Wildlife and People

It is interesting to compare these articles. The story about the Ashton man rescuing his dog contains comments from the Idaho Fish and Game that they have never heard of a wolf attacking a human. These comments are to the wife of the Ashton man who stated she fears for their 60 pound son who is 30 pounds lighter than the dog that was attacked. The story from Perm, Russia tells of boys sledding down a hill where one 10-year-old boy’s sled went down near the edge of the woods where a wolf attacked him, dragged (weg geschleppt – German translation) him away killing him by choking. Soon enough wolves will become habituated in Idaho and then they will start acting like they have elsewhere for centuries.

Why does the Idaho Fish and Game continue to spread this false propaganda? Confronting IDFG on this specific point would make a great project for IdahoWildlife!

Well, we have a population of 6.7 billion people. There has to be some people that are going to be killed by wolves. The wolves only think of people that can be eaten as ‘prey’, since they’re just animals; they aren’t capable of thought processes like ours, and I don’t think that doing what they were meant to do - hunting prey - means they deserve to die.

Well, Allison, what if it were your children that were being stalked by wolves?

You see, some of the sites linked to this site are written by mothers who have to arm their children with guns when they go outside, whose children wait for the bus in wolf-proof shelters, children whose teachers must be vigilant because wolves stalk the school playgrounds, children whose pet dogs and horses are attacked by wolves, and who themselves have been attacked. The children, teachers, and parents exhibit traumatic stress syndrome from the constant threat of blood-thirsty wolves that prey on anything and everything.

I think if you lived in a situation like that, Allison, you might have a different attitude. You would not be so blithe to throw people to the wolves, sharks, bears, or whatever if you knew those people personally, and were related to them, and some of them were your children.

I’m guessing that “Allison” doesn’t live in wolf country.

I agree with Allison. If I or someone I knew were attacked by a wolf, I would be concerned about the attack, but I wouldn’t start hating wolves because I understand that the wolf was doing what it’s done for centuries- hunt prey for survival. So don’t be so aggressive towards wolves, they’re only animals with the need to live.

Kiv,

The issue for many of us is not wolf “hatred” but rather the desire to manage and control predator populations to minimize unwanted externalities.

If anything, the hatred in the debate is expressed by wolf advocates towards ranchers, other rural residents, and hunters. It is disingenuous to ignore the anti-human rhetoric and motives so fervently declaimed by wolf advocates.

Allison expresses a common bias, that people are the problem and people should be punished, eliminated, and thrown to wolves. It is far too knee-jerk these days to bad mouth the human race. That kind of broad brush hatred is unacceptable to me, and I will speak out in defense of mothers, fathers, children and other members of my own species. I am old enough to understand the hemoclysms of the last century, and the horror and suffering that arises from hatred of humanity.

I’m pretty sure “Kiv” doesn’t live in wolf country either (or perhaps former wolf country that isn’t anymore.)

Two million years of human predation upon dangerous predators is what keeps lesser species alive. Natural human predation also keeps the dangerous predators alive by keeping their populations low enough that they don’t run out of food. Wolves would eat the last two deer on the planet. Overpopulation and starvation is what our wildlife management and industrialized agriculture are suppoosed to keep from happening. Kansas can feed China. If humans weren’t supposed to eat animals, animals would not eat humans. And, animals would not eat animals. Cockroaches and spiders are sentient beings too. If not for petroleum, a dead animal product, we would be wearing a lot more leather for footwear. Animal rights is an oxymoron. Animals are animals and rights are all human. Love thy neighbor applies to humans, not the neighbor’s dog. Animal rights is retrogressive pseudo-intellectual bunk that does not stand up to critical thought.

The saskchwan insident went to court and they found the wolves-NOT GUILTY. I’m hearing a lot of russia here. I know what they do to beautiful belgen tigers-with dogs in a pack-so if they are doing the same thing to wolves-good for the wolves. I have seen the big white hunters from the u.s. come up here and in a chopper with a A.K.47 mow down a whole pack. Then they have their picture taked with their prize. How Brave!

Reply: More racism, cultural bigotry, and profound ignorance from a near-illiterate. Generally I don’t post such drivel. I don’t think it adds to the discussion. But what the heck. Every once in awhile I want people to see the kind of immature crap I get from wolf lovers. Compare and contrast the ravings of “the kid” with the insights and findings of the wildlife experts we regularly post to get an idea of the difference between responsible, informed, intelligent adults and the typical wolf lover.

Wolves do not know the difference between good and evil. They have no education in real estate law. They do know that they have to eat to survive the same as any other species including us.

Wolves mostly hunt for food. They also hunt to train the next generation. Some of that predation may look like it was done for fun.

