Colorado wolves are casualties in the
culture wars
theAspenbeat.com,
by
Glenn Beaton
Original Article
Posted By: Big Bopper,
2/20/2025 9:51:09 AM
Wolves roamed Colorado for millions of years. At the end of the last ice age, they managed to survive the mass extinctions of megafauna such as mammoths, mastodons, sabertooth tigers, giant cave bears, and huge sloths, an extinction event that was probably caused in part by the arrival of humans from Asia at about the same time.
Until the much later arrival of Europeans, those early Americans were living in the stone age. Their weapons were stone-tipped spears and arrows. They didn’t even have horses. But they hunted in a way that was deadly to large herding animals and the predators of the herds: They used fire.
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Reply 1 - Posted by:
MOBeef4u 2/20/2025 11:00:08 AM (No. 1900182)
Reintroduction of wolves is all well and good as long as you can convince them to only prey on elk. Good luck with that. The wolves will take the easiest prey and it ain’t elk.
Glen’s attitude towards the losses suffered by ranchers, i.e. their livelihood, is very condescending and dismissive. Breeding cows remain in the herd for ten years or more not 18 months. When wolves were reintroduced in Idaho the results were very different than what was predicted. The information about that is available.
One more thing. Conflating big cats with wolves is misleading. The cats are solitary hunters while the wolves hunt in packs. The impact would be very different between the two.
8 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
DVC 2/20/2025 11:08:54 AM (No. 1900187)
Beaton is totally full of manure on this issue. I gave hike the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming, for 50 years, doing a 2 week backpacking trip in the mountains for over 40 years, every single year. We are not able to do that these days, being in our 70s, but we still day hike. I am always armed in the wilderness, protection against all violent critters, two legs or four.
Our forefathers spent many decades and huge sums of money, and tremendous effort to wipe wolves out in the lower 48. That was a good thing, and protected humans, livestock and big game from their ravenous, vicious jaws. The reason that grizzlies lasted far longer is that they rarely kill livestock and pets. And mountain lions have been run with dogs up into the mountains, generally without killing them, to keep them eating deer and elk, not sheep, cattle, horses, pets and children
Bringing wolves back to any area where humans live, with their pets and livestock is genuinely stupid, and totally destructive. Leftists see the wolves wiping out the big herds of elk and deer as a plus, since they hate hunters and hunting, and applaud there being too few deer and elk to hunt successfully.
We should be exterminating wolves again. It's just that simple.
I love the outdoors, but I hate wolves. I don't hate grizzlies or mountain lions, they are very different kinds of predators, and we can get along with them, in general.
10 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Big Bopper 2/20/2025 11:22:17 AM (No. 1900205)
No 2:
OK, you "hate" wolves and their "ravenous, vicious jaws."
But since there are only about 30 in Colorado, it's extremely unlikely that you've ever seen one here (I haven't, and I get into the backcountry a lot).
As for their destructiveness, we're talking about a few dozen livestock killings a year - compared to thousands and thousands of winter kills, car collisions and other livestock losses. But I guess they don't count because winter and cars don't have "ravenous, vicious jaws."
5 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Vaquero45 2/20/2025 2:08:23 PM (No. 1900303)
I like Glenn - but on this issue, he's wrong, wrong, wrong.
We got rid of the wolves for a reason, a long time ago. Their reintroduction was due to a bunch of nutty "environmentalists" in Denver and Boulder, and the area in between. We call it "ballot box biology" and it shouldn't be allowed.
I can hardly wait until the wolves come down from the mountains and into the suburbs of Denver, and start eating poodles and cats.
4 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
DVC 2/20/2025 2:30:32 PM (No. 1900318)
Re #3, people rarely ever see wolves. I have spent days hunting on horseback south of Yellowstone and seen literally thousands of wolf tracks, because they have been established there longer. Didn't run across any elk tracks at all , covering 30+ miles per day in snow cover wilderness where all tracks are visible.
Wolves have no place in the lower 48.
And, yes, the numbers of wolves in Colorado now are low, but that won't last long, sad to say.
Wolves should be shot, but unfortunately it is illegal and they are very shy.
1 person likes this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
DVC 2/20/2025 2:37:37 PM (No. 1900328)
If you want to see the reality of Colorado wolves, even with few around so far, look up the news story of wolves who disemboweled a pet dog, protecting children from wolves going for the kids, while camping in Colorado. The father of the kids shot one wolf off of his dog, and the dog was saved by major surgery. Last I heard the Fish and Game crazies were prosecuting the father for protecting his kids and dog.
1 person likes this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
Proud Texan 2/20/2025 2:58:02 PM (No. 1900341)
Wolves and other predator species should be introduced in large cities first so that their are plenty of people to admire and protect them, and prey is abundant.
1 person likes this.
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