The Return of Wolves to Maine: With John Glowa. Part 1

[@MikeinBrazil617]

cool vid, love maine

[@johnhedley9136]

I enjoyed this better than the audible version. I watched a film that is available on KZbin "Medacine of the wolf". Highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.

[@MushMaine]

Thanks

[@LiveFreeAndThriveHomesteading]

I'm fine with the wolves coming back on their own, but when you lead with an argument that we need to stop coyote hunting, ramp up ESA enforcement and public expenditure it makes me unenthusiastic. Once they become established they are going to balloon in population like they did in the West and the Great Lakes. If I thought that we'd let them get to a reasonable population and then open up state management I'd be more OK with it, but it always turns into years of lawsuits. The argument that shooting more coyotes increases populations but that we shouldn't shoot them because we want more doesn't make logical sense. If you wanted more coyotes then you'd want more hunting by the data. The argument seems to really be that you don't want coyotes or wolves to be hunted more than you want to see robust populations. Personally, I like both species and I'd be happy to see a limited wolf presence in Northern New England, but it's the potential that we'd get to a problem level of wolves or have to give them top priority because of ESA that gives me pause. I'd actually rather see a non essential experimental population with deliberate reintroduction and a clear population objective at the start than see natural dispersal and deal with the ESA issues. They deserve to be on the landscape even if that means some problems and reduction in other species. We shouldn't be managing an ecosystem just for whitetail deer, but neither should we manage exclusively for wolves. I'd like to see a balanced approach and one that designates a specific geography. Wolves in the Allagash is one thing and in Massachusetts is another. A non essential study population would let us get real data on the incidental take by coyote hunters and allow for some understanding of dispersal into more populated parts of New England. I'd love to hear and see some wolves in New England and I think there are a lot of hunters who feel the same but how it is handled matters. I'll point out that Quebec allows hunting and trapping of wolves outside of certain areas and I think that is probably holding dispersal back as much or more than deer hunters in New England taking them once they cross the border.