Posted 1-31-2011 by Jim Branson, Lowman, Idaho
This posting is created at least initially for the residents of Lowman, Idaho which is the 28 miles of the South Fork of the Payette River in Central Idaho from the intersection of Hiway 21 and 17 up to Grandjean. The private property in this area is approximately 1300 acres of homesteads primarily established in the early 1920s. All the rest of surrounding and immediately adjacent lands two miles wide are 35,000 acres of the Boise National Forest.
Most of the people who I am trying to communicate with likely do not have a degree in law or scientific training. Some of what I will provide herein will be excessive legal language and maybe scientific terms, which the reader can just scan thru and note that the material is there if you want to take the time to examine the details.
Most residents will remember Senator Frank Church, a fairly popular and long serving senator from Idaho (1956-1981) who championed the founding of the Frank Church Wilderness Area which was named after him for his efforts in that regard. This is a huge area in Salmon River Drainage in the northern portion of the Boise National Forest and other forests north and east.
The key point of establishing wilderness areas is to try and preserve vast areas in a state such that children of children into the future will be able to still experience something similar to what all of us saw routinely in the 1960s era. But you can’t walk up to a car that you buy for your daughter going off to college and “legislate that it doesn’t have a wreck”. In attempts to keep the wilderness pristine and free of developments of say mining and logging by outlawing roads and use of mechanized equipment, the wilderness acts essentially guaranteed that the wilderness would be destroyed. Fires and the Let It Burn Policy along with the abandoned use of high tech fire fighting equipment, combined to burn the entire wilderness upwards of 75%. People hanging onto the basic concept of preserving the wilderness point out that the forest will come back, fail to let you know that it will be at least six generations before some of the larger trees are fully back in place. This means the next few generations will not have a pristine wilderness.
The importance of all the foregoing fit in with wolves gaining endangered species listing. The forced re-planting into Idaho did not take advantage of placing the wolves solely in the vast wilderness. Instead, some were planted in Cache Creek that drains northerly into Bear Valley Creek just north of the head of Eightmile Creek near Red Mountain Lakes Area. These wolves, some weighing over 170 pounds, flourished in the 1990s and the following decades and soon had a dozen or more packs spilling down Eightmile, Warm Springs, Five Mile and almost all creeks and converged into the 28 miles of Lowman Valley.
It was natural for the folks doing the replanting, primarily Fish & Game and USFS biologists, to want to plant the wolves where they could watch them and monitor their progress. The decision along these lines was made at very low levels in the departments involved with scant public discussion in the Lowman Area. But the decision had everything to do with our current conflict between wolf advocates and Lowman Residents. I doubt many people in Lowman give a hoot about wolves in the wilderness areas, as most are elderly and couldn’t get there if they wanted to. It is simply where the wolves should be kept.
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But when the wolf population reached the numbers of 2006 era, Lowman Residents were repeatedly subjected to wolves killing elk right in their yards and killing a number of pet dogs and cats. Anybody who has witnessed the wolves ripping an elk apart while it is still alive and crying out has not seen terror up close and personal. Even if you don’t see the actual act, one can tell by the spreading of body parts that it was a very terrifying event. Then if residents are continuously subjected to wolves howling nearby, it creates an atmosphere of fear and anger directed at those who made it happen. If wolf populations are allowed to rise to levels prior to the hunt of 2009, it is just a matter of time until somebody gets seriously injured or killed unsuspectingly trying to get to their home thru one of these wolf kill zones. Below are a few photos of just such kill zones. Note houses are all within feet of the kill.
That is a driveway below, not the highway.
Lots of people in Lowman think that the wolf problem has been solved with the 2009 hunt and don’t realize that wolf advocates have teamed up with Federal Judge D. Molloy in Montana to block future wolf hunts in our area. It only took a couple decades for the wolves to go from less than a dozen to several hundred in dozens of packs. The current population is still in the hundreds so within a few years they will be back down in Lowman, the older fearful wolves of the 2009 hunt having already died off. My big Saint Bernard dogs are lucky to live 6 years with the best of veterinarian care, let alone trying fight for every scrap of food and running breakneck speeds chasing elk.
