Thanks for sharing this Neville. I am a big believer in having a very rounded out ecosystem with plenty of top of the food chain predators. As such I don't eat tuna or swordfish (and I have only eaten shark once in my life) but I try to eat salmon and halibut and hake and a lot of the smaller species for that very same reason. Wolves have been demonized just as bears have because yes, both can kill humans, but more often is the case that they kill livestock and it is ranchers who have driven the propaganda war against bob cats, mountain lions, wolves, bears and coyotes. When I was a child on the way back from a camping trip we passed a pasture with barbed wire fence and 5 or 6 coyotes strung over the fence. My father told me that it was a sign of the times how few were left because when he was my age that fence would have been covered from end to end in dead coyotes.
Living in the Washington DC metro area we have an abundance of deer because there are no natural predators and there are active if not publicly quiet urban archery programs to cull the herds. Occasionally they will even close the parks for a day for rifle shooting to cull the herds. The local tree huggers refuse to understand that without natural predators the populations grow to unsustainable numbers and they strip away vegetation more than they would if there was balance. Recently there was a couple of police reports of a mountain lion just 15 minutes outside of DC, but without photographic evidence or a trapped specimen it might as well be Big Foot. The black bear population is slowly creeping its way further away from the mountains and have been seen about 30-40 miles Southwest of DC. Coyotes too have been spotted and caught on audio right down by the Potomac River but the suspected numbers are very low due to urban and suburban density. I have lived out here since 1997. Mostly around densely wooded areas. Only in the last 5 years have I seen chipmunks. The squirrels are starting to come around the houses foraging for food. I have seen a few rabbits over time but not many. Even beavers are slowly making a comeback in the region. They were supposedly reintroduced to the region through Maryland back in the 1980's and little by little their population is creeping south along waterways, however a lot of residents want them trapped and removed not understanding the significance they have on the ecosystem. Now don't get me wrong, I would defend my life in a pinch against any predator, but I would still rather have them in this world than not. Scott On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 7:46 PM, Neville Gosling <[email protected]> wrote: > Wolves change rivers > > https://www.youtube.com/embed/ysa5OBhXz-Q > > > Neville (Nev) Gosling > > "A Minute Worked is 60 Seconds of Fishing Time Wasted" > > -- > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VFB Mail" > group. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/vfb-mail?hl=en > > VFB Mail is sponsored by Line's End Inc at http://www.linesend.com > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "VFB Mail" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VFB Mail" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/vfb-mail?hl=en VFB Mail is sponsored by Line's End Inc at http://www.linesend.com --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VFB Mail" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
