Common Misconceptions About Wolves

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For my research project I interviewed Kevin Harvey-Marose (who’s credentials are so long I’m just going to copy and past them here)  who has a B.S degree from the college of Natural resources, been a park ranger for the national park service for 12 years (one being a park interpreter and another being a wild life researcher) park ranger with Idaho parks and recreation for 4 years specializing in higher predator relationships o the wolf, grizzly bear and cougar (working on the Minnesota Canadian border wilderness areas and Glacier National Park and central Idaho), and working closely with the Wolf Education Research Center in Winchester when he worked for the state park he was also an independent Naturalist for 12 years.

During that interview he told me of a few common misconceptions people think are true about wolves and I thought I’d share those.

1. That wolves enjoy killing. This is false. Wolves are carnivorous predators, they have to eat meat to survive, and they only eat in order to survive. From what we know today, we only know of humans that kill for any other reason than subsistence survival. As a matter of fact, many if not most of the North American indigenous cultures revered the wolf because of the very close knit family relations of their packs.
2. Wolves will eat all the elk and deer: false again; this makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever. Predator and prey have been around sense prehistoric times. If they killed all the prey, they wouldn’t have anything to eat. We call this, coevolution. Almost every indigenous culture has a saying that goes something like this, “the elk (caribou, moose, deer) helps make the wolf strong; and the wolf makes the elk (caribou, moose deer) strong.” They understood by observing for a very long time that they need each other to become stronger and healthier. It is human interference in this relationship that causes the crashes of prey populations. This isn’t to say that they can’t bring down the prey populations quite a bit in specific areas, but overall in any region over time it will always go up and down. But what the relationship creates is and synergy between the two, which means if left alone the up and down of the cycles are much smaller than the cycles that happen when the predator prey populations are out of balance like they were before they brought the wolf in. What happens is the prey gets way out of hand and destroys their own habitat for their own survival and the population crashes, predators prevent that. Humans have mimicked the predator prey relationship, but it only works if the humans are hunting for subsistence and not for recreation and trophies. This causes reverse evolution, but taking the best genes out of the gene pool instead of taking the worst genes of the gene pool which the predators and subsistence hunters do.
3. That they’re man eaters: there has only been one documented case of  a healthy wolf killing a human being in the five hundred plus years European/Americans have been in the Americas. That happened recently in Canada, when a couple fed wolves to bring them close to their house for tourists to see. Considering almost every day with how many dog attacks there are and how many people every year (which are in the hundreds) are killed by dogs, I really don’t think you have to worry about that. For the most part wolves are more afraid of us then we are of them.
4. They’re eating all the livestock: the actual numbers that have been taken are extremely small. If you take the total number of domestic livestock of cattle, sheep, or pigs that are in wolf territory the amount of predation is unbelievably small. In Minnesota, which has the highest and densest population of wolves, in the lower 48, the percentage is 1/11of one percent which has more livestock per acre than anywhere in the west and there are approximately 3000 wolves in that area, vs 1500 in three states of the Northern Rockies. The wolf predation rate of total livestock is lower than that of coyotes or feral dogs. We have found that healthy wolves will only kill what they have been taught to kill by the alpha male and female of the pack. This means if their natural prey is elk and deer, they will usually (except in dyer emergency situations) take elk and deer not cows and sheep. Generally speaking, what you tend to have (not all the time) where you have trouble is the independent wolves that don’t have any packs so they’re just trying to survive. Sense livestock is easier to catch; they’ll go after them sometimes.
5. The wolves they brought down from Canada are bigger and different wolves then used to live here: false. There are two trains of thought with wildlife experts about grey wolves. One, which is the one that has become the majority thinking, is that a grey wolf is a grey wolf. There is a grey wolf, there is no difference and they are all one species period. Except for the two most extreme ranges of what we call the Arctic wolf and the Mexican wolf and all the rest are just grey wolves that happen to live in different habitats in different climates so their physical morphology changes within one generation of a different habitat. The second is that there are five varieties of grey wolf, but if you put them in another habitat, they change. Even within this train of thought, there were historically two varieties in Idaho divided by north Idaho and using this train of thought the variety they brought down from Canada is the same one that was in Northern Idaho to begin with. Now, sense wolves can easily travel back and forth 400 miles, they were still crossing paths and interbreeding with each other so it really isn’t a big deal. Good evidence of the morphology change has happened already where the first pups that were birthed in Yellowstone are different sizes because of the different food, and climate, where they live separately in separate packs in different places in Yellowstone. The siblings that move to the high elevation with severe temperatures and eat primarily bison are larger than their siblings in the milder climate that eat deer and elk, this change happened in one generation. The grey wolf is different sizes in any region. In other words, wolf size is environmentally conditioned not genetically conditioned.

