Don’t leave wolf hunting up to experts
Originally published in The Daily Sentinel
by Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila, Renee Seacor, and Michelle Lute
Dr. Francisco Santiago-Ávila is a Fellow and board member of PAN Works, as well as a staff member at both Project Coyote and The Rewilding Institute, two organizations working for a more wild and caring world. In this article, Fran and colleagues discuss wolves as complex beings; the cruel and rampant oppression of wolves by humans; the real ethics and science of wolf hunting; human responsibility; and why it is crucial that humans reform our ways of relating to and living among wolves.
So much misinformation around the ethics and science of wolf hunting exists that some confused folks seem to believe it is a legitimate “management” tool. However, current research on the topic points to this type of widespread killing as both unethical and exceedingly harmful to wolves, domestic animals and their human guardians.
Relating and coexisting with wolves should begin ethically, by acknowledging who wolves are and by questioning our self-assumed right to decide over their lives. Today, scientific evidence acknowledges wolves as feeling, thinking, socially complex beings who value their and their families’ wellbeing. Some Native American tribes have always acknowledged this understanding, and have structured their wolf policies around coexistence and reciprocity. But state agencies hardly ever acknowledge this best-available science, or its ethical implications. Instead, wolves are allowed to be oppressed simply because they are not human and humans hold all the power, despite all living beings sharing fundamental claims to life and wellbeing. Policies founded on such prejudice, dismissal and power asymmetries have only ever harmed the most vulnerable, animal and human alike.
There is also plenty of scientific evidence documenting the harms that may come from wolf hunting. Wolves self-regulate their populations, without any need for human intervention. Given their internal regulation, an “overpopulation” of wolves is scientifically unheard of, and clearly a value judgment by humans who would rather have fewer wolves on the landscape. Wolves know what they need and live sustainably; it is a fallacy that their numbers need to be “maintained.”
Nor is there any evidence that wolf hunting decreases wolf-human conflicts. On the contrary, wolf hunting will likely create problems that did not exist in the first place. Wolf killing disrupts the social stability that allows for their cooperation and self-regulation. Hunting causes the break-up of wolf family groups necessary for taking down large wild prey, which in turns leads to some wolves shifting from wild to easier domestic prey. Hence, wolf hunting would increase harms to wolves, domestic animals and their guardians.
Additionally, although wolves regulate wild ungulates through predation, there is no evidence that wolves threaten healthy wild ungulate populations. In fact, a recent review suggests predator removal has negligible, maybe even negative, effects on wild ungulate populations. Wolves have also been shown to reduce the prevalence of deer-vehicle collisions and illnesses such as Chronic Wasting Disease, in addition to the substantial evidence linking wolves to positive ecosystem effects by reducing and redistributing ungulate grazing and browsing. Wolf hunting would imperil all those ecological benefits.
Given the above, hunting’s remaining goal seems to be to manage the humans that want to experience killing wolves, whether it’s called “trophy hunting” or “management.” But, many studies also document how allowing humans to kill wolves does not appease or mitigate them. On the contrary, allowing legal killing of wolves has been repeatedly associated with increased intolerance, increased reports of conflicts and increased wolf-poaching — the highest cause of wolf deaths in the U.S. That means wolf killing does not “manage” wolf killers. It actually emboldens them by signaling that wolves are not as valued as much as when they are protected.
Despite the weight of evidence on the above issues, state agencies generally dismiss it, and most of it is not even included in wolf management plans. This happens because, and this is critical to understand, agency experts are not “neutral” or “objective” on wildlife issues.
It is well-evidenced that agency staff hold more utilitarian, dominating views toward wildlife than the general public, and that their policy recommendations are biased by their professional affiliation, usually toward fewer protections. This bias exposes not only untrustworthy “expertise” within agencies, but also the prejudices and human exceptionalism that chokes what could be reciprocal, caring relationships to wildlife that benefit us all.
Importantly, most scientists are not trained to make ethical decisions, and all policy, such as decisions about whether or not to kill wolves, is ethical. It is because of these issues that agency scientists should restrict themselves to providing the most accurate information (which needs improvement), rather than suggesting what ought to be done.
Wolf hunting is not a question for science, but for ethics. Wolves have their own lives and happiness, and contribute greatly to our community of life. They should be considered and respected as community members, rather than killed based on misinformation, recreation or prejudices.
Kim Hightower is the communications specialist for PAN Works.
Please visit PAN Works for more about our work on ethics and animal wellbeing.
