Hunting+Guide

Stakeholder: Hunting Guide
Lauren Date: 11/6/08 Different stakeholders have many different opinions on whether you should allow wolves in Colorado. As a hunting guide, I think wolves shouldn’t live here because they interfere with my job. Outfitters ask me if I can help them find elk to hunt. After the wolves chased the elk out of their territory or have eaten them, the hunters can’t hunt as many elk. Some hunting guides think a little differently. They want wolves here, for the hunters to hunt. Hunters say it adds to their hunting experience, but hunting wolves is illegal in the continental 48 states. While I’m waiting for hunting wolves to become legal, they’re eating my money. Environmentalists and defenders of wildlife want to keep wolves. Both of them think wolves were put in nature for a reason and should have the ability to live in it. They see wolves as beautiful and unique animals you can’t see anywhere else. Wolves should be welcomed because they help the environment by killing the weakest elk in the herd. That allows the herd to be stronger. The hunters kill the strongest which allows the elk population to decrease even faster. They hunt the stronger elk because they have more meat and larger antlers. No matter who hunts the elk, their population is going to decrease. On the other hand, some stakeholders think the total opposite. Ranchers and outfitters strongly dislike wolves. Outfitters don’t want them here because they’re killing what they were going to hunt. That makes them angry because they waited until hunting season. Now there isn’t anything to hunt. The outfitters want the wolves to stop interfering with their hunting. Ranchers dislike wolves because they eat their livestock. They get upset when they find one of their livestock killed. If it keeps happening frequently, it interferes with their job. If one of their livestock was killed, the rest of the herd were threatened and harassed by a pack of wolves. When threatened, the livestock wouldn’t be eating or gaining weight, they would be running away from the pack of wolves. Ranchers want their livestock for their business, not for the wolves to have a delicious meal on. So it’s very important to a rancher to keep their livestock. As you can see, every stakeholder has an opinion on whether to allow wolves in Colorado. There are some compromises we could do for both standpoints. I think we should move the wolves someplace where they wouldn’t interfere with hunters hunting, they wouldn’t be able to eat rancher’s livestock, but while moving them, no harm would be done. The wolves would be moved to a place where environmentalists could see them and where they could eat. The place they would be moved wouldn’t upset any stakeholders, or the wolves. I**deal Mediation** The ideal mediation is that the wolves would be relocated to a national park. The government would tranquilize them, put them in cages, and release them. Or they could relocate them while they’re conscious. If the population of wolves increases a great amount, outfitters could hunt a certain amount of wolves for a certain period of time. Overall, the ranchers wouldn’t have to deal with them, outfitters could hunt their elk (possibly wolves), environmentalists could observe them, and hunting guides could accomplish their job.
 * What’s Your Stakeholders Opinion?**
 * My Stakeholder: Hunting Guide**
 * Allies: Environmentalists and Defenders of Wildlife**
 * Different Viewpoint: Ranchers and Outfitters**
 * Compromise(s**)

Matt S 11/17/08
 * Position:** My stakeholder, a hunting guide, is undecided about introducing wolves in the wild. There are reasons why wolves would be good for hunting and bad for hunting. For the short term I think it would be bad to have wolves in the wild since they can’t be hunted yet in most of the United States but for long term, I think it would be good to have them because once they get off the endangered species list, they can be hunted.


 * Rational/ and evidence:** A wolf’s main prey is elk, and this is also the animal that the majority of the people like to hunt. One reason elk hunting is so popular is because hunters can also eat the elk meat. The cost of one elk is $10,000. That’s a lot of money for my business. If wolves were introduced to areas where elk are, the elk population would decrease. Fewer and fewer people will want to hunt, because the chances of killing an elk or deer are a lot less. The only way that I would want wolves in the wild would be if there was a wolf hunting season so that the wolf population wouldn’t increase dramatically. Right now, there is a wolf hunting season only in Alaska and Canada. One of the reasons my stakeholder would want wolves to be introduced in the wild is because a good hunter would want to hunt wolves. Wolves challenge hunters and guides. Like elk, wolves are fast but wolves are also smart, small and they camouflage with the environment. This would challenge the hunters. Hunting wolves will benefit the hunting community if there was a wolf hunting season.


 * Rational and Evidence:** People think of wolves as vicious animals, but they actually aren’t. They don’t attack people. Wolves are kind of scared of people and try to stay away from us. The weak and sick elk and deer are normally what they eat. The disease that an elk or deer has can’t transfer to the wolf. This helps the elk, hunters and the wolves. It helps the elk because they take away the weak and sick from the pack. Hunters benefit from it because it takes away the chance to kill a diseased elk or deer. Wolves get food easier because the diseased run slower than the strong and healthy. We also need them to balance out the ecosystem. A lot of people benefit by having wolves.