Wolf hysteria (also known as wolf persecution, or rarely, lupophobia) is the widespread public hatred of wolves, incorporating both their enduring role as folk devils, and societal attitudes favouring policies of active persecution of wolves, and opposition and resistance to policies aiming to protect existing wild populations, or reintroduce the species into former ranges where it has become extinct relatively recently. The phenomenon shares much in common with moral panics, including the use of scaremongering, unverifiable anecdotes, demonisation, exaggeration, moral highroading etc., to the extent the phenomenon could be considered a moral panic in and of itself, though it is not commonly referred to as such.

Nuff said.

 

=)

Wolves Decimate Elk Herds

Wolves Decimate Elk Herds

This wiki article simply states that although we would like to blame what we think of as lower numbers of elk or deer on wolves, it is actually humans that have taken most of the elk. According to Drs. Doug Smith, Daniel Stahler and John Vucetich in combination with Yellowstone National Park, the elk populations remained stable during the reintroduction of wolves in 1995-2000 at around 17000. The population did in fact drop from 2000-2004 but they found that was due more to severe drought and increased hunting by humans.

Analysis Of The Ecology Of Fear: Wolves Gone, Western Ecosystems Suffer

Analysis Of The Ecology Of Fear: Wolves Gone, Western Ecosystems Suffer

The near extinction of the Gray wolves in most of the west has created a cascade effect, affecting everything from elk, deer, beavers, fish, birds, etc. and has lead to the collapsing heath of some vegetation and Aspen. Biologist from the University of Oregon published an article in the BioScience and Forest Ecology and management journals and have helped outline the extremely complex relationships wolves have to our ecosystems. This also explains major problems facing many western streams, plants and wildlife. The scientists say, “It would appear that the loss of a keystone predator, the gray wolf, across vast areas of the American West may have set the stage for previously unrecognized and unappreciated ecological changes in riparian and upland plant communities, and the functions they provide.” In their research, they have studied the idea that has been coined, “the ecology of fear.’ Historical significance on the ecosystem is only to preying on other animals, large and small. The scientists have found that it has something to due with the fear larger animals, such as grazing animals, have of wolves and the behavior that comes from that. These grazing animals and some smaller animals change their behavior when they’re under threat of being preyed on by wolves, “They forage or browse less intensively at high-risk sites.” Healthy ecosystems, the researchers say, are places like stream sides filled with lots of vegetation and when healthy will grow large trees supporting beaver and other wildlife. OSU scientists stated that the loss of wolves dated almost exactly to the time with loss of Aspen and cottonwood trees in Yellowstone. This was only reversed with the reintroduction of wolves, when they preyed on the elk that were eating all of the baby trees. They have found the exact same thing with the reintroduction of wolves in Montana. It may not seem like much, the slow recovery of Aspen, but it sets the stage for “an increase in plant biomass, improved streambank stability, better floodplain functioning, reduced soil erosion, and better food web support for everything from beaver to river otter, fish, birds, amphibians, and insects. Biodiversity will increase and rising beaver populations will lead to even more changes, including sediment retention, wetland maintenance and nutrient cycling.” But the researchers say that fear of human sport hunters play a role. Research has shown that elk move away from road sides when heavily preyed on by hunters and Aspen are heavily eaten where hunting isn’t a real threat. Researchers say that the predation by large predators is pivotal in maintaining biodiversity in some ecosystems. More information can be found at this website, http://www.cof.orst.edu/wolves. While large carnivore population continue to collapse in the lower 48, the numbers are starting to increase a little in recent years and growing evidence suggests they are pivotal to ecosystems. “A similar point, they said, was made by the great naturalist Aldo Leopold in 1949, who predicted this crisis. “I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves,” Leopold wrote 55 years ago. “I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death.”

