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Pressure from the agriculture companies and hunting groups to stop wolves from attacking livestock and sport game has finally stripped the wolf of endangered species protection. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources(DNR) has been lobbying for a proposal to de-list wolves as an endangered species in the states occupying the Great Lakes territories, according to their Communications Representative, Debbie Munson-Badini. Apparently, their wishes have been granted, to the detriment of a species and our planet. Their plan, which is approved and in place to “manage” wolves at the state level could mark the final end to the species, moving forward. How could we have possibly allowed this to happen?

Seeing as the Obama administration stated that it is lifting endangered species protections for what is left of the wolves in the eight states occupying the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes region, control over the wolves’ fates will be turned over to state wildlife agencies, which obviously reside in the pockets of big business. Wolf hunts, or “culls” are already scheduled for the upcoming season in the states of Idaho and Montana.

On a personal note, we are outraged. “Wildlife management” is the most ridiculous terminology that has ever been invented, considering how well humans have “managed” things thus far. The only way to “manage” nature & wildlife is to leave it alone. Whenever humans interfere with the natural balance, it becomes tainted and destroyed. The belief in the fairy tale given by hunters who claim that humanity can “manage” a balance in nature better than nature can, is simply ludicrous. This is all based on management for the hunting industry to continue killing deer and the agriculture companies’ plans to exterminate what they see as a “nuisance”.

To begin with, a deer’s biology is such that it will actually generate some 3 fetuses when impregnated, but if the food supply is low, the deer will naturally abort one or two fetuses because that is nature’s way of “humanely” keeping the balance. The growth of all flora, such as deer clover or whatever the deer in a specific region naturally feeds upon, relies on the burrows and environmental impacts that keystone species, like the wolf, produce. So in essence, by killing off wolves, there is less flora for deer to feed on because natural burrows made by wolves generate the good bacteria for flora, thus making a lower deer population.

This leads to plotting by the hunters. Planting mass clover plots wherever deer normally would flourish can prompt the deer’s biology to birth all of the fawns, rather than naturally abort the ones that can not be environmentally sustained. Plenty of food means plenty of little deer to satiate the hunting industry. Considering that we dwindled wolf population in the continental U.S. down from roughly 200,000 to some 5,000 means that we have effectively “snuffed out” the competition and destroyed a fair portion of the natural ecosystem.

It is appalling barbarity and consistent with the child-like “bumbling” manner in regard to the way we treat all life on Earth…

Anthony Damiano

Founder of AELLA

Please watch the PBS special, Hunting Wolves, Saving Wolves here.