For over two decades, Douglas Smith and successive
teams of researchers have watched wildlife predators hunting for prey in
Yellowstone.
The national park’s senior wolf biologist says
there is no mistaking the way that lobos identify and target elk. To the human
eye, an individual wapiti might appear perfectly healthy yet there is
something—almost a sixth sense— that catches the attention of discriminating
pack members searching for their next meal.
It might be an elk with arthritis carrying a slight gimp in its gait, or maybe a hint of winter-worn fatigue, a slowness brought
on by advancing old age or illness, or perhaps naïve behavior exhibited by the
young.
There is no doubt, based on the accrued record of
wolf behavior documented in Yellowstone—and the significant body of scientific
accounts logged across the continent—that under normal conditions, wolves
key-in on prey that is meek, infirmed or vulnerable.
“Wolves pick up on stuff we can’t see. They are
most efficient at exploiting weaknesses in prey because their survival depends
on it,” Smith told me recently. “They are predisposed, by instinct and learned
behavior, to focus first on animals that are easier to kill rather than those
living at the height of their physical strength.”
Does having predators on the landscape—wolves,
bears, mountain lions and coyotes— provide a protective gauntlet that can help
slow the spread and prevalence of deadly diseases?
In particular, with ultra-lethal Chronic Wasting
Disease now invading the most wildlife-rich ecosystem in America’s Lower 48
states and spreading coast to coast, are these often maligned meat-eaters,
frequently dismissed as worthless vermin in western states, actually important
natural allies in battling CWD?
“Wolves pick up on stuff we can’t see. They are most efficient at exploiting weaknesses in prey because their survival depends on it. They are predisposed, by instinct and learned behavior, to focus first on animals that are easier to kill rather than those living at the height of their physical strength.” —Yellowstone's chief wolf biologist Douglas Smith
While the data and the assessments of most
scientists clearly suggests yes, there remains fierce resistance by some to
acknowledge the beneficial roles predators play. At the recent year-end meeting of the Montana
Fish and Game Commission, anti-predator biases were on full display, especially
toward wolves. They surfaced as the commission pondered its next move in
confronting CWD which this autumn entered Montana via sick wild deer for the
first time in state history.
Weeks earlier, Ken McDonald, wildlife bureau chief
at the Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Department, raised eyebrows when he
claimed the advantages predators bring in weeding out sick prey is merely
theoretical and unproved. Dismissing the notion of wolves as effective
disease-fighters, he asserted that in order for lobos to truly make a
difference in slowing CWD’s advance, they would need to exist in such high numbers
that it would be socially unacceptable to humans, namely ranchers and hunters.
In terms of Montana’s strategy for dealing with CWD
spread in the state through sick wildlife entering via Wyoming from the south
and Canada to the north, McDonald said the state’s primary method of
confronting disease will involve enlisting hunters to aggressively harvest
animals in emerging CWD endemic zones. The state recently approved the issuance
of 1,200 additional B tags to kill deer in areas east of Red Lodge, Montana (the
northeast corner of Greater Yellowstone) where six dead deer have turned up CWD
positive out of 1300 tested there—four mule deer bucks, a mule deer doe and a white-tailed doe.
Many claim McDonald’s characterization of
wolves demonstrates not only a personal anti-wolf bias, which also permeates the
thinking of the department, but it shows a lack of understanding and
appreciation for the natural history of the species. In other words, it denies
what the very essence of a wolf is.
“I was
disappointed with Ken McDonald’s nonsensical bureaucratic response,”
conservationist and professional biologist Dr. Gary J. Wolfe wrote recently in
comments that were widely circulated.
Wolfe is
a former Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks Commissioner appointed by Gov. Steve
Bullock. Notably, he is also the former project leader of the CWD Alliance
founded by a number of prominent sportsmen’s’ groups and former national
president and CEO of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for 15 years. He is widely respected in hunting circles.
“While I don’t think any of us large carnivore
proponents are saying that wolf predation will prevent CWD, or totally
eliminate it from infected herds, it is ecologically irresponsible to not
consider the very real possibility that wolves can slow the spread of CWD and
reduce its prevalence in infected herds,” Wolfe says. “We should consider
wolves to be ‘CWD border guards,’ adjust wolf hunting seasons accordingly, and
let wolves do their job of helping to cull infirm animals from the herds.”
“While I don’t think any of us large carnivore proponents are saying that wolf predation will prevent CWD, or totally eliminate it from infected herds, it is ecologically irresponsible to not consider the very real possibility that wolves can slow the spread of CWD and reduce its prevalence in infected herds. We should consider wolves to be ‘CWD border guards,’ adjust wolf hunting seasons accordingly, and let wolves do their job of helping to cull infirm animals from the herds.” —biologist Gary Wolfe, former Montana wildlife commissioner and former CEO/president of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
Strong
evidence seems to bear him out. Not only do predators stalking large game
species target weak animals, they can mitigate the impact of disease outbreaks,
experts say. Further, by removing sick prey species, predators could, over
time, though this is unproved, make herds more resilient and stronger, less
susceptible to disease.