I love dogs and wolves are dogs. I don’t see a lot of difference between “throwing the wolves to the wolves” than Michael Vick throwing dogs in a fighting arena. What on earth makes wolf advocates think that purposefully creating a conflict between wolves and people can result in anything good for people or the wolves? If the wolf population is maintained far back in the wilderness, then people healthy enough to get back there can have their wolf experience and leave the retired folks of Lowman, and other similar places, out of the wolf advocate’s lust for blood. I am certain people are simply not going to put up with it around their homes and will take matters into their own hands if the current approach is not changed, and changed soon.
With all major legislation, there are a series of preliminary bungles until the major legislation gets passed. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 was the result of a few starts and sputters in the 1960s but when President Nixon was battling to survive his lying episode, he was weakened enough to sign this not-well-thought-out legislation.
The key items in the legislation are as follows:
1. The Secretary of the Interior is the lead agency for making all determinations along with other secretaries such as Agriculture and Commerce. I have not seen any serious oversight by congress or State legislatures.
2 The key components of the ESA 73 are below. The original key components are: (4) the United States has pledged itself as a sovereign
state in the international community to conserve to the extent
practicable the various species of fish or wildlife and plants
facing extinction, pursuant to
(A) the present or threatened destruction, modification, or
curtailment of its habitat or range;
(B) over utilization for commercial, recreational, scientific,
or educational purposes;
(C) disease or predation;
(D) the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms; or
(E) other natural or manmade factors affecting its continued existence.
3. The act was modified in 2005 and a section 1533 (F) was added to the A thru E above. This addition was published in the Federal Register and is about as long as the act itself. Perhaps this is a sign of the bureaucracy in full development mode.
Let us now discuss the ramifications of just this portion of the law. The key word is “practicable”. One can easily ascertain that this word was placed in the law to protect the “sovereign USA” from critics around the world. But it also protects the Lowman Residents from the concept of “forcing wolves into human populated areas”. It simply is not “practicable” to force humans and wolves to live together. Amendment 14 of the constitution protects us from invasion into our private property from the Federal Government.
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All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law; nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
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Do you think that the congress can pass a law that is "unconstitutional"? Just look at the health care mess and be convinced that they can.
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The second very important aspect of the ESA73 law is that it talks about “The United States of America”. It does not talk about “the lower 48 states”, so Alaska and Hawaii are part of the USA. We know that the wolf population in Alaska is far beyond “endangered” into the “pest status” and the State of Alaska is much bigger than Idaho and Montana put together. The wolves simply were never “endangered in the whole of the USA” and it makes absolutely no sense to force wolves into human populated areas. Perhaps the wilderness is fine.
The subsections of 1533, A thru E and now F, were never an issue in regards to wolves. I am certain there are endangered species that only survive in the lower 48 states and never were in the State of Alaska and are perfectly appropriate for these subsections. But wolves are not one of them.
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As far as I can tell, the people who ultimately made the decision to replant the wolves in Cache Creek had every incentive to create a bureaucracy that would grow out of control along with the wolves. The sections above essentially create a whole new world of study for biologists and an array of related habitat scientists and the resources in those departments have grown into a huge bureaucracy in both state and federal agencies. On several occasions in the Lowman Area alone, teams of a dozen folks, helicopters and airplanes swarmed around the Lowman airspace looking for collared wolves and putting new collars on additional wolves. Dozens of other people are just monitoring the data from collars and field notes and then preparing voluminous reports read by nobody but themselves.
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Law enforcement departments have also grown by a huge factor. There was a wolf killed near Casner Creek that I heard had six different agents trying to determine who had shot the wolf but apparently since the bullet passed thru the wolf and could not be found, no serious trace could be made back to even a group of people. With Hiway 21 carrying thousands of folks from several adjoining states, the whole effort was likely a waste of time but it did provide jobs for several people for a month or more. Why didn’t one person look at the wolf body and determine that in minutes?
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How the Wolves Affect Elk Populations?
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I am not going to get into “ungulates” and am staying with the more specific issue of elk. Wolves really prefer elk for some very simple and practical reasons. Elk run with their rear feet hardly ever getting off the ground unless in deep snow. This allows the pursuing wolf to predict where the hoof will land and to plan his bite on the sensitive hamstring. Healing type cow dogs naturally do the same thing, indicating they came from wolves in the beginning. Deer, on the other hand, are far more bouncy and unpredictable in the way they run. A wolf must grab it around the neck and rodeo it to the ground. Deer seem to be thriving in Lowman in spite of the wolves.
