Guest Column
Of Wolves and Men: Hunt Could Foster New Relationship With Predators
By Ron Moody, FWP Commissioner, Guest Writer, 9-14-09
 |
|
 | |
| Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. | |
|
Wolf, the hunter, once again will become the hunted in Montana and Idaho this fall.
Denial of a federal court injunction to stop wolf hunts in those states means that a fundamental change of relationship between people and the lupine predator can now get underway.
I urge Americans of all cultural tribes to allow this predatory drama / biologic adventure to play out to its logical conclusion in peace over the next three months. Then, let us discuss the reality of actual experience rather than continue with ongoing conjecture-based rhetorical clashes.
This change of relationship between wolves and men must result in healthy, sustainable wolf populations and a secure future for the wolf in the Northern Rockies. The American people will accept no other outcome.
No such positive outcome is possible, however, if the wolf’s current expansion into its historic natural ranges is not disciplined to limit the damage done to the legitimate interests of humans who now occupy most of that same original wolf habitat.
The word most commonly used to describe this discipline is ‘management.’
And management means that some wolves will be killed in the process of fitting the new/old species into the fragmented and biologically compromised wild spaces remaining in the Northern Rockies.
In a human dominated world, wildlife can no longer exist as widespread, free-roaming populations in their natural habitats unless a human constituency wills it so. And having it so means that humans and wild things must co-exist on a shared landscape in an existential embrace of interactive give-and-take.
With this imperative in mind, I voted to institute a wolf hunt as a Montana FWP Commissioner.
I opt for regulated hunting as the preferred method of managing a game animal population in virtually all cases because I’ve observed the alternatives and studied the history and results of hunting as a conservation tool. Hunting, when well regulated and ethically conducted, is not a liability to wildlife welfare. Indeed, biologically responsible hunting is an experience-proven path to a wolf future both permanent and wild that is also tolerable to lobo’s human neighbors.
A sharp cultural divide polarizes Americans over the morality of a human hunter taking the life of a wild game animal. Both hunters and non-hunters feed this polarization. I submit that the human squabbling itself, not actual lethal management, does the greater harm to wildlife by weakening the human constituency.
The wolf also is poorly served by the persistent urban legend that “somewhere out there” a vast, pristine wilderness still exists where wolves can roam free of human interference.
Yellowstone Park, the Selway-Bitterroot or the Bob Marshall Wilderness may look limitless to urban eyes. But they are only fragments of the living space needed by wolves, bears and mountain lions in order to play out a completely natural, human-free, relationship with elk, deer, moose, sheep, etc. Human intercession (management) is continuously required to keep these quasi-natural animal relationships from collapsing into a repeat of our 19th Century near-extinction.
Thus we ‘manage.’
And management should mean conservation, wise use of nature, as different from a perpetual ‘zoo-without-walls’ strategy of preservation some would codify within the Endangered Species Act.
ESA is a morally valid and effective tool for casting a safety net under a failing specie. It is a terrible tool, however, for maintaining recovered species in our aforementioned human-dominated world.
People are famously perverse in their relationships among themselves. I believe, however, that wild animals and wild places deserve better from all their human ‘friends’ who say they care about saving some wildness in the Earth.
Historically, North American hunters have achieved a conservation miracle in bringing back and sustaining large, wild populations of huntable prey species such as elk and deer. Their record on conserving predator species such as the wolf, on the other hand, is gray at its brightest point and mostly black. For this reason alone, hunters are still required to earn credibility in the eyes of non-hunters as good stewards of predator wildlife. Hunters should conduct the forthcoming wolf hunt with this standard in mind.
Among non-hunting wildlife advocates, on the other hand, a bit less ideology and a bit more open-mindedness is in order. They would better serve the true welfare of the wolf and all other wild, native species by learning the real reasons and history of why we still have so many wild animals in North America.
It’s quite a story.
And, knowing this story makes it’s much easier to envision a secure future for all wild things and wild places in America by following the conservation path pioneered by wildlife-loving recreational hunters.
Ron Moody is a member of the five-person Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission. He lives in Lewistown, MT.
