Extirpation and Extinction.

I used to know a lot of people who hunted. When I was a kid I would go small game hunting from time to time with my dad. Rabbits, quail, that type of thing. I stopped when I was 13 years old, no longer able to kill birds and mammals. My choice, no wish here to dictate that to others.

Up until a few years ago I would still hang out and talk to hunters sometimes. Some people hunt for what they call sport. Others hunt because they enjoy eating wild game and consuming what they kill. Truth to tell, one of my favorite things to eat is venison. So I am making no judgment call here. I have friends who hunt deer and other game to put protein in their freezers which helps them to cut down on the expense of feeding themselves and their families; it also stops them from consuming meat produced on factory farms. This is a good thing.

However, in my conversations with my friends who are hunters, and with strangers I meet who hunt, the talk almost always ends up with a mention of predators. Hunters hate predators. They hate any animal that also eats the deer, elk, moose, grouse, quail, etc. that people like to hunt and kill. At first I just assumed that this rabid hatred of predators was due to a sense of competition that they felt. But I never heard any of these hunters verbally savage or complain about other human hunters. Their rage and hatred was only for Grizzly bears, mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, lynxes, and other such animals.

But they reserved a very special species of hatred for one particular animal: the Timber wolf.

If the conversation ever turned to wolves, I would watch my hunter friends start to slobber at the mouth like rabid dogs. Their eyes would go crazy. They would begin to rant and rave, talking about how the entire species should be exterminated and how any liberal college-educated moron who advocates for the defense of wolves should be jailed or killed. And, no, I am not exaggerating. I have seen otherwise calm, normal men start yelling for the extinction of an entire species and the deaths of educated biologists over this topic. They almost always referred to those with college educations as scum of the Earth.

I mainly would just squint at these people and wonder what the fuck was wrong with them and look at them as if they were a kind of specimen wriggling on a microscope slide or some cocktail of infection culturing in a petri dish.

Later, I would sit and try to figure it out, putting together what I knew about the activity of hunting and the people I knew who engaged in it.

Almost every hunter I knew (or know) is a white adult male. Nearly all of them are not just avid gun owners, but also are right wing types who--in addition to hating wolves--also don't care for people of other cultures, nor for people who have different skin pigmentation. Most of them are members of the National Rifle Association. Most of them are registered Republicans. Most of them hate the environmental movement.

Also, most of the hunters I have known subscribe to one or more sportsman's magazines. I am quite familiar with these publications because when I was a kid and thirsting for information about wildlife I was drawn to them since they had garish covers with photos and paintings of wild animals on them. And I had an endless supply of back issues of such magazines because my parents owned used bookstores and had stacks and stacks of them in the shops. I was allowed to take home as many as I wanted to read.

One thing that I learned very early on from reading these magazines is that there was an editorial thirst to promote the hatred of all predatory mammals that are not humans. It doesn't matter what kind of carnivorous animal they chose to target, these creatures were presented in a light that was as negative as could possibly be conveyed in words and pictures. Grizzly bears were monsters that should be avoided at all cost except to shoot or poison. Mountain lions were killers of deer and elk that should all be tracked down with dogs and shot on sight. Coyotes and bobcats are worthless vermin that need to be completely obliterated for reducing the rabbit population.

But paramount in their hatred and propaganda was, and is, the Timber wolf. When you read these magazine articles there is nothing whatsoever good about wolves. They are a toxin on the forest landscape that must be expunged. No mercy for any wolf. No quarter to be given. Just kill them all down to the smallest pup.

As I grew older I also noticed that most of these magazines look toward the environmental movement in a similarly negative light. They didn't call for the murder of activists who are out to create wilderness and National Parks, but they did blanket them with disdain and advocate for legislation against them, and to fight any rule such people support or pass.

And there it was. These magazines are distributed to people who, ironically, depend on open, relatively wild spaces where they can engage in their pastime of hunting. But these articles attack mainly two bits of legislation--the Endangered Species Act, and the Wilderness Act. To this end these magazines lobby endlessly, rabidly, and ceaselessly to overturn these protections for wild places and the animals who inhabit them. Who would profit from this? Hunters? Not really. But the folk who do profit from the reversal of these laws need hunters to act as triggers to remove these Acts. Therefore, have those hunters advocate obliquely for the call to remove such protections.

The folk who would ultimately have the most to gain from destroying the laws that preserve the last bits of wild spaces that we have are mining outfits, timber companies, energy corporations, and real estate concerns. If only there were no wilderness protections they could lay waste to the forests and gouge out the minerals. If only there was no Endangered Species Act they could wade into our National Parks to do as they please.

And there I realized that all of these hideous little magazines were nothing but propaganda material for the worst of what my country has created: fossil fuel companies, timber barons, real estate moguls. These are the scumbags directing their poison through hunters, targeting our wild forests to scour out the things that keep those greedy bastards from taking possession of what little wilderness that remains.

