Dear HCN,
The recent article by
Steve Stuebner about wolves in Idaho demonstrates why wolf recovery
is an ongoing failure (HCN, 5/22/00: Activist calls for cease-fire
on wolves). If it were not for a few livestock-free safe havens
like Yellowstone Park and the core of central Idaho wilderness,
there would be no wolf recovery
whatsoever.
Lumping in wolf populations in these
few safe havens with the rest of the wolf numbers biases
conclusions. A more honest approach would be to look how many
wolves are surviving and reproducing outside of fully protected
landscapes. There is not a single wolf pack that I am aware of
whose territory largely overlaps livestock that has avoided lethal
control or removal of at least some of its
members.
What no one wants to say is that these
on-going wolf losses are the direct result of the livestock
industry’s irresponsible animal husbandry. There are no problem
wolves; rather, there are only problem ranchers. Instead of
reducing predator opportunity by use of guard dogs, herders,
penning animals at night and removing carcasses immediately from
the landscape, ranchers have successfully avoided these costs by
extirpating the wolf from the West. They have successfully
externalized what should be a cost of doing business in the West –
protecting one’s livestock from predators by reducing opportunities
for predation.
Leaving cows untended for weeks
without direct supervision is simply incompatible with wolf
recovery – especially if the standard way of dealing with resulting
depredations is to kill the wolf instead of fining the
rancher.
It’s like allowing campers to leave
picnic baskets out at night and then blowing away the bears for
eating the food. We don’t allow campers to leave picnic baskets
out, but no one is willing to tell ranchers that it’s no longer OK
to leave their four-legged picnic baskets out to tempt
wolves.
Trying to restore wolves to the West
without changing the basic way ranchers operate or even removing
cows from more of the public lands is analogous to trying to
restore salmon without talking about protecting riparian areas,
leaving tree buffers along streams, or removing dams. We are
treating the symptoms rather than the causes of the problem. We
capture depredating wolves and move them. We put shock collars on
them or play sirens to make them avoid cows. We try to frighten
them with helicopters or firecrackers. Usually we just kill
them.
All this manipulation is done merely
because no one has the guts to stand up and say the real problem is
cows.
George
Wuerthner
Eugene,
Oregon
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Why wolf recovery is a failure.
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