The Value of Apex Predators

Hi Ariel,

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about the wolves and the perceived problems of those wolves massacring large populations of livestock. You may have read the local article about the hunters on horseback who were supposedly attacked by a pack of wolves. Surely, you’ve seen the bumper stickers: “Smoke a Pack a Day”, “Save a Rancher- Shoot a Wolf”, etc. Recently Governor Schweitzer formally issued a policy of not prosecuting people who shoot wolves outside of any hunting season or for protection. The question of the day in the local paper asked if the reader approves of the governor’s decision to openly violate federal law to shoot wolves. 87% favored the governor’s decision.

It’s getting silly.

Here are some facts and my perceptions to give you a more balanced insight of the impact of wolves in Montana.

I grew up in a small town at the base of the Rocky Mountains. When I was a kid, I spent a great deal of time messing around in the woods as that was my back yard. I didn’t have bowling alleys, fast food restaurants, shopping malls, and many of the things that people living in the city take for granted. My school had little to offer in the way of extracurricular activities, so what did that leave me? The woods. A great deal of my youth was spent hiking or bicycling in areas where wolves, mountain lions, grizzlies, and wolverines lived. I even played around when it was dark and you know how many times I was confronted by a wild animal?

Twice.

It was two separate occasions and those two animals were a badger and a skunk and that was because I was throwing rocks at them.

Do you know what happens when you see a mountain lion watching you from the elevated branches of a tree. It watches you. That’s it. Then when you look at it, raise your hands in the air, and say, “Boogala, boogala!” it flips a 180 in the air like a startled house cat and runs away.

Yet I constantly hear people talking about how dangerous mountain lions are and if you see one, you must train your gun on it and walk away slowly, never taking your eyes off of it.

Ridiculous.

If a 12-year-old boy can spend a good deal of his life growing up in the wilds of the Rocky Mountains with no dangerous encounters, then the stories of how dangerous wild animals are are greatly exaggerated. Large predators are serious animals and should not be taken lightly, but the reality of the threat they truly pose has become mythical.

When I was 19 I spent a few months in Florida near the Everglades. A friend asked me if I wanted to visit the Everglades and I said, “Sure! That would be awesome!” Well, we jumped right in and began wading through a primeval type of wilderness. I immediately voiced my concerns about alligators, snakes, wild boars and such. He briefly explained the real dangers of what to look for. When we saw a snake swimming by, he didn’t freak out, he let it swim by. When we saw an alligator, we simply walked by.

I realized that I was exhibiting the same fears my childhood friends from the large cities were exhibiting when they came up to Lincoln for vacation. Many of them would not so much as step off the dirt road to play in the woods. Once I let my unrealistic fears go (which took all of two minutes), I had a great time in the Florida wilderness.

Without wolves, coyotes fill the niche of being the top predator. Coyotes like baby antelope and when the coyote population gets too high, antelope populations suffer. When wolves move back in, they displace coyotes. The smaller coyote population results in a higher antelope population. This is good for hunters.

When wolves are gone from the ecosystem, elk and deer can forage much more safely. When the deer and elk aren’t constantly moving, they overgraze the Aspen and Cottonwood saplings. In some areas, there are Aspen that are 50 years old or more with few younger trees to replace them. Not having Aspens may not sound bad, but when you break the balance, there are always consequences.

Cottonwoods grow along riverbanks. They hold the soil from excessive erosion. Too much erosion and farmers and ranchers lose valuable land. Fish populations suffer from creeks and rivers that are too silty. Fisherman and landowners suffer greatly from this negative consequence.

Willows also hold the creek and river banks from excessive erosion. Elk and deer love willows. Wolves keep elk and deer and the move, which prevents overgrazing. Birds, beavers, and other animals are now thriving again where wolves have been reintroduced. Beavers are often viewed as a nuisance, but they do help fill underground reservoirs and increased fishing opportunities with their ponds. Beaver ponds may not sound like much, but they certainly have value.

