RandyMarsh: roybatty2010: I'm feeling the need for an Idaho tag, anyone else?

I farking HATE Idaho!

Everyday you can see thousands of cars flooding across the border into Washington to take our jobs. They don't pay any kind of taxes towards our state but take our jobs and use our roads. Its our versions of mexicans

You must live in Pullman. Which really, should be an extension of Idaho anyway.

/went to UI
//worst four years of my life
///the stupid to smart ratio is depressing
////slashies!

UNAUTHORIZED FINGER: Yulian: Hoopido:
Better yet, go find a pack of wolves, and see how yelling and at them works, right before they tear you to pieces. They have no fear of humans and you don't run nearly as fast or fight as hard as an elk can.

How many human deaths due to wolves in the last decade?
One.

Did you know most known wolf attacks involve rabid animals?

You're such an idiot. Really. Stop talking. Wolves actually are wary around us. All the ones that weren't in the past? We killed.

Seriously. So dumb. Herding dogs can and do frighten wolves off. They don't engage in savage death-matches at the edge of the pasture.

Where do you get this stuff?

Link (new window)

Good grief! I haven't seen that in years!

/golf clap

roybatty2010: I'm feeling the need for an Idaho tag, anyone else?

Sure, I'm good with that.

Mr Rusty Shackleford: Whatthefark: Yeah. I had a hard time believing the "they only eat the babies and leave the carcass" part of the slide-show. It reminded me of the stories out of Iraq about the Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti newborns prior to the first Gulf War. It's gets people worked up, but it all turns out to be a completely different story in the end.

Also consider that if wolves are indeed using elk disproportionate to their availability, then wolf numbers will crash as this food source declines, which is of course the premise of this whole conundrum. Or they will refocus largely on domestic animals, which seems unlikely.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA You're FUNNY. But looks aren't everything.... The ranchers are already wanting to decimate the wolves because of domestic animal depredation, so of course they want to wait until the wolves have no choice but to hunt their herds. THAT'S KINDA THE POINT HERE, THAT THE WOLVES WILL RUN OUT OF ELK SOONER OR LATER.

Mr Rusty Shackleford: Excen: I guess the only way to resolve the pre-introduction disagreement is through the acquisition of more data (which I don't have time to do, unfortunately), but we can both agree in an academic sense that the introduction of wolves has caused statistically significant declines in the sampled population.

True enough. However, this does all seem quite sensationalized. BC, for instances, deals with all the species we're talking about here in substantial numbers quite successfully. In fact, that was one of the models of healthier ecology that the reintroduction plan sought to achieve.

Spent a bit more time searching, and I've found nothing indicating the
occidentalis subspecies never existed in Idaho. As is, they're sighted as far south as Northern California.

Considering Baker City's about 200 miles from the nearest Idaho wolf pack, it's not a stretch to say the modern sightings of Canis lupus occidentalis were the result of the spread of invasive species. (click-pop)

Magorn:
Are you seriously arguing that wolves kill "for Pleasure" (an anthropomorphic way of saying they take more than a bare subsistence level of elk) and that therefore they should be eliminated because that's cutting into the action for guys who fly in from out of state to use a scoped rifle to blast the hell out of a few elk with minimal effort, saw the heads off and leave the meat to rot? (guarantee you that none of these mighty weekend hunters are paying the extra baggage fees to cart home a few hundred pounds of freshly felled elk)

Idaho was more densely populated with both wolves and humans before the settlers came, and even with elk being a major staple of the Indian diet there seemed to be plenty for everyone.

Human non-food predation (poaching aside) is done according to strict, scientifically-determined scheduling. There is no such control on the hunting habits of Canis lupus occidentalis. I assume you are not a hunter, and have no idea what you are talking about regarding sport hunting. It is against both state and federal regulations to take game and not intend to harvest the meat. And sport hunters can only shoot one elk per season.

See below regarding the "but the natives lived with wolves" comment.

misanthropic1:
So is linking to evidence that directly contradicts your claims the new en-vogue troll?

If you had actually read what I posted, the US Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced the Canis lupus equivalent to the Canary Island Mastiff (Canis lupus occidentalis) when the natural population was more like a Labrador Retriever (Canis lupus irremotus).

VH_Millsy: Link (new window)

800 wolves are decimating herds of 100,000+ ???

bulllllll crap.

The 800 figure is the extreme lowball, and the same Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has stated that populations (which were not at full environmental capacity before wolf introduction) have declined by 20% in the past 5 years. I distinctly remember the RMEF 2001 forecast in Bowhunter estimating there were 247,000 elk in the state, and that was after 6 years of wolf predation in the most fertile areas of the state. Idaho sportsmen and legislators are being proactive, before they disappear entirely.

angry_redhead: Exactly. And if the hunters would actually hunt for meat and leave the trophy animals alone, they would continue passing along superb genetics for better, healthier animals.
Who's the real useless predator?

By the time a bull elk reaches Boone & Crockett or Pope & Young size, it has reproduced at least three times, and possibly as many as 12 times. Wolves kill the better, healthier animals when they're still calves, before they have a chance to reproduce.

