05 May 22
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Next on the agenda: the pressing question of whether COVID vaccines are giving people AIDS.
Johnson was asked about a theory—one that’s new to me, anyway—offered by a lawyer named Todd Callender that the COVID vaccines are giving people AIDS. Most people would respond with incredulity, and a demand that the person making such an assertion immediately undergo a CAT scan. However, Ron Johnson is not most people, for which we can be grateful because, were that the case, we’d all be eating oatmeal with our toes. From the Wisconsin State Journal:
“Let me challenge you there. That’s way down the road,” Johnson replied. “I mean, you gotta do one step at a time. Everything you say may be true, OK, but right now the public views the vaccines as largely safe and effective, that vaccine injuries are rare and mild. That’s the narrative, that’s what the vast majority of the public accepts. So until we get a larger percentage of the population with their eyes open to ‘woah, these vaccine injuries are real, why?’ You know, it’s gotta be step by step. You can’t leap to crimes against humanity. You can’t leap to another Nuremberg trial.”
He’s not saying he agrees with this lunacy, mind you. He’s just open to any and all speculation, no matter how firmly attached it is to planet Earth.
Johnson has long entertained conspiratorial and disproven theories regarding COVID-19 or promoted less effective treatments, such as gargling mouthwash. He has also convened a group of doctors and scientists who have been criticized for spreading COVID-19 misinformation to “get a second opinion” on the health issues facing Americans because of the pandemic.
Johnson spokesperson Alexa Henning said in a statement, “To be clear, the Senator has never stated nor does believe that the vaccine causes HIV. Someone else brought it up on the call and the senator pushed back on his claim.”
Saying that it isn’t time for a Nuremberg trial yet over whether vaccines are giving people AIDS is not exactly “pushing back.” And it’s not like Johnson hasn’t been a professional traveling nut salesman before.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says vaccines are safe and effective. But Johnson has cast doubt on the public health experts and scientists educated, trained and authorized to conduct COVID-19 studies and report them to the public. In turn, he has promoted debunked myths, like athletes dropping dead on the field after receiving COVID-19 vaccines.
One million dead, and this guy is in the U.S. Senate. The mind, she boggles.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito speaks at the University of Notre Dame, Sept. 30, 2021. (photo: Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)
ALSO SEE: 'Nonscalable' Fence Erected Outside Supreme Court
Amid Abortion-Related Protests
Alito had been set to appear at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' judicial conference, a gathering of judges from the New Orleans-based federal appeals court and the district courts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, a person familiar with the matter said.
But he has since canceled, the person said, and Patricia McCabe, a spokesperson for the Supreme Court, on Wednesday said he was not attending. The spokesperson gave no reason for why Alito, who is the justice assigned to hear emergency appeals from the 5th Circuit, was not going.
Alito, a member of the court's 6-3 conservative majority, authored the draft opinion that was dated from February and published by Politico on Monday.
The unprecedented leak from the high court sent shock waves through the United States. U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday confirmed the draft's authenticity but emphasized it was not final, and said the court will investigate the leak, which he called a "betrayal."
The 5th Circuit's Office of the Circuit Executive declined to confirm its conference was occurring this week, citing security, but the legal society American Inns of Court in a press release last week detailed the date and location.
Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas were slated to speak separately on Thursday and Friday at the 11th Circuit's judicial conference in Atlanta, according to an event program.
It was unclear if they would still attend. McCabe referred inquiries about their scheduled appearances to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which did not respond to requests for comment late Wednesday.
The in-person circuit conferences are among the first to be held since the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March 2020. Similar events are planned this year in the 2nd, 6th, 9th and 10th Circuits and the patent-centric Federal Circuit.
Such conferences are typically a cross between a business meeting and a continuing legal education conference and provide an opportunity for judges to gather and mingle.
Russian forces killed twice as many people as originally thought in its March 16 bombing of a theater that served as a shelter in Ukraine's besieged port city of Mariupol. (photo: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
An extensive AP investigation puts the real death toll at 600—and debunks Russian claims the theater was being used as a Ukrainian military base.
That’s according to an extensive investigation by the Associated Press out Wednesday, which puts the real death toll of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater bombing at about 600. Ukrainian authorities had initially said an estimated 300 people were killed.
