Apparently the hunting season for wolves opens on September 1 (next Tuesday), and the state of Idaho is charging residents $11.75 a head for kills. Wolves have bounced on and off of the Endangered Species list for years now, with their status often more a result of the political environment than anything else. Currently, populations of wolves in the Great Lakes Region are protected, but those in the Rockies are not.

Idaho has set a season quota of 220 individuals, 25% of the wolf population in the state, and 13% of all the wolves currently inhabiting the Northern Rocky Mountains. While residents can bag a wolf for little more than the price of a movie ticket, non-residents pay a higher bounty of $186 for a wolf tag. That still seems to be a bargain, though, when you consider some people regularly spend that much money on coffee or gas every month.

Several groups are currently filing lawsuits to stop the state authorization of wolf-killing, although some officials fire back that people will kill wolves whether it is legal or not. This is true, some degree of poaching or “self defense” killing is almost inevitable. It seems, though, that if we are to make any progress with conservation there has to be solidarity between scientists and government in communicating the importance of the roles that predators play in their ecosystems. I agree that hunting is justified for some species, but not for an imperiled carnivore that is only beginning to recover from the brink of extinction.

Hunting advocates claim that wolf populations are growing too fast and must be controlled by humans. As Linnell et al. (2002) point out, though, “in many situations human tolerance for carnivore presence may well be lower than ecological carrying capacity.” In fact, records show that wolf densities were once highest in areas where they are currently extinct (Riley et al. 2004). As I mentioned in my last post, we have little to no evidence for “natural” densities of large carnivores prior to human hunting, but it is widely agreed that the paltry populations that some officials advocate are far below the numbers that will allow natural genetic, social, and ecological dynamics.

There is a wide spectrum of opinion as to how much intrinsic value and respect wild animals deserve, but seriously, $11.75? That just makes it seem too easy and accessible. I wonder what algorithm was used to calculate that price? Everyone with a weapon and nothing better to do is going to be clambering for a license and roaming the backwoods, hoping to bag one (or more) of these “prizes.”

References:
Linell, D. et al. 2002. The Linkage between conservation strategies for large carnivores and biodiversity: the view from the “half-full” forests of Europe. In Large Carnivores and the Conservation of Biodiversity, J. Ray, K. Redford, R. Steneck, and J. Berger, eds. Island Press, Washington, D.C. pp 381-399.

Riley, S, et al. (2004). Dynamics of early wolf and cougar eradication efforts in Montana: implications for conservation Biological Conservation, 119 (4), 575-579 DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2004.01.019