URBAN MYTHOLOGY – WOLVES & LEAD

 

MYTH #1

 

The following mythological propaganda was recently sent to me by a friend:

 

Jim,

“I just heard a piece on wolves on NPR’s “Living on Earth.” It was some former rancher in AZ who gave a litany of BS about how having the wolves is great. Example: Wolves as an income source for ranchers through tourism.”

 

FACT – Wolves kill and maim calves and cows and steers and horses and foals and working dogs and pets.  Wolves attack and kill people (read Will Graves’ book Wolves in Russia for accounts of hundreds of such killings).  Wolves stalk children going to, coming from, and waiting at school bus stops.  Wolves grow bolder as they are protected and therefore become problems around rural home sites for seniors, children, parents, grandparents, and outdoorsmen (a Russian logger was attacked from behind AS HE WAS RUNNING A CHAINSAW!).  Wolves carry diseases that endanger humans such as anthrax, rabies, and brucellosis.  Wolves carry diseases that affect livestock like mad cow disease, brucellosis, and anthrax as well as every disease and infection that affects dogs from tapeworms to distemper.  Wolves spread chronic wasting disease and other wildlife threatening diseases.  Wolves suppress and endanger big game animals such that hunting becomes impossible because so few animals are left.  Wolves are spread and protected under the auspices of urban mythology that are no more than lies about their benefits.  These lies are supported by federal and state bureaucrats that benefit from wolf programs, University professors that harvest grants and tenure from wolf programs, and politicians that glean votes from urban voters unaffected by wolf programs.  The Non-Government Organizations lobbying for wolf programs get contributions and memberships, from folks that want to stop hunting, control guns (by diminishing gun advocate numbers), depopulate rural America, and convert rural America into a closed and unused and unmanaged government enclave akin to royal estates in Europe centuries ago. Wolf tourism is an oxymoron: wolves are not visible like elk in winter and the number of people that claim to want to spend their vacation looking for an animal that wanders randomly over large areas is INFINITESIMAL compared to the hunters that no longer spend their vacations in such rural environs.

 

Question #1 – What in all this is untrue?  Answer: nothing. Question #2 – Why would a “former” rancher or NPS lie?  Answer: because they are each supporters of and advocates for the hidden agendas of wolf programs.  Whether they lie intentionally or simply believe their imagined desires, I cannot say.  Their motives are their own.  Anyone that believes that wolf programs are other than destructive except for bureaucrats, politicians, professors, and NGO’s are indeed like the fisherman “coming home late and smelling of strong drink”.  That is to say, the TRUTH is NOT in them.

 

MYTH #2

 

From this morning’s paper:

 

“Organizations that donate nearly 1 million pounds of venison to food banks annually say growing concerns about LEAD BULLET FRAGMENTS (sic my capitalization) in meat are premature”. The article goes on to say that venison donations to food banks were banned after testing in North Dakota, Iowa, and Minnesota are causing concern in Maryland, Virginia, and other states.

 

FACT – While breathing lead fumes or digesting lead combined in liquids or foods over an extended period of time can pose a hazard to humans, LEAD BULLET FRAGMENTS ARE NOT A HEALTH HAZARD!

 

As a young man I swallowed lead shot on several occasions where I felt them going down with some mouthful of pheasant or duck I had shot.  Each time they were in my (scat?, feces?, poop?, droppings? or whatever) within three days.  Yet here I am in my 66^th year, college graduate, notorious “whistleblower”, father, and all around bon vivant.

 

Lead (Pb) hysteria has been used to reduce urban traffic, excuse poor scholarship in urban children, reduce hunting and gun ownership in California, make waterfowl hunting more expensive, increase waterfowl crippling rates, sell shotguns, close areas to hunting, eliminate shooting ranges, sell fishing tackle, and generally strike fear in the populace about an Armageddon only slightly less dangerous than a large meteor striking the earth or global warming.  I have probably overlooked some things but there you have it.

 

Lead shot can kill waterfowl.  There are no more than a half dozen locations in the US where ducks and geese ingest lead shot as the only available “grit” for their crop to grind up the seeds they ingest and then digest.  The constant presence of the lead pellets being ground up and its steady dribble into the stomach and then into the blood and tissues can kill the bird.  But the much more expensive and nearly all much less lethal (because of lightness and reduced trauma) substitutes have probably killed far more ducks and geese nationally since lead shot was banned for waterfowl hunting.

 

Lead shot around shooting areas does not enter into the water or soil, it is inert.  That is to say that the pellet or “bullet fragment” stays in place until what, “Hades freezes over”? or “pigs fly?

