ODFW is planning on killing the alpha male (pictured above) and another wolf from the Imnaha Pack, for livestock losses so small, they barely register statistically. Yet incredibly large numbers of cows drop dead in Oregon every year and all we hear are “crickets”.
So here we are, two wolves facing a death sentence. Apparently they are being tracked right now.
The alpha female and her pup of the year will be left to face the winter alone, with no help to bring down prey.
Here is B-300 better known as “Sophie”, crossing into Oregon in 2008. She would later become the alpha female of the Imnaha Pack. Look at her scampering along, beautiful and healthy. Little did she know what she was getting into.
In protest of ODFW’s egregious intention to slaughter two perfectly healthy Imnaha wolves, leaving just the alpha female and her pup of the year, two Portland Animal Defense League protesters, Stephanie Taylor and Justin Kay, chained themselves to the ODFW headquarter doors with bike locks.
Two arrested during protest against wolf killings
Posted: Sep 27, 2011 6:31 PM MDTUpdated: Sep 27, 2011 7:31 PM MDT
SALEM, OR (KPTV) –
For nearly an hour and a half Tuesday morning, protestors took over the front entrance of the Department of Fish and Wildlife in Salem.
“We’ve tried everything from phone calls to the governor, phone calls here, letter writing, protests. Finally today, it ended with an act of civil disobedience,” said Tim Hitchins, with the Portland Animal Defense League.
Read More: http://www.kptv.com/story/15563955/two-arrested-during-wolf-killing-protest
The sad news is this is probably the end of the Imnaha Pack.
Oregon had 1,300,000 cattle at the beginning of 2011. Wolves apparently were responsible for 14 cow losses in 1.5 years. But thousands and thousands of cows were keeling over in Oregon from all manner of things, not wolf related.
Digestive problems
Respiratory problems
Metabolic problems
Mastitis
Lameness/injury
Other diseases
Weather related
Calving problems
Poisoning
Theft
(NASS 2010)
Why aren’t ranchers squawking about this? Those losses COULD affect their “bottom line”, not 14 supposed wolf depredations.
Isn’t it time to call this situation what it is. If if looks like a duck, quacks like a duck then it’s a duck. Plain and simple intolerance of wolves is ruling the day in eastern Oregon. Clearly ranchers don’t want them there and that’s what’s driving this train. The wishes of Oregon’s wildlife advocates and others, who would enjoy seeing wild wolves, apparently don’t count. The scapegoating and hysteria that plague the other wolf states has apparently taken hold in Oregon. Shame. This has completely altered my view of the state.
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Wolf kill order could spell end of Oregon pack
http://m.spokesman.com/stories/2011/sep/27/wolf-kill-order-could-spell-end-of-oregon-pack/
Please continue to call Oregon’s Governor Kitzhaber (503-378-4582) to protest the kill order on the two Imnaha wolves. Ask why wolves are being treated like criminals, collared, tracked continually, when obviously these losses are ridiculously miniscule.
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Boulder White Clouds Council
Exposing The Big Game
Footloose Montana
Friends of the Clearwater
Lockwood Animal Rescue Center
Louise du Toit
LUPUSLAETUS
Mercy For Animals
Northern Idaho Wolf Alliance (NIWA)
Predator Friendly®- Because Wildlife Matters
Project Coyote
Project: Wolf
The Nature Conservancy
The Ravensong Group
WildEarth Guardians
Wisconsin Wildlife Ethic-Vote Our Wildlife
Wolf And Wildlife Studies: Jay Mallonee (Independent Wolf Biologist)
Wolf Song of Alaska
Wolves in english ! Les loups en anglais !
WWP's Gray Wolf Page
Yellowstone To Yukon Conservation Initiative
Howling For Justice 
THIS IS MORE GOVERMENT INTERFERENCE INTO THE LIVES OF ANYTHINGTHAT DRAWS BREATH…WE WORRY ABOUT WOLVES HAVING A MEAL OF WILD ANIMALS AND WE TRACK MAD COW TO THE STALL IT WAS BORN IN AND LET OUR BORDERS GO TO POT…JIM GODBY
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Just like the Ranchers to not to complain. But let a wolf get near, and the squawk . This is normal for them.
These cattle which died a horrible death by being dieased. Not by being killed by wolves.
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They’ve gotten away with this BS far too long Barbara…the constant talk about ranching and cows…when wolves show such restraint concerning cattle. No more free ride for the myth spreaders..we need to bring up facts every single time and not allow them to get away with the rhetoric and scapegoating of wolves..
