A killing in Canada puts an end to the myth that wolves won't harm humans.
Feb 28, 2006
Concerns in the West
Ed Bangs has been following events in Saskatchewan with interest. Based in Helena, Mont., Bangs is the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's (USFWS) gray wolf recovery coordinator, presiding over the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone Park and their return to much of the Northern Rockies. For more than a decade he has told the public that wolves will not kill a person. In light
of Carnegie's death, he's revising that assertion, but only slightly.
"If you look at the history of wolf attacks in North America, wild wolves just don't attack people, and I don't think the Canadian incidents change that," says Bangs. "These were wild wolves that were turned into big dogs because they became habituated. Dogs kill about twenty people each year and put tens of thousands in the hospital. Wild wolves do their damnedest to stay away from people."
But Bangs admits wolf behavior is complicated. They have a "behavioral plasticity," he says, that can allow them to become domesticated, and in that transition from wild to mild, they can behave erratically.
"We recognize this in our recovery plans," says Bangs. "Under the Endangered Species Act, if you're directly threatened by a wolf, you can kill it right then and there. Our rules also require us to respond to every habituated wolf report, and if we can't change the animal's behavior with adverse conditioning-rubber bullets work great for that-then we remove that wolf from the population."
Bangs's work is nearly done. In
2002, wolves in the Northern Rockies reached recovery thresholds-30 breeding pairs spread over a designated range in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Since then he's been working with the three states on plans that would turn the job of wolf management over to state wildlife agencies.
In Harm's Way
Both Idaho and Montana propose eventually regulating wolf populations through a hunting season, a strategy Bangs fully endorses.
"The service strongly supports the hunting of wolves as a management tool," Bangs says. "Hunting is the perfect way to keep the wolf from becoming a domestic dog."
In the Rockies, wolves increasingly are getting into trouble. In part, that's because their numbers are skyrocketing. In the latest census, conducted in December, the USFWS estimates at least 912 wolves in 66 breeding packs. The number of complaints is also rising. In 2004, the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife paid Western ranchers $133,662 in compensation for wolf-killed livestock, up from $5,701 in 1994.
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