Wolf Canards and Other Agendas

A Letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal – by James Beers

The “Wolf’s Return is Big and, for Some, Bad” has one major prevarication and a humbug paradox intended to keep the wolf issue cloudy while advancing other agendas. The wolves introduced into The Lower 48 states by federal fiat are only good for Non-Government Organizations, urban readers and bureaucracies; while being “Bad” for rural economies and residents from children, ranchers, and the elderly to hunters, dog owners and campers.

First, it is a prevarication to say, “In 1995 and 1996 federal biologists at Congress’s direction shipped wolves (from Canada) to central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park”. The US House of Representatives had previously denied a federal Budget Request for funds to do that. Under President Clinton and without Congressional knowledge, the US Fish and Wildlife Service “diverted” (or stole or misappropriated) $45 to 60 Million from Excise Taxes; that could only be used by state agencies for state wildlife programs; to trap, transfer and release those wolves on an Indian Reservation and in an Exclusive federal enclave (YNP) where state permission was not necessary. When this was revealed in 1999 by a GAO Audit Report to the US House of Representatives’ Resource Committee under Chairman Young of Alaska, the wolves were long “out of the bag” and state agencies had become so dependent on federal funds and federal career opportunities that they quietly refrained from asking for Congress to replace the funds. Hardly the honorable “federal ecological experiment” described in your article.

Second, it is a humbug and a paradox to continue this myth that “the US in 2011 and 2012 stripped wolves in Idaho and several other states in the region of protection by the Endangered Species Act”. In the very next paragraph you note how Idaho must be careful “to avoid a potential relisting under the Endangered Species Act”. Thus the feds release and spread the wolves and tell the State residents to pick up the tab for all the destruction and losses and to keep X amount or the feds will step back in and take over. Today, the urban enthusiasts and NGO’s go into federal courts to stop controls, forbid methods, and seek land closures while the fiction of “state management” drains state coffers. Actual state jurisdiction would include the authority to exclude or even exterminate wolves in line with state resident’s desires: no such authority exists today. This is like telling rural Americans that they have a “right” to freedom of speech but only insofar as federal bureaucrats and urban speech police allow.

Just as we are witnessing federal erosion of 2nd Amendment (gun) rights and 5th Amendment private property rights: so too is this wolf fiasco a glimpse of what is happening to the 10th Amendment rights of “States” and “the people” to all those powers “not delegated to the United States by the Constitution”.

James Beers
22 March 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.

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