Saving America’s wolves: Why Obama gets it wrong

By Joseph on February 13, 2014

 

Wolves again to be hunted across America.

As President Barack Obama continues to used what scientists have called “flawed” research in the government’s continued efforts to remove the gray wolf from endangered species lists, it is time that we stand up and speak with honesty and facts about the plight of an animal almost driven by extinction from human abuse of the ecosystems. Obama is pushing, through a research panel, to remove gray wolves from the US Endangered Species Act, which leads to a myriad of difficulties in allowing the wolves to maintain their culture and their habitat.

Last June, the US Fish and Wildlife Service revealed that wolves are no longer facing the risk of extinction in the lower 48 states. It praised the decades of recovery efforts and proposed to delist wolves from the US threatened and endangered list.

Removal of distinct wolf populations from the threatened and endangered species list has already taken place in the Northern Rockies and Western Great Lakes.

A debate was renewed by the administration to have views from both supporters and opponents of wolves protection program, which were reaching extinction in the continental United States before being listed under federal safeguards in the 1970s.

The Fish and Wildlife Service released the panel’s report this month, but saying that the agency did not use the best available science to make accurate decision on nationwide delisting. So what can be done? We need a better nationwide debate and discussion over whether or not animals are to be protected.

Activists are beginning to take to the social media networks in calling for the government to not slaughter wolves. One petition, began last August, garnered thousands of signatures en route to its 10,000 goal.

With thousands of wolves across the country struggling to survive after decades of reintroduction since humans slaughtered nearly the entire population, it seems odd that calls have grown stronger to remove them from the Endangered Species Act (ESA). According to the FWS, in the Great Lakes region, there are roughly 4,000 wolves; in the Northern Rocky Mountains around 1,700; Washington State has nine total; the southwest about 60 wolves. In Alaska, where wolves are not protected by the ESA, there live about 10,000.

So, why have the calls for “culling” wolves increased so dramatically over the past five years, in a plan to reduce the populations which the FWS terms “control?”

The modern wolf story largely begins in 1995, in Idaho (my home state), when the state reintroduced a number of gray wolves into the state as part of the “experimental, non-essential” clause of the ESA. From there, the animals developed and grew in numbers across the state as wildlife biologists helped support the small ecosystems that were developed for the animals’ use. And in the United States Pacific northwest, the Nez Perce Native American tribe also started their own project, which enabled a pack of wolves to live and create familial ties in a large fenced area.

Not everyone was pleased that hills covered in snow and jagged mountains – the difficult terrain of Idaho’s mountains – are now home to wolves: some government officials and ordinary citizens claim the species has now overpopulated the wilderness areas and is a threat to “human activity.”

As one family friend, a hunter, told me recently, the wolves are “killing livestock, attacking people in the natural parks and without action could overrun our landscape.” Although he is right that wolves do attack livestock (and wild prey), there is little evidence that people are being attacked. Wolves rarely are aggressive toward humans unless threatened.

The problem is rather with the continued development on what had, historically, been remote areas; there, wolves are simply attempting to survive. With calls for removing wolves from the protection of the ESA, however, it could soon be open season for hunters – in what officials argue are “conservation” efforts to ensure the wolves’ survival.

I spoke with an Idaho biologist who has worked with both the FWS and the wolf reintroduction program. He argues that human populations continue to “overuse” hunting in the name of sport and this has reduced deer and elk populations, not just in Idaho, but in the Great Lakes and Alaska. The result?

Wolves have been forced to look elsewhere for food and sustenance. This results in cattle being attacked because the regular food chain has been disrupted. Hunting wolves won’t stop this problem unless all the wolves are killed.

He also pointed out that during such culls – which we have seen in Idaho and other areas – it is the adult wolves that are killed, often leaving cubs unprotected and unable to fend for themselves. “It is sad that this sort of thing continues,” he added.

Activists have called for a blanket ban on wolf-killing, but there is a need to work with the FWS and those who feel threatened by wolves. We must understand that the issue of wolves is a nuanced controversy in which those directly affected by the encroaching wolf populations must be heard. There needs to be compromise that does not threaten the whole wolf population and finds sustainable solutions in the specific environments where the reintroduction process has occurred.

At the same time, we can’t afford to reverse the good work of reintroduction programs and go back to the days when wolves were seen as a deadly menace to humans and their livestock – and had to be exterminated because of that perception.

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