Just saying.

i think you mistyped sickly, older, and younger animals there excen

D3_WR: i think you mistyped sickly, older, and younger animals there excen

No, I didn't. Troy Polamalu was 98 pounds once.

/Not that you'd understand a basic metaphor...

NO.. YOU da HO!

Intended prey? Intended by whom? I sense a wolf in sheep's clothing on fark.

BinkyBoy: If you want to know which side of the political spectrum Excen is coming from, IdahoReporter.com is run by a lobbyist named Wayne Hoffman that used to work for a Bachmann type Senator named Bill Sali that thought he could turn trees into oil. There is a fark link somewhere to it.

Attacking the source, not the science.

And that stuff's called Cellulosic Ethanol by the way. (click-pop) It's big in Brazil.

As well, if you want a much more wolf friendly account of Idaho wolves that doesn't spin like a useless pinwheel, Ralph Maughan's site posts quite a bit of the science side of the conversation, instead of the derp that Excen is pushing like a two bit whore.

Nowhere in the blog is any mention of the numerous scientific studies of elk population trends in the state of Idaho. All I see is "teabaggers and ruhpublitards wanna kill doggies" appeals to emotion. This is about the conservation of Idaho's natural resources, not creative writing.

BinkyBoy: Do you have a single clue about wolves and elk? Elk evolved alongside wolves for a few hundred thousand years. Those big bulls that you whine about not being able to find evolved right along with the wolves.

They evolved alongside the Prairie Wolf, not the Mackenzie Valley Wolf.

What you've also forgotten to mention to anyone while you're whining about a "different species" is that the mean average size of the Idaho wolves are exactly the same now as they were before they went extinct in the state. Canadian wolves have a longer high-fat predation season for animals that typically are larger than Idaho prey. Stop lying.

The wolves killed in the state of Idaho that you are referencing were mostly feeding on livestock, indicating they were forced out of natural habitat by other groups. This indicates the animals being harvested are not the biggest, fastest or strongest examples. By Idaho Fish and Game's own admission, their size samples mostly come from killing wolves that return to the kill later on, indicating they are primarily killing lower-status (and therefore smaller) animals, not the larger alpha animals.

/The information I'm referring to is on page 18. (click-pop)
//Check out Page 14. The wolf-kill statistics are quite interesting.

BinkyBoy: Here is a citation to the actual size studies on wolves from 1994 to 2009. If you can interpret graphs, you can see that the weight distribution is decreasing.

Considering the average size of the Prairie Wolf is around 80 pounds, it would make sense that sizes of the Mackenzie Valley Wolf would be decreasing, given the differences in traditional habitat of the two subspecies.

By the author's own admission, differences between maximum weights in the samples could be the result of the timing of weighing, selective sampling and the sample animals' recent feeding activity. If you had bothered to read the explanations of the pretty Excel graphs, you would have reached the same conclusion.

IdahoReporter.com is a site run by a lobbyist. They're science is cherry-picked in order to present a biased view for their customers, which are right-wing politicians. A source should have at least some credibility, which IdahoReporter.com has never had and probably never will.

As for Ralph Maughan's site, it is populated and written by a number of biologists and wolf specialists. But I see you didn't bother noting that, just attacked the source.

Unless you know the posters on that blog you posted personally, I can find no record that they have any sort of scientific qualification whatsoever. Brian Ertz, Ken Cole and Ralph Maughan appear to be no more qualified to put forth a unique opinion than the moderators of the non-government site I posted. The site I posted displays scientific evidence in a rational manner, without an appeal to emotion.

BinkyBoy: Excen: /The information I'm referring to is on page 18. (click-pop)
//Check out Page 14. The wolf-kill statistics are quite interesting.

Try again Wayne, that isn't what page 18 says, and the kill figures on page 14 are consistent with the population trend.

The direct quote is as follows:

"Wolf removal is often focused on the first few wolves seen near the carcass, regardless of pack status. Usually, WS attempts to retain any radiocollared wolves in the pack to continue to provide telemetry information. Wolf removal continues in an incremental progression until the problem is resolved, up to and including the entire pack."

This says they kill the smallest wolves first and work their way up to the largest. Hence, the sample size is statistically small, with smaller animals being over-represented in the sample.

The kill figures on page 14 state wolves are killing elk calves disproportionately to other vulnerable animals, and their rate of killing is increasing. This indicates wolf-caused predation is far more damaging to elk population than a similar quantity of human predation.

Excen: BinkyBoy: Here is a citation to the actual size studies on wolves from 1994 to 2009. If you can interpret graphs, you can see that the weight distribution is decreasing.

Considering the average size of the Prairie Wolf is around 80 pounds, it would make sense that sizes of the Mackenzie Valley Wolf would be decreasing, given the differences in traditional habitat of the two subspecies.

By the author's own admission, differences between maximum weights in the samples could be the result of the timing of weighing, selective sampling and the sample animals' recent feeding activity. If you had bothered to read the explanations of the pretty Excel graphs, you would have reached the same conclusion.

IdahoReporter.com is a site run by a lobbyist. They're science is cherry-picked in order to present a biased view for their customers, which are right-wing politicians. A source should have at least some credibility, which IdahoReporter.com has never had and probably never will.

As for Ralph Maughan's site, it is populated and written by a number of biologists and wolf specialists. But I see you didn't bother noting that, just attacked the source.

Unless you know the posters on that blog you posted personally, I can find no record that they have any sort of scientific qualification whatsoever. Brian Ertz, Ken Cole and Ralph Maughan appear to be no more qualified to put forth a unique opinion than the moderators of the non-government site I posted. The site I posted displays scientific evidence in a rational manner, without an appeal to emotion.

They're all ISU professors. Maughan is a polisci prof, the others are biology. But thanks for playing, consider the door slamming on you as one of your complimentary parting gifts.

g4lt: They're all ISU professors. Maughan is a polisci prof, the others are biology. But thanks for playing, consider the door slamming on you as one of your complimentary parting gifts.

I'll concede Maughan is a retired ISU professor in a non-biological sciences field.

However, there's no record of either Ertz or Cole ever being professors at ISU.

I did, however, find this:

"Ken [Cole] has a degree in Biology from Idaho State University and studied Fisheries Resource Management at the University of Idaho. While in school, he worked summers as a crew leader doing field work and stream inventories for the U.S. Forest Service and for Idaho Fish and Game, collecting data on the now threatened White Sturgeon."

The "expert" in wolves has a B.A. in Fish Studies, and is working for the Western Watersheds Project, where Ertz has the official title of "Media Director".

Forgive me if I find their "science" to be lacking in rigor.

/And ISU's Biological Sciences department is ranked #195 by US News and World Reports

BinkyBoy: This says they kill the smallest wolves first and work their way up to the largest. Hence, the sample size is statistically small, with smaller animals being over-represented in the sample.

No, it doesn't say that. If you hadn't selectively copied and pasted it would be clear exactly what it means:

Wolf removal in response to wolf depredation on livestock in Idaho has typically been
incremental over the last several years. That is, when a livestock conflict occurred, and nonlethal
techniques were not feasible, WS was typically authorized to remove 1-2 wolves during the first
offense, under the premise that the offending animal(s) would be removed when returning to the
carcass. Wolf removal is often focused on the first few wolves seen near the carcass, regardless
of pack status. Usually, WS attempts to retain any radiocollared wolves in the pack to continue
to provide telemetry information. Wolf removal continues in an incremental progression until
the problem is resolved, up to and including the entire pack.

So you're either dumb or you're intentionally lying. Which is it?

Nice false dichotomy. It definitely proves your ability to rationally debate an issue. The wolves Idaho Fish and Game are killing, the animals making up the statistical sampling for size, are the last to feed indicating they are the lowest-ranking and therefore the smallest in the pack. In the case of multiple cases of predation, my point about territory still stands: the least fit packs were forced out of prime hunting territory and were therefore preying on livestock, indicating smaller size and numbers.

And what is your point about calves? Wolves have always preyed on calves and older cows until late winter when they can taken on winter-weakened adults. You really aren't doing well in this discussion, Wayne.

Hunters don't kill calves. Hunters generally don't kill yearlings or 2-year-olds either. Usually, a mature animal has reproduced at least once before harvest. The rate of predation of calves by wolves is going on at an unsustainable rate, and according to sample data, the rate of predation is increasing.

BinkyBoy: Excen: /And ISU's Biological Sciences department is ranked #195 by US News and World Reports

Where is IdahoReporter.com ranked for journalistic integrity, Wayne? Each has more experience in reviewing scientific journals and evaluating them than you, as I pointed out above, you have no ability to read or you intentionally lied about a simple paragraph.

Ah the ad hominem attack, perfect for when you can't logically or rationally debate someone. That particular website (which I picked at random, by the way) just happened to summarize a dry government press release with a pretty picture next to it. I have no idea of their political slant (which apparently is conservative), and it really doesn't matter when the relevant part is a direct quote from a government press release.

My point was that you provided factually-incorrect information about the origins and scientific validity of your citations regarding the topic at hand, and, wait for it, that said incorrect scientific opinions were originating from researchers at a research facility that should be considered mediocre at best.

"Idaho wolf war"

has a nice ring to it...

The wolves and state legislators should sit down in a room and work out a compromise.

Isn't that how politics works?

Excen: angry_redhead: Exactly. And if the hunters would actually hunt for meat and leave the trophy animals alone, they would continue passing along superb genetics for better, healthier animals.
Who's the real useless predator?

By the time a bull elk reaches Boone & Crockett or Pope & Young size, it has reproduced at least three times, and possibly as many as 12 times. Wolves kill the better, healthier animals when they're still calves, before they have a chance to reproduce.

Just saying.

Link (new window)

Lois Crisler notes in Arctic wild, "In all our time in the arctic, the only healthy caribou we saw or found killed were fawns with big herds."
While I understand this is a completely different area in which the wolves were observed, this would still mean that a big herd was big due to having healthy adults and the weaker ones culled, and that wolves are not actually killing all the ungulates that hunters want.