Wolves – Lessons from a Stone

How Do You Feel About Hunting and Hunters?

First Written in Quora

A “Trophy-class” Bull Elk Bugling
inspiredpencil.com

In Colorado, during the 80’s, 90’s, and 2000’s, though I was engaged in all sorts of mountain sports, the season I looked forward to the most was hunting season. I was able to get an early start on my hunting life having grown up in Adirondack Mountains of Northern New York state, where you can begin your hunting journey at fourteen, as long as it is supervised by an adult. You are free to go about your business alone at sixteen and you could hunt both archery and rifle during separate seasons during the same year. When combined, as an “Adirondacker”, I could hunt for what amounted to two months each fall. During my time there, the seasons were each about a month long. This is the way it was (at least during the seven years (from age 14 to 21) that I hunted there, and for many years thereafter. The state managed Adirondack Park’s 2.6 million acres are comprised of both state and private lands under a policy designed to make a “Forever Wild” zone well distant from the much higher populations located farther south, and, of course, the population centers of New York City and Long Island, and, to a lesser extent, the Albany area and it’s two “Sister Cities”. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (ENCON) and the Adirondack Park Agency APA) managed hunter populations in the Adirondacks and ENCON alone managed the rest of the state’s hunting units, which varied greatly in hunter numbers throughout the state’s very different hunting regions. I learned by following my father’s size thirteen footsteps up and down some of the most rugged country in the northeast. For my dad and me, archery practice began in June or July, preparing for the season which opened in September. Rifle practice took place throughout the year and was not limited to a few days or weeks leading up to the season, which began right after archery season had concluded. Rifle shooting was just another part of life and we were always prepared for that year’s window of hunting opportunities.

After college, I followed my dream and landed in Colorado, where I would spend a good part of the next thirty years. Colorado is an “either-or” state, meaning you have to choose between archery and rifle seasons and cannot hunt both modes in the same year. If I had to choose overall, it’d have been archery because it’s nearly a month long versus the five to nine day allocations depending on which of the four relatively short rifle seasons a given hunter elects to hunt. Even nine days wasn’t enough time to satisfy my annual needs. So I began a schedule of two years of archery followed by a year of rifle. As I neared the halfway point of my hunting career, I made the switch to archery only and these seasons would go on to contain some of my best hunting memories.

But things changed significantly over the course of those three decades and by the time I reached my late forties, I was coming full circle with my thoughts and feelings about the sport. I can’t speak as knowledgeably about the other Western states other than to say that some are managing their big game animals, namely, deer and elk, better than others. There are simply too many tags being sold in Colorado and far too many hunters in a given game unit at a given time. Because of this, the gene pool for elk on National Forest lands has gotten weaker every year and continues to worsen. You can see it in the size and antler growth of many four and five year old bulls and the mature bulls are getting fewer and farther between in some of the most popular units. With such a huge shift over three decades, Colorado has become the Pennsylvania of the West. Too many small, ratty looking deer with ticks all over them. Ticks in these kinds of numbers are a bio-indicator, a foreboding sign of a tragically weakened ecosystem. I lived in PA for two years and never had any interest in the kind of slaughter that takes place there every autumn. Since the state is so populated with infrastructure such as roads and four lane highways every few miles, a good fraction of the deer get pushed out of the woods only to become roadkill.

For Colorado to recover, it is imperative that a rotation, not unlike those used on crop lands, be enacted for game units to be “rested” for a period of several years, with the units having the poorest health getting preferential treatment. Some adjustments need to be made to the availability of deer to be hunted, increasing the numbers of licences sold in many units with burgeoning deer populations. It’s become a complicated problem, perhaps one with which the newly released wolves can help once they’ve become established. But, because Colorado is the most populated state to have launched a wolf recovery program, we need to treat them with kid gloves and keep our heads about us if the program is to be a success. Only time will tell, but, based on many years of personal and intimate relationships with various parts of the state, I don’t see wolf reintroduction in Colorado as being viable, given how little space there is between populated areas.

At 64, with a weakened body due to several life altering illnesses, I haven’t been able to hunt in the manner I enjoy for several years and will reluctantly say that my hunting days are over. With things being as they are today, I wouldn’t want to hunt anyway. Perhaps armed only with a good camera and certainly not during hunting season. One thing is for sure, Colorado’s elk are in need of some radical policy changes, even if it comes in the form of a more limited income stream for the state. Though revenues from large numbers of hunters have at least been partially responsible for keeping Colorado’s smaller towns on the map, the deer and elk need to come first for a while.

