The wolves are about to get their comeuppance in my neck of the woods!
(How the fuck does this make any sense? They literally just got back to existing in the state…)
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Because ranchers and farmers hate wolves, and were going to kill them anyway.
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What is it with ranchers and farmers? Their solution to everything is “kill something”.
In the UK - bovine TB isn’t caused by the promiscuous shipping of cows around the country, is it? No, it’s the badgers. Kill the badgers…
Also in the UK there are under 100 000 foxes (native) but millions of cats (introduced). Which do the most damage to other wildlife? Kill the foxes!
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I know for a fact that at least in Idaho, introduced wolf packs which have been expanding pretty much explosively have been responsible for killing some cattle. The ranchers are pretty intolerant of losing that revenue, so they’ll just kill all wolves on sight and burn the corpse. I mean, from their perspective it’s hard to be too hard on the ranchers. The wolves are a direct risk to their livelihood. But they could do more to avoid killing wolves. For instance, supervising their herds, proper fencing, and maybe not ranching in places where there are wolves.
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And foot and mouth disease in 2001. I had months of washing my hair twice daily to get the smell of burnt sheep and cow out of it and nights when it wouldn’t get dark but the sky would have an orange glow instead. All this because farmers didn’t want to vaccinate their livestock because they wouldn’t be able to export them.
While all this was going on, my grandma was dying of cancer in Longtown, foot and mouth central. I was going there 2-3 times a week with my family to check on her, a 20 minute journey with pyres on both sides of the roads. It was a horrible time.
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I very much doubt this is true. A sizeable herd is needed to maintain a single family of wolves. Top level predators tend to be self limiting - unless people do something stupid to give them too easy a lunch.
The ecological argument has been around for a long time; in the Essay on Man Pope observes:
Is thine alone the seed that strews the plain?
The birds of heaven shall vindicate their grain.
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Yeah. The wolves provide a valuable ecological service. And if ranchers spent more time driving wolves away and building decent fencing to protect their assets, the wolves would take care of the deer problem in Idaho and even help protect grazing land.
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That would require them to spend money…which somehow does not register with them as the cost of doing business. They don’t want the responsibilities, just the perks.
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My understanding is that the state reimburses farmers handsomely for any livestock lost to wolf predation. They can even claim other loses as wolf predation and game the system.
http://www.mda.state.mn.us/grants/disaster/wolf.aspx
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That’s Minnesota for ya. Bunch of socialists up that way. (I think I’d like to move back after my son finishes high school. Only 11 more years to go!)
Awesome fluffy cow pic attached to that second link. 
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