“Think about the children”
Posted March 6, 2009 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places
In a picture of last weekend's anti-wolf rally in Kalispell, the newspaper showed a guy in hunter orange holding up a placard that said: "Think about the children". Beside him stood a girl, about seven years old, in an orange cap and an unzipped vest, looking cold.
She was about the same age as the twenty kids at the Livingston Montessori School that I told stories to last week. Stories of wolves and bears, and how our lives have been tangled up with each other for centuries. In one, a wolf helps an incompetent Russian prince survive innumerable scrapes. In the other, a bear dreams the world into being each winter-a landscape rich with antelope, iris, whitebark pine-and people. For this, she is celebrated in the spring when she emerges from her den, trailed by her young cubs. She is celebrated by each animal in its own way (at which point I get to do a lot of animal voices).
Little hands shot up after each story-questions about what wolves eat, how bears sleep through the winter without eating or pooping. The kids who had seen these animals in person had to tell their stories.
The kids' curiosity and enthusiasm matched their endurance. Although each story was 25 minutes long, they listened attentively. At the end, they asked for more. I said, "I have one about a snake and another about a parrot". The teacher looked at me with a disciplinarian's eye. So I stuck with a question/answer format, and promised to keep it short.
Some questions were practical-like about bear spray and how it worked. ("Yeah, I bit into a pepper one time and my lip got all swolled up"). There were a lot about food, ("when bears eat ants, do they bite their mouth"?), and poop. Poop was a biggie-telling wolf pop from bear poop-and generated a lot of giggles.
By contrast, there was little to laugh about in the articles leading up to last weekend's anti-wolf protest in Kalispell. In an ad that preceded the rally, there was a warning: "Please, absolutely no weapons." And, "participate at your own risk." Sounds like a good time, huh? Maybe that's why only a couple dozen people showed up. Another reason could be that most hunters know that elk in the region are at all time highs-so many in fact, that ranchers have been begging Fish and Game to expand the elk hunt so they don't chow down on their haystacks so much.
Hands were still in the air when the teacher gave me the cut-off look. I got up to go and two kids threw their arms around me at butt level. One boy, Nathan, almost wouldn't let go. "Thank you", he said, in the faintest whisper.
What is missing among some of the "hard line" anti-wolf advocates-the kind that have to remind each other to leave their guns at home even when they are just meeting up with each other- is curiosity, compassion and humor. Curiosity about wolf/livestock, wolf/elk dynamics, which are interesting and can be somewhat surprising.
One example is a recently published scientific article that shows how the wolves divvy up their hunting roles according to body size: the smaller wolves tend to be faster and take on a lot of the chasing, while the heftier males, which aren't as fast on their feet, can come in at the end, bringing down an elk four times the size of a wolf. Just like a human family-you turn to Dad or big sister to unscrew the lid off a tight can, while the other members of the family help prepare the meals in other ways.
All of us would benefit from a little more curiosity and willingness to learn, and the courage, sometimes childlike, to ask open-ended questions of those you don't necessarily agree with. And a dose of the attitude displayed by the Montessori kids-kids who will grow up to reshape the debate about wolves.
It's just as the placard at the Kalispell rally said: "Think about the children."
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Comments
Chad Harder — Mar 7 2009 10:30 AM
You mistakenly refer to all pro-delisters as "anti-wolf." I'm pro wolf, I just believe that a sustainable and complete ecosystem will have wolves in numbers kept low through hunting.
FWP will, as they've done with other species, maintain wolf populations somewhere between what the ESA requires and what the ranchers/hunters/ungulate populations will tolerate. If they let the (now introduced) wolf numbers drops to ESA-provoking levels, FWP looses management and as a result, face. They can't and won't allow that to happen.
Lastly, I don't lack "curiosity, compassion, or humor," either, in fact all three enlighten my hunting experience.
Janet Barwick — Mar 9 2009 12:42 PM
Chad,
I greatly appreciate your comments, but just wanted to make a clarification. Louisa's post did not mention delisting and was written specifically about those who participated in an "anti-wolf" rally in Kalispell, Montana last week. In no way did those participants represent all hunters, but they did represent an opinion that is dangerous to the future of wolf recovery in the Northern Rockies--the opinion that every last wolf should be eliminated from the ecosystem by any means necessary. (They seem to like the idea of shoot-shovel-and shut up the best.)
We understand that not all hunters believe this rhetoric, and many hunters we've spoken with believe, rightly, that wolves benefit the ecosystem. Some hunters have even expressed an admiration of wolves saying that having wolves on the landscape makes them better hunters.
NRDC is not an anti-hunting organization. Personally, I'm a fourth generation Montanan who spent my youth in the outdoors hunting deer and antelope. NRDC's position on wolves is NOT that wolves should remain on the endangered species list forever. Important gains have been made in recovering this keystone species to the landscape. But declaring victory based purely on numbers is putting the cart before the horse. It would be irresponsible to delist wolves without a commitment from the states to; 1.) protect and maintain an "appropriate" number of wolves; 2.) ensure natural genetic connectivity; and, 3.) commit to working with livestock owners to implement non-lethal solutions to wolf/livestock conflicts.
The good news is that a lot of work is being done privately, to lay the groundwork for a better future for wolves. NRDC and other conservation groups are working harder than ever to find solutions to some of these issues, but we don't live in a vaccuum and we can't do it alone. Any long-term resolution will have to be agreed upon by those who share the landscape with wolves including sportsmen and ranchers. We CAN get to delisting if we work together, but rallies like the one in Kalispell don't get us any closer.
Catherine Fischer — Mar 13 2009 10:47 PM
What disturbs me most about the potential hunting of wolves is the randomness of killing functional family/hunting members. It was only recently that I learned (Temple Grandin "Animals Makes Us Human") that wolves do not live in large packs. More accurately they live in functional families, and extended families, with roles and rules. It is nonesense to think there would be a population benefit in killing a high- functioning member of the family! Certainly, it would leave behind a void with a greater opportunity for predation on domestic livestock and a greater opportunity for starvation for the remaining family.
Setting aside my strong personal distate of gunning down wolves, I ask the scientfic community: When and if, man must control the wolf population, cannot it not be done with a view toward function and outcome??? To hunt the wolf who live in small organized hunting families in the same manner as white tail deer, who live in large grazing herds makes no sense. Is there anyone out there who has developed this line of thought?
Erin Barca — Mar 14 2009 12:12 AM
I'm very curious about this scientific article on wolf hunting roles according to body size.
Might it be available somewhere online? A link would be most appreciated.