The Minnesota Legislature and the DNR won't be allowed to "manage" our wolf population any longer after a federal judge ruled that the Great Lakes wolves will be returned to the endangered species list ("Judge halts wolf hunting," Dec. 20). How did the Legislature and the DNR do? Great, if you belong to one of the special-interest groups (a subset of deer hunters, farmers and trappers) that couldn't wait to start killing wolves for recreation. If you, like the majority of Minnesotans, think that wolves are an asset that should be protected, legislators and those at the DNR deserve to be fired for their performance. They rushed to start a wolf hunt in 2012 without any public hearings. More than 900 Minnesota wolves were snared, trapped and shot in the first three seasons.
Let's find ways to coexist with wolves that don't involve trophy killing. Let's fund a program that uses the best nonlethal practices to protect livestock from wolves. We failed this time, but we can still redeem ourselves and protect our wolves.
Mike Chutich, St. Paul
• • •
The judge's decision makes a mockery of the Endangered Species Act and will hurt legitimate designations in years to come. As an environmental educator, I have seen attitudes about wolves change in the last 30 years from the inaccurate image of demon to the inaccurate image of deity!
The stated goal of returning wolves to their original range is ludicrous. Will the proponents eliminate roads, towns and farms from this range, relocate humans and replant a wilderness? Urban folks who do not live near wolves are quick to romanticize them, because they are never exposed to consequences. Wolves are increasing to the point where, in Cook County, there are rising negative contacts with people, dogs and livestock. These encounters are not at the edge of the Boundary Waters but near the town of Grand Marais.
Wolves will be the losers in the long run. Wolves are not noble characters in a nature movie. They are an apex predator species that thrives in "wilderness" habitat. They are doing well in the "wilderness" of our state when we look at the scientific, not the emotional, evidence. When their numbers increase beyond what the wild places can sustain, no amount of wishful thinking can change the facts.
Karen Kobey, Lutsen, Minn.
PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
The problems with Klobuchar's triple play
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar puts forward three wise ideas ("How the drug companies play Scrooge," Dec. 23). They're sound as far as they go, but none strikes at the heart of why prescription-drug prices are so steep in America: patent protection. Our government grants monopoly power to pharmaceutical firms, letting them price pills from 10 to 100 times higher than they would cost us without patent protection. Big Pharma will argue that its prices fund important research and development that brings us lifesaving medicines. Government-funded research through the National Institutes of Health could accomplish the same thing, without granting proprietary protections to profiteers.
Klobuchar has introduced a bill to allow importing inexpensive drugs from Canada. It won't eliminate incentives that result in overpriced look-alike medicines sold here. She also co-sponsored legislation to strengthen the Federal Trade Commission's enforcement powers to speed generics to market. It won't eliminate incentives that keep research findings secret. She supports price negotiation for the Medicare program. Why stop with seniors?
