Idaho and Montana’s wolf slaughter must be stopped before it’s too late

by Cyril Christo | July 13, 2021 | Jul. 13, 2021

“Our crude civilization engenders a multitude of wants that lawgivers are ever at their wit’s end devising.”

—John Muir

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

—HD Thoreau

The wolves take maybe 1 percent of cows and maybe three times that number of sheep in Idaho. Hardly a number to cry wolf about. And yet the plan to eliminate 1,000 of these remarkable predators has started in the state that Ernest Hemingway adopted. His voice was used to lure tourists to the state many years ago. What will tourists think of Idaho if it became the wolf-killing state? How about Montana? Federal and even tribal wildlife managers have asked Idaho’s Gov. Brad Little to veto a bill that would allow execution of most of the state’s wolves. How did America ever get to this place?

Former employees from the University of Idaho, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Forestry Service and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game say the “management” of the wolf in this way violates longstanding wildlife practices. It ought to be regarded as a travesty of sportsmen’s ethics.

Trapping, snaring and hunting of an unlimited number of wolves has to be unlawful. Less than 200 wolves would remain in the state. And what Montana does later in its wolf hunting season will pretty much determine what remains of a large portion of the wild in the Northwest. Chasing down wolves with snowmobiles and ATVs is also what the Inuit have been allowed to do in Canada with respect to polar bears. The wild is being run down.

The heat, and not just the recent heat dome that destroyed parts of the Pacific Northwest, offers proof that our relationship to the wild is broken. Allowing newborn pups and mothers to be killed is nothing less than sadism.

U.S. Rep. Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia who understands that climate change is the existential issue of our time, has asked former Interior Secretary Jewell to responsibly “manage” wolves. These representatives should be applauded and pressure applied on the governors of Idaho and Montana for the sake of the future of the wolf in the lower 48 states.

What indeed does management entail today except manipulation of the human will imposing itself on large-scale organic systems that are being overheated or melting worldwide. Highly arbitrary decisions are being imposed on species that are in some cases on their last legs, literally. Given that most mammal populations on Earth are decreasing and habitats are being increasingly homogenized, our species has to change. The recent heat wave in the West is creating a calamitous situation for wildlife. The last thing they need is malice directed through the barrel of a gun, or insensate trapping that is tantamount to torture.

Peter de Fazio, Senator from Oregon, recently wrote a letter to Deb Haaland conquering the wolf situation. His words should inspire others in proclaiming that the slaughter of the wolf is indeed an outrage. The wolf should be a permanently protected species and its future assured.

Just as the pandemic is encouraging people to see wolves in Yellowstone, certain politicians are encouraging their destruction. We have become politically and ecologically schizophrenic. We long for the outdoors, and some of us need to obliterate the other. It makes no sense.

Sen. de Fazio’s letter states in no uncertain terms:

The states of Idaho and Montana free entry passed laws that will have devastating consequences. Should the Biden administration not act quickly, Idaho’s law, which takes effect July 1, will allow hunters, trappers, and contractors to kill up to 90 percent of the state’s wolves — reducing their population from 1,500 to 150 — using deplorable methods, such as pursuit dogs, shooting from helicopters, and trapping in snares. Idaho’s law is so alarming that the now-Fish and Game Commission voted to oppose the measure. The two laws recently passed in Montana will allow for the slaughter of up to 85 percent of their wolves. One law allows for chokehold snares, which slowly and cruelly kill the wolf by strangulation. The other extends trapping season into the wolves’ breeding season, allowing the slaughter of numerous pregnant females.

Proponents of these laws point to livestock deaths or cite supposed competition with hunters for elk and deer. Those arguments are founded on myth, not fact. Wolves kill a minuscule amount of livestock. In 2010, the National Agricultural Statistics Service found that less than 1 percent of livestock were killed by all predators. Dogs killed more livestock than every other species besides coyotes. Meanwhile elk and deer populations continue to thrive. Idaho’s Fish and Game Department reported that hunter harvest increased for elk, mule deer and white tail deer in 2020. Their 2020 elk harvest was the sixth highest of all time, and they called it “the second Golden Age of Idaho elk hunting.”

Killing wolves negates the key role they play in ecosystems. Wolves take out sick, old and inferior elk and deer, while hunters do not. It is also worth noting that 25 years after their return to Yellowstone National Park, the gray wolves that some feared would wipe out elk have instead proved to be more of a stabilizing force. Their presence deters elk and deer from passive grazing, which has helped stop stream erosion and degradation of fish habitat. It has also helped tree stands and vegetation recover. These are just a few of the services provided by these vital apex predators.

Would that all politicians understand how the immune system of the world actually works, economically and ecologically. We are indeed fast running out of time and space. Today wild animals make up only 4 percent of the world’s mammals. Humans 34 percent and livestock 62 percent. At some point there may be no wild animals left. Maybe that is why we have become increasingly violent and angry at ourselves over the last 100 years. We have never been so savage and lash out at the innocent, prime among them the predators of the world, the jaguars, tigers, lions, wolves, sharks, bears, leopards, coyotes. We have become bloodthirsty and are on a feeding frenzy with the chaos we have caused. We hunt for body parts and hunt down the soul of the other as if it were a demon. Everywhere we turn the wild is on its last legs. In turn we have become caged animals. Like the ones that unleashed the virus in China. And if we lose what remains, there will be nowhere to run. The violence we inflict upon ourselves will cost us the Earth.

Senators and politicians should heed de Fazio’s warnings. His vision should not be the exception. It should be the rule before we execute what remains of the wilderness and ourselves. One of the main reasons we have become so violent of late is because there will soon be no room to breathe. Nowhere for the soul to wander and wonder. And people can feel the frustration. The loss. The wolf is much more than a great predator. It is one of the most active sentient verbs in flesh and soul America still can lay claim to. Why reintroduce the grizzly to Colorado or the jaguar to New Mexico if the wolf is obliterated elsewhere? The evidence of fires out West, their vast karmic blanket of smoke that should rouse us from our comatose state. We have been asleep at the ecological wheel for several generations now.

We need to wake up. It starts by acknowledging that we are not alone on this Earth. Wolves and other predators need maximum protection today, before humans become the last predators on Earth.

When Aldo Leopold killed his wolf in Arizona four generations ago, he was young. But it was an incident that would change his consciousness, his life’s trajectory forever. Today America seems to have gone from being a young country to one teetering on the edge. Partly thanks to the way we have treated the land, the soil, the forests, its native people and its wildlife. This decade is the one we have left to change the dynamic of life. If not we will perish. Already there are signs. We have to regain our senses. One way is to allow the others to simply be. Let the others breathe and live. Before it is too late.

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes — something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full trigger itch: I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

—Aldo Leopold

Learn more about Cyril Christo and Marie Wilkinson’s work at their website.