Open Letter from the West

Wolf Comments

Open Letter from the West

USFWS assault of local government

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

  

            Too few have heard of the People’s Revolution of 1774.

            That revolution set the grand stage for the reported Revolution that played out starting at dawn, April 19, 1775 on the Lexington green. The difference is hugely important, and it mirrors the American propensity to defer to historical interpreters rather than herald the raw successes of ‘WE, the people …’

            The aftermath of the Boston Tea Party prompted King George to punish the colonists for their wanton behavior challenging his authority. The so called ‘Coercive Acts’ were cast upon the colonies. The first of the measures, the Boston Port Bill, prohibited all commerce to and from Boston.

            The Boston Port Bill was designed to starve Boston into submission. It didn’t. The rural folks, the farmers, countered with ample supplies. Their actions were not just humanitarian. Their responses were driven by outrage from the second parliamentary action, the Massachusetts Government Act.  In that act, all meetings of the people were prohibited without permission from the Crown, and elected representatives were henceforth disallowed to appoint their governing councils. The latter included the elimination of power to appoint or remove officials who could put people in jail or take away their property rights.

            None of us were taught that Boston represented only five percent of the citizenry affected by the events of the Tea Party. The rural folks represented 95 % of the people and those American farmers were scared to death King George was posturing to eviscerate the one thing that set them apart from all of history … the right of commoners to enjoy what the Founders would craft into words in the matter of ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness’.

            They knew  corrupt public officials not tied to the will of the people and dismissive of the sovereignty of private rights would seek to erode those rights and separate them from their property and its empowering stewardship.

            The process commenced when the patriot farmers told Crown appointed councilors to resign. Those who refused were driven from their homes and forced to flee to British protection in Boston.

            In Berkshire County 1500 farmers met the King’s officials and shut them out of the court house. In Springfield, several thousand farmers shut that court down and forced the judges to renounce their commissions. In Worcester, farmers from 37 surrounding communities deposed of the Crown appointees and made them walk a gauntlet in humiliation and collective submission, hats in hand, reciting recantations apologizing for their intolerable acts.

            The impact was so overpowering British Governor Gage concluded he was not going to do a thing until he had more means of suppressing the rebellion. The patriots were serious. They were not protesting. They simply overthrew British rule with such force and finality that it can be argued it was the only public uprising in history to fully remove political authority. It set the stage for the rest of the Revolution that is driven from the perspective of viewing the affair through the portals of Boston. That view diminishes the part played in the Revolution by the rural citizenry. What must be gleaned, however, is the Revolution may not have succeeded if rural America had not stood up for individual rights. Those people were not enraged over the stamp tax … they didn’t buy stamps. They weren’t enraged over the tea tax … they didn’t drink expensive tea. They certainly didn’t get stirred up over reading from Locke or Cicero … they read “only the Bible, the Catechism, Watts’ Psalms and Hymns and the Almanack.”

They got stirred up over the fear of losing local, self governance and their property rights. Those factors remain hugely important … as long as there are enough Americans who understand the concept.

Mexican Gray Wolf comments due

Public comments for the change in the 10(j) rule governing the Mexican Gray Wolf recovery program were due September 19. The comments are matters of negated public involvement emanating from two closed door settlement agreements between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). The first of the two is the intention to increase the recovery area by 2,740 % from the original plan. The second is to make it illegal to trap and incarcerate wolves that USFWS is releasing along with Mexican counterparts south of the border and south from the proposed expanded recovery area.

Why should the public be concerned about two changes to a regional rendition of an endangered species debacle?

The program began officially with the 1998 release of Mexican gray wolf-canine hybrids in a 5000 square mile footprint of New Mexico and Arizona’s Gila and Apache National Forests. The area was christened the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area (BRWRA). Implicit in USFWS’ private agreement with CBD to expand the recovery area by 137,250 square miles, the program has been an unmitigated disaster.  The agency can not reach the arbitrary population goals it set for the wolves. Prey dynamics, wolf genetics, and wolf human catastrophes disallow it.

The original proposal was 100 wolves. That number morphed into 100 breeding pairs, but that is also changing. The target is being blurred to equate to an unstated number of the subsidized hybrids. The reported number extant swings from 53 to 80 wolves with a 2013 confirmation of 13 breeding pairs. The program has burned through $3.461 million per breeding pair.