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The elk are severely afraid of the wolves and can be stampeded easily. Instead of the dreamland that wolf advocates like to relate that wolves “sense the weak ones and kill them first”, the wolves actually create their own weak ones by stampeding the elk thru the down timber, breaking elk legs or damaging ankles. I have personally witnessed this many times at my own property. Anytime you see elk essentially in single file running at breakneck speeds thru rough terrain, you can bet wolves are around somewhere. When I walk the dogs around the hill, the elk barely move away and often stop and look back as a group and go back grazing when I pass by them.
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Wolves hunt for the sport. They prefer a fetus from a cow and will often eat that and then move on when the elk are plentiful. The wolves essentially create their own demise by killing off calves until the herd suddenly dies off and then the wolves eat each other. I have been monitoring the calf to cow ratio and have multiple photographs showing the ratio of calves to cows. In a photo, you can import that image into Computer Aided Design systems and measure the dimensionless ratio of length to height and easily determine calves and cows at large distances. In the spring time, you can easily determine one cow from another from day to day by noting the dead hair being rubbed and scratched off their winter hides.
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In my area, human hunting seasons primarily are over around the first of December and that seems to coincide with the normal typical major snow falls after Christmas. The elk come back suddenly at the end of hunting seasons and hang around my place and there is about a one to one ratio of calves and cows. This means that one of the two calves the cow likely had has already died of some natural cause, perhaps some wolves and perhaps some hunting and other causes. That situation has been with us for as long as I can remember.
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Prior to the introduction of wolves, the number of calves to cows was still in the range of one to one come spring time when they came back in herds of hundreds in the 1990s. After the wolves had fully invaded the Lowman Area in 2006 era, the calf to cow ratio dropped to 1: 5 and some times herds of 20 cows had not a single calf in it. This is when I started campaigning to do something about the wolves in the Lowman Area. If left unchecked, the herd would simply age and die off suddenly.
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What Should We Be Doing, These Days?
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People should write their congressmen, both State of Idaho and Federal. You can copy anything you want from this page and email your elected officials. Various congressmen have access to the judge's ear and can contact him and this provides an easy way to reference materials for all. If anybody has a bitch, they can take it up with me and my Blogspot site. I would appreciate you making other folks aware of this site and I look forward to providing local issues from time to time.
Jim Branson posted 1-31-2011
Older stuff below
Posted 1-30-2011 by Jim Branson, Lowman Idaho
For being a 40% chance of snow, it got up to 40 and melted snow pretty well. Ground is showing more and more these days.
Nobody shot each other that I know of and I did get some wood in from the woodshed in anticipation of the coming cold nights early this week coming.
If you find something here you like, better copy it sooner than later as this site will be updated and pictures and comments replaced regularly. Left is a view up river about six miles. Below is downriver about 8 miles.
Today, 1-29-2011, I hiked up above my home at 4600 feet to a point at 5100 feet and took some pictures of the South Fork of the Payette River up and down river. The good news is what I didn't see....no wolf tracks, new or old, and no wolf kills even months old. Things are looking up.
I didn't see any cougar tracks but plenty of coyote and fox tracks as well as some rabbit tracks. Looks like the general fury animals are still in good supply. No sign of eagles and hawks but the occasional raven drifting in from Garden Valley dump sites. No UFOs or naked snow bunnies but plenty of signs of it.
Weather has been running in the low 40s by day and low 20s by night and mostly sunny. The Snotel site at Banner Summit shows about 56 inches of snow and 17 inches of water while the one at Mores Creek Summit shows about 65 inches of snow and 21 inches of water. That is about all we normally get, so the rest of winter might be a bit drier until the spring rains set in. Still plenty of Jays around and a few camp robbers and woodpeckers.
I did see a couple elk that I had seen yesterday around the house. They seemed to be able to handle the snow just fine and were bedded down under some trees apparently full from their eating yesterday. Sunshine is looking fine. This is a picture of a road bank that has melted off enough to make it easy on the elk to travel even when there is 2 feet of crusted snow on the level.
The picture below shows how the snow is melting on the SW slopes and providing grass under the brush for the early elk. I think they are tired of
eating dead grass and anxious to get at the greens that are down there from the October and November rains.
Well, this is it for today....
situation can be for the Lowman folks. Many do not understand how axiety builds in the elderly and makes them restrict their use of the private property and surrounding forest lands.
