(no subject)
If you haven’t heard, Minnesota and Wisconsin are the two newest of the lower 48 states to allow limited wolf hunting. These join Wyoming, Montana and Idaho in allowing legal wolf hunting seasons as of 2012.
I have read about the issue, both from the side of conservationists and environmentalists, and from hunters. While I understand that the wolf populations in these states are healthier than they have been in decades, I am not convinced that open seasons are a good idea yet. For one, the pressure to open seasons seems to be predominantly spearheaded by hunting and trapping interests, as opposed to being recommended primarily by wildlife biologists who have been studying the wolves. While some states will be putting money raised from selling tags toward protecting the remaining wolves, I remain skeptical about the driving forces behind using an open season as opposed to hunting primarily enacted by paid state employees to control the populations.
Additionally, while the population estimates range from the hundreds as in Montana and Idaho to up to 3,000 in Minnesota, these are estimates only. Even if they’re accurate, they don’t take into account the possibility of an epidemic decimating populations, for example canine distemper ravaging new litters of wolf pups. Even with hunting wolves will come into greater contact with domestic dogs and have a higher rate of contracting canine illnesses from them. I do not wish to see the wolves that have so recently regained some of their ancestral territories suddenly crash in numbers again. We are still seeing how reintroduction affects both the wolves and the ecosystems they live in, and I feel that the open seasons may be premature.
We have not yet had sufficient time to see long-term effects of reintroduction, and hunting is an additional factor that could affect studies. Some of this is because of the changes the death of a single wolf can have on the dynamics of an entire pack, which can affect the integrity of studies of a pack. Additionally, we are still seeing how the rest of an ecosystem reacts, in large ways and small, to the reintroduction of wolves. The amount of time wolves have been in their newly reacquired territories is relatively brief in the grand scheme of things, and I do not feel there has been enough time to assess the effects without the additional stress and other external factors introduced by widespread hunting.
I have not yet seen hides from the lower 48 states commercially available, at least not from the sources I work with. However, should they become more commonly available, I will not be incorporating them into my work. Almost all of my wolves are from subsistence hunters in Canada, where the estimated population ranges from 50,000 – 60,000. A much smaller number come from Alaska, whose population is estimated around 7,000. Both of these populations have remained stable even with hunting, and are in places where wolves were never completely exterminated and therefore remained part of the living ecosystem to some degree.
I will still work on a hide legally taken from the lower 48 if it is given to me to customize, but I do not wish to support wolf hunting in these states. For now it is largely a moot point due to the dearth of available hides from these states, but I wanted to make my position clear in light of the recent news about Minnesota and Wisconsin.
I have read about the issue, both from the side of conservationists and environmentalists, and from hunters. While I understand that the wolf populations in these states are healthier than they have been in decades, I am not convinced that open seasons are a good idea yet. For one, the pressure to open seasons seems to be predominantly spearheaded by hunting and trapping interests, as opposed to being recommended primarily by wildlife biologists who have been studying the wolves. While some states will be putting money raised from selling tags toward protecting the remaining wolves, I remain skeptical about the driving forces behind using an open season as opposed to hunting primarily enacted by paid state employees to control the populations.
Additionally, while the population estimates range from the hundreds as in Montana and Idaho to up to 3,000 in Minnesota, these are estimates only. Even if they’re accurate, they don’t take into account the possibility of an epidemic decimating populations, for example canine distemper ravaging new litters of wolf pups. Even with hunting wolves will come into greater contact with domestic dogs and have a higher rate of contracting canine illnesses from them. I do not wish to see the wolves that have so recently regained some of their ancestral territories suddenly crash in numbers again. We are still seeing how reintroduction affects both the wolves and the ecosystems they live in, and I feel that the open seasons may be premature.
We have not yet had sufficient time to see long-term effects of reintroduction, and hunting is an additional factor that could affect studies. Some of this is because of the changes the death of a single wolf can have on the dynamics of an entire pack, which can affect the integrity of studies of a pack. Additionally, we are still seeing how the rest of an ecosystem reacts, in large ways and small, to the reintroduction of wolves. The amount of time wolves have been in their newly reacquired territories is relatively brief in the grand scheme of things, and I do not feel there has been enough time to assess the effects without the additional stress and other external factors introduced by widespread hunting.
I have not yet seen hides from the lower 48 states commercially available, at least not from the sources I work with. However, should they become more commonly available, I will not be incorporating them into my work. Almost all of my wolves are from subsistence hunters in Canada, where the estimated population ranges from 50,000 – 60,000. A much smaller number come from Alaska, whose population is estimated around 7,000. Both of these populations have remained stable even with hunting, and are in places where wolves were never completely exterminated and therefore remained part of the living ecosystem to some degree.
I will still work on a hide legally taken from the lower 48 if it is given to me to customize, but I do not wish to support wolf hunting in these states. For now it is largely a moot point due to the dearth of available hides from these states, but I wanted to make my position clear in light of the recent news about Minnesota and Wisconsin.