Your Dog's Going to Hell, Mine's Already in Heaven

I have never understood Communion.

How is a cracker made in a factory in Ohio, and grape juice bought in a jug at Safeway, the blood and body of Christ?

How is a magical wafer any less funny that magic underwear (Mormonism), or space aliens from another planet (Scientology), or a Monkey God?

And why are Christian churches playing pantomine cannibalism anyway?

I ask this because the latest news is that someone in Toronto is outraged that a priest gave a communion cracker to a dog.

According to those in attendance at the historical church at 188 Carlton St. in downtown Toronto, it was a spontaneous gesture, one intended to make both the dog and its owner – a first timer at the church — feel welcomed. But at least one parishioner saw the act as an affront to the rules and regulations of the Anglican Church. He filed a complaint with the reverend and with the Anglican Diocese of Toronto about the incident – and has since left the church.

“I wrote back to the parishioner that it is not the policy of the Anglican Church to give communion to animals,” said Bishop Patrick Yu, the area bishop of York-Scarborough responsible for St. Peter’s, who received the complaint in early July. “I can see why people would be offended. It is a strange and shocking thing, and I have never heard of it happening before.

Really? They are outraged?

Bishop Yu is running around like a scared gerbil because some nameless, faceless person has complained that "the magic cookie" should not be given to a dog?

I am broad-minded. If you want to go to a church that hates dogs and coddles haters, knock yourself out.

If you want to dance around in your magic underwear while eating magic cookies and talking about space aliens, monkey Gods, and cannibalism I am all for that too.

Each to his own.

But as for myself, I worship at a different church: the First Church of Field and Stream. It in an ancient church, it is the First Church, and it is not under new management:

In the First Church of Field and Stream, the resurrection story is told by fritillary butterflies and red-eared sliding turtles. The story of life everlasting is told by a young couple on a river outting, and a pair of deer bouncing across a bright green field of emerging barley.

You do not have to read these stories in a book; At the First Church of Field and Stream you can see them for yourself.

And, for the record, the First Church of Field and Stream does not hate dogs. In fact, they are part of our communion ritual.

Let us prey.

January 26, 1962 episode called "The Hunt"

From The Twilight Zone TV Series

"A dog's got a right to have a man around, just the same as that man's got a right to have a dog around.... I wonder what kind of a tea party they keep in there anyways? Must be city folks mostly. They'd be the ones most likely to outlaw coon hunting."

• Related Links:
  ** Hunting on Sunday
  ** The Forest Ozymandias
  ** At the First Church of Field and Stream
  ** Sunday in the Church of Field and Stream
  ** Dogs In the Woods is Like Church
  ** God Recycles
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In the Beginning

Repost from April 2005.

"The earth trembled and a great rift appeared, separating the first man and woman from the rest of the animal kingdom. As the chasm grew deeper and wider, all the other creatures, afraid for their lives, returned to the forest -- except for the dog, who after much consideration, leapt the perilous rift to stay with the humans on the other side. His love for humanity was greater than his bond to other creatures, he explained, and he willingly forfeited his place in paradise to prove it."

4 Native American folktale from "The Lost History of the Canine Race" by Mary Elizabeth Thurston

Compared to What?

Is there anything wrong with your life that a little more gratitude could not fix?
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Round and Round in the Circle Game

May the circle be unbroken.

I found this graphic on my computer today while I was looking for something else. I suspect I saved it a few years back when I was writing about global wildlife migrations and the fact that everything is connected, left to right, up and down, all over the world.

Yes, migration is about more than birds. It includes whales, sharks, tuna, seals, wildebeests, elephants, turtles, pronghorn antelope, butterflies, dragonflies, and even senior citizens going to Florida for the winter.

Of course, the circle game is bigger than that isn't it?

The nuclear molten core of the earth is a bubbling cauldron of magma, and that magma is seething up and cooling down, like boiling water in a pot.

Even as the molten rock goes up and down, it slowly pushes the vast plates of the earth around, and on top of these massive plates of super dense rock floats "the light stuff" like granite, dirt, sand, redwoods, elephants, and us.

And, of course the great nuclear ball that is the sun heats up the oceans which have massive upwellings of water at the equator, and massive downwelling at the poles.

These in turn drive vast ripping ocean currents we call the Gulf Stream or Humboldt's Current, or the Indian Ocean Gyre, and these in turn determine where the fish feed and whether we need to throw another log on the fire in December.

Several times a day the gravity of the moon pulls billions of pounds of water this way or that, driving water backward up rivers, fueling tidal bores, and pushing waves up and down a million miles of crab-speckled beaches.

The atmosphere too boils up and cools down, with massive upwellings and downwellings of air, and vast ripping currents of wind driving themselves around the earth in clear patterns we call the Air Stream or the Trade Winds or the Doldrums, depending on where they are and what they are doing.

The ground we live on also boils with life as worms and groundhogs, ants, plants and fungi, turn over the soil and build upon it, pulling things down and lifting things up.



And on top of this boiling planet we fight the change.

We try to build for permanence and prevent extinctions.

We fear both global warming and global cooling.

We worry about energy and where we will get it.

We are upset when butterfly, bird, mammal and fish migrations change, and we are equally upset when they do not, and the animals pass away in the face of changing circumstances.

As a rule we are oblivious.

Elephants now live in the heat of Africa and Asia, but their cousins once roamed the frozen north, and we do not think to wonder why none are there now.

Birds fly overhead unseen, coming from places we do not wonder about, and going to places we cannot imagine.

We do not know the name of the drainage we live in, or how the creek behind our house makes its way to the ocean.

We do not even know the names of all the trees in our backyard.

Meanwhile, we go to work in our prisons on the road, stuck in traffic, insulated from the weather, our minds spinning; the world's longest playing record, all the grooves running to the great self-obsessed hole in the center.

“Efé children of the Ituri Forest in Zaire (Rep. of Congo, central Africa) begin the Osani game by sitting in a circle, feet touching, all connected. Each child in turn names a round object like the sun (oi), the moon (tiba), a star (bibi) an eye (ue) and then goes on to name a figurative expression of “round” like the circle of the family, togetherness, a baby in the womb, or the cycle of the moon. As players fail to come up with a term that is “circular” they are eliminated from the game. Eventually, only one remains. Tradition has it that this player will live a long and prosperous life.” :: source

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Amazing Jesus

• Related Posts:
  ** Hunting on Sunday
  ** At the First Church of Field and Stream
  
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Coffee and Provocation

Dogs More Like Us Than Chimps?
Are dogs more like us than chimps? Maybe. Jozsef Topal of the Institute for Psychology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences says so, in any case: "In my view, pet dogs can be regarded in many respects as 'preverbal infants in canine's clothing,'" he says, adding that many dog-owner relationships mirror human parental bonds with children. >> More here

Healthy Dalmatians?
Healthy Dalmatians? There's an idea! Here's the back story for those trying to keep up. Want to help set things right? Here's a start: an ipetition to the AKC asking them to allow backcross Dalmatians to be registered.

