Monthly Archives: June 2017

Alison Morrow, KING 7:27 PM. PDT June 13, 2017

Washington State University carnivore expert Dr. Rob Wielgus documented wolf pack and livestock movements in Ferris County. (Photo: KING)

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is investigating the first livestock death blamed on wolves in this year's grazing season.

It was found near the historic range of the Profanity Peak pack, which was monitored by a Washington State University researcher, who is now suing over free speech

A range rider found the dead calf in Ferry County near the Lambert Creek area Monday evening. It's near the Profanity Peak pack's range, the wolves killed last summer by WDFW after attacking 15 cattle 10 confirmed and five probable attacks. A female and three pups survived. No one has confirmed what pack is responsible for the most recent death.

The lethal removal further divided the state over wolf management, as protesters rallied in Olympia and cattle ranchers received death threats in the northeast corner where the majority of wolves live.

"I love these cows and I don't want to feed them to the wolves. I don't want to see them tortured," Kathy McKay said. "At least the locals, none of us need them, none of us want them. We're fine without them. They're killers. They're vicious killers."

McKay's parents built the K Diamond K Ranch in 1961. Life was good, she said, until wolves migrated back to Washington after nearly a century of being gone.

The Profanity Peak pack killed 30 times more cattle than the majority of wolf packs studied by WSU carnivore expert Dr. Rob Wielgus.

"In particular we noticed that the Profanity Peak pack last year had completely switched to livestock. They were killing a lot of livestock in that particular location," he said.

Wielgus monitored the pack last year. He found salt licks were attracting cattle near the den site, aggravating the problem. His wildlife camera video of the Colville National Forest shows cattle and wolves crossing paths.

During the study, Wielgus followed wolves and cattle to track wolf depredations, the term used to refer to injuries or deaths attributed to wolves. He found that 99 percent of ranchers in wolf occupied areas in Washington lose one out of a thousand cattle to wolves. The rancher who lost cattle to the Profanity Peak pack had a 3 percent loss rate 30 times what Wielgus observed.

WDFW authorized the lethal removal of the pack on August 5. The salt blocks were removed August 8, according to WDFW. Wielgus knew about the salt blocks June 27.

"The livestock were still on the den site. We got video monitoring of wolves trying to chase them away from the den site, but the livestock kept returning because of the salt blocks. Then the livestock started being killed by the wolves," Wielgus said.

Bill McIrvin, the rancher whose cattle were killed in the incidents, was also at the center of controversy over the lethal removal of the Wedge pack in 2014 after losing cattle.

"Last year, during a period of repeated wolf depredations to livestock by the Profanity Peak wolf pack, the Department became aware that the wolf rendezvous site overlapped with part of the normal grazing path, where livestock were concentrated with the use of salt blocks. Once that overlap was detected, the Department contacted the producer, who removed the salt blocks from the area on August 8. Some livestock continued to use the general area where the salt was, so the producer (and family members, staff, and range rider) increased human presence around the livestock to check on and move livestock as needed," WDFW Wolf Lead Donny Martorello wrote in a statement.

KING 5 also asked WDFW about steps McIrvin took to prevent conflict.

"For Producer #1, the proactive deterrence measures were 1) turned out calves at weights generally over 200 lbs., 2) met expectation for sanitation, and 3) cows birthed calves outside of occupied wolf territories. Also, after the first wolf depredation, the producers agreed to the use of regular human presence (a reactive deterrence measure) for the remainder of the grazing season. This was accomplished by hiring two additional ranch staff, using a range rider, and increasing presence on the grazing site by the producer and family members," Martorello said.

Wielgus reports the den site was common knowledge. When Wielgus told the Seattle Times what he knew last summer, he couldn't believe the response.

"I was labeled a liar and a fraud. I was told by my superiors not to talk to the press so I could not tell the full story," he said.

Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda,argued that ranchers used the same land as years past and didn't know they'd put salt near wolves.

"When they salted they had no idea a rendezvous site had moved in. They put it on the same bench they'd put it for 45 damn years. It's the same place. It's part of the rotation through the grazing season. You keep your cows moving," he said.

Martorello said the state is aware of Wielgus' video.

"The Department has seen the video, reportedly made during the conflict with the Profanity Peak pack in 2016. We were made aware of it by WSU graduate students operating the trail cameras. It did not change Department's assessment of the situation. The majority of the known wolf packs in Washington overlap livestock, and many overlap active grazing allotments. That is one result of wolves recolonizing of Washington state. However, the fact that livestock and wolves overlap and actively use the same landscape doesn't necessary mean there will be conflict. In fact, experience in Washington and other western states shows that wolves and livestock coexist without conflict about 80 percent of the time," Martorello said.

