What arguments exist against reintroducing wolves/grizzlies to the American West? I’m under the impression most cons surround the ranching industry but what other organizations are reluctant to see the predators come back? I am aware that urbanized habitat is a major issue which would get in the way of successful reintroduction, but it seems like there is still plenty of room throughout the relatively unpopulated Rocky Mountains to support a considerable healthy population of these critters. Cougars, black bears and coyotes already run the forest, why not bigger bears and bigger dogs (I’m not sure tigers would be a good fit)?
As for ranchers: just what kind of money are we talking about in the way of lost livestock? What measures exist to verify and compensate for predator-related losses? And (this is where the fun begins) what responsibility does state or federal government have to ranchers for business lost as the result of a measure designed to rehabilitate an ecosystem?
Just a suggestion, why don’t you go to any of the major Montana newspapers (Missoula, Billings, Bozeman) and enter the search term, “wolf”? That will answer a lot of your questions.
Wikipedia also has a good article on wolf reintroduction.
whistlepig, whose bumper sticker reads, “I wish wolves ate Californians.”
I can see no real argument in favor of reintroduction outside of the fact that they used to exist in these areas and therefore should do so again. That, to me, is pretty groundless. These predators disappeared a century or so ago. People and animals have adapted to their absence. There is no good reason to reintroduce them. The move to do so comes from people who do not live in these areas because it somehow makes them feel good to know these predators are now running free. Giving urban liberals a warm and fuzzy feeling is a bad way to set outdoor policy.
Here’s an older thread where the control of wolves in Idaho was discussed. You might be able to glean some of the arguments and some possible counters there:
The other arguement is that they are cool to see in the wild. Wolf-watching has become a big tourist industry in Yellowstone National Park. Two winters ago, on a -20 degree farenheit day, I counted about 150 wolf watchers in the 28 miles between Mammoth and Cooke City. Most were on a package tour.
Interestingly, the ratio of watchers to wolves was about 30:1, and then only if you liked looking at a sleeping pack a mile way through a spotting scope.
I forgot about grizzlies. The ranching argument is pretty much the same: “Ranchers have a hard enough time surviving economically without having the government introduce predators that increase our losses.”
The other argument against grizzles is that they eat people. People who are used to camping, fishing and hunting in areas without grizzlies don’t want that added risk when they go in the woods, or even in their yard for people who live in very rural areas.
Well, no, it comes from the desire to introduce independent breeding populations that are geographically diverse in order to sustain sufficient genetic diversity to ensure the continued health of the species. That being said, reintroduction of species, particularly keystone predators which have gone extinct, can produce a watershed of effects on other species, and despite the desire to maintain them in their native habitat and behaviors they’ll often develop different–and often co-dependent–methods of hunting and foraging. There are good reasons to do this, but the execution isn’t always well thought out.
I wonder if wolves would compete with grizzlies. While I know that they are omnivores, I wouldn’t mind increasing the wolf population, who attack humans rarely if at all, at the expense of the brown, or even black, bear, for purely selfish reasons.
The brown, grizzly, or Kodiak bear (Ursus arctos) rarely attacks people without provocation or stimulation and almost never for the purpose of predation. The case of Timothy Treadwell (the self-proclaimed “Grizzly Man” who was the focus of the eponymous Herzog documentary) was an exceptional one, exacerbated by the fact that he and his girlfriend remained in which bears who were not habituated to human beings were migrating toward traditional hibernation grounds, and it’s worth noting that Treadwell–incautious to the point of being utterly foolhardy, and a certifiable loon to boot–survived the previous eleven summers in the Alaskan wilderness in daily contact with grizzlies without incident.
Black bears (U. americanus), while generally more retreating than browns and not demonstrating the cub defense behaviors that browns are typically known for, are actually more prone to predatory behavior toward humans, although this is observed in a rate of about 1:600,000 bears. Hemlock Farms, Pennsylvania, has a permanent population of around 20 bears, which live immediately in and around the town, often hibernating under porches, and has yet to have a single bear attack. Predatory bear attacks are far more rare than unprovoked attacks by the domestic dog, and are pretty much a nonissue with regard to the advisability of settling populations of bears.
On the other hand, bears require a significant amount of territory and browns will displace the smaller black bears where their territories cross, as well as compete with other species for the sparse resources, and of course the proximity to civilization means that they, like other wild animals, will learn to forage off of human refuse, so population and boundary control is a must.
At a species level, they don’t compete to kill each other. Both grizzlies and wolves have increased in number in Yellowstone National Park since reintroduction.
Um, yeah, but the grizz still attacks. There were two incidents on Saturday in the Yellowstone ecosystem, both were bow hunters walking in griz territory. In one instance, the hunter held still when the bear went by with cubs. The bear went out of sight then doubled-back and attacked the hunter. His presence might have been, “stimulation” but he was still attacked. This same bear is believed to have attacked another hunter several weeks ago.
