Wolf experience on Vancouver Island holds harsh lesson

A newly-published essay about wolf predation on Vancouver Island by renowned Canadian researcher Valerius Geist — an authority on deer and other wildlife — is raising eyebrows and some hackles among Northwest outdoorsmen and women.

Geist offers some facts and personal observations about wolves that the reintroduction advocates seem to overlook, but that have elk and deer hunters alarmed.

He writes:

Nothing in my previous studies had prepared me for what I was to experience with wolves on Vancouver Island beginning in 1999. In my student days, in the late 1950s, wolves on Vancouver Island were so scarce that some thought they were extinct. In the early 1970s they reappeared and swept the island. The annual hunter-harvest of black-tailed deer dropped swiftly from about 25,000 to less than 3,000 today. There were incidents of wolves threatening people, and a colleague, treed by a pack, clammed up as nobody believed it. Wolves threatening people? Ridiculous!

Therein lies perhaps the biggest problem. Denial. Among devoted wolf advocates, the terms “benign,” and “shy” are frequently tossed around. It seems somehow inconceivable to them that wolves are simply cunning predators that are smart enough to test potential prey, to find weakness and exploit it. In that respect, they are closer to human predators — street thugs, home invaders; anyone that honest citizens find a need to arm themselves against — or maybe it’s vice versa.

The story of a September encounter between a 24-year-old female deer hunter and some wolves up in northwest Chelan County raised quite a few eyebrows. On a hiking forum, her experience was debated, with some sneering, some jeering and a few cheering. On a hunting forum, her story was respected and her actions getting a not of approval from fellow hunters. This column discussed her adventure.

That hunter, Kari Herschberger, noted during her narrative that the wolves approached and backed off. They flanked her and looked her over. Some believed they were merely curious. But Geist’s essay puts these maneuvers in perspective:

That “tameness,” that “hanging around,” that increasing boldness and inquisitiveness, is the wolf’s way of exploring its potential prey, and the strength of its potential enemies. Coyotes targeting children in urban parks act in virtually the same manner. Two wolves in June 2000 severely injured a camper on Vargas Island just off the coast of Vancouver Island. These wolves became even tamer before the attack, as they nipped at the clothing of campers, licked their exposed skin and ate hotdogs from their hands. Our observations here suggested that wolves, attracted to habitations by the scarcity of prey, shift to dogs and livestock, but also increasingly, though cautiously, explore humans, before mounting a first, clumsy attack.

Geist further observes that there is considerable history about wolves that the current crop of wolf advocates evidently overlook delilberately, for any number of reasons. Perhaps it just didn’t fit with their politically correct notions about wolves. Here is what Geist says about that:

…Italian and French historians published papers and books detailing how thousands of people had died in earlier centuries from wolf attacks. Some historians rightly asked the question, how did North American scientists ever conclude that wolves were harmless and no threat to people? We now know the answer: In the absence of personal experience or sound language competence, they chose to disregard, even ridicule, the accumulated experience of others from Russia, France, Italy, Germany, Finland, Greenland, Sweden, Iran, Kazakhstan, India, Afghanistan, Korea, and Japan.

All of this brings us around to what is happening right now in Washington State, where hunters are growing more alarmed at what they perceive as the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s “Pollyanna” attitude about wolf reintroduction and repopulation. There are suspicions that this state has more wolves than the WDFW estimates, which is also said about the mountain lion and black bear populations, and can probably apply to bobcats as well.

With the end of hound hunting for these predators, their populations have gone up fast.

And this doesn’t include the coyote population. Coyotes frequently show up in urban areas. When house pets begin disappearing, urbanites become alarmed.

All of this predation is having what hunters believe is a serious impact on elk and deer populations. Throw wolves into the equation and the outcome could be devastating.

Some argue that hunters are merely selfish, that they just want lots of elk and deer for their own sport. That may be partly true, but the overwhelming sentiment is that they are genuinely concerned that this state’s elk and deer populations could be devastated. It does not help matters that they see the WDFW as somewhat disinterested in this, so long as we get an ample number of documented breeding pairs.

This columnist has advocated returning hound hunting for cougars, bobcats and bears. The Legislature has that authority. Likewise, the hunting license requirement to hunt coyotes should be abolished, and people should be allowed to shoot coyotes on sight.

Geist’s essay should be required reading. It’s a forecast for what Washington might expect with expanded wolf populations.

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