By Ted B. Lyon
“May it please the court, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. In this case I will prove the following . . .” Those two sentences are the way I’ve started every case for over forty years as a trial lawyer who has tried hundreds of cases.
So, may it please the court, ladies and gentlemen of the court of public opinion, the case that I am about to make to you about wolves and how they have been managed over the last thirty years is a story about misinformation and myths. This will shock the reader into understanding that wolves truly do need to be managed, especially as they get closer to people. Furthermore, they need to be managed by the states and not the US Fish and Wildlife Service. That agency is inefficient and monolithic, so that it is almost impossible to try to change policies for wildlife management at the national level when it comes to wolves, especially when one has to deal with the Endangered Species Act and the endless lawsuits that the act brings in. In reading this book, you will find that a massive campaign has perpetuated misinformation about wolves. Here are some examples:
1. Wolves do not kill or attack people.
Fact: They do, and regularly.
2. Wolves are the sanitarians of nature and only kill the weak and the sick.
Fact: Wolves kill any and all forms of animals, both the weak and the strong.
3. Wolves do not destroy game herds.
Fact: Research has shown time and again that wolves do destroy game herds in most cases, and then move on.
4. Wolves are an economic boom to the economies of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming.
Fact: The research in chapter 11 shows that claim to be totally false.
5. Wolves do not carry diseases that are harmful to man.
Fact: In chapters 8 and 9 you will be shown the truth about wolves and the diseases they carry, backed up by worldwide scientific data that show how dangerous these diseases can be to man.
6. All wild wolves are 100 percent pure wolves.
Fact: Actually as wolf populations grow in the lower forty-eight states, especially in and around communities, wolves interact with dogs and coyotes, either killing them or breeding with them to result in hybrids, which are not protected by the Endangered Species Act.
7. Wolves are an endangered species that is threatened by extinction.
Fact: There are at least one hundred thousand wolves in the wild in North America and another three hundred thousand or more wolves and wolf-dog hybrids that are in sanctuaries, education centers, and zoos, as well as pets in North America. There are at least this many wolves in Europe and Asia.
This book will also demonstrate the enormous amount of taxpayer dollars that the US government and states have spent to introduce wolves back into the western United States, well over two hundred million dollars, and the many considerable additional economic costs these states have endured by this introduction.
We will also prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the wolves introduced into Montana and Idaho were not the same wolf that existed there before. These massive animals are much larger than the wolves that roamed the western states over one hundred years ago.
We will also cast serious doubt over the validity of the Mexican wolf recovery effort. There is a concern of whether or not the millions of dollars spent by the US government (over twenty-six million dollars and counting) have been spent on wolf-coyote hybrids. We ask for a congressional investigation into this program to determine whether or not this is true (see chapter “Canis Stew”).
We will also demonstrate the different methodology that surrounds the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Department of Agriculture’s counts of how many head of livestock are killed by wolves. A disconnect of several thousand exists between the two.
This book will also demonstrate the impact on local residents of areas where wolves have been introduced and how they have effected serious lifestyle changes and cost millions of dollars of losses to ranchers and stockmen across the west.
We will also show the biological, sociological, and political consequences of the present wolf management program nationwide and make suggestions about how to avoid wasting taxpayer dollars on frivolous lawsuits that are currently consuming millions of taxpayer dollars; working against state and federal agencies producing quality wildlife management programs; and causing purebred wolves to disappear into hybrids of wolf, dog, and coyotes, which are increasingly habituated, resulting in more damages to wildlife, livestock, and pets, as well as wolves themselves.
We will make specific recommendations for changes to the Endangered Species Act and the Equal Access to Justice Act so that other states and citizens are not subjected to the same mistakes that were made in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming and are now being made in New Mexico, Washington, and Oregon.
Further, this book will demonstrate the impact that wolves have had on local residents and communities where they have been reintroduced and these animals have forced serious lifestyle changes that have cost ranchers, farmers, outfitters, businesses, and states millions of dollars in lost revenue.
In chapter 12, we will document how the government has paid out millions and millions of dollars under the Equal Access to Justice Act in recent years. How federal agencies cannot, even today, document how much money has been paid out under that act to environmental and animal rights groups, and how wolf litigation has been the proverbial cash cow that shows the way. We will also show how state agencies that are forced to protect themselves from litigation are being forced to spend considerable money on legal protection that could have been spent on wildlife conservation.
This book will, in the end, strip the skin from the skull and call for changes to the Equal Access to Justice Act and the Endangered Species Act, and call for a serious look at the millions of dollars that have been spent on wolf recovery in the USA, as well as who is responsible for many of the problems this book documents.
Photo credit: S. R. Maglione/Shutterstock.com