The Sibley Guide to Birds is Now Online:
Good news: the Sibley bird guides are now on line. Yes! Yahoo!

The Ironic Death of an Organic Farming Guru & Health Nut:
Jerome Irving Rodale was the founder of the organic food movement, the publisher and creator of Prevention magazine, and the author of a huge book on composting that my father used to own. In 1971, he told interviewer Dick Cavett that he'd live to 100. Moments later, the 72-year old Rodale slumped dead in his chair from a heart attack. That episode of The Dick Cavett Show was never broadcast.

Gouldian Finch:
There are now far more Gouldian Finches in captivity than there are in the wild. How many other animals is this true of? The Siberian Tiger, and most other subspecies of Tiger I think. The Hyacinth Macaw, I am pretty sure. Cotton-top Tamarins. Anything else??

Different Strokes:
The opening of the old TV show, with different music. Yes, music does make a difference!

50 Things Every 18-year-old Should Know:
Basic stuff we should all know. Now, what are the 50 things a 50-year old should know?

God Hates Figs!
Yes, you read that right. God hates figs. See Mark 11: 12-14 and Matthew 21: 18-20 and Jeremiah 29:17 for conformation. I am pretty sure God loves everything else, however!

First Gorillas, Now Orangutans:
National Geographic says a large population of over 2,000 Orangutans has been discovered in Borneo. This follows the new discovery of a very large (100,000) population of Lowland Gorillas found in the Congo last year.

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The Mullahs of Texas

From The Wall Street Journal:

The Texas Board of Education will vote this week on a new science curriculum designed to challenge the guiding principle of evolution, a step that could influence what is taught in biology classes across the nation.

The proposed curriculum change would prompt teachers to raise doubts that all life on Earth is descended from common ancestry. Texas is such a huge textbook market that many publishers write to the state's standards, then market those books nationwide.

"This is the most specific assault I've seen against evolution and modern science," said Steven Newton, a project director at the National Center for Science Education, which promotes teaching of evolution.

Texas school board chairman Don McLeroy also sees the curriculum as a landmark -- but a positive one.

Dr. McLeroy believes that God created the earth less than 10,000 years ago. If the new curriculum passes, he says he will insist that high-school biology textbooks point out specific aspects of the fossil record that, in his view, undermine the theory that all life on Earth is descended from primitive scraps of genetic material that first emerged in the primordial muck about 3.9 billion years ago.

He also wants the texts to make the case that individual cells are far too complex to have evolved by chance mutation and natural selection, an argument popular with those who believe an intelligent designer created the universe.

In Japan and China, they are cheering this on, as the rejection of Darwin will set back American schools 100 years, and guarantee that Asia will dominate the global economy for the next 100 years, the Golden Age of Biotechnology.

In Iran and Iraq and Afghanistan, they are cheering this on as well, but for a different reason.

Could the religious zealots of the Taliban variety gain a foothold in the U.S.? It appears they are well on their way to do so. And all you have to do to help is remain silent...



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And in the End, Only One Question

At the end of life, when you are begging God for a little more time on Earth, you will hear only one question whispered softly in your ear: "And what did you do with the time that I gave you?"
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Life, Explained

On the first day, God created the dog and said: "Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. For this, I will give you a life span of twenty years."

The dog said: "That's a long time to be barking. How about only ten years and I'll give you back the other ten?" So God agreed.

On the second day, God created the monkey and said: "Entertain people, do tricks, and make them laugh. For this, I'll give you a twenty-year life span."

The monkey said: "Monkey tricks for twenty years? That's a pretty long time to perform. How about I give you back ten like the Dog did?" And God agreed.

On the third day, God created the cow and said: "You must go into the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves and give milk to support the farmer's family. For this, I will give you a life span of sixty years."

The cow said: "That's kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. How about twenty and I'll give back the other forty?" And God agreed again.

On the fourth day, God created man and said: "Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. For this, I'll give you twenty years."

But man said: "Only twenty years? Could you possibly give me my twenty, the forty the cow gave back, the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back; that makes eighty, okay?"

"Okay," said God, "You asked for it."

So that is why for our first twenty years we eat, sleep, play and enjoy ourselves. For the next forty years we slave in the sun to support our family. For the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren. And for the last ten years we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.

Life has now been explained to you.
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A More Perfect Union

Full text of speech here Link to video here

More folks need to read Barack Obama's first book, in which he talks about the fact that when his white mother, from Kansas, married his black father, from Kenya, such a marriage was illegal in more than half the states in the Union.

In that book, Barack also writes of his grandmother's fear of black men, the sacrifices his white mother made to put him in a very good school in Hawai'i, the marginal economic situation of his white grandparents (who raised him for 10 years), his own service organizing poor black communities in Chicago, and his personal conversion to Christianity while attending Trinity United Church of Christ.

The book is entitled Dreams From My Father and is available, in paperback, in any book store or library in the nation. It is an excellent read, and though it was written 13 years ago (right after Barack finished graduating from Harvard Law School), no one who has read the book, or heard it, would find a note out of place from the speech he gave today.

This is not a politician recutting his jib. This is not a politician who has any fear of controversy, or who is confused about who he is, or what he wants to say to the world.

Instead of diving for cover, Obama used the Ferraro-Wright flap as a moment to reaffirm his message and how he came to it.

Instead of assuming Americans are fools, he spoke as if most Americans are smart, honest and looking to build a better America.

Of course, not everyone is going to get to the promised land. There are some who are too angry, too scared, or too vested in the politics of division. Is Reverend Wright one of those? Maybe. Are Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly? Maybe. Time and action will tell us who is most interested in dividing the nation along race or religious lines. One thing for sure: it's not Barack Obama.
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God Recycles

At the First Church of Field and Stream, we have always known that God recycles, for what are we but star dust and dinosaur piss?

That said, we are always very happy to see alternative religious leaders like the Archbishop of Canterbury, saluting the message that we have an obligation to Good Original Design (God), and nodding to the fact that this is a world we take from one generation and hand off to the next.

Particularly welcome is the message that we have an obligation to "build to last," and that not everything in our lives should be disposable.

So recycle, reuse, do without, and build to last. Or, as we say at the First Church of Field and Stream, "This is the only world we will ever have. Let's try not to screw it up."
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Why There are So Few Muslim Terrierists

From the sages at "Islam Online" who explain, in their own way, why there are no Muslim Terrierists:

Wa `alaykum As-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh. In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.

