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By Marc Bekoff and Sadie Parr
North Americans are often quick to condemn the
brutality of other cultures and countries, inserting ourselves,
sometimes using violent force, to establish what we consider peace
keeping and a “good life”. Why then, has this sense of empathy not
reached the way that we treat and care for other magnificent and
fascinating species with who we share the North American landscape?
Wolves
have been resurrected in Canada as the classic scapegoat. As the human
population continues to expand around and within what have become
islands of wilderness, we condemn wolves for being who they are; one of
nature's most awesome and important beings. In our lust for control, we
continue to condone killing wolves on a massive scale.
In
beautiful British Columbia, more wolves are being slaughtered—read
murdered—for “recreation” in recent years due to government championing
of the so-called sport than since record keeping began. Alberta hosts
numerous wolf-killing bounty programs, both publicly and privately
funded, where people are financially rewarded for bloodlust. Both of
these provinces condone contests where wild canids are rampantly killed
and dead bodies stock-piled. Yet, the motivations to kill wolves are
ethically bereft and ecologically unsound.
Nonhuman
animals (animals), having evolved over millennia to suit their
environment, can be viewed as other Nations. In North America, we have
largely accepted this status for highly intelligent and social animals
on other continents. Primates, dolphins, lions and elephants are often
regarded as worthy of preservation and more. We shame poachers and other
purveyors of grisly wildlife deaths because we feel the individual’s
and family’s pain on a personal level. Are we only willing to take this
position with animals that live elsewhere?
Annually,
the third week of October (October 12 to 18 in 2015) represents Wolf
Awareness Week. Canada's wolf population is considered stable, yet most
provinces do not support areas where these animals can thrive without
being gruesomely slaughtered.
What most of us are
not aware of is that many conservation organizations and esteemed
scientists consider western Canada to be at war with wolves. Wolves are
being killed for "sport" through hunting and trapping over livestock
concerns, under the pretense of saving doomed caribou herds, and on
transportation routes across the majority of the provinces. Wolf family
members are rarely safe from the myriad ways they can be butchered in a
human-dominated landscape—many provincial parks allow sport hunting and
national Parks are too small to protect multiple wolf families.
And,
there often is a good deal of collateral damage when individuals of
other species are unintentionally killed. Although wolves require an
adequate prey base, the defining factor for maintaining sustainable
populations of wolves is protection from humans.
Dr.
Gordon Haber, a biologist who studied wolves for over four decades, was
burdened with the knowledge of the emotional ties, lifelong bonds, and
the importance of family to wolves. He dedicated his life to learning
about and sharing his knowledge that wolves deserve more than minimum
viable populations, that safeguards are required to protect various wolf
cultures and traditions, and that the experiences learned and passed
through generations could be lost by disrupting the social structure of
wolf families.
This knowledge was a “burden”
because of the continuous pressure from Alaska’s Board of Game to allow
hunters and trappers to kill wolves from Denali National Park and
Preserve just beyond park boundaries, decimating the wolf families who
taught him how very much wolves were like people.
Much
of Dr. Haber's knowledge, well documented in his notes and gained
through decades of direct observations while living in the wilderness
alongside wolves, continues to be validated today by other wolf
biologists.
Simply put, what happens to an
individual wolf happens to the family pack. Wolves celebrate together
and mourn together. The social structure and emotional lives of wolves
must be recognized and applied in conservation plans and our treatment
of these highly evolved beings; individuals who should not be wantonly
slaughtered when it serves our, not their, best interests.
Compassionate conservation, a rapidly growing international field, stresses that we should “First do no harm” and that individuals matter.
Emotional capacities and personalities vary among individual wolves and
other animals, as with humans. Some wolves are leaders, some followers.
Some are bold, others timid and shy. Each individual contributes
something different to the family to which they belong.
As
humans, we accept that dogs are emotional beings, and we know that dogs
evolved from wolves. Indeed, humans go to great lengths to promote not
only the humane treatment of companion animals, but to provide such a
high quality of life that it often rivals or surpasses our own.
Unfortunately, in most cases we have failed to extend these ethical
priorities to wildlife, especially when it comes to wild canids, who are
still treated as "pests" to be removed. Wolf management across Canada
implicitly sanctions harm to individuals, which extends to entire
families of wolves. And, we know that killing wolves can have serious
ecological repercussions.
As our population and
utilitarian footprint continue to explode across the globe, we need a
paradigmatic shift in consciousness that changes our role from one of
dominance and superiority to one of tolerance and peaceful coexistence.
We need to expand our compassion footprint, which should drive our
humane treatment of wolves and other animals. This will require allowing
for individuals of different species to be who they are, not just what we want them to be. They are not our slaves.
The
extremely important ecological role of wolves as an apex predator,
influencing the numbers and behaviour of many other species and
ecosystem processes, must be honoured. Like human babies, young wolves
experience prolonged dependency on their parents, siblings and elders,
often spending about one quarter of their lives being taught essential
skills and lessons. The rearing of young is a shared responsibility, as
are cooperative hunting and feeding, protection of territory, and
defense of the entire family.
For these reasons,
trophy hunting, trapping, aerial gunning, use of poisons, and bounties
have grave consequences for wolves who survive these killing sprees. The
ripple effects of losing one or more wolves cascade through the family,
either wiping out entire packs as they hang around in concern for the
injured or return to a site to mourn a loss. Those individuals that
survive to make new wolf families must do so without access to the
knowledge and culture held by their slain family members, something that
takes generations to build. They become refugees on their own land.
Lax
hunting and trapping regulations reflected in current policies are
irresponsible and cruel in light of this. But there is an even darker
truth. In North America we manipulate our knowledge of wolf social
behaviour for cold-hearted killing when we radio-collar individuals,
referred to as "Judas wolves", so that when they rejoin their family
every member can be killed. The Judas wolf is left alive until the
entire blood line is annihilated—an unimaginable punishment for one who
unknowingly betrays his or her entire family.
Canadia's
provincial governments accept, promote, and participate in mass
killings of wolves. In some areas, such as B.C.'s South Selkirk and
South Peace regions, as well as the area around central Alberta's Little
Smokey caribou herd, severe reduction programs—experimental killing
campaigns—are occurring under the guise of caribou conservation while
critical caribou habitat continues to be compromised for human industry
and recreational uses. History has shown that wolves are a resilient
species, capable of returning to landscapes where they have previously
been eradicated, but this does not excuse the butchery or intense and
enduring suffering for which we are responsible. What it does is condemn
the newcomers and survivors to ongoing slaughter even if the root of
the problem, our unbridled resource extraction and recreation, were
halted now.
Habitat loss and fragmentation,
combined with direct human persecution, put Canadian wolves in a
position where positive conservation efforts are critical. Without
protected areas large enough to safeguard multiple wolf families, wolves
face a trajectory of reduced gene flow and inbreeding.
Provincial
governments consider wolf killing a means of acceptable recreation in
most provincial parks in Canada and public lands permit killing wolves
to appease ranchers. Private landowners can also kill wolves and
government agencies continue plans for large-scale slaughter where
wolves overlap with endangered species, regardless of the fact that our
own species has pushed struggling populations such as caribou to their
brink.
Canadians are often considered
"peace-keepers", yet within their own borders they fail to recognize the
nation of wolves, struggling to get by in a changing world that
devalues them. We must rewild our hearts as we move on. We become what
we teach and future generations must not be left to inherit the messes
we leave behind.
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