While
some may doubt this premise, illustrated in literature below, no one has
provided evidence suggesting that having robust and stable numbers of predators
will not aid in confronting the most rapidly spreading and fearsome new disease
in North America.
° ° °
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is a region unparalleled
in the Lower 48 states. It is known globally as America’s Serengeti for having
its full original complement of mammal and bird species, including large native
predators, that were here when Europeans arrived on the continent in the late
15th century. Plus, the landscape these animals inhabit, a 22.5-million-acre
mixture of private and mostly public land, is intact—meaning not fragmented and
enabling migrations of elk, deer and pronghorn (antelope) to occur and which do
not exist anywhere else.
Lloyd Dorsey, conservation director for the Sierra Club in
Wyoming, is a hunter and crusader against Wyoming’s operation of elk
feedgrounds. This autumn when we spoke about predators and CWD, he had just
returned from hunting in the Gros Ventre mountains east of the National Elk
Refuge. He told me of how on the morning that he glassed mule deer and bands of
elk, he found grizzly tracks in the snow and heard wolves howling a quarter
mile away.
Citing reams of scientific studies to back him up, Dorsey
says predators play an import ecological role in keeping prey species in check
and in serving as vanguards in removing sick animals. Greater Yellowstone’s
“predator guild” of wolves, grizzly and black bears, lions and coyotes, he
notes, also makes it a draw for wildlife watchers from around the world,
helping to fuel a $1-billion annual nature-tourism economy tied to the national
parks alone.
A disease like CWD that stands to significantly harm the
health of deer family members over time—deer, elk, and moose—also has
potentially grave implications for species that eat and scavenge their remains.
In many ways, the biological integrity of Greater Yellowstone’s large mammal
populations depends upon the health of its ungulate herds and the biomass they
provide in sustaining other species large and small—those with fur and feathers
down to the microbial level. Diseases that threaten to dramatically diminish Greater Yellowstone’s ungulates could
have negative, far-reaching consequences for people and the environment.
To date, there is no evidence that CWD can infect
predators, humans or livestock, though geneticists who have studied the
molecular make-up of CWD prions [misshapen proteins] believe it could change.
And a recent study in Canada involving macaques exposed to CWD prions has
elevated concerns. Macaques are primates with genes similar to humans.
With CWD, Wyoming is perilously burning the candle
at both ends and it has implications for Montana and Idaho, Dorsey says.
Wyoming and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continue to knowingly operate feedgrounds [read parts One, Two and
Three of MoJo’s series here] which makes the state and federal government guilty of game management
malpractice by setting up public wildlife for calamity, he says.
At the same time, Wyoming persists in destroying a
natural ally—wolves—based upon no solid reason other than traditional cultural
animosity toward these archetypal animals that earlier generations of settlers
took great delight in eradicating to make way for livestock.
“Our understanding of wolves has broadened in an age of
greater scientific and ecological awareness,” Dorsey told me. “They are not the
animals of menacing myth they were portrayed to be in fairy tales. We can—and should—co-exist with them for
mutual benefit.”
Nonetheless, Wyoming—along with Alaska—is known for
having the most notoriously-hostile attitude toward wolves in America. There,
in over 85 percent of the state, lobos, like coyotes, can be killed year-round
for any reason, no questions asked. Only in the northwest corner of Wyoming
within the vicinity of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks are wolves
classified as a game animal and even there it is state policy to keep their
numbers suppressed to please outfitters, guides and ranchers.
Beyond that small zone, they are classified as
“predators” and treated as vermin. They can be trapped, poisoned, shot at any
and all hours of the day, and targeted by aerial gunners in aircraft. Even if
they are not threatening livestock, it’s open season on wolves.
The profound irony is that just as Wyoming condones
a campaign of re-eradication against wolves, CWD has been rapidly spreading
westward, faster than anyone expected across the state via infected mule and
white-tailed deer.
Perfect conditions to amplify a CWD pandemic, experts say, exist on the National Elk Refuge and 22 elk feedgrounds
operated by the state of Wyoming, many of them on U.S. Forest Service land.
CWD’s arrival is considered imminent. When the
disease lands in the Wyoming feedgrounds, where more than 20,000 elk are
unnaturally concentrated during winters, CWD is expected to not only take hold
but have its spread accelerated due to the widely-condemned management practice
of bunching up wapiti. The conditions there are similar to game farms where CWD
infections have been devastating.
This point was made in a letter sent December 7, 2017 from the Montana state wildlife commission (read it at bottom of this story] to counterparts in Wyoming,
asking the state to take steps to shut down feeding.
