Looks like the President is thinking about taking the grey wolf off of the endangered species list.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060316/...sc/gray_wolves
I think I am going to have to agree for a controlled amount of hunting. We have a problem with whitetails here in Maryland, and it would probably be good to have some wolves here. Since there are no predators of whitetails in our area, the population has exploded and hunters can take tons of deer every season. All of this when 20 years ago the limit was one antlered deer. Now, they want hunters to take does, and bunches of them. Resident geese were also introduced about 20 years ago, and when hunting first started for them, we were allowed to kill a couple a person and the season began September 1. Now, Maryland's DNR has proposed an August 1 start date, a 15 bird limit, no possession limit, and the use of unplugged guns because the population is getting out of hand.
Wolvie,
In the end, the ecosystem cannot manage itself anymore because man has had way too much influence on it and we continue to influence it more and more each day. We destroy fields and move deer into pockets of woods where they tend to flourish because there is no hunting and they love the homeowner's shrubs and other high dollar landscaping. I almost ran into one on Monday while driving over to my aunt's house, and there were three more waiting to cross the road. There are more auto accidents caused by deer in the county I live in than by other motorists.
Wolves, if left unchecked, would end up getting themselves into trouble. See, it isn't like the old days when man wasn't around. If the food supply (e.g., elk herd) got too low, there would be nowhere else for the wolves to turn to for food, so some would die through starvation. Same goes for the elk herd if there is not enough grazing to live on. The problem today is that a starving wolf that cannot find any elk to eat can find cattle, sheep, a dog, a baby, a cat, a person, etc. Things that weren't around before man, but things that man will get really pissed off about if the wolves eat them. I know I wouldn't like a wolf to eat my dog, much less my child.
We live in a pretty residential area, but we have a wetland "preserve" behind us where I see deer, ducks, geese, groundhogs, and foxes. To meet, it is great to see these animals. I even got to see a pair of mallards this evening wading through the marsh grass. However, I am sure that the neighbors with their small dogs are scared to let them off their leash for fear of one of the foxes grabbing them. Me, I let Nitro run around without a leash because he is much bigger than those foxes and I have seen the foxes run when Nitro approaches, but I do worry a little about a rabid fox.
At the end of the day, life is too complicated not to have laws, and the more complicated it gets, the worse it will get. 100 years ago, there wasn't nearly as many issues as there is now. We didn't have to worry about copyright infringement from a teenager downloading a protected song over the internet onto their IPOD. Barely even had to worry about auto accidents, and the few horse collissions that we had weren't all that bad. The laws are a result of people not knowing how to behave and one person's moral values being different than another.
As far as the war in Iraq is concerned, I think we should leave the troops over there until Iraq settles down. We never actually went into Iraq to find Osama Bin Laden. The reason we went into Iraq was because of weapons of mass destruction, and we didn't find them. Maybe, if we stay over there and the Iraqi people get their freedom, we might not have to worry about the middle east as much. Who knows. I love how people think that ending the war in Iraq will make all their problems go away. One of my clients, a real estate agent, made a comment that if we brought the troops home and ended the war, the economy would probably get a boost from it. I was dying to ask him how that could be, but I bit my tongue since he is a client. Of course, he doesn't blame the markets sluggishness on the fact that realtors helped driving the price of homes into the unaffordable range or that with the interest rate increases, what the realtors and new home contractors made barely affordable became unaffordable. Nah, we always find something else to blame. I truly hope that the new home contractors, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers saved up their money from this 3 year boom they had because I think they are in for some slim pickings over the years to come.