The Truth about Wolf Haters

Today I happened across a purportedly wildlife author/researcher/writer's site that makes several false allegations against the current state of wolf occupancy within the North American continent. I am shocked and appalled that such a person would be taken seriously, given his lack of research, his lack of writing skills, and his lack of control over his emotions. But then the level of intelligence of wolf haters is not that great, now is it? That facts should be fairly obvious to the thinking person. These  wolf haters belong in the same category as climate change deniers and creationists; in short, they can't think their way out of a paper bag and I'm surprised they don't drown when it rains.

But I digress... this "author" states that Defenders of Wildlife is "pimping" wolves; he states that DOW wants to put a wolf in everyone's backyard. He also refers to wolves as disease infested canines that endanger the lives of people and pets. His main argument is that DOW is promoting wolf occupancy in the state of Maine where they haven't been (according to his research) for 100 years and that if wolves are returned to Maine that the "fragile ecosystem" would be destroyed. This "author" conveniently omits any concrete evidence to back up his claims, but then the crowd to whom he preaches doesn't need any. The word of a good old boy with a reputation for hunting anything with four legs will do.

And that bit about wolves eating pets? Come on... explain to me why you hunters out there are using your dogs to hunt wolves??  And anyone with any common sense knows not to walk your dog where wolves live. It's THEIR home-not yours or your dog's. Oh, and when was the last time you heard of a person attacked by a wolf? What was that you said? Little Red Riding Hood? I thought so. There are infinitely more deaths by sharks throughout history and yet no one is thinking of eradicating these giant fishes from the sea, or people planning to stop swimming and surfing and boating. If the sea is the shark's domain, then why so murderous of wolves in their traditional forests?

But wait... there's more.

The DOW does not want to promote wolves in areas where human habitation is in the thousands or millions. Wouldn't that situation be seriously stupid? The DOW does want to restore the wolf to his native hunting grounds and yes, Maine is one of those states. The blogger states that there is no food source for wolves to eat, since the caribou have all gone north. Oh wait. There's deer and moose in Maine. Hmm. He must have forgotten that fact. And also, the blogger must have forgotten that the wolves would still be thriving there had Theodore Roosevelt not declared the wolf as "the beast of waste and destruction" and called for its eradication during his administration. Well then, I suppose the blogger forgot who messed everything up in the first place and mistakenly blamed everything on the wolves.

This "author" also blames the wolves for spreading hydatid cysts in moose in Maine. Unfortunately, I have spent a lot of time tracing where these Echinococcosis tapeworms originated and here's the gist of what I have found. The worms originally infested livestock in Europe. The life cycle of these worms requires two hosts: the first host is a carnivore, namely a wolf, coyote, or dog and the second host is an herbivore.Those European ungulates that were infected? The dogs did the deed. In North America, nowhere is it written that the wolf is the sole vector for these worms. Sure, the wolves can have them, but then so can all the coyotes and all the stray or coy dogs. Think the author might have a proverbial ax to grind where wolves are concerned?

One last thing that the author insists is that wolves have wiped out the natural herbivorous population in the state of Maine. Gee. So the hunters have had nothing to hunt there for the past 100 years? Then how the hell do you explain that in 2011, 18,839 deer were harvested by hunters in Maine and the remaining deer were still quite populous?

Yeah, that's why I'm thinking, too, but let's spell out why these outrageous and libelous claims are believed. Either the "author" is an idiot, a liar, or lives in a fantasy world. But when he makes his claims on science, he figures me to be an idiot, too, and that's downright insulting. This is the type of person we have to fight in order to protect the wolves' right to live and flourish again. This is the type of person who propagates ignorance in the minds of those who trust people who remind them of themselves. It is a quite jolly circle of the foolish, but that's how it is. Where science is treated as gibberish, the truth will become diseased and turn into the same.

When people asked Flannery O'Connor why she wrote the type of fiction that she did, she replied in kind that in order for the deaf to hear, one must shout. This is me shouting. Is anyone listening?

Lin

PS If you want to read the original post that angered me so much, then here it is:
http://tomremington.com/2013/10/23/wolves-in-every-back-yard/