"Wolves Don't Live By the Rules"

Biologist Sadie Parr, of Wolf Awareness, a pro-wolf outfit based in

Golden, spoke last night at the Scout Island Nature Centre.  I'm

glad I joined the "pack" of more than 50 to listen.  The British Columbia

(BC) regime plans to kill wolves to save cariboo, whose decline is due to 

habitat loss, not wolves, Parr's research proves. 

Top carnivores keep ecosystems diverse and healthy, Yellowstone

National Park brass learned this after killing that park's wolves in the 1920s. 

Deer and elk numbers boomed.  They ate seedlings and other

plants that shelter birds and small animals, and grow into trees

that beavers use for dams, increasing wetlands. Biodiversity plummeted.  

The 1990s reintroduction of wolves, from the Canadian provinces of

Alberta and BC, increased diversity, on land and in water.

Oregon and Idaho studies proved that livestock decrease when

wolves decrease, because killing pack leaders splinters packs, which

then hunt more livestock.   Rising wolf numbers raise livestock

numbers, surprisingly.  Disease, theft, and transportation take more livestock than

wolves take, which is never more than 0.02% of losses.  Range

riding leaves a human scent that keeps wolves away.  Large,

unattended herds attract predators.

A retired forester who writes a column in the local paper told me 

before Parr's presentation, "Some people never learn.  When one 

species declines, they kill another, which doesn't help.  It's about

habitat loss, not predation."

 

Parr concluded that humans threaten caribou more than wolves do.

BC has Canada's greatest biodiversity.  Almost unique in North

America, BC has healthy top carnivore populations and the required

intact ranges.  Hibernation and high elevation feeding helps protect 

bears, but wolves, awake year round and feeding in valleys, 

encounter people more, and therefore suffer more.  Each has a right to

live, as we have.

Will we share the world, with other species and with the rising

fraction of poor humans, or will we exploit nature and

one another and hasten extinctions, including our own? 

Here is a link to Parr's group's website:

http://www.wolfawarenessinc.org/

Here is a link to the song "Wolves Don't Live By the Rules," which I

found in McGill University's music library during my teacher training:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP2g70zS36k

This song went through my head as I walked home last night, and

again as I typed this morning.  

Have you seen a wolf in the wild?  Few have.  I remember seeing three

wolves.

 

First, in the 1980s, walking up Pyramid Mountain near Jasper, Canada,

I rounded a corner and saw a wolf standing on the trail, about 10

metres away.  It looked at me.  I looked at it.  Then we went our separate ways. 

Second, driving south, south of High Level, Alberta in August, 2005,

I saw two wolves, one on each side of the highway, about 500 m

apart.  I guessed they were hunting, and I thought they were smart.

 

Parr mentioned the theory that primitive humans learned to hunt better

by watching wolves hunt.  

 

"It's all connected," as a Carleton University professor told one of my

graduate school classes long ago, far away.