The Wolf Preservation Blog

The wolf kills to eat.  And it is the wolf’s status as a predator that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of wolves at the hands of humans.  The two prime areas of conflict are the wolf’s status as a habitual predator of big game and as an occasional predator of livestock.

In the United States, federal Animal Damage Control guidelines define predator control as “control…directed toward less desirable species which are depressing populations of more desirable species.” 

CLEARLY MAN HAS DEEMED THAT THE WOLF BE OFFICIALLY CERTIFIED AS “LESS DESIRABLE.”

It is unfortunate that both Canis Lupus and Homo Sapiens sometimes seek the same prey.  It is even more unfortunate that the wolf has often been WRONGLY BLAMED for depleting ungulate populations, populations equally sought by both subsistence and sport hunters.  

Large-scale wolf kills by humans assume that wolves are the primary limiting factor to a hooved game population.  All too often, the wolf is just a convenient and visible scapegoat, the final product of years of prejudice.   And all too often insufficient studies have been undertaken to determine the true role of the wolf in controlling the prey population.

Various studies have shown that in fact wolves my control an ungulate population, extirpate the population, have no effect upon it, increase it, or decrease it.  Other important factors include the prey/predator ratio, habitat loss, overhunting by humans, and the effects of severe winters.

As wildlife biologist Chris McBride has written in The White Lions of Timbavati, “The very fact that any species of predator still exists today is proof that is has evolved in such a way that it cannot seriously limit the numbers of its prey.  If it did, it would have become extinct.”

Overhunting by humans is often a major factor in ungulate declines.  In one study of Alaskan wolves, it was found that humans had killed forty four percent of the Nelchina caribou herd in 1971/1972, a decrease that had previously blamed on wolves.  One year when caribou strayed too close to the city of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories and were slaughtered by its residents by the hundreds, outsiders immediately blamed wolves for the kills.

It is ironic that many fish and game departments exist to support the hunters and fishermen who fund them through the sale of tags and licenses.  The irony turns to tragedy, though, when these departments kill wolves to appease hunters.

In 1983, the British Columbia Wildlife Branch announced plans to kill eighty percent of wolves in the northeast Peace and Omineca districts in order “to support moose and deer numbers.”  However, the close ties between the department and the hunting lobby quickly became evident.  To fund the wolf kill, the government stated their intention to hold a lottery, first prize being a hunting trip to Zimbabwe.  Despite a government report that the moose and deer numbers had decreased primarily because of loss of habitat, overhunting, and a series of severe winters, the wolf was the one put in the crosshairs.

A more recent Canadian wolf kill was the plan to kill 150 wolves in the Yukon in 1993 in an area adjacent to Kluane National Park.  The purpose of the kill was to support the Aishihik caribou herd, which was declining in number.  After much public pressure, the Yukon government admitted that the slaughter was a “scientific experiment” using living animals.  In early 1993, about seventy wolves were killed, and it was discovered that the wolf population in the area was about forty percent smaller than expected.   Despite this finding, the Yukon goverment planned to continue the killing!  The cost of the initial year of killing was an incredible $2,500 per wolf. 

In the IUCN Manifesto on Wolf Conservation, it states that where wolf kills must be carried out, “the methods must be selective, specific to the problem, highly discriminatory, and have minimal adverse affects on the ecosystem.”  It concludes that “alternative ecosystem management, including alteration of human activities and attitudes and non-lethal methods of wolf management, should be fully considered before lethal wolf reduction is employed.”

According to the World Wildlife Fund of Canada, “the only safe conservation route is to stop large-scale wolf killing programs altogether.”  And as wolf biologist Lu Carbyn has noted, wolf control “has become socially unacceptable.”

**Special thanks to The Wolf Almanac by Robert Busch for providing this information!