The stigma of wolves

I’ve had the pleasure to live with a wolf. She is one reason the topic of wolves has piqued my curiosity, wondering why her counterparts are so hated despite how much she proved willing to love. She was 50% gray wolf and 25% Mexican red wolf, the remainder of her mix was rothweiler. I met her father when I adopted her and he stood a regal 4 feet high with long legs and piercing eyes, a mirror image of the iconic gray wolf. Oddly, as she grew she took on the resemblance of her lesser part, the Mexican red wolf. She looked like a coyote, weighing only 40 pounds with red and blonde fur mixed with coarse black hairs. She was intensely loyal and so gentle and well behaved that unless I told someone she was 75% wolf they judged her only as a good dog. The vet was the only person I couldn’t lie to in order to protect her. Her canine teeth gave away her secret. They were larger, thicker and more curved than a domestic dog’s should be. I was fortunate enough that the vet didn’t confiscate her from me and turn her over to authorities as a doomed illegal resident of the county. How could my best friend who cuddled with me on the couch, rode shotgun in my car and licked tears from my face be any less invited in town than the golden retriever that lived next door? The fear surrounding wolves provokes an interesting investigation into the human psyche and the economy. And the delisting of Oregon’s wolf population this November reiterates that people are still afraid.

The hate started spreading centuries ago. Children were, and still are, cultivated from a young age to fear the villain in fairy tales; often the villain is a wolf. In 1812 the Brothers Grimm authored Little Red Riding Hood, placing fear in the minds of children that wolves lurk in the woods and conspire to eat little girls. In 1867 Aesop’s famous fable, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, held the message that liars are punished by wolves who destroy flocks of sheep while they sleep. In 1890 Joseph Jacobs published the story of a wolf huffing and puffing and blowing down the house of The Three Little Pigs. The message underlying these fairy tales is that we are not safe from wolves in the woods, in fields or in our homes. The message is clear to a child who knows nothing different: wolves should be feared because they seek humans either in spite or for a snack. Such stories paint humans as prey and wolves as predators. This couldn’t be further from the truth. In his 2002 report for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Mark McNay reported that no human deaths have been attributed to wolf attacks in North America since 1900 (Kullgreen). Since the report was published, there have been two documented deaths by wolf. The first was in 2005 when Kenton Carnegie was found near a garbage dump in Saskatchewan, Canada and a jury two years later declared his death caused by wolves (CBC News). The second was Candice Berner in 2010 who was discovered next to a road in Chignik Lake, Alaska bearing “multiple injuries due to animal mauling,” declared inflicted by wolves (Butler). Despite rumors of dozens or even hundreds of human deaths by wolves, these two cases remain the only officially documented deaths to date, confirmed by the Department of Fish and Wildlife (Kullgreen). In fact, humans are more likely to die by a lightning strike or by an elevator or ATV accident than by a wolf attack (Viegas). In fact, in 2014 there were 41 fatal domestic dog attacks as compared to zero by wolves (National Canine Research Council).

So where is the wolf-fear stemming from? Europeans could possibly be a motivator behind the American mentality of wolves. All of the fables mentioned above were published in Europe at a time when wolves had already been eradicated from most of that continent. But eradication of wolves overseas started long before suggestive fairy tales were published. In the 800s France paid hunters to control wolf populations, in the 1200s King Edward I ordered extermination of Wolves in England, and in Scotland in the 1400s James I passed a law requiring wolf hunts three times a year to keep the population at bay (Lamplugh). England hunted wolves to extinction by the 1500s, followed by Scotland in the 1600s, and by Ireland in the 1700s (Lamplugh). What is interesting about the spreading phobia of wolves is after centuries of hunting them down in Europe, the Pilgrims came to what would become the United States in the 1600s. They were from England; a country that purposely hunted wolves to extinction a century before. At the time Pilgrims arrived, Native Americans who inhabited before them did, and still do, name the wolf as a sacred animal. So where does the fear in modern America come from if it isn’t from the people native to the land? Could it have come with the ships that brought the Pilgrims and their fairy tales? Japan, for example, had a change in their perception of the wolf after Americans influenced them. The wolf, much like in Native American cultures, was a special and spiritual creature in Japanese culture. However, in 1868 the Japanese government wanted to create a livestock industry and to do so they needed to create ranches (Lamplugh). Their government hired American rancher Edwin Dun, a descendent of the Europeans, to teach them how to get started. From Dun they also learned how to eradicate wolves (Lamplugh). He shared a new tactic in killing wolves that required little effort: soak a carcass in strychnine, leave it where wolves are expected to be, and wait for them to eat it. The method could kill the entire pack, one pack at a time. By 1905 Japan killed off their entire wolf population (Lamplugh).

