Jennings cries wolf!

[Guest guest]

ACTION ALERT: Peter Jennings Cries Wolf

 

September 18, 2002

 

The special was called " In Search of America, " but when ABC News and Peter

Jennings addressed the issue of the reintroduction of wolves to Idaho

(9/3/02), they gave the strong impression that they’d already decided what

they would find before they started to look.

 

ABC told a story about the federal government forcing Idahoans to accept

wolf reintroduction against their will-- with the wolves, ravenous for the

flesh of cattle and sheep, now having a ruinous effect upon powerless

ranchers. As Jennings suggested to one Idaho source, " This was a case of

the federal government telling those of you here in the state that it was

going to do what it wanted to do and you didn't have an awful lot of say

in it. "

 

You'd never guess from ABC's broadcast that, according to the Rocky

Mountain News (2/5/95), 71 percent of Idahoans polled actually said that

they supported reintroduction of wolves. Other polls in Idaho and around

the region have shown similar results (e.g., Idaho Falls Post Register,

2/4/98). The decision to bring back the exterminated animal was made over

the course of many years, involving numerous public discussions across the

region that resulted in significant changes being made to the rules for

reintroduction, largely to give ranchers more rights and protections.

 

Jennings calls wolves " one of nature's most efficient killers, " and a

source describes them as " a land piranha and a wildlife terrorist. " And

the network went out of its way to suggest financial disaster for

hard-working ranching families: " All of the profit that the ranch is

generating, the wolves are getting, " one source claimed.

 

No statistics were provided to back up this assertion; Jennings says, " The

number of dead livestock is difficult to confirm. " But the Fish &

Wildlife Service puts out a report on losses to wolves every year, based

on reports from ranchers; in 2001, the survey found a total of 138 sheep

and 40 cattle killed by wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. By

contrast, coyotes killed more than 14,000 sheep in Montana alone, where

domestic dogs killed another 1,100. Despite Jennings' claim that " the

wolves have found cattle and sheep to their liking, " elk and other wild

animals provide the vast majority of the wolves' diet, and predation on

livestock has been lower than the government anticipated.

 

ABC suggested that ranchers are helpless to stop the wolves from attacking

their flocks and destroying their livelihoods. " As the wolf population

grows, so do the livestock losses and so does the ranchers' frustration, "

Jennings told his audience. " They are not allowed to hunt the wolf. "

Actually, ranchers are allowed to shoot wolves that are attacking their

animals; this rule was not mentioned in the documentary. ABC also played

down the federal government's routine killing of wolves that prey on

sheep-- nearly 100 have been legally killed since reintroduction began in

1995-- referring to this controversial topic in a single sentence. In a

striking omission in a documentary that stressed the economic hardships

posed by wolves, the program completely ignored the compensation that the

environmental group Defenders of Wildlife pays to ranchers with documented

losses: some $60,000 last year alone.

 

" Almost everywhere we went in Idaho, including the state capital, this was

seen as a case of them in Washington vs. us, " said Peter Jennings.

Actually, ABC found many more supporters of wolves than it chose to air.

The network shot footage at an Idaho wolf conference, for example, where

most of the participants were pro-wolf, but only used quotes from the

critics they found there (Ralph Maughan's Wildlife Report, 9/4/02).

Perhaps if the sourcing had been more balanced, ABC would not have found

so many inaccuracies when it went " In Search of America. "

 

 

ACTION: Please tell Peter Jennings that you hope that future episodes of

" In Search of America " will show more balance and fairness than was

displayed in the misleading program on wolf reintroduction.

 

CONTACT:

Peter Jennings

Peter.Jennings