This was very important to my topic in that it gives a name to the issues that have occurred in the last few decades and has been documented scientists who have written articles and journals. It’s been documented in place after place that the extermination of wolves causes a great effect on the wildlife and vegetation in an ecosystem. “The Biology of Fear” is a great example of what could happen if wolves were to be exterminated, and this has happened in more than a few places including here in Idaho. The fear of larger predators, the fear of hunters– it’s all interconnected in a complicated way that not a lot of people understand or care to understand but the fact is, wolves play a pivotal role in our ecosystems, a role that shouldn’t be ignored or altered out of ignorance or greed. This gives me facts that are credible and interesting.

 

CA BC: Livestock stats don’t justify wolf cull

CA BC: Livestock stats don’t justify wolf cull

There’s been a controversy over the cull from the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association in “control program killed 60 problem wolves in 2011, 35 per cent of them in the rangelands of the Thompson region” this on top of the wolves that had been hunted and trapped. Unfortunately, wolf harvests are “notoriously unreliable” and we can’t be sure how many actually were killed in the year. “So with predator control, trapping and hunting, at a conservative estimate, we’re likely already killing around five per cent of the wolf population every year, presently estimated at about 8,500.” This then creates an issue, because the Cattlemen’s Association says the population is out of control, but they’re already killing about five percent of the population. Undeniably, wolves kill livestock each year, but how does that warrant the wolf cull? A privately commissioned economic impact analysis says that wolves are costing them about $15 million a year– however, there are problems with that number from the very beginning. “For wolves to destroy $15 million worth of livestock using yearling steers as the yardstick, they’d have to kill 19,736 animals. But Statistics Canada’s 2011 inventory for steers aged one year and over in B.C. totals 21,000 head. So, wolves would have to wipe out the entire provincial herd of yearling steers — every year.” Considering that wolves prey on smaller livestock, like calves, the weak, or sickly. Doing the math, wolves have to kill at least 63,000 more animals then there actually are to achieve that loss. “This year, 107 wild predator kills have been verified so far. Last year, government verified 133 kills and paid out $63,800. In the previous reporting year, compensation was $32,931 for 78 verified kills. And the year before that it was $38,292 on 93 verified kills.” From those figures, the ranchers should have been about $45 million and should get 31.5 million in compensation for their losses. Also, not all verified livestock kills are by wolves, but in actuality 60 percent are from other animals. Grizzly bears, black bears, cougars and coyotes take 30-40% of the kills. In fact, some livestock die from other causes, like sickness and then are preyed on by other animals. “better than 80 per cent resulting from disease, nutrition or severe weather,” we need accurate and believable data on these things in order to make a decision on a culling or not.

 

This is important to my topic because it is a problem that I talk about; not getting accurate data and assuming wolves are the ones killing the animals. It’s something I hear over and over again and although in some areas wolves are a problem to livestock, most of the time they take a very small portion of ranchers/farmer’s livestock and the rest is left up to the rancher or farmer to assume for themselves which a lot of times is false and inaccurate due to fear of the species or just placing blame on them for something they don’t necessarily understand and myth.

My Comments

Episodes

My comment was based on all of the information I’ve learned thus far in my research and is in reply to all of the comments stating that wolves either “kill all of our elk/deer” or “they kill all the livestock”.

Wolves only killed about 0.01% of cattle available and 0.03% of sheep in 1986 when the wolf population was at about 1300-1400 in Minnesota (way more than the amount of wolves in Idaho at present which is at around 570). Also, in Idaho we have The Wolf Depredation Compensation Program (Idaho Wolf Depredation Compensation Program – 2011
http://species.idaho.gov/pdf/2011_Idaho_Wolf_Depredation_Compensation_Program.pdf). I understand that losing livestock costs you money, but you also have to understand the wolves that eat livestock are generally one or two individuals who are outcasts of a pack, fending for themselves which is not something they’re used to. Of course, there are exceptions to this like anything else. But condemning an entire group of animals based on political or personal opinion (which is quite obviously the way they do things in Idaho) is ridiculous and uncalled for. Also, I have no sympathy for hunters who hunt for sport and are angry with wolves because they’re “taking all our elk”. That is false; first of all, the biggest dent in elk and deer populations is from humans and it doesn’t make sense that wolves would eat all of the deer or elk because they need them to survive themselves– unlike us who have places like Wal-Mart and CostCo to shop for food (again, there are exceptions to that– there are people who hunt for sustenance). It is human interference in this relationship that causes the crashes of prey populations.
So give them a break, they’re trying to survive in areas where they’re habitat is being taken over by humans and they also have to compete with humans who have increasingly more powerful ways of killing their prey.