For Kretz, Wielgus did more harm than good, further dividing the state over wolf management.

"We all got tired of the death threats. That's not the way for a scientist to be operating, I don't think," he said.

Kretz told WSU he thinks Wielgus' science is driven by agenda. WSU reviewed the research but that resulted in no evidence of misconduct. Still, Wielgus believes his job is hanging by a thread.

"I was publicly discredited and defamed by the university. The university said I had lied. I did not lie. I simply reported the facts," he said.

Wielgus plans to sue for six years salary and then leave his teaching position.

At the same time, he's publishing research he calls one of the most in-depth wolf studies ever. He found wolf attacks on livestock are extremely uncommon, and that the more humans kill wolves, the more wolves kill cattle the following year. Depredations, he says, typically follow lethal removal of wolves due to disarray in the social dynamics of the apex predators.

"My agenda is scientific truth, and that's what's gotten me in trouble in this case. I could've just shut up," Wielgus said.

For Wielgus, the answer is simple: keep cows away from wolf dens. He believes many ranchers are working hard to live beside wolves, but are too afraid to speak out in areas where animosity toward the carnivores continues to mount.

"It's all about the encounter probability. Predators respond to prey on how frequently they encounter them," he said.

For Kretz, wolf management isn't so clear. He's furious that WDFW did not respond fast enough to the calf found dead Monday. It was called in around 6 p.m., he says, and WDFW responded that there were no conflict specialists available to investigate until Tuesday morning.

"The first incident of the year they can't get somebody there?" he said. "We can't trust them to have their act together."

Kretz worried the evidence would deteriorate, making it more difficult to confirm it as a wolf kill.

"They're not going to work 24-7. That's impossible to expect from them," said Western Wildlife Conservation Director Hank Siepp. "We're trying to educate people that we have a new critter on the landscape and there will be challenges."

Washington State University sent a letter to Kretz in regards to his concern over Wielgus. It included the following findings:

"Discussion of the data set and its analysis is continuing among Professor Wielgus, Professor Dasgupta, and other WSU researchers. The University believes the best path forward is continued analysis and discussion of the data within the research community, culminating in submission of articles to scientific journals as appropriate. There is no evidence of research misconduct in this matter. Accordingly, the University has not opened a research misconduct investigation."

2017 KING-TV

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Wolf researcher plans to sue WSU over free speech - KING5.com

There has been a curious turn in the free-speech wars. For a decade, Americas elite culture has been marked by a growing willingness to persecute people for private remarks and personal opinions that fall outside contemporary speech norms. The examples are numerous and familiar, many of them high-profile. The signal case is probably Brendan Eichs forced resignation from Mozilla in 2014 after it became public that he had donated $1,000 to support Proposition 8 in California. Other examples are less sympathetic: Donald Sterlings career was destroyed after tapes surfaced of racist comments he made to his mistress; Paula Deen lost publishing deals and endorsements over similar allegations that she had used racist language decades earlier. The overall pattern is that of an increased sensitivity to violations of speech norms, almost always enforced by the Left. If you give to the wrong group, if you say the wrong thing (even if only to a friend), not only do you face the general social opprobrium associated with wrongheaded or incorrect opinions, but you may be hounded out of employment, your life may be threatened you may be forced, essentially, to vacate the public sphere as a pariah.

For many on the left, this tide of censoriousness is not so much an unfortunate consequence of social media as it is a useful tactic to police American speech. The phenomenon is most evident on college campuses, where groups of outraged students regularly attempt to force professors out over even minor controversies. The latest incident: At Evergreen State College, angry students demanded that professor Bret Weinstein, who describes himself as a progressive intellectual, be fired after he called into question the idea of a day of white absence from the university.

But it has cropped up in other left-leaning spaces as well. There was widespread support on the left for Eichs firing, and much of the Left gleefully endorsed the punching of Nazis after Richard Spencer was assaulted. (Who decides what a Nazi is, you ask? I do! scream a million different voices at once). The implicit assumption always is, and always has been, that the growing liberalization of American life will ensure that the Left keeps a monopoly on this sort of sanction.