"We respect the fact that how Wyoming manages its
affairs is up to Wyoming. However, Montana’s
ability to combat CWD will depend upon decisions that Wyoming makes about its
wildlife management. Over the long-term,
the feed grounds make your wildlife populations less healthy, less stable, and
much more vulnerable to a catastrophic disease event," the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission wrote. "We implore you to begin the process of looking
at alternatives to the present management regime that unnaturally concentrates
wildlife in feed grounds each winter and increases the pace at which CWD
infects both states’ wildlife populations."
The letter ends with this warning: "If we do not address CWD, we will all be culpable in leaving a greatly devalued landscape to future generations." Culpable is a word with many connotations.
While
Montana has escaped the intense scrutiny and public rebuke aimed at Wyoming
over its operation of feedgrounds and controversial management of wolves, Wolfe
and others say Montana isn’t much better with regard to predators.
Recently, another case of CWD was confirmed in a deer near Chester along Montana’s Hi-Line south of Canada.
Currently,
only three wolf management units in Montana have strict quotas (two located
north of Yellowstone and one west of Glacier National Park). But all others
allow unlimited wolf harvest “which is probably not the best ecological
strategy for containing CWD,” Wolfe noted. “As a wildlife biologist who spent
several years working on the CWD issue, I believe wolf predation is an
important tool that needs to be recognized and effectively utilized, along with
other tools, as part of Montana’s CWD management plan.”
Wolves, Wolfe says, ought to have their
numbers safeguarded in areas that represent the front line of disease. Stable
packs can serve as a barrier. Wolf management units (WMUs) that border CWD infected areas (or have CWD
infected herds within the WMU) should have conservative wolf harvest quotas, he
notes. Currently, only three WMUs have quotas (313 and 316 immediately
north of Yellowstone, and 110 west of Glacier). All others allow
unlimited wolf harvest.
When the
argument has been presented to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, it has
been met with deaf ears, though Dr. Mary Wood, the state wildlife veterinarian
noted in 2016 that predators can play a beneficial role.
° ° °
Humans can invent any fairy-tale-reason they want
to despise wolves and justify their elimination, but that doesn’t change the
fundamental time-tested nature of the species, says Kevin Van Tighem, a hunter
and former superintendent of Banff National Park in Alberta’s Canadian
Rockies. “I don’t know of a single
credible biologist who would argue that wolves, along with other predators and
scavengers, aren’t important tools in devising sound strategies for dealing
with CWD.” Van Tighem says it can be rationally argued that wolves provide the
best line of defense since they are confronting infected animals.
Van Tighem told me, just as a dozen other
scientists and land managers who hunt have—that once CWD is confirmed in the
places where they go afield, they will no longer eat game meat from that area
and may stop hunting altogether.
Dr. L.
David Mech, the eminent American wolf biologist, has authored or contributed to hundreds of
peer-reviewed scientific papers on wolves and prey. We’ve been talking about
wolves since the late 1980s when he came to Yellowstone in the years before
lobos were reintroduced. There’s no tangible argument he’s seen that suggests
wolves wouldn’t be useful in combatting CWD.
“In
the main, the preponderance of scientific evidence supports the view that
wolves generally kill the old, the young, the sick and the weak,” Mech said.
“There’s so much documented field data behind it.”
He then
made a point that exposes the limitations of relying on human hunters and
sharpshooters alone to remove suspected CWD carriers. Wolves appear to target sick animals that, to
the human eye, exhibit no overt symptoms of disease.
“There’s
a lot more going on than we can detect,” Mech said. “They are killing animals
that most people would say, ‘That animal looks pretty healthy to me,’ but in
fact it isn’t.” Mech stays out of the political fray, though he says the
value of predators is clear. “Based upon everything I’ve seen over the
course of my career, I generally stand behind the assertion that wolves make
prey populations healthier,” he said. “The evidence to support it is
overwhelming.”
In Wolves on the Hunt: The Behavior of Wolves
Hunting Wild Prey, Mech, Doug Smith and co-author/editor Daniel R. MacNulty
undertook an exhaustive, unprecedented review of scientific studies and
observations related to wolf behavior. They cite example after example of how
wolves choose prey. They use
intricately-detailed observations based on the work of park ecologist Rick
McIntyre and colleagues who have tracked the wolves of Yellowstone’s Lamar
Valley for decades. They also point to hours upon hours of accumulated video
footage amassed by award-winning wildlife cinematographer Robert Landis who has
recorded numerous wolf predation incidents in Yellowstone.
“Suffice it to say here, in summer, that it is well
documented…that wolves generally kill calves, fawns and older members of prey
populations along with individuals that are diseased, disabled, or in poor
conditions or that have various abnormalities,” the authors noted. “These types
of individuals are physically less able to withstand long and persistent
attacks like more healthy animals can.”
