The Hornepayne Wolves

In fall 2006, photographer Gene Belanger of Hornepayne, north of Lake Superior, came across and photographed a strange looking dog in the woods east of town. He had never seen anything like it.

Belanger’s photos were sent off to the Ministry of Natural Resources. An email came back two days later from the Senior Scientist with the Manitoba Conservation Wildlife and Ecosystem Protection Branch with a positive identification. ” Looks like wolf with sarcoptic mange ” was the reply. ” Never seen one with this much hair loss ” was his next comment.

The family of wolves had been surviving on remnants of bear carcass, but winter was fast approaching and, without their coats, they would not make it.

The Toronto Wildlife Centre was alerted, and its director, Nathalie Karvonen, made plans to capture and treat the wolves. A live capture of grey wolves and treatment for mange had never been attempted before.

In October, TWC received permission from MNR to proceed with the rescue. The first step in the plan was to find an experienced trapper, then TWC would capture any wolves in the area. The wolves would be assessed and treated, then the healthy ones would be released. Affected wolves would be transferred to a fenced compound being built by TWC volunteers in the Sudbury area for treatment and then release once they had recovered.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Thunder Bay sent a reporter to interview the rescuers. As luck would have it, they had caught their first wolf while the reporter was in town. He videotaped the proceedings and a segment was shown nationwide.

Two females were eventually captured, treated, and taken to the compound for rehabilitation, then released. The alpha female was equipped with a radio collar.

Unfortunately, no trace of the pups was ever found. It is doubtful that they survived the winter. However, it’s suspected that the rescued alpha female had a new litter of pups in the spring.

Mange is cause by tiny mites that attach themselves to an animal’s skin or fur. In sarcoptic mange, the female mites will dig under the animals fur and lay eggs there, and the animal will become very itchy.

Mange is most likely an important regulating factor of wolf and coyote populations. Cases of mange in wolf populations increase when wolf densities increase, and the number of surviving pups in a wolf population decreases as the number of wolves with mange increases. Wolves with mange often freeze to death because of the hair loss that occurs with a severe infestation of mites.

Sarcoptic mange has been used in the past by wildlife “managers” to control wolf populations. In 1909, wolves that were caught and infected with sarcoptic mange were released into Montana, in hopes that the disease would spread to and infect and kill other wolves

The story in photos at Gene Belanger’s website.

It’s Not The Iditarod

From an eloquent blog by an Alaskan who knows:

Aerial wolf hunting began in 1948. In 1972, Congress passed a law that prohibited aerial wolf hunting. Problem solved? No, under the guise of “wolf control,” permits were issued to “pilot gunner” teams in 1979. In 1992, under Governor Walter Hickel’s Administration, the Alaska Board of Game initiated a wolf control program with the goal of reducing numbers by 80%. Under threat of a massive tourist boycott, the “land and shoot” policy was reintroduced. During Democrat Governor Tony Knowles Administration, only non-lethal measures were used against wolves. The Wolf Management Reform Coalition collected 33,000 signatures to put an aerial wolf hunting ban on the November 1996 ballot; 59% of Alaskans voted for it, with the exception being a biological emergency. A Republican Legislature introduced SB74. This bill eliminated the need for a biological emergency to justify aerial wolf control and usurped the will of the people. Governor Knowles vetoed the bill and the Republican majority overrode it. In March of 2000, SB267 was passed which allowed hunters other than the state biologists to aerially shoot wolves. That same year, Alaskans voted on another ballot initiative to ban aerial wolf hunting by a 53% majority. In 2004, then Governor Frank Murkowski reinstated aerial wolf hunting to private hunters. He opened up 60,000 square miles of Alaska for the flying cowboys. All you needed was a plane and a permit.

With all of this history, we should have been prepared to deal with a Palin Administration hell bent on killing wolves. She wants to shoot them out of planes. She stacked the Alaska Board of Game with pro-aerial wolf hunters. She was successful at merging faulty science, Safari Club International interests and state funded propaganda; spinning a web of lies to masquerade as conservation.