The investigation also debunks Moscow’s earlier claims that the theater had been serving as a Ukrainian military base at the time of the airstrike, with survivors confirming they never saw any Ukrainian soldiers on the premises.
Russian forces lobbed bombs on the building despite the word “children” being painted in huge, white letters on the pavement outside, large enough to be visible even by satellite.
Using testimony from 23 survivors, rescuers, and others familiar with the theater, as well as photos, video, and floor plans, the AP investigation paints a devastating picture of how many lives were lost in the bombing.
More than 1,000 civilians were inside the premises at the time, among them pregnant women and families with young kids, many of them trying to evacuate the city. Survivors said they didn’t see any more than about 200 people escape—with the rest of them buried in the wreckage.
“All the people are still under the rubble, because the rubble is still there—no one dug them up. This is one big mass grave,” a survivor named Oksana Syomina told the AP as she recalled the horror of seeing bloodied bodies.
The disturbing new details about the theater bombing—one of the most heinous of Russia’s alleged war crimes since the invasion began on Feb. 24—come as Ukrainian authorities warn the decimated city may be the site of even more atrocities yet to be discovered.
Some of the most gut-wrenching glimpses inside the battered city have come from firsthand accounts of those who made it out. Ukrainian photographer Yevgeny Sosnovsky shared photos on Facebook this week of a diary kept by an 8-year-old boy who was trapped in the city during Russia’s siege.
In heartbreaking detail, the diary pages reveal what the war looked like through the eyes of a child.
“I slept well, woke up, smiled, got up and read up to the 25th page. Also my grandfather died, I have a wound on my back, torn out skin, my sister has a head wound, and mama has flesh torn out of her arm and a hole in her leg,” the boy wrote, titling the diary entry “War.”
On another page, the boy notes that he’s preparing to celebrate his birthday, alongside a doodle of a stick figure family wearing party hats and standing next to a big cake. On the next page, the boy drew pictures of dead bodies in the street, burning buildings, tanks, and men holding rifles.
“Two of my dogs died, and grandmother Galya, and my beloved city of Mariupol all throughout this time starting on the 24th,” he wrote.
The grim snapshot of what remains of Mariupol after weeks of Russian bombardment comes as Russia reportedly prepares to hold a parade in the city to mark Victory Day on May 9, when the country celebrates the defeat of the Nazis in 1945. (President Vladimir Putin is widely expected to use the holiday this year to claim that Russian forces defeated “Nazis” in Ukraine with his “special military operation.”) Local Russian forces have reportedly been ordered to clear debris and dead bodies from the streets to help sell the Kremlin narrative that the city has been “liberated.”
Meanwhile, the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance in the city came under intense fire by Russian troops Wednesday. Ukrainian soldiers holed up in the Azovstal steel plant, along with some civilians, continue to fight in the hopes of fending off a full-blown Russian takeover of the city, most of which has been wiped off the face of the earth.
IRS employees sort through returns at a facility in Ogden, Utah. (photo: Alex Goodlett/Washington Post)
Placer.ai allowed anyone to freely create an account and start using its visualized data to see where visitors to Planned Parenthood facilities approximately live. (photo: Getty)
Placer.ai allowed anyone to freely create an account and start using its visualized data to see where visitors to Planned Parenthood facilities approximately live.
Location and other data related to abortion clinics has taken on a new significance as a leaked draft opinion indicates the Supreme Court is ready to repeal the decades-old protections of Roe v. Wade to people seeking abortions and those providing them. Anti-abortion activists have previously used similar types of data to send targeted ads to the devices of people in and around Planned Parenthood clinics. A Missouri official previously said the state reviewed Planned Parenthood patient data, in some cases including their menstrual cycles, looking to identify those who had failed abortions.
Many companies have access to location data of people who visited abortion clinics, but it is often not generally available to the public. In Placer.ai’s case, the ease of access is what changes the threat the data poses: it takes a few minutes to create an account and start viewing data related to a specific clinic.
The news follows Motherboard’s report on Tuesday that SafeGraph, another company in the location industry, was selling aggregated location data of people visiting Planned Parenthood facilities. On Wednesday SafeGraph announced it was stopping the sale of this data through its online shop and API.
“Unprecedented visibility into consumer foot-traffic,” Placer.ai’s website reads.