In 2003, then
Denver Post reporter Theo Stein interviewed scientists about CWD spreading
though deer and elk in Colorado. Dr. Valerius Geist, who briefly became a
darling of anti-wolfers when he raised the issue of tapeworms, made this
assertion about the significance of wolves in containing CWD spread via
proteins called prions. “Wolves will certainly bring the disease to a halt,”
Geist said. “They will remove infected individuals and clean up carcasses that
could transmit the disease.”
The impacts of
historic predator-killing campaigns have been documented.
Stein added that
“Geist and Princeton University biologist Andrew Dobson theorize that killing
off the wolf allowed CWD to take hold in the first place.” Further, the Chronic
Wasting Disease Alliance observed, “The spread of chronic wasting disease
toward Yellowstone’s famed game herds alarms wildlife lovers, but two top
researchers think biologists will discover a powerful ally in an old frontier
villain. The wolf.”
Be it wolf, mountain lion, bear or coyote, each
different predator species has different approaches to both taking prey and
scavenging. Besides the significant body of evidence in the Mech-Smith MacNulty
book, there is a lot of brainpower that has been applied to thinking how
predators could help head off CWD.
Mountain lions are known for being ambush
predators, lying in wait to target mule and white-tailed deer. Wolves and
coyotes are “coursers” meaning they chase prey across open ground. Grizzlies
and black bears take elk calves and deer fawns and, like the others, feast upon
freshly killed carcasses, cleaning them down to the bone. Of note is that Mech
and others have documented that wolves, for example, take down larger numbers
of deer bucks, which, according to CWD researchers, also have a higher level of
CWD prevalence in wild herds.
“In the main, the preponderance of scientific evidence supports the view that wolves generally kill the old, the young, the sick and the weak. Based upon everything I’ve seen over the course of my career, I generally stand behind the assertion that wolves make prey populations healthier. The evidence to support it is overwhelming.” —Renowned American wolf biologist L. David Mech
In a 2010 peer-reviewed journal article, “Mountain
lions prey selectively on prion-infected mule deer,” lead
author Caroline E. Krumm with the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s scientific
research center and four colleagues noted how cougars appeared to select for
CWD-infected deer because they were easier to fell. Their research examined 108
kill sites where the big cats ambushed deer.
“From the observations gathered across several
studies, we hypothesize that although much of the ‘selection’ we observed may
be attributed to infected mule deer being less vigilant or fit and thus
relatively vulnerable to ‘attack’ of one kind or another, mountain lions may
also learn to recognize and more actively target diseased deer,” they wrote.
Echoing Mech’s observations, they pointed out
“other studies indicate that coursing predators like wolves and coyotes select
prey disproportionately if they appear impaired by malnutrition, age or
disease.”
Just as other scientists have warned that once CWD
becomes firmly established in wildlife population and its effects over time can
be dire, Krumm and co-authors suggested predators can help minimize prion
contamination.
“Although theory suggests that removing infected
animals could ‘sanitize’ and slow the rate of prion transmission, prevalence
can be remarkably high in mule deer populations preyed upon by mountain lions.
Prion transmission among deer can occur via several mechanisms, including
indirect transmission from exposure to prions in the environment,” they stated.
“We observed that mountain lions typically consumed greater than 85 percent of
a deer carcass, often including brain tissue, and this may be beneficial in
decreasing prion contamination at kill sites. However, the extent to which
selective predation by mountain lions alters the dynamics of prion disease
epidemics in natural mule deer populations remains unclear.”
That’s why it’s important to have the full
predator-guild present, perpetually seeking out sick animals in different ways,
in different parts of the landscape.
There, he created a simulation based upon meat
consumption necessary to sustain a group of wolves and factoring the likelihood
they would first target sick animals. Just as experts who deal with epizootic
diseases warn that the Wyoming feedgrounds represent the worst possible
conditions for CWD to take hold, likely to unnaturally accelerate an outbreak,
wildlife predators can serve as a powerful counterbalance.
Hobbs lays out how it works. “Increased mortality
rates [by predators] in diseased populations can retard disease transmission
and reduce disease prevalence. Increasing mortality slows transmission via two
mechanisms. First, it reduces the average lifetime of infected individuals.
Reduced lifespan, in turn can compress the time interval when animals are
infectious, thereby reducing the number of infections produced per infected
individual,” he writes. “The effect of reduced intervals of infectivity is
amplified by reductions in population density that occur as mortality
increases, reductions that cause declines in the number of contacts between
infected and susceptible individuals. Both of these mechanisms retard the
transmission of disease. If these mechanisms cause the number of new infections
produced per infected individual to fall below one, then the disease will be
eradicated from the population.”
Granted, his analysis focused on Rocky Mountain
National Park and Colorado where there is today a population-level outbreak of
CWD under way and where there are no wolves. Rocky
Mountain has densities of wapiti approaching 115 elk per square
kilometer. The unnatural densities of elk on the Elk Refuge and Wyoming
feedgrounds, Dorsey notes, are orders of magnitude greater, literally thousands
of elk per square kilometer. It means that should CWD take hold, predators
would be even more important in aiding to stop a potentially virulent spread.
