Oregon wolves and livestock:
This is a followup to our earlier story in the Wildlife News. Oregon range rider hired to watch out for wolves, quits. September 17, 2010
Farewell to one of my top five: Wolf range rider. By Cassandra Profita. Ecotrope.
Boss says range rider quit for economic reasons. By Cassandra Profita. Ecotrope.
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Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project.
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Very interesting that Cunningham is not commenting on the reason he quit. Probably fearful of being shot by accident. I hope he decides to tell his story but I’ll bet we all know what happened.
Here’s a photo essay by the photographer/ contributor to the current “1859” story on Wallowa County wolves. It contains some good sketches of the personalities involved.
http://wallowawolves.wordpress.com/
First, this was a temp job, and apparently the guy wants more job security. And, well, here is one other explanation from the wolf range rider’s supervisor:
++Nash said Cunningham wasn’t spending the minimum four days a week tracking wolves and finding out whether they were eating ranchers’ calves – in part because of all the media attention he was getting.++
Not surprising – 15 minutes of fame- reduced to about two because the guy maybe gets caught up in the celebrity of it all, and forgets why he was hired. Easy temptation to be before a camera, rather than in a hot dry brushy draw looking for smelly dead things.