America's wolf wars are heating up, as Montana loosens its hunting rules and other states push for their first legal wolf hunts in almost 40 years.
Mon, Jul 16 2012
WHO'S AFRAID? Fears of wild wolves have spurred a backlash
in Montana, where officials recently legalized trapping, lifted kill
quotas and lengthened the hunting season. (Photo: U.S. FWS)
The gray wolf is no longer an endangered species
in several U.S. states, thanks to decades of federal protection in the
Northern Rockies and western Great Lakes. But amid escalating efforts to
curb its comeback — namely via public hunting and trapping — many
conservationists say the iconic predators aren't out of the woods yet.
One major battleground in America's wolf wars lately is Montana, where state officials last week loosened an array of restrictions on wolf hunting.
Passed by the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission in a 4-0
vote, the new rules allow trapping for the first time since gray wolves
were removed from the endangered species list last year. They also
extend the length of the hunting season, and remove a statewide limit on
how many wolves can legally be killed per year.
This is welcome news to many ranchers and hunters in Montana, who often
suggest wolves pose an existential threat to livestock and wild elk
populations. And with biologists reporting at least 650 wolves in the
state this year, up from 500 in 2009, advocates of looser hunting laws
have found ample support from local politicians.
"We need to make sure we keep the wolf population in balance so they're
not attacking more elk, more deer, more antelope," Gov. Brian
Schweitzer told Billings' KTVQ Thursday, "but we're going to maintain a healthy wolf population in Montana as well."
Not everyone agrees that Montana's wolves are a problem, though, or
that more hunting and trapping is a good strategy for ecological
balance. Montana had a population of 2.5 million cattle and sheep in
2011, notes ecologist George Wuerthner in a recent blog post on Wildlife News,
yet wolves killed fewer than 100 of those animals last year. The
MFWPC's decision, he writes, "will likely lead to greater conflicts
between humans and wolves because [it] ignores the social ecology of
predators."
Image: U.S. National Park Service
Gray wolves inhabited most of North America 200 years ago, but they
were virtually wiped out of the Lower 48 states in the 19th and early
20th centuries by government-sponsored eradication campaigns, which
portrayed them as deadly pests. Only later did scientists realize their
importance as a "keystone predator" — an animal that helps regulate the
food web by, for instance, keeping grazer populations in check so they
don't eat too many tree seedlings and hinder forest growth.
U.S. wolves were added to the endangered species list in 1974, and
wildlife officials later reintroduced small numbers to the Northern
Rockies in the 1990s. After a slow start, the species is now
self-sustaining in several states, including Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
Meanwhile, another rebound has unfolded in the western Great Lakes,
where Canadian wolves have repopulated parts of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
As wolves return to their former hunting grounds, however, they've
found a changed landscape — one populated not just with familiar prey
like deer and elk, but also with millions of chickens, cows and sheep.
This has predictably renewed their ancient rivalry with humans,
ultimately leading to their removal from the endangered species list
and the return of legal wolf hunting. And while those hunts have so far
been limited to the West, Wisconsin will also hold a wolf season this
fall, in which 25 percent of its wolves may be legally killed. Minnesota
is similarly mulling a plan that would let 13 percent of its wolves be
hunted or trapped per year.
Wolf attacks on livestock are relatively rare, but they can still be
costly for ranchers. Wisconsin has about 800 wild wolves, for example,
which have been blamed for 64 incidents of livestock harrassment, property damage or other problems so far in 2012. (There were 182 such incidents reported in 2011, but not all were confirmed.) To reduce tension, Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources issues payments
to people whose livestock are attacked — it has paid more than $214,000
so far in 2012, up from $155,000 in all of 2011 and $203,000 in 2010.
HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF: Wolves stare down an elk in Yellowstone National Park. (Photo: NPS)
Another rationale for allowing wolf hunts is to reduce competition for
game animals like elk, whose populations are also smaller than they were
200 years ago. But according to the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation,
while "elk will probably never return to their historic numbers nor to
all of their historic range, far more elk inhabit the United States than
at any other time in the last 100 years."
Experts generally agree that wolves are now stable in much of the U.S.,
and many say they exceed the numbers needed for a healthy population.
There is substantial local support for wolf hunting in states that have
wolves, but there's also a firm opposition that sees public hunting and
trapping as archaic ways to manage wildlife.
"In 2012, it's just mind-boggling to me that we're still talking about
trapping. It's such an inhumane and torturous method," Pam Guschausky of
Great Falls, Mont., told the MFWPC during Thursday's public meeting, according to Reuters.
And beyond ethical issues, Wuerthner argues that unfettered hunting and
trapping could make wolf-human relations even worse than they already
are.
"Hunting predators tends to skew populations toward younger animals,"
he writes in Wildlife News. "Younger animals are inexperienced hunters
and thus are more likely to attack livestock. ... In addition, just as
occurs with coyotes, under heavy persecution, wolves respond by
producing more pups. More pups means greater mouths to feed, and a need
to kill even more game — thus hunting and trapping may actually lead to
greater predator kill of game animals like elk and deer."
Montana hunters killed 166 wolves last year, well below the quota of
220, a disparity supporters cite as a reason to soften state laws. Yet
conservationists point to the 20th century as evidence that loose
hunting laws can push wolves to the brink of extinction, and
animal-rights advocates add that tactics like trapping are cruel. "It's
barbaric and it's uncalled for," Kim Bean of Helena, Mont., said at
Thursday's meeting, according to the Helena Independent-Record. "You need to stop this trapping. It's not fair chase."
As MFWPC chairman Bob Ream said Thursday, such battles over wolves will
likely continue long into the future. Rather than trying to end them,
he hopes to simply contain them to sustainable levels — much like what
Montana wildlife officials aim to do with wolves themselves. "This is a
tough issue," Ream said, noting that the MFWPC received more than 7,000
public comments about wolf-hunting rules. "It's become so polarized. My
hope for the future is that we can get to the point where we treat this
large predator like we do any large predator, like mountain lions."
