Aerial "hunting" of wolves

By Per Inge Oestmoen, the ALPHA association, Norway

In late December 2003, it came to the attention of the world that the Alaskan Board of Game had approved a plan to reduce the numbers of wolves in some areas of Alaska.

According to the plan, about 40 wolves were to be shot from aeroplanes in the McGrath area in Alaska. This was only the beginning. In another area, called Nelchina, the plan entailed the shooting of 100 to 130 wolves, which will first be found by planes and thereafter shot on the ground. Matt Robus, director of Fish and Game's Division of Wildlife Conservation, was very open about the rationale behind the plan: "We want to emphasize that these are predator control programs - not hunts - for the purpose of targeting prey until moose rebound to higher numbers." As if this were not more than enough, the Board also discussed the implementation of a similar wolf killing program in the Skwentna/Rainy Pass areas.

In other words; this Board of Game intended to carry out a drastic program of "predator control" because human interests were arbitrarily set above that of wildlife. The use of aeroplanes of course incurs considerable costs, and is an indication that the people who approve such a plan are willing to go to great lengths in order to bring down the wolf population to whatever the target number may be. The killing of wolves with the aid of aircraft is not a new phenomenon, but in 2003 it was 15 years since last time it happened in Alaska, due to the population's being less than enthusiastic about it.

Aerial "hunting" actually has two aspects. The one, which often comes to the forefront in mass media, is animal rights activists' anger over what they perceive as brutal and ruthless treatment of living animals. These people react because of the emotional impact from what they perceive as merciless human slaughter of innocent animals by means of modern technology. Of course the very action of using aircraft against wild animals betrays an alarming lack of environmental empathy, and there is little question about the monstrosity of waging war against wolves, but there is a more important aspect, and which needs to be approached in an unemotional way. The very reason why wolves are and have been gunned down from helicopter or aeroplane is what we must analyze if we are to tell wildlife administrators and other people involved not only what not to do, but how to behave in an environmentally responsible way.

The basic premise used to legitimize aerial shooting as well as other ways of decimating a wolf population, is that wolves are by definition a pest which needs to be controlled and held down by humans. Some human hunters try to justify this by the wolves' allegedly destroying hunting, which is a rather thin justification because it explicitly states that human interests must always be set over those of Nature and the living animals.

Four things need to be clearly pointed out:

1. The premise that wolves destroy the opportunities for human hunting is false. What is correct is that a large and healthy population of wolves is going to harvest a portion of the prey, and so it will likely be less left for human hunters even though the exact effect is difficult to determine, and is also influenced by factors like moose cows' increased ability to protect their young and the frequent giving birth to twin calves the year after having lost a calf to wolf predation. Still the total surplus will be somewhat less. This is nothing sensational. The presence of more than one predator means there may be proportionally less left to other predator species. In Minnesota, there is (in 2004) a population of approximately 2600 wolves. It is estimated that these 2600 wolves kill and eat 40 000 whitetail deer every year. Human hunters with their guns likewise kill and eat 40 000 whitetail deer annually. The ecosystem in Minnesota seems to be in balance in the sense that neither predator destroys the prey base, and a similar sharing of prey between top predators (as in this example between wolves and humans) can be established elsewhere as well.

2. In a healthy ecosystem, there will always be prey for both humans and four-legged predators to hunt. This is convincingly documented by the Minnesota example. Thus, the problem is not the wolves' hunting, but some human hunters' inability to accept that they must share the prey with a four-legged fellow hunter even if it means that their share will not be so big.

3. Hence, it is wrong to consider the wolves as the problem, and the intrinsic feature of aerial hunting and any program for reduction of wolf populations is not the cruelty towards the individual animals. What is important, is to understand that the even more serious cruelty lies in the biologically irresponsible approach towards the ecosystems which is demonstrated when some act upon a belief that humans should manage wolves in the wild in such a way as to drastically reduce their number at any time when it is determined that these natural predators harm some real or perceived human interests.

4. Hunters who want to seriously reduce the number of wolves or even exterminate them, need to be made aware that this is an ecologically destructive thing to do. An optimal ecosystem contains wild predators which can exert a healthy predation pressure on their prey by challenging the animals in a lot of ways that human hunters alone cannot. Moreover, in the long run it cannot be avoided that people are going to associate extermination programs carried out on behalf of hunters with the very tradition of hunting. This is potentially damaging to future hunters' possibilities to harvest in Nature. If hunters are viewed as ruthless killers who are unable to accept to share their prey with the furry hunters of the wilderness, they are effectively contributing to the undermining of hunting. This is unfortunate and also unnecessary. All that is needed is that hunters understand the necessity of responsible hunting, where the hunters refrain from harvesting any more than dictated by the area's carrying capacity and the biological limits for what the prey population can tolerate, and where they accept that wolves and other wild hunters must be equally entitled to their part. It is imperative to realize that human hunters have no greater right to prey than the wild predators. Responsible hunting which merely harvests from the surplus of Nature is not biologically wrong, but when humans demand "wolf control" and advocate large-scale killing and reductions of natural predator populations because of a desire to increase their own share of prey animals, they behave irresponsibly and must change their ways if they want to be responsible participants in Nature's great whole.