| Killing the Wolf [....] We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock. In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable side-rocks. 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 eyesÑsomething 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. * * * Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers. Leopold, Aldo: A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There, 1948, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987, pp. 129-132. |
| Story by Aldo Leopold |
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| The wolf is the spirit teacher of us all |
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| Just last July under Governor Sarah PalinÕs approval, Fish & Game employees in Game Management Unit No. 9 staked out wolf den sites (which is illegal even under Alaskan laws). They tortured and killed 14 adult wolves and then went into the birthing chambers and dragged out 14 puppies and shot each one in the head. She also promotes (as did her predecessor) the barbaric practice of "aerial hunting" in Alaska, in which state officials allow trophy hunters to use aircraft to run down and kill wolves. George W Bush wants to allowin Wyoming and Idaho to use aerial hunting of wolves by federal and state agencies--But right now, the request was overruled by what is left of the EPA.. There is a bill in the house to stop it, H.R. 3663, the Protect America's Wildlife (PAW) Act, introduced by Rep. George Miller. The PAW Act would end needless and cruel aerial hunting of wolves and other wildlife by closing a loophole in the Federal Airborne Hunting Act of 1972. Palin opposes the Bush administration's decision to list polar bears as a threatened species under our now nearly castrated Endangered Species Act. Alaska sued Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne earlier this month to try to overturn his decision. She sees the polar bears as another roadblock for the development of Big Oil ventures, especially since it was Big Oil (the executives of VECO Corp., an oil services contractor at the heart of a massive influence-peddling investigation) who continually financed her campaigns. In fact sheÕs even married to Big Oil. Todd Palin, her husband, earned $46,790 last year as a facility operator for BP Alaska in Prudhoe Bay.Her soon-to-be son-in-law, Levi Johnson, also got a job with VECO. Alaskans, who say they pride themselves on their independence, each received a Big Oil welfare check in the amount of $1,654 in 2007. This woman who prides herself as being against corruption, but she fired a safety commissioner because he wouldnÕt fire the state trooper who divorced her sister. If you care about wolves and other wildlife and care about the Earth and donÕt want your life run by the concerns of Big Oil and the globalists, tell President Obama to help protect them |
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