Outdoor Life Responds To 'Stop Shooting Wolves, You Maniacs'

Author of article, PoPSCi staff, I suppose Dan is anonymous today and wow short article.

Frankly, I think that any response from Outdoor Life gives Dan's article an air dignity it does not deserve.

Then again, perhaps Dan learned something about journalism.

I'm surprised PopSci even posted a rebuttal to Dan's frothy blog posting. Hopefully people don't just glance over the article, it was actually a well thought out and informed piece.

Hunters: "let us continue killing ... that is the only hope for nature"

These 'sportspeople' need to find an new sport!

"Agree to disagree."

You rant to your readers with all the angst of a 13 year old girl, with a complete disregard for journalistic standards and a pathetic lack of understanding of the subject. They politely call you out on your demagoguery and clarify just how wrong you are...

and you call it a disagreement. Anonymously.

I reiterate. Intellectually dishonest. Journalisticly lacking. Pathetic in every meaning of the word.

Oh, and if it isn't already implicit - Unscientific. For a website that calls itself "popular science"... let's just say you really know how to fail your own standards.

Do we get an article on the science and statistics behind wildlife conservation? Nope. We get a child's ignorant rant. And a link to a real article with referenced science.

Pa - thet - ic

That Outdoor Death article does very little to refute any of Dan's facts (let us know if you find an example). Instead they look at it from a different perspective (after all, they are hunters) and they introduce some other facts. Their idea of management is:

"okay, kill a bunch of wolves
... okay now, kill lots of elk
... okay, back to the wolves
... and now the elk again
... who's turn is it now, oh ya, the wolves
...
...
...".

How about we let nature handle that stuff. If wildlife absolutely needs to be 'managed' by humans, at least take the 'sport' and trophies out of the equation (hard-won, eh??). Anyone who enjoys killing animals cannot be trusted for such work. It's like having gun-happy policemen!

@Far Out Man

You mean as opposed to gun-ignoring policemen like the ones in NY that shot 9 civilians trying to stop a guy on a busy street? Thanks but o thanks. I'll judge people based on their actions, not their intentions.

I'll take the hunters. They're good shots -- no suffering. Those animals will either die of starvation (in the case of the wolves) or be eaten alive (in the case of the elk) as nature oscillates around its happy medium (nature doesn't reach steady-states. It oscillates around an optimum, with noisy death on either side).

And they aren't in charge of it. The Conservation divisions in those states are. They set quotas to pre-empt wolf and elk population explosions that will be followed by famine. Hunters just go and hunt, and they have to stop if the quota is met.

And all of this was in the article. You can complain about killing animals, but unless you offer an alternative, I really can't comprehend why you're shooting your mouth off. They reduce the total number of deaths, and provide much more humane ones than "nature".

So please, point out where they are wrong, bloodthirsty, or evil. I'd really love to hear your great alternative method that grants wildlife immortality and unlimited food and space.

This is kind of a trashy thing to do and I say that as someone who completely agreed with the conclusions reached by the author of that original rant. I mean that it's trashy to run something whiny and attention-seeking and then follow it up with a "response" that never would have been necessary had you not run the shrill and attention-seeking thing to begin with. It's an echo-chamber of dumbness. Did you all sign your names to it as "Staff" because you're all proud of it or because you realize the whole thing stinks and none of you want to claim responsibility for it? This site looks really desperate lately. Always either trying to stir up controversy or writing about some dumb gadget. And that's in addition to all the "sponsored articles" and the junk-science "is santa clause real" stuff. It's sad.

The first line of OL's response shows it totally misses the point. It reads: "The first rule of wildlife management is that populations matter. Individuals don’t."

The problem in this case being that the individual qualities of 832F as the leader of the Lamar canyon pack, impressing and inspiring millions of Yellowstone visitors, represented her real value. What it reveals is only that the style of wildlife management Outdoor Life prefers ignores and destroys the individual value of animals like 832F.

It doesn't change the fact that a national treasure was trashed for a person's pleasure, as though the only real value of a priceless piece of art was the fun someone could have destroying it and depriving a vast number of other people for the paying of a pittance.

To get an idea of what the "pro-wolf hunting" crowd is all about, link to this petition:

http://www.causes.com/actions/1724771

They have facebook pages that post pictures of wolves and coyotes being tortured and then laugh about it with their buddies. They don't care about science or facts. I spent two days attempting to reason with them and explain the facts. I am a biologist and I have researched the RErelease of the wolves extensively. I developed the microsatellites that helped determine the reintroduced wolves were, in fact, the same species as the historical population. (They like to claim it is a larger, more aggressive subspecies and therefore non-native). While I don't believe all of the hunters and ranchers share the barbaric attitude of these groups, these guys happen to be the most vocal. Maybe if more hunters and ranchers would speak out against their practices the rest of us wouldn't view you in such a negative light.