You guys are seriously disapointing. You pick and choose what laws to abide by when you have a gun in your hand? What happened to respecting and honoring the spirit and life of animals we hunt? Those are sad comments that I thought would not make it on this forum.
Is the disappearance of over 15,000 elk enough to shed you some light?
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/01/12/1486173/famous-yellowstone-elk-herd-suffers.html
Here is just how fast they really reproduce and just how they impact the areas they inhabit
http://www.pinedaleonline.com/wolf/wolfimpacts.htm
WOLF IMPACTS
Wolf impacts underestimated
According to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grossly underestimated the impact of a reintroduced population of wolves.
• The wolf population in the Greater Yellowstone area in 2005 was at least 3.3 times the original environmental impact statement prediction for a recovered population.
• The number of breeding pairs of wolves in the GYA in 2005 was at least twice as high as the original EIS prediction and the number of breeding pairs in 2004 was at least 3.1 times the original EIS prediction.
• In 2005, the wolf population in Wyoming outside Yellowstone National Park exceeded the recovery criteria for the entire region and continues to increase rapidly.
• The estimated annual predation rate (22 ungulates per wolf) is 1.8 times the annual predation rate (12 ungulates per wolf) predicted in the EIS.
• The estimated number of ungulates taken by 325 wolves in a year (7,150) is six times higher than the original EIS prediction.
• The percent of the northern Yellowstone elk harvest during the 1980s currently taken by wolves (50 percent) is 6.3 times the original estimate of eight percent projected in the EIS.
• The actual decline in the northern Yellowstone elk herd (more than 50 percent) is 1.7 times the maximum decline originally forecast in the EIS.
• The actual decline in cow harvest in the northern Yellowstone elk herd (89 percent) is 3.3 times the decline originally forecast in the EIS.
• The actual decline in bull harvest in the northern Yellowstone elk herd is 75 percent, whereas the 1994 EIS predicted bull harvests would be “unaffected.”
• Since wolf introduction, average ratios of calf elk to cow elk have been greatly \depressed in the northern Yellowstone elk herd and in the Wyoming elk herds impacted by wolves. In the northern Yellowstone elk herd and in the Sunlight unit of the Clarks Fork herd, calf:cow rations have been suppressed to unprecedented levels below 15 calves per 100. The impact of wolves on calf recruitment was not addressed by the 1994 EIS.
WG&F stated: “Despite research findings in Idaho and the Greater Yellowstone Area, and monitoring evidence in Wyoming that indicate wolf predation is having an impact on ungulate populations that will reduce hunter opportunity if the current impact levels persist, the Service continues to rigidly deny wolf predation is a problem.”
The 1994 EIS predicted that presence of wolves would result in a 5-10 percent increase in annual visitation to Yellowstone National Park. On this basis, the EIS forecast wolves in the region would generate $20 million in revenue to the states of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. WG&F reports that annual park visitation remained essentially unchanged after wolf introduction, and has decreased 2.6 percent since the wolf population reached recovery goals in 2000.
“ Since park visitation did not increase as originally forecast, the Service cannot legitimately conclude presence of wolves has had any appreciable effect on net tourism revenues,” WG&F stated.
WG&F stated: “Wolf presence can be ecologically compatible in the GYA only to the extent that the distribution and numbers of wolves are controlled and maintained at approximately the levels originally predicted by the 1994 EIS –100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs.” WG&F maintained that FWS “has a permanent, legal obligation to manage wolves at the levels on which the wolf recovery program was originally predicated, the levels described by the impact analysis in the 1994 EIS.”
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I live in wolf country. The people have about had it with these BS protection laws. Over 30 years of conservation efforts by The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and numerous other groups..
erased. Thanks to the reintroduction of wolves and when the elk and moose are gone. They will be coming for more and more live stock and pets. Moving into the prairies to find more things to kill. Same thing for Minnesota. They have decimated our moose and deer populations where their range is. That's why they are being found in the Dakota's in ever increasing numbers. Incidents of them killing peoples dogs right in their yards are becoming more and more frequent. Now two deaths, one in Canada and one in Alaska from wolves. Just how long are we going to continue to believe the fallacy that they are only killing the sick and the weak? Wolves will and do kill for sport. No management plan..people take to managing them themselves. This has nothing to do with wolf population recovering anymore. it has everything to do with animal rights groups out of control efforts to protect a animal at all costs, just because it's a animal.