Placer.ai sources its location data from having the developers of ordinary apps install the company’s software development kit (SDK) into their apps. On its website Placer.ai claims to have over 20 million active devices and its code in over 500 apps. “WiFi, GPS, Beacons, and user motion all play a key part in determining accuracy,” the website adds.
On Wednesday Motherboard made a free account on Placer.ai and used the company’s website to search for “Planned Parenthood.” The site returned multiple locations Placer.ai already had data for. Selecting one of those results provided a dashboard of relevant location and other data, including likely demographic information of who attended this particular facility. For example, according to Placer.ai the Planned Parenthood facility Motherboard selected at random was likely to be visited by someone who is Hispanic with an annual income of between $75,000 and $90,000. The results also showed what specific businesses or landmarks they came from to the facility and went to after, and the total number of visitors.
Most notably, Placer.ai presented a heat map that showed what approximate physical location visitors lived in. For example, for a Planned Parenthood facility in California that Motherboard verified offered abortion services, the heat map showed attendees’ calculated homes were in a city to the south of the clinic, another area to the south east, and in close proximity to the facility itself.
To then access more detailed data from Placer.ai about the specific Planned Parenthood location, a client needs to schedule a meeting with a company sales representative. But the heat maps are available to anyone who takes a few minutes to make a free account.
The concern with showing where people are traveling from to clinics under the looming changes around abortion’s legality is that the data could reveal which clinics are providing out-of-state abortions, something which is set to become a crime in many states if the Supreme Court does repeal Roe v. Wade.
“It's bonkers dangerous to have abortion clinics and then let someone buy the census tracks where people are coming from to visit that abortion clinic,” Zach Edwards, a cybersecurity researcher who closely tracks the data selling marketplace, previously told Motherboard in an online chat after reviewing similar data from SafeGraph.
On Thursday Senator Ron Wyden, who has proposed stronger legislation around the sale of location data and whose office has extensively investigated the data trading market, told Motherboard in a statement that “The threat to women’s privacy and safety is not hypothetical—it’s already here.”
“Shady data brokers have already tracked women to and from Planned Parenthood clinics, and sold their information to anyone with a credit card. It has been obvious for years that location data leeched from phone apps is ripe for abuse. Now that the right to legal abortion is under threat, these shady data brokers are putting people’s lives at risk. Every company that collects, stores or sells personal data should be aware that they could soon be a tool for a radical far-right agenda that is trying to strip women of their fundamental privacy rights,” he added.
Placer.ai responded to an emailed request for comment from Motherboard on Wednesday, but ultimately did not provide a statement. Overnight, Placer.ai quietly removed the ability to search for Planned Parenthood from its website.
At the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, sexual abuse has been rampant, authorities acted with utter indifference and the workforce was deeply demoralized, according to recent reports.' (photo: William Widmer/Redux)
Just weeks earlier, an Associated Press investigation had revealed a culture of abuse and cover-ups that had persisted for years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, a women-only facility called the “rape club” by many who know it. Because of AP reporting, the head of the federal Bureau of Prisons had submitted his resignation in January. Yet no one had been named to replace him, so he was still on the job.
Now he was responding to the problems in Dublin — but only after an angry congresswoman had called him to complain.
So early March found the lame-duck administrator, flanked by a task force of senior agency officials, arriving at the prison after flying in to meet inmates and staff in person. According to Dublin inmates, this was how he faced them as he toured the facility:
“You wanted my attention,” Michael Carvajal said, “so here I am.”
___
‘TRUST HAS BEEN BROKEN’
“It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible. I’ve never experienced anything like this. In my career, I’ve never been part of a situation like this. This is really unprecedented.”
Those words, spoken about the troubled Dublin facility, come not from an activist or inmate advocate, not from any elected official, not from anywhere outside the prison walls. They come from Thahesha Jusino, its newly installed warden.
Her predecessor, Ray J. Garcia, is one of five Dublin employees who have been charged since last June with sexually abusing inmates.
“We’ve really lost a lot of credibility through all of this, which is understandable, because it’s appalling what has happened,” Jusino said in an interview with the AP.
This story is based on interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the visiting task force’s work, the prison’s operations and the abuse crisis. They include current and former inmates, employees, lawyers, government and union officials. Many spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation or because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The AP visited Dublin, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) east of Oakland, during the same time as the task force’s visit, the week of March 7. Lawmakers, disturbed by reports of abuse, also traveled there shortly after. Carvajal and some task force members returned to Dublin in April. In one sign of progress, the agency replaced both of the prison’s associate wardens.
