plummeted in recent years to the lowest levels in decades. While moose in Minnesota face bears, humans and deer-related diseases as predators, moose on Isle Royale have only wolves as threats”.
Finally, the piece de resistance! Like the President and his minions explaining what he “really” meant when he said we could keep our doctors and our insurance policies; these bureaucrats, scientists, and their media enablers are faced with a dilemma. How to explain how wolves decimate moose on Isle Royal and not on mainland Minnesota and why when the wolves are about to disappear moose populations are exploding on Isle Royal? If we knocked down dramatically the wolves on mainland Minnesota would moose recover? (The answer is YES.) Yet the Park Service will milk the federal Treasury for more money and people for this mysterious “situation” just like the Minnesota DNR bureaucrats and the University “scientists” have and are milking the State Treasury for more and more money and people to conduct “research on this mystery. Like the explanation of the President’s repeated use of the word “period”; these government con artists add “bears, humans and deer-related diseases” to the growing and irrelevant reasons for the mainland moose declines.
Oh well, it sell papers and garners urban votes to keep in power State pols maintaining unemployment with handouts and building stadiums (Romans called it “Bread and Circuses) and Federal pols signing UN Treaties to sell our sovereignty while taking away our property and our Rights. You couldn’t make this up if you tried to.
Jim Beers
7 November 2013
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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.
Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net
