#024 Never Cry Wolf

Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast

Episode 24

Never Cry Wolf

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is episode #23 title Never Cry Wolf

In this episode I want to talk about how, as humans we have the tendency to destroy things that are in the way of what we view as “progress”. First I want to talk about this from a historical perspective and then give you a more modern example of how we continue to do the same thing. We still have not learned and we still do not appreciate that it is the balance in nature that provides us with all of the things we need to survive. 

When I first purchased my cabin property in 1996, the highway that lead to the small community where I still live, was completely undeveloped. The nearest supermarket was, and still is, 22 miles away. But at the time the supermarket was miserably small so I made a trip to town once a month to go to CostCo or Sams Club to stock up on basic supplies. Since I was in fact very poor at the time, I did not have a four wheel drive and had to pack everything in to the cabin. 

My only means of food storage was a large metal trunk which I kept locked and chained to a tree.  Almost daily I would come home and find the trunk had new scratch marks on it from the bears attempting to raid my stash. But over a 10 year period of time, I had numerous up close and personal encounters with bears and mountain lions. I can think of at least a half dozen times I was standing almost face to face with a bear or a lion with a 45 caliber or a Winchester 30 30 point directly at them and saying to myself, “Okay, one more step closer and I am going to unload this clip into your head.” And I am happy to say that during all of that, there was only twice I actually had to fire warning shots to scar them off. 

But in the process of all of this, I accepted the fact that I was literally living in the middle of THEIR territory and I had to learn to live with them. To this day, I still  more wildlife than people when I am at home. I still see mountain lions and bear on a regular basis. But I have also learned about all the things that they are attracted to and I keep things put away. 

But it is interesting that when you literally live in the middle of the forest you learn to recognize various animals in the dark based on their eyes and how they move. Where we live there are no street lights or any other sort of light pollution.  If you go outside at night you need a head lamp. 

It is funny that I was telling my younger sister recently that when I walk outside at night I am always wearing a head lamp and before I get very far outside the cabin I check the trees for eyeballs. My sister of course cannot even conceive living in such a ways. But I also remind her that she is the one that lives in a busy downtown area, has to have an alarm on her house, and lives behind locked doors. And the fact that animal predators are usually very predictable whereas people are not. And so I would much rather take my chances living in the middle of the forest than in the middle of the city. 

But the point of this story is to just simply say I have made every attempt to live with the wildlife that is around me instead of just killing everything.  But, that is not the way humanity is in general and especially when it comes to predators. And a lot of the time it is simply because we fear them. However, we also have to accept the fact that predators in nature are actually very important. But why is that? 

So why are predators important and what would the world be like if they were all gone. 

Well, predators are actually an important part of a healthy ecosystem. A normal, vital ecosystem is truly survival of the fittest because predators have a tendency to remove the most vulnerable animals. This usually means the older animals, the injured, the sick, or the very young. What this mean is there is now more food for the survival and success of the healthy animals in the herd. 

A secondary impact of predation is that the size of prey population is controlled and this in turn helps slow down the spread of disease. Predators will of course catch healthy prey when they can, but catching sick or injured animals first helps in the formation of healthier prey populations because only the fittest animals survive.

Additionally, predators help to reduce the negative impacts that their prey can potentially have on the ecosystem if they become too abundant or it they stayed in one area for too long. For example, when grazing animals are preyed upon by big cats, it keeps the prey population moving around (in fear) and prevents overgrazing in any one area. As a result, more trees, shrubs, bushes, and grasses can grow, which then provides habitat for many other species.

If this were not the case, and carnivores or predators  were removed from an ecosystem, herds of grazing animals, such as deer, elk, antelope, and moose would rapidly increase. Eventually, the only thing limiting the population growth would be bad weather or some sort of disease process.

As a result, larger herds would overgraze their food source, and as the food disappeared, the whole herd would begin to starve. But you may ask, what about hunting?  While hunters can sometimes replace predators in the control of herd populations they generally do not remove the injured, sick, or older animals.  Humans tend to go after the larger, healthier animals because they either want a trophy or they want as much meat as possible. 

Consequently, predators play an important part of the ecosystem because they are vital to maintaining the health of the herd. And to take this a step further, predators also play a part in feeding many scavengers. In a sense, nothing goes to waste.  