Dear sister in Islam, we would like to thank you for the great confidence you place in us, and we implore Allah Almighty to help us serve His cause and render our work for His Sake. May Allah reward you abundantly for your interest in knowing the teachings of Islam!

In his response to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states: “A dog can be owned for purposes such as the following:

1. A trained dog for hunting. Remember in Islam we are only allowed to hunt for food; there is no such thing as hunting for fun, for we are not allowed to kill or torture animals or drive them out of their habitats for the fun of it.
   
   
2. A trained dog as a guide. This would be the case if a person is blind and he/she has no choice but to keep a dog for essential services. In this case, it is permissible for him/her to keep a dog inside the house once it has been trained for service, but it is still recommended that the dog have its own sleeping arrangement.
   
   
3. A dog trained for police duties.
   
   
4. A guard dog to guard houses or property.
   
   
5. A dog used by farmers to shepherd cattle and sheep.

We are, however, not allowed to keep a dog as a pet, since it is not a very clean animal. How often have you come across the nasty sight of dogs taken for a walk licking their own excrement? Isn’t it disgusting to see their owners kissing the mouth of such animals after such incidents as if nothing happened? Would you kiss the mouth of your own baby if he were to do the same? Think how many parasites and microbes may be hiding in their mouths. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) has spared us from being contaminated by such filth when he ordered us to stay clear of the saliva of dogs. If we ever come into contact with a dog’s saliva we must wash the spot seven times, the first of which should be with sand or dirt. It is also possible to use a bacterial soap instead of sand or dirt. In conclusion: Don’t contemplate taking a dog home as a pet. If, however, you do need to keep a dog for any of the reasons given above, then you may do so. But take every precaution not to have contact with its saliva, and also arrange for a separate living space.”

Sailor, A Working Terrier, Has Gone to Earth

Sailor died one year ago today, and it still hurts to talk about it.

And yet, this was a good death by any measure -- standing up, boots on, doing what she loved best.

The post below was her obituary from this blog, one year ago. Words cannot express how much I loved this small, self-effacing little dog. We had a happy life together.

____________________________

Sailor, the love of my life, has gone to earth for the last time.

Her last day was a beautiful sunny morning in September.

She worked a groundhog at the first hole of the day, only 200 feet from the truck, and she then found again, 10 feet deep, in a rocky sette under an ancient and shattered oak at the edge of the farm.

We moved on, confident that she would exit in a bit, and she did, following us up a slope to a large field sette where she located again and bolted a large groundhog, which was nailed by Mountain as it tried to slip back to ground.

Two groundhogs down, and it was not yet 9:30. It was already a good day.

The dogs noodled around the edge of a steeply sloped and forested creek bed, and Sailor found again in a mess of old iron, discarded rugs, and wood that had been topped over with dirt. This earth was undiggable, and we moved on, confident that Sailor would sense the silence and realize we were not interested.

At the bottom of the slope, I began to pound the posthole digger into the ground like I was digging, and down came Sailor, trotting to where the action was.

Fooled you, I thought, but she did not seem to mind. She traipsed along behind me as we went up the wooded slope to the fields on the other side.

We worked the edge of the fields, looking for settes. All three of the dogs pinged on a rocky set of holes just 100 yards up the edge. Excellent!

Once again, Sailor was in the ground first, moving around and trying to locate. This sette was very tight, and after forty-five minutes of chasing around through rocks, roots and rumble, Sailor came out, walked off a little ways into the woods, and sat down. She was tired.

Sailor giving up in the middle of a dig is a very odd thing, but I reminded myself she was a little dog and she was no longer young. Plus she had worked four settes already. And then, of course, this sette was impossible. Maybe she had the right idea -- move on.

I let Sailor rest for a few minutes, and then picked her up and carried her to the creek for water. She was not interested, so back we went to the hole.

While I was in the creek, Chris had been digging up a storm, and his young dog, Moxie, had at last found a small groundhog squeezed in among the broken slates. I helped Chris move a little more dirt to get to it, and then we dispatched it and decided to call it a day.

I picked up Sailor and a full load of tools and carried her back to the truck in my arms. She looked fine, but she was very tired.

We were about 100 yards from the truck, when Sailor suddenly squirmed and jumped out of my arms.

She hit the ground running, flying down the fresh-mowed hay field like a six-month old puppy. What the hell? Had she seen a rat? A cat? A groundhog? A fox? There was no telling.

Sailor disappeared over a slight curve of the earth, headed straight for the trucks. I was sure she was headed for the vehicles.

When I arrived at the trucks a minute or two later, Sailor was nowhere to be seen. I assumed she had slid under the vehicles to get cool, and so I loaded up the tools and poured her some water.

I looked under the truck, but the grass was too high to see anything. I looked under Chris' vehicle, but she was not there.

Chris walked up with Moxie and the rest of the tools, and Dave, the farm manager pulled up in his truck at exactly the same time.

Chris and I showed Dave the three groundhogs on the hood of my vehicle, and we talked a bit about Dave's chickens and the terrific quality of the eggs you get from pasture-raised hens.

While Dave was still there, I rolled my truck forward, very slowly, looking for Sailor. She was nowhere to be seen, and I began to get worried. She never wandered off. Ever...

Chris and I said goodbye to Dave, and then we headed off with Moxie and Mountain to find Sailor.

We walked the length of the hayfield, which Dave had cut as smooth as a suburban lawn the day before. We saw nothing.

Then, just as we neared the very end of the hayfield, Chris saw something white on the ground in the distance. He began to walk to it and then, as he got closer, he started to run. That was when I knew something was terribly wrong. I did not run.

It was Sailor. She was dead in the field, her eyes open, rigor just starting to set in to her legs. There was nothing at all around her. It was as if someone had put a stuffed toy out onto the lawn. But, of course, it was not a stuffed animal. It was Sailor.

Sailor must have been dead within a minute of when I last saw her. She had continued running past the trucks, taking a sharp right up the hayfield and then straight on to where she had expired.

Chris left me alone with Sailor, and I sat in the field, craddling the greatest little dog I have ever known, completely heart broken and dumbfounded.

There is no explaining it. Perhaps Sailor died of a massive heart attack or a stroke or an embolism. Perhaps the Black Widow Spider bite that she survived in June weakened her heart or brain, and something finally ruptured within. Perhaps she got stung by a bee or a hornet while she was in my arms, and that's what made her jump off and run, with anaphylactic shock setting in a few hundred yards later. Perhaps a Black Widow Spider got her, but this time it caused a very different reaction from the one before.

It hardly matters what killed her. Either way she is dead and gone, and now I have a hole in my life that seems unfathomable. I loved this little dog.

Sailor was wonderful on every level. She was like a cat in the house -- curling up in her bed, and mugging for my wife who adored her. No other dog was allowed on the bed, but Sailor was. It is an unequal world, and Sailor was an unequaled dog, and everyone knew it. She was treated like a queen.

