Kill the Wolves

The reintroduction of wolves has effected game a crossed the western Rockies. In many ways wolves have been a negative influence. They have caused problems in many wild game populations, including deer, elk, and many more. What has caused these problems, how do wolves hunt, and how do we control them? The original wolves were very different from the ones that were planted.

Another problem is that some taxpayers are against the reintroduction because it cost them money to get the wolves back into the park. Another issue for taxpayers is that they have to pay for the damage the wolves do to the farmer’s animals. The pro for the reintroduction is the ecosystem is healthier. With the reintroduction, the wolf hunts sick deer and elk. The weak are sorted out and the strong survive.

This stress limits the animals’ ability to eat sufficiently and store the fat and energy they need t... ... middle of paper ... ...act, a fraction of the wild animal population is specially directed to be killed. Because of this hunting actually causes overpopulation and ecological disturbance. While hunters believe they control the populations of the animals they kill, natural predators, wolves, bears, and mountain lions , are the actual ecosystem managers, if they too are not hunted. Hunting is a huge problem in the world that is over looked by many. It kills millions of defenseless animals every year and wounds even more.

While wolf hunting habits are a prime example of natural selection, human hunters are the opposite. They hunt the bigger and stronger deer, giving the weak a chance to reproduce. What about the problem of the decreasing deer population? They have been over-populated for many years, and while good for hunters, this is a problem for the wilderness areas of Wisconsin. Without the wolves to hunt the deer, they overpopulated rather quickly.

Deer and rabbits have consequently increased in number due to lack of predation. An excessive deer population can overuse plant species and destroy the plant base. This makes the habitat less fit for other animals. Scavengers' food sour... ... middle of paper ... ...ten million dollars in spending from visitors since wolves were reintroduced to the park. California's tourism would likely benefit as well.

Many wolves were removed from regions where they weren’t even threats to humans or livestock (Klinghammer 446) because wolves, like grizzlies, were perceived as competitors for land and food. Unlike grizzly bears, wolves didn’t survive in the Northern Rocky Mountains because of poisonings, shootings, and bounties for their pelts (Barker 177). These actions caused the extinction of wolves in western states, changing the ecosystems by eliminating a natural predator. The reasons for this genocide, according to David Mech, were “the possible predation by the wolf upon man. .

Men hunting deer for meat was still a necessity for most families for survival was still prevalent. The big cattle Barons who supplied the troops with meat, had problems now with coyotes, wolves, attacking their cattle, got together an put bounties on these animals to protect their investments. As these farmers’ extensive cotton production and hunting grew, it put a large dent in the deer herd population drastically. By the 1900s, the population had reached an all-time low, the public became concerned, talks about conservation were talked about, and Laws were put in place to protect the herds. Just after WWII, a re... ... middle of paper ... ... will mate their first year, because of more abundant nutrition less stress because of less predators lurking.

This meant that they turned their attention to domestic livestock, causing farmers and ranchers to fight back. There were even some states offering bounties for the wolves. Montana had a bounty on wolves that totaled more than $350,000 on 81,000 wolves. Due to the lack of a food source, as well as the bounties being offered, a wolf was no longer safe in the lower 48 states. However, there was one safe haven, and that was Yellowstone National Park that was established in 1872.

The general public needs to dig deeper than the newspaper in order to get real facts on wolf issues. What needs to be considered is the biological proof of wolf kill issues and then that information put side by side with hunter kill statistics. Once you do the math you can see that a single wolf eats a ton of meat every year, that being 5-10 pounds of meat a day. It hunts daily every day of the year, it has no limited or regulated season the way human hunters do and it takes a lot of wild game to fill up just one wolf thus decreasing a species population quickly. Hunters have seasons that are strategically set to make sure population reproduction is not effected drastically.

The following factors are responsible for their decline. Hunting, loss of habitat, and just plain apathy on part of the public to preserve the bio diversity of our land. During 1994/95, a total of 19,430 bear hunting licenses were issued to both residential and non-residential people. There were 3,790 so-called legal bear kills in BC alone. It is estimated that out of every one legally killed bear be it grizzly or black two are killed illegally by poachers primarily just for their paws, head, gall bladder, and reproductive organs.