BETRAYAL OF WOLVES AND PUBLIC TRUST:
A
DEBACLE OF DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
By Dr. Michael W.
Fox*
State and federal lands, including
all that abides therein,
from moose and minerals to wolves and oil, are managed as natural resources.
Most states can even claim eminent domain over private property for the oil and
mining industries and other vested interests. The laudable ideology of
sustainable resource use touted by the mining, timber, cattle and other
industries has resulted in endless law suits to enforce various laws to
minimize harms to the environment, biodiversity and to threatened and
endangered species. This costly and often futile process will never end until
there is greater state and federal government transparency and accountability
so that the accusation that governments pander to vested interests and betray
the public’s trust will have no foundation.
The legalization of shooting
and trapping wolves in the
state of Minnesota for recreation as ‘trophy’ animals and for the commercial
fur trade is a case in point that puts in bold relief how states manage natural
resources and wildlife species in total disregard of public sentiment and
concern. The commercial value of the wolf, in terms of state licenses sold to
hunters and trappers, and to the private sector outfitters and hunting guides,
is considerable. The reasons for the hunt are clearly for pleasure and profit,
certainly not to reduce predation on livestock for which cattle owners have
been long compensated and thousands of wolves shot and trapped (over 260 in
2012) even while under federal endangered species protection.
Behind essentially closed doors,
with no public hearings,
the state of Minnesota broke its stipulated hunting moratorium agreement in its
wolf management plan submitted to the federal government that would not permit
the recreational hunting and trapping of wolves for five years once the state
was given control over the Gray wolf once it was removed from protection under
the federal endangered species act (ESA) on Dec 21, 2011. The drafting of
hunting and trapping regulations, to be administered by the MN Department of
Natural Resources,(DNR) was put on a fast track by state legislators.
Nineteen days after Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton
signed an omnibus bill on May 3, 2012 approving this legislation that
sanctioned a kill quota of 400 wolves, the MN DNR announced that it would
accept public comments directed to its website but that there would be no final
public hearing. Some 5,809 people opposed and only 1,542 supported what the
Governor had signed---too late for any repeal or referendum. With a reported
23,000 hunters and trappers paying $4.00 to apply to the DNR for wolf killing
licenses, 98% being in-state residents who will pay $30.00 if they win a
license on the lottery, and out-of state winners paying $250.00, wolves will
help replenish state coffers. “Wildlife must pay its own way,” and “regulated
hunting is the best conservation” are wildlife farming claims which amount to a
death tax on the wolf whose killing by sport hunters is touted by outfitters in
wolf hunting states such as Alaska, as well as Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, as
“Helping us with predator control.”
No strangers to broken agreements,
several Native American
Indian tribes added their voices to the international public outcry over the
state of Minnesota’s legally sanctioned wolf hunt. Killing wolves for pleasure
is anathema to the spiritual traditions of these indigenous first peoples, and
to the ethics and symbolic value of the wolf as a state totem of all that is
wild and free. All of Minnesota's Chippewa bands have banned wolf hunting and
trapping on tribal lands. The affected reservations include Red Lake, White
Earth, Bois Forte, Grand Portage, Leech Lake, Fond du Lac and Mille Lacs.
The morality of
exploiting such a highly intelligent, sociable and empathic species has no
sound biological justification or ethical validity. The consequences include
great suffering for wolves caught in traps and snares and for those shot and
injured but not immediately killed, and harm to their family-packs from social
disruption, reduced hunting success and yes, the grieving of surviving mates.
With climate change bringing on an earlier breeding season, reproduction may be
disrupted with the hunting and trapping season continuing until January
31. Harmful ecological consequences are
highly probable, notably deer herd health, which wolves can help maintain, and
coyote insurgence leading to loss of red fox and other smaller predators that
help control Lyme disease and Babesiosis harboring rodent numbers.
