URGENT! Alberta has proposed creating a caribou zoo and killing wolves for the next 50 years!
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Wolves and Caribou
Both provinces of Alberta and BC have been killing wolves for at least a decade under the guise of caribou recovery. This is not the solution. Caribou are in decline across the world. Like a canary in a coalmine, humans have been watching the health of animals to gauge the health of the surrounding environment for a very long time. Caribou are indicating to us that their habitat is no longer able to sustain them. Will we choose to further disrupt these ecosystems by killing wolves; an apex predator capable of causing trophic cascades?
Check out this coverage and informative video about what is happening in Alberta with wolves, caribou, and oil. Click here to watch "Crying Wolf for Oil.
Also, Pyramid Productions has a new documentary about the situation wolves are facing in Alberta titled Unnatural Enemies: The War On Wolves. Click the title to watch to watch the official trailer.
Why killing wolves is unacceptable
Wolf culls have been taking place in BC and Alberta for decades, indicating that this is a short-term and unsustainable technique as caribou numbers have continued to decline.
1. Wolf control is publicly unacceptable. Killing one (or more) species to save another is an outdated practice. Bringing harm to other sentient beings can not be justified. The end does not justify the means.
2. The intrinsic value of individual wolves cannot go ignored. Harming them and their families is unjustified when human actions have put caribou in this situation.
3. The ecological role of intact wolf families as a keystone species merits preserving them in their most natural form. In this way they can continue to help maintain balance and biodiversity in ecosystems.
4. There is a lack of scientific evidence that predator control will increase mountain caribou herds. Lethal control of wolves has mixed results and is unsound for long-term management of an ecosystem. When entire packs are eliminated, wolves from other areas may move in. Furthermore, sterilization may be ineffective in reducing births as sterilized breeders are killed during the process, lose their status in the pack or flee the area upon being returned.
5.Killing predators to help recover caribou is a short term design. Long term recovery of caribou requires a strategy that limits continued compromises on essential habitat. To date, what has been protected for BC Mountain Caribou is too small and isolated to ensure self-sustaining herds.
More on BC Wolves and Caribou
In January 2015, the BC Government announced their plan to kill up to 184 wolves around the South Selkirk and South Peace Caribou herds that winter, read an about it article HERE.
Within a few weeks, it was announced that this plan would be in effect for the next 5 years. Part of the rationale behind the mass killing of wolves proposed is that this plan had been outlined in the BC Wolf Management Plan released in April, 2014.
Through the Freedom of Information Act process, Wolf Awareness was able to access the province's operational wolf kill plan for the South Peace region, titled Experimental Wolf Reduction to Enhance the Recovery of Threatened Caribou Herds in the South Peace. Click the title to read the docment.
Not to mention that 66% of public respondents that submitted comments during the short 3 week comment period were opposed to the BC wolf plan and recommended more humane treatment of wolves.
Between the late 1980's and 2010 the BC government has killed a minimum of 110 wolves in the name of caribou conservation (MoE, personal communication 2009), with numbers continuing to grow.
As of 2010, wolf control had been increased to include the following:
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Wolf hunting seasons have been extended in some Wildlife Management Unit’s (WMU's), and there are now No Bag Limits in several ranges that overlap with mountain caribou habitat. There is still no game seal required to hunt a wolf, and many regions are open year-round below 1100m.
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Currently MOE sterilization project in Caribou Region on pilot basis,…ongoing trapping, sterilization, collaring and killing in Quesnel and other areas.
A bigger question arises; “if mountain caribou are lost from areas that have been protected to preserve caribou (ie. 2.2 million hectares set aside by BC government as part of caribou recovery plan), will that land remain protected for other wildlife?”
If it really is impossible to protect these areas for their ecological and intrinsic values without having caribou present, such a shocking state of affairs should be changed.
READ March 31, 2009 recommendations were put forward to start killing wolves and begin practicing "predator control.
Included in this proposal is a plan to cull wolves using helicopters where herds are less than 50 animals. Also included are recommendations to sterilize wolves, cull cougars, reduce moose populations and limit white tailed deer from expanding further into caribou habitat. Many of these practices are in effect now.
Ongoing practices in critical habitat for mountain caribou include mineral exploration and recreational activities such as cat skiing, snowmobiling, glading, planning and construction of snow trails. These practices involve tree clearing and road building. Humans are still creating snow pack in caribou territory and leading predators into areas where in the past caribou would have been safe through avoidance.
Image Craig Pettitt, Valhalla Wilderness Society
Click HERE to check out our recomended reading list about caribou decline in Canada, and previous failed predator kill programs.