Wolves at the Door
October 1, 2014 11:14 AM   Subscribe

Wolves in Wyoming are once again being protected under the Endangered Species Act, just two years after those protections were taken away. A federal judge’s ruling last week found the state’s management plan for the animal “inadequate and un-enforceable.” In February, NPR’s Nate Rott took a comprehensive look at the wolf situation in the Western U.S.

A brief history of wolf restoration in Yellowstone.

Previously 1, 2.
posted by Librarypt (32 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
I was on a canoe camping trip in the Boundary Waters this summer, the family all in one tent. About 3 in the morning, my son and I met eyes as we heard the local wolf pack howling.

It still sends a little tingle. Magic. We need these roadless wilderness areas.
posted by C.A.S. at 11:21 AM on October 1, 2014 [2 favorites]


It's a bit of a clickbait site but this video seemed like a nice presentation of why wolves are important in Yellowstone. (Summary: deer were grazing everything. Being chased off of flat open areas by wolves meant reforestation of those places and a host of renewed wildlife followed, erosion was lessened, etc.)
posted by emmet at 11:46 AM on October 1, 2014


beautiful pictures at the link.
posted by garlic at 11:49 AM on October 1, 2014


I like to be in a world where wolves run free. While I understand the frustration and anger at livestock losses and diminished elk herds I prefer to leave the wolves alone.

We live in northwest North Dakota. Last summer my cousin was plowing up the edges of a slough that had gone past its banks the year before. He scared out of the brush two brutish looking coyotes but he barely got a good look at them. A few months later he was talking to the game warden and he described them. The warden shook his head, "Yeah, you do NOT have coyotes on your farm."

The wolves live up on an old cattle pasture. It's about forty acres with a wetland that covers at least half of it and some thick growth of box elders and poplars. A couple moose live there as well. If you're on the farmstead at the right time of night, we can hear them yip and howl. Long may they run.
posted by Ber at 11:54 AM on October 1, 2014 [6 favorites]


Just, to not lose track, and I say this as someone in favor of re-integrating wolves - wolves will kill and eat you. They might look like big dogs to you but to them, especially in the dead of a lean winter, you look like food.

Cool presentation.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:47 PM on October 1, 2014


Given that Wyoming's 'plan' was basically to try to wipe out the wolf population again, I'm glad of this.
posted by tavella at 12:56 PM on October 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


Just, to not lose track, and I say this as someone in favor of re-integrating wolves - wolves will kill and eat you.

But...so what? A lot of things in this country will kill you, and some will eat you. Do we kill them all because of that? Bears are dangerous, and moose, and mountain lions, and bison and spiders and especially other people.
posted by rtha at 1:06 PM on October 1, 2014 [8 favorites]


Here's a NYT piece on the restoration of protections for wolves in Wyoming, which sadly may be temporary.
posted by crazy with stars at 1:09 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


No, don't kill them but as unhelpful is thinking they are anything other than what they are. We need predators. But articles like this don't always do much to describe the complexity of the dynamics at work.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:41 PM on October 1, 2014


Just, to not lose track, and I say this as someone in favor of re-integrating wolves - wolves will kill and eat you. They might look like big dogs to you but to them, especially in the dead of a lean winter, you look like food.

I welcome more information on the subject but it seems like worrying about wolves killing humans, specifically in North America, should be really, really low on the totem pole of concern here.
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:49 PM on October 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


tavella: Given that Wyoming's 'plan' was basically to try to wipe out the wolf population again, I'm glad of this.
Indeed. I have a Facebook friend who is very emotionally invested in wolves, and his posts about the ongoing horror show in the mountain west have made me wonder why they were removed in the first place.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:02 PM on October 1, 2014


Just, to not lose track, and I say this as someone in favor of re-integrating wolves - wolves will kill and eat you. They might look like big dogs to you but to them, especially in the dead of a lean winter, you look like food.

Citation, please?

I'll dig into this when I get home. Until then it will eat at me, like those imaginary bloodthirsty wolves. Someone is wrong on the Internet.
posted by quiet earth at 2:34 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


ob1quixote: […]why they were removed […]
"They" meaning the endangered species protections.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:42 PM on October 1, 2014


Ob1, I reckon you could have guessed...politics.
posted by notsnot at 2:54 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't think there is much risk at all of wolves viewing humans as prey. Livestock? That's another story. Yes, wolves are predators. No, not of people.

My impression from my time in the Boundary Waters, is that you need very very good bush/tracking/stalking skills to have any chance of ever seeing the wolves, that they are very shy of humans and will actively avoid contact. Most of us are too clumsy to get a peek.