If grizzlies attack bow-hunters, that’s a good reason for introducing more grizzlies, in my opinion.
Wolves are good for the overall balance of wildlife (I was in Yellowstone last month and was lucky enough to see three wolf-packs). They are an apex predator that helps control the populations of prey species - and they do it by eliminating the weak and sick (unlike hunters, who prefer to kill the biggest and healthiest specimens).
Outside of protected areas like Yellowstone, there certainly needs to be a program in place to protect the livelihoods of ranchers. There is no doubt that wolves will take some domestic animals. This can be handled with appropriate compensation programs. You can’t just tell people that their livelihood must suffer for the common good of biodiversity - their concerns must be addressed in some way.
Wolves apparently also promote healthy forests. I read an article where they interviewed park rangers who had noticed that there were no young trees anymore. After the reintroduction of wolf packs, they realized that the caribou, in the absence of predators, were eating all the saplings during the winter with no compunctions at all. After the reintroduction of wolves, the caribou had to be more careful and stayed in areas where there were more complete sightlines. As a result, the forests are making a comeback. (Hundred year old trees are pretty to look at, but if no new trees make it past 2 years you eventually run out of the centenarians.)
So…ranchers and sports teams? Ranchers are in it for the money, wolf-people are in it for the ecosystem. So no biggie, we pay the ranchers for the occasional loss of an ecologically disruptive methane-producing fatball and they go away happy.
(bolding mine), also from this article it is insinuated that Scandinavian resistance to wolves is headed up by hunters who don’t want to have to compete with wolves. Sounds like a short-sighted argument to me.
That would be a horrible way to go. I can’t find numbers on bears, but I do know that so far in 2007 6 people in the US have had their brains eaten after swimming in amoeba-infested waters. Haven’t seen many bear stories in the news lately. In terms of “relative threat” I’m thinking we lose more people to amoebas; more bears to people per year than the other way ‘round, and more people to people for that matter. I splash urine on this argument.
So, why not flesh out these ideas some so that someone doesn’t think you’re just hicks who sneer at ideas that are different from your own? Have you any fact & logic-based arguments against reintroduction of predators or are you relying solely on sensationalist tabloid scribblings by authors who get a large part of their subscription earnings from a ranching culture that raises inbred and pale imunologically-compromised pseudocattle?
I see bloated herds of elk and mule deer here in Colorado that are decimating their own range, dying of starvation or chronic wasting disease and which are viewed by many locals as a nuisance—to traffic, to yards, to orchards…Rats With Antlers. Hunters are no good at fixing the problem; as was mentioned earlier, they take out the healthiest and are instructed to NOT cull anything that looks sick. Can’t run more counter to nature than that now, can you? Large predators keep the cervid populations in check, prey on the exploding numbers of small predators (coyotes & foxes) which in their turn compete against birds of prey, etc… I truly thank whistlepig and Renob for their contributions here, but I would think that it would be yuppies who would be happy to see the elimination of the biodiversity which shits on their cars and eats their yards. Rural folks, on the other hand, I would think would want to see nature in balance. So I’m confused even more now. Surely there is more behind opposing predator species than simply the cost of some cattle? Because that makes the opposition money-based, which is really no different from knocking down 20,000 acres of forest for a new mega mall for the yuppies to play in.
Again, one attack out of how many encounters? And against an individual the bear may well have recognized as being a potential threat to her offspring. Lynn Rogers has been running tours in Katmai National Park for a number of years in which tours are taken up on the beach in close proximity to grizzlies who are foraging for shellfish, including sows and cubs, with nary an incident.
Curiously, you decry the danger of bears, which result in at most a handful of incidents a year, but say nothing about moose which are known to regularly attack people, particularly in mating season. The real problem with repopulating Yellowstone is that the bears will become habituated to people and will learn to forage off of the waste or unprotected food that careless tourists leave about, and then people will behave stupidly around them, resulting in needless encounters. This is more of a problem with people rather than bears.
A 240 grain soft point out of a 6"+ barrel is adequate for bear given good shot placement. I wouldn’t place much faith in one of those cut-down N-frame Smith & Wesson snubbies or the Ruger Alaskan, although you might set the bear on fire if you’re at close range owing to how much still-combusting propellant is flying out of the muzzle. Guides and trappers who expect to cross paths with grizzlies in remote areas and during the pre-hibernation feeding season (when they’re most prone to aggression) generally carry something like a .300/7mm Magnum-chambered rifle or a shotgun with 3" slug shells. If a bear is seriously charging you you’ll have, at best, one chance.
But again, bear attacks are rare; rarely than lightning strikes or shark attacks, and far rarer automobile accidents, domestic dog attacks, and accidental home electrocution.
I just couldn’t let this go by without comment. You are welcome to disagree with hunting if you want to, and I’ll respect *rational * arguments against practices you personally dislike, but the passive-agressive wish that more bears would attack more hunters to satisfy your personal preferences is rather vile, IMHO.