Predators: Pivotal Role, yet Increasingly Imperiled
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Two distinct, loud “thumps”—that is how, in a September 27, 2014, Facebook post, the president of Lobo Watch, an anti-wolf organization, described the sound when his minivan struck two wolves chasing an elk calf traversing I-90 in remote western Montana. He claimed it was an “accident,” but admits to hitting the accelerator in order to “save that calf.” The outcome was predictable. According to his account, one wolf died on the road shoulder while the other, with a badly broken leg, was observed traversing the ridgeline in obvious distress. The post became fodder for Montana media and the incident was investigated by Montana authorities who, notwithstandingthe perpetrator’s own admissions on Facebook and to local media, found no evidence that any wolves were ever struck.
Only days before, on September 24, US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson restored Endangered Species Act protections to Wyoming’s wolves when she found that the US Fish and Wildlife Service acted arbitrarily and capriciously in relying on the nonbinding promises of Wyoming officials to maintain a particular number of wolves in the state. Wyoming’s now invalidated wolf management plan permitted a shoot-on-sight policy for wolves in a majority of the state.
Earlier that month, the National Park Service in Alaska—presumably fed up with the state’s anti-predator policies—proposed a ban on the baiting of brown bears, the hunting of wolves and coyotes during the denning and pupping period, and the use of artificial lights to shoot black bear mothers and their cubs at den sites within national preserves in Alaska. Though these unethical practices had been illegal under state law, the Alaska Board of Game recently approved them as part of its decades-long efforts to reduce predators to increase numbers of more popular game animals for hunters.
Humans have conflicting attitudes toward predators. ...
The folly of this long-held attitude has been in evidence for some time. In the early 1900s, on the Kaibab Plateau in northern Arizona, a coalition of federal and state agents agreed to implement a US Forest Service policy to exterminate predators in an effort to protect more desired
species like elk, deer, and bighorn sheep. By 1920, the armed agents had eliminated most mountain lions, bobcats, wolves and coyotes from the Plateau. Without predators to
constrain their numbers, however, mule deer populations grew exponentially, consumed all of the available food, and then tens of thousands died from starvation. It was around this time that scientists began to reconsider the value of predators. ...
https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/articles/14FallQ-FinalWeb.pdf
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