Wolves, de-listing, drops in deer and elk populations, and more. I’m David Sparks. Right back with that report. Almost everyday in the Northwest, there’s a newspaper story about wolves.   Bottom line…wolves are not getting good press and appear in the papers to be worse than the plague upon our land. But then you talk to Ed Bangs Wolf recovery Coordinator for the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

 By that title, can I assume that you’re a wolf friendly guy?

 (Bangs) “Not really. I’m wildlife friendly and wolves are just  to me are just another animal. I’ve worked on wolves in Alaska for 13 years and on wolf issues here for about 20 years so I know a lot about them and the biology and the politics and all that stuff.”

 Yesterday there was a newspaper story in Boise talking about wolves killing for the fun of it.

 (Bangs) “What happens with wolf issues is that they’re never about wolves. What people mean when they say wolves kill for fun, what they do is use the human value of greed and waste and try and give wolves human values, so they try to make them people, and give them negative values so that people won’t like them. Actually, wolves very rarely kill more than they can eat. That’s what God made them to do was kill big stuff and eat it and they also made the big stuff like deer and elk be able to avoid wolves. If wolves were going to kill all the elk they would have done it ten thousand years ago.”