When The Cockamamie Call The Cockamamie Cockamamie
December 17, 2007
As most of you probably know by now, the park authorities at the Rocky Mountain National Park have decided to “Do It My Way!” The park has too many elk and they’re trying to figure out how to reduce numbers. The debate has gone on for some time and last week the park announced what it plans to do. It plans to use park employees and other hired guns to slaughter the elk. Even though they say they might use, with approval from the National Park Service, “qualified” volunteer hunters, it is very unlikely that they will or that they even seriously considered that method at all.
Once again the park’s announcement of its plans has set off yet another round of debate over the best way to proceed. Charlie Meyers, Outdoor Editor for the Denver Post, had an article on Saturday ridiculing the officials at the RMNP. In that article he says this:
The National Park Service is to be commended for taking action to reduce elk herds that are damaging vegetation over large parts of the park. Such initiative is particularly commendable in face of cockamamie proposals from the carnivore-promotion group, Sinapu, to reintroduce wolves.
To make sure you understand the context in which this was written, Meyers throughout the entire article is quite cynical in discussing the efforts of the park authorities. He is attempting to show readers, in a spoofy kind of way, that there are many things to be thankful for even though park officials don’t seem to really care one way or the other about the ideas presented by wildlife experts at the Colorado Division of Wildlife or the Wildlife Commission.
In the announcement by park officials, it was made clear that they had NOT removed the idea of introducing wolves into the park to help reduce elk numbers. As a matter of fact, one of the biggest complaints from DOW seemed to come on Saturday when Tom Burke, chairman of the Colorado Wildlife Commission, said the plan was so vague and open ended that it was extremely difficult to know what the real plan was and that it left too many unanswered questions up to the park to work out on their own. People can’t realistically comment on or understand what this elk management plan is when they’re not even sure if Abram’s tanks can be brought in and used.
Now, Charlie Meyers seems to be in a bit of hot water from his wolf-loving readers who think he went off the deep end calling the plan to bring wolves into RMNP, cockamamie. If you go to the site where the article is and scroll down to the bottom, you’ll see the comments left by readers. As of this writing, six readers weighed in with comments, all in favor of bringing wolves back and all because they favor “natural” wildlife management.
I wonder if this “natural” wildlife management makes for better wildlife viewing opportunities in our National Parks (Zoos)?
For Charlie Meyers, I guess it’s time to start looking for another job. With a nationwide movement toward natural wildlife management, what will there be to write about?
Tom Remington
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[...] enough, some groups are arguing for the reintroduction of wolves as an alternative measure of elk population control. The last wolves left Colorado in the 1930s. [...]
What an excellent article on “When The Cockamamie Call The Cockamamie Cockamamie”. You have explained a difficult topic with such ease that I was amazed. Also, where you discussed about “The National Park Service is to be commended for taking action to reduce elk herds that are damaging vegetation over large parts of the park. Such initiative is particularly commendable in face of cockamamie proposals from the carnivore-promotion group, Sinapu, to reintroduce wolves” the selection of words was great.
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James Chapel
Addiction Recovery Colorado