Gray Wolves to Be Removed from Endangered Species List
Copying from an old comment of mine:<p>&quot;As someone who grew up in a wolf reintro zone I have a few comments and opinions to help others have more productive conversations.<p>First, not all wolf reintro&#x27;s are the same. Each ecosystem is different and the scientific justifications need to be done for each, and the papers for one do not necessarily apply to the other. The Yellowstone program may have been a success, but other places are not Yellowstone, and it is a mistake to use it as a way to handwave away criticisms. Also, sometimes the justifications are pretty weak, and could easily be made up with by increase in hunting tags or adjustment of hunting time windows and area restrictions.<p>Second, there are jurisdictional and public control issues at the heart of the matter. There are people who actually have to live in these areas and they are major changes. I strongly dislike the attitude of some that locals should have no say. The people in our area voted against the reintro program and it was done anyway, with the governor saying &quot;I don&#x27;t care what the people want, the reintro program is happening&quot;. That is a problem. I have also seen the effects of fresh Forest Department&#x2F;BLM phd types ignore the locals wisdom and advice and pay the price for it, and the same &quot;We know better than you back country bumpkin&quot; condescension tends to be at play in the reintro programs. These things have real consequences. For example, as a kid my grampa who was a logger in the area in the 70&#x27;s and many other loggers were saying the Forest Service needed to let the loggers thin the forests out and to do more control burns. I being young thought the old loggers were just old-fashioned and the PhD&#x27;s knew what they were doing, until reality happened. The holier than though attitude of the credentialed people prevailed, then the pine beetle infestation hit, and within a decade we had two ~500,000 acre forest fires that the forests are still recovering from.<p>Third, there are often claims that wolves never attack humans, and those claims are blatantly false or are using very carefully selected statistics (North America only, etc) to craft a narrative. Beyond that, it vastly changes the safety profile of being in the forests, in a way that discourages people from experiencing it. Many locals from my area have posited that this is an intentional side-effect. Even more so when the rumors of a grizzly reintro program started floating around (I don&#x27;t know if these are just rumors, but who can blame the locals for being afraid of an unelected unaccountable bureaucracy who already ignores them from doing something else against their wishes). We used to be able to only have to worry about bears or mountain lions, who both have pretty easily avoided confrontational profiles, but now locals don&#x27;t go anywhere without being armed.<p>Fourth, the dismissal of the cattle ranchers is far overrated. Cattle ranching, especially in this day in age, is a science in itself, and in the forest is a vital part of forest maintenance. Silviopasture&#x2F;agroforestry is also often studied by the kids of the old ranchers who then come back and apply that knowledge. Thoughts of the ranchers as dumb hicks is a foolish and insulting stereotype. Not only that, but often the forest service and BLM are underfunded and undermanned, and many of the ranchers who are paying public land leases do a good job assisting in maintaining the forest, and unlike the new kid who just got shipped in from across the country after getting a degree, they live there and have passed down local knowledge for decades if not longer.<p>I know it&#x27;s easy to see something like a wolf reintro program and assume it&#x27;s a great thing and just jump on the bandwagon, but maybe a perspective from someone who grew up in one and have heard out the locals on the issues might help color your view on the topic a bit.<p>Otherwise you just end up with a bunch of locals that around the campfire say &quot;It&#x27;s all about the three S&#x27;s... shoot, shovel, and shhhhh&quot;.&quot;