Carvajal, a Trump administration holdover, submitted his resignation Jan. 5 but said he would stay on until a successor is named. He joined the task force for the first three days of its weeklong first visit to Dublin.
But even as the task force was arriving, and as scrutiny from the outside appeared finally to be at hand, things did not seem to be proceeding in a positive direction.
Officials moved inmates out of the special housing unit so it wouldn’t look as full when the task force got there. And they lied to Carvajal about COVID-19 contamination so inmates in a certain unit couldn’t speak to him about abuse.
Those who managed to get to Carvajal didn’t hold back. In one emotional scene, a woman who said she was abused by prison officials tearfully confronted him in a recreation area as he and members of the task force were meeting with inmates.
The woman shared graphic details of her alleged abuse. She spoke for about 15 minutes and grew increasingly upset, calming down only after prison officials brought her tissues. She was eventually taken out of the room and brought to a prison psychologist, where she was offered immediate release to a halfway house.
She objected. She wanted to wait so she could tell her story publicly to congressional leaders expected at the prison. But people at the prison say she wasn’t able to thoroughly express her concerns.
Bureau of Prisons and Justice Department officials told the woman that because she was a potential witness, she couldn’t talk about the investigation, the people said. The woman was moved to a halfway house soon after the tour.
In another charged moment, a group of Dublin workers lashed out at Carvajal for putting Garcia in charge of a women’s prison when he’d already had a reputation in prison circles as a misogynist.
“You created this monster,” one worker told Carvajal. Asked another: “Why did you create this toxic environment? Why did you pick Garcia as the warden?”
Garcia is accused of molesting an inmate on multiple occasions from December 2019 to March 2020 and forcing her and another inmate to strip naked so he could take pictures while he made rounds. Investigators said they found the images on his government-issued cellphone. His lawyer refused an interview request.
Garcia is also accused of using his authority to intimidate one of his victims, telling her that he was “close friends” with the person investigating staff misconduct and boasting that he could not be fired. He has pleaded not guilty.
Carvajal promoted Garcia from associate warden to warden at Dublin in November 2020, after Garcia’s alleged misconduct but before the agency said it knew about it. Carvajal told the workers that if he had known about Garcia’s reputation or alleged abuse, he would’ve chosen a different warden.
Speaking to inmates about Garcia, however, Carvajal said something a bit different — that he believed in “innocent until proven guilty.”
___
AN UNEASY HISTORY
FCI Dublin is one of just six women-only facilities in the U.S. federal prison system. As of Wednesday, Dublin had about 785 inmates, many serving sentences for drug crimes.
It opened in 1974 as a federal youth center in which men and women ages 18 to 26 lived in a campus-like setting. The concept was later abandoned.
In 1977, the Bureau of Prisons converted the facility into a traditional adult prison — first for female inmates like the high-profile heiress Patty Hearst and then, in 1980, for men and women. It went back to being a women’s prison in 2012.
Throughout FCI Dublin’s existence, it has been troubled by sexual abuse.
In 1996, three female inmates sued the Bureau of Prisons, alleging they were “sold like sex slaves” by correctional officers who placed them in a male unit, unlocked their cells and allowed male inmates to rape them. No one was arrested; the agency agreed to settle the lawsuit for $500,000.
Separately, in the late 1990s, four officers were charged with engaging in sexual conduct with inmates. And in the early 2010s, about a dozen Dublin employees were quietly removed for sexually abusing inmates. None was arrested, according to a person working there at the time. One worker was allowed to retire after videotapes were found in his locker of him having sex with inmates.
More recently, two of the five employees charged since last June with sexually abusing inmates have pleaded guilty, and the investigation continues: On March 20, a food service foreman was arrested for allegedly touching an inmate’s breasts, buttocks and genitals in October 2020.
Since March, nine other workers have been placed on administrative leave by the Bureau of Prisons. New inmate sexual abuse and staff employment discrimination complaints were filed during the task force’s visit. FBI agents conducted searches at the prison and an employee’s home in mid-April, and at least six internal affairs investigators have been on site investigating claims.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who is being briefed regularly on issues in the beleaguered federal prison system, said the Justice Department was committed to “holding BOP personnel accountable, including through criminal charges.” Said Monaco: “Staff misconduct, at any level, will not be tolerated, and our efforts to root it out are far from over."
