By Bob Ferris
“At issue is how wildlife is managed in
this country. Our belief is based on more than 100 years of the most
successful wildlife management model in the world that our state
agencies are to manage wildlife within their respective borders. That
includes management of gray wolves along with other predators.” David Allen letter to Congressman Peter DeFazio dated July 10, 2014
An Open Letter to David Allen of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
July 11, 2014
Mr. David Allen
President and CEO
Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
5705 Grant Creek
Missoula, MT 59808
Missoula, MT 59808
Dear Mr. Allen,
As much as I enjoy reading your declarative statements about
complicated issues you clearly know very little about, I find that I
must interrupt that pleasure and interject a few comments. Again, as I
have before (1,2,3,4,5).
There is a lot to criticize in your letter starting with the
disrespectful and unprofessional omission of the “Dear” in the
salutation to a sitting Congressman (here are some helpful tips
on writing to elected officials), but I want to set all of that aside
and focus on this gem of a paragraph at the top of this page and also
your general invoking of science.
Ignoring the question about whether or not wildlife in your first
sentence should be treated as a plural in this context (i.e., multiple
species and in multiple settings) and setting aside the fact that the
following sentence is poorly written, this whole paragraph demonstrates
that you are laboring under a tall tower of misconceptions as jumbled as
your second sentence. And while it might seem advantageous for you to
pull a state’s rights page out of the Cliven Bundy handbook at this
point, you should take some time and actually look at conservation
history in this country before acting the expert as you have.
While completing that exercise you would come to understand that
market hunting—what caused your elk to decline precipitously in the
first place—was largely allowed or inaffectively opposed by the states.
But it wasn’t until the federal government stepped in with the Lacey Act
in 1901 and other similar federal legislation as well as international
treaties (Heaven forbid, Edna, he’s talking Agenda 21) that market
hunting finally took a powder.
Certainly there were actions from both levels of government, but it is a complicated relationship. And my sense is that you seem to have problems with these complex relationships like, for instance, why wolves and elk are seemingly at odds but really need each other to prosper in the long run. All this led me to believe that perhaps no one has taken the time to explain these relationships in terms that you can understand—you do, after all, lack grounding in ecology and any direct experience in conservation or natural resources policy. I have taught ecology, worked as a biologist and participated in policy for more than 30 years, so let me take a stab at that.
You come from NASCAR so let’s start there. NASCAR is a sport born
out of bootlegging and running from federal revenuers. The best initial
drivers were the ones that ran more ‘shine faster and kept it on the
road. So we have a good example of natural selection here as those who
did not were removed from the population by running into trees, rocks or
handcuffs.
In essence this sport involves running a car at high speeds around a
banked track (my wife’s family once owned a tire company and stock cars
so she is coaching me). The car, driver and engine provide the speed
and excitement while the banked track—for the most part—keeps cars and
drivers from spinning out of control with potentially fatal
repercussions. If you think of the cars and drivers as the "states" and
the banked track as the "federal government," this analogy works for
the North American model of wildlife management and why it has
functioned as it has over the years. As much as you want to invoke the
10th Amendment you cannot have a successful model without both parties
playing and it is folly to think so (see also this analysis on the North American Model).
But there is more. In the western states a lot of the wild habitat
is owned by the federal government so they become even more important
in this relationship, not less, as your paragraph has characterized. In
addition when you look at Montana, Wyoming and Idaho where the flow of
federal money is positive (i.e., more federal monies flow into the
states than flow out in federal taxes) the folks who are paying to
maintain and keep those habitats are from all over the country and
therefore federal in nature. And since what we are talking about in
this proposal by Congressman DeFazio is mostly federal forest lands
perhaps a more open and welcoming attitude in this should be exercised
by you. (Just a suggestion.)
The funny thing is that the relationship between elk and wolves is
very similar and the NASCAR model works here too. Wolves prevent elk
populations from spinning out of control by overshooting the carrying
capacity of their habitat; being too numerous or concentrated thus more
subject to disease; and accumulating too many of the wrong kind of
alleles (variants of genes) that normally would be selected against just
like the bad bootleggers referenced above by the process of natural
selection. These seem to be foreign
concepts to you as you continually mischaracterize what is happening in
Yellowstone though your organization has paid for and been briefed on
the science by folks like Dr. Arthur Middleton.
Moving on to the topic of science, your condemnation of Congressman
DeFazio’s lack of scientific justification is ironic coming from
someone who has called for a reduction of all predator populations in
the absence of any scientific justification for that collection of
actions. This is made even more ironic given your organization’s tight
relationships with the cattle and timber industries both of which
through grazing and herbicide use displace elk and degrade elk habitat.
And the science on the increased likelihood of disease transference
when wildlife populations are concentrated at supplemental feeding
stations that are supported by you and RMEF further calls into question
your dedication to science, scientific principles or even prudent
wildlife management.
Perhaps you and others in your organization have trouble with
complex analyses or dealing with data in general. That was certainly
apparent when you rolled out your page on wolves and elk
using truncated graphs that were purposely misleading. Your constant
arguing that wolf populations are too high because they are well above
minimum recovery goals may sound like science to you and many of your
adherents, but it is not. These were simply numbers indicating when the
shift from federal recovery management to state recovery could happen.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Are wolf numbers too high in the Northern Rockies states as you
have repeatedly claimed and inferred? Probably not. Right now the wolf
densities in these states are about one fifth of what we see in British
Columbia with about the same land area. Certainly there are habitat and
human density differences between BC and the Northern Rockies states
but there is unlikely a five-fold carrying capacity differential and
there are many in BC who think that their wolf density is too low.
And while you are madly trying to claim this scientific high
ground, there is nothing in your rhetoric that shows any acknowledgement
of the ecological value of wolves, their impact on other predators such
as cougars and coyotes,
and any appearance of a mental governor on your talking points as
evidence emerges of the importance of maintaining social structure in
packs and the need for large numbers of wolves across a broad landscape in order to realize the promised benefits of trophic cascades and meso-predator release.
Circling back to the original premise for your letter, I will not
tell you that Yellowstone wolves killed outside the Park will cause
population calamity as that would be just as disingenuous and unfounded
as your claims that science dictates that predators—particularly
wolves—need to be controlled and that their current levels are too high.
That said, these near-park boundary mortalities do impact the
population.
My concern, which is science-based, has to do with the value
of these animals as part of a well-studied population free from
interference. Now you might—having never conducted scientific research
yourself—not consider these animals and the data their continued
existence contributes to our overall understanding of complex
predator-prey relationships valuable but many of us do. And quite
frankly I long for a day when the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is once
again led by someone who might similarly value research and understand
that successful conservation is more about appreciating the complexity
of these natural systems and all their parts and less about marketing
fear and innuendo like a pair of jeans or stock car race.
Now granted some of the above is certainly facetious in nature and
somewhat patronizing. And I would be annoyed and offended if something
similar was done to me. But at some point, Mr. Allen, you have to ask
yourself which is the greater sin, the facetiousness and patronizing
tone I employ or your misstatements and missteps that make this sort of
response not only appropriate but necessary?
Sincerely,
Bob Ferris
Executive Director
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