Kill, Kill Them All!

Kill, kill them all!

The Sacramento Bee is doing a series on the U.S. Wildlife Service" war on predators. Over the past six years 1/2 million predators have been exterminated by the Wildlife Service.

This weekend I watched a 15 year old move, "Never Cry Wolf". The movie decries man's approach to wolves, basically trying to kill all of them, as senseless, and not based on any scientific evidence.

The Bee article expands that research to include Bear, Lions, Eagles, Coyotes; etc.

There is no scientific backing whatsoever for the wholesale slaughter of predators. In fact, when man is successful in dramatically reducing predator populations, elk and deer herds, who are being maintained to hunt, are actually damaged. The sick and the defective parts of the herd survive, making the herd weaker.

Wolves and coyotes prey on the sick in a herd. They usually eat small rodents, which are in abundance as the scientist in "Never Cry Wolf" discovers. Much to his amazement, the wolves he is researching mainly live on arctic mice, not deer or caribou.

I worked for two years as a superintendent in a rural ranching community. The ranchers there hated coyotes and lions. They complained about the damage they did to their herds. I once asked, when the last time a coyote had killed a calf. The rancher looked at me and said never, because "we kill coyotes".

The truth is coyotes and wolves for that matter rarely kill livestock. And when they do, the government (in wolves cases anyway) reimburse ranchers for their loss.

"Never Cry Wolf" ends with the wolf pair being slaughtered by "hunter tourists" for their tails, leaving three pups orphans. Man comes into the valley, and kills everything he can, for sport. And the wolves run for their lives. And the caribou herds get sicker and fewer.

Today, mankind continues overpopulating, polluting, burning up oil at a record clip, ignoring the signs of global warming, and killing everything he can. And the clock is ticking.

Because the day is not far off, when the number one predator will become his own victim.