Killing Wolves to Save Caribou Makes No Sense

June 20th 2007

Revelstoke Times Review, Page 0008, 20-Jun-2007

Having been involved in many of the local and Provincial land use planning processes in the late eighties and early nineties, and having seen the head in the sand approach to managing the habitat needs of these animals, I feel it is incumbent upon me to respond to some of the current hysteria surrounding their demise.

We have been studying them for years, at least 30 years in this area. Biologists have made careers on their imminent demise, they have chased them to exhaustion with helicopters and net gunned them and corralled them and injected them and transported them, and collared them all to tell us they have needs, needs we refuse to meet.

All studies indicate the particular habitat requirements for their survival, all have been ignored. From the Core process mapping, onward through the years we have drawn lines on maps. These lines allowed us to accommodate snowmobile use and the economic benefit to our community, these lines allowed for logging and the economic benefits to our community, these lines allowed for hydro development and the economic benefit to our community, these lines allowed for heli-skiing and the economic benefit to our community In fact we allowed the so-called stakeholders at these meetings to draw lines on maps that accommodated everything but the carbou.

Look at it this way, What we have done is fail in our duty as responsible stewards of the land base.We have failed Provincially and we have failed locally. We have failed miserably.

If the caribou came into town and destroyed all of southside and most of the Big Eddy and tore all the houses in Columbia Park in half for whatever reason and if they left only the canned goods section of Coopers store and Malone's market to feed us then to finish it they bulldozed our roads and destroyed our bridges and flew low overhead in un-muffled helicopters playing 100 decibel rap and gospel music as we slept or rested, where would we be as a species? With 90 per cent of our houses gone and only canned food and candy to live on and no way to access it for large numbers of us we would be hooped (extirpated).

Now the enlightened ones want to kill a few predators (wolves) in a too late response to the demise of the few that are left. Wolves chuckle when they hear snowmobiles, it means another easy path into the strips of trees that hide the few caribou left. No more looking longingly at the mountainside and wishing for snowshoes, the 400 horsepower whine of the sled is their ticket to a low energy romp up the hill to a helicopter stressed, habitat and food starved, dam blocked, easyï¿∏lunch.

In spite of study after study and biologist after biologist and committee after committee the Caribou are on their way out. The silence of the winter landscape that once nurtured them and their kind has been shattered too much and to often by us and our kind. Cut off the collars and leave them be. If they possess some remarkable genetic ability to respond to the destruction of their habitat that we have wrought then they will make it and if they do not then they will not. Killing wolves instead of sledders and loggers and heli-skiers makes no sense. Let them roam and remain untouched by our heavy hand, leave them to become a quiet mystery, are they there or aren't they should be our only question.

To Mayor McKee, rhetorically speaking, maybe the target animal should be politicians. Let's kill a few of those, they are the real wolves in this scenario, and it makes about as much sense.

Pat Wells
Revelstoke, BC

Pat Wells is a past director of the BC Wildlife Federation, BC Conservation Foundation, Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Compensation Program, Revelstoke Rod and Gun Club and a founding member of North Columbia Resource Council

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