The Minnesota Court of Appeals,
Oct.10, 2012 dismissal of an appeal to stop the wolf hunt
was based on the belief that it would
not cause “irreparable harm” to the population, an oft cited quote from federal
government wolf scientist and trapper Dr. David Mech. The radical disconnect
for anyone not to feel the abject, absolute, incomprehensible terror and
helplessness of a wolf or accidental dog or any creature caught in a steel jaw
trap or snare is in the same currency as the ‘splitting’ forensic psychiatrists
have associated with violent acts of psychopaths. It should not be regarded as
small change when it comes to animal cruelty when wild creatures are exploited
en masse for commercial and recreational uses, rather than minimally for
traditional subsistence purposes by indigenous peoples, or when they must be
either selectively and humanely culled or translocated for valid ecological
health reasons.
According to the MN DNR close to 7,000
licensed trappers in the 2011 season “harvested” 331,259 furbearers of 17
different mammalian species including 1012 Bobcats, 1,814 Otters and 46,166
Beavers, stating on their website “Hunters and trappers harvest up to 10,000
red foxes annually”. In 2011 some 9,100 winners of the sate Black bear lottery
killed 2, 131 bears, while nearly 500,000 licensed deer hunters killed 192,300
White tailed deer. Significantly, with milder winters now in MN associated with
global warming, the US Fish & Wildlife Service notes “an approximate five-fold increase in
hunter deer harvest since wolves were listed under the ESA in 1978.” Wolves benefit deer, weather conditions not
withstanding.
Ninety wolves were shot and killed
over the first week in
Minnesota’s inaugural wolf hunting season, which Sen. Amy Klobushar, (D-MN) who
fought for the wolf’s removal from the ESA, told a group of hunters that she
wanted named after her,--- since the opening of the state’s duck hunting
season is named after the Governor.
The Bad River Band of Lake Superior
Chippewa Tribe in
Wisconsin opposed their state’s hunt, declaring their land a wolf sanctuary.
For some Ojibwe, “Killing a wolf is like killing a brother.” Wisconsin’s wolf
hunt is in some ways worse than Minnesota’s with over 10,000 applicants for a
lottery quota of 201 kills out of an estimated population of 850. Some 2,010
permits were sold allowing one wolf kill per person through an extended hunting
and trapping season from Oct 15, 2012 to the end of February 2013 (into the
wolf’s breeding season), and allowing baiting, night hunting and tracking with
dogs. Eighty-five of the 201 wolf ‘harvest’ were reserved for Chippewa tribes
under agreement with the Wisconsin DNR and will not be taken by them, leaving
the target kill quota for non-Indians at 116 wolves.
The
tally of wolf kills on Jan 4th,
2013 registered by the MN DNR as 405
wolves brought an early end to the hunt a few days after a computer glitch made
it impossible for hunters and trappers to log in to register their kills. This
number, when added to the 272 killed by state and federal trappers in response
to livestock depredations and 16 killed by citizens protecting their livestock
and pets, represents 23 per cent of the estimated population of 3,000. What
number were shot and died but were never recovered is anyone’s guess. Tom
Landwehr, the DNR commissioner says “This is a sustainable harvest.
We will
have wolves in the state for ever”. (Star Tribune, Jan 5th,
2013).But the argument that wolf conservation is best accomplished through
regulated recreational hunting and commercial trapping is as ethically bankrupt
as it is biologically absurd.
All
public citizen protests and legal efforts failed to stop this first wolf
hunting and trapping season in Minnesota, the belated intervention of the
Humane Society of the United States and Fund for Animals suit against the U.S.
government not withstanding, But may it be the last, unless we choose, as a
nation, to sacrifice the wolf and all that we embrace in the name of civil
society and in the spirit of democracy. Shall we choose to surrender to the
prevailing anarchism of vested interests that enact laws to protect and justify
a way of living in the absence of the sacred, devoid of bioethics yet infused
by the morality and convictions of human superiority and the illusions of a
progressive civilization? Revolution is evolution!