The battle between ranchers and conservationist has been around since ranches have existed. It is no secret that wolves are carnivores. Nor is it a secret they prey on livestock. But it is also no fault of the wolf that they are born to eat meat, just as humans are born to eat meat. The difference lies in the fact that humans understand the concept of meat in the form of livestock as owned by someone, and until it is sold as food, we understand not to eat the animal. For a wolf, they see someone’s livestock and they only see a meal. They are trying to survive—the basic instinct of all living things. Can we really blame the wolf for adapting to us invading the land they also call home and for learning where they can easily capture a meal? Just as a fisherman goes to his lucky fishing hole, a wolf surely goes to its lucky hunting ground. Is it really fair for humans to assume wolves should know where they are and are not invited? We create boundaries and borders which we understand, wolves on the other hand do not. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to live together.

As the U.S. population expands to 319 million people, we take up more space and more resources. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports the 2015 wolf population in the lower 48 is a mere 5,600 and in Alaska is less than 11,000. In all of our expansion the few wolves left are trying to find a place to live and eat. The more area we call our own, the less we leave for them. In a 1997 report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported just under two million farms in the nation (Kellogg). Of those farms 69% had livestock on the property, 54% of which were pastured on the land (Kellogg). In addition, 49% of all the farms were in rural areas—the areas where wolves call home (Kellogg). It should be no surprise that wolves come to a livestock baring rural farm just as bees come to a flowering field of clovers. The issue then comes to light. Is it really that the wolf is so scary to human survival or is it that the wolf scares those focused on livestock industry survival? As previously discussed, the livestock industry appears to have single-handedly changed the perception of the once honored wolf in Japan to a creature too dangerous to allow its existence.

Until November of this year the gray wolf remained on Oregon’s endangered species list—all 80 of them known in the state (Center for Biological Diversity). Just seven years after the first known breeding pair was identified in Oregon, the state has stripped their protection despite the population being estimated at only 12% of the suitable size (Center for Biological Diversity). With the wolves removed from the list, there is potential for sport hunting in the near future and now allows people to kill in self-defense or in protection of livestock. In 2008 when wolves were delisted in Wyoming it led to an unlimited kill-fest by hunters and ranchers alike. In September of 2014 a federal judge ended the slaughter, removing Wyoming from its authority and restoring federal protection (Center for Biological Diversity). This year Idaho looks to have a bleak future for their wolves, as their governor signed a bill allowing all but 100 of the 700 wolves to be killed (Governor). It seems that even in places where wolves appear protected federally there are still little-known loopholes that allow wolf poachers to go unpunished. The McKittrick Policy, for example, is a policy that came into existence in 1995 after Chad McKittrick killed a wolf in Montana that had just crossed over the Yellowstone borders (Cart). McKittrick claimed he thought it was a “wild dog” and challenged his punishment on that basis (Cart). A policy in his name now exists as a weapon allowing potential intentional killing to be disguised by a smokescreen of ignorance unless proven as targeting.