According to one study, CWD
rates in Rocky Mountain were as low as one percent in the early 1990s.
Since 2008, the proportion of female elk infected with CWD in the park has
fluctuated between six and 13 percent. CWD is today the leading cause of death
in adult female elk.
Despite claims that predators decimate big game herds,
there is, in fact, little evidence to back up those assertions, broadly
speaking. It’s true that under certain circumstances the presence of predators
can result in a significant population decline compared to numbers of ungulates
present after species like wolves were eradicated. However, predator sinks are gross anomalies
in the Rocky Mountain West; moreover, ecosystems are dynamic and populations of
all species are always in some kind of flux.
Again, based upon surveys compiled by state wildlife
agencies in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, most elk hunting units—with wolves
inside them—are at, close to, or above desired population goals for
wapiti. Hunter success is high,
especially for hunters willing to work at stalking their prey.
Outfitters/guides throughout the tri-state region tout hunter success and boast
of having happy customers.
What anti-predator voices never acknowledge is that the
very prey species they covet—large, muscular bull elk and deer bucks—are
products of thousands of years of evolution and pressure applied by predators,
ecologists note. Pronghorn (antelope) on the prairies are fleet of foot
because, as a result of survival of the fittest, they became biologically
engineered to outrun North America’s version of African cheetahs before those
big cats went extinct.
McDonald of Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks has asserted
that human hunters will be deployed to eliminate CWD. In Wisconsin, the state has spent millions of
dollars depopulating areas of white-tail deer and enlisted hunters to remove
animals in an effort to knock CWD back, all to no avail. CWD has spread from
Wisconsin into both Minnesota and Michigan.
In 2011, Dr. Margaret Wild collaborated with Hobbs
and two other authors on a paper, “The Role of Predation in Disease Control: A
Comparison of Selective and Nonselective Removal on Prion Disease Dynamics in
Deer.” This study was based on a model
that examined the likely effects of wolf predation on CWD-infected deer and
holds possible implications for states in the Upper Midwest. The simulation
noted that wolves could prevent CWD from emerging at the population level and
proliferating. Crucial is allowing
predators to perform their role in the early stages of the disease’s arrival.
“Thus far, control strategies relying on hunting or
culling by humans to lower deer numbers and subsequently CWD prevalence have
not yielded demonstrable effects,” they wrote, explaining that human hunters
only remove sick deer randomly while predators actively seek out the
infirmed.
“Doubling the vulnerability of
infected animals to selective predation accelerated the rate of decline in
prevalence,” they noted, even encouraging the consideration of making sure
predator populations were healthy in the forward zones of disease progression.
"We suggest that as CWD distribution and wolf
range overlap in the future, wolf predation may suppress disease
emergence or limit prevalence," they added.
The noted American-Canadian mammal biologist Dr. Paul
Paquet has been monitoring the geographic expansion of CWD relative to the
presense of long-established wolf populations since the disease was first
confirmed in the wild decades ago.
“To date
and in general, CWD has not thrived where wolf populations are active, although
the disease has appeared on the margins of these populations. A simple mapping
of the distribution of wolves and CWD is very instructive," Paquet told Mountain Journal. “I have not mapped
the distribution of all large predators and CWD, but that would be an
instructive exercise. In particular, a comparison of diverse multi-prey and
multi-predator systems like Yellowstone with simpler systems like the Great
Lakes would of interest, as well as comparing the mix and densities of
predators with establishment of CWD.”
° ° °
Why is confronting anti-wolf bias as important as
the significant body of evidence pertaining to predators and CWD? Because the opinions that are informing
policy don’t align with reality.
Here, it is essential to provide some context of
wolf presence in the West, more than two decades after Canis lupus was reintroduced
to Yellowstone and the wilderness of central Idaho and since they have fanned
out across a much wider area, reaching Oregon and Washington and possibly opening
discussions of their return to Colorado.
In 2016, a record 243 livestock animals—154 cattle,
88 sheep, and a horse—were killed by wolves in Wyoming which a year ago had an
estimated minimum wolf population of 377. Montana’s wolf count is close to 500
and Idaho had 786 in 2015, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service.
The Fish and Wildlife Service no longer compiles a
regional report for the northern Rockies/Pacific Northwest since wolves were
removed from federal protection and management handed over to the states.
Wolves account for about 1 percent of total livestock losses. Noteworthy is that only 62 of the 300-plus wolf packs in the western U.S. were involved in livestock depredation and the majority of those cases involved only a handful of livestock depredations at most. “What it means is that four of every five packs are existing without incident,” former federal wolf biologist Michael Jimenez said.
Before he retired as the Fish and Wildlife
Service’s wolf field director, Michael Jimenez and I spoke annually about wolf
losses—real and imagined—and this gets at McDonald’s point about social
tolerance and its connection to political rhetoric.