NewWest.Net welcomes guest columns of all kinds. Submit yours to editor@newwest.net.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
rscott
Mr. Moody, based on your above paragraph, I think it would be quite prudent to hear your take on just how you plan to recover imperiled Salmon runs in states like Idaho or Montana. And if so, can you please elaborate on "the real reasons" as to "why 'we' still have so many wild animals in North America."?
I would argue that in your/others quest to "fence off" these perpetual "zoos without walls" as a form of "wise use" which at some point was given to "legitimate interests of humans who now occupy most of that same original wolf habitat", a fatal error will/has occur/red for some species in the process which require perseverance and innumerable finances to restore them.
As we all know, restoration efforts are possible for any depleted ecosystem based on availability of resources, financial backing, and a society at large to move forward towards restoring these less desirable species. However, this cost does not come cheap.
Your elimination of "perpetual 'zoos without walls' " in the name of "management" will come with a high price, Mr. Moody and not just for deer and elk. Who will foot the bill? Who will/should be financially responsible or accountable for wildlife species restoration efforts for the present, past and future?
It is quite a story...one that requires these pioneering, wildlife loving recreational hunters to realize that retribution comes with a high price tag.
Let's see where the hunt goes. Absolute protection is not the answer, unlimited open season is not the answer. This is not the 1700's in North America! Pandora's box is open. No amount of tinkering is going to return us to a "wilderness state". You either manage wisely or lose it all.
Our little islands of wilderness are all that's left of a massive ecosystem that is now basically a habitat for humans, a case in point for a species that has gone to long without "management" in its own right, a perfect example of what happens when one species goes unchecked.
The polarized views that currently exist on this issue are never going to lead to a solution, just more money, time, and talent wasted that could be spent much more wisely on something else, like addressing Salmon restoration.
It's time to "get over it" and move on.
I have nothing at all against managed hunts of wolves, especially if conducted the same as other large carnivore wildlife species hunts we do in Wyoming, by which I refer to Cougar and Black Bear hunts, and so-called trophy hunts. I presume it's similarly done in Montana.
What I really need to hear in no ambiguous terms from Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho game commissioners is that they intend to manage wolves as actual wildlife instead of predators. Large Carnivore Predators as both wildlife and game, not nuisance animals. Here in Wyoming, the Grey Wolf is being " managed" paranoid-schizophrenically , even in the absence of formal delisting and acceptance of a state management plan. Ron Moody's counterparts in Wyoming have a fearful two faced working policy. In the so-called trophy zone immediately outside Yellowstone, wolves are ( mostly ) protected, although Wyoming Game & Fish hates to have to work it that way. Outside that buffer zone, wolves have no protection at all and are summarily eradicated at the earliest opportunity. Catch and release is seldom used. That really is the situation on the ground and precisely what Wyoming wants to codify with its management plan that the Courts have rightfully thrown out. No matter. The USDA's hired guns--- Wildlife Services--- is still called on every whim to take out wolves as a matter of course.
I do not know Ron Moody nor am I aware of his credentials to be a sitting Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks commissiones. But I remind him that he serves the interests of wildlife , and wolves are indeed wildlife. We have to get past the belief that wolves are just big coyotes that form social packs. Further, there is no doubt in my mind that the importance of the Predator-Prey relationship in general and wolves coexisting with elk, moose, and deer in particular comes nowhere near getting the management credence it deserves. It's almost as if basic Ecology 101 isn't even on the table or was never learned. I know that is the case in Wyoming. I pray that is not the case in Montana. But reading Moody's essay above, between the lines, tells me that ecology is at the back of the bus.
No state anywhere manages predators wholly as wildlife. But it is time we did, and the Grey Wolf is the perfect vehicle of change along with his brother in arms the Grizzly. Both species need to be allowed to disperse and populate over a much wider habitat range than current WY-MT-ID state 'management' allows. Moody writes that healthy , sustainable populations and a secure future for the wolf are the goals. I would hold him and the other Commissioners to their word and hope to see it made to happen. Ecology demands no less of them, in spite of what ranchers and outfitters might have to say about it...because sound wildlife ecology is in all their interests as well.
But, also begs for regional/international, inter-connected wilderness systems to be well protected, since as the article states, we have so little of it left.
Ranchers are anachonisms as certainly as there are feedlots polluting our water, air and soil.