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Wednesday, December 5, 2007
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Coroner’s jury says Carnegie killed by wolves
(Note: Yooper is a term to describe someone living in the Upper Peninsula, or "Yoop," of Michigan. For those still clinging to the hope that this happened in a place distant from them and those they love, I offer this saying: You'll know it's true when it happens to you. There's a reason information about Kenton Joel Carnegie and others impacted by wolf attacks is posted prominently at my website's Home Page: http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org. As "captive breeders" continue under contract to breed large predators for "re" introduction in many states, I could not live with myself if I did not continue to warn people. This is happening in our times. It is not ancient history. It is carnage and it is being foisted upon people in rural areas by agency employees with "recovery" agendas to fulfill. Which large predator is scheduled to come to your neighborhood -- or has it already arrived? Should you call it a Texas cougar or a "Florida panther?" Is it really endangered? No one should have to face wolves as Kenton did. Kenton Carnegie Memorial website: http://www.mtechservices.ca/Kenton/Kenton.html Below the article is a poem posted to Kenton's memorial site by his mother, Lori Carnegie.)
December 2007 issue
By C. J. Williams cjwms@up.net
The Yooper Spectator
1425 Cedar Street
Hancock, Michigan 49930
906-482-4692; 906-370-2372 (cell)
http://www.yooperspectator.com
To submit a Letter to the Editor: yooper49930@charter.net
On November 1, 2007, after almost two years with no closure, the parents of Kenton Carnegie, age 22 at the time of his death, suffered the ordeal of a coroner’s inquest that finally brought an end to their quest for the truth of how their son died to be told to the public.
After viewing horribly graphic pictures and listening to contradictory testimony given by two experts, as well as the testimony of those who found Kenton’s body, a coroner’s jury put to rest the notion that healthy wolves won’t kill humans. Through caretaking consideration of the grisly evidence, the jury found that Kenton Joel Carnegie was indeed attacked, partially eaten, and dragged by a pack of wolves at Points North Landing, Saskatchewan, Canada on November 8, 2005.
Kenton, a third-year Waterloo University geological engineering student said by some to have been gifted with superior intelligence, was working as a geophysicist through a cooperative term placement with an Ontario aerial survey company, Sander Geophysics, in northern Saskatchewan. He had only been with the company for about three weeks before the incident occurred.
Late in the afternoon of November 8, 2005, and with some free time on his hands, Kenton told co-workers he was going for a walk, but expected to be back by suppertime. When he didn’t return for the meal, a search party went looking for him and stumbled upon tracks in the snow that told a gruesome story of the young man’s death.
Earlier newspaper accounts disclosed the young man’s apparent struggle with a wolf pack, as the investigating coroner called to the scene told of coming across signs that Kenton had fought the wolves off at least five times, but managed to get up and take more steps until the wolves finally overpowered him. In fact, searchers claimed the wolves were still near Kenton’s body as the men approached [forcing searches to leave and call] authorities. When coroner Rosalee Tsannie arrived, the wolves could be heard howling close by -- too close for comfort, she said.
Dr. Paul Paquet, an adjunct professor with the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is a wildlife expert who was hired by the chief coroner’s office to investigate the death and prepare a report. He was one of two such experts allowed by the coroner to testify at the inquest.
Dr. Paquet serves on the board of the United Nations' International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the board of the “Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe,” which is a Working Group of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission. The proclaimed wolf expert, whose work typically addresses the role played by humans and by development plans in ecosystems, has been co-director of the Central Rockies Wolf Project, Canmore, Alberta, Canada, which he co-founded. He has worked extensively on “real-world” management, which -- according to him -- depends to a large extent upon human attitudes.
In an accounting of the inquest, CanWest News Service reporter Chris Purdy wrote that Dr. Paquet said the way Carnegie was attacked, eaten and dragged through the bush suggested that a bear was responsible, but because there’s never been a documented case of a wolf killing a human in the wild in North America, it’s difficult to determine what a fatal wolf attack would look like. “We don’t know much about humans as prey for wolves and how they might respond,” said Paquet.
At considerable personal expense, Kenton’s parents asked two scientists to investigate the matter of their son’s death, but when the coroner limited them to only one who could testify, they chose Mark McNay.
McNay, a wildlife biologist who recently retired as head of research for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, refuted Paquet’s testimony about evidence pointing to the feeding behavior of bears.
According to a Canadian Press article, McNay said that “in photographs of the site, what Paquet identified as bear tracks were actually wolf tracks. The tracks were on a lake’s surface, which hadn’t completely frozen over. When the wolf stepped into the ground and broke through to water, the water came up and made the track larger, leading people to believe it was bear tracks.”
Additionally, [although] Paquet’s conjecture was that bears might have been out looking for food, McNay said it was more likely bears were in hibernation at that time of year and that interviews he’d conducted indicated that bears hadn’t been seen in the area for several weeks before, or after, Kenton was killed.
Commenting on the necropsy conducted on two North Points Landing wolves, [which] had human hair and other material in their intestines, McNay said it was highly unlikely that both would have eaten the same hair at a nearby dump on the same day Carnegie was killed.
The wolves, killed three days after Kenton’s body was discovered, were found to be healthy.
McNay also dispelled the myth that wolves don’t attack humans, by saying that’s not the case anymore, because wolves are becoming habitualized and losing their fear of people.
“These incidents of wolves and people, predictably, are going to increase,” said McNay.
Though he was unable to testify on behalf of Kenton Carnegie’s parents, Dr. Valerius Geist kendulf@shaw.ca, former head of the environmental science department at the University of Calgary, submitted a written report to the coroner. In a follow-up after the inquest, Dr. Geist indicated he was gratified that the coroner had kept politics out of it and limited the inquest to the question of who killed the young man, the who being wolves.
However, says Geist, in the matter of what killed Kenton the answer is “the belief that wolves are not dangerous to humans. Consequently, neither the jury nor the public were made aware of the fact that this belief has killed three persons in the recent past, and that it has a very long and most unsavory political history. Thus the attempt to whitewash wolves in the Kenton Carnegie tragedy by blaming bears is but one instance in a very long history of misrepresenting wolves. Moreover, this misrepresentation is not only historical, but ongoing, and involves scientists -- so-called and genuine -- as well as agencies, governments, environmental organizations and, in the past, political parties.”
Furthermore, according to Geist, “The public is being overwhelmed by statements that wolves are harmless, misunderstood creatures, not dangerous to humans. Such a message has come not only from North Americans and Europeans, from environmentalists and Russia’s communist party, from respectable scientists and romantic literati, while evidence to the contrary has been systematically suppressed, censored, belittled, and misrepresented. It’s a sordid history, of which some is a systematic hoodwinking of the public.”
Dr. Geist asks, “Is the public not entitled to know?”
And in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, many hoodwinked Yoopers are asking the same thing.
http://www.cbc.ca/sask/features/wolve s/2.html
http://www.mtechservices.ca/Kenton/ Kenton.html
Copyright 2007, The Yooper Spectator.
http://www.yooperspectator.com/files/YS_Dec_07.pdf (Page 7 of 20 pages; 1.81 MB)
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