Dear editor:

A recent article says that game biologist Tony Mong says the decline in our deer herds has come about from lack of habitat.

This is an outright lie.  The North Fork and the entire Big Horn Basin has an abundance of habitat. Yes, there is a lack of deer to enjoy it. But not for the reasons he states.

In 1994 Wyoming Game and Fish’s Mark Bruscino stated the missing link to the ecosystem was wolves. Then in 1995 an illegal planting of nonnative Canadian wolves took place, against the protocol of the Endangered Species Act. They claimed they were endangered, however that too was a lie.

Wolves were used to destroy a renewable, natural resource: the moose, elk, deer and bighorn sheep. We have lost thousands and thousands of animals to this predator and the large increase in grizzlies.

For the numbers of wildlife consumed by wolves, grizzlies, black bear, lions, coyotes, over issuing of tags, the percentage of home builds, on the North Fork, does not warrant the decline in ungulate herds.

This line of “loss of habitat” is an attack on our property rights, a violation of Wyoming mandate to preserve our game herds for perpetuity for the enjoyment of all. Yet, Game and Fish doesn’t admit to the huge loss of wildlife from predators, “it’s just a fraction.”

Those of us who spend a lot of time up here, know it to be fiction. 

Yes, there are diseases and some homes being built — a small percentage of the overall land. With NO building on USFS ground, YNP ground, BLM or state ground. Common sense, as well as the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, which built up great herds, has been thrown out. 

Tony Mong meetings are propaganda meeting, nothing more than a pat on  his own back while covering up the real loss of our game herds. “Wildlife management” is an oxymoron.

Randy Selby

Wapiti