The Real Side

Stop being a moron and sounding like an ignorant jackass! There already is a Wolf Awareness Center in the Great Lakes States that brings ecotourism and educates the public on wolves and how humans can coexist, and its working along with other centers in Europe and across the world. It spread to the schools where our young children are being educated and being given the opportunity to make their own decisions. Educating our children is the exact opposite attitude of "fuck the children". If you would get our your little box in your head and do some actually journalism or educate yourself instead of having that attitude "fuck everything, I don't care" you would know the following....

There are ranchers who are working closely with Defenders of Wildlife and state government in the United States and abroad in Europe where wolves are endangered/threatened. There are ranching techniques already in practice that deter wolves and are keeping cattle and other ranching animals safe. Part of everyones problems today, especially the wannabee journalist that wrote this article as well as the commenter who likes to say "fuck" all the time, is that it is easy to follow the rhetoric of "fuck the wolves" "fuck the environment" instead of actually educating yourself on the wolves and how they significantly impact ecosystems and why it is so important that we as humans start to appreciate our natural surroundings and learn to live within them instead of always trying to "dominate". Our environment is not on its way out, we have plenty of technology and science to change what is happening to our planet and live sustainably with our planet for many generations to come. Why is that wolves in Yellowstone are considered keystone species, because with their presence, the biodiversity in the ecosystem thrives. This isn't about wolves, this is about people not really caring enough to stop being so judgemental and ignorant to something that is different. When is our society going to stop saying our "dominant ways" is right and nature is wrong? When we look at all the natural disasters that occur, our dominant ways are destroyed and nature wins and some of these natural disasters could have been prevented if we took more steps towards living sustainably. Its time for us to start trying to live with nature sustainably. I come from the country, farming and ranching land. There are alot of ranchers across this nation that are realizing that living sustainably with nature, which includes wolves, bears, etc is what helps sustain their land longer. There are more documented records of bears killing humans than wolves, there are more documented records of feral dogs, mountain lions killing cattle than wolves. Our society needs to start listening honorably to others points of view...and that is the whole point of journalism is to present an objective point of view based on objective unbiased information so that the reader can take from the information what they want. Journalism that breeds hatred should not be tolerated in our country, if you want to breed hatred go to a facist country. Part of our founding fathers coming here was to get away from rhetoric and damnation sounding journalism. Now a TRUE journalist would interview and do research on ranchers, both for and against wolf reintroduction and interview scientists and do research on studies that suggest wolf reintroduction works and why and interview scientists and studies that suggest wolf reintroduction isn't working and why. Our society promotes biased ignorant uneducated journalism and this is why our society is so misinformed and why Albuqueruqe is the way that it is, why our young are in gangs, killing eachother, doing drugs, etc. Our children in our society are telling this country what works and doesn't work, that ignorance breeds hatred and education breeds tolerance.

Ranchers aren't being harmed -AT ALL- by wolves; predated cattle are fully reimbursed. Period.

Even so, a few dozen people (ranchers) control millions and millions of acres of OUR public land ("public" meaning everyone) in New Mexico and are the single most destructive force in the Southwest, dwarfing the damage done to nature by oil and gas drilling, and deforestation.

If it weren't so damned fictionalized and romanticized, ranching in the southwest would've been outlawed altogether decades ago. The desert simply can't support it. Raise cattle where the land can support it, or in feed lots, not in the desert. Nobody, (especially less than .0000005% of our state's population) should be allowed that kind of power over land that belongs to all of us.

Scarantino, your opinion (as usual) is devoid of logic and science. What's really sick is that you know the facts about wolves and about ranching, but choose personal vendettas over truth, to the detriment of your home state and all its people, ranchers included.

Wolf reintroduction should be our state's highest priority, and would benefit 99.999945% of New Mexico's citizens.

To see the truth, the true impact of the wolf, see this clip from CNN:

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I'm a city boy and don't have much of an opinion on wolves either way, but..

"Ranchers aren't being harmed -AT ALL- by wolves; predated cattle are fully reimbursed."

..unless the wolves themselves are paying this reimbursement out of _​their_​ pockets, loss of cattle due to wolves, _​is_​ harm-done-by-wolves. (It's just a question of how _​much_​ harm occurs, and whether it's _​worth_​ paying, in order to support or protect wolves.) Maybe it's the taxpayers, rather than the rachners, who are harmed, but shuffling a cost doesn't make it go away.

Saying the harm doesn't occur, is the same kind of trickery I hear from politicians when they say they're going to give us something for "free." It's never free.

All predated cattle is reimbursed with PRIVATE funds, through a trust fund established by the conservation group, Defenders of Wildlife.

I reiterate: "AT ALL".

Have you ever been on a ranch? Have you have talked to a rancher? Or a degreed agricultural or environmental scientist? (Did you know that many ranchers in New Mexico also carry degrees in earth and agricultural sciences?) I consider myself an environmentalist and I've taken it upon myself to do all those things. And from my experience, spent many hours outside of our smoggy, resource-gobbling, wasteful cities (bar none the most destructive forces in the Southwest), environmentalists and ranchers want, basically, the same things. They just need to work with each other. Stop perpetuating this paranoid, misinformed us vs. them crap and we've all got a chance.

How much power can ranchers have if they're barely breaking even? Ranching is not profitable in the least. They're not doing it for money, that's for sure. And they're not doing it for power (there's an incredible amount of bureaucratic red tape that comes with agriculture in NM, especially when you're doing it on public lands.) Why would a person work from sun-up to sundown, seven days week until you die for virtually no netable income under ever-changing, complex (the laws) and unpredictable (the weather) circumstances? Because people who work with the land in that capacity feel a profound and reverential connection with it, going back generations. If you don't feel that connection, you'd be much better off packing up and moving to a city (as many have).