The curious turn in the free-speech wars, then, is that the Left, too, has begun to suffer casualties. A blizzard of cases over the past week suggests that the remonstrative tone in American speech has escaped the bounds of the university hall and the Twitter feed. First, Kathy Griffin lost endorsements after posting a video of her holding a representation of Donald Trumps severed head. Then, Reza Aslan was dropped by CNN after calling Trump a piece of s*** on Twitter. Most recently, Delta and Bank of America both dropped their sponsorships of Shakespeare in the Park after the productions Julius Caesar clearly analogized the Roman tyrant to, of course, Trump assassination scene and all. Corporations are starting to realize, perhaps, that about half of America voted for Trump, and liberal commentators, celebrities, and artists alike are feeling the heat. Predictably they have cried censorship in some cases, rightfully so but thus far they have failed to recognize that the cultural preconditions were laid by themselves and their liberal predecessors.

Now, then, may be a good time for disarmament. It should be clear over the past few weeks that there is no caging the beast: Companies, after all, are sensitive to financial, not intellectual, distinctions and will defer to the most easily offended every time. Now is a time when the American Right may offer an olive branch particularly with four more years of Trump looming, and with American progressives racing to outdo each other in the tactlessness of their criticism. The era is over, we could say, when the bad quip, the inartful performance, or the indiscreet donation will lose you your job, your standing, and destroy your life. Accept these terms, and criticize the administration freely you will still be subject to all the social censure and disapproval that has always enforced social norms, but your livelihood no longer will be on the line. In return, you must welcome conservatives back into the fold and re-expand the window of what is acceptable.

To some conservatives, this will seem risky a dangerous unilateral disarmament that deprives them of useful weapons in the short term without ensuring protection from those same weapons in the long term. But that view is shortsighted: Norms reinforce themselves, after all. A consensus for restraint in political dialogue, if it takes hold strongly enough, cannot be broken by any one group without political cost. And the alternative, a Hobbesian race to persecute both Left and Right, conducted by the angriest and the dumbest, in the service of the narrowest possible discourse, should be welcoming to none.

READ MORE: Kathy Griffin Cant Be Criminally Prosecuted for What She Did and Thats Great A Trump-ifiedJulius Caesar Robert De Niros Conditional Patriotism

Max Bloom is a student of mathematics and English literature at the University of Chicago.

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Free Speech, Hate Speech -- Let's Call the Whole Thing Off ... - National Review

According to a report by theOlympian, free speech activists and a group of Olympia community members who defend the colleges actions against Professor Bret Weinstein have both scheduled rallies that will take place this week.

A rally set for Wednesday called Olympia Stands with Evergreen will take place in downtown Olympia.Organizers claim that they want to remind lawmakers that the local community stands with Evergreen State College, despite the recent chaos that has captured the attention of the national press.

This peaceful rally is intended to A) Send the message to the people at Evergreen that the greater Olympia community loves and supports them and that we abhor the disgusting threats they are receiving, and B) Make the statement that the Olympia community loves and supports this college, which some conservative politicians are trying to strip of its federal funding.

The rally is being organized by Evergreengraduate Mark Alford, who claims that the campus needs protection after white supremacist posters and graffiti were widely posted on campus and a phoned-in threat shut down the campus for two days.

A second rally, scheduled for Thursday and titled Free Speech Evergreen State College, will be held on Evergreens campus. Organizer Joey Gibson claims that the event should serve as a wake-up call for the Evergreen community.

Evergreen State College: you guys need to wake up, Gibson said. You dont understand what the real world is like. And you need to understand how lucky you are. You are at a university, getting an education. You dont have to be running around complaining and screaming and acting like victims.

Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart.com

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Free Speech Activists and SJWs Plan Rallies over Evergreen State College Chaos - Breitbart News

By Adrian H. Wood

Editor's note: Adrian H. Wood, an eastern North Carolina mom, writer and blogger from Tales of an Educated Debutante, originally shared this on her Facebook page where she writes about education issues, among other topics. Wood holds a doctorate in educational research and policy analysis with a minor in curriculum and instruction.

Southwest Edgecombe High is a high school in the town where I grew up, right in the heart of Eastern North Carolina.

Marvin Wright is an outstanding young man and well liked by his classmates and faculty. He was senior class president and in the top ten percent of his 2017 class. He has joined the U.S. Navy and, in the days of stories all about bad teenagers, he is a light in the darkness.

This past weekend, Marvin spoke at his high school's commencement per tradition for the senior class president. During graduation practice, Marvin was instructed by his senior adviser to email his speech so it could be placed at the podium.

The morning of graduation, Marvin was informed he would not be reading his speech, but instead one prepared by the school. Like all good mama bears, his mother went to the school to speak to the principal and her words fell on deaf ears. She was told Marvin would not be reading his speech.

