America set to declare open season on wolves
As the Bush administration continues with its anti-conservation agenda, Ros Davidson in San Francisco finds ranchers baying for the blood of the much-feared canis lupus
Few mammals evoke more fear and passion than the wolf. Once hunted almost to oblivion in America, over the last eight years they have been reintroduced in remote areas of the Rocky Mountains.
Once again canis lupus is in the news, a symbol more than ever of Americans’ complex and changing view of wildlife and of the clash between conservationists and business interests.
Within a few months, federal law will no longer protect wolves. The move follows a decision last week to reclassify the species as no longer ‘endangered’ in most of the United States. They can now be shot on sight, like a domestic dog, if they are caught menacing livestock or pets.
Wolves now number some 600 in the region. When their protection is lifted entirely, possibly by the end of the year, they will be treated as any other non-domestic creature.
Local sentiment is hardly pro-wolf. Ranchers and hunters, especially in mountainous Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, are hailing the changes. Two years ago, Idaho passed a law allowing all wolves to be removed, by whatever means necessary. Wyoming is another conservative state, for years the constituency of vice-president and former senator Dick Cheney.
Powerful ranching, mining and oil interests frequently battle with conser vationists. A state law, passed several months ago, would allow anyone to kill canis lupus, like a jackrabbit or a skunk. And in some regions, wolves could be hunted as trophies.
It is only federal protection that prevents such state laws from being implemented, say environmentalists. The wolf is again endangered, they say, by the Bush administration, the most anti-conservation since the first major environmental laws were written in the 1970s.
Gale Norton, the US Interior Secretary who oversees public land and natural resources, is seen as especially hostile. A lawyer before joining George W Bush’s Cabinet, she represented and lobbied for Delta Petroleum and for NL Industries, which was defending itself in lawsuits over children’s exposure to lead paint.
‘Cutting short the return of the wolf is just another sad page in Secretary Gale Norton’s worsening conservation record,’ said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife, the group most active in wolf conservation.
The reclassification is premature, he says. Most environmental groups say the government’s wolf programme is exemplary, a £4.5 million model of how predators can be retrieved from the brink of survival even as humans increasingly encroach upon their habitat.
Despite last week’s change, many ranchers still see Washington as overly influenced by the voting public, which they see as overly pro-wildlife and ignorant about the realities of rural life and their threatened livelihood.
The wolves kill sheep and cattle. And even though farmers are compensated for damage, they say they still lose money. ‘The reality of it is, there’s a long way to go,’ says Bob Gilbert, a sheep farmer with the Montana Wool Growers Association.
An estimated 44 wolf packs now roam the Rockies, mostly in and near the famed Yellowstone National Park. The Yellowstone packs are now a magnet for tourists, keen to hear the creatures’ call of the wild. Few actually glimpse them, as they are shy and nocturnal.
Northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, near the remote Canadian border, is home to another 3000 wolves. They are less endangered, as they do not compete for territory with ranchers.
In Alaska, where wolves have never been classified as endangered, hundreds of wolves may also soon be shot in a move to boost moose populations for local natives who rely upon them for food. The plan, unveiled recently, is causing outrage amongst animal rights groups, who are vowing to promote a tourist boycott of the state.
Wolves once roamed most of the US but were hunted almost to extinction for fur and as pests. Within a decade of the Pilgrims’ arrival in New England in 1620, a price was placed on their heads.
By the end of the next century, they were virtually eliminated from the region. In the far west, they were poisoned and trapped so vehemently that by the 1940s they were wiped out.
It was in 1994 that Canadian wolves were first imported to Yellowstone and to the forests of central Idaho, where Nez Perce Indians now help monitor their progress.
These wildest of wildlife wore radio collars and were tracked by rangers. Within a few months, biologist Joe Fontaine was working in the field when he heard what he assumed was an unusual bird song.
But when he saw a she-wolf’s tracks, he realised that the high-pitched squeal came from the first new-born wolf pups in Yellowstone in almost 70 years. Alone in the snow, he lifted a branch on the ground and saw a litter of seven. ‘I wanted to tell the whole world, but there was nobody to tell,’ he says.
The litter’s fate soon became less clear. A few weeks later the father was killed, probably illegally. Those cubs may not have survived, since the she-wolf depends on her mate for hunting while nursing her young, but others thrived.
Even the wolves’ impact on the ecosystem has been better than expected, say biologists. Herds of elk and moose that once trampled streams and natural meadows into mud are acting more wildâ and less like domestic cows, says Suzanne Stone, the local representative for Defenders of Wildlife.
Riverbanks, natural meadows and aspen groves are recovering, she says. Attitudes of ranchers are also changing as they find ways to protect their livestock, such as using Pyrenean Mountain dogs as guards. It is her group that manages compensation for ranchers.
Actual losses have been minuscule, she says. Only 228 claims have ever been submitted. Montana farmers have lost an average of six cattle and five sheep to wolves yearly, she says. In Central Idaho, the toll has been higher with an average of eight cattle and 3223 sheep killed since 1995.
The figures don’t impress Ron Gillett, who rents cabins to hunters of elk and moose. ‘The only wolves we want in Idaho is one in the zoo — and neutered,’ he says.