Encountering a bull elk such as the one pictured while hunting on public lands (BLM, National Forest), in Colorado, has become an extremely rare event due to far too many hunters (as allowed by the vast number of hunting licences sold by the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife) which has resulted in chronic herd mismanagement and the highly inordinate numbers of elk taken during Colorado’s hunting seasons. Put simply, it has been the short-term value state wildlife officials have placed on the huge sums of money put into state coffers at the longer-term expense of the well-being of the state’s elk (and deer) populations.

High Country Cabin Near Minturn, Colorado

Originally Posted on Quora

Circa 1997 Canon Digital Elf 3.2

One of Colorado’s more obscure backcountry skiing destinations, this cabin is located about twenty miles from the historic mining community of Minturn, Colorado. Four friends and I made the nine mile ski into the cabin for four days of fun and fellowship. It had been snowing on and off throughout our stay, making for some prime deep powder skiing. We skied all day everyday and were ready for some hard earned rest.

We hadn’t seen the sun in three days and, just as we were headed out (you can see our telltale single file trail), it magically cleared as if the snow gods were bidding us goodbye. I looked over my shoulder and waited a moment before snapping this pic. It was cold and sunny for the ski-out to the trailhead and our awaiting vehicles below.

How do poachers usually get caught in places like Africa or India, and what are their reasons or excuses for doing it?

Originally Written for Quora

First, I’ll add that poaching isn’t something that only takes place in faraway lands. It is a significant problem right here at home, in the US.

As with most conservation issues, it’s like peeling an onion with each layer getting closer to the core. On the face of it, many of us view poachers as bed men doing evil deeds, but it can be far more complicated than that. If you look at the problem of the black market for animal pieces and parts as being an evil entity with its roots stretching far and wide, you’ll find that once you get far enough out from the root ball, you’ll reach the poaching aspect of the illegal trade. Things are a bit different in the different areas around the world where poaching exists. You may even find that poachers can sometimes be good people doing evil deeds. In Africa and India, for instance, some of the poachers are poor farmers or herdsman from the neighboring tribes and villages. The gravitational pull for those who become poachers is quite strong in terms of putting food on the table for their families. Poachers receive a small fraction of what a given animal is worth to a wholesaler within his other country and that fraction is miniscule as compared with what those same pieces and parts are fetching at the end of the line, where they are sold to dealers in countries like Japan. But as little as a poacher makes on their end, it is more than they can possibly make on their crops and livestock alone. So the incentive is extremely tempting. Add to that that there are cultural differences which make it easier to kill these animals than we in the West can comprehend. In many cases, tribesman are histlorically accustomed to hunting many of these now threatened and endangered species. I can’t say that the paradigm is the same in every impoverished country, but it is certainly similar. I would anticipate that the poaching problem is bad enough that if a particular poacher is caught or killed there’s another right behind him awaiting his turn to carry the AK.

On the other side, you’ve got guys who are paid some paltry sum to put their lives on the line protect these animals from being poached. In relation to the size of the territory they are responsible for, the number of paid rangers is very small. It is not unusual for a poacher and ranger to know one another or even belong to the same tribe and live in the same village. Graft is a very real problem for a ranger who simply gets paid to look the other way. Of course, the rangers aren’t nearly all on “the take”. But the point is, on this level of the problem, it is more complicated than it might appear to be. That being said, friendly or not, these poachers are a cog in what comprises the wheels of poaching and they must be stopped. More funding is needed so that park rangers aren’t so easily tempted to break the laws that they’re paid to enforce. There are state sponsored anti -poaching organizations and there are the smaller game management entities that are generally not-for-profit associations that operate on shoestring budgets and their anti-poaching personnel are completely out-numbered by “the bad guys”. Being a ranger for this kind of conservation effort comes with serious dangers and many rangers are simply killed in the night while out on patrol. They could use the help of privately owned mercenary companies that have been in place contracting to the US military in the neverending wars in the Middle East.Though this is an expensive option, it is possible to obtain the funds necessary to get these wildlife advocacies the help they need if the right people get involved.

The way to solve the overall problem is to work it from both ends towards the middle. There are already international laws in place to put an end to world trade in animal pieces and parts, but they are not as effective as they should be because the law-breakers aren’t punished to the fullest extent of the law. Often, they are simply fined while being allowed to continue. Corruption runs amok. Laws “without teeth” are of little value in the fight to put an end to trafficking in animal parts.

