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Greetings!
Federal District Judge Donald Molloy heard oral arguments
from both sides of the wolf issue in Missoula, Montana last week. When he hands down his decision later
this summer, it will determine whether wolves will be protected, or if hunters
in the Northern Rockies will be allowed to resume killing them again this
fall.
The anti-wolf fervor is as ferocious as ever. In light of the proceedings in
Missoula, anti-wolf groups mobilized members of their wolf-hunting minority to
protest on the steps of the courthouse. Openly threatening to bait wolves with poison (an illegal practice),
those willing to do this, clearly see themselves as above the law. They're well aware that it's difficult, if not impossible,
to apprehend them when hunting in isolated back-country. They suggest that after hunters field
dress their deer or elk, that they leave behind the gut piles, laced with sweet-tasting
and readily available poison. Of
course, this bait would indiscriminately kill any carnivore, omnivore or
scavenger that would eat it, including pets.
Toby Bridges is the founder and president of LoboWatch, one
of the most violent and reprehensible anti-wolf groups in the West. He was responsible for notifying and
summoning the protesters in Missoula. Showing total disregard for whatever the judge might decide, he has been
sharing his views openly in regional newspapers, including the following:
Bridges' blog bumped the discussion to a new level June 5 when he posted
a warning that hunters might consider using Xylitol artificial sweetener to
poison wolves. "Wolf control now has a new, until now secret,
weapon." Bridges wrote. "I have a feeling that if Molloy goes against
the wishes of today's hunters, there's going to be a whole lot of very sweet
gut piles and wolf-killed carcasses dotting the landscape this fall. Along with
some supplemental feeding of wolf pups come next spring." -Missoulian,
June 13, 2010
"People are going to take things into their own hands and solve the
problem." Bridges recently posted to his blog some information about Xylitol, an
artificial sweetener that is poisonous to canines. Was he suggesting that
people poison wolves? "I'm not advocating it", Bridges said. "I'm just putting
information out." -Missoulian, June 15, 2010
"And if those inside (the courthouse) want to continue
playing their silly mind games, the sportsmen will take care of the wolf
problem on their own." -Toby Bridges, Idaho Mountain Express (blog), June 16, 2010
The reintroduced wolf is a new piece of the wildlife mosaic in the states
of the Northern Rockies. Unfortunately
our state wildlife management agencies or "game agencies" as their title often
implies have very little understanding of the wolf as a social animal. Enlisting the help of hunters to kill
wolves as a management tool is proven by science to be ill conceived.
There are very well-established biological reasons why "managing"
wolves at the point of a gun will continue to have a very negative effect on
all sides of the wolf issue. Please read on to find out what these
reasons are and to read a brief summary about our meetings with officials at
the Department of the Interior in Washington D.C.
As always, your support goes a long way towards helping wolves.
Sincerely,
Jim Dutcher Jamie Dutcher
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The Social Wolf: Science vs. "Management"
There is one thing most often missing from the debate about
wolves and from current management policies. It is the hard science, specific to the social nature of the
wolf. The very nature of the
animal is not taken into consideration. Wolves are designated as "big game animals" by state wildlife
management agencies and are therefore managed the same way as deer, elk and
other animals of that designation.
Extensive scientific research has conclusively proven that
wolves are very different in their intelligence, social nature and family
structure from any other North American land  animal. Their highly developed social communities are nothing like
those of deer and elk. They are
different and therefore they require a different approach. Comparable knowledge has guided us in
our dealings with other wildlife in the past.
To take a similar example from the ocean, we don't manage
cod in the same way we do dolphins because the two are vastly different. Both swim in the sea, and they both
have fins, but that is about where the similarities stop. Dolphins are treated differently
because of the highly intelligent and social behavior they exhibit. They demonstrate compassion for family
members and have the ability to learn complex behaviors from one another. Dolphins pass on knowledge from
generation to generation about breeding and hunting grounds as well as hunting
techniques and strategies specific to different types of prey and conditions. Wolves share all these same behaviors.
It was a scientist and researcher, studying wolf packs in
remote reaches of the Alaskan interior, who witnessed and documented these
behaviors in wolves. Observing
dozens of packs for over 40 years, Dr. Gordon Haber recorded countless hours of
wolf behavior. The packs he
observed were much further removed from human influences than those studied elsewhere. This pack isolation and his unrelenting
commitment to his research made Gordon's work unique and invaluable.
What he most wanted to convey in his findings was that wolf
packs (families as he called them) could not sustain hunting at the levels that
game agencies allow, without a serious loss of their learned knowledge. The totality of knowledge passed from
generation to  generation of wolves is not fully understood and new discoveries
are still being made. The very
information that teaches wolves what to hunt, when to hunt it, where to hunt it
and what group strategies to employ in a hunt are lost through such
indiscriminate killing of wolves.
Also, the ability to know and defend each pack's territory by patrolling
a perimeter is fundamental to maintaining the stability of the mosaic of packs
across the land. Hunting
compromises that stability, causing unnatural vulnerability in packs wherever
it occurs. Other such documented
losses of knowledge and the consequences are detailed in the short and very
compelling article we provide a link to below.
Gordon was a friend and colleague. We worked with him and the wolves he studied on three
separate National Geographic sponsored Alaskan expeditions. Sadly, Gordon died in a plane crash
while conducting aerial surveillance of his most beloved and longest studied
subject, the Toklat Pack.
Gordon's work is now gaining more recognition as his
discoveries are being validated by the research of biologists in Yellowstone
National Park, where they are making the same observations. Please click here and link to this nail-on-the-head article that with the support of research from Dr. Gordon Haber and others
explains why hunting wolves is a counterproductive means of wolf management and
what happens when the generational chain of passing on a culture of knowledge
is broken.
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Meeting with the Department of the Interior
We recently returned from Washington, D.C. where we met with
key Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife managers. This is the federal department that oversees
national wildlife issues and had been responsible for managing wolves until
management was  turned over to the states. There was no hunting of
wolves under their supervision. The purpose of
the meeting was to share vital information regarding our firsthand
observations of the current flawed wolf management policies.
We are here in Idaho, eyewitnesses to the pack disruption
that results from the shooting deaths of alphas and pups. Though hunters were only allowed to
shoot ten wolves in our immediate area, it is now clear that many more were
killed. A year ago we had several
large and healthy packs in the area. Our local packs are gone now, with only a few sightings of one or two
individual wolves at a time to report.
Our meetings in Washington D.C. were very productive and we
established invaluable contacts where it counts. We have scheduled a return appointment at the Department of
the Interior in July to report on the current atmosphere and what has happened
to the wolves of all Americans. Your support is crucial to our work.
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