Norman Bishop(reviewer of the 1990 and 1992 reports to Congress, “Wolves for Yellowstone?”......as well as contributing to the 1994 Environmental Impact Statement, “The Reintroduction of Gray Wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho”) and Chris Colligan of THE GREATER YELLOWSTONE COALITION rebutting biologist Val Geist's errant commentary on the ability of people being able to coexist with wolves .............(I inadvertently left these comments off of the Friday August 26 Post on this subject...my apologies!)

From: Chris Colligan
To: Norman Bishop

 Re: Comments on notes from Dr. Val Geist.

Norm,

Thank you for sending this along.  I think you would also appreciate
the article in the below link.  Here's an excerpt: "Their assumptions
raise the possibility that they were interested in providing evidence
for a hypothesis they considered self-evident, perhaps because of a
biopolitical perspective (cf., Urbigkit 2008, Patterson 2010), or
affiliation bias (Murphy 2001).

 Unfortunately, these approaches often
reinforce rather than reduce human–wildlife conflict (Dickman 2010).
This may sound like harsh criticism, but given the controversy
surrounding carnivore–livestock conflicts, reliable knowledge is
needed and studies must be able to withstand scientific scrutiny to
guide management." Thanks!

Chris

Hebblewhite, M. 2011. Unreliable knowledge about economic impacts of
large carnivores on bovine calves. Journal of Wildlife Management. In
press.
http://www.cfc.umt.edu/HebLab/PDFS/JWM_Hebblewhite_unreliable%20knowledge%20carnivores%20bovine%20calves%202011.pdf

_______________________________________________________________________

 Norman Bishop response to Val Geist's errant comments on Wolves:

Dr. Geist's first paragraph under "The North American Paradigm" sets the

tone for his diatribe.  If Kenton Carnegie was indeed killed by wolves, it

was because they, like the local bears, had been allowed continual access to

human foods, with no hint of aversive conditioning.  It is no surprise that

food-habituated carnivores occasionally kill humans.  The wolves that

apparently killed the teacher at Chignik Lake, Alaska, were similarly

habituated.
-----------------------------------------------------


Reviewing Dr. Geist's second paragraph under "The North American Paradigm,"

I offer these notes.................

Barry Lopez, in his classic Of Wolves and Men (Pp. 70-71) reports on
Clarke's story of the Beasts of Gevaudan.  To anyone who has read it,
Geist's take is ludicrous.  No, of course Clarke did not think the Beasts of
Gevaudan were rabid.  He concluded that the beasts were hybrids, based on
their size and coloration.  He also concluded that most reports of a wolf
attacking a human could be attributed to a rabid animal or a hybrid.  Any
veterinarian acquainted with the very quick demise of any wolf that
contracts rabies would guffaw at the notion that the beasts of Gevaudan were
rabid, because their killing spree lasted from June 30, 1764 to June 19,
1767.  No rabid wolf would last anywhere near that long.

   Lopez notes that"Between 1740 and 1773, about two thousand wolves were killed in the region
of Gevaudan, mostly in attempts to kill the Gevaudan pair. With reference to Dr. Geist's "The North American Paradigm," paragraphs 3-5 on wolf propaganda by the Russians, quite a different picture is offered by Professor of zoology Dmitry I. Bibikov, Institute of Animal Evolution, Morphology and Ecology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, member of the IUCN Wolf Specialist Group, and his colleague, Dr. of zoology Nikita Ovsyanikov, also a member of the IUCN Wolf Specialist Group.

  They responded to an October 22, 1993 letter from Steven H. Fritts, Ph.D., Northern Rocky
Mountain Wolf Coordinator, in which Dr. Fritts enclosed a letter of comment on the wolf EIS from Will Graves to Ed Bangs, noting that Mr. Graves cites no literature to back his arguments against restoring wolves.  He asked Prof. Bibikov if the information from Mr. Graves was correct.  Dr. Fritts'
letter and Prof. Bibikov and Dr. Ovsyakikov's December 28, 1993 response are included as Appendix 14. Information on wolves in the former Soviet Union, on Pp. 6-97 to 6-99 of the 1994 Final Environmental Impact Statement, The reintroduction of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho.

 From their response, a snippet:  "We should note, that there were a lot of speculations and incorrect reports on harmful role of wolf in Soviet and Russian hunting magazines and books supported by former Ministry of Agriculture, but very few true research on that subject in Russia.  Reading
Mr. Graves' letter we have formed an impression, that his opinion is based mainly on highly speculative hunting magazine publications and/or on popular hunting books (Pavlov's for instance)."