Wolf lovers spew hate

by Cat Urbigkit

Some wolf advocates are devoted to their love and concern for wolves, but their feelings for humans holding different views appears to be the opposite.

In the last week, there have been several cases of "hate mail" being sent to at least two western Wyoming residents who aren't exactly supporters of the wolf reintroduction program. Both received e-mail messages from wolf advocates. The e-mails were sent by different people and were filled with profanities.

In the first case, a livestock producer who maintains a website that contains his stories of wolf predation on his cattle, complete with photos, received an e-mail stating: "F*** you ***-****, now suffer you opened the e-mail." Apparently the sender was attempting to send a virus, but the attempt failed.

Earlier this week, a western Wyoming outfitter received an e-mail stating: " I read your crap about the wolves...you are the biggest piece of inbred **** ... I guess you can't because you are too gutless and stupid to compete against other men in business so you have to resort to killing wildlife for a living ... let's face it ... you have no talent ... life has kicked your *** ... you failed ... your family must be so embarrassed by you ...

"The wolves are great ... .we want them back ... you only represent you ... and nobody even knows you exist ... you could drop dead today and nobody would notice ... so you keep just acting like killing wildlife is some type of career ... like the animals are only here for you to make money off ... all the wildlife is here for a jerkoff like you to make money ... yeah ok ... it sucks to be you."

Neither of the senders of the e-mails left their names, but research by the Examiner led to the discovery of the authors' identities. The one sending the message to the livestock producer is a man from Maryland. The man sending the message to the outfitter is an out-of-work wildlife photographer.

As this issue went to press, he sent another message to the outfitter, full of profanities and stating, "Here's hoping the gun backfires into your skull."

The Examiner also received a piece of fan mail from a wolf advocate last week, via e-mail. The writer, giving her first name only and no address, took issue with the Examiner's article about wolves chasing elk off the feedgrounds.

She wrote: "This is for Cat, the wolf-hater. In your newspaper article, you seem very surprised that wolves are chasing elk to other disease-infested feedlots (which the feedlots are the things that need to be done away with). Imagine that!!! It seems to me that is the way Nature provided for her predators since Adam and Eve ate the fruit and wrecked forever the peaceful Garden of Eden. Just be grateful you don't have to catch your meals using just your teeth, but wolves and predators do. It is a matter of their survival. They are magnificent animals with a great need to balance nature and even if you think they are terribly cruel, just look at your daily newspaper or five minutes of the evening news on T.V. is so disgusting what us humans do to humans and we do terrible things not to survive but just because we hate others. Who is the REAL PROBLEM here, it is not the animals. I suggest if you are unhappy with wolves chasing elk, then go move to New York City, far away from Wyoming and all the beautiful creatures God put there for us to enjoy but you Wyomians think they were put there for you to exterminate."

Research revealed that the woman sending the e-mail to the Examiner is a woman who doesn't like livestock production on public lands either. The Examiner was able to obtain further identifying information about all three people sending the e-mails, so their attempts at anonymity didn't work.

Name-calling and hatred aren't new to the wolf advocacy scene. Idaho wolf advocate Ralph Maughan recently called the Wyoming Wolf Coalition "a bunch of wingnuts" and said county commissioners are "stupid."

One wolf website, www.heartofthe-wolf.org, calls Mike Jimenez and other U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees who may engage in controlling wolves "murderers" and even provides links to send these men e-mails. The site also takes issue with Defenders of Wildlife for allowing the wolf murders and compensating for damages. The website is operated by a man who calls himself a "freelance wolf activist."

During the litigation over the wolf reintroduction program, while the case was pending at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, the American Farm Bureau Federation reported it received death threats from wolf activists. AFBF President Dean Kleckner wrote: "Wolf stocking program advocates, incited by Defenders of Wildlife, organized a campaign of harassment and intimidation against Farm Bureau with the aim of forcing us to ignore our farmer-written policies and to drop our lawsuit. We have since received several bomb threats and threats against the lives of Farm Bureau officers and their families. Even a federal judge's life was threatened."