Sailor began her working career at nine months, and got her first working terrier certificate at 10 months, to a groundhog, only an hour or so after being skunked undergound. From Day One, there was no stopping this dog.

Larry Morrison once told me I would die of old age before I ever saw a dog the likes of Sailor again, and I am afraid -- very afraid -- that he might be right.

Over her life, Sailor worked it all -- groundhogs, red fox, raccoon, and possum. We mostly worked groundhogs of course -- they account for better than 90 percent of the terrier work in my area.

It's impossible for me to tally up all the critters Sailor worked, but the number is well over 400 -- a fairly impressive tally for a dog that weighed just 10 pounds with a full belly, and who stood only 11 inches tall.

Sailor was not a perfect dog in terms of conformation. She was a little short in the back, and had almost no coat at all on her belly. Winter fox hunting was hard on her. That said, I have never seen a dog that could equal her in the field. She had a great nose, and could get anywhere, and she never got hurt. Sailor not only knew butt from breath, she knew the power of voice and used it. She also knew when to put in her teeth. On more than one occassion people have gone out with me and exclaimed, after watching Sailor in action, "I thought you said she was a soft dog." Well she is. But mostly she's a smart dog.

Sailor did not know one way to work a critter in the hole, she knew a half dozen. And she changed tactics when needed, depending on the quarry and its temperament.

When Sailor was underground, I almost never worried about her. She was small enough to get anywhere and she was not foolish. She protected herself from real harm, and her only serious injury was caused by a freak accident when a falling piece of steel roofing nearly cut her in half. I scooped her up in my arms that day last winter, stuffed her intestines back in, and sped to an emergency vet who stapled her back together. Miraculously, she rallied and was back in the field again a few months later.

Sailor, you have gone to ground for the last time. I know you are happy down there, because it was your favorite place. Until we meet again.

REQUIEM

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.

~ Robert Louis Stephenson ~

Sailor doing what she loved best.

Jesus, That's a Lot of Camo

Devout readers of this blog might remember that a while back I noted some fools over at PETA had suggested that Jesus was a vegetarian. I cited Biblical sources, noting that Jesus was not only NOT a vegetarian, he served lamb at the Last Supper, and one of his major miracles was "the miracle of loaves and fishes," and not "the miracle of loaves and tofu."

I then went on to prove, using Biblical sources, that God is a meat-eater.

Now, for those interested in carrying this Good News message out into the woods, I am happy to report that several new camouflaged versions of the Bible are available. This information comes to us via way of J.R. Absher's blog over at Outdoor Life, who notes that a camo coffin is also now available.

Just to add to the items listed, I would note that over at Cabela's they have all kinds of camo bedding (Mossy Oak sheets and comforters, anyone?), cameras, baby shoes, diaper bags, and burp bibs to say nothing of regular clothing for everyone from toddlers to geriatrics. And of course there's no limit to the camo gun and bow wrap, packs, rain gear, boots, belts, gun cases, and deer stands. Leaving Cabela's and hitting a few more sites, we can find camo versions of ladies intimates (Don't lose her in the camo sheets, boys!), and camouflage wedding dresses, to say nothing of camo leashes, collars and dog beds.

Oddly, I do not own a single piece of camo clothing; I'm a Carhartt man. When you're digging on the dogs, the critters tend to be underground and visuals are not too much of a problem; what you need is something that will not wear out from repeated contact with dirt and briars.

Carhartt offers the kind of camouflage I need -- it makes a crazy terrierman look like anyone else that might normally be found on a farm. Blend in, blend in. There are no crazy people here; move on.

As for any PETA members that might be upset by all this camo, and especially the camo Bible, I have Good News: this new camo Bible is printed entirely with paper. The first Gutenberg Bible, on the other hand, was printed on the skins of over 300 sheep, while the Dead Sea Scrolls were printed on the skins of thousands of goats.

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Elk, Wolves and Grazing

Over at the Black Bear Blog, Tom Remington has a couple of posts on wolves, and also one in which a young man asks a very good question: Why Aren’t Ranchers Upset About Elk Eating Crops?

Reading these posts tonight made me recall an email I got back in January in response to a post I made about Idaho Governor "Butch" Otter's suggestion that 500 wolves be shot in his state.

The not-so-subtle title of my January post was "Why Stupid on Stilts Is Good for the Environment."

A bit harsh, to be sure, and my post generated an email from a reader who is a US Forest Service rangeland management specialist in Montana. He had a couple of objections to my original post. They were:

Ed Abbey was writing a long time ago (the 1960s, 70s and 80s);

There are still some grazing problems out west, but on the whole the land is not as wrecked as it used to be because of better (and integrated) land management plans, and professional science-based rangeland specialists;

People like Butch Otter are saying we need to shoot wolves in order to save elk, the hunting of which is a big business in Idaho.

Everything done in the National Forest system is subsidized, and in this respect cattle grazing is no different than recreation.

Points one and two are readily conceded on this end. Sometimes, when I am writing, it's easier to pull up the old stuff in my head than it is to track down the latest quote, picture and data set. Western lands are still over grazed, but it is true that they are not as bad as they were (or as good as they are going to get, I will venture).

As I noted in the last line of the original piece in question, America does wildlife management pretty well, and it's thanks to a lot of Good Government Guy and Gals, hunters, and environmentalists working together that this is so. I am a pretty enthusiastic supporter of the younger, college-educated and science-based public lands managers coming up. I truly believe the best is yet to come.

That said, I disagreed with points three and four, and I detailed why in a missive back to my Forest Service friend. Because my response is "on point" as to why Elk are given a pass for eating alfalfa while wolves are not given a pass for killing an occasional calf, I append it below:

Dear M -

Thanks for the note. I see you are working in the ___ National Forest in Montana. I know nothing about Montana National Forests, but I do know about land management problems in Idaho.

The good news, is that some of the major problems in the Nolo and Clearwater are getting fixed. In fact, the good news across the board is that we have much better science and much better public lands administrators now than we used to have. It used to be that a USFS guy would mark his career by how many big timber sales he could put together. Now, in part due to litigation and in part due to education and attrition in Forest Service and BLM personnel, different values are in competition with each other. That's a good thing for all sides. Who knew truth to suffer in a free and open debate?

There is, of course, a place for sensible private business use of public lands, but I think you would agree that it's an easier mission to achieve in theory than in reality. The Clearwater, for example, needs more prescribed burns, but the timber folks are not all that enthusiastic about that -- they would rather skid out the big trees and leave the trimmings for beetle bore infestation. Burning up their profits? Are you mad?

