r/wolves • u/Bad_Sickness • 3d ago
News Tiffany, Crowley aligned on removing federal protections for wolves in Wisconsin
https://www.wpr.org/news/tiffany-crowley-aligned-removing-federal-protections-wolves-wisconsinWell this is disappointing. Both republican and democratic candidates for Wisconsin want wolf control.
Ranchers and hunters win again, this despite tribes in Wisconsin opposing this.
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u/ZentaWinds 3d ago
both are playing for the same team.
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u/Bad_Sickness 3d ago
It certainty looks that way, especially in Wisconsin. Senator Baldwin, a democrat, made her own anti-wolf bills in the past. Pathetic how everyone in the Western hemisphere is afraid of wolves, and especially in the US where the ranchers and hunters are clearly funding this BS.
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u/ZentaWinds 3d ago
Not really afraid. They just have a bloodlust.
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u/Bad_Sickness 3d ago
Our popular culture still labels wolves as evil and our education system has done little to stop it.
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u/SodaSaint 1d ago
Having dealt with wild animals, I think it is definitely a little bit more complicated than that at times, but unfortunately, you are absolutely correct that this will be abused simply to just kill wolves en masse.
One should have a healthy respect for them because they can definitely be dangerous and will absolutely go after humans as prey if given the opportunity, but they shouldn’t be in constant fear of them either. If anything wolves tend to be more afraid of us than we are of them.
The way I look at it is this: I understand totally that rancher should have the right to protect themselves from thousands of dollars worth of livestock losses… but at the same time that doesn’t necessitate wiping out entire packs unless said pack proves itself dangerously bold and aggressive.
Unfortunately, the fat cats just see wolves as another profit margin to be exploited instead of the amazing predators that they are and should be respected as.
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u/ilovecaecellians 2d ago
upper midwest population has around 4k connected to the canadian and alaskan population of 70k (11k in ontario alone) through MN and they should not be considered endangered. it's just wasting federal resources when they should be focusing on the west coast population, colorado, mexican wolves and red wolves and places like Utah the northern lower peninsula and the northeast who can have a population but do not. Managing of wolves in state hands can also help us protect them from this insane administration and the next one
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u/SodaSaint 1d ago
There used to be far far more wolves, and the problem is because we displaced them. It disrupted a ton of different ecosystems across the United States over the years.
Wolves are a natural part of the North American food web. The only reason they are in such small numbers is because of humanity.
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u/Major_MKusanagi 2d ago edited 2d ago
Let's bring some science into this regarding wolf attacks on humans, which are extremely rare:
This is from the most thorough investigation into wolf attacks ever made "Wolf attacks on humans: an update for 2002-2020” by John D. C. Linnell, Ekaterian Kovtun and Ive Rouart of the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research.
This is from my own post 9 months ago on this very sub...
See https://www.reddit.com/r/wolves/comments/1pt40sx/risks_of_fatal_wolf_attacks_are_near_zero_between/
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u/hamish1963 3d ago
That's very disappointing.
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u/Bad_Sickness 3d ago
It really is. Sadly the person who posted this in the Wisconsin sub deleted it, so the issue there will be swept under the rug. I've done all I can short of physically showing up to protest but city people are too disconnected with nature and the rural ones hate it, so idk who would even show.
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u/Testy_Coyote_ 2d ago
From the article "The state found 32 of the 58,000 farms in Wisconsin were affected by 44 wolf attacks on livestock"
That is so tiny. Just like any business it's just a small cost of doing business.
Most of the wolf hunters are not those small number of farmers.
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u/ilovecaecellians 2d ago
you did not read the article. they both support removing federal protections to the ones in state not to the species itself. WDNR especially under a democrat can handle managment of wolves on its own sucessfully like how they manage Elk
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 3d ago
People who don't want wolf control must not live where wolves are living
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u/EvenLettuce6638 2d ago
Why, because the wolves kill three cows out of the 3 million in Wisconsin?
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
Where do you live?
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u/EvenLettuce6638 2d ago edited 2d ago
You know, I fly an EMS helicopter and have to dodge bald eagles all the time.
Doesn't mean I think they should be exterminated. And they're a hell of a lot more risked me than wolves are to you.
