Here's the other side of the wolf kill coin from someone who has actually studied the situation.
http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/Opinion+Ecologists+oppose+wolf+kill/10827496/story.htmlSome comments.......
This first is from the official BC Wolf Management Policy
“Attempts to control wolves to reduce predation risks on caribou has been a provincial priority since 2001. Wolf densities have been reduced; however, at this time, a correlation between reduced wolf densities and caribou recovery cannot be substantiated.”
From John and Mary Theberge who wrote this piece....
"Another possibility is that no rise in caribou numbers is possible because of habitat destruction, regardless of the presence of wolves"
"Realistically, caribou days in the southern part of their range are numbered. It is biologically futile to kill wolves to return to the former situation."
"We would place our bets, however, on a third reasons that wolf killing has not lead to caribou recovery. Over much of B.C., what is known as an ecological phase shift has happened."
"Across much of B.C., massive forest cutting has resulted in gross habitat alteration and fragmentation. The cost? A phase shift. Moose, benefiting from early successional forests after logging and other land uses have greatly extended their range in B.C. Numbers of elk and deer have adjusted, too. However, caribou, especially the southern mountain ecotype, have declined due to a loss of critical older-growth, lichen-clad forests. They have been victims, too, of habitat fragmentation preventing herd-to-herd “metapopulation” flow that once reduced risks of local, herd extinctions."
"New species crowd out the potential for recovery of old ones. Recovery is generally beyond the scope of management intervention."
(In this case, deer and elk)
"Every practicing wildlife biologist knows two landmark scientific publications show a straight line graph linking wolf population size to prey biomass (the live weight of prey in that region). It is simple. More prey, more wolves."
" With fewer wolves, will moose and elk populations increase? Will their browsing inhibit forest regeneration? Should they be killed, too? (In B.C.’s 2010 plan for an aerial wolf kill, moose reduction was a management prescription, too)"
Again, habitat is more the issue than predators. But it is more convenient to go after predators, even if it doesn't work, because habitat changes take decades in many cases and people want to see changes NOW. The thinking is "At least it looks like we are doing something, even if it changes nothing.".
I now some of you hate the habitat argument, and argue that the habitat is already there. The problem is, habitat isn't just empty space. Each species has it's own needs and they are not the same for each species. So where you see forest and think...."there is habitat", it may not have what individual species need. For instance, locally Deer and Elk do great inf well managed tree farms where there is a succession of different age classes of trees. The newer clearcuts offer great food sources (unless they are sprayed with herbicides) and the older areas provide plenty of cover or protection from hunters. But if an area is logged all at once, it may be good for several years, but once it reaches the cover stage, it's a dead zone because 12 to 20 year old reprod Douglas fir plantation has virtually no food to offer. The only thing on the ground is fir needles. As the forest grows up, and trees are thinned, eventually there is some forage that grows sparsely but it will still be marginal hunting at best. In the 80s and into the 90s there was an area north of Hoquiam, basically the Copalis unit, that was heavily logged and my gang had superb deer hunting there. It was blacktail paradise. The large group of us that hunted together pretty much tagged out every year there. In 2013 a total of 60 deer were taken in the whole unit. That is next to nothing. Our group alone would take a dozen deer in a year there in the late 80s and early 90s. There is still habitat there, but it doesn't support the deer numbers it once did. They are starting to log parts of it again, so it may get better for a time. Then a couple other local areas, unit 638 Quinault Ridge and unit 618 Matheney ....... Lots of habitat there, but it isn't deer habitat to speak of. 20 deer and 4 deer were taken in those two units respectively in 2013.
Land and forest does not necessarily translate to habitat.
