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November 20, 2005: Killing Wolf

Northwest Coast/Haida Gwaii

Killing Wolf

By CHRIS GENOVALI

Nov 09 2005

MONDAY MAGAZINE

My Raincoast Conservation Society colleague Nathan deBruyn and I meandered up the river as the late afternoon sun revealed itself through the broken rain clouds. Suddenly the landscape, previously muted by all the grey and misty rain, became illuminated with light and brilliant colour.

We were on an island system in the Great Bear Rainforest, looking for genetic material (i.e., scat) for Raincoast's ongoing coastal wolf study. Our itinerary on this expedition also included visiting islands that have essentially been left unprotected by proposed land use plans for the central and north coast.

As Nathan and I came to a bend in the river, we spied two wolves on the opposite bank, one adult and one pup. Almost immediately after viewing them, we saw an additional two adults farther down the river, one of which appeared to the be the largest wolf I have ever seen on the coast; he was eating salal berries and was intermittently standing on his hind legs like a bear to reach some choice morsels.

Before long, two more wolves popped up on a small rise to our left. They were pups, and were chowing down on salal berries as well.

Curious about the muffled click of Nathan's camera, one pup came closer and sat attentively on his haunches, staring in our direction, trying to figure out what was making such a sound. We just sat there shaking our heads at the beauty of the scene unfolding before our eyes. The sharp but fragile autumn sunlight streamed down on the freshly rained upon landscape, making everything around us glisten, including the damp fur of the six wolves.

The wolves eventually drifted off into the bush and we headed back down the river.

There, we found several headless salmon-the result of wolf predation. We came across two seat cushion-sized chunks of a washed-up giant squid that the pack had also been scavenging. And we found numerous electric purple scats from their salal berry feast.

Down the river, we saw the first two wolves again. The pup was being dive-bombed by numerous ravens-they clearly wanted whatever it was he had been picking at. The raven harassment got to be too much for the pup, and the small wolf reluctantly fled, only to become separated from the accompanying adult. The pup started howling as we trudged down the river. By the time we reached the river mouth, the howling had stopped, the pup apparently reunited with his guardian.

The next day in an adjacent island system, we came across a fresh wolf stomach with the intestines fully intact. When we opened the stomach it was chock full of undigested salmon. Above the tideline and with no other remnants in sight, it was obvious that a trophy hunter had recently killed a wolf, gutted his trophy and left the stomach to rot in the elements.

In British Columbia, wolves are treated no better than vermin, as the government takes a disturbingly laissez faire management approach with the species. So-called "bag limits" are set at three wolves per resident hunter per season. There are no bag limits for trapping wolves. Guide outfitters regularly "supplement" their bear hunts with killing wolves.

Absent of any legitimate scientific rationale and often at the behest of the sport hunting lobby or logging industry, the B.C. government is carrying out predator control programs to systematically sterilize or kill wolves in different regions of the province.

The provincial government's estimates of the number of wolves killed are crude at best. The province has never attempted a scientifically credible census of coastal wolves, and manages this population with virtually no information about how many animals exist and how many are killed annually on the coast.

From an evolutionary and ecological perspective, killing carnivores whether for "sport" or "management" is unwise, especially on islands. Killing individuals in a small population with a low effective breeding size can lead to severe reductions in genetic variability, especially in an insular landscape such as an island. Moreover, scientists agree that top predators serve an important role in the ecosystem, and their removal often has negative consequences.

The Great Bear Rainforest agreement will do little, if anything, to protect critical wolf habitat and will institutionalize the sport hunting of wolves across the entirety of the landscape.

It is confounding that wolves, as the apex predators in the Great Bear Rainforest, were completely left out of the planning processes and land use negotiations for the central and north coast. When it comes to Canis lupus, the proposed land use plans for the Great Bear Rainforest appear to be irreparably flawed, as the B.C. government has shown no inclination to do what is necessary to ensure the protection of coastal wolves and their habitat, or the complex ecosystem that supports them. M

Chris Genovali is the Executive Director of the Raincoast Conservation Society.

Hunting wolves, whether for sport or management, is an unwise move

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