 

Lead shot does NOT threaten loons or condors!  Why?  Because they do not have crops and they do not eat sharp objects and even if they occasionally ingest a piece of lead, like me in my teenage days, IT PASSES THROUGH THEIR GUT.  They are NOT seed-eaters, they eat fish and meat so like you and me they digest them in their guts and simply “pass” what is not digested in a short period.  The VERY few loons carcasses found that contained lethal lead levels in their tissues (reported to have “died” from lead poisoning) really died from something else.  They nearly all had fishing tackle tangled up in their guts.  They had grabbed a minnow that was on the bottom of a lake.  The minnow was on a hook that was on a broken fishing line that had a lead weight on it.  The resulting minnow, hook, line and sinker (hence the origin of the term?) were all balled up in the gut such that AS THE BIRD WAS STARVING TO DEATH SINCE IT COULD NOT PASS FOOD IT ABSORBED LEAD FROM THE EXCESS STOMACH ACID THAT WAS BEING GENERATED WITH NOTHING TO DIGEST EXCEPT THE LEAD.  In other words, the BIRD WAS GOING TO DIE ANYWAY WHETHER THE WEIGHT WAS IRON OR COPPER OR SOME ALLOY. The result is government, professors, fishing manufacturers and righteous fishing organizations all “turning in” their lead tackle and (like waterfowl ammunition buyers) replacing their tackle boxes with “unleaded” and more expensive substitutes. This urban myth then (that lead kills birds) was sufficient for California anti-hunters to recently pass legislation to “ban lead bullets” for hunting where the “endangered” California Condor roams.  Condors are no more likely to ingest, much less suffer from lead fragment than you or some loon.  Of course the ammunition manufacturers and the fishing tackle manufacturers have reaped a financial bonanza from this bit of environmental legerdemain intended to increase the cost and difficulty of hunting while building governmental power and bureaucracy.

 

Since it (lead hyperbole) worked for all these other things, why not use it to scare people out of using venison for the poor and the homeless.  Forget the benefits of wild meat (anyone noticed all the truthful hype being used to sell buffalo?) and the salutary effects of controlling (i.e. “managing”) deer and elk numbers and distribution.  Killing the wild meat donations to such needy folks will further marginalize hunters and hunting.

 

I’ll tell you what, I hereby volunteer to swallow a bullet on TV and then check back in periodically to see if I get early dementia or suddenly can’t spell or lose weight.  I will further volunteer to arm wrestle any skeptics when I swallow the bullet and when I check back in.  Lead is certainly a valuable element with many uses and we know enough to use it wisely where it is the best product WITHOUT ENDANGERING HUMAN HEALTH.  “Bullet fragments” and lead shot are not things to be concerned about for ourselves or condors, or loons or waterfowl, or certainly the food banks accepting wild meat.

 

The current gullibility index about such things among Americans can be stunning to an old wildlife biologist.  Writing about these wolf myths and lead shot legends reminds me of a conservation I overheard last week in New Hampshire.  My wife and I were in a “kitchen stuff” store when a lady customer from Massachusetts had a conversation with a lady clerk from New Hampshire.  It went something like this:

NH Clerk – “So you raise dogs?”

Massachusetts Customer – “Yes, my husband and I are trying to modify huskies because of global warming.  In only a few years it will be too late to breed for the adaptations huskies will need to make in order to survive the coming warmer temperatures.”

Note: This was in early April.  The NH restaurant windows were covered with ice and snow.  NH has had one of the snowiest and coldest winters in years.  Ski resorts were still open.  We were seeing homes and motels and barns and Quonsets collapsed from snow all over the place.  Some blacktop roads were the worst I have ever driven on from frost heaves and the effects of freezing and thawing on the surface.  That very morning on the national weather news they reported that Fargo, ND had gotten a foot of snow overnight and Northern Minnesota had gotten 2 feet.

 

At least someone is thinking about the future of huskies, just like someone is thinking about wolves and lead.  The one important difference is that the “huskie” lady can breed HER huskies with HER chihuahas to her heart’s content and good for her.  She may be humorous to some of us but that is HER business in a free Republic.  When the wolf-lovers and lead mythologizers attack ranchers and hunters and rural residents and gun owners that is OUR business.  There is nothing funny or benevolent about these hidden agendas being foisted on the rest of us by government fiats under the guise of bad science and emotional feelings that harm others.  They should not be allowed or even considered in a free Republic.

 

So remember: Wolves Bad; Lead Useful when used wisely; “Global Warming – Resistant Huskies” humorous.  The best answer to simple myths is simple truth.

 

Jim Beers

13 April 2008

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- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow.  He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC.  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands.  He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC.  He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.