Culling an elk herd - Hunters or Govt Sharpshooters?
Really - does the madness ever end? A great piece by Tom over at the Black Bear Blog.
You can read the full post here: NYT weighs sharpshooters vs hunters
A snippet:
The New York Times published an opinion piece, a piece I assume was compiled by their editorial staff because there was no name attached to it, about the effort to cull the elk herd in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in western North Dakota.
You see the problem is there are too many elk. Over 20 years ago, a handful of elk were deposited in the park and today that number is approaching one thousand. Officials say there should be no more than 300 to maintain some semblance of balance within the ecosystem.
The argument has been how to kill off those 600-plus elk. Some have said a hunting season should be opened up to allow qualified hunters to do the job, while others think the federal government should pay exorbitant fees to hire sharpshooters to systematically slaughter the beasts. And let’s not forget that there are those who think we should let Nature deal with it and yes, some espouse bringing in wolves to do their bidding.
The editorial isn’t so much one declaring their preference of slaughter methods as it is a bundle of contradictions and bad information. Montana Senator Byron Dorgan proposed using hunters to do the job. Evidently the NYT has a problem with hunting.