The same is true for mining, drilling and grazing. I think you and I would probably agree that there are a lot of places in the West that could benefit from a little less grazing (especially around riparian areas), but try to get the cattle folks to agree to that, much less the cattle. When we talk about free range in this country, it's not just free of fencing -- it's free of human oversight too, which is why wolves are an issue. Not only could the cattle guys not be bothered with owning land, or building fences, they generally cannot be bothered to put someone out there 24-7 to watch the herd.

The good news, as you note, is that a great deal of National Forest rangeland has improved through the 1980s and 1990s thanks to better management practices. A very big problem remains, however: The Western range is vast, the herds of cattle grazing on them are numerous, and the Forest Service has too few personnel to do very much on-the-ground oversight.

That said, I concede that things are better than they used to be, and I have little doubt they are not as good as they are going to get. I am, basically, a huge fan of our public lands professionals.

OK, that said, let's look at the wolf-cow-rangeland-elk-hunter nexus that Governor Otter speaks of for a second.

The first question is this: Are wolves actually having a serious negative impact on elk populations in Idaho or Wyoming?

The short answer is NO.

In Wyoming, where wolves were first introduced in the West (outside of MN where they have always been extent) the state reports that their elk populations are 91,555 -- more than 9,000 head over capacity.

"We would like to get the elk down to our population objective," Game and Fish spokesman Al Langston said. "But overall in the state, the elk population is doing well."

In Idaho, The Idaho Statesman (hardly a liberal rag) notes that : "In 2005, hunters harvested 21,523 elk - the largest number in a decade and the seventh-largest harvest since 1935."

In Montana, nearly 60 percent of Montana's original elk management units exceed their elk-population objective and the folks that write the outdoor columns in your neck of the woods openly laugh at the fear mongers who say wolves are a problem, noting that Montana's elk-harvests are very fine, thank you.

Where elk populations have gone down, it turns out wolves have been less of a factor than the drought -- the same drought that drives beetle bore infestations, and which has always resulted in swings in elk and deer populations in the west.

The bottom line is that, so far, the presence of wolves does not appear to have had a noticeable, significant or unwanted decline in the average Elk population of Idaho, Wyoming or Montana -- despite the rise in wolf populations in all three states.

If there had been a noticeable, significant or unwanted decline in Elk populations, would the proper response be to shoot large numbers of wolves, or would it be to cut back on private ranching on public lands?

My answer: Cut back on cattle and sheep grazing on public lands. Here's why:

As a general rule, wild land can support more wild animals than domestic animals for the simple reason that wild animals (like elk and deer) are native to the land and pretty efficient at converting forbs and grass into flesh.

As you can see from the data (gleaned from GAO), land that can support one cow can support more than 7 mule deer, more than 2 elk, and more than 10 pronghorn.

The Governor of Idaho wants to shoot 500 wolves, each of which can be expected to consume about 20 elk a year (according to Yellowstone biologists who track this kind of thing).

To put it another way, 500 wolves can be expected to eat about 10,000 elk a year across Idaho.

If we want to replace those 10,000 elk in Idaho, we do not need to shoot wolves. All we need to do is dial back on the Animal Unit Months (AUMS) of grazing we are now allowing on public land in Idaho. The AUM data for state land (and federal lands by agency) is available here, but from what I can see, if we want to see an increase of 10,000 elk in Idaho, all we have to do is dial back on public lands grazing in Idaho by 5,000 head.

Now, of course, the subsidized grazers will object to this, but remember they also object to Elk being in our National Forests. As far as some ranchers are concerned, the National Forest system is something they own, and it's there for their use -- not for elk, wolves, back country packers, fly fishermen or even hunters.

The "beef cow vs. bull elk" debate is not a new one, of course, but it is important to note that it predates the rise of wolf in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

On the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's web site, for example, there's a pretty good article detailing how livestock grazing in the Elkhorns negatively impacted the elk herds up there until they began putting together an integrated land management plan. Fish, Wildlife and Parks area coordinator Mike Korn is quoted as saying:

"The combination of elk and cattle on public land allotments has always been the point of contention in the Elkhorns. The general feeling from livestock permittees is that there are too many elk using the forage, and their cattle are suffering because of it."

"Too many elk"?

Well sure, you can have too many elk if you put a lot of beef cattle on the land and also have no wolves to keep things in balance.

But let's remember who the foreigner is here. The elk and the wolf are native to the landscape, but the cattle showed up yesterday and are now claiming all the rights. If something has to give, it has to be the last arrival.

Especially since the last arrival is costing America's taxpayers quite a bit of money -- $500 million a year in direct costs according to one study.

Before the wolves showed up, the cattle guys were being painted as the bad guys. Now the cattle guys are only too happy to change the story and point to the wolf as the bad guy, just as the timber guys are only too happy to change the story and point to forest fire as the bad guy.

There's just one problem with that equation, and that problem is what's left unsaid: that what made Montana, Idaho and Wyoming the great states they are today was not subsidized free-range cattle, strip mining, and clear cutting of timber, but God-driven natural forces.

And three of those natural forces are elk, wolves and fire.

For the cattle guys, the wolf is a convenient distraction from what I think is the real story, which is that elk and cattle are in direct competition with each other. The cattlemen want us to forget that every cow stands where two bull elk should be bugling.

The good news in the American West is that we can still field-test our theories against reality. Most of the west is under "new management" of one form or another -- Wall Street Executives, PhD scientists, rangeland experts, farmers, ranchers, Forest Service and BLM officials, etc. Some of these folks are managing their lands better than others, but what's truly interesting is that very few of them seem to be managing their land better than God did.

Former Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation president Bob Munson helped start the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which gives us some very interesting numbers about roadless forest land in Idaho -- land where there is no timber cutting, no fire suppression, no mining, and (as the name suggests) no roads. There is also not too much grazing of cattle. This is land still under the "old management plan," i.e. God's Original Design (or GOD for short).

As the Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership notes:

88% of the land in hunt units that yielded more than 90% branched-antler bull elk is roadless;

94% of the land in hunt units yielding both 70% bucks and 40% 4+ point bucks in the mule deer harvest is roadless;

58% of westslope cutthroat trout habitat is found in roadless areas. And, 83% of the of the westslope cutthroat populations rated as "strong" are found in roadless areas;

74% of chinook salmon habitat is found in roadless areas; and

94% of sediment-impaired (degraded) streams are located outside of roadless areas.

Now, to be clear, I am not against all grazing on public lands any more than I am against all timber harvest on public lands. You are correct that, in theory, we should be able to cut timber and graze cattle on public lands under science-based supervision and with carefully crafted integrated management plans.

That said, I am against allowing folks to exploit public lands for private financial gain while the American people lose money on the deal.

And the American people DO lose money on the deal -- lots of money.

