Excerpted from Cosmos Magazine, June 10 2019
Canada’s 60,000 wolves are not protected by law as they are in Europe and the majority of US states. In many parts of the country they can be hunted and trapped year-round, but this is small beans compared to government culling programs.
A controversial poison has been used to slaughter over 1000 wolves in the province of Alberta since 2005, while British Columbia (BC) has conducted aerial shooting to control wolf populations since 2015.
Ian McAllister, executive director of the Canadian conservation non-profit Pacific Wild, explains that “the core reason why wolves are being persecuted is because the natural habitat for many other species, in particular ungulates like mountain caribou, has been decimated and the BC government is using wolves as a scapegoat.”
Research supports the fact that wolf predation is not the sole root of the problem; rather, caribou losses are largely driven by the erosion and alteration of habitats by human activities such as logging.
“If adequate habitat was protected, the natural balance between predator and prey would be maintained,” McAllister explains.
For the full article, visit Cosmos Magazine