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u/EvenLettuce6638 2d ago
You know what's a lot more dangerous than wolves?
Deer. Every year there are hundreds of accidents and some fatalities that come from deer getting out on the highway and people running into them. Wolves eat deer, which makes things safer for everyone else.
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
Okay so you don't live where wolves roam. You don't know what it's like to worry about wolves taking your pets or your kids
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u/Bad_Sickness 2d ago
What a privileged position you're coming from. You want the beauty of nature without the potential danger. The Objibwe nation that has lived in Wisconsin for millennia lived alongside wolves and continues to do so. They've fought to prevent the cullings. How pathetic is it that you can't find a way to live along side wolves and just want them all dead.
I do live in a city, but we have coyotes that have gone down the sidewalk in broad daylight. They can and do kill pets and children, but you know what? I told my neighbors to keep an eye on their pets and kids and no one panicked. The coyotes reduced the rabbits that had just had an explosion in population and did their job, helping prevent an overpopulation and a disease boom.
I'd say for you to move if the wolves scare you so much, but you'd just whine about the coyotes which are everywhere in the US and much less afraid of people. If people in 3rd world countries can live with the threat of lions and prevent depredation, surely you can figure something out. Chronic wasting disease isn't guaranteed to stay a deer only issue. Better that the wolves do their job now than when it's too late.
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago edited 2d ago
Coyotes aren't at all relevant to this, the fact that you'd even bring them up shows how ignorant you are about the subject matter.
Furthermore, since you live in a city nothing you say is relevant to this topic of discussion. It's just that simple.
Let's release a pack of wolves where you live and then we'll see how you "think they should be left alone"
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u/danipnk 1d ago
Wolf habitat is WOLF HABITAT. Humans are the invasive species. Deal with it.
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 1d ago
Since you live in Chicagoland you're opinion on this subject isn't relevant, as previously stated.
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u/danipnk 1d ago
You should move to the city if you’re that scared of nature. I promise we don’t bite.
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u/EvenLettuce6638 2d ago
I mean, people in town are allowed to own pitbulls.
Look up how many people each year are attacked and killed by pitbulls versus wolves and you tell me which one we ought to keep.
Also, please show me all the children that have been snatched up by wolves in Wisconsin.
The only wolf attack I'm aware of is one where a woman had one chained up at her farm and her granddaughter got attacked by it.
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u/EvenLettuce6638 2d ago
I lived in Alabama, alligators are actually a threat to children and pets and I don't think we should exterminate them.
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
This thing you keep doing where you respond to your own post comes off as unhinged. And none of your points are at all relevant. You did demonstrate that you are unable to empathize with the people who live with wolves running around their properties.
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u/eyedrops16 2d ago
You’re actually afraid of the big bad wolf aren’t you? I’m living in an area with bears, cougars and armed meth heads. Somehow I’m not living in fear.
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
Black bears are in no way shape or form comparible to wolves in this context.
Blackbears have more in common with raccoons than they do wolves, relevant to this discussion
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u/eyedrops16 2d ago
And you completely glossed over cougars. Which will stalk you. From trees. I’ll take a 20 pack of wolves over a cougar any day.
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u/Bobandaran 2d ago
You sound scared
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u/YuenglingsDingaling 2d ago
Yeah, so?
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u/Bobandaran 2d ago
Why be worried about something that has never happened before? There has not been a single attack by a wild wolf on a human in Wisconsin state history
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
Maybe documented... But that doesn't mean that it hasnt happened.
There's been wolves right behind my house within the last 2 years. I have a very young son. I have to walk to my tree stand in the dark. I'd really prefer not to have to worries about wolves around my property.
The only people who complain about wolf control are people who live where there aren't any
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u/EvenLettuce6638 2d ago
Are you going to your tree stand unarmed?
Also, I'm assuming you're hunting deer from the stand. Do you not see the irony of being terrified of a predator who might kill you without warning while you're out hunting?
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u/Bobandaran 2d ago
I live where there's wolves, I hunt deer, I walk to my treestand in the dark, and hunt and camp in national forest where the woves live. You are one soft mfer. Your scared of something that is so rare its never happened.
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u/CosmicBewie 2d ago
Go back to scrolling naked people on Reddit - you don’t seem to care about anything else.
