Open Season on Wolves

[Guest guest]

Apri1

2, 2008

Delisting is a

Recipe for Conflict

Open

Season on Wolves

By GEORGE WUERNTHER

Last week the wolf was delisted under

the Endangered Species Act and state wildlife agencies were permitted

to take over wolf management. Most state wildlife agencies profess

a desire to minimize human-wolf conflicts. Yet their management

plans are, without exception, guaranteed to create greater conflicts.

All state wildlife agencies

are guilty of conveniently ignoring the socio-biological relationship

of predators like the wolf which makes any indiscriminate killing

of animals counter productive. Just as a hundred years of coyote

persecution has failed to reduce rancher/coyote conflicts, so

called wolf "management" by the states will have the

same effect.

Indiscriminate killing of predators--and

hunting by sportsmen and/or predator control by wildlife services

is indiscriminate--disrupts wolf social relationships within

packs, relations with other packs, as well as relations with

other predators. Even if hunting/predator control worked--which

it doesn't--it is a blunt tool at best for resolving wolf-human

conflicts.

First a hunted/persecuted population

tends to have more fragmented smaller packs--usually consisting

of two adults plus pups. Collectively 2-3 packs of this social

organization may occupy the same territory as one pack with intact

social organization that may have 3-6 adults. So instead of one

wolf pack occupying X amount of territory, you get three with

the same number of adults, but many more pups to feed. Just the

odds that any pack will attack livestock goes up tremendously

when you have more packs, so two or three different packs are

far more likely to attack livestock than one pack.

Furthermore, when the wolf

population becomes skewed towards younger animals, they breed earlier,

and produce more pups. Young rapidly growing pups, just like

my own teenagers, eat a lot of food. If you have a pack that

consists of two adults with 5-8 pups, they need more food per

capita than a pack with 4-5 adults and 2-5 pups (which is what

you are more likely to get with wolves living at near capacity

and not suffering continual persecution). Consequently even if

the "total" number of wolves is the same, the predation

effect is greater. Packs composed primarily of young animals

are more likely to require more elk and deer--even if they resist

the temptation to kill livestock. Raising a young family requires

more food for sustaining a pack than a more socially stable pack

with older pack members--not too much different than from us

humans.

Finally hunting and persecution

of wolves can often lead to higher numbers of other predators

like bears and lions. For instance, in Yellowstone, bears take

more elk calves than wolves. In other places, lions may benefit

from persecution of wolves with increased numbers, and of course

higher predation on elk and deer.

The unfortunate fact is that

all three states are managing wolves using 19th Century attitudes

and science, and ignoring 21st Century socio-ecological insights.

Hunting of predators--other than the surgical removal of an occasional

offending animal--is a process for conflict.

It is a self full-filling process

where by wolf-killing begets a demand for even more wolf-killing

in a never ending cycle that ultimately satisfies no one. In

the end everyone loses. Ranchers lose by suffering more predator

losses than necessary. Hunters lose in two ways--bad press for

hunters by killing an animal that a majority of people do not

want shot, and secondarily by increasing the predation on elk

and deer over and above what would otherwise occur. Finally,

wolves lose by garnering a bad reputation they don't deserve.

George Wuerthner is an ecologist, writer and photographer

with 34 published books, including Wild

Fire: A Century of Failed Forest Policy and Montana,

Magnificent Wilderness and, most recently, Thrillcraft:

the Environmental Consequences of Motorized Recreation.