If we have to make a case why it is inappropriate to allow the agency to scarf up another 87,840,000 acres of undefined ownership without any spending plan, the response is twofold. The agency was never intended to be lavished with such expansive authority and matters of local authority and private property rights are being savaged.

Comments from the West

It is important the greater citizenry of the West, who depend on the principles of Multiple Use Management, be heard in the matter of Canis lupus baileyii management.  A condensed version of their comments follows:

● In the decision to place bounties on wolves in 1918, the State of New Mexico determined a population of less than 50 wolves roamed the state. That number of the genuine wolves equated to over $1 million WWI dollars damage to the state’s livestock industry and an untold dollar figure on native ruminant populations. The economic destruction paralleled the danger to human and livestock in matters of disease and public welfare. In the arbitrary USFWS-CBD decision to place 100 wolves into the wilds within the 5000 square mile BRWRA, the population density exceeded the 1918 New Mexico dynamic by a factor of 50X. The decision didn’t pass any prey or habitat study specific to the release area nor was it examined in the context of updated socio-economic implications. That data can now be examined as it applied to wolves in New Mexico at a time when genetics and prey conditions actually supported a wild wolf population.

A dramatic disconnect exists. This is compounded by adding counties within New Mexico that are named among the most at risk counties in the Nation. As a result, a NEPA, prey and habitat studies, and an updated socio-economic study must be done. The State of Arizona must be entitled to similar action.

● The detail of land ownership within the expansion of the recovery area has not been done. In expanding endangered species recovery habitat, increased limitations of many factors will necessarily take place. The BRWRA demonstrates how such changes affect and diminish multiple use principles. The original New Mexico data regarding livestock depredation is now available and can be interpolated into monetary impact to the state in current dollars. It is appropriate an economic analysis be undertaken to quantify such losses. The State of New Mexico can no longer allow wholesale expansion of critical habitat without compulsory monthly charges to the United States. Impacts to its citizenry must be mitigated. This matter is particularly acute in two funding mechanisms. The first relates to State Land Commissioner collection of trust funds for education and the second is the collection of taxes associated with private property valuation rolls. The State of Arizona must be entitled to similar actions.

● A fundamental flaw in substituting closed door negotiations between USFWS and CBD and unavailable information on the impact of science exists. This is particularly acute in any program expansion equating to 2,740% or 87,840,000 acres. As USFWS knows, CEQ disallows that. This renders the entire approach to agency expansion illegal and grossly inappropriate. The nation is entitled to an elevated display of cultural courtesies without fear of predetermined intent.

● Cultural courtesy equates to the primacy of local Customs and Cultures. Since most of the land earmarked for environmental strangulation is rural, the evaluation of the socio-economic impacts to a whole community of citizens is paramount. In studies concluded this year, New Mexico is the most senior of the nation’s land stewards. Arizona follows closely. Both states must factor the social implications regarding economic, emotional, and physical stress along with future stewardship disruption levied at that segment of senior society.

Likewise, the expansion must devote efforts to cataloguing and arraying infrastructure and investments on these lands as they apply to their historical value. All expansion must be delayed until such matters are attended.

● Finally, there is the matter of local governance. A survey determined not a single conservation district board, among the 87 in the two states, was contacted for input. That is particularly egregious in that those bodies are charged by statute to oversee their respective states’ water and soil resources. USFWS might disregard FLPMA, but they cannot get around the NEPA demand for conformity to local planning. This has been made more intolerable by the response from Regional Director Benjamin Tuggle in his official USFWS response denying board requests for cooperating status. Tuggle must present statutory authority for his actions. As it stands, this is a breach of law, and more importantly, it is a breach of the respective state constitutions and the Constitution that grew from the shot heard round the world on a spring morning on that Lexington green.

Western America must demand the protection of sovereign property rights that are being destroyed in this and similar acts of environmental hooliganism. Rural America started the tradition in 1774, perpetuated it for over two centuries, and … it is time the rest of the nation returns the favor starting in 2013.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “Our ranch will be affected by the expansion of the recovery zone. The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish officially estimates the population of deer in our area less than one deer per square mile of land. Livestock are the only prevailing food source for the wolf-canine crosses.”