This letter to the editor is intended to respectfully offer a rebuttal opinion to Lynn Stone's letter of last week in which she chose to make fun of my comments about wolves as if I were some kind of bad person. Here is an expansion on my opinions.
In the winter of 1994, I attended a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scoping meeting in Stanley. The officials were there to ask those present what they thought about releasing 30 Canadian gray wolves into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness Area as a reintroduction effort. They said the goal would be to have 10 alpha pairs or 10 packs totaling 100 wolves and that this is what they had in mind. Most comments offered that night were a variety of reasons opposing reintroduction. Those in attendance trusted those numbers and responded to questions accordingly.
In 1995 and 1996, we got 'em regardless of the public input given in Stanley that night. Now we have an understated 70 packs and 650 wolves, and that's just in Idaho. This is far beyond what we were told the recovery goal was. Someone took the liberty of allowing the numbers to go way beyond promises. They should lose their jobs.
In that meeting, when asked, the Fish and Wildlife Service spokesperson did not dispute the fact that wolves could kill one ungulate a week. Most in attendance didn't think that 5,200 a year would severely hurt elk and deer populations. Now we have at least 650 wolves eating more than 50,000 ungulates a year.
The rest of the story is that wolves don't eat all of every animal that they take down. They waste a lot of meat. I have heard more than once that wolves dispatch five or six ungulates for every one that they eat. They do it for the fun of it and to prove to themselves that they can do it.
It has been said that hunters kill 21,000 elk and 55,000 deer a year. I think it is wonderful that we have a resource that can feed 76,000 Idaho families a year. I don't know of any hunters feeding their families wolf meat. Not yet.
To wolf advocates, I may be called a spreader of misinformation. Or is it that they don't like to acknowledge the whole wolf story, preferring instead to sweep the ugliness of what wolves do under the carpet? As long as they howl, they are way cool.
One of the first times we heard about the Fish and Wildlife Service delisting wolves and turning control over to Idaho was on Tuesday Jan. 4, 2005, in a Twin Falls newspaper's front-page article. Nothing concrete happened, and we have had two more breeding seasons plus another looming in 2007.
With an Idaho wolf tag costing only $26.50, one thing you a can count on is that many of the available tags will be sold to wolf advocates. They will buy them to deny a hunter an opportunity and to undermine the state of Idaho's effort to control the exploding wolf population.
Gary Busch
Hailey