My neighbour who lives across the street is an educated person. He shoots everything that moves. So do his friends. There are people like that all over the world. None of them eat what they shoot. They leave it where it drops.

Most species on earth have seen their populations drop substantially in the last 130 years. On average wildlife populations worldwide are down by over 90%. The human population has gone through the roof and is still climbing. The planet is not running out of humans.

As well as mowing down the wildlife, humans have been stripping the planet of non-renewable resources. Development is spreading like a cancer all over the world.

Water is a big deal. A much bigger deal than a few wolves. The US mid-west is losing its water. A hundred and thirty years ago, there were 150 glacial ice sheets in the US Rockies. Now there are 15. Those 15 ice sheets provide water for a lot of farms and people. Those ice sheets have a projected lifespan of fifteen years the last I heard. Unfortunately, ice melt predictions are almost always optimistic. The prediction for the Larsen B ice shelf in the Antarctica was out by 996 years. The prediction was that it was good for a thousand years in 1998. It fell into the ocean four years later.

Most of the aquifers in the midwest are in bad shape or gone. Only the Ogllala is in reasonable shape but it is very vulnerable to depletion.

As of right now, 94% of the water take goes to agriculture. Agriculture is the biggest threat to the water supply in the US. As such, over-extraction of water through out the US is the greatest threat to American solvency and sustainability there is, not terrorism and not wolves.

Have any of you thought for even one second what you are going to do when you run out of water? You are living in an area that will certainly become desert in the foreseeable future. No miracle is going to come along and unpollute your water or freshen up your polluted or drained aquifers, and unfortunately, the water you might be thinking will come from Canada flows north, not south and we need it.

All American surface water is polluted to the point where cancerous fish exist in every major watershed. All of that pollution is due to human exploitation due to too many people and too few natural resources.

As such the wolves are your best friend - especially if they can put enough pressure on to reduce agriculture. Your water shortage is directly tied to the loss of the buffalo on the Great Plains and the wolves. I know that’s a bitter pill, but if you look back through your history and track what has happened to the land since the wolves were exterminated you’ll find the evidence is pretty strong.

Wolves were present in North America long before there were any humans of any description. If the land belongs to anyone, it belongs to the wildlife, not humans.

Land of any description is best managed by nature, not humans - and particularly not post 19th century humans who mostly regard natural resources as an eternal grocery store whose goods never have to be paid for.

There is no such thing as good land management by humans in this century regardless of how long your family has been on the land.

No matter how many elk, deer, moose or buffalo wolves kill, they never upset the balance of nature. That has been proven on Isle Royale in the longest running study of its kind in world history. There is no argument.

After fifty years, the moose are thriving despite not being able to “get away” from the wolves. By contrast, the wolves are suffering because of a lack of genetic diversity. No new wolves have arrived on the island in the fifty years of the study.

If the wolves die out, the moose will eat themselves out of house and home. Elk have proven over and over again that without wolves, they do exactly the same thing.

As far as wolves being killed by humans, all of those kills are a result of a lack of respect for the predator, a species wide arrogance on our part in thinking that we as human beings have an ordained right to be on the land and that we are untouchable. That has never been true. If you think so, then you merely confirm my point.

In Churchill, Manitoba the primary predator is the polar bear. It eats mostly seals but is not averse to adding a human to the menu. In Churchill, people and polar bears co-exist. That town has the highest density of polar bears on earth. Tourists go there to see them. Occasionally the become the first course.

Are we wiping out the polar bears?

NO. Polar bears are a key link to a healthy arctic environment. To wipe them out as rednecks seem to think wolves need is unthinkable.

Humans are trespassers in North America, not owners.

Did you ever wonder how the Eskimos (Inuit)found their way around on the featureless frozen tundra?

The Arctic wolves were the original telephone system. Wolf communications are a distinct language. It is recognizable speech capable of translation into human terms. The wolves told other wolves point to point where the caribou and the people were at any given time. That’s how the inland Inuit were able to know how to find the herds so they could kill enough caribou to eat for the winter - eight months of winter and darkness - no daylight.

For the Inuit, killing a wolf was unthinkable. To do so would be to sabotage their own communities.

That all changed when Europeans showed up and in about fifty years virtually destroyed the system with the fur trade. Now the Inuit are almost completely dependent on goods from southern cultures.

The wolf was just as important south of the arctic to aboriginals. But again Europeans arrived and rather than learn and co-exist with nature, they blasted it to oblivion. The buffalo whose habits prevented Central North America from becoming desert were wiped out and fifty years later dust-bowl conditions prevailed. That was temporarily defeated by modern agricultural techniques but is about to be defeated once and for all by Climate Change and water loss.