Timber sales alone on public land results in a net LOSS to U.S. taxpayers of over a billion dollars a year. The unreimbursed costs of grazing on public lands appears to generate major losses as well.

You suggest that everything in the National Forest system is subsidized, and ranchers, miners, drillers, and timber companies are no different in this regard than hunters, anglers or back country tourists.

I disagree.

The timber and cattle companies working public lands employ few people, put disproportionately high resource pressures on the land, and require far more management oversight, construction, and reclamation money than do hunters, anglers, bird watchers, or car campers. Extractor industries pocket the cash (hence the name "cash cow") and leave us with the bills.

Hunters, anglers, bird watchers and campers are not a complete free ride, of course, but the cost-per-person-served is very low compared to the cattle and logging companies, and a tremendous number of jobs are generated by recreation -- far more than are generated by cattle and logging.

Lumping these two groups together, I think, is to lump two very different things. One group is a largely benign presence on the land and a huge economic engine, while the other leaves a massive environmental footprint, but creates relatively few jobs.

Ultimately, of course, all public land debates devolve into politics. Sadly, however, the elk, wolves, trees and bears do not vote -- people do.

The good news is that Governor Otter's inane comments about killing off all the wolves are exactly the kind of thing that mobilizes people to take action, donate to groups, join political campaigns, and vote. In the year ahead, I suspect no one will have harmed the cause of public lands grazing -- or done more to help wolves and elk in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana -- than Governor "Butch" Otter.

And for that, we give thanks -- not because we are against ranchers, but because we are for elk and wolves.

Unlike Governor Otter, I think all sides can find room for each other out there in vast stretches of the American west. If push comes to shove, however, Governor Otter has just helped make sure that the wolf (and the elk) will not lose.

My friend working for the U.S. Forest Service objected to a few bits in my missive. As I recall (I am afraid I do not have his original email), he argued that there was a lot more grazing in roadless areas than I thought and that the $500 million grazing figure was too high.

He may be right. Without a doubt there is no ending the debate and discussion on these issues.

The good news is that in the discussion is the solution. At the end of the day, though we may not end up with a perfect policy that makes all sides happy all the time, we get a pretty good policy in which we end up being neck-deep in elk, deer, wolves, alfalfa, and all the rest.

Whatever it is we get wrong, we are (more often than not) getting conservation issues rights. And for that, I remain a proud American.

PETA Fails the Bible Test

The centerpiece to this table is not tofu.


A hat tip to Steve Bodio who alerted me to the fact that the self-aggrandizing lunatics at PETA have put models of Jesus, Paul McCartney (as Sergeant Pepper), Ghandi and others in a cage in the side of an Airstream trailer that has been made up to look like a diner (a reference to the Last Supper I suppose). The story is up at Maine Hunting Today.

All this does is prove that the folks at PETA have not only never read the Bible, they really did ride the short bus to get to school.

Say what you want about Jesus, but he was a Jew, and as such was raised in a world in which the Torah -- the most sacred book of God -- was not only made of animal skin, but wrapped in animal skins as well. His was a world of sheep and goats, camels and donkeys, horses, and mules. Sheep and goats were routinely sacrificed and eaten, just as they are today. Larger pack animals were used to the very edge of their miserable existence, and then they were killed and skinned for water bags, saddles, drums, shoes, bags, and cord -- just as they are today. In much of the Middle East, little has changed in 2,000 years, and I assure you that there is no notion of Animal Rights at all.

In both the Old and New Testaments, animals do not have rights, and in fact on at least one day every year -- during the Passover sacrifice -- practicing Jews always had to eat meat as it was part of the traditional meal. In fact, while the Bible is not quite a recipe book, it does have instructions. In Deuteronomy 14 we are told:

"These are the animals you may eat: the ox, the sheep, the goat, the red deer, the gazelle, the roe deer, the ibex, the addax, the oryx, and the mountain sheep. Any animal that has hoofs you may eat, provided it is cloven-footed and chews the cud.... "Of the various creatures that live in the water, whatever has both fins and scales you may eat...You may eat all clean birds. "

Jesus was born in a manger -- a place where beasts of burden and service are housed.

The story in the New Testament is not of loaves and Tofu, but of loaves and fishes, and it was fish -- a living thing -- that was killed and which Jesus fed to his followers.

In Mark 7:19 Jesus says all meat is now OK to eat (a major legal difference between the Old and New Testaments), and in Luke 22:8-15, Jesus intructs his followers to prepare lamb for the Last Supper.

Add to this the story in Samuel where the fox's tail is set on fire to help torch the fields of the Philistines (made famous in the Rudyard Kipling poem, "The Fox Meditates"), the Old Testament tales of frogs falling from the sky (not a good day for the frogs, I suspect), and the wholesale drowning of animals (see the Great Flood in Genesis and the un-parting of the Red Sea in Exodus), and it's clear that God is not a PETA member.

We have more direct evidence, of course.

If God made man in his own image, as the Bible says, then God has canine teeth.

Try to reconcile that with vegetarianism.

God did not make man alone, of course. He also made spiders which bind up living things, inject them with poison, and then eat them eat them alive, one piece at a time.

God made the hawk which will rip the head off a fluttering sparrow still grasped in its claw.

God made the fox which will chew the hind legs off a living mouse so that the flapping rodent can serve as a toy for its kits.

In short, God made nature, red in tooth and claw, and I assure you it is not all a mistake.

.

Hunting On Sunday

"How long he stood he did not know, but there was a foolish and yet delicious sense of knowing himself as an animal come from the forest, drawn by the fire. He was a thing of brush and liquid eye, of fur and muzzle and hoof, he was a thing of horn and blood that would smell like autumn if you bled it out on the ground. He stood a long long time, listening to the warm crackel of the flames." - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

When I go hunting on Sunday mornings, I almost always leave the house feeling like I’ve forgotten something.

Do I have my vet box, my digging bar, my old canvas pack, two gallons of distilled water, both locator collars and at lease 6 button batteries?

Do I have the camera and the cell phone, my wallet and my hat? What about an extra shirt in case I need to look presentable for a stop on the way home?

I feel rushed and jangled going down the driveway, but it soon eases off. There is never any traffic on Sunday morning, and by the time I take a turn at the river, the radio is on 88.5, and I am listening to the soothing and familiar voice of Red Shipley, host of the “Stained Glass Bluegrass”

Gospel bluegrass music is about as close to a conventional church as I get. The message in the music is both simple and austere: Life is hard; Try to live life right; In the end you are going to die. Two solid facts and a small bit of good advice covers a lot of ground.

In winter my trips start in the dark and the dawn creeps up as I head into Maryland. This is my quiet time for the week, and I make the most of it.

In spring, as it is now, early morning fog will often roll in, giving the land a truly pagan feeling.

