Having a healthy population of predators is vital to a functioning ecosystem and if farmers can't keep their livestock safe while also protecting the enviroment they co-exist the farmer should admit defeat, pull up their bootstraps, and get a job where they can't be outwitted by a dog.
I'm not sure that I agree with the bad meat thing...I've read opinions and "proofs" that this may or may not be true, and I suspect it has a lot of contributing factors like availability of food in general, experience of the wolves in question, etc.
But I'm in full agreement that nature must be allowed to function naturally. That includes allowing predators to do their own thing. Farmers and ranchers who think that they must be eradicated fall into the same category, IMHO, as some religious zealots I know who kill every snake they see, anywhere they see it, out of some silly notion that they are "doing God's will".
I don't subscribe to the idea that the Earth is here for us to crush beneath our bootheels, and that anything and everything that doesn't directly serve human interests must be exterminated. When in wilderness areas, the fact that there is some risk presented by such things as venomous snakes or aggressive/predatory animals is part of the appeal of being there. When we raise up a bunch of semi-free-range chickens, we expect and accept that some will be lost to weasels, foxes, coyotes, etc. Some yard and crop damage due to deer, bears, rodents or other critters is a part of life in the country...and it should be. Folks who don't or can't accept these losses need to move to the city.
I've shot countless coyotes and a couple of wolves that have gotten a little too cocky, a little too familiar, a bit overconfident that they have nothing to fear from those weird two-legged critters who have all that tasty stuff living and growing in their yards and fields. I'm accustomed to farmers whose only complaint is that I don't shoot more. I'm also accustomed to the tree-hugging types...usually weekend warriors from the city... who weep and wail at the notion that I would kill such "beautiful, innocent creatures". I wonder how many of them stop to think that one of the things that makes it safer for them to don their Birkenstocks and traipse merrily along a wilderness trail is the fact that predators are taught...largely by hunters...that humans are to be feared and respected and avoided.
This view that animals own the world and we are interlopers is silly. The animals are here for our use. When they are unwanted, it’s not a problem.
I don't think many people actually say the animals "own the world", which is indeed silly. Equally silly, in a dangerous way, is the notion that the animals...along with the rest of the world...are here "for our use". The world is here; we evolved, along with the rest of the animals, to live here. If the world changes too much, becomes too far removed from the place where we, humans and animals, evolved...then there might be a re-set. Climate change, droughts, famines, upheavals of any sort, have been happening since long before we were around, and will continue long after we're gone.
It's silly to suggest that we are destroying the world. We are altering its condition, perhaps to the point where it's no longer survivable to us, but if we disappear tomorrow...it's not a big deal in the cosmic scheme of things. It's about the equivalent of a fresh coat of paint on the living room walls. The Earth...and life...will persist, even if we don't.
Of course, we won't just disappear; our population might be decimated by any number of "disasters", both artificial and natural. But those highly-overrated brains of ours will allow us, as a species, to survive almost anything. Then we can start overpopulating again.
And, yes, of course we are overpopulating. For the human species, evolution ceased being a thing long ago. Now that we are so enlightened and aware, we do everything we can to ensure that everybody lives a long life, has kids, blah, blah, blah. Perhaps a small percentage of us thinks in terms of future generations, but most people just keep on breeding. Gimme, gimme, gimme, more, more, more...it's devolution now. Not natural selection, nor any kind of selection at all.
