Thursday, August 23, 2007

Idaho Wild Fire

The Castle Rock Fire, just 17 miles north of my home, reached status as the #1 priority fire in the USA.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Coyotes, Wolves, Etc..

In areas where they are hunted or trapped, coyotes, like bears and mountain lions, are extremely wary of humans, but they can be bold in urban areas where they associate people with food and water. In southern California between 1988 and 1997, there were 53 documented coyote attacks on humans, and 21 people were bitten. Most of these resulted in only minor injuries. However, several children have been more seriously bitten, and in 1981, coyotes attacked and killed a three-year-old girl in Glendale California.
Remember what happened when California stopped hunting mountain lions? Same thing!
Wolves are just bigger, more agressive Coyotes!
Today in America, a wolf attack must follow the following criteria in order to be labeled as a proper attack.
1. The wolf has to be killed, examined and found to be healthy.
2. It must be proven that the wolf was never kept in captivity in its entire life.
3. There must be eyewitnesses to the attack.
4. The person must die from their wounds.


KILLER WOLVES
Since historians seem to be having problems digging up this information, here are a few documented cases of wolves killing and/or injuring humans. Although wolves should not be excessively feared, and wolves that kill humans are rare, we do need the truth told by someone.
Research: Scott, Peter A., et al. “Aggressive Behavior by Wolves Toward Humans.” Journal of Mammalogy 66.4 (1985): 807-809; Munthe, Kathleen and J. Howard Hutchinson. “A Wolf-Human Encounter on Ellesmere Island, Canada” Journal of Mammalogy 59.4 (1978): 876-878; McNay, Mark E. “Interactions in Alaska and Canada: A Review of the Case History.” Wildlife Society Bulletin 30.3 (2002): 831-843.
Scientist: Arctic wolf attacks a scientist in Canada (1985—Arctic, Vol. 38, 1985).
Female Researcher: Three penned wolves had to be killed before rescuers could get to the body of a female wildlife reserve employee that the wolves had killed in their pen (1996—The Kingston Wig Standard, Ontario, Canada, April 20).
Trapper and Two Indians: An elderly trapper did not return to the post office as promised, so two Indians were sent to find him. All three were killed by wolves (1922— Port Arthur, Ontario newspaper, Dec. 27).
Negro Man: Two Negro men were attacked in Kentucky by wolves on the way home from visiting girlfriends. One survived by climbing a tree (1851—John James Audubon, “Black American Wolf” in Quadrupeds of North America).
Farmer and Son: A pack of wolves attacked and ate a farmer and his son (1888—The Saint Paul Daily Globe, March 8).
Eskimo Woman: She was strangled by a wolf as her husband rushed to her assistance (1829—John Richardson in “Fauna Boreali-Americana”).
Sick Indians: Not only did wolves come into the Indian camps and eat corpses dead of smallpox, but also attacked, killed, and ate the sick (1770—Peter Kalm in “Travels in North America”).
Injured: Several instances of nonfatal, but serious attacks in Canada and Alaska have appeared recently in the news: Algonquin Provincial Park, 1996; Yakutat, Alaska, 2000; Vargas Island, British Columbia, 2002 (The Wolf Society of Great Britain, www.myinternet.co.uk/wsgb/index.htm).
Rabies: Of course history is also full of accounts of rabid wolves killing humans, but advocates slip around these records by concentrating on “healthy” wolves. Since wild wolves can’t be vaccinated, why does it seem so comforting to think a wolf must be rabid to attack a human? By insisting the accounts be “documented,” scientists and advocates are also able to discredit hunters, Indians, Eskimos, and rural people who just “remember” but don’t write the story down or publish it.
Guns: Wolf attacks on humans seem to occur mostly in places where the general population is unarmed and/or where wolves are protected. The low number of recent historical encounters within the U.S. borders as compared to India, for instance, are probably due to the fact that during the period of America’s written history almost every citizen went about armed and seldom passed up a chance to shoot at a wolf. Protected animals lose their fear of humans.

Now that the wolves are on the ground, breeding like rabbits, depleting wild game and starting to get more serious about livestock, the public winds are about to change again. Plus, the U.S. government sure doesn’t want new trouble. Some history lessons maybe they remember!
Someone said FWS announced just five days earlier that they are turning the Mexican wolf recovery program over to Arizona Fish & Game. What a surprise! The same will soon happen in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. That way the states can be blamed and will have to deal with the public outcry as soon as the wolves are totally out of control. Next step? Call back the feds, of course, so they can play the cavalry riding in to save the day once again. We need some new movies.

http://www.rangemagazine.com/archives/stories/summer03/ground-hog.htm

Idaho had a few wolves around before the reintroduction of the Canadian wolves. They were hardly ever heard from or noticed. They were a smaller sub species and were relatively few in number. I hope a few of them survive. The "Reintroduced" Wolves will kill any of them they can catch.