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Article
Wolf Proof Shelters Needed In New
Mexico
By C. J. Williams
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Documentary
Undue Burden
The Real Cost
Of Living With Wolves
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Yoopers are accustomed to seeing one-holer outhouse looking structures at
the end of long driveways in the rural areas of the U.P. and know they’re
meant to protect children from the wet and blustery cold as they wait for
their school bus.
In New Mexico,
however, specifically Catron County where the “re-introduced” wolf
situation is particularly bad, one cash-strapped school district is
building 20 wood and wire mesh wolf-proof shelters for its rural school
children.
Like the U. P., Catron County’s once robust timbering and mining
industries have become the victim of rabid environmentalism and government
encroachment on county citizens’ rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness. (See first link)
Several months ago, yours truly wrote about two Catron County school
children that were stalked by a wolf while walking to their house, some
distance from their bus stop. Out of fear and against what he’d been told
to do when confronted by a wolf, the 13-year old boy grabbed his mildly
retarded 11-year old sister’s hand and took off on a run through a
brush-filled short cut to the safety of their home. Normally, a friend of
the family would have picked them up after school and drove them to their
front door, but it was the last day of school, the children were released
earlier than normal, and there was some miscommunication among the adults.
It remains to be known what would have happened had one of the McCarty
kids tripped and broke their leg or had the wolf and rest of the nearby
pack overtaken them, so this story has a happy ending, that is if you can
count children being petrified of going out in their yard as a happy
ending. But, for many New Mexico kids and their parents, living in fear
of wolves has become the norm, not the exception.
Although older
children are allowed to pack a gun around their rural homes, they
certainly can’t carry one to school, and at least a wolf-proof shelter
will give kids of all ages a place to get into when wolves “prey-test”
them at a school bus stop. Moms and dads often both work and older
children are sometimes left to get themselves and siblings to the bus on
time.
Unfortunately, wolves are also now lurking around schools in Catron
County, as witnessed by reports of the Glenwood Elementary School quickly
being put into “lock-down” mode after an uncollared wolf was spotted
within 17 yards of the playground on November 29th. The Catron
County Sheriff has since assigned an armed deputy to be on the premises
when school is in session and to stand playground duty to protect kids
from wolves while they enjoy their outdoor recesses.
In the colder climes, some schools near Fairbanks, Alaska, were also
taking precautionary steps last month to safeguard children. Two
Rivers Elementary School cancelled its after-school ski program after
wolves were seen near the ski trails located in a wooded area, and parents
of Walker Elementary School students have been advised to escort their
kids to and from the school bus stop because of all the wolf sightings in
the area. Walker Elementary has also taken the extra precaution of
beefing up playground supervision after it was reported
that three wolves were seen
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trotting down the road less than a mile
from the school.
Though it’s a far cry from New Mexico to Alaska, reports of human/wolf
conflicts are getting to be the norm rather than the exception wherever
wolves have been reintroduced. The so-called reintroduction programs have
gone far beyond a need to study wolves all over the United States, and
there is no absolute proof to the theory that reintroduced wolves are a
necessary element of “healthy” ecosystems.
While parents in New
Mexico and Alaska, and points in between are worrying about their children
being attacked by fearless wolves, children in many other areas are being
indoctrinated to join the ranks of pro-wolf environmentalists.
One such program was evident in Rhode Island where 12 and 13-year old
students were treated to seeing a timber wolf on a leash at a school
assembly. The director of a Colorado wolf sanctuary and education center
told the children that “wolves play an important role in environmental
management, helping to keep deer and elk populations balanced.” He
explained that, “by eating deer and elk, wolves stop the depletion of
grass, plants and young trees. The trees, in turn, grow larger and revive
forests.”
A little closer to
home in the Copper Country, at least one public library has been used to
teach preschoolers, ages 3 to 5, that there is no such thing as Little Red
Riding Hood’s “big, bad wolf”. The lesson plan, which is online and
available for anyone to use, involves handpicking children’s books with a
wolf or wolves as its subject, reading the books to the little ones during
“story time”, and then discussing the children’s ideas about wolves before
and after the books are read.
The objective of the lesson plan is to have the children come away from
story hour able to discern fact from fiction about wolves, at least at
their level of comprehension. Of course the teacher is ready and willing
to dispel any myth regarding wolves, including the claim that a healthy
wolf won’t attack mommy, daddy, or little Susie, as if it matters whether
a wolf is healthy or not when people get hurt or killed.
The health of a pack of wolves certainly didn’t matter to the family of
Olaf Halesrud back on January 18, 1902. Olaf, a farmer who lived about 10
miles north of La Crosse, WI, had been awakened during the night by a
disturbance among his barnyard animals. After leaving the house to see
what the ruckus was about, he was surrounded by a pack of wolves.
According to an account published in the New York Times, Olaf “attempted
to regain the house, but before he had gone twenty feet the beasts were
snapping and snarling at his heels. He tried to defend himself with a
club, but several times he was forced to the ground. Each time, however,
he managed to fight them off and gain his feet. Fighting his way inch by
inch, he finally succeeding in reaching the door of his dwelling,
staggered in, and drew the bolt.”
In that 1902 accounting it was reported that the farmer’s flesh was
literally torn from his body in many places, he was in critical condition,
and physicians said he couldn’t live. The Times also reported that wolves
had been so numerous and their work so destructive in the vicinity (La
Crosse) that an organized effort was
being made to hunt them down.
Discerning myth from fact
regarding wolves isn’t a problem for the parents of 11-year old Zack Delventhal
from Pennsylvania who was dragged from a sleeping bag and viciously attacked by
a wolf in August 1996 while the family was vacationing at Algonquin National
Park. Zack’s face was ripped open, his nose was crushed, parts of his mouth and
right check were torn, blood gushed from below his eyes, and the lower part of
his right ear was missing. Park officials killed the wolf, which was deemed
healthy.
The death of Joel Carnegie
at the jaws of healthy, but habituated wolves, in Canada in 2005 should have
been a wake-up call to the environmentalist myth-busters who are trying to turn
fact into fiction. Wolves are not an endangered species and the fact is that
wolves have and will continue to maim and kill people whether they’re healthy or
not.
http://www.svpvril.com/catron.html
http://www.projo.com/ri/eastgreenwich/content/wolf27_10-27-06_1P2I23H.339535f.html
http://www.ed.mtu.edu/pd/lessonplans.html
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplans/programs/wolvesatourdoor/
Documentary
Undue Burden
The Real Cost
Of Living With Wolves
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