Those millions and millions of acres "owned" by a "few dozen people" (your numbers are wacky to say the least) are public not because Uncle Sam was "giving" anything to His citizens, but because these lands have no resources that the government deems it can exploit. No water to dam, no energy to drill for, no minerals to strip mine, no harvestable trees to clear cut. So they make this land available to the ranchers, for a price.

So, responsible ranchers have an imperative to prevent overgrazing and keep native species of plants and wildlife on the land diverse and populous, to keep the number of predators and prey in balance, to keep the quality of the soil healthy. That's how they've been able to last so long in a place you or I would probably die in fairly quickly. Irresponsible ranchers do exist, but they're killing their land and livelihood for a short term gain. Next year's grass crop, and next year's head of cattle, will disappear. Good ranchers with a long connection to the land know how important biodiversity is.

And I can't fathom how you actually believe polluting, sickness spreading and completely unnatural feed lots are more environmentally cound than free-range livestock rearing, which Native Americans have done it here for millenia. That's nuts, Joe.

People sure are emotionally invested in the issue of wolves. Personally, I think people are more important, and wish there had been this sort of interest in articles I've written about DWI, public corruption, gangs, war, pollution's harmful effects on children, homeless families and education. This subject--wolves and the passion about them--deserves to be revisited in upcoming columns. Thanks to everyone for participating in the voting and this conversation.

I love great conversation, but with that - I wonder what wolf tastes like?

To clarify yet another inaccuracy stated by Mr. Scarantino in an above comment, Kenton Carnegie was very likely not killed by wolves--he was likely killed by a black bear and then scavenged by wolves:

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Jim, don’t be afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf!

It seems the entire dialogue of the Right is about fear: fear of terrorists (a terrorist's whole objective), fear of environmentalists, fear of scientists, and even fear of nature. They're constantly suggesting that the actions of environmentalists are anti-people …as if people don’t need ecosystems! Holy shit! –is there ANYTHING on earth people need MORE?

Setting rhetoric and bumper-sticker anti-logic aside, what true conservationists condone is one simple (and apparently scary) truth: we need to restore the balance.

Yellowstone National Park has lived a natural renaissance in recent years. The trees are healthier. Yellowstone’s streams and rivers have more fish. There are more falcons, hawks, owls, eagles and foxes. There's more and a bigger variety of grasses, which feed a passel of creatures. In fact, Yellowstone’s health in general is improving.

Why? The wolf.

Before the wolf was reintroduced to Yellowstone, elk became an apex animal -no enemies. It made them linger unnaturally in one place, to become complacent. They overgrazed meadows, gnawed bushes to the ground, and trampled streambeds. Coyotes had become the apex predator, and became over-populated, decimating prey that was once shared with other creatures, like eagles and foxes.

With wolves back, the elk are nervous again. They can't stay still: a lazy elk is wolfchow, so Yellowstone elk are on the move. Because the elk don't linger anymore, grass is growing stream-side again and smaller, softer trees like willow are back. The return of the willows has increased the songbird population; the grasses feed a wider variety of animals, and grow in thicker patches of greater variety. Along with the willows, stream banks are getting narrower and steeper again, shading them, and lowering the water temperature. That temperature drop brought about a marked increase in the population of fish.

Coyotes are being dispensed back to normal levels too, so there are more rodents and rabbits …that resulted in an increase in the number of falcons, hawks, owls, eagles and foxes.

Seeing a pattern here?

Every year, environmental conditions in Yellowstone get better and better –a complete turnaround from its previous course– thanks to the wolf.

No legitimate conservationist wants ranchers to suffer, lose their land, or their heritage. We just want them to recognize the fact that we ALL need to do our part to keep all of earth’s habitats viable –for people. We’ve all had to recognize our previous unhealthy habits like DDT, asbestos, PCBs …it’s time to add desert-fed cattle to that list; they’re toxic to New Mexico.

The cattle Americans have raised originated in Europe, where they've adapted –been domesticated– for thousands of years. They belong in places where rainfall is measured in feet, not inches. European cattle linger in one spot forever (as any New Mexican can testify) and completely denude a spot before getting the gumption to move on.

Desert grasslands simply can't bear sustained grazing like wet, European meadows can.

Healthy grasslands consume huge amounts of greenhouse gases, increase rainfall and lower range temperatures by reflecting sunlight –and lower temperatures result less water evaporation. As far as I know, water is fairly important to people.

Southwestern range-fed beef represents less than 10% of total U.S. beef production; cattle do okay in feedlots, because the food comes to them; they aren't out actively destroying our public lands.

What conservationists would like to see ranchers do, is raise buffalo. Buffalo are ideally suited to New Mexico; their natural habitat once covered the entire state's grasslands. They move around constantly, giving range the time it needs to recover, before returning to graze again. Ranchers could enjoy their own renaissance, with sustainable, healthy land that will get better every year; a new legacy to be proud of.

And guess what: buffalo can defend themselves against wolves! Their rivalry was once legendary: Bison aren't stupid, lumbering hunks of meat; they're big, strong, quick, smart and mean. Wolves really have to pick their fights, or stand a very real chance of being killed by their intended prey.

A healthier, cattle-free New Mexico would improve everyone’s life: New Mexicans, tourists (spending billions) and most of all, our children. Watching out for the environment every man, woman and child need to survive show a REAL, long-term concern for mankind.