Boise State Radio goes out with Defenders’ Phantom Hill wolf/sheep crew–
Audio 2. The ranchers have their say.
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.
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To bad they didn’t stop them from killing some sheep earlier in the week. A famous pack with all those people watching and they still managed to kill some sheep. Not that I mind sheep are dumb and an easy meal.
You are right Hilljack, sheep are helpless, and I think they are one animal that wolves may sometimes kill with no intent to eat.
Wolves don’t hunt for fun because prey are dangerous, but sheep are another matter.
Why do we allow sheep to graze in Idaho’s rugged backcountry? For them to be safe you have to make the backcountry into a tame place.
If we totaled up all the damage the sheep industry has done to wild Idaho it would astronomical. Herders routinely shoot any bear,cougar, coyote or wolf that approaches their sheep. If they can’t shoot them, they call on the U.S taxpayer to do it for them through Wildlife Services. The IDFG now has to shoot any Bighorn that gets close to domestic sheep.
Mutton gets to be pretty old hat for food and many a deer or elk is shot for camp meat by sheep herders. I always thought that herders were required to stay with the sheep at night, but this recording says they don’t. “Too expensive.” I suspect that some of the woolgrowers that are too cheap to pay a $750/month Peruvian herder to stay with the sheep at night are multimillionaires.
I think some of the wolves kill an old ewe and are so repelled by the taste, that they kill another one or two just in case one of them is edible.
For them to be safe you have to make the backcountry into a tame place. That is the 1800s thinking that is so rampant still all over the west.