Studies were done in the field, observing the balance between wolves and ungulate populations. They proved what common sense verifies; wolves take the weak and the sick thereby strengthening the herds. The Alaska Board of Game lacks common sense and ignores science. The Board is loaded with Viagra starved, trigger-happy Alaska Outdoor Council and Safari Club International agenda driven thugs.

The science from the Department of Fish & Game’s own biologists contradicted the need for any predator control. Studies conducted for the McGrath Adaptive Management Team proved that over-hunting was the reason for the lack of moose in the area, not wolves. That data was buried and wolf control was implemented.

Right before the 2006 Election, Alaskans for Wildlife submitted 57,000 signatures to get another aerial wolf hunting ban in place. Newly elected Governor Palin and the ADF&G issued even more wolf kill permits and put up a $150 bounty. A state judge ruled Palin exceeded her authority and the bounty was scrapped. At the end of the 2007 legislative session, Palin flooded the legislature with bills to ease up on wolf hunting restrictions, but the bills were held up in committee. In the spring of 2008, Palin tried to declare wildlife an “asset” of the State.

Governor Palin did her part to defeat the initiative as well. She approved the use of public money and ordered the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to publish a 26-page full color pamphlet called “Understanding Intensive Management and Predator Control in Alaska.” It circulated through newspapers statewide and was mailed to tens of thousands of Alaskans just days before the election. The pamphlet emphasized “how well the current system is working.” Spending public money to tell Alaskans that the Aerial Wolf Control Program is necessary to protect our moose and caribou populations just before a statewide election wasn’t an attempt to influence the outcome? The fear machine was in full force. The message was clear: wolves threaten hunters’ ability to put food on the table. But the truth was more about putting pelts on a wall.

Full story at Shannyn Moore’s WordPress blog: here

Related reading:

A Dead Moose in the Room

A Compassionate Conservative

The Artist’s Brush Becomes the Sword

Thinking Like A Mountain

Aldo Leopold (1887 – 1948) was an American ecologist, forester and environmentalist. He was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness preservation. He has been called an American prophet, the father of wildlife management, and one of most strongest advocates for conservation.

Thinking Like a Mountain , by Susan Flader, professor of environmental history and policy at the University of Missouri, was the first of a handful of efforts to capture the work and thought of America’s most significant environmental thinker, Aldo Leopold. This account of Leopold’s philosophical journey makes brings much-deserved attention to the continuing influence and importance of Leopold today.

Thinking Like a Mountain unfolds with Flader’s close analysis of Leopold’s essay of the same title, which explores issues of predation by studying the interrelationships between deer, wolves, and forests. Flader shows how his approach to wildlife management and species preservation evolved from his experiences restoring the deer population in the Southwestern United States, his study of the German system of forest and wildlife management, and his efforts to combat the overpopulation of deer in Wisconsin. His own intellectual development parallels the formation of the conservation movement, reflecting his struggle to understand the relationship between the land and its human and animal inhabitants.

Drawing from the entire corpus of Leopold’s works, including published and unpublished writing, correspondence, field notes, and journals, Flader places Leopold in his historical context. In addition, a biographical sketch draws on personal interviews with family, friends, and colleagues to illuminate his many roles as scientist, philosopher, citizen, policy maker, and teacher. Flader’s insight and profound appreciation of the issues make Thinking Like a Mountain a standard source for readers interested in Leopold scholarship and the development of ecology and conservation in the twentieth century.

“My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a wolf die. We were eating lunch on a high rimrock, at the foot of which a turbulent river elbowed its way. We saw what we thought was a doe fording the torrent, her breast awash in white water. When she climbed the bank toward us and shook out her tail, we realized our error: it was a wolf. A half-dozen others, evidently grown pups, sprang from the willows and all joined in a welcoming melee of wagging tails and playful maulings. What was literally a pile of wolves writhed and tumbled in the center of an open flat at the foot of our rimrock.

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy: how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable slide-rocks.

We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves. I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn. Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.”

Aldo Leopold Archives

License to Kill

Tom Rush, wrote “A Cowboy’s Paean”, which is on his “Trolling for Owls” album. The image is of the Druid Peak Pack in Yellowstone, and the photographer is Dan Hartman. Check out his work at the Hartman Gallery

Go on out and shoot yourself some coyotes,
Makes a man feel good, Lord, it makes a man feel proud!
Go on out and shoot yourself some coyotes,
One for Mother, one for Country, one for God.

