WOLF SLAUGHTER FROM HELICOPTERS
COULD BEGIN SOON IN BC'S INTERIOR
WETBELT
TMTV/BCTV
Kootenays - March 8, 2010 - Sources
wishing to remain anonymous have told
the Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS)
that the provincial government will make
a decision very soon on whether to begin
slaughtering wolves from helicopters.
The use of helicopters is an escalation
of the wide-spread slaughter of wolves
and cougars that has been happening over
the last three years under the excuse of
saving mountain caribou. Prey species
that attract wolves are also be-ing
targeted for increased killing,
especially moose. One knowledgeable
source told VWS that hunters are now
allowed to shoot cows and calves.
Cougars are being elimi-nated in some
areas.
Progress Board Stacked with Vested Interests Operates in Secrecy Public and Dissenting Environmental Groups Locked Out
In 2008 ten
environmental groups signed
confidentiality agreements to
collaborate in the creation of a
mountain caribou recovery plan that
placed heavy reliance on the killing of
BC's large carnivores. They were
appointed to a "Progress Board" heavily
stacked with interests that want to use
mountain caribou habitat for profit or
pleasure: logging inter-ests, snowmobile
clubs and heli-ski businesses.
Despite claims that the Progress Board would keep the public informed, it's website on the Internet could no longer be found. The minutes of the monthly meetings are kept se-cret, which locks the public and all dissenting organizations out of management issues related to this endangered species and its predators. Board members include representa-tives from ForestEthics (U.S.-based), Wildsight, Conservation Northwest (U.S.-based), CPAWS, B.C. Sierra Club and the BC Nature Federation. These organizations now have a big decision to make. They take public donations and they have a duty to inform the public of their position.
Wolves have
limited access to mountain caribou in
winter, unless snowmobiles pack down
snow. Snowmobiles drive mountain caribou
from preferred winter feeding grounds
and leave behind tracks for wolves.
There are not enough snowmobile
closures, and the closed areas are not
big enough. In the Revelstoke area, the
South Columbia mountain caribou herd has
plummeted from 105 in 1994, to 29 in
2002, to just 13 animals in 2009! Yet
there have been only minimal snowmobile
closures in the areas used by that
herd. Instead wolves and cougars are
being wiped out, despite the fact that
previous scientific studies had shown
very little wolf predation on mountain
caribou around Revelstoke.
A government claim
that it is killing only selected
predators in the immediate vicinity of
mountain caribou should not be
believed. The government has been
misleading the pub-lic with that claim
for several years now. The leghold
traps and open bag limits that are
currently being used are not selective
methods, and they are being implemented
over a very large area.
"Scientific
studies show that excessive logging has
brought moose and increased wolves,"
says Anne Sherrod, Chair of VWS. "Yet
the mountain caribou recovery plan
decreed that over 99% of the Timber
Harvesting Land Base would remain open
for logging. And mining, which logs
huge swathes of forest for roads, hasn't
been curtailed at all.
"VWS has spent
years doing everything we could do to
protect mountain caribou," says Sherrod.
"Independent scientists assure us that
killing top predators will cause a great
deal of ecosystem damage, and that the
caribou can only survive if enough
habitat is protected and restored.
Saving a species by wrecking its
ecosystem doesn't make sense and will
not work in the end."
BC governments have been trying to wipe out wolves for years. In the 1980s wolves were slaughtered by helicopter killing sprees and baits poisoned with compound 1080, which caused the horrific deaths of any carnivores that ate the broadcast baits. This was all approved by government biologists, one of whom went to the press with the message: "When in doubt, wipe them out." (Harrowsmith, July/Aug. 1984) The public fought tooth and nail to save its wolves, and it won, but now the government is trying to sneak it through by limiting public input to only the groups on the Progress Board that are liter-ally partners of government and have signed confidentiality agreements. See the www.vws.org for information.
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