Laws have continued to be unfair to wolves. Although they are often written by those who care for the wellbeing of wolves, the fact is that those ruling on punishments don’t always have a like mind. Judges often share the cultivated fear of wolves that so many in the nation do. For example, in October of 2014 Jonathan Rasmussen spotted a wolf while deer hunting in Washington. He proceeded to stalk it while it was minding its own business and succeeded in killing it and calling authorities to boost about his good deed (Judd). The wolf surely would have attacked something if he had not done it, he said (Judd). What should have been a $5,000 fine and up to a year in jail for killing an unprovoked protected species, instead was a measly slap on the wrist of a $100 fine, six months probation and the surrendering of his weapon. In contrast, also in Washington the same year, Charles Hildebrand poached a 40-pound Chinook salmon. He too illegally killed a federally protected species but his punishment was far worse: a $5,000 fine and the seizing of his $6,000 boat (The Associated Press). What’s interesting is that there was an estimated 1.6 million Chinook that returned to the Columbia River that year compared to the entire population of Washington’s wolves totaling 48. We must ask ourselves how two species under the same protection can be treated so unequal in a system meant to maintain fairness. In this example, wolves are far more endangered than Chinook salmon yet the wolf offender received a monetary ruling 50 times smaller than that of the other. Could it be because the Chinook lacks the stigma of the big bad wolf?

What this all comes down to is that the name of the wolf has been tarnished. Not only by the generation living now, not only by the generation before, or even the generation before them. The unraveling of its species has been centuries in the making, and for largely no reason other than the comforts of humanity. At no point should we ever create myths for the purpose of fairy tale and give them so much life that fantasy becomes a reality.

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Citations

Butler, Lem; Dale, Bruce; Beckmen, Kimberlee; Farley, Sean. “Findings Related to the March 2010 Fatal Wolf Attack near Chignik Lake, Alaska.” Alaska Department Fish and Game. (2011). Web.

Cart, Julie. “U.S. sued over policy on killing endangered wildlife.” Los Angeles Times. Tribune Company, 29 May 2013. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

CBC News. “Ontario man killed in wolf attack, coroner’s jury finds.” CBC News. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1 Nov. 2007. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Center for Biological Diversity. Victory for wolves in Wyoming. Arizona: Center for Biological Diversity, 23 Sept. 2014. Web.

Center for Biological Diversity. “Oregon Strips State Endangered Species Protections From Gray Wolves.” Arizona: Center for Biological Diversity, 9 Nov. 2015. Web.

“Governor Otter’s Proposed Bill to Kill Wolves Moves Closer to Becoming Law in Idaho.” Defenders of Wildlife. Defenders of Wildlife, 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015. www.defenders.org.

Judd, Ron. “Whitman County: Not Kentucky, but you can see it from there.” Seattle Times. The Seattle Times Company, 18 Sept. 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Kellogg, Robert. “Profile of Farms With Livestock in the United States: A Statistical Summary.” USDA. United States Department of Agriculture, 4 Feb. 2002. Web. 2 Dec. 2015. www.nrcs.usda.gov.

Kullgreen, Ian K. “Department of Fish and Wildlife say there have been no wolf-related deaths in the Rockies.” Politifact. Tampa Bay Times, 16 Dec. 2011. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Lamplugh, Rick. “Creating Worldwide Wolf Hatred.” Blog. Rick Lamplugh’s Blog. Rick Lamplugh, 20 April 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Lamplugh, Rick. “Can We Create a Culture of Wolf Respect?” Blog. Rick Lamplugh’s Blog. Rick Lamplugh, 3 June 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

National Canine Research Council. “Preliminary Report on Dog Bite-Related Fatalities 2014.” National Canine Research Council. (2014). Web.

The Associated Press. “Salmon poaching costs man his boat and big fine.” Seattle PI. Hearst Seattle Media, LLC, 12 June 2002. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.

Viegas, Jennifer. “Wolf Attacks More Myth Than Reality.” Discovery News. Discovery Communications, LLC, 11 March 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015. www.news.discovery.com.