If you’re not a real, genuine species, but merely some mutt of a dog, then you shouldn’t qualify for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Or so Republican thinking goes, according to a story in today’s Phoenix New Times:
Buried in the dry language of a newly released budget proposal for the U.S. Department of the Interior is a line that you could easily miss: a directive to study the genetics behind the Mexican gray wolf and another species, the red wolf.
Driving around the rural Southwest, it’s not uncommon to see billboards denouncing wolves and the wolf recovery project, which began reintroducing Mexican grays in the late ‘90s. Wolves of course are predators, they kill cattle and sheep, which the livestock industry and their political flunkies don’t like. But here’s the deal: Mexican gray wolves are native to this region, cattle and sheep are not. One contributes to a healthy environment, the other destroys it.
For a long time we’ve known that removing predators from nature screws things up immeasurably, which is the point of the Endangered Species Act, signed in 1973 by Republican President Richard Nixon. We don’t protect species just because they’re really cute or extremely big and awesome, but because they’re ecologically linked to everything else. Remove one and the system can collapse, as John Muir famously said: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
One of the most famous essays in nature writing is Aldo Leopold’s “Thinking Like a Mountain,” about shooting a wolf, first published in 1944 and then included in his posthumous masterpiece, A Sand County Almanac (1949). Among other disciplines, the short essay is studied in literature classes because it’s beautifully written, in philosophy because it raises ethical and moral issues, and in land management because it’s grounded in scientific and ecological fact.
The essay is based on a 1909 incident in northeast Arizona, when Leopold, only 22 and fresh out of Gifford Pinchot’s Yale Forestry School, did what all new foresters did when they encountered a wolf: He shot it. Given the bounties on wolves at the time, as well as the Forest Service’s own kill-on-sight policy, nearly all wolves would be extirpated from Arizona and New Mexico during Leopold’s 15 years in the Southwest. By the ‘30s they were gone. But when Leopold shot the wolf in 1909, he sensed something wasn’t right, as he watched the “fierce green fire” die in the animal’s eyes. It took him until 1944 to figure it out:
The mountain knows what works. He should learn to “think like a mountain,” which understands that predators are necessary for a healthy ecosystem. Leopold eventually saw the destruction firsthand: remove wolves, and deer and other critters multiply to the point they erode the land.
Because the Mexican gray is a distinct subspecies of the gray wolf (and there is no scientific doubt about that), and because it was brought to the brink of extinction, with just five remaining, the Mexican gray wolf was afforded protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1978. Today, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona thinks the 110 or so Mexican grays that currently exist in the wild are too many, while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to increase the number to 300 and keep the Mexican gray on the endangered species list (last month the Trump administration announced a new, watered-down version cheered by the livestock industry).
In 2015, Gosar introduced a bill that would delist the Mexican gray, which means open season for hunters, farmers and government officials, who’ve killed thousands of wolves in the states where species have been delisted. There are creative programs that allow for wolves and cattle to coexist, but it seems most ranchers only know one solution: a gun (and, like Sarah Palin, maybe a helicopter).
In 2011, wolves were removed from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act in Idaho, Montana, and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Utah… That has made it easier to shoot wolves—Idaho and Montana now even allow recreational hunting.
Last year hunters and ranchers killed more than 600 wolves in Montana and Idaho alone, and Rep. Gosar wants to delist the 110 here?! His 2015 bill didn’t go anywhere, fortunately, but the GOP and their industry dollars are back, with assistance from the Trump administration, which has been clawing away at environmental protections since the inauguration.
See, the 1973 Endangered Species Act doesn’t say whether a mutt or hybrid animal qualifies for protection, so if scientists chosen by Republicans can show that the Mexican gray in the Southwest, as well as the red wolf in the Southeast, are not distinct species, then they should be removed from the endangered list. While most scientists say the two wolves are district species, and the study would be a waste of time and money, we know there’s a legion of “merchants of doubt” ready to do the GOP’s bidding, for the right price.
“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.” — Aldo Leopold