Manage Our Wolves Act
Floor Speech
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the bill today.
In a world full of lions and tigers entertaining the masses, have you ever seen a wolf in the circus? If you love your dog, thank a wolf.
There is a line of poetry that says: ``A wolf eats sheep but now and then; Ten thousands are devour'd by men.''
Wolves are historic and vital keystone predators that have been hunted to near extinction in the contiguous United States. After being formerly designated as endangered and protected under the Endangered Species Act, wolf populations began to rise. However, they still inhabit just a fraction of their historic range, and continued protection under the Endangered Species Act is necessary. Instead, H.R. 6784 strips the protections that have allowed the species to begin to recover.
Prior to widespread human settlement, hundreds of thousands of gray wolves roamed North America. They could be found from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast. Today, sadly, the farthest east they can be found is in Michigan.
Some of my colleagues might know that I would love to see the gray wolves in Virginia some day, but for now, it is important that we continue to protect the fewer than 6,000 that we have left in the lower 48.
How did we get to only 6,000? As the human population grew in the 19th and 20th centuries, gray wolves were poisoned, trapped, shot, gassed--every possible way to kill them--and their population decline was exacerbated by habitat destruction. Removing Federal protection opens the doors to further baiting, hunting, and trapping of wolves.
The war on wolves is based, in part, on a myth that wolves are dangerous to humans and livestock. The reality, of course, is that humans are far more dangerous to wolves than wolves are either to humans or wolves are to livestock. Wolves cause less than 1 percent of all livestock losses in the United States, which is a mino threat compared to health issues, weather, and even other predators. In fact, domestic dogs cause more cattle losses than wolves do. But no one is talking about trapping or poisoning dogs.
Ironically, researchers at Washington State University have found that killing wolves leads to an increase in livestock losses caused by wolves. Wolves generally avoid people. There are only two known deaths from wolves in the entire contiguous United States in the 21st century. Far more Americans are killed by bees, dogs, or deer-car collisions than by wolves.
It has also been proven that State agencies cannot successfully manage these species. We have to look at what happened when they were delisted in Idaho and Montana in 2011. In just those two States, hostile State management practices have caused more than 3,200 wolves to be killed through hunting and trapping. That is half the known wolves in the lower 48.
Furthermore, we know that targeting wolves is not only cruel and detrimental to the species itself, but it is also detrimental to the other species and to the ecosystems in which it belongs.
Many of us have seen the video, the documentary on what has happened to Yellowstone since the reintroduction of wolves. Before, when wolves were eliminated, the explosion of other populations caused defoliation, erosion, and an unbalanced ecosystem in the park.
When wolves were reintroduced in 1995, everything changed. They were the keystone predator, the linchpin, that held together this delicate balance. When the deer and elk populations were managed, vegetation regenerated, which brought back species such as birds, beavers, mice, and bears. Riverbanks stabilized as plant life thrived and erosion decreased, and the whole landscape was transformed.
Delisting decisions are best kept in the hands of scientists, and we can't allow any delisting decisions to happen because of politics, particularly not to a species so historic, majestic, integral, and charismatic to the ecosystem in which it belongs.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. BEYER. Bonamici).
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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining.
Mr. Speaker, as we have heard today, our colleagues say that this bill is needed to mitigate human/livestock conflict, but that claim is just simply not compelling. Across the country, wolves account for only two-tenths of 1 percent of all cattle losses. Other predators, such as mountain lions, coyotes, and even stray dogs account for significantly more livestock kills.
My friend from Minnesota talked about his neighbor's German Shepherd being killed by a wolf. We have small dogs and cats killed in our densely urban area all the time by coyotes and by foxes, and no one is talking about hunting the coyotes or hunting the foxes. For example, out of the 3.9 million cattle deaths in 2015, coyotes and dogs combined killed more than 164,000 livestock, compared to the 10,000 killed by wolves. That is 16 times as many. Not to mention that 93 percent of all cattle losses are due to disease or other natural causes.
In the northern Rockies alone, which is where we have been talking about today mostly, wolf depredations account for less than 1 percent of all livestock losses: 256 sheep and 41 cattle over an 8-year period of time.
The numbers don't lie. The claims that wolves are responsible for a massive slaughter of livestock is simply a myth used to justify lethal control of these animals.
Instead of the shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality, there are lots of great farmers promoting nonlethal methods that have been scientifically proven to mitigate human/wolf conflicts: livestock guardian dogs, fencing, and reducing attractants.
There are solutions to this problem that don't involve the unnecessary killing of one of the most iconic and charismatic animals, not just in North America, but in human imagination.
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