Now I actually get to witness this type of thing on a regular basis. I commonly see the same herds of deer and elk on regular basis. In fact I have gotten to the point where I even recognize individuals based on specific markings. On somewhat of a regular basis, I find a lion kill. It is typically deer because they are smaller.  So what happens is that the lion eats most of the meat and then internal organs.But there is a considerable amount of meat in smaller chunks left not the carcass. Then the foxes and coyotes come in and feed on that. Then what is left if picked clean by the birds.  In the end, absolutely nothing goes to waste.

To me, this is the natural course of things. But you see, we are often taught to fear predators. But this is mostly fueled by the fact that many of us do not understand their unique behavior and value in maintaining a healthy ecosystem. And we humans always get busy destroying the things we misunderstand or dislike. We see this sort of thing over and over again.

For example, it is a historical fact that during the time in our national history in which the US Army waged war on the Native Americans, the army absolutely could not get the Indians under control so to speak. This was because of the nature of the Native Americans and the way they engages in gorilla warfare. It wasn’t until the literal destruction of their food supply that the Native Americans were subsequently herded onto reservations. 

Now the mass destruction of their food supply was finally brought about due to the completion of the transcontinental railroad. On May 10, 1869, a telegraph arrived in New York officially announcing the completion of the Pacific Railroad. And this is what accelerated the destruction of what had been in the center of North America. 

Shortly after President Abraham Lincoln sighed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, railroad financier George Francis Train proclaimed, “The great Pacific Railway is commenced……… Immigration will soon pour into these valleys. The millions of emigrants will settle in this golden land in twenty years….this is the greatest enterprise under God!” 

Unfortunately, he could not have imagined the full and tragic impact, as well as the speed at which the railroad changed the shape of the American West. For in the wake of the railroad development, tens of millions of buffalo, which had roamed freely through eh Great Plains since the last ice age 10,000 years ago, where nearly driven to extinction in a massive wave of slaughter that was made possible due to the development of the railroad.  Additionally, the lives of countless Native Americans were destroyed.

After the end of the Civil War, General Sherman’s first command was to protect the development of the railroad. He also engaged the services of General Philip Sheridan. Between these two men, with an attitude of “we must act with vindictive earnestness agents the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children” it is not wonder that they slaughter hundreds of Native Americans. And I quote from General Sheridan, 

“If a village is attacked and women and children killed,” Sheridan once remarked, “the responsibility is not with the soldiers but with the people whose crimes necessitated the attack.”

 But, it was not until the development of the railroad that they were able to easily get supplies and troops to the areas where the wars were being fought. And this is what truly brought on the slaughter of the enormous buffalo herds. It is estimated that in the mid 19th century, somewhere between 30 and 60 million buffalo roamed the plains. Even William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who was hired to hunt buffalo to provide meat for thousands of railroad workers, could not even put a dent in the numbers of buffalo. 

But then massive hunting parties with .50 caliber rifles began to arrive by train. Literally hundreds of men would sit on the train and shoot as many animals as they could simply leaving them to die. Unlike the Native Americans, who hunted for food, shelter, and clothing, hunters from the East killed only for sport. 

Winter hunting parties began killing buffalo by the hundreds of thousands. One hunter named Orlando Brown brought down nearly 6000 animals by himself.  When the Texas legislature proposed a bill to protect the buffalo, General Sheridan opposed it, stating, ”These men have done more in the last two years, and will do more in the next year, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last forty years. They are destroying the Indians’ commissary. And it is a well known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; but for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle.”

By the end of the 19th century, only 300 buffalo were left in the wild. Congress finally took action, outlawing the killing of any birds or animals in Yellowstone National Park, where the only surviving buffalo herd could be protected. Conservationists established more wildlife preserves, and the species slowly rebounded. Today, there are more than 200,000 bison in North America.

Sheridan acknowledged the role of the railroad in changing the face of the American West, and in his Annual Report of the General of the U.S. Army in 1878, he acknowledged that the Native Americans were scuttled to reservations with no compensation beyond the promise of religious instruction and basic supplies of food and clothing—promises, he wrote, which were never fulfilled.

“We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this they made war. Could any one expect less?

Now, back to the subject of predators. 

