Oh Canada! B.C. and Alberta Governments Plan to Kill Hundreds of Wolves
B.C. Wolf in the Great Bear Rainforest.
In another sad attempt by politicians to fix the ecology informed by simplistic cause and effect science that has been proven wrong about 50 years old, the B.C. government has started a wolf kill in which 180 wolves are to be located by the radiocolars some of the wolves wear to make them trackable by scientists, then shot from helicopters. The official idea is to protect the last surviving woodland caribou, which have been severely decimated by … you guessed it: humans, not wolves; habitat loss to be precise.
Here is an idea of how senseless these measures are: The U.S. National Park Service stopped what was cynically called “predator control” in the 1960s, and in fact reintroduced wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1998. This has been one of the greatest success stories of human animal control of the last decades, simply because it meant less rather than more control of an ecosystem that has developed through co-evolution over millions of years. Not so the B.C. government, or the Alberta government, which has killed over 1000 wolves since 2005 according to Alberta wildlife photographer John Marriott (that is the entire wolf population of Yellowstone and then some each year for the past 10 years!), and apparently politicians are considering stepping up their game by killing even more wolves so that they do not have to stop human habitat destruction. The whole procject is, of course, not only highly unethical, but also scientifically unsound, and pointless. As Canadian researchers have shown in a paper published only two months ago, there has been no effect of the Alberta mass slaughter, other than a thousand dead wolves, of course (see here; the site also gives other good reasons to oppose the killings). A sad day for a country with some of the greatest nature, but sadly not the greatest track record of protecting it – to put it mildly.
So what can we do?
If you are in BC or Alberta, write to your governmen, call them, visit them. Make your opinion heard. If you are neither in BC nor in Alberta that does not stop you from writing to the provincial governments, of course. Since they are not your (or my) representatives they probably won’t care too much about our votes, but they may care about our tourist dollars. After all these pay for the wolf killings. Many voices promising to boycott the two provinces may make a difference. They certainly will not hurt. Tell them you had planned to go to B.C. / Alberta this year and that you are now reconsidering. If you hadn’t consider it, consider it now, then change your mind. Wyoming, Montana and Colorado have beautiful mountains, too, as do the Alps for that matter. And Washington State also has a nice temperate rain forest. Pacific Wild’s website has a link to a preformulated email with the right addresses for B.C. here. Marriott has the Alberta addresses here. The Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals also has sample letters and addresses, here and here. All these sites also have more background as well as other links which support the point that the wolf kills are not only unethical but show no effect on the caribou population they are supposed to save.
You can also support the folks at Pacific Wild, Ian and Karen McAlister and their supporters, who have done more in recent years for B.C. than most by donating money to their campaign to stop the wolf kill.
If you cannot give money and do not want to write, you can also sign their petition, which takes about 2 seconds. Over 100,000 others have already done so. It may not make a huge difference, but it certainly won’t hurt.
Thank you for caring about these wonderful and intelligent creatures!
Fehrle Photography Blog 