By Sadie Parr and Chris Genovali
Wolf Awareness has erected a double-sided billboard along
Highway 2 between Calgary and Red Deer alerting visitors and residents
to the province’s misguided war on grey wolves.
The billboard highlights the dire situation wolves are
facing and heightens awareness about preserving this ecologically
influential species as an important part of Alberta’s intact
environments.
Grey wolves in Alberta are exposed to lethal threats from
every angle, including aerial gunning from helicopters, choking neck
snares, and poison-baits that lure wolves and many other species to
excruciating deaths. Alberta’s liberal hunting and trapping regulations,
as well as unregulated private bounties, assure that the devastation of
wolf families occurs nearly year-round.
Under the pretext of protecting caribou in habitat that is
95 per cent disturbed by oil and gas development, more than 800 wolves
in the Little Smoky area were strangled by snares, gunned down from
helicopters, and poisoned with strychnine over seven years. Many
biologists and wildlife experts consider these killing methods inhumane
and unethical. Caribou are endangered not because of wolves, but because
the province has knowingly allowed industry to destroy essential
caribou habitat for decades.
Snares intended for wolves “accidentally” killed at least
676 other animals, including two caribou. In a recent review of trapping
as a wildlife management technique in the Journal of Canadian Wildlife
Management and Biology, Gilbert Proulx and his co-authors reveal that
Canadian snares are considered inefficient at killing and can cause
tremendous pain and enduring suffering to animals.
Big Lakes is one example of numerous bounty programs
hosted across the province, providing $300 for evidence of each dead
wolf since 2010. Other bounties offer $500. Dwight Rodtka, a retired
problem wildlife specialist with Alberta Agriculture, reported: “The
municipal district of Big Lakes has claimed 647 wolves in their bounty
program in less than five years. During the previous winter, 62 wolves
were registered through Alberta Fish and Wildlife by registered trappers
in the Sundre and Rocky districts alone. Another 19 wolves were
registered as killed by hunters in these areas. These are bare
minimums.”
In those districts alone, the combined mortalities are
equivalent to 10 or more wolf packs being destroyed or facing the trauma
of having individual wolves taken from their families and purposeful
way of living.
Alberta is the only province that still uses strychnine to
kill wolves and coyotes. It is past time to ban these dangerous toxins,
as others have done. Knowing how many animals in addition to wolves
died because of strychnine poisoning in the Little Smoky area is
impossible because the victims’ bodies could not be accounted for.
Strychnine has long been judged by the Canadian Council on
Animal Care as an inhumane way to kill animals and therefore
inappropriate for euthanasia. Animals poisoned with strychnine die
traumatically from asphyxiation caused by paralysis of the respiratory
muscles. Considering that euthanasia implies death without signs of
panic, pain or distress, minimum time to loss of consciousness, and
minimal undesirable physiological and psychological effects on the
animal, death through poisoning with strychnine does not comply with
CCAC guidelines.
Raincoast Conservation Foundation large-carnivore experts
Heather Bryan and Paul Paquet, along with colleagues at the University
of Calgary and Israel’s Bar-Ilan University have authored a seminal
scientific paper, published in the British journal Functional Ecology,
which suggests wolves that are heavily hunted or subjected to intensive
lethal control experience significant social and physiological stress.
The scientists used tufts of hair to measure hormone levels in wolves
subject to different hunting pressures in Canada.
Although the long-term effects of chronically elevated
stress and reproductive hormones are unknown, there are potential
implications for wildlife health, welfare, long-term survival and
behaviour. The effects of stress are often subtle, but the ensuing harm
can be acute, chronic and permanent, sometimes spanning generations.
Ignored in all the killing is the evidence that exploited
wolf populations lead to smaller and unstable packs, smaller
territories, and potentially more prey killed per capita by these
inexperienced wolf packs. All of this increases conflicts with humans,
who see wolves as competitors for livestock as well as wild game.
Wolves are recognized globally as predators playing a key
role in the top-down regulation of ecosystems, yet they still struggle
to find safety in Alberta. Will the province’s new leaders have the
vision to right the wrongs being done to this highly persecuted species?
The opportunity to do things differently remains.
Sadie Parr is executive director of Wolf
Awareness Inc. and Chris Genovali is executive director of Raincoast
Conservation Foundation.
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