Illogical arithmetic and wagers ignored
By Todd Wilkinson
Well, loyal Headwaters News readers,
the plot thickens: Bob's still got a lot to say about wolves in the West,
but he's unwilling to back up his words by putting a dinner on the line.
Last week, right here, I staked a dinner in suggesting that Robert T. "Bob"
Fanning Jr. would be proved wrong in his doom-and-gloom prediction that wolves
will obliterate an entire Yellowstone elk herd within three years.
Mr. Fanning, you may recall, is chairman and founder of the group, Friends of
the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd, Inc. headquartered in Pray, Mont., north
of Yellowstone Park.
In a recent letter to a newspaper, Fanning made these statements and assertions:
When I called Fanning on his bluff and bet him a dinner
that time will prove him wrong on all four of his assertions, he declined saying
he is too busy.
"As for Todd's bet for dinner ... I don't have the time, I just did two
radio shows, a two-hour television interview and testified in front of the county
commissioners from Idaho and Montana, all in one week."
And what is it that Mr. Fanning is so aflutter testifying about? He's out there
doing his level best to generate public hysteria, his specialty. Despite lacking
compelling empirical evidence, he claimed, just last week, that the Absaroka-Beartooth
portion of the Gallatin National Forest — once "continental America's
most productive public hunting grounds and Montana's most popular hunting grounds"
is "now destroyed by wolf predation."
Mr. Fanning insists that by 2008 — one year after he claims the Northern
Yellowstone Elk Herd is extinct—there will be 4,300 wolves in the interior
West consuming 104,000 big game animals a year. He says the death and biological
destruction already apparent in his own mind but invisible to most people will
spread across all of Montana.
Mr. Fanning has always been flamboyant with his biological arithmetic. Three
years ago he asserted — convincing a few impressionable Montana legislators
along the way — that by this year the inner West would be populated by
1,700 wolves (twice as many as currently exists in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho).
In 2001, biologist Mike Phillips, who supervised wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone
and who now is executive director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund, challenged
Fanning:
"Fanning's claim that 1,700 wolves will inhabit the region by 2004 is hyperbole
at best," Phillips wrote. "While such a growth rate is THEORETICALLY
possible, I'm so sure that the Northern Rockies will not support 1,700 wolves
by January 2004 that I publicly wager Mr. Fanning $1,000 to see if he'd like
to put his money where his mouth is."
It's a good thing Fanning fled from the wager because today he'd be out 1,000
bucks. And, once again, let me suggest he'll also be out a dinner in 2007 if
he'd only accept accountability for the public statements he's making now.
Bob already is backpedaling mightily from his earlier wapiti doomsday prophecy.
While recently testifying in Helena, Mont., Mr. Fanning himself made a bet with
Chris Smith, a top administrator with the Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Department.
Fanning said that within two years, the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd would
crash to between zero and 3,000 elk (three times as many—about 9,000—
now exist).
If he's wrong, he offered to buy Mr. Smith and his family a week's stay at the
Bellaggio Casino in Las Vegas. Now we're really talkin', Bob. Once you get done
chewing the ears off rural county commissioners in the West and other wolf haters,
you might try bringing your predator fear, loathing and hysteria to Sin City.
You could become a new opening act for Seigfried and Roy.
Until then, I'm still waiting. Come on, do we have a bet or not?