Coxology

The Fate of the Gray Wolf

photo credit: CCCPxokkeu

It is a shameful testament to the enormous political lobbying power of the American livestock industry that they have connived to get the gray wolf removed from the Endangered Species List.

What is not often understood is that the vast majority of the land - Wyoming, Idaho and Montana plus parts of Utah, Oregon and Washington – has no wolf population in any case.  So why bother de-listing the wolf in these areas?

Explains Michael Robinson, from the Center for Biological Diversity:

Wolves periodically show up in these areas, which include national forests and other public lands, but because most of these regions are severely grazed by livestock — so much so that deer and elk don’t find enough to eat and are very rare — the wolves end up killing stock and the federal government traps and kills them or shoots them from the air.

The purpose of the delisting is to kill as many wolves as the livestock-industry can get away with to ensure that fewer wolves enter these severely grazed regions, fewer show up anywhere where stock are pastured, and, on a broader scale, that no wolves survive to disperse outside of the “recovered” zone and establish themselves in states such as Colorado where they would enjoy full legal protection; they will be killed en route.

Don’t entirely blame the Bush administration for this; if you eat the burgers, your cash is facilitating this slaughter.

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© 2008 Peter Cox’s Blog.