Living with Wolves

I saw this National Geographic special on Ellis and wolves and it was fantastic.  By studying their howls closely, he developed a system that uses the appropriate type of howl to warn other packs to stay away.  The system can be used by ranchers to keep wolves away – instead of shooting them from planes. 

Shaun’s method allows for co-existence and is much cheaper.

The show is called Living With the Wolfman and it premieres this week on Animal Planet (APL – Direct Tv 282). 

http://www.newsweek.com/id/165028?GT1=43002 
Perhaps you’ve heard of Shaun Ellis before. For 21 years, the British wolf expert has been living among wolves—howling, licking and snarling as one of them, both in the wild and in captivity, in the name of research. He spent seven years on an Indian reservation near Yellowstone National Park studying their distinctive howls, and ultimately publishing a book on the topic, “The Wolf Talk.” Later, he was the subject of a National Geographictelevision special, which documented his experience of raising a trio of cubs abandoned at birth, teaching them how to howl and hunt, and ultimately integrating them into a local pack.

Morford on Palin

Mark Morford on Palin:

Truly, among women in the know and especially among those who fought so hard to bring Hillary Clinton to the brink of history, nausea and a general recoiling appear to be the universal reactions to Palin’s sudden presence on the national stage, stemming straight from the idea that there’s even a slight chance in hell such an antagonistic, anti-female politico could be within a 72-year-old heartbeat of becoming the most powerful and iconic woman of all time.

They say: You’ve got to be kidding me. They say: This is what we get? This could be our historic role model? Two hundred years (OK, more like 2000) of struggle, only to have this nasty caricature of femininity try to hijack and mock and undermine it all? 

It cannot be true, they say. The universe must be joking; it would not dare dump such a homophobic, Creationist evangelical nutball on us, this anti-choice, God-pandering woman who’s the inverse of Hillary, this woman of deep inexperience who abhors birth control and supports abstinence education and shoots exhausted wolves from helicopters and hates polar bears and actually stands for everything progressive women have resented since the first pope Swift-Boated Eve.

 

Public Wolf Hunts?

  An upcoming court ruling is expected to block public wolf hunts in three states that aimed to kill up to twenty-five percent of the wolf population in the region. 

I’ve sometimes thought about those idiots who killed off the bald eagles.  I shook my head arrogantly at the tiny brains of those before us for not being able to resist sending a species into extinction.  And here we are, talking about public wolf hunts.  It’s shameful. 

Here are the sub-species that lived in our 50 states: 

Kenai Peninsula Wolf (Canis lupus alces) Alaska, EXTINCT!
Texas Gray Wolf (Canis lupus monstrabilis) Texas and Northeast Mexico, EXTINCT!
Great Plains Wolf (Canis lupus mubiles), EXTINCT!
Southern Rocky Mountain Wolf (Canis lupus youngi), EXTINCT!
Northern Rocky Mountain Wolf (Canis lupus irremotus), EXTINCT!

Updated 8:32 p.m. CT, Fri., July. 18, 2008

BILLINGS, Mont. – A federal judge has restored endangered species protections for gray wolves in the Northern Rockies, derailing plans by three states to hold public wolf hunts this fall.

Molloy said hunting and state laws allowing the killing of wolves…would likely “eliminate any chance for genetic exchange to occur.”

Full Article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25741975 

Good job Judge Donald Molloy!  Good job to all the environmental groups!  Thank you to all those who also took time to donate to these groups and to sign petitions! 

You can help protect the remaining wolves by joining Wild Earth Guardians, a 4 star charity by CharityNavigator.org.  (4 stars is the highest grade).  Wild Earth Guardians is the new name for the Forest Guardians.  If you are looking for a great cause backed by a very efficient charity that is tax-deductible, this is a good one! 
http://www.fguardians.org/
http://www.wildearthguardians.org/
http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=9974 

 

Gray Wolf / Timber Wolf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf 
Sub-Species: http://www.wolvesgalaxy.de/wolfinfo/index.php