Nice wolves
To the Editor:
I’d like to clarify some points made in your article “New wolves have old eating habits” in the Feb. 6 edition of Western Producer. This highly controversial subject requires that all parties strive to be accurate.
The Belly River wolf pack, which denned in Waterton Lakes National Park in 1993 and 1994, was not reintroduced to this area as your article implies. These wolves, like packs farther north near Beauvais Lake and the Carbondale River, dispersed naturally into the area from an expanding population in northern Montana, where wolves are currently protected.
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Wolves will continue to disperse into this area on their own. Given that, the question is not whether they should be here, but how they should be managed.
All but two of the 20 cattle killed by wolves in 1994 were north of Highway 3.
No livestock losses were documented for the Belly or Beauvais packs. The Beauvais pack denned in a cow pasture.
The Belly pack, which at its largest contained six adults, raised seven pups in 1995. They denned less than half a kilometre from a bush pasture in which a rancher ran 125 cow-calf pairs throughout the summer.
At the end of the summer, this rancher confirmed that he had lost no cows or calves to any causes, even though the wolves frequently hunted white-tailed deer in his pasture.
The Carbondale pack did kill two calves in spring 1994. The wolves north of Highway 3, on the other hand, killed and mauled several cows over a number of months, before those wolves were killed by a trapper.
This suggests that new wolves do indeed have old eating habits: they eat what they have learned to hunt.
The challenge may be to get rid of wolves that learn to attack livestock while retaining wolves that focus on wild game. Wolves being highly territorial, the desirable wolves may help keep undesirable ones out. Many ranchers already manage coyote populations in this way.
Your reference to a pack of 50 or 60 wolves is inaccurate. Average pack size for wolves is between six and 10.
The total population of wolves in the entire Oldman River drainage was between 50 and 60 in late 1994, and that population consisted of at least five different packs.
Nobody knows how many wolves or packs now frequent the area, as all radio-collared study wolves were shot by hunters in 1994-95.
– Kevin Van Tighem,
Conservation Biologist,
Waterton Lakes
National Park, Alta.
That fax
To the Editor:
Mike Halyk’s accusation that some Reform Party worker inadvertently contacted him on his fax with no name affixed and Mr. Halyk using this fax as if authentic is unbelievable. After reading Mr. Halyk’s analysis of the fax, the fact is it was not Reform material. The Reform Party is not anti- or pro-CWB.
Mike, you no longer need to be in the dark. I can turn the light on for you. It’s certain … it was from one of his farmers’ union or NDP buddies. The article was to inform Mr. Halyk of this person’s own personal analysis of what Reform’s reaction to the CWB vote might be, neither more nor less. The theme of Mr. Halyk’s fax was basically the same rhetoric the NDP candidate in Yorkton-Melville was spouting during the last federal election, 1993. The part missing from Mr. Halyk’s unsigned fax was the Reform Party would destroy medicare.
Further in Halyk’s article, he favored the Charlottetown accord “special status for Quebec” and damned the Reform Party. Mr. Halyk, let me shed some light on special status. What if Alberta would have its own immigration policy, collect its own income tax, and its own pension plan? Suppose Alberta would be the only Anglophone province in Canada, the rest of Canada and the United States were Francophone …
Just think, Alberta receiving the same treatment as Quebec. The Governor General would be an Albertan (for the last 29 years), so would the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Minister of Finance, the Ambassadors to U.S.A. and France would be all from Alberta, the Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Canada from Alberta, most of the high ranking officers in the armed forces would be from Alberta.
The head office of Air Canada by law would be in Edmonton. Head office of CNR in Edmonton. Head office of all financial institutions in Alberta. Albertan companies would be recipients of non-repayable loans from the federal government. Alberta would receive $100 billion more in transfer payments than it paid out. Mr. Halyk, do you get the picture? A Canada giving special status to some of its citizens will never fix anything. If Canada is to survive, the Quebec blackmail must quit and Quebec must be told what separation will cost Quebec. For starters, no medicare, no pensions, no use of Canadian currency, no citizenship, no parliamentarians from Quebec, land partition, etc.
– A. Lipoth,
Waldron, Sask.
Rail delays
To the Editor:
Prairie grain elevators are full. Farmers are waiting for months to deliver their crops. The Crow rate is gone and the railways got what they wanted. Grain cars were provided by Federal and Provincial Governments. Forty-five ships are waiting to load grain, costing millions of dollars of demurrage, which is being charged against lowering grain prices and taking more money out of farmers’ pockets.
It is obvious it’s the railways that are not doing their job and we farmers have to do something about it. We should band together and sue the railways for ship demurrage, loss of international grain customers, lower grain prices and subversion to Canada’s agricultural economy. Let’s get together and do it. Why should we farmers shoulder the loss that railway mismanagement is causing? This has to be fixed for once and for all.
– Ron Henschell,
Edmonton, Alta.
Good show
To the Editor:
Three cheers for Nettie Wiebe, President of the National Farmers Union. She was brilliant in defending the Canadian Wheat Board on CBC “Fifth Estate.” I would also commend the program moderator and CBC for giving the debate balanced coverage. After all, the main subject matter, the three anti-CWB rebels, had nothing to offer. They refused to answer pertinent questions or face the camera, etc. Their ignorance was balanced by their arrogance. If it was only ignorance, one might be persuaded to feel sorry for the families involved.
It is too bad that we cannot bring their advisers and sponsors out into the spotlight. These three individuals have been grossly misled and intimidated by the very people that have been buying their hot dogs. Unfortunately, that is the way that most “kingpins, lords and propaganda experts” operate.
– Lorne Radcliffe,
Cardale, Man.
