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Delisting the Grey Wolf Essay

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Delisting the Grey Wolf

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service are considering removing the gray wolf from the endangered species list once Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming have enough wolves to be deemed sufficient to continue to expand the wolf population, requiring only that each of these three states have a management plan in effect to prevent the gray wolf from becoming endangered again. With the current attitude of the governments in these states, the wolf should not lose their federal support under the Endangered Species Act as it would merely serve to cause the wolves to become endangered once again, or at best, held to the absolute minimum population that the states can pass off as “viable, self-sustaining populations” …show more content…

The state legislature has favored the ranching industry above ecology and continues to do so. Public polls “conducted by Boise State indicate that the overwhelming majority of Idahoans (nearly 70 percent) support wolf restoration” (Laverty, par. 4) and the legislature is seeking to remedy this by re-educating the public with “a balanced view of the impact of wolves on big game species, those sectors of the economy dependent upon sport hunting, livestock, domestic animals, and humans” (State, 3). Furthermore, the “cost of wolf reintroduction will be presented as a part of any public education program including direct and indirect costs” (State, 3).

This so-called balanced view was presented in a program in which the “most misrepresented issues concerned the economic impact of wolves. Ranchers were allowed to claim unsubstantiated losses, with no attempt to validate the accuracy of these claims” (Laverty, par. 2). In granting the balanced view sought by the legislature, the “program portrayed the salt of the earth rancher as a poor victim of the federal government’s whim to restore the ‘killers’” (Laverty, par. 2).

The lies by omission also showed up in this balanced view program, it “failed to expose the enormous subsidies that benefit

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