Welcoming Wolves Back Home and the Effects of Manifest Destiny

Explore ideas based on manifest destiny, why we don't own the land, and how ranchers can learn to live with wolves.

1. Welcoming Wolves Back Home By Dr. John Hughes, DO July 7 th , 2024

2. Wisdom, Creator, and Nature Requires humility and wonderment Supersedes knowledge as well as any science-based knowledge Enables us to know how to use knowledge with a kind of embodied intuition that all of us with a heart possess

3. Who loves domestic wolves (aka dogs)?  Who loves wild wolves? What’s the difference? Who believes in a Creator?  Who believes that Nature has an inherent intelligence and goodness in design? 

4. The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the Earth and it is part of us. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, the wolf, these are our brothers. 

5. Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the Earth is our Mother This we know: The Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the Earth. All things are connected... Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself…

6. Your destiny is a mystery to us What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed?  And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival . When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? 

7. In dishonor to Chief Seattle and the Creator, Westerners have seen the Earth and her creatures not as sacred, or as our Mother, but rather as a commodity with resources to exploit and manipulate for the benefit of certain privileged peoples.

8. The EARTh is Mine to USE how I Choose, or is it? Humans have prioritized themselves over the balance of Nature and health of Mother Earth. 

9. Extermination and Genocide To exterminate one creature (bison or wolves) or one race (Indigenous peoples, Jews, African Americans) in favor of another is to spit in the face of the Creator and embrace a false God and faulty religion.

10. Evolution and Manifest Destiny “Science-backed” genocide: Later in 1859, Darwin's theories - The Origin of Species and the Preservation of Favored Races “Religious-backed” genocide: 1860 to 1940, upon settling in the Western US , this genocide was justified under the name of Manifest Destiny . 

11. Homestead Act = Manifest Destiny From 1860 to 1940s, Western minded Anglos killed a significant number of Natives, and most of the two million wolves Cows and their homesteaders settled the land because they were God's "chosen people", or in Darwin's words, " Favoured Race."  Cows on public BLM, USFS sacred lands

12. Where are they now?

13. The BLM Grassland Allotments in Colorado

14. BLM Grazing Allotment Lease Holders KremmLing Field office

15. BLM Grazing Allotment Lease Holders KremmLing Field office

16. Large BLM Grazing Allotments livestock, E.g. Silver Spur Ranch Silver Spur is "producing the right kind of “commercial cow”...is this a “sacred cow?” 

17. CastLe Peak Ranch  25000 acres of BLM grazing allotment land spending $1.35 per AUM (Animal Unit Month) 7500 head cattle, including 800 Wagyu (Kobe) cows (wilder animals, take 3+ years to mature) Managed by Reece Hartman and his wife Shayla

18. Sacred Wolf's Proposal to Castle Peak (and similar Ranchers with BlM Leases) Sublet all or part of their 25000 (or more) BLM grazing allotment after most of the Hartman cows are sold off in the fall Apply for a 3-year nonuse permit to allow for other ruminants (Deer, Elk, Bighorn Sheep--along with their predators) to have better habitats free from domestic cows Within 3 years and after permission of BLM, begin ranching bison (at $7 per AUM) on the land to support continued lease payments to Reece Hartman and his family plus a bonus for helping ranch bison (if interested) Help protect Reece Hartman's domestic animals from predators with Range Riders and acoustic devices Manifesting A New Destiny: Wild Lands for Wild Animals

19. True Wild: A Wolf Biologist Studies Lobos on Ted Turner’s Flying D Ranch

20. Bison over Feed-Lot Beef (2013 VA study) Beef meal: Triglycerides, hydroperoxides, oxidized LDL (harmful Cholesterol) Increased Flow-mediated dilation was reduced (a measure of Arterial Health) Bison meal: Triglycerides only increased slightly, and no increase hydroperoxides, Oxidized LDL, or flow-mediated dilation https://www.research.va.gov/currents/summer2013/summer2013-10.cfm

21. Bison Better designed by nature to care for the earth Hooves stir the soil and push seeds down further + help with moisture Less resources - drink less water, more resistant to extreme weather Produced without growth hormones or antibiotics According to the USDA, bison burgers have 152 calories and 7 grams fat, Less than even a 90% lean beef burger (184 calories and 10 grams fat) and a 93% lean turkey burger (176 calories and 10 grams fat). Bison offers more omega-3 fats than beef, and a better omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. https://www.onnit.com/academy/bison-vs-beef/

22. Milagro Ranch Local ranchers who raise only grass-fed animals on their own land in a no-till fashion—sell sacred meat that is similar in quality to bison. Sacred Wolf seeks to aid these ranchers on small family farms who use their own land with acoustic devices, Range Riders, and local support

23. OUR Destiny together: How will it Manifest in the 21st Century? Can we foster habitats and food for two- leggeds and wild four- leggeds ?  What is your role in caring for these creatures and the land we all share?

24. What about Hunters and Wolves? Official data highlights that there are more elk today in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming than there were when the government reintroduced wolves over a quarter century ago. Also, most wolf kills in Yellowstone of are of elk over 11 years old (not your typical hunted elk) https://www.rockymountainwolfproject.org/how-have-wolves-affected-yellowstones-elk/

25. Ecclesiastes 3:18-21 “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath"  Chief Seattle: Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself