Introduction

I am a hunter who feels that wolves hunt and kill animals such as elk for no reason. They ruin people's business by killing their market such as cows and sheep, I would like an extended season for Wolves to control them. This being my bias, I will look further into Controlling wolf habitat without killing them.

Definition of the Issue

To inform you, each wolf kills two animals a month for food, and two more for a sport According to (Save the Elk). These predators kill for fun and they are killing other animals and don't even eat them. As a perspective of a hunter we need to shoot the wolves and save our elk. They kill peoples live stock and the future of our live stock. According to Save the Elk Organization we are losing between 24,000 and 48,000 animals per year. I say we need to stop all this massacring by these wolves and we need to extend the season for killing wolves and need to bring down the population of them.

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Opposing Perspective(s)

There are always two sides to a story, now i will inform you on the side that I don't believe in because we can’t rule the other way out. Wolves are an endangered species, But yet they are classified as vermin which means wild mammals and birds that are believed to be harmful to crops, farm animals, or game, or that carry disease.
There are over 700,000 people that are concerned about the disappearance from wolves over the last 10 years. They have a season to go out and kill this endangered species because they are killing too much live stock and other animals such as Elk.(Save the Wolves Foundation) Bringing back wolves restores predator-prey interactions that preceded humans and shaped the wild. We need the U.S fish and Wildlife service to take a step up and go the the public hearings and speak the truth. We all know that they want to save the wolves because they see nothing wrong with them they just need to step up in court and state their case. In June of 2012, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed no longer protecting gray wolves as an endangered species in the vast majority of the country, threatening any chance of wolves returning to much of their former range. Putting the fate of wolves back into the hands of the western state politicians will not keep them on the road to recovery, but send them down a path to destruction. (Treehugger) Federal and private poisoning as well as hunting and trapping pushed the gray wolf to the brink of extinction in the United States. After being listed as federally endangered, populations rebounded. But more trouble is at hand ,Throughout much of its range, the wolf was removed from the Endangered Species List and some state governments responded with plans to reduce their populations further. In Idaho, the government plans to cut reintroduced wolf numbers by 80 percent. There are about 5,000 gray wolves in the lower 48 states, including 1,600 in the Rocky Mountains. An estimated 7,000 live in Alaska and as many as 50,000 live in Canada. Other remnant wolf populations are scattered in Poland, Scandinavia, Russia, Portugal, Spain, and Italy.(Wildlife Conservation Society) Education efforts and increased law enforcement throughout the Studies in Yellowstone National Park have demonstrated just how valuable a healthy wolf population is to having young trees to grow to middle age. Wolves were absent from Yellowstone National Park since 1927 when the last wolf was killed by bounty hunting. After wolves were reintroduced in 1995. The Yellowstone river was brought back to a healthier state. (Howling for Wolves) The river bank has less erosion and supports more wildlife. More vegetation supports more beaver that have now dammed up more streams and parts of the river. This results in cooler river temperatures and healthier fish. The increased vegetation also provides for a healthier bird and small animal habitat. So this is a reason we need to save the wolves, They make our environment a better place because they clean up



My Perspective(s)

According to my sources wolves in some regions are over populated and are a pest and a big problem to a lot of people. The USDA cattle report indicates a total of 4,437 head of cattle were lost to wolves across Wyoming, Montana and Idaho in 2010. For comparison, the 2010 annual wolf report issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicates there were just 188 confirmed cattle losses to wolves.(Defendersblog.org). For another example, in west Yellowstone the population has and still is dropping for elk. The elk herd, much of which migrates into Montana in winter, declined 6 percent from a count of 4,174 last year to 3,915 this year. In recent years, the average decline was 8 percent. Also, more elk as a percentage of the herd – 77 percent – migrated out of the park than at any time in the past. The northern herd, which is only a portion of the park’s entire elk herd, has declined from a high of more than 19,000 before wolves were reintroduced into the park in 1995. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks also allowed an aggressive hunt for cow elk that migrated out of the park until 2005.(trib.com)
With wolf harvest numbers still lower than anticipated for the 2011 hunting season, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks is seeking comments on a proposal to extend the current wolf hunting season by an extra month. The quota was 220 wolves dead but they only made it to 79, and to me i think that we need to get the word out and start to lure people into killing the wolves(Montana FWP). And i also think that we need to put another month on top of the extension because that is just not enough time.We need to reduce wolf numbers and the most effective way to do that is use hunting and trapping. Wildlife workers say that there are an estimate of 625 wolves in 147 pack in the state of Montana, As a resident in Montana that is just shocking! I believe we need to do some major hunting and trapping because that is a lot of animals that the wolves are killing .
At the end of 2012, at least 83 wolves in 10 packs (6 breeding pairs) occupied YNP. This is roughly a 15% decline from the recent three years where the population had stabilized around 100 wolves. Breeding pairs declined slightly from eight the previous year. The wolf population has declined by about 50% since 2007 mostly because of a smaller elk population, the main food of northern range wolves. The interior wolf population has declined less, probably because they supplement their diet with bison. State managed wolf hunts contributed to the 2012 decline by removing 12 YNP wolves adjacent to the park (National Park Service). To me i think that west yellowstone is good where it sits. The wolf population is low and a lot of people like to see the wolves in west yellowstone because the tourist like to see them. But as a hunter's perspective like myself I think we are good in west yellowstone due to the facts in the first couple sentences of this paragraph








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Conclusion

To my Knowledge I think we need to extend the season longer and give out more of these tags to kill these predators. All they do is kill, we need to have a damage hunt at least for 3 seasons to lower down the population and get them out of our areas. I believe the people who were writing in the opposing perspectives didn't really pay attention to what was really going on. These people need to see what these wolves are doing to our wildlife and the sake of our elk. We can't let predators take control of our land and I feel that it is longer over-do and I think we need to start right now! We need to make a statement before it is too late. I have tried to hunt wolves before an let me tell you from a personal experience, These things are smart. It takes a lot of effort and dedication on killing these animals and i think thats why they are so good at killing, They are a lot smarter than a lot of different animals and thats why they reign supreme on the food chain.