It doesn’t matter what sort of system you care to describe, whenever a small change is made to a system, there is a domino effect. When a big change is made, the domino effect is correspondingly huger. Deducting the wolf and the bison from the Great Plains was a big change and the consequences are going to be correspondingly huge.

It may not seem like the wolf is that big a deal. They’ve been mostly wiped out in Europe and many other areas. As a result, our species has been able to evolve cultures that do not respect nature in any significant way.

The big deal in the end is that we are actually changing the chemistry of the oceans from alkaline to acidic because all of those environmentally oblivious cultures are dumping garbage, chemicals, nuclear waste and so into them.

Our oceans produce most of the oxygen on planet earth. To do that they have to be alkaline. So changing them to acidic is not a good idea. The transition is happening much faster now than the oceans can neutralize the chemicals so Dead Zones are growing. If you remember your high school chemistry, water can act like water for a long time with a lot of different stuff in it. But eventually, it stops being water and becomes something else. You also might remember that it only takes one single drop to make that happen.

So rather than bellyache about what an inconvenience wolves are, you’d better start thinking about how you can best accommodate them because, like it or not they are essential to all large Northern Hemispheric environments.

We simply can’t do without them. To think we can is delusional.

“Wolves were present in North America long before there were any humans of any description. If the land belongs to anyone, it belongs to the wildlife, not humans.”

This statement shows your lack of education and thus credibility. I’m not going to bother reading the rest of your emotional rant. The “native” Dire wolf went extinct with the rest of the NA mega-fauna 12,000 years ago. Asian wolves migrated here about the same time as humans. You are forgetting that humans have been here just as long.

Until you live in wolf country - you can have no idea what it is like.

Gully,

Thank you for your opinions. They are too much, though, and require some response.

1. You are right — wolves do not know the difference between good and evil. That is something people know, or seek to know.

2. Regardless of their intent or lack of it, wolves engage in spree killing and consume only a tiny proportion of what they kill.

3. Your neighbor and his friends do not shoot everything that moves. That is an unfounded accusation. If it were true, then he would have shot you, since (I assume) you move.

4. Many species on earth have experience populationincreases and even irruptions over the last 130 years. Your 90% decline figure is false and unfounded.

5. Your water stats are also unfounded. Further, American insolvency is due to exploding Federal spending and deficits, not terrorism, wolves, or water usage.

6. The Willamette Valley where I live is not going to become a desert in the foreseeable future. That’s ridiculous.

7. Water flows downhill.

8. All American surface water is not “polluted”. Fish do not cause cancer. Many natural resources, such as water, trees, and agricultural crops are renewable. Many non-renewable resources are not in short supply, and those that are are generally recyclable.

9. The use of wolves to “reduce agriculture”, if successful, will cause people to starve. You depend on agriculture for your survival. We all do. It is perverse to wish for mass starvation. One might even call your point of view “evil”.

10. Gray wolves moved across the Bering Land Bridge into NA at the end of the last Ice Age, roughly the same time (perhaps later than) human beings arrived here.

11. Land ownership is a human concept and phenomenon. Animals do not “own” anything.

12. Land is best managed by people. Nature is cruel. People are compassionate. Some of us, anyway.

13. Good and evil are human values. And yes, there are many examples of good land management.

14. The Isle Royale experiment proved that there is no “balance of nature”.

15. Moose are capable of population irruptions. That’s why human value systems and human stewardship of wildlife are preferable to the chaos of natural imbalances.

16. Rights are a purely human concept and phenomenon. Rights are form of contract among men. Animals have no rights because they cannot make or enforce contracts. If you don’t think so, then you don’t know what rights are.

17. In Churchill the coexistence between people and polar bears is filled with conflict.

18. “Healthy” environments are another human construct. Wildlife management is a science and practice not limited to “rednecks”. Your cultural bigotry in unfounded and offensive.

19. I repeat, ownership is a human concept. And yes, all of NA and in fact the entire terrestrial world is owned or claimed by somebody or some group.

20. The Inuit are smarter than you think.

21. Indigenous residents hunted wolves. They competed with wolves and kept wolf populations to a minimum.

22. The Great American desert was not “prevented” by bison. The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s was not the first time great clouds of dust blew around this continent. Loess soils are proof of that.

23. Your dire future reports are unfounded. Society has great respect for nature. Civilization is not an artifact of predator control. Predator control predates civilization by thousands of years.

24. Oceans are not becoming acidic. Dead Zones are not anthropogenic and have nothing to do with ocean pH.

25. A single drop of whatever will not alter the water on Earth.

26. Wolves are not essential to anything.

27. You are deeply misinformed about a lot of stuff.

Mike you get a gold star for patience.