Attorney General Merrick Garland, asked about Dublin at a U.S. Senate budget hearing Tuesday, said it was Monaco's idea — not Carvajal's — to form a task force “to investigate and determine the procedural failures” at the prison. He cited the prosecution of accused employees, an ongoing internal investigation and the selection of Jusino as warden as steps toward improving conditions.
“This is another really terrible set of events," Garland said.
Justice Department spokesperson Kristina Mastropasqua said the task force that visited Dublin had reported allegations of misconduct to the prison system’s internal affairs office, where investigators “opened a case file for each allegation.”
Also during the task force’s visit, numerous complaints were filed by inmates and staff members alleging sexual harassment, misconduct and violations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act and federal Equal Employment Opportunity laws.
How many complaints were received? Asked by the AP, the Bureau of Prisons said it couldn’t say.
___
REAL CHANGE, OR PERFORMANCE?
For all the disturbing details the March task force took in, it was hardly the whole truth — partly because inmates and prison workers do not trust the leadership and refused to speak candidly, and partly because officials hid some of Dublin’s problems.
Inmates who’d been in the special housing unit for disciplinary issues were returned to the general population so the place wouldn’t look nearly as full. Officials also lied to Carvajal and told him he couldn’t visit a particular housing unit where inmates wanted to talk to him about abuse. They claimed, falsely, that it was contaminated with COVID-19.
Carvajal did seem taken aback by the lack of security cameras in critical areas — an issue the prison's union had been raising for six years — and pledged to speed the process for installing them.
Though Dublin does have some cameras, there were none in some of the hallways and rooms that Carvajal toured, including areas where some inmates were sexually abused. Several times the director asked, “Where are the cameras?”
On a recent afternoon, inmates from Dublin’s minimum-security prison camp could be seen congregating on a walking track outside the prison’s fences with no visible supervision and no perimeter cameras. The Bureau of Prisons has faced scrutiny in the last few years after dozens of inmates escaped from its prisons, with many simply walking away from low-security areas.
“Making infrastructural improvements, such as adding additional cameras, to protect the safety and security of inmates and staff is a priority,” the Bureau of Prisons said in response to questions about Carvajal’s visit.
But seven weeks later, not one new camera has been installed.
Precisely what actual progress the task force’s visit produced — and who ultimately had access to its members while they were there — is not entirely clear.
Susan Beaty, a lawyer for Dublin inmates, said advocates had information to share with the task force but were shut out of the visit. Beaty said several abused inmates were immigrants and that predatory prison employees were targeting women facing deportation.
The Bureau of Prisons “is never proactive. They’re reactive. They’re only doing this because Congress is on their ass and they know they have to act,” Dublin union president Ed Canales said.
Canales said the prison’s staff was “not impressed” with the visit and wasn’t expecting any changes, in part because some senior managers who ignored or encouraged abuse are still working at the prison.
Beaty said correctional officers staged a charade during the visit, exhibiting their best behavior while the task force was present and cursing at inmates as soon as the visitors left the room.
Some inmates saw the task force’s visit not as an actual, good-faith way to fix Dublin but as window-dressing ahead of U.S. Rep Jackie Speier's return to the prison with two other members of Congress on March 14.
One inmate asked: “Is this just for show so that you can say you came before the Congress comes back?” Observed another: “It is just as I thought. The task force was here to head them off and tell them that they were on top of issues that were raised.”
___
CONGRESS IS WATCHING
Congress has been increasingly critical of the Bureau of Prisons, an agency plagued by myriad problems in recent years, including many revealed by AP reporting.
The bureau formed its Dublin task force after the AP investigation in February revealed a toxic culture of sexual misconduct and cover-ups at the prison. Carvajal announced the task force in an internal memo on March 2, just days before its work began. But he did not disclose it publicly until the AP asked about it.
Carvajal wrote that the group — 18 women, including a warden and officials from human resources and internal affairs — was being sent to “observe and assess the climate of the institution” and “assist the agency in redressing identified issues and increasing performance.”
Speaking to inmates, Carvajal acknowledged that pressure from Congress prompted him to act.
