BY JOEL CONNELLY, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy.
The Twilight saga, famously set in Forks, gets one brief allusion in the Burke Museum's new exhibit on Wolves of North America, and the precarious reappearance of canis lupus in Washington:
"Nowhere in Quileute beliefs do werewolves and vampires appear." (Nor are wolves found on the Olympic Peninsula.)
An intelligent student -- we'll call her Bella -- will find myths and stereotypes shattered by a visit to "Wolves and Wild Lands in the 21st Century," which opened Friday and runs until Sept. 5.
Wolves inspire fear, dating from when European farmers were clearing forests in the Middle Ages. Canis lupus generates raw hatred in parts of the American West. "They're killers: They do it for sport and then they leave their victim still alive for a lingering death," in the words of Idaho state Rep. Lenore Barrett.
Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter recently signed legislation declaring wolves a state "Disaster Emergency." He would destroy 55 of Idaho's 700 gray wolves. "I'm prepared to bid for the first ticket to shoot a wolf myself," Otter told a recent hunters' rally.
Then-Gov. Sarah Palin proposed in Alaska a $150-per-animal bounty to "hunters" who shoot wolves from planes: As proof, they were to hack off the dead wolf's left foreleg and submit it for payment. The Palin administration also proposed that state wildlife agents be given power to enter dens and slaughter wolf pups.
Butch Otter will soon have the chance to shoot off more than his mouth. Wolves were de-listed from the Endangered Species Act in Montana, Idaho and Eastern Washington as a provision of the recent budget deal between the Obama Administration and House Republicans.
The results: There is no more federal protection for two of Washington's three wolf packs. The Salmo and Diamond packs live in wilds of the Selkirk Range of Northeast Washington. The wolves are still protected under state law. But new proposed state rules would allow permits to kill wolves that are preying on livestock.
Alas, wolves repopulating Northeast Washington must pass through Idaho -- where Butch Otter is gunning for them -- to reach the relative protection of the Evergreen State.
The Burke exhibit gives you not only a look at but a feel for wolves' family structure, hunting habits and The Howl. It features wolf skeletons, full-size wolf specimens, wolf audio and outsized paw prints.
Canis lupus is a key critter in the food chain, feasting on the old, the sick and the weak in elk and deer herds. Wolves create balance: Just look at Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were reintroduced (Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt carried the first cage) in 1995.
Yellowstone's uncontrolled elk and deer had gnawed through plants and trees. Overpopulation resulted in starvation. Absent for 75 years, wolves have checked the population of hooved animals. Visitors to the Lamar Valley can scramble up a hillside behind Soda Butte and observe the fabled Druid pack go about its fascinating, coordinated hunts.
Wolves used to populate much of the "lower 48" states. They are now gone from perhaps 95 percent of former habitat.
They hang on in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan -- notably in Isle Royale National Park -- and have repopulated Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. About 40 Mexican gray wolves, recently reintroduced, inhabit two national forests astride the Arizona-New Mexico border.
In Washington, there has been hopeful news, and bad in recent years.
A gray wolf was photographed sauntering through a kids' playfield in British Columbia's Skagit Valley Recreation Area, just north of the border. A den was located on the south flanks of Mount Hozomeen on our side of the 49th parallel.
The Lookout Pack then took hold up Wolf Creek in the Methow Valley, home to the state's largest mule deer herd. The pack numbered as many as 10 animals, summering in the wonderful Twisp Pass-Copper Pass country on the east border of the North Cascades National Park.
But poachers have taken their toll. An alleged human being in the Methow tried to ship a bloody pelt via Federal Express. Another wolf carcass was found alongside the North Cascades Highway.
"Only two to three animals are still documented: The female has been missing since May, and we believe killed by poachers: The major reason for the decline of the pack is illegal killing," said Jasmine Minbashian of Conservation Northwest, who has studied the pack.
We should be able to live with a few thousand wolves in remote reaches of the "lower 48." Environmental groups are compensating ranchers for calves and sheep killed by wolves. Three decades have passed since Barry Lopez's book "Of Wolves and Men" dispelled the notion that canis lupus preys on homo sapiens.
Candidly, I find the Butch Otters of this world much more harmful to the human species, and the world in which we live, than canis lupus.
