American Wolves and Game Management
This week, I wanted to talk about game management theories, practices, and real life examples. Last week, researching a bit about Aldo Leopold, really gave me the urge to look further into his thoughts and philosophy about relations of predators upon environment and ecology, as well as the role of human interference with the livelihood of these "keystone" animals.
When I got to thinking about it, there really isn't anything that exhibits such a feeling of natural awe and fear that a wolf does. Can you imagine being a pioneer of northern American woodlands 300 some years ago, trying to secure your foothold in the native wilderness, and hearing, off in the distance but all around, the sounds of wolves crying under the moon; or looking into the shadows and seeing the yellow glow of eyes looking back at you? When you think put yourself in our ancestor's shoes, its easy to see why the wolf was such infamous and renowned creature. We tried to coexist, tame, and eventually hunt this animal in order to expand our territory, claiming the wild as our own. However, we pushed these guys out as we moved in, and ever since then, there has been much discussion about the importance of these apex predators and their [non]necessity as a piece of our northern woodland environments.
Still to this day, we have a debate and discussion about whether we need to let the wolves flourish or if they are already flourishing and we need to reduce their population through means of directed hunting practices and seasons. One source claims that wolves across the world are flourishing and that we need to limit their population growth pretty drastically.
What this figure shows is that the population of wolves in the United States and Canada is increasing rapidly, most likely due to the fact that we have been "too lax" on limiting their population and thus strayed from the original scheme for their population management.
However another source claims that quite the opposite. They say that the DNR does not recognize the wolf to be valuable organism in ecological roles, and thus can be dispensable. So the DNR opened the first hunting and trapping season for wolves in Minnesota in 2012, despite being opposed by 79% of respondents to the survey that the DNR proposed to display public opinion. Also, according to DNR data, wolf population has decreased by 25% since 2008, with a stable population range occurring between 1998 to 2008. Currently, the DNR has not put into place any non-lethal plans to help manage wolf population, so that leaves hunting, and a large amount of illegal poaching, as the only forms of human intervention; the hunts organized have also produced unpopular results with the majority of wolves killed during the season were juveniles (240 juveniles of 413 wolves claimed).
So my question to you is do you stand? Do you think that managing wolf population is through organized hunting is the right path for us to walk down; do you think that there is currently no need to try to limit the wolf population and that they should be replaced back on the protected/threatened species list; or do you think that we do need to limit their population, by hunting and lethal approaches are not the right way to go about it?
http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/222746571.html?page=1&c=y
http://biggameforever.org/wolf-overpopulation.php