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Open season on B.C.'s grey wolves
Province to allow year-round wolf kill to increase big game herds
Friday, March 07, 2003 The B.C. Liberal government plans to declare open season on grey wolves in the North, allowing them to be shot and trapped year-round while backing more than a three-fold increase in the annual bag limit in a move that would generate more big-game animals for hunters. Rather than allow wildlife and the landscape to run their natural course in the province's greatest wilderness -- the 6.3-million-hectare Muskwa-Kechika management area of the northern Rockies -- the province also proposes to burn 120 square kilometres a year. The two-pronged goal is to create grassland habitat while reducing natural predation of ungulates -- Rocky Mountain elk, Stone's mountain sheep, woodland caribou and moose, all species heavily sought after by resident and foreign hunters. These proposed measures are in addition to the sterilization last month of 13 wolves in five packs in the Muskwa-Kechika, part of a hunter-funded experiment to increase ungulates in the Turnagain River valley. The Turnagain is a tributary of the Kechika River. "This is retrogressive wildlife management," said Paul Paquet, a Saskatchewan-based consulting ecologist and large-carnivore specialist who has studied wolves in B.C. and throughout North America. "I thought we were far more sophisticated in our thinking, but apparently not. The motives are clearly to increase the number of ungulates for hunting -- no other reason." Paquet added in an interview Thursday that it is illogical to conduct an experiment to gauge the success of sterilization then allow increased hunting and trapping -- activities that could lead to the death of the wolves being studied, specifically the breeding alpha males and females. "Those two things are not compatible, and illogical at best," he said, arguing that sterilization is just a "slow way of killing wolves." The measures are outlined in a Muskwa-Kechika wildlife management plan, prepared by the Fort St. John office of the ministry of water, land and air protection, and obtained in part by The Vancouver Sun through freedom-of-information legislation. The document blames wolf numbers on "many years of laissez-faire management in the past," adding it will take at least a decade to achieve ungulate objectives. It also singles out aboriginal hunters for shooting female ungulates, and warns of the future impact of development (oil and gas, logging, mining, commercial recreation), saying "it is likely not possible to maintain existing wildlife values for all areas or all habitat types given the kinds and intensity of development that might occur ..." The report does not recommend suspension of hunting to rebuild ungulate populations. Andy Ackerman, the ministry's regional wildlife manager, cautioned that the plan is a draft and subject to change, including scaling down the ungulate population targets. As well, any of the management options could be used in whole or in part. "There's been human use in the Muskwa-Kechika for thousands of years," he added, and that land and resource management plans in the north have clearly emphasized the need to maintain traditional activities such as hunting and trapping in the region. Hunting closures can also be spelled out in hunting regulations in specific areas as needed. "Where you have a conservation concern ... yeah, we'll shut the season down," he said. "Those options are always available." Still, he emphasized: "The idea is not to produce animals strictly for hunting. The idea is to manage wildlife for all kinds of purposes." The plan is to reduce the number of wolves in the region -- currently estimated at 850 -- by one-quarter. At the same time ungulate populations would rise to 30-year-high levels: mountain sheep to 10,000 from the present 5,000; caribou to 11,000 from 4,000; elk to 16,000 from 13,000; moose to 43,000 from 18,000; plains bison to 1,400 from 1,000; and wood bison -- a protected species, not open to hunting -- to 200 from 40. Once those ungulate numbers are reached, the report estimates the area will be able to support more wolves than currently exist -- 1,100. "They're guessing at the numbers," said Paquet, a former Canadian Wildlife Service biologist. "Wolves could be half that number or twice that -- they have no way of knowing. That's a key issue." He also questioned the idea of basing management of the Muskwa-Kechika on producing a maximum number of ungulates. "That's not an ecological approach. There is a huge difference between conservation and wildlife management." Ackerman said it can be argued that managing for the "higher-order species" will benefit the lower-order species, but confirmed not all scientists agree. "The general concept is that you don't manage one species to the detriment of the others," he added. The biologist who came up with the ungulate targets is John Elliott, the same biologist at the centre of a controversial wolf-kill program that destroyed more than 700 wolves in B.C.'s northern Rockies in the 1980s. The province cancelled the program amid intense international criticism shortly before Expo 86, and resumed it in 1987 for one more year. Should the Vancouver-Whistler Olympic bid succeed, would the province's new wolf-kill strategy also raise the spectre of an international boycott? "I don't anticipate it," Ackerman said. "These are tools that may or may not be used." Ackerman said it isn't "sustainable" to allow nature to run its course -- allowing wolves and ungulates to find their own population levels. Paquet disagreed, arguing that wildlife management seeks stability in wildlife populations, even though that is not natural. Created by provincial legislation in 1998 and enlarged in 2000, the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area now encompasses 6.3 million hectares, a roadless wilderness larger than Nova Scotia. Of that area, about 58 per cent is special management zones in which industry can proceed on an environmentally-sound basis, 27 per cent is protected area and 15 per cent is wildlands off-limits to logging only. Under the B.C. hunting and trapping regulations for 2002-03, hunters in the northern Rockies have an annual bag limit of three wolves per hunter, with hunting banned between June 15 and Aug. 1. Under the proposed wildlife plan, the bag limit would be increased to 10 wolves per hunter, with hunting allowed year-round, raising the risk that a hunter -- in theory, at least -- could shoot a female wolf at her den raising her cubs. "That's taking it to the absolute extreme," Ackerman said in response. "I wouldn't even want to comment on that. That's not the intention of the regulation." Trapping would also be allowed year-round, although the pelts taken in summer would have little market value. Still, some guide-outfitters currently hire trappers to kill wolves as a way to reduce predators in areas in which they guide foreign trophy hunters. During the 2001-02 trapping season, the average value for a wolf pelt was $116.09, although the retail value of a quality tanned pelt would be closer to $500. Ross Peck, a second-generation outfitter and biologist whose territory is located in the northern Rockies, is chair of the Muskwa-Kechika Advisory Board, a group that provides independent advice to government on the area. He said the board is waiting for possible revisions to the government draft before taking a position on the wolf-kill issue. Members of the public who wish to comment on the wildlife management plan should contact Pierre Johnstone, wildlife biologist, ministry of water, land and air protection, 400 10003-110th Ave., Fort St. John, B.C. V1J 6M7 Tel: (250) 787-3332 Fax: (250) 787-3219, or email at pierre.johnstone@gems1.gov.bc.ca [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ |
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