Cheyenne's Howl

Printed in Mountain Messenger on Friday - February 13, 1998

Pawns in the Game of Life

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America, home of the brave, land of the free, where all are given an equal opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Well, at least this goes for those who have the gold, for they are the ones who make the rules that govern our lives. And if you are politically correct, you might also have a chance to follow your dreams. Now if you know someone in high places, this too might get you to where you want to go. But if you're average Joe Citizen, you're nothing more than a pawn in the game of life and are controlled by those who wish to exploit you for their own personal gain, no matter what the burden is to you or to those around you.

Once again my cousins in Yellowstone and Idaho have become the pawns for the top ranking executives in the American Farm Bureau Federation. If you had the chance to follow my columns the past three weeks you would have discovered that it took the government about twenty years to restore the wolf back into Yellowstone, which is just about as long as it took them to completely eliminate us from the park in the early 1900's. Now that we're back, the Farm Bureau wants us removed.

Now to go back a few years, it was on Thursday, January 12, 1995 at about 8:00 AM, a horse trailer carrying eight captured Canadian wolves in small travel containers, approached the entrance to Yellowstone National Park. Passing under the Roosevelt Arch, my cousins had to travel only forty more miles before they could get out and stretch and run in their new highly secure one acre acclimation pens in the Lamar Valley area. It was at this point that the Wyoming Farm Bureau filed an emergency appeal in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Denver. The court granted a forty-eight hour stay which basically prohibited the release of my cousins from their cramped travel containers into their acclimation pens. This last second legal maneuver created an additional and unnecessary hardship on the wolves. The order forced the Park Service to keep them in their tiny two-by-four-by-three foot travel crates while the court decided the case. My cousins had already been under a lot of stress. They had been captured and had intensive handling by humans. They also had just been on a long journey from Canada. Now, due to the stay order by the court, my cousins were going to be forced to be confined to their travel crates for up to another forty-eight hours. Agency veterinarians were concerned for the welfare of the wolves. Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt was in a somber mood at the afternoon conference at which he stated "If we don't get those wolves out of those cages, they may turn into coffins". All that the Park Service could do was to put my eight cousins inside the acclimation pens, however they were still confined to their travel crates. In the meantime, Justice Department lawyers in Denver fought to lift the stay. Fortunately the stay was lifted that night and after over thirty-six hours of being confined to their cages, my cousins paws were finally allowed to hit the powdery Yellowstone Park snow. More next week.

Cheyenne