Sale on canvas prints! Use code ABCXYZ at checkout for a special discount!

Blog

Displaying: 1 - 1 of 1

The Wolf

August 28th, 2017

The Wolf

Recently we visited the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center (http://www.wolfeducation.org/). The tour was educatioinal and entertaining. The wolves and fox were beautiful and amazing. The best part was at the end of the tour when we howled at the wolves and the whole pack broke out in responding howls. It went on for about a full minute. They raised they heads up and howled at the sky. So cool!

The tour guide did a great job of educating us on the history of the wolf. I was struck hard by the plight of the wolf and feel compelled to share this information. We have a long complicated history with the wolf.

Please read the following articles to understand our complicated history with the wolf: http://www.graywolfconservation.com/Wild_Wolves/history.htm and https://www.outsideonline.com/2151411/trumps-presidency-means-end-wolves-american-west

The wolf population before colonization of USA was over 250,000. Over a hundred years ago, people around the world began waging a war against the wolf. Through a systematic extermination of every wolf to be found, the US government won its battle against nature and by the 1960s, the population in the lower 48 was down to 300. 300. That's stunning.

After the monumental declaration that the gray wolf was protected under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1974, wolf recovery became possible in new areas. The public's interest and fascination grew in leaps and bounds as the American culture became more and more removed from nature. It was only after the wolves were gone and people had to go in search of true wilderness, that we began to value what we had lost.

1980 marked the extinction of the wild Mexican gray wolf in both the US and Mexico. However, due to pressure from the ESA, the last 4 wild males and the very last female were captured and placed in a captive-breeding program. Through a breeding registry, biologists hoped to preserve the genetic diversity of these animals and save the unique subspecies.

While the Mexican gray faced oblivion, the northern gray wolf took a huge step on the road to recovery. The first pack of wild wolves crossed the border from Canada into Glacier National Park, Montana. In the celebration, this first wild group of wolves to return to the US became known as the Magic Pack.

Perhaps the most monumental move in gray wolf policy over the past century was the decision to reintroduce wolves to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho. After years of political battles and local grassroots efforts to win over support from area ranchers, 31 Canadian gray wolves were released into Yellowstone and 23 into the Frank Church Wilderness of Idaho.

The reintroduced wolves in Idaho were "hard released" directly into the wild from their transportation crates. One female traveled over 60 miles in the first day looking for her Canadian home. In cooperation with the US government, the Nez Perce Nation took over the reintroduction effort.

Sixty years after the last two wolves were killed in Yellowstone, the first wild caught Canadian wolves destined for reintroduction entered the park. After the wolves spent three months in acclimation pens in the backcountry, the alpha male of the Crystal Creek pack worked up the courage to take his first steps of freedom in the US. Despite the disappointment of another wolf’s illegal murder outside of Redlodge, MT, biologists were overjoyed to find that it had fathered the first litter of wild wolf pups born in Yellowstone.

Over the past 30 years, the wild wolf population in the US had grown from less than 300 to over 4,000. Even two decades ago, it looked like wolves would probably disappear forever from the plains and forests of this country. However, as people have searched harder and harder for a true connection to nature, we have slowly learned the value of wild ecosystems and the animals that live in them. In the 13 years since wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, we have learned that wolves are a keystone species that is an essential part of the “trophic cascade” and a balanced earth. 1998 saw the controversial reintroduction of Mexican gray wolves to New Mexico and Arizona. The red wolf population in North Carolina is continuing to grow. Yellowstone can boast a population of over 300 wolves, reaching its recovery goals. The Great Lakes’ wolves may soon be removed from the ESA because they are so abundant. In just the past year, there have been reports of wild wolves in Oregon, Utah, Washington, and even Maine.

Why We Need Wolves
As an apex predator, wolves create a trophic cascade of benefits in their ecosystem, restoring balance the whole way down the food chain.