He said Speier, D-Calif., had called him after she visited Dublin in the wake of the AP’s reporting. Speier, Carvajal said, was upset with how inmates were being treated and complained that prison officials stonewalled her when she tried to speak with them directly.
Dublin’s union and inmate advocate groups said the bureau and Justice Department had ignored their earlier cries for help. The union said it had been begging agency leaders to visit Dublin since FBI agents raided the former warden’s office last July.
In February, more than 100 inmate advocacy organizations sent a letter to the Justice Department calling for “swift, sweeping action” to address abuse at Dublin, including an independent investigation and the release of victimized inmates to prevent further trauma, but never got a response.
Speier and Reps. Karen Bass and Eric Swalwell, two other California Democrats, visited the facility after the task force and said they were encouraged by its work but still had concerns, including a lack of adequate medical and psychological services at the facility.
They applauded recommendations to add more security cameras and a dedicated email address for inmates to report abuse. They also called for special training for employees in women’s prisons.
“There is literally a culture there that is toxic and one that needs to be addressed,” Speier said in an interview.
Bass, Speier and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced legislation last month to improve the treatment of women in federal prisons such as Dublin, including providing adequate medical care and examining efforts to retain female officers.
Among other things, the Women in Criminal Justice Reform Act would require minimum standards of care and conditions for federal prison facilities where women are held, temporary release of inmates for medical services such as care from a sexual assault nurse examiner and training for federal prison workers in trauma-informed screening and care.
Each one of those changes would improve conditions at Dublin. Together, they could begin to overhaul it entirely.
___
WILL ANYTHING HAPPEN?
As the crisis continues at Dublin, questions remain about whether the Bureau of Prisons is serious about fixing it — or even capable of doing so. And the wake of the task force’s visit offers little in the way of optimism.
After the visitors left in March, Dublin officials started enforcing more exacting prison uniform rules and cracking down on inmates’ few luxuries.
Blankets, issued to keep inmates warm in drafty cells, were confiscated. Robes purchased from the prison commissary were banned. Inmates were told to wear bras, cover their bodies and avoid tight pants. Some felt they were being punished to keep prison workers from leering at them.
Inmate advocates say the task force ignored them entirely. Local union officials, seeing the whole trip as a smokescreen to placate Congress, said they’d been begging agency leaders to visit for months, to no avail. Prison workers came away from the week doubting anything would change.
Does the new person in charge offer any hope? Perhaps it’s too soon to tell. Jusino, Dublin’s first permanent warden since Garcia was put on administrative leave prior to his arrest, started a week before Carvajal and the task force arrived.
The daughter of a former federal prison warden, she has worked in federal prisons since 1998. She was an associate warden at two prisons and was the warden at a federal prison in Victorville, California, about 71 miles northeast of Los Angeles, before being assigned to Dublin.
She is adamant that change will come — that it must.
“The trust has been broken with our inmate population, which is beyond unacceptable. It’s been broken with our staff, and it has been broken with the public,” Jusino says. “We need to show that we’re committed to this.”
Last year Idaho approved the killing of 90% of its wolves and Wisconsin killed 200 in less than 60 hours. (photo: John Conrad/Getty)
Last year Idaho approved the killing of 90% of its wolves and Wisconsin killed 200 in less than 60 hours. Recently 500 were killed in the northern Rockies. This is a disaster for our ecosystem
We stopped commercially hunting whales, and the mass slaughter of bison. We no longer clearcut old-growth redwoods, or use explosives on prairie dog towns, or build massive dams on wild salmon rivers. We no longer kill egrets and herons to adorn women’s hats with their feathers.
So why shoot and trap wolves, God’s dog, the forebear of all our beloved domestic dogs? Why destroy an animal that is playful, cooperative, cunning, giving, loving, predatory, faithful, intelligent, savage and social and dedicated to family? Not unlike us.
Over the past few years, as the US Fish … Wildlife Service delisted the gray wolf as an endangered species, many states enacted laws to reduce wolf numbers, some that permitted wolves to be chased on all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles, and caught by snares. Idaho earmarked $200,000 to kill 90% of its wolves. More than 200 were killed in less than 60 hours in Wisconsin. In recent months, more than 500 wolves have been destroyed in the northern Rockies, including roughly one-fifth of those that frequent Yellowstone National Park, a prized population studied in great detail since wolves were re-introduced there beginning in 1995, after a 70-year-absence. Because of how wolf packs have revitalized the park, Yellowstone today represents a rewilding and ecological renaissance admired around the world. And this recent killing spree “is a huge setback,” the wildlife biologist Doug Smith told Science.