Later that day, Marvin stood at the podium and read the speech, the one he prepared, the one I have read and, truthfully, it was outstanding. He stood proud and strong and defied an administrative blight and exercised his right to free speech with the support of his family, classmates and faculty.

After four years at Southwest Edgecombe, Marvin exited the stage and was denied his diploma. He was told to speak to the principal who hid in his office and Marvin left empty handed. (Read more about what happened next in this WRAL-TV story).

My oldest son is just a sixth grader, but I have tried to imagine how I might feel if he was class president and my whole family had come to cheer on his success, including his right to free speech that someone tried unsuccessfully to overthrow.

This morning, I told Marvin that if I was his mom, I would be awfully proud of him and can't imagine there are too many good people that would disagree. His speech ended with this: "I am no expert in this journey we call life, but we all have the ability to make a difference and to be that change the world needs."

Marvin, I would say you're well on your way.

Adrian H. Wood, PhD, is a mom of four and an N.C. writer, who offers glimpses where satire meets truth, faith meets irony, despair meets joy and this educated debutante escapes the laundry, finds true meaning in graceful transparency regarding education, special needs, and the real life that is not always lovely, but worth sharing.

Excerpt from:
Tales of an Educated Debutante: A lesson on free speech on graduation day - WRAL.com

Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvards president, told graduating seniors last month that the institutions theory of education requires students to be "fearless in face of argument or challenge or even verbal insult."

Suppose youre an incoming freshman at Harvard University, which in April reportedly rescinded admissions offers for the fall term to 10 students who had posted racist and obscene memes over the internet. Will the controversy make you more or less likely to speak your mind when you get to campus?

I think we all know the answer. And thats what troubles me about Harvards decision, which will fuel an already-tense atmosphere of censorship at colleges across the country.

Second, there is no constitutional issue here. The First Amendment bars the government not private institutions from restricting free speech. So Harvard has the legal right to retract admissions offers from the people who trafficked in these images. Whats more, Harvard, like many colleges, has a policy that acceptance may be withdrawn if the prospective student engages in, among other things, morally compromising behavior.

But that doesnt mean it was right to rescind the offers. By rejecting the offending students, the university reinforced the idea that students shouldnt offend one another. And thats inimical to free exchange and expression, which Harvard claims to prize over everything else.

Offense is always in eyes of the beholder. I don't want a university administrator making that judgment for us. Do you?

Yet the decision to turn away the 10 admitted students communicates exactly the opposite: Students should be afraid very afraid when confronted with controversial or offensive material, especially if it concerns the thorny question of diversity on campus. And instead of taking risks, they should keep their mouths shut.

Students hear that message, loud and clear. In a 2016 survey of over 3,000 undergraduates, more than half agreed that the climate on campus prevents some people from "saying things that might offend others."

More than two-thirds of the students seemed OK with that, favoring restrictions on racist and offensive speech. And its hard to blame them. Bewildered by the ever-mounting charges of "microaggression" and other forms of racial offense on campus, they want clear directives on whats truly offensive and what isnt. But who will determine that?

The students arent sure, of course, so they err on the side of caution. And the longer theyre on campus, the more cautious they become. In a 2010 study asking students whether it was "safe to hold unpopular positions on college campuses," 40 percent of freshmen "strongly" agreed, but just 30 percent of seniors strongly agreed, suggesting that college makes them warier than they were when they arrived.

Many people possibly, most people on campuses think thats all right: If youre harboring offensive ideas, you should be reluctant to express them. But theyre wrong, as Harvards own declarations remind us. Look again at President Fausts commencement address, which encouraged "unfettered debate" even in the face of insults. We wont get that if were always looking over our shoulders, wondering whom we are insulting.

That doesnt mean we should turn a blind eye to racism and other forms of bigotry, of course. The memes that the admitted Harvard students circulated were vile beyond measure, and they deserved every piece of condemnation that they received.

But the students didnt deserve to have their admission rescinded, which opens the door for all kinds of censorship in the future. Over the past few years, for example, some students opposing Israel have produced disgustingly anti-Semitic imagery: Stars of David dripping with blood, for example, or superimposed upon swastikas.

So if a Palestinian student was admitted to Harvard and was found to have circulated one of these images, would the same people who praised the university for turning away the 10 offending students also demand that the Palestinians admission be revoked? I doubt it. Offense is always in eyes of the beholder. I dont want a university administrator making that judgment for us. Do you?

And when that administrator is also someone who claims to support free speech over everything else, weve entered the theater of the absurd. The best reply to bad speech is always more speech, not less. Thats a lesson we all have to learn, over and over again, until we know it by heart.

