The Wolf-Dogs of Yellowstone
Wolves have decimated the elk herds in Yellowstone Park [here], but that’s okay because Yellowstone wolves are wild animals in danger of extinction, whereas elk are totally expendable.
The USFWS tried to take wolves off the Endangered Species List last year [here], evidently because their scientists believe that Canadian gray wolves are not endangered [here, here, here, here]. But twelve enviro groups sued to put a halt to the delisting [here], and a federal judge agreed with them [here].
U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy enjoined the delisting of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies and put them back on the Endangered Species list because, in his a-scientific opinion, wolves need more “genetic exchange” [here]. If the entire country is not crawling with wolves, they might get inbred and retarded like European royalty, in the judge’s twisted view of world.
We wrote at the time:
The problem is that wolves breed like dogs, and with dogs, coyotes, and everything else dog-like. Genetic purity can only be maintained within limited populations. When wolves are allowed to roam all over, their genotype gets polluted with dog genes.
They become wolf-dogs, like in New Mexico, or wolf-otes, like in Minnesota.
Sure enough, a new study by a team of biologists and molecular geneticists from Stanford University, UCLA, Sweden, Canada and Italy has found that nearly half of North American wolves have dog genes already [here].
Biologists solve mystery of black wolves
UCLA Press Release, 5-Feb-2009
Why do nearly half of North American wolves have black coats while European wolves are overwhelmingly gray or white? The surprising answer, according to teams of biologists and molecular geneticists from Stanford University, UCLA, Sweden, Canada and Italy, is that the black coats are the result of historical matings between black dogs and wild gray wolves.
The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, appears Feb. 5 in the online edition of the journal Science and will be published later in the journal’s print edition.
The scientists used molecular genetic techniques to analyze DNA sequences from 150 wolves, about half of them black, in Yellowstone National Park, which covers parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. They found that a novel mutated variant of a gene in dogs, known as the K locus, is responsible for black coat color and was transferred to wolves through mating.
It is hard to imagine how genes could get transferred other than by mating, but we didn’t write the press release. The scientists could not find evidence that Yellowstone wolf-dogs had picked up the domestic genes recently, but if the proliferation desired by Judge Molloy and the Plaintiffs in the lawsuit is realized, more cross-fertilization with dogs is inevitable.
“The underlying assumption is that genes from one species will be contained and not enter another species on a massive scale; this may not be true,” [Dr. Robert] Wayne said. “There may be implications for genetically modified organisms.”
Implications? Genetically modified organisms? Wolf-dogs?
All the hoo-rah over wolves and it turns out they aren’t wolves after all!
Elk herds decimated, sheep and cattle slaughtered, rural residents beset with killer predators, state legislatures in an uproar, Fish and Game budgets cannibalized, and the damn wolves aren’t even pure wolves.
They’re wolf-dogs! It’s Save the Zebronkey [here, here] all over again.
The wildlife rights groups who wish to “save” a species (Earthjustice, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, The Humane Society of the United States, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Friends of the Clearwater, Alliance for the Wild Rockies, Oregon Wild, Cascadia Wildlands Project, Western Watersheds Project, and Wildlands Project) are gumming up the wildlife populations of an entire region with hybrid wolf-dogs!
The whole thing is a monumental fraud!
The wildlife species of choice (the wolf-dogs), to be protected no matter how much damage they do to other wildlife species, are not even wild; they’re feral!
Oh well. The monumental fraud will continue. Too many folks are too deeply invested in the proliferation of killer predator wolf-dogs. They hate everything else (people, elk, sheep, etc.) with such a burning passion that it does not matter to them what the killer predators are. As long as the slaughter continues, the wolf-dog lovers will be happy.
Slaughter, death, destruction, extirpation, mass suffering of man and beast; it’s all good.
Save the Wolf-dogs! Kill everything else.
by Laura
“Save the Lobo” ought to be rephrased “Save the Lobote”.
Not to mention the cross-breeding with Airedales dumped in the countryside by Alba-quirkies when the dog got too big for the condo.
Maybe if people stopped believing in Disney movies and got in touch with real reality instead of the Hollywood virtual kind, we might be able to be decent caretakers of the land.
by Tom
In writings by Teddy Roosevelt and Dr. Richardson from 1850s-1900, they often tell of Indians as well as settlers interbreeding their hounds with wolves to get a better fighting dog to deal with wolves, etc.
Yup. Eskimos, too. Tie the malamute bitch in heat to a stake and leave her there for the wolves to toy with. Build up the hardiness of the sled team.
And once in awhile the family pet went feral. Heeded the Call of the Wild. 10,000 years later, it’s all one big family…
Not to mention the coyote blood.
So don’t give me any of that paranoid nonsense about how humanity and other lifeforms will go extinct if the wolf disappears, and all of Nature will crumble and wither as the “natural balance” is pushed beyond its tipping point. Gag me.
Or that crap about “wolves were here first.” People brought the dogs. The wolf-dogs came later.
We need to purge our schools of numbskull union teachers. Maybe that’ll help.
Ode to the large predator loosers and freedom slayers:
Greedy one, greedy one, Give it pause,
Your machinations have grow-en maws
In which to feed your ‘diction green
You will be swallow’d by your machine.
Tiger, tiger, in the dark
Sheath your claws, lest you strike a spark,
and upon you rage the flames of doom
there to catch in guarded room.
The USFWS are deliberately ignoring most of our uncollared wolves because, and this is speculation, they are happily breeding with coyotes here. The evidence is there, we have coyote packs now killing full grown elk and there is no real attempt to identify uncollared animal sightings. The limited Mexican Wolf genetic diversity is certainly not going to be lost here.
Is anyone really surprised? The ESA isn’t really something they want to follow to the “T” anyway. As long as those checks cash, the biologists are fine with “whatever.”