Idiotic Judicial Decision Causes Mass Tragedy
What happens when a Federal Judge gets confused and disoriented, can’t read, or can’t understand what he reads, and he dismisses human rights with a wave of his gavel? Horrible decisions that result in catastrophes that hurt people.
Last Sept. Federal Judge Paul L. Friedman ruled that the exploding population of Great Lake wolves in Minnesota could not be removed from the Endangered Species list (contrary to the wishes of the USFWS and Minnesota DNR) because he (Friedman) was confused about the Distinct Population Segment (DPS) verbiage in the Endangered Species Act [here].
Friedman wrote the following gibberish in his decision:
The DPS Policy does not qualify as a construction to which this Court can defer because the DPS Policy does not directly address the interpretive issue before the Court. The purpose of the DPS Policy is to clarify the meaning of the term “distinct population segment” and to set forth criteria for deciding whether a sub-population should be designated as a DPS. It does not address the propriety of simultaneously designating and delisting a DPS within a broader listing…
Translated into English, that meant the USFWS could not delist Great Lakes wolves by declaring them to be a DPS, even though it is quite common for the USFWS to declare DPS’s for the purpose of listing them. The language in the ESA stumped Friedman. He just could not figure out what it says, or didn’t want to, or was looking for any angle to scuttle the delisting.
There are real world consequences to the Judge’s confusion: Great Lake wolves (now numbering over 3,000) are increasingly killing livestock and there is nothing that ranchers can do about it.
Some background: last year the Great Lakes wolf DPS was delisted, due to the burgeoning wolf population, which meant ranchers could (again) shoot wolves that killed their cattle. However, the usual enviro-wacko cults sued, and in his profound confusion, Friedman enjoined the delisting.
Now, protecting livestock from wolves is a Federal crime. And guess what? — the wolves have ramped up attacks, unencumbered by ranchers’ bullets:
Easy prey: Relisted timber wolves taking a toll on Minnesota cattle
by Matt Bewley, Grand Forks Agweek, 11/24/2008 [here]
KITTSON COUNTY, Minn. — It was Sept. 6 when cattle rancher Scott Syverson received a call from his neighbor, Milo Minske. Minske told Syverson he’d seen two wolves feeding on one of Syverson’s calves outside his pasture’s fence line eight miles northeast of Karlstad, Minn.
Syverson went out to check and found the partially stripped calf had been dragged under the barbed-wire fence into the ditch.
“I was disgusted,” he says. “They tried to drag it across the highway.”
The dense birch woods and scrubbrush there would provide ample hiding for a pack of wolves. Minske, retired, lives behind those woods, and had noticed a big increase in wolves this past year, many of them crossing his own yard, he says. One day, he had counted six wolves traversing his property. …
Minnesota’s timber gray wolves were returned to the federal threatened species list when a federal judge’s Sept. 29 ruling overturned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision in 2007 to delist the entire western Great Lakes population, which includes all of Minnesota’s wolves. [The Friedman Decision]
Minnesota’s DNR had been managing the wolves for four months under the terms of a federally approved state wolf management plan. Under it, ranchers in the western portion where Syverson operates could take any wolf that was stalking his cattle.
Woinarowicz now had to warn all ranchers dealing with wolf predation that they no longer could take any wolves that were attacking their herds, even if they caught them in the act of taking down a calf.
“I would like to have seen the wolves come back to state management,” he says. “Under the federal management program, livestock owners cannot legally shoot the wolf unless it is endangering human life. I don’t think that’s fair.”
The legal decision to relist the wolves was based on a legal technicality related to federal rule-making procedures. This will require federal intervention to rescind, according to DNR a spokesman. The ruling had nothing to do with the status of Minnesota’s wolf population or the adequacy of state management.
Minnesota’s 3,000 wolves represent, by far, the highest number and concentration of wolves in any of the Lower 48 states. The population is more than double the minimum required to delist wolves and, according to the DNR, the state’s wolf population is fully recovered.
Yet the Sept. 29 ruling is tying the hands of livestock producers and conservation officers.
Meanwhile, the wolves have returned to hunting Syverson’s herd. Another calf and a full grown Hereford were taken, their remains left on his pasture for Woinarowicz to see. But by Syverson’s count, some 36 calves and three grown cows also are now unaccounted for while several remaining calves bear wounds on their hind legs, a typical sign of wolf attack. …
One idiot judge, prodded by human-hating wackos, has brought disaster and ruin upon hundreds of ranching families in Minnesota. The Constitutional rights of human beings were never considered in Friedman’s decision, only the imaginary “rights” of blood thirsty four-legged predators.
Let the wolves pay the Judge’s salary. Human beings should not under any circumstances feed, clothe, house, or otherwise recompense an idiot judge who can’t read and has no idea what our Constitution is all about. If he could read, he would have noted that every right guaranteed by the Constitution is a human right. Animals aren’t even mentioned.
Throw the Judge to the wolves. Let them administer justice to Friedman. But if wolves kill livestock, then the rights and duty of livestock owners should be exercised with deadly force and the full support of our Nation and Federal Government, created by, of, and for the people.
