Is Delisting Rigged?
by Dr. Charles Kay, Utah State Univ.
Published in Muley Crazy Magazine, July/Aug 2008 [here]
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has announced that wolves in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming will be delisted by the end of March 2008. According to a recent USFWS news release, wolves in the Northern Rockies were to be delisted when there was a “minimum of 30 breeding pairs and 300 wolves for at least three consecutive years. That goal was achieved in 2002, and the wolf population has expanded in size and range every year since. There are currently more than 1,500 wolves and at least 100 breeding pairs in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. While most sportsmen think that delisting is long overdue, a consortium of eleven environmental groups has said they will sue to stop delisting because there are not enough wolves! Apparently “wolf recovery” has been a fraud from the beginning!
When I published my first article on wolves in Petersen’s Hunting back in 1993, USFWS’s Ed Bangs called my Department Chairman, as well as the President of the University, and asked them to fire me because I had suggested that the 30 pair, 300 wolf figure was a con game between the feds and pro-wolf groups. To quote from my 1996 monograph on wolf recovery,
“The government proposed 100 wolves in each area [Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming] knowing that the numbers would not be enough to meet ESA [Endangered Species Act] requirements of minimum population size, and environmental groups did not object [they did not], knowing that 300 wolves would raise less political opposition than 1,500 to 2,000 wolves. Wolves arrive and increase to 300. The government moves to delist. Environmentalists sue and win. The wolf population is allowed to reach 1,500 wolves or more. Environmentalists are happy, the federal agencies are happy, [more federal control and bigger budgets], and the public realizes — too late — what has happened.”
So I was right! No wonder the USFWS wanted me fired! But I was also wrong, for the Greens do not want 1,500 wolves, as they already have that, now they want 6,000 or more wolves as one interbreeding population in virtually every western state!
… I hate to say I told you so, but I TOLD YOU SO 14 years ago and no one did anything except to try and have me fired! It is time for sportsmen to wake up because we have been and are being played. … [more]
