Reporter Jeff Gearino and others have written a series of articles in the last few days about the $6-million the Wyoming legislature just put into state-funded predator control. That is a sudden infusion of big money, and I wonder what it’s really about? This is money on top of that appropriated by Congress for the predator control federal agency, Wildlife Services. I haven’t seen any reports on a large buildup of coyotes, even though that’s what most of the talk in the article is about.
Somehow I’m suspicious that the big dollar increase has something to do with the just delisted grizzly bear, and maybe, the soon to be delisted wolf.
Here is the first article “Kill or be Killed,” which begins with two foreign workers riding their “magnificent steeds, trailed by their equally magnificent Great Pyrenees sheepdogs” as they get instructions from their padrone to go out and kill a whole bunch of coyotes.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