In southwest Montana, adjacent to Yellowstone, where anti-wolf bumper stickers say “Smoke a pack a day,” hunting and trapping ended when the total number of kills hit a threshold. Not since wolves were shot, trapped and poisoned to near-extinction a century ago has the US seen such a vigorous assault on its poster apex predator. Ranchers and hunters detest wolves for taking their livestock and big game. Conservationists prize them as essential for ecosystem health, and say wolves aren’t nearly as abundant and wide-ranging today as they once were.
Hated by some, loved by others, wolves polarize us. Why?
Autumn 1909. A few months out of Yale Forest School, 22-year-old Aldo Leopold sits eating his lunch on a rimrock in Apache National Forest, Arizona Territory, when he and a fellow Forest Service employee spot an animal far below, crossing a river. A deer? No – not a deer. When the animal reaches the riverbank and shakes itself dry, several pups bound out from golden willows to greet her, their tails high.
Wolves!
The young men grab their rifles and begin shooting.
When the gunsmoke clears, they clamber down to inspect their work. Many of the pups are dead. One drags itself over scree rocks, bleeding, trying to escape. But it’s the mother that Leopold will never forget. “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would be a hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”
Beginning as far back as 1630, wolf bounties did their job, allaying fears that wolves would kill livestock – or worse, eat settler’s children. Valley after valley, state by state, wolves were extirpated across a young, growing nation. In 1890, the US Bureau of the Census showed the “unsettled” American frontier – places with a population density of less than two people per square mile – gone. The historian Frederick Jackson Turner said this was significant because “the democracy born of free land, strong in selfishness and individualism, intolerant of administrative experience and education, and pressing individual freedom beyond its proper bounds, has its dangers as well as its benefits.”
Today’s American wolf killers – who say they prize life and liberty – eagerly kill an animal that embodies life and liberty. An animal that does not kill children, and at most takes only a small percentage of cattle and sheep. Cattle and sheep some ranchers raise on US public land. Cattle that belch methane and are “a worldwide curse,” according to the author and wilderness advocate Doug Peacock. Sheep that are “hoofed locusts,” according to the great naturalist John Muir. Might these same ranchers ever consider the rich human cultures that preceded them; that lived light on the land, strung no barbed wire, and seldom if ever killed wolves? Might a rancher have a crisis of conscience? An epiphany as Leopold had?
“What did you learn today?” Leopold would ask his children at the dinner table. Not what did you do but what did you learn – a big difference. By then an admired professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he would take his family north where they owned a cabin (an upgraded chicken coop they lovingly called “the shack”) and the kids could run and play wild and free. Like wolves. Three of Aldo and his wife Estella’s five children were ultimately elected to the National Academy of Sciences, an unequaled achievement for an American family.
When wolves returned to Yellowstone in the mid-1990s, they created what ecologists call a “trophic cascade.” The wolves killed some animals, but enlivened the park in ways that thrilled, informed and inspired millions. Deer and elk became more alert and on-the-move; where they had over-browsed and -grazed, aspens and willows now prospered. Songbirds returned. Soil erosion decreased. Beavers spread from one colony to nine, and built new dams and ponds. Even the rivers changed, with deeper channels, more riffles and shaded pools – better habitat for amphibians, fish and ducks.
All because of wolves? It’s an ongoing debate, one filled with “competing and very complex arguments,” says Doug Smith. One thing is certain, however: wolves made the park wilder.
Recently, a federal judge reinstated wolf protections in 44 states, but not in the northern Rockies around Yellowstone. Conservation groups have asked US Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland for an emergency relisting of the northern Rockies gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act. Or better, a national Carnivore Conservation Act to end the cycles of listing, delisting, killing and relisting to permanently protect wolves, cougars, coyotes, grizzly bears and black bears.
When he died in 1948, at age 61, Leopold had just completed writing a book that would become his masterpiece, A Sand County Almanac. “That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology,” he wrote, “but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of ethics.”
Wolves deserve our protection. They have ecosystems to heal, rivers to restore.
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