In
April 2015, 36 Republican House members sent a letter to then Interior
Secretary Sally Jewell and Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe
demanding wolves be delisted across all of the Lower 48. “Since wolves were
first provided protections under the Endangered Species Act, uncontrolled and
unmanaged growth of wolf populations has resulted in devastating impacts on
hunting and ranching, as well as tragic losses to historically strong and
healthy livestock and wildlife populations,” those members of Congress wrote.
The
phrase “devastating impacts on hunting and ranching, as well as tragic loses to
historically strong and healthy livestock and wildlife populations” is, on the
face of it, a fabrication. How?
“
In one
of the last reports Jimenez compiled, he noted that at the end of 2014 there
were an estimated 1,800 wolves comprising roughly 313 packs. Across Wyoming,
Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington, all those wolves in that year were
confirmed to have killed a total of 140 cattle, 172 sheep, four dogs, one horse
and one donkey. In a vast region where there are millions of cattle, sheep,
dogs, horses and donkeys — and thousands of ranchers and farmers — is this what
members of Congress mean by “devastating” and “tragic”?
Across
the West, thousands upon thousands of domestic cows and sheep perish each year
from disease, weather, accidents, eating poisonous plants, lightning strikes
and predation of all kinds, including killing by feral dogs. Wolves account for
about 1 percent of total livestock losses. Noteworthy is that only 62 of the
300-plus wolf packs in the western U.S. were involved in livestock depredation and the majority of
those cases involved only a handful of livestock depredations at most. “What it
means is that four of every five packs are existing without incident,” Jimenez
said.
° ° °
Those who possess a disdain for wolves have, for
years, thrown up a series of theories, all either discredited or
unsubstantiated. The first was that
wolves would decimate big game herds. Fact: it hasn’t happened and most big game
populations in wolf country are at or above population objectives. Click here
to get the 2017 elk outlooks for Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Recently, an analysis conducted by the Washington
Department of Fish and Wildlife showed that wolves in the eastern part of that
state were not harming populations of deer, elk, moose and bighorn sheep.
Those who possess a disdain for wolves have, for years, thrown up a series of theories, all either discredited or unsubstantiated. The first was that wolves would decimate big game herds. Fact: it hasn’t happened and most big game populations in wolf country are at or above population objectives.
Another claim is the lobos reintroduced from Canada
were the “wrong subspecies” and substantially different from wolves that
existed in Greater Yellowstone and central Idaho prior to their extermination.
Fact: also not true. Click on video here that addresses that contention.
More recently, as those notions have been dismissed
as absurd, two new contentions have been advanced. There’s one claim that
wolves represent an imminent danger to humans, pets and wildlife health because
they carry Echinococcus granulosus, a tapeworm linked to hydatid disease. Not only is this dismissed as
untrue and fear-mongering, but the tapeworm is found widely in elk, deer and
moose. Hunters are advised to take precautions such as wearing gloves in field
dressing animals.
The latest unproved charge, raised again at the
Montana wildlife commission meeting, is that wolves may themselves be vectors
for spreading CWD because they eat disease-infected elk and deer and might
therefore disperse prions via their scat. Opinion is divided on whether prions,
being hardy agents, can survive passage through a wolf, or bear, coyote, or
mountain lion’s digestive track. It’s possible.
Nonetheless, ecologists say that the role of predators
in removing CWD-infected animals and “cleaning-up” carcasses by scavenging them
would more than likely offset any negative potential they have for dispersing
CWD more widely via scat. Migratory deer and elk already are already moving
hundreds of miles seasonally across and between vast expanses of land, shedding
CWD prions into the environment along the way via urine, feces, saliva and
decomposing tissue when they die.
Critics say the denial coming from western states
about the beneficial role predators can play in slowing the advance of CWD is
driven by a backward cultural mindset—reinforced by politicians who perpetuate
it to get elected—that has little or no scientific basis. In the case of CWD,
states that continue to adhere to anti-predator policies may, in fact, be
making disease impacts worse.
Adds Dorsey,
“At this urgent moment, when everyone is scrambling to do what’s
sensible, now is not the time to be killing off the very biological tools we
need.”
° ° °
CWD is literally at the gate of Yellowstone and its
arrival has park officials worried.
A decade ago, P.
J. White and Troy Davis provided an overview of CWD for an article that
appeared in the journal Yellowstone Science. Referencing the study by Wild and
Miller, and noting that wolves could have “potent effects” in tamping down CWD
prevalence, they wrote, “Wolves [in Yellowstone] are highly selective for elk
throughout the year and bears are highly selective of neonatal elk during
summer. If predators can detect CWD-infected animals, then selective predation
and quick removal of carcasses by scavengers could reduce CWD transmission
rates and, in turn, the prevalence and spread of the disease. Wolves could also
reduce the risk of transmission by dispersing deer and elk.”