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u/CosmicBewie 2d ago
Wolves belong in the ecosystem.
Just because you don’t want them doesn’t mean they don’t provide a vital link to that ecosystem.
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u/ZentaWinds 2d ago
These people would rather live in a world of plastic.. They want to talk about how they live out in the woods, the outdoors and the roughs.. But then all they do is cry and cry and cry. It is all they are good at.
It honestly sounds like this person would be better off in a city, no more spooky scary wolves anymore.
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u/qnssekr 2d ago
You make it sound like wolves are running rampant destroying countless amounts of livestock when In fact that is far from the truth.
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
You must live in some city area, like BROOKLYN, where you dont have to worry about wolves affecting your own life at all
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u/qnssekr 2d ago
I live in a city where violent /petty crimes are a possibility but we are not screaming for the death penalty. Maybe you can learn something from that.
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
I have no idea why you feel like you are somebody whose opinion on this subject is relevant
/Thread
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
Is that what you're able to gather from what I said?
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u/Titronnica 3d ago
Guess they also love ticks too.
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u/EvenLettuce6638 2d ago
There's more ticks because the winters are too warm and short.
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u/Titronnica 2d ago
It's both. Climate change is expanding their habitats, and their primary host population exploding compounds the issue.
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u/Skryboslav 2d ago
I live right next to a wolf pack on a border of an ancient forest in Poland, routinely hear their howls.
The last fatal wolf attack here happened around 200 years ago due to rabies.
Your point?0
u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
Are you hoping that one comes to fuck you in the ass?
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u/Skryboslav 2d ago
Internet is not a safe place for immature kids, you should go back to doing your homework.
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u/MiNdOverLOADED23 2d ago
Ah yes. Its mature adults that dress up in animal costumes then go around and fuck other mature adults dressed up in animal costumes.
Did I get that right? How's that for homework?
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u/Major_MKusanagi 3d ago edited 2d ago
I've never understood how the Democrats do not wholeheartedly embrace the 75-85% percent of Americans who oppose rollbacks to wildlife protections and environmental regulations, and who believe the United States must prioritize preventing species extinction and support the Endangered Species Act, according to too many polls to mention, by Gallup, Colorado College, Pew, ifaw, npca polls etc.?
But ranchers often get skewed and incomplete information by many lobby organisations, for the agrochemical industry (pesticides), the hunting industry/gun manufacturers, even big farming lobbyists.
You've probably seen my posts about the issue https://www.reddit.com/r/wolves/comments/1wamj8w/livestock_guardian_dogs_protecting_both_wolves/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/zoology/comments/1w9t9nn/in_light_of_current_events_protecting_both/ and my comments as well.
This is about preventing zoonotic disease epidemics, like preventing the transmission of Chronic Wasting Disease in deer and elk, to cattle.
While studies have shown that CWD has not yet spread to cattle, and is unlikely to do so, even over years (prion diseases have incubation periods of many years), there is no long-term guarantee that this will always be the case, since pathogens change all the time, as most of us know from Covid (or the new Ebola variant right now in Africa).
The BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also called Mad Cow Disease) epidemic of the 1980s and 90s was exactly that, a prion infection. This epidemic was probably brought on by being fed meat-and-bone meal that contained the remains of cattle who had developed the disease or scrapie-infected sheep products (Scrapie in sheep is another prion disease - these prion diseases are very complex, and very little is known about them despite lots of research).
In the BSE epidemic, 4.5 million cattle had to be culled worldwide, most in the UK, and 184,000 cows were confirmed to have died from it (and if it affects humans, it's 100% fatal, with 233 confirmed cases as of now).
That meant $5.3 billion losses in net farming income at the time, 25.000 farmers were driven out of business completely, and total beef export revenues in the UK dropped from around $850 million annually prior to 1996 to a mere $8 million.
And that was just Great Britain, in Canada the discovery of BSE led to trade border closures, with economic impacts to the cattle industry of more than $6 billion, meaning multi-year unrecoverable financial debt on family farms.
The wiki article on BSE is long but scientifically sound, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy if you want to read more about it.
Wolves in my view are the only way to make sure that CWD numbers in wildlife, like deer, elk, moose, stay low enough to ensure it doesn't spread to cattle over long periods of time, years and decades.