It
is time to think of wolves and other animals not as abstract species,
harvestable populations, but as individuals, and as nation states whose
sovereignty we should honor rather than treat as state or federal property and
as exploitable, renewable resources: Yet another form of Colonialism. Such a
change in perception and relationship with the non-human animal and plant
species and communities, terrestrial and aquatic, which help preserve and
sustain the life and beauty of this world, may be in our best interests in the
long term. There is now ample evidence that when we harm the environment, we
harm ourselves, and as long as we demean and exploit other species, we continue
to do no less to each other.
We should respect other animal
species, especially the wolf
that helps maintain the vitality and health of deer herds and other prey species,
serving as essential population regulators, disease-controllers and
biodiversity enhancers. We must protect the wolf for these contributions to the
greater good of the ecology, helping preserve the natural wealth of our
national heritage.
Potentially
Devastating Consequences of the Wolf Hunt
Wolf hunt opponents,
including ecologists and
epidemiologists, point to the devastating impact of chronic wasting disease
(CWD) in wild and farmed ungulates--- elk, deer and moose. CWD in deer has been
documented in Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota,
Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma,
South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming and the
Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. There is circumstantial
evidence of occasional transmission of this disease to humans, (see Belay ED, et al Chronic wasting disease
of deer and elk and the species barrier. Emerg
Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. 2004 June. Available from: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/6/03-1082.htm)
There is no doubt
that wolves help control the spread of this communicable disease by culling
afflicted animals, preventing them from spreading the disease to other herd
members. Ranchers opposed to wolf reintroductions and protection, and hunters
who do not engage in ecological/health management of these ungulates but go
after prime, healthy ‘trophy’ specimens, are inadvertently promoting CWD. They,
along with state wildlife managers who manipulate habitat and species to
maximize ungulate numbers, ‘canned hunt’ wildlife ranches, and farmers whose
commodity crops provide feed for wild ungulates, need to address role in
ecological disease/imbalance and appreciate the role of predators such as the
wolf for their ecological value. It is likely that there will be a resurgence
of CWD (as well as brucellosis, tuberculosis and other communicable herd
diseases) now that the federal government has de-listed the wolf from
endangered species protection for those states now engaged in or considering
the recreational/sport hunting and commercial trapping of wolves, including
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Oregon
and Washington state.
Reporter
Dennis Anderson’s Outdoors article “The Time Was Right” ( Star Tribune
Dec 2, 2012)--- to start the Minnesota wolf hunting
and trapping season, lambastes those who buy into the “fatuous fact dalliance”
of opponents. Ethical questions aside, the facts that he and others offer, such
as increased wolf numbers and livestock losses from wolf predation, fail to
support any biological justification for wolf “control” through DNR-managed
“harvesting” by lottery-winning recreational hunters and commercial trappers.
There
are those who say that since wolf numbers are up we can start killing them
again without harming the population are surely guilty of the kind of “fatuous
fact dalliance” by which they seek to discredit their opponents. One basic fact
is that deer numbers as well as wolf numbers have both increased over the past
decade in Minnesota. Science supports the in-field evidence that thanks to the
wolves, the ecosystem is healthier with more rather than fewer wolves. Their
role in helping control the spread of chronic wasting disease in deer, elk and
moose, and possibly Lyme disease, cannot be dismissed.
So
the time is right for a moratorium on wolf hunting and trapping, with more
funding for research surveillance and less reliance on traditional
culling/harvesting of wolves which is a scientifically questionable if not
outmoded wildlife management practice. It is also time for all involved to
realize that a purported “scientific” approach to wildlife management will be
challenged when it translates into a numbers game to further vested interests,
scientific authority being the Emperor’s new clothes that fail to cover the
truth of animal exploitation and suffering.
LUPOPHOBIA: WOLF FEAR, HATRED &
POLITICS
Fear and hatred of wolves goes
back in European history for
centuries. Such lupophobia is still evident today in purportedly advanced
civilizations like the U.S.. This phobia is certainly not shared by indigenous
Native American Indians or by a growing majority of non-native American citizens
who oppose wolf hunting and trapping.