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author, with Emily Robertson, of The Case for Contention: Teaching Controversial Issues in American Schools (2017, University of Chicago Press).

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Free Speech Loses Ground as Harvard Retracts Offers to Admitted Students - The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription)

Felice Gelman 3:57 p.m. ET June 13, 2017

Westchester Board of Legislators' proposed resolution directly misstates the aims of the BDS movement. BDS is a campaign directed against the repressive and colonialist policies of the Israeli government, not against the Jewish people, says Felice Gelman. Wochit

A 2016 rally outside Gov. Andrew Cuomo's New York City office advocated for the The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which works to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.(Photo: SUBMITTED/Andrew Courtney)

Westchester County legislators have been discussing and are likely soon to vote on a resolution condemning the Palestinian-led international movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions directed against the Israeli government. The boycott movement, known by the shorthand BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) is aimed to protest the denial of basic humans rights to the Palestinians under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, to the Palestinians who are citizens of Israel but decidedly second class citizens, and to the Palestinian diaspora dispossessed from their homes and land in 1948 and 1967 and living all around the world.

Board of Legislators Chairman Mike Kaplowitz, D-Somers(Photo: David McKay Wilson/The Journal News)

What does this have to do with the Westchester County Legislature you might ask? County Legislator Ken Jenkins began the controversy. He proposed, in a resolution since withdrawn, that anyone doing business with Westchester County would have to sign a statement affirming that they did not support BDS. In this resolution, many heard echoes of the McCarthyism of the 1950s, when teachers, people doing business with the government and others were forced to sign statements that they were not and never had been members of the Communist Party. The resolution theLegislature is now considering sponsored by legislators Mike Kaplowitz and Jim Maisano condemns the use of boycott in general as a tactic that threatens the sovereignty and security of allies and trade partners," condemns the international BDS movement and claims that BDS seeks to undermine Israel and malign the Jewish people.

County Legislator Jim Maisano(Photo: File photo)

First, the resolution directly misstates the aims of the BDS movement. Contrary to much propaganda, the BDS movement does not call for an end to the state of Israel and it is not anti-Semitic. The BDS campaign for Palestinian rights has the support of many American Jews and explicitly disavows anti-Semitism. It is a campaign directed against the repressive and colonialist policies of the Israeli government, not against the Jewish people. The Palestinians boycott campaign calls for a boycott of Israeli companies benefiting from the military occupation, and an academic and cultural boycott of institutions complicit in supporting the occupation. It seeks an end to the military occupation, equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and recognition of the rights of dispossessed Palestinians to return to their property.

It does not malign the Jewish people. Accusations of anti-Semitism should not to be tossed around lightly by our elected officials. Anti-Semitism is a real problem one that has been given new momentum by the Trump campaigns willingness to accept the support of well-known white nationalist anti-Semites.

A 2016 march in support of the BDS movement heads to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Mount Kisco house.(Photo: SUBMITTED/Andrew Courtney)

Second, our legislators seem unaware of the crucial role that the non-violent tactic of boycott has played in human rights struggles. Did any of our legislators support the boycott of South Africas apartheid regime? South Africa was and is an ally of the U.S. and the boycott was a major contributor to the end of apartheid and the liberation of the black majority of that country. Boycotting the apartheid regime made the U.S. a better ally of the South African people.

Did any of our legislators more recently support the boycott of North Carolina endorsed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo that protested that states laws discriminating against transgender people?

This is hardly the time for legislators to be trying to chill free speech and to limit political engagement. The Kaplowitz-Maisano resolution aims to demonize the BDS movement and it levels false accusations against that campaign and its supporters. The purpose is for the county Legislature to put its thumb on the scale and chill dissent. Resolutions like this undermine First Amendment protections. Further, they stifle the open exchange of ideas that could help resolve the tragic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Why, in an era when progressives have doubled down on protest and political engagement has our county Legislature decided they must attack free speech and a global human rights campaign? Its what has been called the Palestine exception to free speech. In other words, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, our political principles are suspended.

In the age of Trump, our legislators should stand up and cherish political engagement, free speech and dissent. It is what our democracy is made of. This very undemocratic resolution should be defeated.

The BDS movement has the support of Westchester social justice organizations WESPAC, Jewish Voice for Peace and Concerned Families of Westchester.

The writer, a Tarrytown resident,is member of WESPAC Foundation.

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Westchester could demonize BDS movement, chill free speech: View - The Journal News | LoHud.com