Sunday, December 2, 2007

FW: Wolf-Proof Shelters Go Up for School Kids

Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity is quoted in an article in the Albququerque Journal by Rene Romo as saying that bus stop shelters built to protect Catron County children from the threat of wolves are a stunt "designed to get the sympathy of the public when the real concern is safety of their livestock."
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/state/266402nm12-02-07.htm

Has Mr. Robinson contacted the school in question to see how many of the children protected by the shelters are from livestock-owning families?  Has Mr. Romo bothered to do any research at all, or is he just writing for sensationalism, the safety of the children in question be damned?

It has always amazed me how willing people who don't live in the area in question are so fast to question the motives of those who are directly impacted by the wolf program, and to cast blame on the impacted people for the failure of the program.  Has it never occurred to anyone that if the program has not succeeded, the basic premises upon which the program is based may be faulty?  Let me remind the reader that the Mexican wolf is an experimental population, and the program is supposed to be adaptively managed - but is it?

Hardly.

Instead of a true scientific experiment in which the outcome is not pre-determined, what we have is a program whose outcome has been pre-determined and mightily defended by non-local, non-impacted groups.  Note that certain environmental groups who have most resisted adaptive management just happen to be associated with agendas which require the ousting of ranchers and others who live in and use the areas the groups have identified as "needing" to be wild, no matter that private lands and local economies are run over in the process (research "sky islands" and "rewilding" to see what groups are affiliated with the concept).  These groups use litigation, deceptive language and pseudo science to force their point of view, and somehow are accorded more credibility than the victims of this farce - the local residents - who are accused of falsehoods, as if they had some sort of weird willingness to lie about their children in order to protect livestock they have no financial interest in. 

We expect the sort of situation where programs and pogroms are forced on people to occur in countries where the citizens have no rights.  Yet here it is happening right in our own country.  Here we have eco-terrorism and unlawful taking of property and rights disguised as "environmentalism for the betterment of the planet".  What a sad situation when environmentalists would rather risk the lives of children than even admit there could be something to what we've been saying all along, down here in Mexican wolf country where you all don't live.

1 comment:

Jess Carey said...

The Bias That Killed A Child

By Jess Carey, CWII
12-02-07

Mr. Romo is so biased in favor of Mexican Gray Wolves his actions keep the children in Catron County in danger. The only people calling the protective measures instituted by the Catron County Commission, and the Reserve School District as a "Political Ploy" are the pro-wolf
organizations and their liberal press. It is not their children in
danger, so why would they care. As long as they keep our children in
harms way they seem satisfied. I'm sure Mr. Romo can't wait to write a
big headline front page story for the Journal about a wolf killing and eating one of our children. I wonder what his conscience will allow him to write, the child should have not been born, or the sun was shinning,so it was not the wolves fault. The rural folks of Catron county live with this danger everyday of their lives, they have to alter their lives to accommodate the wolf. Wolf biologist like Mr. Parsons, Paul Paquet have not told the whole truth about the Mexican wolves that are being released. Why are so many Mexican wolves habituated to humans and human
use areas? Why are they lacking in "Wild Wolf Characteristics"? Why do
these wolves seek out people and their homes, communities, camp sites, elementary school, and recreation areas? Why do these wolves leave territorial scrapes around peoples homes, attack, kill and injure pets in their yards? Why don't these wolves stay in the wilderness away from homes and flee when they see people?. This is the other side of wolf recovery story they will not talk about, but will insist this is not a problem and the rural folks are only over reacting, a "political ploy"
is their only response. Folks, all of these thing are true about wolf
interactions with children, people, pets, and homes, but the sad fact is they are ongoing and not even Governor Richardson will came to the aid of our children.

Children have been attacked, killed and eaten in other countries. India
has 1000 to 2000 wolves. From 1989 to 1995 there were 80 wolf attacks on children, 20 were rescued and 60 were killed and eaten by the wolves. The Government paid 58 families that lost their children to fully protected wolves 20,000 Rupee's. A rupee is equivalent to 0.023 U.S.cents or the value of a child killed and eaten by wolves in India is $460.00 U.S. How much is your child worth? How much is our children worth?

Catron County children have had several close calls with habituated
wolves, psychological trauma has been documented in numerous children and their parents.These facts were all dismissed by government wolf agencies and pro-wolf organizations alike. For years now the Catron County Commission has asked the US Fish and Wildlife Service for protections for our children, but to date no action has been instituted. There is something very wrong here, an unwillingness to protect children from habituated wolves is a shameful act. If you had 10 pit bulldogs coming to your home on a regular basis with your small children present and you could not take any action against the pit bulls unless they have your child down tearing it to death because the pit bulldogs have full feral protection and if you shoot one before it is chewing on your child you will go to jail for one year and be looking at a 100,000 dollar fine. Would you let your children out to play in the front yard? Would you let your child walk to and from the school bus stop?
If you cried out for help and all the federal agencies and pro-pit
bulldog organization constantly stated you do not have a problem, your overreacting, your just pulling a "Political Ploy" that your children are in danger. What would you do? Where would you go for help to protect your children? All the parents I know would give their lives to protect a child. Would you? Any common person would say "Yes I would". Are the
children that live in Catron County worth less than the children where
you live? Something is lost in our government wolf agencies, there is no accountability or concern for their actions that put children in harms way. Sometimes you have to look beyond the front page for the truth.

Jess Carey
Catron County Wolf Interaction Investigator