The thousands of applicants for
state licenses to kill
wolves is surely indicative of a significant degree of lupophobia coupled by
many others seeing the wolf as a trophy animal, a mere object to be ‘sustainably
harvested’ for personal gratification. Both of these attitudes are part of the
‘moral pluralism’ of America’s culture which makes a mockery of democratic
process when the majority of the populace want full protection for the wolf and
are now witness to their nation-wide slaughter. The wolf is a species symbolic
of a nation divided by a bipolar society that has yet to find unity of vision
and values, ethics and spirit.
Putting the wolf on the protective
federal Endangered
Species list to outlaw sport hunting and trapping of these highly intelligent
and social species is a limited deterrent against their illegal killing when
there is virtually no effective local enforcement and informant network.
Internet pages posted by “Sportsmen
Against Wolves” are especially
revealing, combining graphic photographs of slaughtered wolves with supportive
comments by hunters. They see wolf protectors and wildlife conservationists as
representing the kind of society they abhor: One of tree-hugging Bambi-lovers
that threatens their way of life and right to shoot wolves. Killing wolves
affirms their kind of manhood and survivalist skills. Many express a perverse
form of lupophilia, calling the wolf a ‘worthy adversary’ to be tracked
and shot or trapped as a trophy to decorate their homes and cabins and as a
‘furbearer’ to wear and sell.
Wolf hunting advocates disclose
a disturbing degree of
ignorance about the balance of nature, wolf-deer and prey-predator
relationships. They perpetuate the erroneous belief that exterminating
competing hunters such as the wolf is an act of conservation, helping preserve
the balance of nature. Some cast this as their divine right and responsibility,
scientifically justified, so they can have an abundance of prey for themselves.
The notion of co-existence, as practiced
traditionally by Native American
Indians and being promoted by organizations such as Project Coyote, is anathema
to this community living in close association with the last of the wild which
most American citizens are calling to be better protected.
Wolf hunters,
feeling threatened by wolf protectors and conservationists, are now enjoining
across wolf-inhabiting states to justify and protect their rights. But if they
were to connect their perceived fate with the fate of the wolf and every tree
in the forest, hen in the prairie and frog in the swamp, they might realize, as
Henry David Thoreau advised over a century ago, that in wildness is the
preservation of the world.
That does not mean the preservation
of their way of life but
their evolution into an effective, non-governmental community of wildlife
monitors and conservators. Many deer hunters, for instance, like traditional
Native American Indian hunters, are already there having discovered the wisdom
of biophilia, seeing themselves and wolves and other predators as essential
components of healthy ecosystems. With such an ecological perspective they can
begin to articulate a hunting ethic, acknowledge the vital importance of
wolves, humans and other predators in helping prevent deer overpopulation and
loss of biodiversity, and become a ‘boots on the ground’ force and unite with
other voices for conservation, habitat preservation and restoration in concert
with wolves. This is especially germane considering that across much of the
U.S. the white tailed deer population has risen over the past century from some
300,000 to an estimated 25-30 million. Animal rightists must also evolve and
not reflexively condemn all deer hunters as Bambi eaters.
But so long as lupophobia and
the trophy mentality persist,
wolves and other essential predators will continue to be killed by some hunters
as well as by cattle and sheep ranchers whose subsidized grazing rights on
public lands should come with a caveat prohibiting lethal methods of predator control.
Without a unified sensibility, like those deer hunters who also abhor the
killing of wolves as sporting trophies along with the majority of non-hunters,
the disunited states will surely continue to fall short of becoming a truly
civilized society.
Within every culture there are
sub-cultures and cults
defined by demographics, economics, religious beliefs, education and values
shared and opposing. Good governance accommodates such diversity to maximize
the good of the nation state, including proper management of natural resources
and public lands. But the record of the U.S. federal and most state governments
is lamentable, pandering to vested minority interests. These include
sanctioning and funding ranchers’ war on wolves and other predators and permitting
hunters and trappers to kill wolves respectively for sport and fur pelts. This
all amounts to a violation of public trust and calls for full accountability
and a return to good governance “of the people, by the people, for the people”.