For the wolves, For the wild ones,
Nabeki
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The reason why the media doesn’t report the full facts is because they are more concerned with sensationalism instead of good old fashioned honest reporting. I think from now on every time we see a news media story about wolves and they say wolves kill livestock while conveniently failing to leave out the public records that show wolves are responsible for less than 1% of all livestock losses annually, we slam them with the facts! I am sick of the sensationalism and lack of honesty in news media reporting!
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You are so right Justin. I blame the media for this…they love a train wreck and this is one heck of a train wreck. I’m wondering when Wolf Wars will become a reality tv show. EVERY TIME I hear about wolves and livestock losses it’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull. …I see RED. The livestock industry is using this as a hammer over wolves’ heads. If these reporters would do their job, instead of printing the fish and game party line, they’d be asking the same question I’m asking, what about the 51,200 cows that wolves didn’t kill? And the ranchers wouldn’t have an answer because there is no rhyme or reason to what is happening to wolves. It’s scapegoating pure and simple.
For the wolves, For the wild ones,
Nabeki
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Thanks, Nabeki. We posted your great piece above on Friends of Animals’ blog today: http://www.friendsofanimals.org In addition to all the cows who died, many, many more met their unfortunate ends at the slaughterhouse because people consume their flesh. Change is possible when folks transform their diets — eliminating animal products — thereby not supporting ranchers and the misery they put into motion.
On the legal front, we just learned the 9th Circircuit Court of Appeals granted FoA’s motion to participate as amicus curiae in the Alliance for the Wild Rockies et al. v. Salazar et al. Oral arguments are in November in Pasadena, Calif. I hope to travel there for such an
important event.
This weekend we’ll hold a Howl-In rally for wolves at San Francisco’s Vegetarian Festival, as FoA has a table there. The work goes on.
All the best,
Priscilla
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Thank you Priscilla for posting it on the FOA blog. I sat at the keyboard last night and thought about the two PADL activists who were arrested trying to save two wolves. I was going to do just a piece on them but people need the facts and the facts get lost in all of the rhetoric. And your right, the cattle are doomed from the beginning.. I don’t eat meat and haven’t for many years. Factory farming is another horror our culture has to face.
Terrific you received standing. When you said you were traveling to Pasadena for oral arguments, i had to think for a minute because the case has been in Judge Molloy’s Montana courtroom for so long.
San Francisco is one of my favorite cities. I know people will be very receptive to the Howl-In.
For the wolves,
Nabeki
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Update: The 9th Circuit’s hearing in the wolf appeal case is set for November 8th, 9:00 a.m.
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Priscilla…it can’t come soon enough. I think FOA gaining standing will make a difference!!
I can’t imagine what the death toll will be in November, the Idaho trapping season opens on November 15. I fear that more then anything.
For the wolves, For the wild ones,
Nabeki
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It is time for the Ranchers to feel our pinch. You who eat beef, do not buy any beef for awhile. Let them feel the pinch of no one eating the cattle that they sell to meat markets.
They are putting the pinch on the wolves and we need to pinch them in their back pocket. In their pocket books.
If there was an anthrax epidentic going around, the ranchers would be crying out loud.
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We can cry barrels of tears, our hearts breaking, for these magnificent animals. We can rant and rave, write letters, send emails, make impassioned telephone calls. We can threaten boycotts and pick up our banners and march….We can advocate on behalf of sound science based wolf management until we are blue in the face and work mightily to mobilize grassroots opposition all this needless death. We can even throw money at the problem, but until the American public cares as much about the fate of wolves as they do about what Brad Pitt said about his former marriage or about what celebrity bimbo was arrested yet again for violating their probation, until we can get the wolf’s story plastered on the front page of the tabloids and reported on the evening news, I fear the battle to save them is a futile one.
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This Fish Wildlife and Game Department of each State is no good. But we need to call all of our FWGD and tell them what is going on in Oregon.
Tell them about the plight of the wolves.
Or tell them to get off of their behinds and get the problem with the RANCHERS and The WOLVES stop ASAP.
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It is never futile as long as we believe the wolves are important to us and our environment.
If we stand still and do nothing then we are letting the Ranchers and Politicians win.
