

Wolflandia: The Fight Over the Most Polarizing Animal in the West - daddy_drank
http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/politics/Wolflandia-The-Most-Polarizing-Animal-in-the-West.html

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rfb
Strange timing. I just contributed to Pacific Wild's campaign to save the
wolves in British Columbia. Our province recently re-opened the wolf hunt with
the goal of protecting caribou populations. IMO reducing the pipeline and LNG
explosion in the province would also have a positive effect on the wolf
population.

[https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-b-c-
wolves](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-b-c-wolves)

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stolio
In the past when livestock owners had to contend with wolves they'd often use
mountain dogs who would live with the livestock, sometimes they'd wear "wolf
collars"[0] It's pretty intense and I have mixed feelings about the collar
especially, but it goes to show that there have been solutions for this very
old problem that don't involve killing all the wolves.

3 or 4 big mountain dogs out with the livestock are apparently enough to deter
the wolves. Though I'm not sure if you expect to lose any of the dogs to the
wolves and how you'd weigh that aspect of it.

[0] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_collar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_collar)
mountain dog example:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyrenees](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyrenees)

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gharial
The mentality of people who support this kind of environmental destruction is
baffling. "I have the right to a profitable business even if it means
slaughtering an entire species to the point of extinction and ruining
ecosystems nation-wide." Human arrogance at its finest.

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innguest
Tragedy of the commons. That's why the solution is to privatize everything.
You'd care about people killing your wolves.

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cafard
What exactly would you do with the wolves you own?

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kansface
Presumably collect payments from the people who kill them.

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jboggan
I hunt elk in the Idaho panhandle and have witnessed the changes that the wolf
packs have brought to the area over the past ten years.

The current situation with controlled hunting of the wolves is vastly
preferable to the previous state of affairs where locals felt the need to take
matters into their own hands because the Fish and Game authorities were not
able to control things (and when given license to do so the state authorities
manage the animal populations admirably). The destruction the wolves brought
to the elk population isn't as big of an issue (though in our area the total
numbers dropped by half when the wolves arrived in force) as the damage they
were doing to animal husbandry in the area. Wolves are like humans in that
they sometimes kill for sport - in one case a rancher had over 100 sheep
killed over the weekend by three wolves, throats ripped out but not eaten.
This was an extreme event but not surprising given the extensive low-level
damage that farmers and ranchers experienced in those areas.

There was also a growing discomfort in the area due to the wolves' general
fearlessness around humans and several threatening incidents which thankfully
didn't result in any injuries. They can grow to be seven feet from nose to
tail and weigh over 150 pounds - and when you hear two dozen of them howling
around you in the woods it will chill your blood in a very special way, no
matter how well armed you are. Thankfully now they are much more skittish and
are not as aggressive towards people - they are quite intelligent and know
that the rules have changed for us. It's actually incredibly hard to fill a
wolf tag, the actual success rates for the hunters were at least an order of
magnitude lower than predicted in the first seasons. Wolf hunting success
rates are less than 1%, whereas elk hunting success rates average more around
20% [1]

One issue is that these aren't even the right variety of wolves that used to
roam these areas, before the era of human game management. It would almost be
like environmental activists bemoaning the loss of black bear territory in
Virginia and replacing them with grizzlies. Once a few wandered into the D.C.
suburbs the locals might get a little upset.

Ultimately it boils down to trade-offs. How much economic activity and tax
revenue would we mind foregoing in order to maintain an abstract good of
environmental balance? This is a hard problem when both sides of that equation
are well-defined, but in this case the definition of environmental balance
varies radically, especially when trying to reconstruct some unmeasured (by
comparable modern methods) pre-existing state.

1 -
[https://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/docs/fgNews/2012feb.pdf](https://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/docs/fgNews/2012feb.pdf)
(page 3)

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wavefunction
You say that population decreased by half, but that may not mean much if they
were overpopulated by 100%. What about the incidence of disease among elk
populations and livestock? One of the supposed benefits from reintroducing
wolves is the positive effects for bears and coyotes as well as keeping
overpopulated prey species populations down.

I'm obviously a proponent of the reintroduction of wolves to their traditional
habitat where possible, but I do have some sympathy to the concerns you've
expressed.

~~~
jboggan
I'm not a wildlife conservation expert by any stretch, but it was my
impression in 2006/2007 (before wolves came in significant packs to the Idaho
panhandle) that the elk population was stable and on sustained slight growth
without any overpopulation.

When the Rocky Mountain states were debating opening up a wolf season (circa
2008-2010) one of the arguments was that the early studies had indicated a
balanced and desirable wolf population of around 700 or so - but current
population estimates were an order of magnitude larger, around 6,000 wolves.
An apex predator population of that size would (and did) tear through a large
and unadjusted prey population and tend towards overpopulation, starvation,
and disease themselves. Putting a human control on their spread is the only
thing that was sensical both for the wolves and for the whole ecosystem. The
only thing worse than 10,000 wolves running through the Rockies is 10,000
starving wolves running through the Rockies.

I'd also point out that by putting the wolves on the list as a hunted species
their long term survival is all but guaranteed - hunters of a particular type
of game tend to be very active when conserving populations of "their" game
animal, put massive personal resources towards supporting that game's
environment, and pass those values on to others.