The public conflict over the
fate of the Gray wolf has made
this species an icon of opposing values and cultural discord best resolved
through legal protection and effective enforcement, and inducement and
inspiration through education, of the sanctity and inherent rights of wolves
and all indigenous species and communities, human and non-human. The fate of
the wolf in North America will be a measure of the success or failure of civil
society to put compassion and reason, justice and respect to bear on all our
relations and relationships.
While wolves, like us, care and
protect their young and
injured family/pack members, play, court, sing, mourn, share food, orchestrate
intelligent hunting strategies, defend their territories, in other ways they
are our superiors. We fail in our own population control; have become a global
threat to biodiversity and the causal agent of climate change. Wolves do not
engage in ecocide, biocide, genocide, infanticide, pedophilia and other
psychological aberrations and pathologies of character and behavior. that are
seen by many as being of the same currency as recreational trophy hunting and
fishing, commercial trapping, dog fighting, bear baiting, whaling, vivisection
and animal factory farming. Such activities reveal a disconnect of empathy
evident as a pervasive issue in the epidemic of violence across the world, from
school shootings in the U.S. and despotic regimes abroad massacring citizens,
to the slaughter of the last of the elephants and tigers for China’s ivory and
folk-medicine industries, and of captive wild animal ‘canned hunts’ on Texas
game ranches for the trophy hunting industry..
An international consortium of behavioral and brain scientists attending a
conference in July 2012 at Cambridge, England put together and signed “The Cambridge
Declaration on Consciousness”.
This document asserts that animals---all mammals, birds and even insects and
cephalopod mollusks (e.g., octopus)— possess states of attentiveness, sleep and
decision making abilities, can experience emotional states much as humans do,
and like us are conscious beings possessing awareness and exhibiting
deliberated, intentional behaviors. From my own doctoral research on behavior,
development and effects of domestication of dogs compared to wolves, coyotes
and foxes I can assert that wolves are fundamentally no different from our
domesticated canine companions in terms of their awareness and capacity to
establish enduring emotional bonds associated with empathy. They show devoted
care-giving behavior to their young and to injured companions, and mourn their
death. Just like the family dog they will show fear, anxiety, depression,
joyful anticipation, affectionate greeting and playful invitation.
Millions of people who love their
dogs have a natural
affinity and respect for the wolf. Others reject ‘big bad wolf’ folklore
because they know something about wolf intelligence and highly evolved
cooperative pack society and social dynamics. Wolves, like other creatures, in
the words of Henry Beston, “are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are
other Nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow
prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.” Many people embracing such
sentiment and ethics have voiced opposition to the various states that have
legalized the trapping and trophy hunting of wolves, knowing how these animals
would suffer from such human predation. Just because wolves are wild, why
should they not enjoy the same protection under state Animal Welfare Statutes
as our dogs since they are no less sentient and can suffer? The law is now
recognizing that dogs can suffer both physically and psychologically and are
not mere objects of personal property but subjects of considerable emotional
value worthy of compensation in cases of neglect, cruelty and killing. Any
person deliberately trapping or snaring dogs or shooting them for sport would
be liable for prosecution Wolves who are shot and not killed instantly will
suffer injuries leading to a slow death or become permanently crippled. Those
caught in traps and snares will be in terror before they escape by chewing off
a paw or are shot or clubbed by the trapper. The emotional loss and social
strife to pack mates losing leaders and relatives would be detrimental to pack
integrity, hunting success, reproduction and survival.
