Livestock MARKET
“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
Digest R
OCTOBER 15, 2012 • www. aaalivestock . com
Volume 54 • No. 11
The Wolf Agenda by Lee Pitts
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Beef: It’s What’s For Dinner
NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
Today, there is a sense of desperation on the Diamond M Ranch. One of the great ranches in the country is being stalked by wolves who have looked at the menu and wisely chosen beef. They are doing what animals have always done, moving on up the food chain by dining on McIrvin beef. The so-called experts who were trying to foist wolves on everyone told us that wolves killed only for food, never sport, and that as long as there was other game available they would not kill cattle. Oh really?
by LEE PITTS
Step Up America
– JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
en McIrvin frequently hears the wolves howl on his ranch in the northeastern corner of Washington. But pardon him if he doesn’t get a warm and fuzzy feeling, or yearn for the frontier past. No, to him the wolf’s lonely howl sounds more like the end of ranching, not just for him, but for any rancher within earshot. Len McIrvin is not the type of man to “Cry Wolf.” He and his clan are independent folks who quietly go about their work and have persevered as ranchers through five generations because they proved capable of surviving anything that life, and Mother Nature, can throw at them. Except the wolves. These they cannot survive.
Riding Herd
“It’s the little things that get tangled in your spurs that trip you.” Said one wildlife official after witnessing the wolves’ handiwork, “The aggressive wolf behavior at the Diamond M proves wolves will attack cattle even when the weather is agreeable and wild game is available.” Len says, “The game department told me there is nearly 100 percent beef in the manure piles.”
Wolves are very smart, why dine on venison when you can have beef, after all, “It’s what’s for Dinner” for wolves, too. Last year on the Diamond M was bad enough, wolves “only” killed 11 calves and five mature bulls. But this year what is called the Wedge Wolf Pack has thus far killed 40 calves out of 200 on just
one allotment! And the five calves that survived so far might as well be dead. By our calculations that’s a 20 percent loss. One wildlife official commiserated with Len and said, “I’d sure hate to have my paycheck cut by 20 percent.” But as Len told him, “You don’t understand. We don’t make a 20 percent profit. The wolves are cutting our paycheck to nothing!” But it’s even worse than that. Len says the wolves are costing him more than $100,000 when you add in weight loss of the frightened cattle, injuries, and a lower conception rate. He figures that if this keeps up the wolves will bankrupt the Diamond M within ten years. Wolf lovers will counter that ranchers are compensated for their losses but Washington’s wildlife department has a grand total of $50,000 to reimburse continued on page two
MAKE BELIEVE WORLD . . . The Cat Burglars — The planned 53 million-acre heist by STEPHEN L. WILMETH
ow, what a headline! The Sun-News headline read, ‘Pussy Riot — like justice is served!’ Such a headline could mean only one thing. Surely, the courts had finally had enough of the antics of the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) in Tucson. What was disappointing, though, was the story had nothing to do with the three-stage plan to put the wraps on over 53 million acres of lands in Arizona and New Mexico for nonexistent big spotted cats. Rather, the story was about some female punk rock band from Russia. It seems the girls had run afoul of the Putin allowances for blasphemous church displays. Even in Russia, there appears to be some degree of nonsense that will not be tolerated.
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Jaguar Alley The southern border is one of the most hotly contested borders in the world. In just over 100 miles from New Mexico’s Bootheel into the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, a.k.a. Jaguar Alley, more than half of all drugs and human smuggling apprehensions and interdictions now take place. That is not just those matters on the southern border. That is the interception of
those things on combined US borders. For scoring purposes, it is useful to array the players in the war zone. The list should start with the remnant community of American citizens. They are the folks who have duties, responsibilities, and investments in the lands being ravaged by the illicit smuggling trade. The gate keepers, the Customs-Border Protection (Border Patrol) forces of the Department of Homeland Security, would be next. Ostensibly, their job is to protect our borders. The Mexican drug cartels come next. The Sinaloan Cartel has become the major player on that border expanse. They have battled the Juarez Cartel for domination to the east and other rivals to the west. They seem to be the favored operation within the Calderon Mexican administration. The next collaborative dynamic are the combined United States land management agencies. That would include the Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Services, the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Following them would be the other cabal complex which includes the combined forces of the Environmental movement. That network
ecently I had to look up the phone number for traffic court and while I was on hold for the better part of a day I had time to thumb through the city, county, state and federal government sections of the phone book. There were listings for everything from A to Z, from alcoholic services to a zoo. (Why is the government serving alcohol?) It dawned on me that with our government’s gushing red ink we simply can’t afford to continue to fund graffiti hotlines and Cantonese translators. There were phone numbers for street sweeping, adult sports, golf courses and, of course, traffic court. (I’d get rid of that one right now!) There’s also a phone number for a flood control agency, even though It hasn’t flooded in my neck of the woods since 1969. I wonder what those folks have been doing to keep themselves occupied these past 40 years? Then there’s a phone number for the Adopt-A-Highway program in which people volunteer to pick up trash along our highways. As bad as our roads are getting I’d say to heck with the bottles and cheeseburger wrappers, it’s time to really adopt a highway by trading in their trash bags for a shovel and a wheelbarrow and start patching holes and building bridges. Under listings for our county there were things like food stamps, DUI schools and smoking classes. Now I ask you, do we really need to be teaching people how to smoke? And what does a department called “Affirming Family Empowerment” do? There were several listings for fire departments and it occurred to me that perhaps the time has come to go back to volunteer departments. My Grandfather eventually got paid five bucks for every fire he fought as Chief and I think maybe we could afford that. There were also several listings for things like Lead Abatement, Hazmat, and Bomb Disposal. Because our prisons are costing way continued on page three
continued on page four
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