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HOW MUCH IS A WOLF WORTH?
My cousin Jinx Pyle and his eighty-year-old mother Dorothy operate a little ranch in western New Mexico. Like the typical western ranch it consists of a nucleus of deeded land--in this case 160 acres--and a grazing allotment of public land which is purchased and sold as private property and forms a substantial portion of the ranch's value.
The owner of an allotment pays the government land agency that controls the particular public land (i.e., Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, etc,) rent for use of the land and is also required to comply with various official mandates. ( A point of interest successfully argued in court by western scholar Wayne Hage is "that there is no such thing as public land. What we know as 'public' land is actually split-estate federal land", Hage says, with the government retaining mineral rights, and surface rights to grazing, water and access legally adjudicated and recorded as private property rights in state law. This little known and hotly contested standing is currently being fought in court, with the federal government as the defendant, accused of depriving Hage of the economic viability of his ranch. According to Tim Findley, writing in Range magazine, Summer, 2001, the outcome may change the course of western property rights.)
But to get back to the Pyles, the 'federal' land allotment in this case consists of eleven sections, or 7,040 acres. By government edict the Pyles are currently allowed to graze only twenty head of cattle and four horses (the ability to financially sustain itself was taken from this ranch years ago), though the actual number at present is fourteen cows and one bull, plus the horses. The ranch also supports 300 to 400 head of elk and an unknown number of deer.
And now, wolves.
Ten of the cows gave birth to calves this spring.
Five of the baby calves became wolf fodder in the last month, with both slow and rapid deaths confirmed and documented by investigators from the wolf release project of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico.
But what's a calf or two in the grand 'natural' scheme born in the half-baked brains of those mostly urban folk with a noble vision of rewilding the West?
By modern day standards, much of the West is still pretty darned wild, isolated and far removed from such amenities as shopping malls, casinos and golf courses. The ranch inhabitants as a whole live simple lives and are low grade consumers. Jinx and his mom don't travel much except by foot and horseback. Two hours to town is a once a month venture. They recycle their scraps and animal waste to the garden and chicken yard and enjoy their own fresh vegetables and eggs.
They are surrounded by nature, and like many people on the land are endowed with an understanding of natural processes that was generations in the making.
The wolves, those pitiful victims of human ignorance and arrogance, are neither natural or truly wild. Indeed, how can they be 'natural' when they have been raised by humans at a taxpayer cost of approximately $1.2 million each BY THE TIME OF THEIR RELEASE? Following their release, monitoring of the poor, citified wolves by air and on the ground will apparently be financed by the public purse until the wolves are deemed truly wild and natural. That is, until that unlikely time that they decide to quit hanging around the easy prey near towns, schools and homesteads, and go into deep cover.
The mantra of the rewilders of course, is that with the exalted, exception of those within their own ranks performing such life-sustaining activities as watching wolves and counting owls and minnows, the few people left in the nation who actually produce more than they consume don't belong out there in the wilderness.
Such a sentiment is an unspoken admission that government is not to be trusted, its word only as strong as the current political wind.
Canyon Creek Ranch was created soon after the Civil War by military script, the government's reward and sacred promise to former Union soldiers who were willing to settle and produce on raw land in the untamed West. Confederate soldiers and immigrants were urged to go west also; however, all but Union soldiers were required to 'prove up,' or make certain improvements within a specified period of time.
Quentin Hulse, the elderly rancher from whom the Pyles purchased Canyon Creek Ranch screened potential buyers very carefully before finally giving the Pyles his nod of approval. With family roots trailing back to the military script promise, transfer of hard-earned ownership was not a decision to be taken lightly by a man whose roots grew deep and wide in this land.
So, what constitutes a right in our country that once so valued the efforts, continuity and traditions of individuals and families?
Prior occupation?
New York City and Boston were once wolf habitats. Should they be rewilded? Should Tucson and Phoenix be torn down and turned over to the Apache tribes? Shall Albuquerque and Santa Fe be vacated by the intruders of the last century and restored to the Spaniards?
Not likely.
Unfortunately, Twenty-First Century airheads from la-la land are unable to grasp the fact that some 'natural' conditions of a hundred or two years ago cannot be recreated today like a Hollywood script. This is even more true on the land than in cities. The entire ongoing assault against families on the land, the piece by piece dismantling of the lives and livelihoods of this productive minority, is a perfect example of why our nation was founded as a republic rather than a democracy.
Democracies are inherently political, ultimately dictated by uninformed masses, with so-called equal treatment for individuals and minorities degraded to a matter of time, place and trend rather than justice.
The list of broken lives, communities and livelihoods inflicted by their own government on today's forsaken minorities--families on the land--could fill several books. One of the most recent affects 1,500 farm families of the Klamath Basin, in the high desert along theCalifornia/Oregon border. In 1909, to lure homesteaders west, the government participated in an irrigation project to supply water to the farms. This year the Bureau of Reclamation broke the contract. And for what noble cause were the 1,500 farms condemned to waterless oblivion?
To supposedly 'save' the sucker fish, a bottom-feeding scavenger the Endangered Species Act has proclaimed threatened due to drought in the Northwest.
It seems that this once respected country, so young yet in the grand march of history, has reached the shameful stage described by Cicero more than 2,000 years ago: "When a government becomes powerful, it is destructive, extravagant and violent...It is an usurer that takes bread from innocent mouths, and deprives honest men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself."
Is a sucker fish worth such betrayal and ruin? Is a frog, a flycatcher.....or even a wolf?
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