Wolves are treated as state property
on public lands, but
public trust is betrayed when the protection of wolf and wilderness is
sacrificed for the pleasure and profit of an anarchistic minority whose
ethically unexamined activities are sanctioned by the laws they enact to
justify and protect what they deem culturally acceptable. Anarchism, the
antithesis of democratic process, flourishes when policy makers dismiss public
polls and calls for referendums because of the demographic bias of larger urban
versus rural populations. Wolves have been long vilified, persecuted and
feared, often for understandable reasons in times past. They are a highly
evolved species, far more ancient than we humans, with their own social rituals,
affiliations and intelligent survival strategies. Surely we can evolve
ourselves as a society and culture to put an end to killing them for sport and
for their fur, reasons legitimized not by science or ethics but by the
principles of power, profit and pleasure.
Pandering to the negative attitude
toward the wolf held by a
rabid minority and to those who see the wolf as a ‘harvestable’ resource, both
the federal and state governments have violated the public trust of a
democratic and demographic majority that gave to them the authority and
responsibility to protect and preserve wildlife and wild lands as part of the
greater good or commonwealth of all that people hold dear for reasons spiritual
and ethical. It is surely on these principles of reason and sentiment that a
sane, just and sustainable society is founded and best governed.
POSTSCRIPTS:
MINNESOTA
WOLVES SUFFERING MANGE (SCABIES)
DISEASE.
Wolf numbers and population recovery
resilience can be
especially undermined periodically by outbreaks of the contagious skin disease
called mange or scabies. It can become endemic---literally embedded in a
population. Factors such as poor nutrition and stress, (notably a quarter
million deer hunters taking one third of their main food source every year, the
White tailed deer, now exacerbated by 6,000 wolf hunters and trappers); also
concurrent disease (such as hook worms) make animals susceptible to this
contagious parasitic skin. It can spread rapidly within packs sharing the same
resting-up and denning areas. Reported public sightings and photographing of
emaciated wolves with little fur on their bodies and extensive bald patches
near Duluth, relayed to the DNR, indicate that the wolves of this part of the
state are sick and suffering. For them to be easily seen from the roadside
indicates that these normally shy and elusive animals are in dire straits from
this disease which is not entirely of their own making, or some ‘natural’
occurrence. Sick animals
indicate sick ecosystems.
The parasite responsible
for this disease, which can affect
many species including humans, Sarcoptes
scabiei, causes intense and distressing itching, often leading to secondary
bacterial and fungal skin infections and extensive alopecia due to hair
follicle damage. Infested wolves with little or no insulating fur left on their
bodies have been known to seek warmth and shelter in out-buildings in rural
areas, and will die of cold exposure when severely infested and lacking
adequate coats. Bill Paul with the USDA Wildlife Service program in Northern
Minnesota “believes mange, a skin problem that causes animals to die from
exposure, may be reducing overall wolf numbers in Minnesota” according to a
2004 report by John Myers, ( Mange keeps MN wolf complaints down, Feb. 12, 2004,
TWIN Observer, News Tribune). Mange
was
introduced into the Northern Rockies in 1909 by state wildlife veterinarians in
an attempt to help eradicate local wolf and
coyote populations.
According to the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife’s Grey Wolf Western Great Lakes DPS
Post-Delisting Monitoring Program ( http://midwest.fws.gov/wolf/pdm), the MN DNR is supposed
to keep records of
wolf diseases such as mange, which should be posted on their website as public
information. How many of the over 400 wolves killed by hunters and trappers
this past season showed signs of mange, and to what degree? What was the
incidence of mange in wolves killed for preying on livestock by federal and
state trappers and by private land owners ‘protecting’ their animals over the
past decade? How many public sightings of mangy wolves have been received by
the MN DNR?
Without adequate monitoring to
estimate the severity of this
and other periodically devastating wildlife diseases---which can be red flags
indicating a species is in under stress/duress from multiple factors that need
to be addressed by wildlife managers—how can Minnesota or any state set annual
kill quotas for recreational and commercial killing of recently de-listed
endangered species such as the wolf?