On May 6, 2021, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed a bill into law that may very well result in the killing of 90% of Idaho’s wolf population which is about 1,500 at this point. This bill was heavy backed of course by hunters and the states’s powerful ranching sector.  The lawmakers that sponsored the bill say they want the wolf population reduced to the allowed minimum of 150 to reduce attacks on livestock and to boost the state’s deer and elk herds. This laws allows the state to hire private contractors and also expands the way wolves can be hunted and killed. 

Those methods include hunting, trapping and snaring an unlimited number of wolves on a single hunting tag, using night-vision equipment, chasing down wolves on snowmobiles and ATVs and shooting them from helicopters. Also under the new law, newborn pups can be killed if they are found on private land.And of course the Idaho Cattle Association heavily backed this law. 

But I should also point out that nearly 30 former state, federal and tribal wildlife managers sent a letter to Governor Little asking him to veto the measure — saying the methods for killing wolves violate longstanding wildlife management practices and hunting ethics.

So, I would ask, have we learned anything? What does this sound like? We are again slaughtering animals because it suits our purpose. Apparently we have a total disregard for the sort of balance in nature that makes an ecosystem sustainable. This Idaho law is an obvious example of strong legislative support of a cattle industry which has one of the largest negative impacts on the environment. It simply supports an industry that is not sustainable. 

And yet we continue as a people to do these types of things out of fear. Fear of the unknown. For example, as a nation, we in fact have the ability through renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric, to produce 6 times more electricity needed to power the entire country. Yet due to big business, such as the oil industry and big government holding each others hands and funding each other, most likely we will never see that happen at least not in my lifetime. 

Yet we do not change because we are fearful of change. There are so many ways that we could all change our lifestyles to live more sustainably yet we do not do it out of fear. 

We are once again in that vehicle that passes a sign that says “Danger, cliff 100 feet ahead” and we look at each other and say “It hasn’t happened yet.” 

We go about our merry way allowing the wanton destruction of the very things that make our planet sustainable and we refuse to change out of fear of the unknown.  Just like I told one of my coworkers the other day, “You had better learn the skills of sustainability because some day you are not going to have a choice.”

Do you remember the fable about the little boy that cried wolf. This was a story about a little boy that lived in a village of people that were mostly sheep farmers. He was tending to the village flock one day and out of boredom he cried “Wolf, wolf”. To his amusement, all the villagers came running out to help him defend the flock. They of course left in anger and frustration because there was no wolf. Yet this little boy did the same thing three or four times. Each time the villagers left in frustration because it was all a lie. 

Well, when the wolf finally did come around, this little boy cried “Wolf, wolf” , and no one came to help because he had already fooled them several times and they no longer believed him. Consequently, the wolf destroyed much of the flock and then returned to the forest. 

A seminal paper was published by a scientist in the late 1800’s addressing concerns about excess carbon in the atmosphere causing global warming. And what does everyone think? “Wolf, wolf”. 

We talk about the benefits of sustainable energy sources and the environment destruction caused by the oil industry. “Wolf, wolf”

We talk about environmental degradation caused by the beef industry and everyone thinks “Oh he is crying wolf, wolf again” so no one really pays attention. 

And in the case of Idaho, people really are crying wolf. 

When I decided to start his podcast, I made the decision to put a lot of research behind each episode so that what I talk about would be based on solid research. Consequently, I read a lot of articles from reputable sources such as National Geography, Smithsonian, Scientific American, various university publications as well as medical publications.

I want to speak truthfully and honestly and Never Cry Wolf. 

So the point of this episode is to get you to thinking about a couple of examples, one historical and one in our modern day, of how we still engage in wanton destruction of the very thing that makes us sustainable. I realized a long time ago I could not take on the oil industry, I cannot take on the cattle industry, I cannot take on the governor of Idaho. Yet I can take on my own lifestyle and live as sustainable as possible. 

And that is the thought I want to leave you with this week. Despite what is going on round you, you can in fact take control of your own lifestyle and seek out as many ways as possible to be sustainable and earnest teach others to do the same. 

Be honest and truthful in your approach and Never Cry Wolf. 

This is your host Patrick, signing off until next week.  Remember, always live sustainably because this is how we build a better future. 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/where-the-buffalo-no-longer-roamed-3067904 /