With predators
on the landscape, again based on simulations run at Rocky Mountain National
Park, “compensatory and density-related effects could result in less net
mortality than rates of infection and death from CWD would suggest. Thus, the
net effect of CWD on the abundance, reproduction, and survival of deer and elk
could be less than predicted based on data collected in areas with few large
predators.”
Many scientists say that Greater Yellowstone's full predator guild represents a formidable gauntlet to CWD.
In March
2016, Yellowstone assembled its “Chronic Wasting Disease Surveillance Plan”. Looming large in the document is
this acknowledgment by the three authors Chris Geremia, John Treanor, and P. J. White: “If epidemics lead to widespread population reductions in
Yellowstone, CWD could indirectly alter the structure and function of this
ecosystem during future decades; adversely affect species of predators and
scavengers; and have serious economic effects on the recreation-based economies
of the area.”
The authors note that Yellowstone, by law, is mandated
to confront diseases that threaten its mission to promote the persistence of
native species, but CWD represents a conundrum. “A primary purpose of
Yellowstone National Park is to preserve abundant and diverse wildlife in one
of the largest remaining intact ecosystems on earth. Disease management actions
such as depopulation or substantial population reductions by random culling may
be inappropriate for the park because they would remove many more healthy
animals than infected animals, substantially reduce the prey base for predators
and scavengers, and result in fewer benefits (e.g., scientific knowledge) and
reduced visitor enjoyment (e.g., recreational viewing).”
No strategy has been effective at eradicating CWD from
areas where the disease is present. Disease management objectives will focus on
early detection and monitoring,” park officials say. Yellowstone in summer is a
mixing bowl where as many as 20,000 deer and elk from multiple herds converge,
including animals from the Jackson Elk Herd that winters on the National Elk Refuge
and state feedgrounds. Those animals, in turn, mix with tens of thousands more.
Yellowstone, along with officials in Montana, Idaho,
the Elk Refuge and Wyoming state feedgrounds are on the lookout for
sick-looking animals, testing carcasses of dead animals and even removing
asymptomatic elk. Wolves, lions, and coyotes are always on the lookout, prowling.
° ° °
Gary Wolfe is hardly the only one who questioned
McDonald’s claims about wolves and predators not being impactful. I asked McDonald if he really believed what he said. “I don’t think predators are going to hurt our
efforts in addressing CWD but I don’t think they are going to make a
significant difference in stopping the spread of it. You’d have to have a
pretty significant population of predators to have a significant reduction on
populations of deer carrying CWD.”
McDonald has said that hunters are a better tool for
trying to control CWD but it’s clear most hunters cannot discern an
asymptomatic CWD-infected deer or elk from a healthy one.
Some 15 years ago and just months before he died
tragically in an auto wreck, Tom Thorne, who had served as Wyoming chief wildlife
veterinarian, acknowledged to Theo Stein of The Denver Post that cultural hatred
of wolves trumped science. "Emotions
against wolves are so strong that I'm not sure this potential benefit, which I
agree might be there, would sway the opinions of many folks," he said.
"I think it would be a long, long time before people are used to wolves
enough to admit they might be doing a bit of good."
Is the civic dialogue and the public conversation about
predators in Montana any more evolved? Bill Geer, president of the Montana
Wildlife Federation, praised state wildlife managers for their bolstered
surveillance and putting in motion an attempt to stop CWD before its foothold
deepens. But he too encouraged McDonald and colleagues to reconsider their
attitude toward predators.
“The
outbreak [of CWD]…speaks to the benefit of having apex predators like wolves
and mountain lions on the landscape. Wolves and mountain lions often
preferentially kill compromised animals, and once a CWD infected animal starts
to show signs of the disease, it will be easier to kill for wolves,” Geer wrote
on Nov. 28, 2017. “That’s the way every effective predator hunts. That does not
imply that CWD infected animals are not shedding the prions that spread the
disease before they start to show symptoms. It does mean that predators could
be a factor to help remove infected animals from the population. It’s important
that these predators play their role in a functioning ecosystem.”
Few former civil servants in the world are more conversant
on the topic of rural hostility toward predators than Norman Bishop. He spent
36 years with the National Park Service and played a vital role in
Yellowstone’s drafting of an environmental impact statement on wolf
reintroduction. The document drew upon the best available wolf science going
back half a century, including studies of how the animals stalk prey.
Prior to wolves being brought back to Yellowstone, and
afterward, Bishop gave more than 200 public presentations on the ecological
role. He received many different forms
of personal threats from people who refused to hear what he had to say and politicians even
sought to have him fired for calling them out when they claimed wolves
represented a pervasive threat to human safety.
In November, Bishop, who today is retired, attended the
public meeting on CWD where McDonald asserted there is no evidence
substantiating the value of predators.
He is incredulous that McDonald made the claim. “Wolves are out there
sweeping the landscape 365 days a year, rooting out sick animals. Why would you
want to remove the best weapons you have?