That's why hearing them alone feels special
posted by C.A.S. at 2:59 PM on October 1, 2014


The first third or so of the Nova episode Wild Predator Invasion (watchable online at that link) is about the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone and highly recommended.
posted by George_Spiggott at 3:23 PM on October 1, 2014


I'm glad they are being protected in at least a few places, at least some of the time. The local pack here will likely be culled this winter after a mountain of complaints from hunters and ranchers.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:39 PM on October 1, 2014


Glad to hear this...and some debunking of the canard "threat to cattle." For a hundred years, people have wiped out all big predators and lots of small ones e.g., prairie dogs, because they are a threat to cattle grazing. "Management" by various US government agencies usually = extinction too.
posted by CrowGoat at 4:42 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


A strong majority of Wyoming residents don't want a large population of wolves outside Yellowstone. Why shouldn't they be allowed to make the decision about managing the population? The lack of local consent is troubling.
posted by humanfont at 4:46 PM on October 1, 2014


Because species conservation is not a state-level concern. Species ranges do not have anything to do with political boundaries.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:58 PM on October 1, 2014 [11 favorites]


Beavers are regularly removed from suburban streams. Black Bears from back yards. Alligators from Florida golf courses. Political borders play a role in animal conservation all the time. Managing one species from Washington and judicial fiat without the input and consent of the local population has resulted in the local population becoming increasingly hostile to wolf restoration projects. The result has been an environment where the community is actively working to undermine conservation efforts.
posted by humanfont at 7:54 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Beavers are regularly removed from suburban streams. Black Bears from back yards. Alligators from Florida golf courses.

None of those animals are endangered, and even listed animals can and are removed from areas for certain reasons. No state gets to decide unilaterally how to manage a lot of things, including endangered species.

Also, I think it's a little much to presume that everyone in Wyoming is against the reintroduction of wolves; there are people who live there who are in favor of it, and their opinion being in the minority doesn't make it wrong.
posted by rtha at 9:16 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


A full-grown cow is worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500.

Imagine if a bunch of Wyomingites (?) got together and released a bird into New York City that survived by stealing and eating smartphones. Then got it made into a federal crime to harm or even interfere with those birds.

No matter how majestic that bird was, it's safe to assume that New Yorkers would hate them.
posted by Hatashran at 9:32 PM on October 1, 2014


First of all, this is great news for Wyoming!

Although it won't stop the "SSS" (shoot, shovel, and shut up) mentality that dominates so much of the conversation among the anti-wolf crowd. Yeah, poaching is a great method of wildlife population control, isn't it?

The reputation of Canis Lupus precedes him. Healthy adult wolves rarely attack people. You'd be wiser to worry about a grizzly bear attack, or pissing off a bull elk or a stag in rutting season, or getting crushed by a cow, or getting struck by lightning, or a terrorist attack on your particular city, or perhaps getting hit by a meteorite.

A fear of strange dogs makes much more logical sense than a fear of wolves, but human attitudes toward wolves and logic seldom seem to get along.

Death-by-wolf is incredibly uncommon because wolves are intelligent, people-shy animals who have the good sense to avoid us like the plague, except in rare cases of habituation. Here's Wikipedia's list of wolf attacks in North America. Note that they're few and far between. As for wolf predation on livestock, I really wish people would research before spouting what they assume to be common knowledge. Here's an infographic from the Sierra Club showing common causes of premature livestock deaths. Wolves are responsible for 0.2%. Cattle are more likely to be killed by domestic dogs (0.6%), weather (12%), or respiratory problems (26%). Don't blame coyotes either. Reports of livestock "kills" by coyotes frequently take the following form: a cow or sheep is observed to be dead, and a coyote is observed at the carcass. That's it. In her book God's Dog, which I wish I had with me right now, Hope Ryden observes that of all the ranchers she spoke with who claimed losses due to predation, not a single one had actually observed a wolf or coyote take down a calf. In fact, subsequent experiments with prey carcasses showed that it takes at least a day or two for a coyote to steel itself enough to approach a fresh carcass.

Scavenging should not be conflated with predation!

Don't get me started about poor livestock husbandry practices and outright deception by farmers and ranchers, including intentional baiting of wolves with sheep carcasses, for example. There's a rant I would be happy to write. I highly recommend Carter Niemeyer's book Wolfer for an in-depth and first-person account of the ways in which anti-wolf folks will grasp at anything possible to claim that "wolves did it", no matter how unlikely. The official percentages of livestock deaths by wolves are probably also exaggerated because the reporting process is corrupt and anything but scientific. Science doesn't figure into the claims at all. You can read an incredibly thorough account of the anti-wolf mindset throughout the centuries in the excellent and dense book Predatory Bureaucracy, although I'd argue that wolves are still miscast as wanton killers.

