Well, I’m not sure just who it is here whose only knowledge of large predators comes from “an agency who twist facts to further their agenda”, but let me assure you it isn’t me. I’ve spent much time in each of the areas mentioned, much of it alone, in the wilderness, or with small groups. I’ve observed and often had to deal with every large predator found in North America. I come from a farming/ranching family. I’ve seen dead cattle, sheep, dogs, chickens, goats, cats, and probably goldfish that were killed by predators ranging from bobcats and coyotes to bears and pumas. But I don’t rely only my own observations and experience. I also read, study, and listen. Next month I’ll be in bear country for a week. Most of this summer I’ll be where wolves howling is not an unexpected event, and most of that I’ll be far from paved roads and quilted comforters. I’ve come face-to-face with a mountain lion that wasn’t happy to see me. I’ve encountered bears that insisted on using the path through the woods I happened to be on. I’ve seen a cow moose with a calf stand her ground in front of a brown bear. I’ve watched a wolf pack chase down an elk in the snow. So let’s just quit attacking messengers, so to speak, and deal with facts.
Yes, sometimes a wolf pack (or other predator) will take a big, healthy animal. But more often, they take the first one they can get, because it’s easier, less risky, less costly to them in terms of time and energy. Nature, red in tooth and claw, as the saying goes, includes some nasty events, like a fawn being taken by a puma, say, or a wolf pack dragging down a doe. The mortality rate for young creatures often is quite high, by our way of thinking. But looked at a different way, let’s consider for a moment what would happen if the deer survival rate through the first two years was 80%.
A deer becomes able to reproduce at about a year of age. In an area with a reasonable population density—e.g., where deer aren’t quite rare—the fecundity rate amongst yearling does averages about 75-85%. In older deer, the number is about the same. Most does deliver either 1 or 2 fawns—average about 1.5. Starting with a population of 100 deer, 50 of which are yearling-or-older does, we see that after one year the population will have increased to about 125 (about 30-40 yearlings, with some of the adults having died from whatever causes), with about 60 does, +/-. In two years, the population is up to about 160, and in four years, the population will have approximately doubled. That rate of growth of the population is clearly unsustainable. If adding wolves brings the two-year survival rate of newborns down to 12.5%, that puts us in the realm of a stable population, as the natural attrition rate due to adult mortality in most populations is a bit below even that.
The evidence clearly shows that wolves, as participants in a suitable natural system, rarely if ever “destroy” the populations of deer, elk, moose, or other prey animals. Anecdotes of some type of event or another are merely, at best, small bits of data about a large and complex system. Systematized data collection, at an adequate scale, by objective observers, covering a wide range of carefully selected variables, is a scientific, not story-around-the-campfire, sort of approach. To pooh-pooh science because it doesn’t produce the conclusion you want is, well, it just ain’t smart.
Now let me be clear—I haven’t proposed turning wolves loose in Central Park, downtown Minneapolis, etc. Nor have I proposed a ban on wolf hunting. I’ve not offered an opinion about the de-listing of wolves from the ESA. Management of predator populations in the context of ranching and farming must be undertaken for the good of all concerned—rationally, responsibly, and with a view to the long-term health of ecosystems and the planet. But the notion that wolves are some sort of evil-incarnate creature is just plain silly.