It makes no sense,” he told me. “What do the states have to
lose by bringing predators into this fight which basically means just leaving
them alone to do their jobs?”
One of the state officials who attended the recent Montana
Fish and Wildlife Commission meeting told me, “Wolf advocates have been trying
to get the commission to recognize the positive role of predators and make it
an official part of the CWD strategy but there are folks pushing back who say
they can’t handle anything that even remotely casts wolves in a positive light.
People are reluctant to do it because they believe there would be a political
downside.”
A political downside even worse than having Montana’s elk
and mule herds decimated by CWD? I asked.
“What we are witnessing with wolves is a battle of modern
scientific data against entrenched Old West dogma and we are in a time in which
data doesn’t appear to matter to those who cling to dogma,” Bishop said. “It is
disheartening to realize how the states have abandoned good sense.”
“What we are witnessing with wolves is a battle of modern scientific data against entrenched Old West dogma and we are in a time in which data doesn’t appear to matter to those who cling to dogma. It is disheartening to realize how the states have abandoned good sense.” —Conservationist Norm Bishop
At a public event in Bozeman recently, before a
crowded room, Bishop served up one of pioneering ecologist Aldo Leopold’s most
famous quotes, lifted from Leopold’s book, A Sand County Alamanac. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve
the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when
it tends otherwise.”
In their tome, Wolves
on the Hunt, Mech, Smith and MacNulty note in field observation after
field observation how difficult it is to be a predator like a wolf making a
living with its mouth. The vast majority
of predator attempts to take down large game animals are unsuccessful—by some
estimates more than eight of every ten tries fail—and each one comes replete with
the very real possibility that the wolf could get killed or maimed.
Survival of the fittest has a huge upside for those
who care about elk and deer. “And so it goes, day after day, as wolves continue
their rounds, ever searching for more vulnerable prey animals, chasing,
missing, trying again and again, and eventually connecting,” the authors wrote.
“The net result of all this sifting and selecting of prey over eons is that the
prey gradually get faster, smarter, and more alert.”
Sadly, conservationists say, the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service—the agency that is supposed to be a global leader in
professional wildlife management—has been an accomplice in the CWD controversy.
The agency continues to unnaturally feed thousands of wapiti at the National
Elk Refuge under its command and yet the agency willfully is breaking its own mandates
pertaining to wildlife health as noted by a panel of U.S. Circuit Court judges.
Second, Dorsey and Bishop note, it was the Fish and
Wildlife Service which, in removing wolves from federal protection, handed over
their management to Wyoming, knowing the very essence of recovering a species.
Never before in the history of the Endangered
Species Act was an animal brought back only to, under state management, be
immediately subjected to antiquated policies of re-eradication. If there were compelling reasons for
artificially feeding wildlife, which is making the herds of Greater Yellowstone
sicker, and for the gratuitous killing wolves, some of it might make
sense. But none of it does, they note.
Today, akin to many fronts of U.S. environmental policy,
discussions about the ecological niche of predators appears to be yet another
example in which science and natural history are warped or ignored in favor of
carrying out political agendas. In the case of wolves, are politicians refusing
to accept reality because it cuts against the grain of myths they have helped
to perpetuate and they are concerned they might lose votes from ecologically
unenlightened constituents? If yes, what kind of wildlife management is it
producing?
In the second part of this series, Tim Preso, a
senior attorney with the environmental legal firm EarthJustice, noted that
these are government agencies legitimizing their own known violations of laws,
tenets and scientific truths in natural history that protect wildlife health.
Instead, both federal and state agencies are violating the public trust
doctrine they claim to uphold and spelled out in the North American Model of
Wildlife Management.
“I don’t know that anything else exists with
management policy in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem so blatantly contrary to
the science, the law and common sense and involves a state that is so resistant
to change,” he noted. Does that summation apply as equally to Montana and Idaho
as to Wyoming? Preso doesn’t yet have an
answer.
MoJo is committed to giving you great reads that take a lot of time to produce. In turn, we rely on your generosity. We are a non-profit public-interest journalism site and, like public radio and television, we depend on you to keep us going and expand our coverage. Please vote your values by clicking on these words and supporting Mountain Journal.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Below is a copy of the letter that the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission sent to the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission on Dec. 7, 2017 regarding feedgrounds:
About Todd Wilkinson
Todd Wilkinson, founder of Mountain Journal, is author of the book Ripple Effects: How to Save Yellowstone and American's Most Iconic Wildlife Ecosystem. Wilkinson has been writing about Greater Yellowstone for 35 years and is a correspondent to publications ranging from National Geographic to The Guardian. He is author of several books on topics as diverse as scientific whistleblowers and Ted Turner, and a book about the harrowing story of Jackson Hole grizzly mother 399, the most famous bear in the world which features photographs by Thomas Mangelsen. For more information on Wilkinson, click here. (Photo by David J Swift).
