Dear reader, I do not generally like name-calling. I consider it crude, ineffective and often a poor way of disguising a poor argument. But on occasion I am faced with an individual who cannot be described any other way.
And with that, I will say quite firmly that Dirk Kempthorne is a nincompoop in the full denotative and connotative sense.
One would suppose Mr. Kempthorne, as U.S. Secretary of the Interior, would conserve and protect wildlife, as his department states. Although Sec. Kempthorne claims he follows this duty, many recent edicts of the Department of the Interior have done the opposite, putting species in greater danger. I am left with the conclusion that he is a fool who could not tell his Manis manidae from his Alopex lagopus.
In particular, Sec. Kempthorne knows nothing about wolves, and this despite being governor of Idaho during the wolf reintroduction there. In the decades since the wolf’s extirpation from the lower 48, scientists have realized that wolves are a vital part of the ecosystem. In response, various agencies, both governmental and civilian, have helped to restore the wolf to its former range. In some areas, the wolves must be introduced from distant populations, and in others naturally dispersing packs have been nurtured, but everywhere the wolves have been protected from undue human intrusion.
According to Sec. Kempthorne, wolf numbers have rebounded so well in the northern Rockies that we can now remove the extra protections and treat wolves like any other animal. So, for the past two years, he and the Department of the Interior have tried to remove the gray wolf from the list of endangered species and let the states resume local control.
It’s a nice thought, in theory. But the states’ own plans make no effort to help the wolf, and instead do their best to return to the wolf-killing days of yore. Idaho’s wolf control plan – I’m sorry, the Idaho Wolf Population Management Plan – only calls for 15 breeding pairs and the governor’s office states a goal of having 100 to 150 wolves in the state. And yet, Idaho has nearly 1,000 wolves already present. So what happens to the other 900? Wyoming’s plan states outright it wants to designate wolves as either trophy game or predators; as trophy game, wolves could be shot by a hunter, with proper permits, in about 10 percent of the state, but in the remaining 90 percent, wolves, as predators, could be shot by anyone at any time.
Thankfully, continual changes to the states’ wolf management plans has left the Rocky Mountain delisting floundering in legal limbo. Unthankfully, Kempthorne’s nincompoopery has not been so caught up. Just this month, the Department of the Interior revealed an alteration to a rule written under the Endangered Species Act’s section 10(j) – and so commonly called the 10(j) rule – which regulates experimental populations of reintroduced wolves.
The alteration slams a dagger into the heart of the original 10(j) rule. The rule helped prevent any over-zealous wolf protections from becoming a burden to livestock owners. In 2005, the rule was expanded to say that if wolves were determined to be the sole cause of a similar burden on ungulate populations, the wolves could be controlled – that is, killed or relocated.
But several recent scientific studies have shown that wolves are never the sole cause of ungulate population loss; there are always more factors involved. So the revised 10(j) rule announced this month allows the states to control wolf populations if wolves strongly affect biological indicators such as – and I quote – “population or herd numbers, calf/cow ratios, movements, use of key feeding areas, survival rates, behavior, nutrition and other biological factors.”
I am sure Sec. Kempthorne and the rest of the interior have read the same scientific reports that I have, reports which show that the very presence of wolves in an area is enough to change ungulate movement and behavior. The 10(j) change is a carte blanche to kill any and all wolves in the Northern Rockies, regardless of protected status. So, yes, mister secretary, you sir are a nincompoop. You say you are helping the wolf even while you are ignoring its plight; your mouth does not know what your right (or left) hand is doing.
Or that is what I hope. At least with a fool I could forgive his foolishness.