 * Allies/Areas of compromise:** One of my allies is a private hunter. We could also have another allies in Estes park residence We believe in the same things. Although I think that wolves should not be in the wild short term, there are areas of compromise. One compromise is that we could hunt the wolves that kill livestock. Also another solution, long term, could be that there is a hunting season for wolves. A compromise I could have with the Estes park residence is that we could hunt the wolves in a five mile perimeter of the town.


 * Ideal mediation result:** There are good arguments for both sides. I think that overall I would rather wolves not be introduced in the wild so that my elk hunting business can continue as usual. However, I would support having wolves in the wild for the long term if a wolf hunting season is created.

Caroline G. November 17, 2008**
 * Stakeholder Analysis

I am representing a hunter’s guide, and I do not want wolves in Colorado. I make my living by taking people out to hunt. The hunters pay me to show them the best places to hunt, and show them the proper techniques of hunting. Wolves may add to the effect of hunting; however they eat the elk and deer that we hunt and find interest in.
 * Position and Rationale**

Discussing with many different hunter’s guides has been exceptionally interesting. We spoke about wolves re-entering Colorado. The majority of us said that they do not want wolves to come back. We decided this because the wolves have eaten over half of the elk that we want to hunt. We make money by bringing people hunting. When wolves eat the elk people don’t want to hunt as much, and when people don’t come hunting with us we don’t get any money.
 * Evidence**

Given that wolves tend to stay in certain areas, we have to be thoughtful about where they are. We hunt where the wolves live, and they kill about half of the elk and we kill the other half of the elk soon we would no longer be able to hunt there. We would then be forced to leave that area and find new hunting grounds. Often we do not like having to leave and having to adapt to new places. Many times the new place is not as dreadful as we expected and other times not extremely good but it never stops me from hunting.

A nice man from http://voices.idahostateman.com got my hopes up by revealing to me that there are still more elk this year even though the wolves are present. He also mentioned to me that during the hunting season the elk are moving and are trying to get away form the wolves. The elk scatter in many different places and could potentially be available for us to hunt.

All in all I am exceedingly disappointed that wolves could possibly be coming back to Colorado. If wolves re-enter Colorado there is a slight chance that wolves could come into the areas in which I hunt and interfere with my job. We met with our ally the private hunters. We met with them over others because we share the same opinion on wolves so we discussed and we thought about ideas to share with other stakeholders. One compromise that my fellow workers and I have come up with is that if wolves get off of the endangered species list we could have a short two week season to hunt the wolves. If we can do that we can slightly balance out the population. As wolves slowly come down into Colorado I will have to come up with more strategies so I can still hunt and make a living without being disturbed by the wolves.
 * Allies and compromise**

All of our research paid off in an incredible mediation. A woman named Johanna came and listened to all of our different stakeholders positions. Once we all stated our opinions she started to ask us questions and we put our ideas on the table to come up with a final compromise. The Association of animal rights said that the wolves are doing us a favor by killing off all of the weak elk and so we have the strong ones left to hunt. Our compromise in the end was that we should be able to tranquilize the wolf and then have a professional come and remove the wolf. It was a truly extraordinary happening.
 * Mediation**

I have learned so much through out this tremendous experience. Not just about wolves, but how to work as a team to find a solution. We have had so much fun with this project, and it has made me more aware of the fact that people sometimes jump to conclusions before really knowing the person’s opinion.
 * Conclusion**

11/ 17/ 08 I am a hunter guide and I am undecided whether of not to get rid of wolves because they do benefits and they do harm. Some benefits are that they do are keep herds healthy and keep elk at a stable population. Some harm they do are that they kill rancher's livestock and reduce their money. Another is that they can reduce the work and money of hunting guides. We hunting guides think that if everyone takes a better look at the wolves, we can learn from them. I have done research to find out what ranchers and farmers and other people think about wolves, because they live close to them. We also want to know what wolves strategies are like, maybe we can learn how to do the same thing.
 * Brandon H**
 * Position/ Rationale**

Some people think wolves only attack weak animals but the truth is that they attack weak first but if elk stay, they get killed. Some people say the wolves are actually helping us by killing weak animals. Wolfs keep animal groups healthy. Wolves keep a stable population with overpopulated elk, wolves eat anything mice and moose. The way that wolves hunt, they can change the way that things grows. Wolves can attract a lot of attention from spectators. I think that if the wolves get off the endangered animals list we should have a hunting season for two weeks, it should be two weeks don't get on the endangered animals list and they wont overpopulate. Wherever they go they can adapt quickly like when wolves where introduced back to Yellowstone from Canada and started a new life.
 * Evidence**