I don't read those magazines anymore. I used to pick one up now and again in shops or libraries just to see if things had changed. They have not. The scumbags who write for them still sell their souls for a few dollars to malign wolves and mountain lions. My hope is that these pernicious bastards who work for the worst of the worst will all die choking on their own guts.

To look for evil, follow the trail of profit.

The eastern Timber wolf.

What hunting magazines tell you Grizzly bears do.

What grizzly bears really do 99.999999999% of the time.

Constant Struggle

There are some things that I will never completely understand. I try to figure them out, but in the end they make no sense whatsoever.

Probably the finest thing the US nation has ever done was to establish National Parks and wilderness areas. As far as I know, it was an original idea that was born in this country. Part of the reason could be that we actually had unspoiled places that were worth protecting. There was a time when these Parks and wild places were delineated and placed under the sheltering wing of common good.

But those days seem to be over.

And I cannot figure that out, no matter how hard I try to understand how we can all be manipulated to the contrary.

For some years now, there has been an effort to create a new National Park in the state of Maine. It has been some time since a large, new National Park was dedicated in the USA. Some smaller ones have been named, but these have almost all been mere transfers of title from National Monument status to that of National Park. Most of these have been rather small areas, very fragile, and with little in the way of infrastructure.

The proposed Park in Maine has been called "The North Woods National Park" and sometimes the Maine Woods National Park. It would encompass over three million acres of mainly roadless forests, rivers, ponds, lakes, gorges, valleys, bogs, and mountains. Almost none of it is virgin territory, since Maine has pretty much been logged from side to side, end to end for lumber and pulpwood over the past couple of centuries. So there's not really anything there in the form of untouched lands.

What this area does have is the potential to be a set of recovered environments, and a place where "rewilding" can take place. Mother Nature repairs Herself if left unmolested by the hand of Mankind's exploitation. Everything that lives on the planet needs places like this. As long as we have wide areas of wilderness, then the ecology that birthed us and sheltered us and provided us with clean air and water can continue to do so. These are facts that are self-evident.

But whenever such an effort to create something like a National Park is raised, there is always a push-back against them. The people who earn vast amounts of cash wrecking these spots never fail to rally their forces to prevent the establishment of Parks and wilderness. Generally, they get their ignorant minions to scream about "government land grabs" and other such nonsense. Grabbed from whom? Given to whom?

The proposed North Woods National Park is something that this nation needs. It has been far too long since a large, new national Park was added to the eastern USA. Here is the acreage. This is the place where forest ecosystems can be restored; where wild  creatures that have been eliminated from the land can be repatriated.

Let's have it. Now.

Katahdin.

The Woodland caribou, which used to live in Maine but which has been extirpated from the area. It could be restored to the area within the proposed Park boundaries.

Even the folk who promote the proposed Park are afraid to mention the Timber wolf when discussing the effort. This is because one of the main arguments against the Park come from brainless hunting and gun rights morons who are among the most effective weapons of the corporate elite who don't want to see a new National Park created.

Hoping.

On our upcoming trip to Glacier National Park, I am very much hoping to see several North American animals that I have never seen in the wild. Between trips to Colorado and Wyoming I was lucky enough to spot several animals I had never seen before, including the Moose, Bighorn sheep, Pronghorn, Coyote, Mule deer, Marmot, and Grizzly bear.

The ones that I am very much wanting to spot and photograph on this trip are Mountain lion, Mountain goat, Timber wolf, Badger, Porcupine, Wolverine, and Lynx. Badgers and porcupines are not rare, but I've never been able to spot one, even though I've hiked and backpacked where they were likely present. With any luck at all I should be able to witness at least some of these animals in their natural habitat.

Among this group, I really do not expect to see some of them. People search for years without ever seeing wolverines, mountain lions, or the Canada lynx. But I could get lucky. Wolves are also notoriously private creatures, but I've heard they're easier to spot in Glacier than in other National Parks. I'm looking forward to finding out.

(None of these photos were taken by me and all were found on stock footage sites.)

Wolverine.

Badger.

Mountain goat.

Porcupine.

Timber wolf.

Canada lynx.

Mountain lion.

Restoring the American Pleistocene Environment in the East

Someday I would love to see as much eastern land as possible restored as closely as possible to its Pleistocene glory. A complete restoration is, of course, impossible. This is due to the fact that so many of the plants and animals that formed that dead ecosystem are gone forever.

No matter what you did, you could never bring back things like Mammoths, mastodons, glyptodons, megatherium, saber-toothed cats, etc. Those animals were completely wiped out by the advance of humans who crossed the Bering land bridge and spread across two untouched continents killing off a huge percentage of the large mammals they encountered.