But wolves like to hunt elk calves. So having wolves must be bad for the elk hunters, right? Not so much. Most of our elk populations are steady. So why are we finding fewer elk during hunting season? Because the elk are on the move and are now harder to hunt. We need to become better sportsmen if we want to bag an elk. It would be nice if they stood around more so we could get a better shot at them, but we have been spoiled. Just because we don’t see elk around as much, does not mean the elk populations are down significantly due to wolves.

I don’t like tourism; I would like to keep Montana more to myself, but I can’t deny the amount of money that comes in from tourists. By having wolves, mountain lions and the increased biodiversity that results from that, tourists bring in more money.

Wolves do prey on livestock. That is a real problem that needs to be addressed. Ranches have become accustomed to only dealing with coyotes, feral dogs, and other lethal threats to their livelihood. Instead of shooting wolves outright, those ranchers need to employ guard dogs, fladry, fencing, etc. But that costs money. Losing land to erosion costs money, too. Losing fishing habitat is a big cost to many ranchers who are also fisherman. What is the balance? I’m not sure, but part of the problem is that we need to change and make a better effort to live with our environment instead of razing down anything that is a problem.

The federal government also has a monetary compensation fund to compensate ranchers for their losses due to wolf predation. It sounds like a good program, but I am ignorant of how well this program really is. Have not researched this well enough.

The government can be really screwed up, but I do have a good example of how a government should work. Back in the late 70's, early 80’s a parasitic pest called the Screwfly would lay its eggs in the open wounds of livestock on just about any animal it could get it’s dirty little legs on. Unlike other maggots, these little buggers had no problem eating live flesh and could cause great suffering potentially killing its host. Not only was being eating alive and the resulting infections horrific, it cost the cattle industry many millions of dollars-maybe billions. Then the government got an idea. They irradiated male Screwflies making them sterile. Those sterile flies would mate with the females, but because the dudes were shooting blanks, the eggs would not develop. In a short time, the Screwfly became extinct in the U.S. What a huge success story!

But you could not get something like that to happen now. Too many lawsuits from too many treehuggers would create near endless delays. We would see “Save the Screwfly” t-shirts and bumpers stickers all over the place. The government would do decades of studies to evaluate the consequences -both positive and negative- of eradicating such a pest. I don’t think we have to worry about the loss of wolves because of today’s red tape, but we will have to worry about poor, untimely bureaucratic management harming not only the wolves, but the residents of Montana.

In this respect I have to applaud our governor for stopping the stifling efforts of our federal government that is too often out-of-touch with our local needs, but he needs to be careful about going too far the other way, renewing old problems for our state.

Wolves are not the biggest concern to loss of cattle. They are only above bears with everything else being a more lethal threat. In the sheep loss bar chart, wolves do not have their own category, but instead are lumped in the "All Other Predators" category. Despite this, we can still get a good idea of the relatively limited lethal impact wolves have on sheep.

So why do we spend an inordinate amount of time getting all angry and negative trying to delist and eradicate the wolf when other more lethal threats should be demanding more of our attention? I don’t know. People tend to see the worst in things and not look at things for what they really are. If we spent that time, money, and energy into other areas that pose risks that are hundreds of times greater than wolves, I can't see how our livestock populations wouldn't improve.

I can’t tell you specifically what a good answer would be. What I can definitively tell you is that we need to settle down and look at the situation for what it really is. Wolves should not be ignored; neither should we be spending the disproportionate amount of time, money, and energy that we are currently spending on them. There are times when wolves should be shot. If I caught a wolf stalking my livestock, it would be dead; that is fair. But eradicating the species of wolf based too much on emotion while allowing other far more lethal killers to continue to have the impact that they do is counter-intuitive.

Education is a big part of the answer. Angry mob-like mentality is not. I truly hope you have the integrity not to jump in with the mob, but if you have, you can always back out and opt for a more realistic view point of our apex predators, our environment, and everyone who shares it.

Love You Oodles and Gobs,
Dad :)