Hecatomb: 'Predator Control' Carnage

I am, myself, a hunter, and believing that no right exists in isolation, I am also a fervent defender of a constitutionally-based individual right to keep and bear arms (defending the 'cartridge box' that goes along with the ballot and the jury boxes---A R Amar and A Hirsch---to which we might add the 'soap box'). Of course, I may not be the sort of hunter familiar to most Americans---though familiar to many Alaskans---for I am a 'meat hunter'. Taking a moose during fall hunting season has been for years an important part of my diet and the diet of my family. (Even now, as I choose to eat far less meat than I once did, I prefer---both ethically and nutritionally---to eat the flesh of wild herbivores taken not in excessive numbers, and with an absolute minimum of suffering on the part of the animal leading up to and during the moment of its killing.) I am a hunter. I have to emphasize this for what I am about to say.

There are many reasons why I deeply believe we ought to culturally and ethically include hunting as a part of what we do. Yet, I have to say that sometimes I feel compelled to shake my head and spit on the ground at the doings of about half of the hunters and shooters out there. It would seem that half of them are giving the rest of us a bad name. There has been some growth in the hunting ethos over the past thirty years, but with that, also has grown up a reliance upon 'big iron' machinery and technology for the 'hunter', and an industry that serves it. Along with this, something called 'varmint hunting' is alive and well. (I will have more to say about this later.) Something seems to have been lost, or turned away from, in the simple act of carefully preparing one's body, mind and focussed attention in going out to 'make meat'. (Perhaps it is that most hunters now aren't rural folk, but suburbanites.) Yet this essay, as much as I want it to be, is not about troubling changes in the hunting culture as observed in the pages of Field and Stream, Outdoor Life and American Hunter over the past thirty years. That will have to be a discussion for another time.

What I need to talk about here is Alaskan 'predator control'---particularly wolf control---and the role of the 'bad fifty percent' in the political promotion of an issue more wisely left to the cool calculations of science.

To-wit:

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s there was a certain he-man 'hunting' experience that many 'hunters' came north to enjoy---that of riding in an airplane, rifle in shaking hands (and presumably, visions of a much more dangerous game dancing in heads), along for the ride while wolves chased from the air would be harassed and panicked into running across country more or less in a straight lines, or played to exhaustion, at which point the heroic 'hunter' would make his---inevitably his---slaying shot.

This was a part of 'hunting' in Alaska not that long ago, and there have been a number of guides and 'hunters' who've ached to see a return to the good old days of human-wolf interaction, before a meddlesome legislature and 'emotional' public opinion caused them to have to put away their toys. Several times the people of Alaska have voted against a return to aerial wolf hunting.

Now, in many areas of the state, human hunting pressure upon moose populations year-round (either illegally or for 'subsistence') is very great. This is particularly so in a time when inexpensive snow-machine travel can take a hunter even hundreds of miles into wild country. The issue of 'predator control' in the State of Alaska, as it addresses strained local or regional populations of moose and caribou, characteristically does not refer to the most efficient predator out there---humans assisted by mechanical means for travel---but to wolf, and now bear, control.

'Control' means killing. There remains a fairly strong distaste in the general population---including many hunters---for a return to the free-for-all days of commercially guided aerial wolf hunting. Accordingly, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game under direction by the Alaska Board of Game and certain legislative factions, has been compelled (willingly or less willingly) to introduce a permitting process for the taking of wolves (and sometimes bears) in areas where large herbivore populations are deemed to be held artificially low by predation.

There are ecological reasons why an herbivore population can stabilize---subsequent to experiencing significant human, wolf and bear predation pressure---at a level much lower than the forage capacity of the region can support. These reasons are too technical and detailed to outline here. Suffice to say, there may be instances when human intervention to restore game populations is called for. Of course, for some people, even hunters, the matter of such intervention is problematic without taking into consideration, and changing, the overwhelming human impact. Still, under very specific and measurable conditions, a very particular situation can arise which might necessitate increased hunting and trapping of predators over a number of years, in an area, to restore a historically known and ecologically understood balance. Key to this, though, is that making the policy decisions to intervene in these situations must follow peer-reviewed, unpoliticized, field research---in other words well-founded, unhasty biological science---and not be introduced and adopted prior to actually knowing what is going on. (To know what is going on in the field is the reason we now have state departments of fish and game nationwide. That the large animals inhabiting the wild country matter, and are valued by us, for more than their meat or their 'trophies', is why we have not had commercial market hunting in the US for over a hundred years, and why we have not had bounties on predators for over almost 40 years.)

Nothing like science--and this is important... nothing like science is driving the recently renewed Palin administration 'plentiful game' initiative to open up 'predator control'. The Sarah Palin administration proposes measures to: kill denned wolf pups with poison gas, expand same-day helicopter hunting of wolves and bears, permit snare-trapping of bears, and allow non-resident 'hunters' to participate in unlimited black bear 'predator control' harvests, and to create new areas (such as in the vicinity of Anvik) for up to an 80% reduction in wolf populations--this in a complete absence of any scientific study in the new areas under proposal.

Compounding the recent frenzy for new 'predator control' is the fact that many hunters stand up in their defense of 'predator control' out of a certain political allegiance, and not out of any specific knowledge of the issues. In such an atmosphere, it is easy to see how any introduction of predator control, anywhere, whether needed or not, whether scientifically based, or not, will automatically find its defending constituency. Many of us who stand in opposition to specific wolf-control measures proposed for specific areas do so because we fear that politically motivated, naive 'predator control', in the current Alaskan political climate, will become the solution of first resort--a panacea--in the minds of hunters and pro-hunting legislators.

Then, also, there is this: For some people, wolf, coyotes, lynx, fox, and the like are merely 'varmints'; animals to be killed without question, on sight. (Even the American Bald Eagle, the patriotically holy symbol of our nation, went through decades of falling under the varmint classification. That's why we have laws for the protection of these birds.) Recall mention of a predator bounty system around some 50 years ago? That was a government sponsored program in place for decades, nationwide. It was understood that wolves and bears, and the like, were simply nuisance animals. This resulted, by the way, in interesting situations like the Grizzily Bear (a subspecies of Ursus arctos, the Brown Bear) appearing on the California Flag in a state where wild populations of Grizzily Bears can no longer be found. In part, then, the opposition to wolves being 'allowed' to take game is a visceral, irrational response, with roots deep in the European experience in Europe and in North America. As deeply as those roots go, we now know enough to say that a cultural bias is no basis on which to decide matters better left to biologists. If it is to be said that 'emotion' drives those who would preserve wolves and other predators at any cost, then certainly it is also true that emotion drives those who would kill predators because they are 'varmints'.

I have to disagree with the 'hunter' Sarah Palin. Her version of predator control is simply wrong.


[For those---hunters particularly---who wish to learn a lot more about the biology of the wolf and the history of human-wolf interactions in Europe and North America, it would be hard to do better than to read Of Wolves and Men by Barry Lopez.]