In Yellowstone, for instance, the reintroduction of wolves corrected an imbalance caused by the unchecked expansion of ungulates. Historically, wolves kept the elk population in balance in that area; without them, the elk became too numerous and their movements too static. Grasslands were overgrazed. Willows, cottonwood, and aspen were damaged, destroying the riparian habitats of beavers, songbirds, otters, muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Wolves fixed that. They also checked the population of coyotes, which preyed heavily on small animals. So those populations returned, too, along with the birds of prey that feed on them. The revitalized shrubbery produced more berries, expanding the bear population. The entire ecosystem benefited and was returned to balance by the mere reintroduction of a handful of wolves. It’s that whole circle of life thing that Elton John once sang about in that Disney movie.

Can wolves restore balance to ecosystems elsewhere in their historic range? This study, published in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, suggests they can, and that they may also enable the successful coexistence of invasive species with their native counterparts. The study argues that allowing the return of apex predators like the wolf may be much cheaper than trying to manage these environments through human methods.

Why are Wolves Demonized? And Politics...
Wolves kill and eat stuff. That’s their job. Things they like to kill and eat include things people like to kill and eat—primarily deer and elk, but also sometimes sheep and cattle. Which makes us rivals. Between 1995 and 2005, wolves killed 213 cattle and 173 sheep in Wyoming. The elk population has also fallen since the reintroduction of wolves, though drought, disease, and hunting also play a role. There were 17,000 elk in the park when the reintroduction began. Today there are 4,844.

Perhaps due to an exaggerated presence of wolves in nursery rhymes and fairy tales, we humans also find them scary. There have been only six documented fatalities due to wild wolves (two of which were rabid) in North America in the past 100 years. The number of people killed by wolves pales in comparison to the number of people who die each year due to, say, bee stings (in the United States, that’s 100 people every year). Others complain that the loss of livestock hurts ranchers’ livelihood, even though state governments compensate ranchers for any losses. Still others lament the decrease in lucrative guided elk hunts in wolf states, though that has largely been attributed to an increase in out-of-state tag prices.

Politicians from rural areas have been pressured to address those unsubstantiated fears of their constituents, but that doesn’t come close to explaining the scale of the GOP’s war on wolves. The 114th Congress (2015–17) introduced 20 bills targeted at eliminating protections for the gray wolf alone. The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) called it “the most anti-wildlife Congress we’ve ever had.” Until the 115th, that is.

Why exhaust so much time and energy attacking a single species? The real answer is that the protections wolves require in the West can run counter to the interests of industrial agriculture businesses and the oil and gas industry, both of which want to operate on land that is currently subject to protection because it’s wolf habitat.

The anti-wolf policies being paid for in part by industrial agriculture are actually damaging the small, family-owned farms where problems with wolves killing livestock actually take place and which are often cited as the cause for these policies. It’s been scientifically demonstrated that killing problem wolves actually leads to a direct correlation in increased livestock depredation.The killings disrupt pack order and disperse wolves into new areas, and weakened packs are forced to seek easier prey than the wild animals they’d otherwise focus on.

The CBD has tracked donations from those industries to Congress and compared them with the number of bills introduced that threaten the Endangered Species Act (ESA). As campaign donations from the oil and gas industry and industrial agriculture have increased, so too have legislative assaults on the ESA. Because wolves have large ranges, the ESA may prevent energy extraction or industrial farming across larger areas than some other species. That explains the focus on removing the wolf’s protections.

So... We've waged war on the Wolf and almost eliminated them from the US, and the current Congress & administration will do nothing to change that. Makes my heart hurt. Our tour today showed us that wolves are not scary, man-eating demons, but they are an important part of a balanced ecosystem. They need our help.


What You Can Do:
1) Sign this online petition http://action.biologicaldiversity.org/o/2167/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=17687
and this one
https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3206
2) Call or write your representatives. Tell them you support the ESA, you don’t want them to steal our land, and that you oppose any legislation intended to remove wolf protection. If you live in the west, AZ, NM, NC, or around the Great Lakes, this is especially important. You can also donate to organizations like the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife. They’re the ones who will be fighting this legislation as much as possible through this historic assault on our environment, our wildlife, and our natural heritage.