Sadly, the blood lust persists. Go to the Burke Museum and get your blood up to preserve and restore -- to the Selkirks and high Cascades at least -- these fierce but familiar predators.
Source
"Nowhere in Quileute beliefs do werewolves and vampires appear." (Nor are wolves found on the Olympic Peninsula.)
An intelligent student -- we'll call her Bella -- will find myths and stereotypes shattered by a visit to "Wolves and Wild Lands in the 21st Century," which opened Friday and runs until Sept. 5.
Wolves inspire fear, dating from when European farmers were clearing forests in the Middle Ages. Canis lupus generates raw hatred in parts of the American West. "They're killers: They do it for sport and then they leave their victim still alive for a lingering death," in the words of Idaho state Rep. Lenore Barrett.
Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter recently signed legislation declaring wolves a state "Disaster Emergency." He would destroy 55 of Idaho's 700 gray wolves. "I'm prepared to bid for the first ticket to shoot a wolf myself," Otter told a recent hunters' rally.
Then-Gov. Sarah Palin proposed in Alaska a $150-per-animal bounty to "hunters" who shoot wolves from planes: As proof, they were to hack off the dead wolf's left foreleg and submit it for payment. The Palin administration also proposed that state wildlife agents be given power to enter dens and slaughter wolf pups.
Butch Otter will soon have the chance to shoot off more than his mouth. Wolves were de-listed from the Endangered Species Act in Montana, Idaho and Eastern Washington as a provision of the recent budget deal between the Obama Administration and House Republicans.
The results: There is no more federal protection for two of Washington's three wolf packs. The Salmo and Diamond packs live in wilds of the Selkirk Range of Northeast Washington. The wolves are still protected under state law. But new proposed state rules would allow permits to kill wolves that are preying on livestock.
Alas, wolves repopulating Northeast Washington must pass through Idaho -- where Butch Otter is gunning for them -- to reach the relative protection of the Evergreen State.
The Burke exhibit gives you not only a look at but a feel for wolves' family structure, hunting habits and The Howl. It features wolf skeletons, full-size wolf specimens, wolf audio and outsized paw prints.
Canis lupus is a key critter in the food chain, feasting on the old, the sick and the weak in elk and deer herds. Wolves create balance: Just look at Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were reintroduced (Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt carried the first cage) in 1995.
Yellowstone's uncontrolled elk and deer had gnawed through plants and trees. Overpopulation resulted in starvation. Absent for 75 years, wolves have checked the population of hooved animals. Visitors to the Lamar Valley can scramble up a hillside behind Soda Butte and observe the fabled Druid pack go about its fascinating, coordinated hunts.
Wolves used to populate much of the "lower 48" states. They are now gone from perhaps 95 percent of former habitat.
They hang on in northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan -- notably in Isle Royale National Park -- and have repopulated Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. About 40 Mexican gray wolves, recently reintroduced, inhabit two national forests astride the Arizona-New Mexico border.
In Washington, there has been hopeful news, and bad in recent years.
A gray wolf was photographed sauntering through a kids' playfield in British Columbia's Skagit Valley Recreation Area, just north of the border. A den was located on the south flanks of Mount Hozomeen on our side of the 49th parallel.
The Lookout Pack then took hold up Wolf Creek in the Methow Valley, home to the state's largest mule deer herd. The pack numbered as many as 10 animals, summering in the wonderful Twisp Pass-Copper Pass country on the east border of the North Cascades National Park.
But poachers have taken their toll. An alleged human being in the Methow tried to ship a bloody pelt via Federal Express. Another wolf carcass was found alongside the North Cascades Highway.
"Only two to three animals are still documented: The female has been missing since May, and we believe killed by poachers: The major reason for the decline of the pack is illegal killing," said Jasmine Minbashian of Conservation Northwest, who has studied the pack.
We should be able to live with a few thousand wolves in remote reaches of the "lower 48." Environmental groups are compensating ranchers for calves and sheep killed by wolves. Three decades have passed since Barry Lopez's book "Of Wolves and Men" dispelled the notion that canis lupus preys on homo sapiens.
Candidly, I find the Butch Otters of this world much more harmful to the human species, and the world in which we live, than canis lupus.
Sadly, the blood lust persists. Go to the Burke Museum and get your blood up to preserve and restore -- to the Selkirks and high Cascades at least -- these fierce but familiar predators.
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment