Following is an e-mail that was sent today to Steven Williams, President of the Wildlife Management Institute...It also went to the heads and upper management of many sportsmen-based wildlife or conservation organizations.
Dear Steven;
I really need to ask...What in the hell are universities teaching those who are majoring in wildlife studies these days? One thing is for certain, it sure isn't the good ol' North American Model of Wildlife Conservation that has served us so well over the past 75 or 80 years. Is it?
Last week, I read the study presented by "Professor" Mark Hebblewhite, of the University of Montana, at the 72nd North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference (2007). The title of that study was, Predator-Prey Management in the National Park Context: Lessons from a Transboundary Wolf, Elk, Moose and Caribou System. In that study, Hebblewhite referred to wolf recovery in the Lower 48 as "one of the great conservation successes of the 20th century". In reality, it has been the biggest wildlife disaster in our lifetimes.
But then, I guess that all depends on whatever one's real agenda happens to be. The University of Montana is a collaborator of the Yellowtone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, and for that matter so are MT Fish, Wildlife and Parks and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. And I guess I don't have to tell you the "agenda" of that environmental pipedream. But for some of those in the "Cc:" field, I will anyway. The "agenda" is to pretty much remove the majority of human inhabitants from western Montana and Idaho, on through Canada, to establish a wild corridor three times the size of California - which would allow major predators to travel freely North-South for more than 2,000 miles. One of the Y2Y policies states that the effort neither "endorses" nor "condones" the hunting of wolves, grizzly bears and cougars...the very predators which are now destroying big game populations in MT, ID and WY.
Is this the new wave wildlife management that's now being taught? Is that why the mismanagement of predators and big game now leans so heavily in favor of our anti-hunting enemies with organizations like the Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, and the Humane Society of the United States?
If this is the direction that the Wildlife Management Institute has also chosen, forsaking all of the members of all the sportsmen based organizations and groups in the "Cc:" field - tighten your belt, the sportsmen of this country have had their fill of this idiocy.
The change just may begin here in Montana come November 2012 - when the voters purge our political ranks of those who have stood in the way of getting back to the business of managing wildlife the way the sportsmen who have footed the bill want wildlife managed. And when we get a like minded governor into office, rest assured that MT Fish, Wildlife and Parks will get one hell of an overhaul...and those who are not with the program today's sportsmen want will be the first to be shown the door.
We're going to take wildlife management back, and make it harder than ever for radical environmental NGO's to do business in this state. America is as mad as hell right now, and the stupidity of allowing wolves and other major predators to destroy the wildlife resources that have taken nearly a century to rebuild is a powder keg that will explode right in the faces of those who continue to practice such idiocy.
Where does the Wildlife Management Institute get its funding?
You can't play both sides of the fence. The Wildlife Management Intitute is either part of the problem or part of the solution. There is no middle ground.
Toby Bridges
LOBO WATCH
www.lobowatch.com
