Hell It’s Only Idaho
Posted by skyblu on January 29, 2007
AND IT’S ONLY IGNORANCE AND SEXISM
According to the Mercury News:
“Wolves in the northern Rockies will be removed from the endangered species list within the next year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Friday, a move that would open the population up to trophy hunting.”
There are loud voices against this move, and the state of Wyoming seems to be listening to them. There are less loud voices with guile in their hearts. They appear to be in Idaho.
A note in Ralph Maughan’s Wildlife News pointed us at a story with this note:
“Update: Thanks to Brian Ertz, here is a video of the sexist commissioner’s comment on You Tube. The person speaking is Jim Caswell, head of the governor’s Office of Species Conservation. The species office is, according to some displacing the Idaho Fish and Game Commission. It being yet another forum for the extractive industry. The voice in background is Cameron Wheeler, head of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission.”
A post a day later mentions the Montana plan that is evolving. and cites the detailed story in the Billings Gazette that shows the Montana legislature wrestling with the problem. So far Defenders of Wildlife have: “. . . paid out $153,930 for wolf kills last year, more than $50,000 more than in 2005, and many claims are still pending, said Minette Johnson, the group’s Northern Rockies representative.”
For one local, sane – (read female,) report you can peruse the Wolf Report for May 9, 2006. Such an interesting divergence of views. The photos posted here are from that report.
It is a source of constant amazement to me that the very people who despise wolves for killing elk, are the same people that rave about how many elk were here before the Europeans arrived.
Return with me to those bygone days when Pilgrims lined up, shoulder to shoulder and spread their genes westward. Killing and burning and slaughtering elk. There were so many elk because they were healthy and well adapted to the world they lived in – including far more wolves than there are today. How did that happen? Don’t they pause to consider? Hell, it’s only Idaho.
Ralph Maughan said
Idaho has a lot of good folks. Unfortunately, they don’t elected to office anymore.
Demarcatedlandscapes said
They have a different way of seeing things in Idaho. I once got a letter from a fledgling organization in Eastern Idaho (“Twin Falls Multiple Users Coalition” or some such thing) whose motto was “Red Meat, Board Feet, Dig Deep, Drive Jeep.” Their letterhead had a picture of a guy driving a Jeep through a clearcut to a dead elk with a mine in the background. The whole thing was just so beautiful, the iconography, the poetry, and of course the sentiment expressed in the letter. I kept it around for years and would take it out to admire from time to time. Wish I still had it. They were protesting an administrative appeal of a logging project called Miner’s Creek on the Targhee NF.
skyblu said
– I love Idaho, — AND — the many good people that I know there. I took an MA at ISU. There are good folks – many of them. Just as in Montana. The laid back atmosphere demands an unseemly level of tolerance, for all levels of ignorance and audacity, {strength and weakness sort of thing!}
– Some time, Around the time of Frank Church, (or Kennedy, or Nixon,) the politicos discovered that power pays. Since then there are fewer and fewer public ‘servants’ and more and more public ‘players.’
– This is one of the sad commentaries on the state of politics in America. I’m guilty of protecting my comfort and ignoring activism. How do we change the trend?
…………skyblu
be said
“livestock ! livestock ! livestock !” – that’s idaho politics for ya… it kinda makes ya wonder…
Mary said
Mary
love fishing too..hope to read more about it on your site!