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The turds on Anti Wolf North West have this # now and they are planning on calling so peeps let’s get this ball rolling. Also, on Lobo Watch, they said an Idaho woman was attacked by a wolf while elk hunting. Of coarse the article was from Tom Remington on Black Bear Blog. He has very unethical writing tactics. I looked it up. His was the only source. Jackwagon.
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They’re just hoping and wishing for that Christie. Wolves aren’t attacking anybody. They’ve tried livestock losses, game losses, tapeworms and none of that is sticking because people are waking up to the truth. Now they’re trying the public safety issue. Well dogs bite 4.7 million people a year and kill on average 30 people annually and I’m a dog lover but those are the facts. Hunting accidents kill almost a hundred people a year in the US and Canada. Moose kill more people then wolves, deer kill more people then wolves. That’s because wolves haven’t killed anyone in the lower 48 in a hundred years of record keeping. So let them keep spinning.
What do you mean they have this number? All they have to do is look up the NASS numbers for 2010 and they can find out for themselves. But they are so used to listening to themselves talk, nobody bothers to do any research.
N.
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I am tired of the Anti-Wolfers of the North do not know what problems they are causing.
They do not know that when all the wolves are gone, there will be other predators to come out and do their evil.
When the Idaho Woman was attacked by a wolf, was she alone or was she wearing perfune which attracted the wolf. Or was it a wild dog, who killed her. What is a woman alone doing out hunting without someone with her. That is stupid. Nobody should be alone in wolf or bear country.
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No One Does More For Ranchers Than People Who Protect Wolves.
As I’m preparing a statement to donors/stakeholders in the Yellowstone Wolves Transfer I thought a contingent issue might be loss insurance available to ranchers. Apart from the subsidies for stock loss to predation, they receive compensation funded by DOW one of the corporate sponsors of the Yellowstone Transfer, and Defenders of Wildlife, another Yellowstone Project supporter, there are many insurance schemes available. But I find that no one does more for ranchers than people who protect wolves.
In Wyoming Defenders of Wildlife has paid 100 percent of the market value of confirmed livestock losses attributable to wolves and 50 percent of the value of probable losses. To date, Defenders has administered over 800 payments to livestock producers, totaling more than $1,100,000. In Wyoming alone, it has compensated ranchers for over $350,000 in livestock losses.
The problem is we’re talking about less than 1% of the cattle growers’ losses. The industry is grossly unmanageable, out of all proportion to need and the land’s capacity to support it. Only rendering plant Moguls seem to be making money, like Tyson who received a dollar a barrel subsidy for rendered fat then sold his product literally to every facet of industry. There is virtually no building material that does not now depend on animal fat or latex from milk for production, all coated electrical wiring, plywood, drywall. Vast image producing machinery depends on suspensions made with animal fat. Rendering plant money funds political campaigns. The industry’s future is guaranteed for as those who render ask, how are you going to dispose of all the dead farm animals, the downers, the dead in the field?
Not only does the U.S. Constitution require compensation whenever the government takes an animal away from its owner, it is deemed, compensation for animals destroyed is a necessary financial incentive for reporting livestock diseases, therefore, an important tool in eradication of livestock diseases in the USA, meaning farmers sell animals dead of disease if they can without reporting.
Feeding dead cows to their own is now outlawed. Instead we feed cows dead of disease to pigs and chickens. One has only to read how children who ingest Ebola are treated, supposing they survive. It’s almost better to die.
There are numerous insurance schemes involving contracted grazing or feedlot finishing, too many and too complex in their reciprocal legal obligations to elaborate here. The language however is instructive, indicative as it is of the amorality of a terrible industry. Suffering, horrible fear attending disease, quarantining, and transport that results finally in mortality of animals is referred to as, depopulation. Cows are ciphers.
Ungulates nurture their young, grieve for their lost calves and bawl pathetically when they’re taken from them. Ungulates also protect their mates to the point of sacrifice. How can ranchers sleep at night with the constant specter of debt and thoughts of the harm they cause crowding their minds? Waking they are heavy with guilt, blaming others for their own disorderly lives. Even a cursory look at the ranchers business is sickening and disheartening.
The economics of livestock disease insurance: concepts, issues and … By Stephen R. Koontz
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21212.pdf
The 2008 farm bill also authorized three new livestock assistance programs… The Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP) compensates ranchers at a rate of 75% of market value for livestock mortality caused by a disaster. The Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP) assists ranchers who graze livestock on drought-affected pastureland or grazing land. The Emergency Assistance for Livestock… compensates producers for disaster losses not covered under other disaster programs and more. Visit: wyoming.sierraclub.org/WOLVES%20AND%20LIVESTOCK.pdf
CMM
For the Wolves
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Isn’t interesting Charlot when you start in one direction and are lead to another on your journey?
