Sometimes when humankind tinkers with Nature's grand plans, the complex ecosystem suffers mightily and humans feel the backlash. Is there any better example of the consequences to man, animal life, vegetation and waterways than industry's pumping pollution into the environment?
Now Idaho is about to embark on the killing of gray wolves roaming the state without any reasonable explanation of the thinking behind the killing quota set by the state Fish and Game Commission.
Of the estimated 1,000 wolves in the state, the commission has decided to allow 428 to die this year, including those killed by hunters. Prior to last week's meeting, Fish and Game biologists had recommended that the population be reduced by only 328 wolves, to the 2006 level. But the commission said, no, let's take it down to the 2005 level, estimated at 518 animals.
Other than using the estimated wolf population of the 2005-2007 period as a guide, did the commission take into account any of the needs of the ecosystem and need for predators in the animal kingdom to maintain the balances that nature mysteriously and delicately creates for the betterment of life on the planet?
A cloud hangs over this wolf "management" plan: Fish and Game Commissioners tend to reflect the temperament of Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, who's made no secret of his hostility toward the animal. Last year, he expressed the wish that the wolf population would be slaughtered down to 100 animals to protect elk stock for hunters.
Until the state commission provides better biological rationale for its wolf-kill quota, the suspicion will linger that this state license to kill is more to satisfy the animosity toward and superstition of wolves held by Gov. Otter and his ilk rather than to balance nature's far older and more intelligent ecosystem code.
