The first year of the controversial BC wolf cull ended in mid-April. Government-contracted hunters killed 84 wolves from helicopters, below their target of 184 wolves.
The cull began January 15 in the South Selkirks and the South Peace regions of BC where the BC government says wolves prey on caribou herds with declining populations. The BC Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations says the caribou population in the South Selkirks declined from 46 to 14 between 2009 and March, 2015, and in the South Peace wolves account for 37 per cent of all adult caribou mortalities. Previous methods, such as hunting and trapping of wolves have not effectively reduced caribou populations. The Ministry reported that 11 wolves had been shot in the South Selkirks and another 73 killed in the South Peace when the hunt ended.
Ian McAllister of Pacific Wild is one of many who are critical of the hunt, saying the real problem for caribou is habitat destruction. “Killing top predators will harm the whole ecosystem and not miraculously save the caribou in the absence of habitat protection.”
Pacific Wild and Watershed Sentinel were two of 60 Canadian and international signatories to a letter opposing the wolf cull. The letter asked government to halt the wolf cull and put the cost of the slaughter, $575,000, towards caribou habitat protection. It fell on deaf ears and the wolf continues to be a bloody scapegoat for poor decision making.
A new report, Witnessing Extinction, studied five BC caribou herds over 11 years and found that caribou, which are displaced by clearcuts, pipelines, and seismic cut-lines, have had extreme habitat loss due to industrialization. The two University of Northern BC scientists and the government biologist who authored the report stated that we may observe the extinction of the South Peace herds in our lifetime, if industrialization continues at its current rates.
Indeed, killing wolves has yet to be linked to an increase in caribou populations. In Alberta, a wolf cull has claimed more than 1000 animals since 2005. An analysis published in the November, 2014, Canadian Journal of Zoology found the Alberta caribou are just maintaining their numbers, not increasing.
There, caribou have been listed as threatened since 2002, mainly because much of their boreal forest habitat has been sliced into small fragments by a web of roads, pipelines, clear-cut swathes, and well pads. Moose and other deer species do well in these open areas, and their populations have boomed – supporting an increasing population of wolves, which have learned to use the roads and pipelines to access caribou in the deep woods.
Companies in Alberta’s tar sands are scrambling to find a way to reclaim tens of thousands of kilometres of seismic lines cut into the boreal forest, before provincial regulations mandating the recovery of endangered caribou habitat are implemented in 2017. Yet the Alberta government is still selling off caribou habitat to oil and gas companies. The province came under fire in March for putting 21,000 hectares of energy leases in caribou habitat up for auction, and quickly put the sale on hold – for now.
Meanwhile, advocates to stop the wolf cull in BC, such as Pacific Wild, are using donations to fund an ad campaign to educate the public about the wolf cull. Though the wolves are safe for now, BC’s wolf cull is meant to be a five year project and will resume again next winter.
If there was ever a time to cry wolf, it is now.
Action: Letters can be written to the BC Minister of the Environment. Email: mary.polak.mla@leg.bc.ca
Sign petition: www.change.org/p/save-b-c-wolves
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Susan MacVittie is managing editor of the Watershed Sentinel.