N.
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Yes. I’d started drafting the letter. It helps to know the territory. I considered this possible issue. Loss insurance mitigating a rancher’s loss to disease isn’t economically feasible. For well-kept animals, prize animals, yes. Such policies are costly. Whereas insurance companies would rather not pay claims and won’t pay for dead cows if the claimant hasn’t provided clean feed, has failed to respond to early signs of illness, or if overcrowding and poor living conditions have done to a man’s cows what these same factors do to poor people. If in any way the insurer can discover a rancher has contributed to stock loss, then in the rhetoric of insurance companies, these are morality issues. When insurance companies can figure out how to make money on a policy of that kind and make it ‘affordable’ then ranchers will have policies. It’s under discussion. It was to prevent payment of insurance claims that geriatric medicine was devised. Insurance companies must win. As an issue it is tangential. Either way the rancher pays. Greed meets greed. How much better, how great to be free.
That such polices can’t be made available is the more important fact and indicative of the great misery of cows. Ranchers are totally responsible for their losses and that alone must make for terrible chronic uncertainty and anxiety. Ranchers who live in the shadows of materialism may demonstrate exaggerated pride yet doubt their self-efficacy, feel shame and as is likely, if they are addictive personalities, will blame and aggress against their vulnerable, cows, children, pets. Ranchers are generally made in childhood. Haneke’s White Ribbon is not just for Germans, it’s a story about western society.
A wolf takes down the injured, the sick, the weak and so makes strong the herd. What a wolf leaves feeds many. This is the mountain. The rancher mistreats, acts out against sentient property. Wolves in the innocence of their need based predation are vulnerable to such as these. And I infer that part of the ranchers’ rage against wolves is motivated by envy. What a vegan group reports on cows is of import to humanity. Ranchers and their cows can be seen at http://www.veganpeace.com/animal_cruelty/beef.htm
The images are gripping. Far worse has been documented.
I found a book that may provide unintentionally some useful data, though why I need to build a case to donors I don’t know. The book was written by a woman rancher researcher, and where wolves are concerned, right wing reporter. She writes of leaving her ‘twelve year old man’ alone with a shotgun to fire on wolves in protection of their sheep. Rather like leaving your toddler tied to a meter while you shop. Where was the electric fence, the well trained sheep dog? Why did she leave him in what she deemed to be danger? The life of her brave son as against the cost of a sheep. There’s nothing like introjected mythos.
Wyoming has such fencing though not universally. Wyoming reports not one three hundredth of a percent but a high less than 3% loss of cattle to wolves. A satisfied Alberta’s Sheep Growers Association reported their findings to the Alberta Ministry. Electric fencing effectively cut their losses. And it was noted electric fencing saved tax payers rather a lot of money. A Wyoming woman reporter wants to destroy wolves. It seems subjective and I wonder, what does the woman need to destroy beside wolves.
In hopes that everyone in our society who has not read Derrick Jensen and Robert Firestone reads them.
CMM
For the Wolves
For Peace
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These stupid antis are so backwards-minded,
their brains are still stuck in the barbaric 19th Century.
I hope there will be a day, our Native American sisters
and brothers will rise up in a full-scale rebellion
against these country-bumpkin inbred savages,
and protect what is sacred to their heritage and
spirituality and that’s our noble wolves.
The hostile ways 19th Century is trying to repeat
itself in the 21st Century and we need to do all what it takes
to send these Far Right freaky antis back to the past where they belong and never again, “invade” our modern-day era,
for not only they are a threat to our wolves and other wildlife,
they are also pose a serious danger to the planet Earth,
as if their sinister agenda is to destroy the future
and keep us enslaved to their past…
Fellow warriors, WE shall NEVER fall in line,
walk lock-step, and conform to their oppressive ways.
We shall continue fighting the noble fight until our
sacred wolves are back on the protections list and
the antis sent into permanent exile or life imprisonment,
or until the end of the world, whichever comes first.
