By Leonard Hitchcock
January 10, 2014
Where in Idaho can a wolf find a friend? Obviously not among the
cattlemen, or the sheep men, and certainly not among the hunters and
outfitters, whose credo seems to be: If humans enjoy killing another
species, like elk, then they have the right to eliminate any non-human
predator that reduces their chances of doing so.
And then there are all those Idahoans who may not feel any particular
animosity toward wolves, but for whom wolves symbolize the big, bad
federal government’s unwelcome interference in Idaho’s affairs. These
are the same people who eagerly help themselves to federal agricultural
support payments and tax subsidies and cheap grazing fees for public
lands, and snatch at dollars flowing into the state from innumerable
other federal programs, but who feel that only Idahoans have a right to
control that land within the state that legally belongs to all the
citizens of the nation.
When the U.S. Congress – which is to say, the people of this country –
passed the Wilderness Act, in 1964, its intentions were perfectly
clear. The country was in danger of losing all those areas in which
nature alone shaped the landscape and the living things within it: areas
that could still remind us of the America that Europeans found several
hundred years ago when they appropriated it and began the inexorable
process of transforming it to suit their needs and desires; areas in
which we can now find solitude and rejuvenation; where we can
reestablish contact with the daily rhythms and activities of a living
world independent of us, a world in which we are now, of necessity, only
visitors, yet one to which we are still attuned because it is akin to
the world in which our species evolved.
The Wilderness Act was intended to preserve such areas as these by
protecting them from further alteration by human activity, and to
thereby “secure for the American people of present and future
generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.” A
Wilderness area was to be “an area where the earth and its community of
life are untrammeled by man.” It was to be managed “so as to preserve
[its] natural conditions” and “wilderness character.” Humans could
enter Wilderness areas, but only for a short time. They could study,
backpack, hunt and fish, but their impact on the area had to be minimal,
and they could leave behind nothing but footprints.
The state of Idaho has clearly violated both the spirit and letter of
the Wilderness Act. It has hired a hunter to exterminate two wolf
packs within the boundaries of the Frank Church – River of No Return
Wilderness (FCRNRW). The agents of this violation are primarily the
Idaho Fish and Game department (IDFG) and the National Forest Service,
which aided and abetted the extermination project by allowing the use of
its landing strip and cabin.
The target of this killing project is not a visitor to the FCRNRW, it
is a resident. It lived there before Asian peoples crossed the Bering
Strait, before the Europeans came. It is a true, native Idahoan. It
was, regrettably, absent from that wilderness for many years because
humans exterminated it. When the area was being considered for
wilderness status, the only serious shortcoming of the region, apart
from that cabin and two airstrips, was the human-caused absence of
wolves. But now the wolf has been restored to its home, and it is now,
as it was before, an integral and vital element in the ecology of that
wilderness.
Idaho has betrayed the spirit of the Wilderness Act because, in areas
so designated, nature must be allowed to take its course. Governments
are required to insure that humans do not interfere with the natural
forces which shape life in those areas, and must not manipulate the
ecosystem to serve their own purposes. It has violated the letter of
the law because, while the management regulations for wilderness areas
do allow for certain interventions by man, those interventions must be
narrowly restricted to actions that make no major or long-lasting
alteration in the dominance of those natural forces. And any actions
which threaten to make such changes must go through a careful review
process before they can be approved.
The reasons for the Idaho wolf extermination project are obvious and
largely acknowledged by the government. Wolves prey upon elk and deer.
Hunters like to kill elk and deer. Killing two wolf packs will reduce
predation on those animals, making them more abundant. IDFG profits
from hunters killing elk and deer, as do outfitters, who are parasitic
on the hunting community. The state, in other words, is intentionally
altering the ecosystem in the FCRNRW in order to create profit for
itself and the hunting industry.
The illegal actions of Idaho and the Forest Service have now been
challenged in a suit brought by Dr. Ralph Maughan and three conservation
organizations: Defenders of Wildlife, Western Watersheds Project, and
Wilderness Watch. They charge the defendants with failing to submit
their extermination plan for the required evaluations and violating the
Wilderness Act, the National Forest Management Act, and the National
Environmental Policy Act. The details of their indictment are available
at: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwzwdJo0zxv5SmQ4dWl5WmtLbWc/edit
The government of Idaho apparently listens attentively to those of
its citizens who believe that land only has value if it can be
physically exploited, i.e. to those citizens who would say “If you can’t
grow something on a piece of land, or harvest what already grows there,
or mine it, or build on it, or kill what lives there, either for sport
or food, then what good is it?” These are not people to whom one can
entrust the protection of wilderness areas. It’s time for the rest of
us to be heard.
Leonard Hitchcock of Pocatello is a professor emeritus at Idaho State University.
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