VFTWT S02E01: Hungry Like The Wolf
Air Date: 2022.01.09
Welcome to the public show notes for VFTWT season 2, episode 1
News:
- Adam:
- Working through my backlog of ~500 unplayed games in my Steam library over on http://twitch.tv/GreyPilgrimGaming whenever I have spare time
- Steve:
- Cobra Kai season 4, and Crikey! It’s the Irwins
Main Topic: Season Finale, 2021 Recap, and 2022 Predictions
Reintroduction of wolves into the wild in the intermountain west
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Pros
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Help increase biodiversity
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Help feed scavengers (coyotes, ravens, crows, eagles, vultures, etc…
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protect seedling and sapling trees from deer and elk grazing allowing for more maturity in the forest.
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Eco-Tourism
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People want to see a wolf in the wild so they will travel to places that have them.
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Gives money back to local economies, forest management services, local governments, and conservation efforts.
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Balance
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Wolves tend to kill for food and not for sport (unlike what many anti-introduction groups will claim) this helps balance grazing populations
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Don’t normally target livestock unless there is a severe drought or famine
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Can be controlled
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Steve This one seems a little far fetched to me coming from a ranching family this doesn’t seem viable.
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GPS tracking can be used to track the wolf packs and with the help of government agencies ranchers can be alerted so as to rotate their animals or shelter them while wolves are in the area.
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Wolves Rarely Target Livestock
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USDA claimed in 2015 that 4300 livestock were killed by wolf pack. US Fish and Wildlife were only able to verify 161 of these claims.
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The data collection method appears to be extrapolated rather than collected.
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Claim that some of these “deaths” could have been famine, disease, or self injury (as in broken legs or other accidents) rather than wolves and ranchers would report the “kill” as wolf related to get government reimbursement.
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Wolves Create an Ecology of Fear
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This sounds scary but it is actually a good thing. Ungulates (Deer, Elk, Moose, etc…) have a natural fear of wolves which causes them to be more nervous out in the open fields. This limits grazing time and forces the herds to move on rather than clear graze a valley. This potentially helps with the natural grassland growth cycles allowing for a more diverse flora and fauna in the valleys where wolves are present.
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Cheap Wolf Deterrents
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In Canada ranchers have found that adding a rope rail to their fences and tying plastic flags to this rope at random intervals will create enough movement and uncertainty in wolves to keep them from crossing these borders.
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Protections For Ranchers
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NGO’s and governmental agencies will work with ranchers to help mitigate wolf hunting practices on their properties.
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Only drawback is that the ranchers have to do the work to make these best practices work and implement them on their lands.
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Healthy Grazing Herds
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wolves tend to target the weakest in a herd.
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helps populations have the most robust gene pool available and helps with the success of the herd.
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Yellowstone saw elderly and arthritic elk and moose being hunted first.
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May cull Chronic Wasting disease stricken animals from the herd keeping the herd from becoming too sick to perform their functions.
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Intelligence
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Wolves are incredibly intelligent and we could be missing out on a chance to see how life could have been without civilizations interference.
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Cons
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Agricultural Detriment
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When a wolf does happen to impact a rancher or farmer the local community tends to respond in the extreme.
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Entire packs have been culled over the loss of a single cow costing the government hundreds of thousands of dollars in failed relocation as well as reimbursement to the farmer
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Wolf relocation is expensive
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$200,000 to $1,000,000 depending on pack size
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Money could be used to help people suffering from many things in life.
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Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment, government housing, etc…
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Harm Livelihood.
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In times of famine wolves have been known to hunt in ranch land. Cattle, Sheep, Llamas, and Horses have potentially been lost to wolf attacks.
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Division of Herds
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Because wolves try to isolate an animal while hunting their movements can divide an existing herd into two different herds.
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Humans hunt the same animals that wolves hunt
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Herd managers and wildlife biologists may use GPS to find the herd and see limited numbers which in turn would limit the number of hunting permits available to people.
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Lower income, lower sports stamps, lower tourism, etc…
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Inconsistent Legal Protections
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Wolves were taken off of the endangered list in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and parts of Oregon and Washington.
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No longer found in the wild in these states no longer federally protected…
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In Minnesota they are labeled as Threatened and not Endangered
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Different protections: hunting permits for predators can happen for threatened species to help with “gene pool” diversity.
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This could counteract any and all relocation efforts in these states.
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Attacks on Humans
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Wolf attacks are rare, except in cases of rabies, but they do happen every now and then.
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No amount of training can protect everyone from wolves if they are hungry enough and bold enough to attack a human.
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Wrong Species in the wrong area
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Mexican wolves
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Mindfulness Moment:
Steve was listening to the New Year church service from the National Cathedral on Sunday and the pastor said something that I absolutely loved. The Reverend Canon Leonard L. Hanalin Sr. shared a quote:
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“We grow together when we help each other, we grow together when we encourage each other, we grow when we look out for each other, and we grow when we love each other.”
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I love this because it fits one of my goals as a human being which is to always be there for those that are struggling and to make sure that they are taken care of. I really enjoyed this quote of his as I believe this to be one of the best things that we can do to live a better life in 2022.
Next Episode Sneak Peek:
Examining the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – Part 1