Though I like bluegrass gospel, I am not sure I am a Christian. I have spent too much time in the woods to not believe in evolution, and I have spent too much time reading the Bible not to notice that the Old Testament and the New Testament have different messages and a God who is, by turns, jealous, vindictive, petty, passive- aggressive and schizophrenic.

That said, I believe in the essential message of the New Testament, which is Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. I have not invented my own moral code.

The dogs are not Christian. Christians are preoccupied with the promise of an afterlife, while the dogs do not give it a moment’s thought. The dogs are Zen Buddhists, always living in the eternal NOW, fully cognizant that all is connected, and that much of life is unseen (if not unscented or unheard).

As I pull off the road onto the edge of the field I am going to hunt, I feel a little bit paranoid. Sunday hunting is illegal in both Virginia and Maryland, and though there is an exception for groundhog it still feels subversive. It does not matter that I am fully licensed in both states; I am always glad to get away from the car and into the privacy of the nearest thicket. Here the dogs and I tumble backwards, slipping through a rift in time to our antediluvian roots.

The dogs may look like two small white terriers, but they are genetically indistinguishable from wolves.

I may look like a balding, middle-aged white guy, but I am genetically indistinguishable from those who first knapped flint 20,000 years ago.

The dogs and I are the most primitive of hunters.

Humans and wolves have hunted this stretch of ground for millennia, both together and apart. Hunting is deeply encoded in our genes and, as improbable as it sounds, that code explodes within us just a few yards into the forest. Already we are thinking differently.

Hunting is not about killing. Humans and dogs hunt for water, for shelter, and for mates. We hunt for berries and warm weather, and a soft spot on which to rest from our labors. We hunt even when nothing dies.

Hunting, is the business of seeing connections, and from those connections being able to tease out higher and lower probabilities. A hunter understands succession and season, knows where to dig a water-well by looking at the plants, and knows where to find large game by looking at small signs.

In truth, the dogs and I are not very good hunters. On the up side, we are getting better. As bad as I am at my job, the dogs are good enough at theirs that we rarely have a blank day in the field.

Every time we go out, the dogs learn a little more about me, and I learn a little more about them. Over time we get better as individuals, and we become better as a team.

I watch the dogs closely. To do so is to see the world through a new set of glasses. Mountain can sniff at a hole and know what animals have come and gone and who still remains. She reads the language of forest and field -–- language written in urine and musk on a writing tablet of earth and vine. Mountain speaks many more languages than I do.

In this regard, most dogs are smarter than their owners. A dog knows the difference between bullshit and horseshit, but most humans are too far removed from the connective tissues of real life to tell the difference.

Not all humans are so blind, of course. The Kalahari bushman that seemingly tracks an eland over solid rock extrapolates from a single hoof-drag in a narrow patch of sand. From that alone he knows which direction the eland is moving, and about how long since it has passed. The bushman knows the eland is not going to spend much time on rock where there is no food, shelter or water. No doubt it is headed to the thicket of a nearby streambed. And there he is sure to find it.

Modern humans are not as good as bushmen at tracking wild game. Not only do we not see tracks in the sand, we do not stop to think what they mean.

As it is in the forest, so it is the suburbs. In the modern world we tend to rush too fast, only seeing the vast spaces between big things and big events, nearly oblivious to the small but telling details in between.

For most people, most of the time, that works well enough. After all, we have maps and road signs to tell us where to go. We have newspapers and television commentators to tell us what to think. We do not have to hunt very hard to find our meat at the grocery store.

Out here in the hedge, however, it does not pay to rush too fast. The dogs watch me because they know I can see farther ahead than they can, and from experience they know that I have a pretty good sense of geography, drainage and cover.

On my end, I watch the dogs because I know they can smell things I cannot see. Slight changes in their posture telegraph that we are likely to find along the upper bank where the drainage is good and the soil is soft . And we do.

When all goes well, the dogs and I work as a trans-species pack. There is a natural fit here. Not only are dogs and humans predators, but we are both pack animals as well.

As a general rule, most dogs are only too happy to have humans lead the pack. Being pack leader is over-rated. Whether you are wolf, politician, or corporate executive, you are not likely to last long at the top. It is not an accident that men tend to die sooner than women.

Perhaps to obviate the stress of leadership, humans have developed written codes to follow. Most of these codes make a great deal of sense, but in truth some are complete nonsense.

In Reno Nevada, there are slot machines at the airport, but it is illegal for the volunteer fire department to run a bingo game to raise money.

In the U.K., it is illegal to hunt badger or disturb their dens in any way, but DEFRA – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – has been systematically gassing thousands of healthy badgers every year for thirty years in order to control brucellosis by wiping out badgers over large areas.

In the area I am hunting today, it is illegal to hunt deer on Sunday, but there are so many deer doing so much damage to forest and farms that in season there is an unlimited take – no limits at all. Shoot 100 deer a day if you want, but for God’s sake don’t shoot one on Sunday.

The core laws for humanity, of course, do not cover things like hunting and are pretty simple and universal.

Truth be told, the Ten Commandments are really just five commandments (no murder, no adultery, no theft, no false witness, no coveting). The other five commandments are just religious branding -- a Judeo-Christian version of “You shall drink Coke and never Pepsi, you will never show the Pepsi logo, nor will you ever say anything disparaging about Coke or anything positive about Pepsi, nor will you ever drink any other type of soft drink other than Coke.”

Here’s a hint: branding is not about morality. Branding is about business.

The business side of every religion fears that the congregation may take its business elsewhere. Christians fear more than Muslims, Jews and and Bhuddists -- they also fear alcohol, dancing, commerce, and hunting -- to name just four items once banned under Sunday "blue laws”.

Eleven states – including Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania – still ban Sunday hunting.

One story says the ban on Sunday hunting was first implemented as a kind of conservation measure to prevent landowners from shooting out all their game.

In truth, the measure was more likely implemented to keep the church pews full.

In Victorian England, the problem was not just keeping the congregations in church, but the pastor too. Parson John Russell, after all, was not the hunting parson, but just one of many.

The Reverend John Froude had his own pack of foxhounds, for example, while the Reverend John Templer of Stowe hunted with a live monkey seated on the saddle in front of him. There were so many hunting parsons, in fact, that Anthony Trollope dedicated a whole chapter to them in Hunting Sketches (1865).

All of this is a sidecar to the day, of course. The weather is about perfect with a 10 mile breeze. The temperature in the shade is 65, and it's 75 in the sun.

Prowling the edge of the Monocacy River, the dogs and I startle a precocious turtle – a slider – who pushes off into the muddy current and then is gone. It is very early for turtles.

The dogs and I dig another groundhog on a steep hill, but the third groundhog of the days manages to wedge itself into a root fortress and I give it law and pack up the tools.

