Wolves: Handle with care — Madsen

Columnist Sue Lani Madsen writes:

As popular culture loses daily touch with nature, romanticizing it becomes the dominant attitude.

“Wolves are really, really popular if you don’t have any,” northeast Washington state Rep. Joel Kretz said on the recent TVW special “Wolves in Washington.”

Government bounties to encourage killing wolves accelerated in the 1800s. The wolf was practically eliminated from Washington by the 1930s and was one of the earliest species listed for protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1974. But neither “kill all wolves” nor “keep all wolves” is a sustainable position.

The challenge is finding a balance for the 21st century.

The Washington Wolf Advisory Group, representing a variety of stakeholders, has written guidance for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on managing the human-wolf relationship. It includes killing wolves. Conservationists and ranchers accepted compromises on the types and extent of nonlethal deterrents required and losses absorbed before taking such action.

It took months of frustrating and intense discussion to reach a compromise. One rancher expressed her appreciation to the conservation groups for keeping their word after the Department of Fish and Wildlife announced it would follow the lethal protocol and cull the Profanity Peak Pack.

“I know this decision hurts your hearts, but you are doing exactly as you promised … you would not do anything to inflame the situation,” she said. “Thank you so much; I know this is really painful.”

If a stakeholder group had been assembled in 1860 on the western frontier, they would have heard different testimony.

One young woman’s journal transcribed in “Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier,” by Joanna L. Stratton, describes wolves pawing at the door of a sod house of a sick woman. After the woman died, “the wolves were more determined than ever to get in. One got his head in between the door casing, and as he was trying to wriggle through, Mother struck him in the head with an ax and killed him. I shot one coming through the window. After that they quieted down for about half an hour, when they came back again. Their howling was awful.”

And now we miss the sound. Many would agree with state Sen. Christine Rolfes, D-Bainbridge Island, that it would be “way cool to be able to go out to Eastern Washington … and sit in a lodge in the woods somewhere and hear wolves howling.”

Twenty-first-century society has a very different point of view from the groups who cheered wolf bounties in the 19th century. But as the numbers of wolves increase, they are moving into territories where high density of human activity will make conflict inevitable again.

There have been few well-documented attacks on humans in North America in the 20th century, but this will change with increased contact. More here (subscription).