The above Monitoring Program gives
the option to states to set up
disease-control and prevention initiatives for mange and other diseases ( such
as hookworm, heartworm, rabies distemper and parvovirus), but such
interventions, including selective culling, should be on an emergency basis and
not be a substitute for healthy-ecosystem management policies and practices
which include putting the interests of wolves and other predators before those
of competing, non-indigenous and non-subsistence human predators.
One does not need to be a wildlife
scientist or ‘expert’ to
surmise that the impact of humans has enormous effect on the health and
well-being of any wild species: Especially on a complex, intricate ‘social’
pack species like the wolf. When their environment is dramatically changed by
thousands of insurgent hunters and trappers, the additional stress of being
targets themselves is likely to exponentially exacerbate the stress- disease
connection. No one can accurately quantify this, and ‘scientific evidence’ if
any, comes after the fact, too late to prevent their suffering and demise.
Language in this Monitoring Program I interpret as a
binding agreement that when the MN wolf population falls below 1,500 it will be
re-listed and given endangered species protection. But even before that
contestable point is reached, a moratorium on the 2013-2014 MN wolf hunt should
be instigated until the health status and more reliable population distribution
census reports have been completed and posted for public review.
“SCIENCE” SUPPORTS MINNESOTA’S WOLF HUNT AND “TRAPPER FRIENDS”.
I find it disturbing that the
biggest newspaper in the
region, Minnesota’s Star Tribune, has
published pro-wolf hunt articles and little to the contrary. Newspapers are
supposed to give objective, unbiased news and provide balance in the airing of
public opinion. One notable pro-wolf hunting article, insultingly entitled “Opposition
to wolf hunt seems purely
emotional” (Star Tribune, Nov 17,
2012 Opinion Exchange) by Peggy Callahan, executive director of the Wildlife
Science Center, Columbus, MN, is a point in question. Mirroring the evident
bias of this newspaper, her brand of ‘science’, rather than serving the
advancement of impartial knowledge and unbiased understanding, deflects ethical
concerns by using ‘science’ in the service of vested interests to protect the
status quo. I sent the following letter to the editor of this newspaper in
response to her article, and as I anticipated, it was never published:
“The kind of science to
which Ms. Peggy Callahan alludes,
and upon which she draws her opinions, is not founded on the ethics needed to
resolve the dissonance between pro and anti-wolf hunters. It is a moral
responsibility of wildlife scientists, as well as other users of animals, to
avoid causing “unnecessary” animal suffering. She states that her “trapper
friends” use traps that look like those that she has used for research
purposes, and insists that there is no cruelty involved. Cruelty is a
deliberate act, and even while there may be no deliberate intent to harm
wolves, what of the consequences of trapping to the wolf rather than to the
sensibilities of the researcher or trapper? What rational person can say that a
wolf in a leg-hold (which she calls ‘foot-hold’) trap experiences neither pain
nor fear?
Considering the evidence that
she presents of the natural
causes of death in wolf packs, and the average of 200 killed annually for
livestock predation, her conclusion that a cap of 400 wolves to be taken this
first hunting season in Minnesota is not “conservative by any measure”. By the
measure of probable suffering of those shot and not killed but injured and
crippled, and of pack-mates who mourn the loss of companions, killing wolves
for pleasure/recreation is ethically questionable. The most pertinent question
is not how many wolves people can kill to maximize their economic and
recreational value without jeopardizing population recovery but rather, how
many wolves must be protected in order to maximize their ecological value as
apex predators and indicator species reflecting and helping maintain optimal
biodiversity.
There are surely no scientifically
or ethically valid
reasons for any state to have a public wolf hunt, but there may be valid
grounds for selective, humane predator control by state and federal agencies.
Yet Ms. Callahan contends that elevating the wolf, like the black bear, to the
status of a game animal will help in its conservation because it will be held
in “reverence” rather than “distain”. This is a curious use of language which
gives a quasi-scientific sanctification of recreational sport hunting which
leaves me speechless.”
* Author of The Soul of the Wolf.
