Wildlife and People

Who Is Stupid?

The following very annoying piece of accusatory idiocy drained into the Internet last week:

When It Comes to Wolves, It’s the Habitat, Stupid

Leaders with the Montana Wildlife Federation argue increasing habitat functionality is the conservative, financially smart way to boost game herds where needed.

By Skip Kowalski and Tim Aldrich, New West, 7-30-10 [here]

We originally set out to write a piece about wolves and how hunters can manage all wildlife, even large carnivores, under the North American Model of Fish and Wildlife Conservation. We quickly realized that this topic has been “rode hard and put away wet” so to speak. What we discovered, through our own reflection, is that there seems to be an important lesson learned and not being adequately applied by those who hunt – the lesson of the importance of habitat. …

Whether it’s noxious weeds, loss of winter habitat due to fragmentation, or the loss of access that helps disperse wildlife across our public lands, it’s the habitat, stupid, as the saying goes. …

Skip Kowalski is chairman of the Wildlife and Wildlife Habitat Committee and Tim Aldrich is president of the Montana Wildlife Federation.

All of which demands a rejoinder.

*****

Dear Skip and Tim

No, it’s predator prey relations, you stupids, not “habitat”.

Population dynamics in animals is governed by predator-prey interactions [here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here].

That is true of elk, deer, sage grouse, spotted owls, you name it.

There is no shortage of habitat. The Feds own 30 percent of the land in the U.S., twice that much in some Western states [here].

In 1995 wolves were introduced into the Lolo Wildlife Management Zones 10 and 12 of the Clearwater River watershed in Idaho [here]. The elk cow count subsequently dropped 90%, and the calf count dropped 94 to 96%. Did 90% of the habitat suddenly disappear? You stupids blame that prey population crash on “habitat”, whereas every other analyst blames the wolves!

Is everybody stupid but you? Or is it the other way around?

In 1994 25 million acres were set-side into No Touch Zones for the Northern Spotted Owl. Since then the NSO population has crashed by 60 percent or more. Looks like your stupid “formula” didn’t work.

Nowhere has the “habitat” formula worked. Setting aside habitat has no effect of wildlife populations. Instead predator-prey relations govern population dynamics. Where predator control has been applied, prey population flourish. Where predators have been uncontrolled, prey populations crash. In every single case.

So-called “fragmentation” is eco-babble garbage, stupids. Animals move around through all kinds of “habitat” including cover habitat, foraging habitat, and “edge”. The same people who decry “fragmentation” swear by the vegetation “mosaic”, yet the mosaic and fragmentation are exactly the same thing. The latest eco-babble desire is to “diversify forest continuity” [here], which is fragmentation by holocaust. If “fragmentation” is such terrible thing, why do you promote it via catastrophic fire?

You stupids are not promoting wildlife conservation, you are promoting environmental destruction.

You stupids are perpetrating a war on the West [here]. You are war-mongers. You seek to drive humanity out of the West, by any means, including through the extirpation of prey populations by uncontrolled predators.

You regurgitate junk science and Big Lies in order to inflict suffering on your fellow human beings and wildlife. Your motivations are repulsive.

We are smart enough to realize that. We have you pegged. We know exactly what you are.

So go easy on the “stupid” remarks. You are not fooling anybody.

Mike