But there are the surviving Pleistocene animals who can (and should) be restored to their former ranges.

Already the elk has been brought east again. True, the eastern elk is actually extinct, but the variety that now roams the forests in the Midwest, in Pennsylvania, (and now in North Carolina) is so close as to be almost indistinguishable from the type eradicated by the advancing Europeans. It would be nice to see them living in all of the eastern forests again.

A bull elk that I photographed just a few weeks ago in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Another creature that could be returned, but which probably will not be (as long as humans can be brought to bear against them) is the American bison, commonly called the "buffalo". These creatures once lived from coast to coast and inhabited every land type except for the wettest swamps and the deepest, driest deserts. And, once more, the type that once lived here in the east is completely extinct. The last woodland buffaloes in the east were hunted down and eaten in Kentucky in the late 1700s. Since then, there have been no bison here in the east.

But bison could be restored to eastern forests. There are similar animals who could easily adapt to our forests and once more inhabit them. The main barrier to their restoration is, once more, human opposition. Bison are very big animals (largest native land mammals in North America) and can sometimes be quite aggressive. Convincing easterners that our wild lands would be better off with bison than without them would be a tough sell. I think the nearest free-ranging bison to our eastern lands are in Oklahoma where the locals have learned to tread softly and understand the risks.

An almost free-ranging bison herd at Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky/Tennessee. (Not true free-ranging since the borders of the area are policed against their movements.)

In the northeast, one animal largely missing from the scenery is the woodland caribou. There are still some extant in Canada, and I've heard rumors that some have been seen in Maine forest just south of the Canadian border, but those might merely be cases of wishful thinking. However, the animals are not extinct and could be returned to the forests of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont if only some effort were made to protect enough habitat to allow them to find the area once again attractive.

An eastern woodland caribou in Newfoundland.

A huge piece of the ecological puzzle that could be restored are our extant predators. And chief among these are the Grey wolf and the mountain lion. Other than some brief and singular appearances from time to time, there really are no mountain lions remaining in the east outside of the small pocket of the animals that have survived in Florida. Allowing the mountain lion to return to the east and exist here unmolested would be a relatively easy thing to do. The hard thing would be to control the mad hysteria of the eastern humans who have grown accustomed to living in a world without such large feline predators.

The true eastern cougar is extinct. But western types could flow right into the old ecological niche with ease.

And, of course, wolves are the bane of the corporate greedheads who rule us all. To sustain healthy wolf populations you need lots of true wilderness, and true wilderness means that the lands encompassed as such cannot be exploited by mines, by drilling, by timbering, by urban sprawl. The filth who profit from the degradation of our lands always find it easy to loose their mindless rabid tools, the hunters and gun-humpers and ATV fans who scream like the spoiled brats they are when anyone champions the aim of returning the Timber wolf to its native range.

A Great Lakes timber wolf. It's only a short distance from the Midwest to the East. Let's allow them to return home.

Coyotes have been able to move back into former Timber wolf range and partially fill the ecological niche that the wolf filled. But coyotes aren't wolves and can't really do the same jobs that wolves did. And that job was to curb the growth of the vast herds of whitetail deer that fill the east from the deepest forests to the very edges of our urban areas. Many forests in the east cannot grow properly because of the sheer numbers of hungry deer who browse constantly and prevent the growth of native trees and plants. Deer are largely uncontrolled and their numbers threaten our native ecosystems here in the east. What is needed is the return of the wolf and the mountain lion.

I would love to be able to go hiking and backpacking and trekking in a restored eastern forest habitat that included woodland bison, elk, wolf, and mountain lion. Maybe one day this will happen. My suspicion is that it could happen, but only in the absence of humans. The humans will definitely go away at some point. When that occurs, I have to hope that our elderly Pleistocene friends will have survived to once again roam where they have been excluded for far too long.

For now, if you want to experience scenes of Pleistocene flora and fauna, there are precious few places where this can happen. I was lucky enough to go driving and trekking in Yellowstone National Park last year. There, the Pleistocene megafauna are still around--what remains of it, at any rate. You can stand on hilltops and see bison and bighorn sheep and elk and mule deer and pronghorns and wolves and grizzly bears and (if you're lucky) mountain lions and lynx. There are also great opportunities to see what's left of our Pleistocene pals in a number of places in Alaska, Montana, Idaho, and in several of the Canadian provinces. Hell...there are places where the wolverine still roams. But here in the eastern USA, such things are only the dreams of those of us who wish to see even a portion of the biological health restored to our lands.



RESTORE, a movement to create a new National Park in Maine, restoring the Pleistocene flora and fauna as closely as possible. Of course corporations and gun-humpers and four-wheel/snowmobile fuckheads will fight to ensure that it never happens.