Well, if you’re having trouble with the truck, or with the woman,
Maybe them kids are screwin’ up in school,
If the cows are actin’ smarter than the cowboy,
You gotta show the world you ain’t nobody’s fool.

Go on out and shoot yourself some coyotes,
Makes a man feel good, Lord, it makes a man feel proud!
Go on out and shoot yourself some coyotes,
One for Mother, one for Country, one for God.

I got my 30.30 and my eyes are 20/20,
I got my M16 and my trusty .44,
I got my 10-80 and my IQ’s double digits!
Boys, this is gonna be an all-out war.

I got my field rations straight from old Jack Daniel’s,
Hank, Jr.’s on the 8 track in my 4X4,
And I’d shoot a thousand coyotes if I could only just find one,
‘cause, boys, that’s what God made coyotes for.

Go on out and shoot yourself some coyotes,
Makes a man feel good, Lord, it makes a man feel proud!
Go on out and shoot yourself some coyotes,
One for Mother, one for Country, one for God.

So you never mind them Eastern, liberal, environmental … Democrat sissies,
Vegetarians are just a passing fad,
Just tip your hat and wish ‘em “via con … carne,”
Then go on out and make ‘em hopping mad!

Go on out and shoot yourself some coyotes,
Makes a man feel good, Lord, it makes a man feel proud!
Go on out and shoot yourself some coyotes,
One for Mother, one for Country, one for God.

---

In related news, the Bush Administration has issued a disastrous “License to Kill” plan that could trigger the extermination of half the gray wolves in Wyoming and Idaho, starting as early as October. The gray wolf population is still classified as an endangered species, although it has staged a welcome and dramatic comeback from the brink of extinction. Bush is circumventing his own agency’s process for delisting a species.

In preparation for these mass killings, the government has already purchased planes and helicopters capable of gunning down entire packs of wolves in minutes. Their goal: To immediately kill up to 700 wolves in Greater Yellowstone and central Idaho.

The administration wants to be able to kill wolves anywhere that elk herd numbers may be affected by wolves. It is focusing on areas where big game numbers are “below management objectives”. But those few cases of declines in elk herds have been caused by a combination of factors including habitat destruction, drought and human hunting — not just by wolves. And in most areas of the northern Rockies, elk numbers are at all-time highs.

Wolves once thrived in much of the lower 48 states. Today, they reside in only five percent of their former range in the U.S. If there is one place in the U.S. where they should be allowed to flourish, it is in and around Yellowstone — the nation’s oldest park — and the remote Selway Bitterroot ecosystem in central Idaho.

Shadow Mountain

Part memoir, part meditation, part love story, Shadow Mountain is an impassioned commentary on how our connection to the wild can rescue or destroy us.

While completing an undergraduate research thesis, Renée Askins was given a two-day-old wolf pup to raise. Named Natasha, the pup, was destined for a life in captivity. Through her work with Natasha and her siblings, Askins developed a deep, fierce love for the species. On the day Natasha was unexpectedly taken from her and sent to a remote research facility, Askins made a promise to the wolf pup: “Your life, your sacrifice, will make a difference.” And it did.

Renée Askins spent the next fifteen years in the grueling effort to restore wolves to Yellowstone, where they had been exterminated by man some seventy years before. The campaign’s popularity with the American public aroused the rage of the western ranching community and their powerful political allies in Washington. She endured death threats, years of contentious debate and political manipulations, and heartbreaking setbacks when colonizing wolves were illegally killed. But in March 1995, Askins witnessed the realization of her mission when wolves were released into their native home in Yellowstone–the first wolves to be found there in almost a century.

A born storyteller, Renée Askins offers moving and vibrant examples of the reciprocity that exists between man and animal. And, like a wolf in the shadows, Askins circles the issues surrounding the conundrum of embracing wild nature. Shadow Mountain explores the wildness present within animals and humans, urging us to recognize both its light and its shadow.

Renee currently lives in California with her daughter, her husband, Tom Rush, three dogs, four parakeets and two lovebirds.

Renée Askins website