Shamus

You are condescending and you are anthropomorphising wolves. You’re right wolves aren’t blood thirsty killers and neither are those who hunt them so your comment is inflammatory and ignorant. And yes, social science is an oxymoron. I stick by that. Hard sciences should dictate wildlife policy. The North American Model of Wildlife Management is the most successful wildlife model and is the gold standard. You would be far better served putting your efforts into protecting one of the 21 endangered/threatened species in your own state than telling those in another country how to manage their wildlife, especially a species of least concern

I have a BSc Honours degree as well. Thanks for dumbing it down for me though. And Social Science is an oxymoron. That wolf was not murdered. It was killed. If you are going to place human characteristics on animals then that wolf was a homicidal maniac and would have killed hundreds of deer. Science is basing wildlife management policies on sustainable harvest and managing based on carrying capacities and to have an abundance of all wildlife species, not just the charismatic Disney animals. I care about the health of the entire system over that of an individual animal. And your quote is accurate. Nature doesn’t care if you give an animal a name or not. Nature is nature. It harsh, savage and beautiful. You are thinking nature will just look after itself and that is not the case as long as humans are on the landscape. Wild animals will only continue to exist as long as we actively manage them. Some people are content to merely observe nature. I choose to be an active participant.

Doug, my thinking is far past “humancentricity” as you put it. You’re right not all hunters want to see wolves on the landscape but the majority do. And wolves are highly managed. Quotas and mandatory reporting and inspections are required for the majority of the province (including Vancouver Island) and areas that do not have these requirements have booming wolf populations. If hunters truly wanted wolves wiped out they would have done that a long time ago. If hunting is every seen to be having a negative impact on populations of any species (wolves included) seasons, harvest levels are shortened, reduced or closed all together. Again, wolf populations are growing every year. We can never stop “meddling” in nature. You seem to not realize that we are part of nature and not separate from it. If you live here you are part of nature. There is no separation. Wildlife management needs funding. Your call for a sweeping ban on the hunting of wolves based on the actions of one individual isn’t fair either. And to call the person that hunted this wolf, who you don’t know and neither do I, a psychopath because they lawful hunted a wolf is not fair. You know nothing of their motivation to hunt that wolf and you are making judgments on them based on your own preconceived notions. Wildlife management needs to be based on science and not emotion. If we start managing wildlife based on emotion wildlife will lose in the end.

This is a very inflammatory and misleading article. Hunters do not see wolves as competition. Hunters also under the fine balance of nature far better than the average person as we immerse ourselves in nature and see it first hand. Animals are not on this landscape by accident. They have to managed. Unnatural features such as roads and logging have lead to a boom in wolf populations due to ease at which they can reach new hunting grounds. Ungulate populations across the province are way down and wolf predation is a major contributing factor (not the only factor but a major one). On the island cougar populations are down by 2/3rds and wolves are the second leading cause, right behind habitat loss. Human conflict is not the main reason why wolf populations need to be managed. Nature is not a balance it is a pendulum, with wild swings that with the added strain of human encroachment could lead to extirpation of different species. Maintaining balance is our responsibility. Transplanting animals doesn’t work because they will generally end right back where they came from. Despite the writer of this article’s belief the wolf was lost is asinine. Wolves and bears are frequently transplanted hundreds of miles from locations only to return right back from where they came from. The reason this wolf left the island it was on was because it was searching for a new food source, one that was not decimated. Hunter may have shot as many wolves as she claims yet wolf populations are still increasing dramatically every year. Hunters do not want to see wolves removed from the landscape, despite what this article may imply. But we do want a healthy ecosystem and that requires proper management. What this author should be writing about is the pathetic wildlife management budget that we have in this province. We spend the least, per capita, on our wildlife and natural resource management compared to all Western States and Provinces. For a place that has Beautiful British Columbia on our license plates we sure don’t care if it stays that way. One final comment. This article is clearly implying that hunting of wolves should be banned. Hunters care about the species as a whole where people here are giving human characteristics to an individual animal. The controversy over Cecil the lion got lion hunting on Zimbabwe banned but did not save a single lion. The only difference is instead of hunters paying for the cost to hunt and manage those animals and bringing money into the economy government officials killed them and tax dollars were used.