Wolves do take livestock sometimes. Much more frequently, they're scapegoats, as are coyotes, the unfortunate heirs of a legacy of human brutality. It's hysteria. Hysterical communities vilify the wolf and ennoble the modern cowboy. This empowers the gun and hunting lobbies, who basically get their say on how predators are managed, to do things like joke about dragging snared wolves behind their trucks, to gut-shoot wolves and enjoy their unnecessary suffering, to club wolf pups over the head, or to blatantly run down wolves in their vehicles and brag about it on Facebook. (I personally observed people cheering about the pup with the broken leg, saying that all of the wolves should have had their legs broken.)

Wolves are treated appallingly and all of this is perfectly legal.

I'm annoyed with the argument that the hunters and farmers "own" the wildlife, while the majorities of educated people in cities who oppose the killing of wolves are thought to have no stake in the matter. Once again, I refer to the excellent article "Who Owns The Wildlife?" by the Wolf Conservation Center. Here's one particularly relevant paragraph:
Adding up the state revenues and the various Federal sources, we see that recreation users and general taxpayers support wildlife to the tune of around 12 BILLON dollars annually. This compares to the annual 800-900 MILLION dollars generated by sportsmen. But how about that 10 billion dollars generated by sportsmen spending? If we compare the number of people participating in hunting versus other outdoor activities, the latest figures are: 24 million hunters vs. 317 million outdoor enthusiasts. Of those, more people go birdwatching (67 million) than hunting. If we assume a similar per person spending as hunters, then these non-hunters are spending over 130 billion dollars! So, I leave it up to you to decide, are hunters the only ones paying for wildlife?


From an economic perspective, there is much more money to be made on wildlife tourism than on killing wolves.

One more point on the big, bad wolf stereotype. The following was written by Dr. Cristina Eisenberg (The Wolf's Tooth, The Predator Way):
“Wild wolves are not dangerous to humans,” says Eisenberg, who also notes with wonder that wolves have fresh breath and aromatic fur. “When our daughters were little, they played in our woods, and the wolves would sometimes come around and howl and bring their pups. These wolves never presented any kind of threat to our family, and as a wildlife ecologist who works very closely with wild wolves I have never been threatened by them.”
Some days I'm surprised that we aren't still hanging wolves on the gallows alongside convicted criminals. We as a species certainly haven't progressed very far since then in the ways we treat our fellow predators.
posted by quiet earth at 10:00 PM on October 1, 2014 [11 favorites]


Imagine if a bunch of Wyomingites got together and released a bird into New York City that survived by stealing and eating smartphones.

I and my team of scientists are working on breeding such a bird as we speak!
posted by zaelic at 10:46 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Imagine if a bunch of Wyomingites (?) got together and released a bird into New York City that survived by stealing and eating smartphones. Then got it made into a federal crime to harm or even interfere with those birds.

Maybe the best thing to say in response to this is "Hey! Eat less beef, save the planet in more ways than just Carbon!"
posted by hippybear at 11:15 PM on October 1, 2014


Some days I'm surprised that we aren't still hanging wolves on the gallows alongside convicted criminals. We as a species certainly haven't progressed very far since then in the ways we treat our fellow predators.

To be fair, and without doing any research at all at this moment, my understanding is that the native European wild forest-dwelling wolf was an order of magnitude more aggressive and wily than the Native American wolf, and much of the mythology about how truly awful wolves are come down from that European tradition, and aren't at all related to how the actual western species interacts with the local ecosystem.
posted by hippybear at 11:19 PM on October 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


The notion that 'North American wolves are not as ferocious as European wolves' is a curious one. I don't know if that's the case or not, or how that would be assessed - in Europe by virtue of the much greater population density, wolves are and were forced into contact with people much more frequently, so there's habituation.

I read an interesting article a while ago that I've not been able to re-find but looking for it I came across a report compiled by the WWF, 'Review of Wolf Attacks on Humans that addresses this. Two points they make that I thought were relevant were, 1. by mid 20th century, wolves were extinct in the 'lower 48' and 2. to keep humans 'safe' from wolves, 'keep wolves wild' and wolves that start to check out /frequent human habitations should be 'removed' (killed).

It's a good paper with intelligent points about how wolves interact with their environment and what that subsequently means for people.
posted by From Bklyn at 12:14 AM on October 2, 2014


Homo homini lupo lupus est.
posted by kewb at 3:37 AM on October 2, 2014


Gray Wolves are not endangered. They are classified as an IUCN least concern species. They are found all over the world.
posted by humanfont at 6:11 AM on October 2, 2014


Oddly, no-one seems to want to shoot bald eagles for taking lambs. What's up with that?
posted by stet at 8:49 AM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


, no-one seems to want to shoot bald eagles for taking lambs. What's up with that?

It happens every year in sheep country. Not just bald eagles but golden eagles too.
posted by humanfont at 2:07 PM on October 2, 2014


« Older THRU YOU TOO   |   Hail, Guardians of the Watchtower of the East Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments