Wolves were there.
As to excitement on the trail, That'd be moose, more than any other, and griz after that.
Ah...mooses.
Went camping in Yellowstone in 1980. We hiked up a trail, not more than a couple miles from the road, and crossed a stream. We'd seen a moose about ten minutes before. "Cool!". Then, right there, in a little clearing on the side of the trail, just barely big enough to make a moose comfortable to lie down, there he was, not three feet from us. Just watching us. THAT was very interesting. At least he didn't get up and chase us.
We decided to camp back by the stream, where the water was. Woke up with a moose twenty feet away having breakfast. That guy was totally used to people.
Then again, it wasn't mating season.
As much nonsense as the claim that man is an invasive species in Colorado.
An invasive species is a species that is introduced into a ecology it did not previously occupy. Until the Clovis people came to North America, none of the Americas were human occupied, EVER. Or until the asians came over from the other way, if you subscribe to that theory.
By definition, Man is an invasive species throughout all of Europe, Asia, Australia, North and South America, and Antarctica. And we've changed the environment everywhere we go, except Anarctica, but only because there's not very many of us there.
It's what humans do.
There is nothing of measure that is extinct here. Do we kill predators that mess with livestock, hell yeah. Do we hunt and trap? YEP. And all that stuff we been killing and hunting and trapping is still here getting killed and hunted and trapped to this very day.
Uh-huh. Everyone knows this. Some people are being sloppy with the word "eradicated" but I believe, without checking the OP again, that it's the article's fault there.
Nothing wrong with protecting livestock. So long as the rancher doesn't indulge his natural urges and tries to eradicate the native species who are merely doing what they evolved to do. Maybe the rancher can spend some of his money and install better fencing?
If he's too cheap for that, maybe the state should simply re-imburse him for the minor cost of the occasional dead (insert euphemism for Democrat voter here)?
Just add an extra nickel to the cost of a hunting/fishing license. Those license fees go towards preserving the environment anyway.
Or continue treating the state like a protected park and don't let the wild things grow.
This is a common affectation of modernity and folks that don't get out of the cities. Generally rural folks live in harmony with nature. Generally, the forest is more healthy in the areas outlying rural farms and homesteads because rural folks thin things out - WAY better than the deep forest, where the protection that man provides is absent.
Harmony = killing off species that come between the rancher and his money.
Got it!
Thanks.
Your DOG is a subspecies of Lupus. Everything canine is a gray wolf. Both the McKenzie and the Timber are sub-species. There is no gray wolf proper. There are varieties of gray wolf, and they are not all the same.
Yup. The word is "dogs", plural, and they're all huskies. And they all have this annoying urge to chase ...everything that's an animal. Fortunately they ignore cares and they like small children.
And yes, the definition of "species" is that one species is morphologically different from the others, though sometimes it's hard to tell, like with parrots. The standard Amazon Orange Wing Parrot has three orange flight feathers on his wing, the Trinidad Orange Wing has four. Not gonna tell that at a glance if they're together.
McKenzie River wolves come out of a big landscape with long wide valleys and are huge to compensate for the land that bred them. The timber wolf is made for the forests that bred them. The timber wolf is elusive and runs in small packs. The McKenzie is a bruiser, bold, and runs in big packs.
You would know what I mean standing in the carnage with 12/15 elk ripped to shreds and left to rot - Just the hamstrings and the throats tore out, and the lower gut ripped open, and nothing fed on at all.
Ah, the arrogance, assuming he's such a poor writer that others can't understand what he's trying to say. When he's actually writing so well I can understand him just fine.
I get it that the Real McKenzies are a kick-ass wolf band. They're also a really hot punk rock band.
A timber just would not behave that way. And that is not good predation. That is frenzied killing and waste. Not the same critter.
And if the McKenzie is not native to the region, I agree with you entirely.
You've said they are not native and I have no reason to dispute this. So if what you say is the case, then those wolves should not be introduced.
It's really as simple as that.
Going to? It's already been done. I can see the results.
Yeah, like when they introduced the micinea shrimp here and destroyed the kokanee that they were supposedly introducing the shrimp to help. You used to be able to walk across the rivers on the backs of the salmon, and now they're nearly gone... Because some dumass thought them shrimp would help things.
Because science.
This is the same sort of thing. Monster wolves that are wiping out whole herds of elk and mule deer... What will be next is declaring elk and muleys endangered and then we can't survive because we can't subsist. Watch and see.
Stand in the middle of that slaughter with me and preach. And know that a timber wolf would cull that herd, taking what it needs. Not decimating the herd for sh*ts and giggles.
Again - ignorance.
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Yawn.
You should try to read what I write instead of preaching against what I didn't say.