On the way back to the truck, I see my first butterfly of the season – a fritillary -- and the dogs bust a large pair of deer from a hedge. On the river near the truck, a young couple in a canoe shoots down the Monocacy. These are the first canoeists of the year -- Spring has sprung. In a week, the shad will begin running up the Potomac to spawn.

On the way home, Dick Spotswood is hosting his bluegrass show on WAMU, and he cues up a version of “That Old Time Religion.”

Perhaps this is the big thought of the day: My religion is an “old time religion”.

My religion predates Gideon's Bible, televangelists, collection plates, sectarian riffs, and the story of the resurrection of Jesus.

My God is not under new management.


In First Church of Field and Stream, the resurrection story is told by fritillary butterflies and red-eared sliding turtles. The story of life everlasting is told by a young couple on a river outting, and a pair of deer bouncing across a bright green field of emerging barley.

You do not have to read these stories in a book; At the First Church of Field and Stream you can see them for yourself.

Let us prey.

Why "Stupid On Stilts" is Good for the Environment

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Governor of Idaho, C.L. "Butch" Otter, wants 550 wolves killed in his state -- enough to keep the wolf just above the threshold for endandered species listing (and a return to full federal control of the animal).

One is tempted to review the history of political idiocy and national embarassment that is Idaho politics, from the late Rep. Helen Chenoweth to current Sen. Larry Craig, but let's skip that and, instead go straight to a map and "ground truth" the reality of land ownernship and land management in Idaho.

Idaho politicians, like most Western politicians, do not actually control all that much land within their state. You see, out West, most of the land is owned by the Federal Government and is either National Forest land, Bureau of Land Management land, National Park land, or National Wildlife Refuge. These are lands owned by all Americans for all Americans. Or, as Woody Guthrie sang, "This land is your land, this land is my land."

Along with National Parks, National Forests, National Wildlife Refuges, and BLM land, there are also other large tracts of federally-owned lands: Indian Reservations, military bases, and lands owned and managed by the Bureau of Reclamation (fresh water lakes and reservoirs) and other Federal agencies.

The short story here is that if you take a look at the map of Federal Lands and Indian Reservations in Idaho at the top of this post, every bit of land in color is a Federal property -- only the stuff that is colored white on the map is privately owned property or under states control (state parks, state forests, etc.).

In short, the Governor of Idaho is "governor of not very much," relative to what is around him.

Which is not to say that the Governor of Idaho (or any other western state) has ever been shy about throwing his weight around -- that's what Western politicians do.

Western politicians talk a good game about "property rights" and like to describe their constituencies as being strong, self-sufficient, anti-tax conservatives, but in fact a very large percentage of the political money in a state like Idaho comes from greedy welfare ranchers (and miners, drillers, and timber cutters) sucking on the Federal teat for ever-increasing tax-payer money in the form of crop supports, water subsidies, road constuction subsidies, mining rights, timber-cutting rights, and fire suppression subsidies.

Edward Abbey noted that "Cattle ranching on the public lands of the American West is the most sacred form of public welfare in the United States" and that the environmental consequences of supporting so much "welfare ranching" was a palpable level of environmental degradation:

"Most of the public lands in the West, and especially the Southwest, are what you might call 'cow burnt'. Almost anywhere and everywhere you go in the American West you find hordes of [cows].... They are a pest and a plague. They pollute our springs and streams and rivers. They infest our canyons, valleys, meadows, and forests. They graze off the native bluestems and grama and bunch grasses, leaving behind jungles of prickly pear. They trample down the native forbs and shrubs and cacti. They spread the exotic cheatgrass, the Russian thistle [tumble weed], and the crested wheat grass. Weeds. Even when the cattle are not physically present, you see the dung and the flies and the mud and the dust and the general destruction. If you don't see it, you'll smell it. The whole American West stinks of cattle."

Of course, not every rancher out west is a welfare rancher, and not every range is mismanaged. That said, there are huge financial incentives to "privatize the profits" and "commonize the costs" when you allow private profits to be made on public lands, and that is true for everything from grazing to timber harvest, and from water removal to hard rock mining and oil and natural gas removal. Why pay to clean up your mess, when Uncle Sam will force the American taxpayer (yes, that would be you) to do it?

Which brings us back to wolves.

You see, the Governor of Idaho's "big idea" is to to kill Federal wolves on Federal land, for private ranchers who are being subsidized to raise sheep and cattle that America does not actually need, and which are degrading public land that all of us taxpayers (from Redwood City to the New York island) will be taxed to restore.

This is stupid on a stilts -- so stupid, in fact, that it's actually a good thing. Insanity this tall in the saddle exposes the lunacy of "state rights" claims that we should all be subsidizing private interests on federal land.

Killing off 500 wolves in order to enable more "welfare ranching" in the American West is something so stupid and warped that redneck hillbillies and suburban housewives will find common ground in opposition to it.

Groups like the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Natural Resources Defense Council, and The Wilderness Society should send the idiot Governor of Idaho a thank you note and roses for giving them a simple and just cause to fight for -- and a cartoon-like idiot of a politician to fight against.

Thank you, Governor Otter. Idiots like you do not grow on trees. If you did not actually exist, the American environmental movement might actually have to invent you.

Now, here's the kicker: Right now, if a wolf can reasonably be shown to have killed a cow, sheep or any other type of livestock anywhere in the United States, that animal is bought and paid for by American environmental organizations like Defenders of Wildlife. Last year Defenders paid bill out over $150,000 to cover the costs of 158 cows, 204 sheep, and a couple of goats and stock dogs.

That's right -- in the American west there is NO economic loss from wolves because groups like Defenders of Wildlife pay the full market value of any animals killed by wolves.

To put an even sharper point on the matter, no one in the American environmental movement thinks any individual wolf is sacred. If there is rogue wolf that has taken to stock-killing in a regular way, that animal is going to be killed by a professional, federally-licensed sharpshooter, and no one is in opposition to that.

Which is not to say that compensating ranchers for risks they assume by grazing on federal land actually makes any sense. As conservationist, hunter and author Jonathan Hanson notes on his excellent blog (which you really should check out):

"Where did the idea of public liability for wolf predation come from, anyway? If a cow falls off a cliff on leased public land, do we reimburse the rancher? If a lamb dies from a rattlesnake bite, do we reimburse the rancher? Obviously not. The idea behind wolf compensation came about, ironically, because we were properly bringing back an animal that had been eliminated for the convenience of ranchers in the first place."

So is there good news in this mess?

I think there is, because the Governor of Idaho reminds us that there are a lot of idiots in the world, which is why we need conservation organizations, why we need laws, and why a federated system of government with federal control over vast expanses of public lands is a very good thing.

God bless America. We get some things right, and wildlife management is one of them.