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WiZaRd Of The Wolf Nation
That’s a very long past you’re talking about. Perhaps what we’re observing is very different cultural values in practice. Families make societies and societies make nations. Canada and the U.S. are nations comprised of diverse societies, Among the many there are those, principally those of European origin who regard Earth as a resource for their private consumption and exploitation. Materialism and its ugly sister, technological domination of Earth, are propped up by a kind of disembodied intellectualism, propelled by many little Descartes, the original being a psychotic. People are beginning to raise that issue, Descartes’ family origins and his concomitant low empathy development, in academic discussion. Neither Voltaire nor Sam Johnson needed some process of logical discourse to condemn and ridicule him. Descartes is a benchmark of rationalized institutional violence in Western society. And that’s what hit the New World along with a few Quakers shortly after the dictum “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”, first deployed in the South of France, found prolonged usage among Quechua speaking peoples of the Americas. It is indicative that in Nulle terre nothing was owned until Europeans owned it. Things have calmed down since Chivington’s time, and societies and nations have progressed. Europe that spawned a lot of this madness is now Green, their press portrays Americans and their politicians as cowboys. The interval has been starred with a few godlike European and American people. Tolstoy in his later years. Garrison who devoted his life to the liberation of slaves in America. There have been so many, only a very few are famous. A process that is continuing will hopefully bring humanity to mutual understanding and man in harmony with Earth. Hopefully there will be time. Probably millions of Europeans in the New World (what an idea) and their descendants longed for and found something found only in nature, illustrated to them by the cultural values of people they met in a strange land. This probably doesn’t help much. Not if one’s heart is swelling with tears. Anguish and rage, I know them well. The love of my life was a wolf bred dog. But the energy focused in this and other actions to protect a graceful natural predator will be honoured soon, in November, and in time.
I work with a young woman who like me chose early not to eat animals. I was kept in my room and refused food till I broke. Her mother, who is Native Canadian, respected her wishes. For me it was a long road home but she grew up beautiful vibrant and vegan.
CMM
For The Wolves
For Peace
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The anti-wolf nuts thrive on ignorance, lies and mis-information. These figures alone prove that!!
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Very true Jimmy, they count on it.
For the wolves, For the wild ones,
Nabeki
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If only this information could get the coverage that the other does. Would discovery channel run something about this? If we could only get advocate’s that get alot of face time in our corner we could garner more support, someone is using the Twilight saga to get the word out, a wd rescue, possibly fmf? If the actor’s would just take a small stand that could make the whole difference.
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Scott and Sandra, I plan to ask of National Geographic exactly that. I’m drafting to Yellowstone Wolves Project donors/stakeholders and National Geographic was a donor. I’ll send to a couple of writer/ film maker teams that have published on wolves. The people who made Cove will get a copy. There’s one donor I’ll ask to boycott the U.S. Because you have to try. Let’s hope it works. Discovery Channel is a great idea.
CMM
For the Wolves
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This is too much. These 51,000 cattle dying from causes other than wolf kills.
I am tired of these Ranchers, Farmers and others saying that Wolves are causing these deaths.
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“Death is the number one commodity in a business where the demand for feed ingredients far exceeds the supply of raw product. But this elaborate system of food production through waste management has evolved into a recycling nightmare. Rendering plants are unavoidably processing toxic waste.”
http://www.realfoods.net/renderingplant.html
I agree. It’s another incredibly important battle that must be fought and won. Ranchers can’t insure their stock because they are 100% responsible for the mean and miserable deaths their cows suffer. Millions never make it to the squeeze chutes and yet ranchers are reimbursed full value for every animal they loose to predation by organizations that exist to protect wolves from vigilante hunters and farmers who leave out dead stock for bait. These same organizations offer internships and public awareness programs. Other people want to learn about wolves.
Ranchers are wrong on so many scores. The cattle industry, not the automotive and airline industries in their combined pollution of Earth, is the single greatest contributor to global warming. A United Nations report to that effect was issued three months before Gore’s first triumphant tour hit Toronto. Gore’s father was a cattle rancher. 78,000,000,000,000 people could eat every year on the food we feed to animals. That figure is based on the number of animals killed for consumption. Look at all the dead that never leave the fields. It’s a hopeless business. Ranchers habitually deflect their terrible burden of guilt. I’ve resisted that formula. I believe it’s true. I believe ranchers envy wolves their freedom and their majesty. How they must resent Nature’s proud agreement between predator and prey.
There’s a great article about rendering the dead at, realfoods.net It’s not the whole story. There’s another about rendering plant moguls and political donations, another about pet food and the pet health industry. Ranchers are full partners in the destruction of Earth. Their business is a mistake.
CMM
For the Wolves
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