Since the announcement of approved wolf killings in British Columbia by the B.C. government, it has received attention from the local Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary to petition the decision.
The sanctuary posted a link to the Pacific Wild petition, the non-profit organization that is spearheading the fight against the wolf cull in B.C., on the official wolfdog organization’s Instagram account urging followers to sign it.
Wolf culls, while more recently approved in B.C., have been approved in Alberta for the past decade – both provinces citing the declining numbers in caribou herds as the official reason for the approved killing of wolves.
“Essentially the program was initiated in the region because we were going to lose the Little Smokey caribou population for sure – the rates of predation were too high and the population could not sustain itself,” said Dave Hervieux, provincial caribou biologist.
But not all agree with the province’s proposed solution.
“It is very frustrating my tax dollars are going towards killing wolves,” said Georgina De Caigny, director of Yamnuska Wolfdog Sanctuary.
“I think when it comes to a lot of the policy making, not all the information necessarily gets considered. For example, here in Alberta with the wolf cull, if you ask any wildlife biologist, the decline of the caribou population is not due to wolf jeopardization – it’s due to habitat loss.”
Hervieux acknowledges that the declining population numbers began with a habitat change due to industrial activities, increasing wolf populations and predation, but said if the province did not step in when it did, the Little Smokey caribou population would have been wiped out.
“This is difficult management and a lot of people derive their livelihood from forestry work and the lands – we know that a lot of industrial activity has challenged the caribou conservation and [we] are striving for a solution,” Hervieux said.
According to the Alberta Wilderness Association, the Alberta Woodland Caribou Recovery Plan was initiated in 2004 as a 10-year plan to help the province’s caribou maintain stable numbers, with approval in the plan for the culling of Alberta wolves.
Since the province approved the plan, reports state that over 800 wolves were culled by 2012 with some of the province’s researchers questioning the method of killing. In 2014, a paper was published in the Canada Journal of Zoology with four out of five authors from Alberta, called, ‘Managing wolves to recover threatened caribou’ – the paper discussed culling methods, such as aerial gunning and strychnine poisoning. A response paper was published earlier this year in February called, ‘Maintaining Ethical Standards during Conservation Crises’ addressing the culling methods stating poisoning and aerial gunning did not meet ethical standards by the Canadian Council on Animal Care.
“With respect to the various opinion pieces and whether or not the program should have occurred or be maintained, what I ask is. ‘What else would we do at this point?’ and that is a hard question to answer. Ultimately there needs to be some habitat solutions to reposition the ecological relationship so that a predator program is no longer required, but it will take some time for the habitat to regenerate,” Hervieux said.
“The thing that bugs me a bit is that humans have a way of not learning from their mistakes. If you look at what happened in Yellowstone, once they eradicated the wolves, there was many more problems balancing the ecosystem – to the point of where the government had to spend money to actually reintroduce wolves into Yellowstone,” De Caigny said.
According the Yellowstone National Park website, after wolves were extirpated in the park in the early 1930s, there was a 70 year wolf absence period before the national park launched a reintroduction program in 1995.
“For a province like Alberta or British Columbia that already has a healthy wolf population, it is crazy we are making the same mistakes – but I guess it is cheaper to shoot some wolves than it is to mitigate or minimize resource extraction.”
With recent critics coming forward, such as pop star Miley Cyrus posting the petition link on her Instagram against Canada’s wolf culls, De Caigny echoes the Pacific Wild’s statements about the misconception of wolves and stresses the importance of proper information distribution.
At the Wolfdog Sanctuary, workers strive to do two things: rescue wolfdogs and educate the public about wolfdogs and wolves in general. And there is a huge misunderstanding with wolves and the public’s perception of the animal’s behaviour, De Caigny said.
“The biggest misconception that people have on wolves is that they are these dangerous, vicious, aggressive animals, and I think where that misconception comes from is fairytales and movies,” De Caigny said. “Unfortunately, humans have sensationalized wolves to be this dangerous, viscous animal, when in reality, behaviorally speaking, wolves are very timid and weary of humans, [likely] to avoid humans as a way of survival.”
Working with 12 wolfdogs at the sanctuary and the first recently rescued coydog, Rango, De Caigny said the workers just want to inform people.
“Unless you really go out and educate yourself on wolves and wolf behaviour, you are going to assume that everything you learn in fairytales as kids and even in movies in our adulthood – you assume that they have some grain of truth, when in reality they don’t,” De Caigny said, referencing stories such as The Three little Pigs and movies like The Gray.
“The adult movie of Little Red Riding Hood did to wolves what Jaws did to sharks – it’s sensationalizing that very scary image and making [wolves] the bad guy.”
The sanctuary offers to bring the public together with wolfdogs of different wolf content, ranging from low to mid to high, and even putting certain low-content wolfdogs up for adoption.
While people can legally have wolfdogs in their home, De Caigny warns that the family must be educated and prepared for the amount of work it takes to own a dog that is part wolf. “Technically there are two available for adoption, [but] it would take a very specific, special home for them to be adopted out and leave the sanctuary,” De Caigny explained.
“[We want] to promote responsible dog ownership and are just trying to educate people that they are not the ‘big bad’ wolf – and what an important role they play in our eco system. [We] are just trying to show people the other side of these animals.”