Ranchers and farmers want to get rid of the wolves because they're killing their animals. They say wolves kill the animals they raised. They say that wolves will eat anything and everything, but they first kill the diseased animals because they're slower. They eat them and the healthy ones have the chance to escape. When the wolves kill and eat the animals, the ranchers lose a lot of year.
 * Rancher Rational/ Evidence**

I think that I have the same idea as the environmentalists and the Estes Park residents because they don't want them to get over or underpopulated. We want to get them to a stable population for hunting so we could have a two week hunting season and they would be fine. We hunting guides want to make money out of our living but the wolves take our job so we don't make much money.
 * Allies**

We could compromise with environmentalists and the Estes Park residents because we have similar ideas. If all goes well at the mediation, everybody will share similar ideas and we wont need to compromise too much. The ones that won't be easy to compromise with because they will have different ideas. Stuff don't always work out the way we want them to, I think that we will have to have a little compromise with some people like ranchers.
 * Mediation**

We may not know it, but we mimic the wolves. People think that they're reckless and that they destroy everything, but when I tell them that we mimic the wolves they get confused. Some traits that we mimic, for example, are how they take care of their young ones; they ask relatives and close friends to take care of the children while the parents go out seeking food. We learn how to hunt from the wolves, but we use weapons to hunt instead of doing it their way. If I go camping and I run out of food, then what would I do? I would have to eat like the wolves by eating my fill of animals until a rescue squad comes. When I get enough to eat and there are a lot of leftovers, I give them to other people and make more food so everyone can eat, wolves have the same trait. If you go camping and there isn't any equipment, what do you do? You have to make the best of everything and rub two dry sticks together to make a fire to keep warm. Wolves keep the others warm in a den. When you have a family, you have to make sure that you have a leader to keep the family in order; the wolves have a leader with strategies for hunting. A mistake people often make is throwing away leftovers. You have to make sure that what you are throwing away isn't wasting resources that can be reused, wolves make sure that food is never wasted.
 * Thoughts**

My Hunting Guide Debate Essay. By Daphne Psaledakis

I’m a hunting guide, and I’m here today to try and convince the government that their opinions are merely guesses on what we hunters want. I have done enough research to defend this declaration. I am willing to compromise, as long as both our points are included. There are two ways to look at it. Some people want wolves, some others don’t. Today I’m going to defend both.

Rationale: For the Wolves

Some outfitters really do want wolves and think that they add to their hunting experience. The government, and also most people, automatically assume that we don’t want wolves. But they can be wrong, dead wrong. Most hunters rely on the same hunting grounds every year to take their clients. It’s not the wolves that make the elk scarce, but the hunters. So how can we blame the wolves? Wolves only kill the weak elk. Some hunters have changed their business slightly to actually go into wolf country, and get the healthy elk. That way the chance of getting an unhealthy one is much lower. One person (on a site that had peoples opinions on this topic) said that they would caution anyone against shooting a wolf, unless you know the penalties for doing so. One quote I found said this (according to a source): “Good news for the wolves in the Northern Rock Mountains? They’re off the Endangered Species List. Bad news for the wolves? Plans are already in the works to hunt them.” That quote is from a site called New West Boise.

Compromises

I have about two compromises for this rationale. One of them is that we harmlessly remove wolves to a place where people can enjoy them, and they can’t be shot. My second one is that we keep one or two packs and harmlessly remove the other larger ones.

Allies (for this rationale)

My allies for the wolves are: Environmentalists, some Estes Park residents, animal rights activist, tourism guides, ect. Are allies with me because they are for the wolves.

Rationale: Against the Wolves

I have gone around and researched people’s opinions. Someone from the same site as before said: “Why even consider reintroducing wolves. They abide no game laws and take the strongest bulls and the weakest calves.” In my opinion I must agree. They kill my game. How do I survive? Fish and Wildlife Service (located in Montana) says that wolves  should be shot in places where there are too many. I think that they should be shot whenever it takes down too much game or farm animals.

Allies (for this rationale)

My allies for this rationale are: cattle ranchers, private hunters, tourism guides, Estes Park residents, and maybe a few others that I can’t quite remember. These are allies with me because they are against the wolves.

Compromises

Every year the government sets a number of wolves allowed to be killed, depending on how their population is doing, hoe the elk are faring, and how many farm animals are killed. Once we have killed enough to reach that limit, we can’t shoot them any more. Period. There’s no argument about it. That way the killing is not out of hand, like environmentalists fear, but we still get our part of the debate. I think it is a pretty good bargain, and reaches both points thoroughly.

Conclusion I conclude that Hunters don’t necessarily disagree with wolves, but actually like them. Saying that it ads to their experience, helps their business, and even supplies them with good elk. What is the reason not to like them? Because maybe there isn’t.

Ideal Mediation Result

An ideal mediation result would be that be allowed to live in Colorado, but we keep them away from ranches and hunting territories.