While not perfect, the poaching problem in the US has been reduced, with steep fines and substantial jail time levied on offenders. Still, highly organized poaching is the same most organized crime and can be fairly sophisticated in their cryptic ways and means of evasion.

The best thing we as simple citizens of the world can do is see that our people on the front lines are closely backed and that related anti-poaching programs ascend the ladder from being grassroot efforts to amply funded organizations with appropriate structure and enough “boots on the ground” to make a palpable difference. Make no mistake, this has gone from being a back-burner issue to one of serious urgency with mind-blowing consequences if we don’t act, in earnest, in the here and now.

What role do zoos and conservation groups play in helping increase the Dhole population, and are there any success stories?

Originally Written for Quora

I’m going to use this question about the dhole, a wonderful but little known animal that inhabits parts of Asia but is 75% absent from its original habitat, to make a point that no one seems to want to hear. The first thing I noticed in this National Geographic story are the words used to define the story category: “Photo Ark”. To me, that’s a great way to think about endangered species, particularly the ones that have little to no chance of recovering from their current status and made the Endangered Species list decades ago. To send out the message that Nat Geo is compiIing a photographic ark obviously means something. I have posted a couple of screenshots so you can read the basics on the dhole and see what they look like. Like most caniids, I am drawn to their handsome, wolf-like features. Though wildly different upon initial inspection, the dhole has similar features to all sorts of wild dogs found all over the world. I must admit that while I have at least a general understanding of most canids, sort of a “working knowledge”, other than the name “Dhole”, I knew very little about them as a species.

Of course, the second thing that struck me was just how few of them remain, 4,500 to 10,500 individuals. This is roughly half the number of African Wolf Dogs which, as the name suggests, can be found in South Africa and just a handful of countries to the north. It’s historic range was throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Dozens of creatures are down to similar numbers, numbers that have been holding onto existence using tooth and claw and every bit of their instinct to thrive when conditions are stacked heavily against them. How would we view our own chances if there were just 20,000 of us remaining following what could have only been apocalyptic events to bring our kind to the knife’s edge of being? With this and other posts, I’m trying my darndest to wrap some “shock and awe” perspective around what’s happening to the planet. It is abundantly clear that even with biological scares like (in recent history) HIV, Influenza, COVID, Ebola, Bird Flu, Hantavirus, West Nile, and on, that we’ve become numb to the potential for something as big to come along as the Black Plague (aka Black Death, 1346 – 1353) which killed 25 to 50 million people in just seven years. Granted, times have changed, but COVID should be a reminder of how we had to enlist the help from doctors and scientists from all over the world to bring to bear their collective knowledge to come up with a solution while the clock was ticking on something which quite easily could have been much worse. This clearly reflects the extents to which we will go to save ourselves but, even then, nothing seems to shake us as we look to others to save our lives.

Credit Wikipedia

Credit Wikipedia

If that same effort, say, over a six year period, were put into saving threatened and endangered species, I believe we could have turned things around for some of the most ecologically important species. It’s amazing what we can do when pressed hard for results.

In the mid-60’s, my grandmother took me the one of the larger zoos back East and even as a child of preschool age, I was imprinted by seeing what were clearly wild animals stuck in cages and steel and concrete mini-habitats. I went some thirty years before I took a chance because my girlfriend at the time had never been to a zoo and had a strong desire to visit one. I really liked this girl and thought I could set my feelings aside for one day. I know that most people don’t feel the same way I do on many fronts. Besides, I was just a young child during that first ill-fated foray. Who was I to stop her from having an experience that millions of others enjoy every year?! The Denver Zoo was known for having a very good wolf exhibit and I had been fascinated by wolves for my entire life, reading numerous books and catching every documentary I could find on the subject. I thought I could “tough it out” for one day at one of the most progressive zoos in the country. But almost from the get-go as we were buying tickets, I began to get “cold feet”. I had lied to myself in an effort to make someone else happy. I managed to fake my way through the other exhibits (as I did not wish to have a negative impact on her experience) until we got to the wolf enclosure and, as much as I wanted to spend a few moments admiring them, I began to shed some uncontrolled tears while doing my best to quell my reaction and keep her from seeing it (I must be a decent actor because she didn’t notice).

What got to me the most was due to simply knowing too much about wolves to see them in captivity. They are an iconic symbol of everything that is pure and wild. The alpha male was probably around six years old and 120 pounds of sheer and magnificent masculine beauty. Predominantly light grey and white (grey wolves, aka, timberwolves come in a variety of colors from various shades of grey to reddish brown to all white, and all black) he was what most people think of when they hear the word “timberwolf”. It was just my girlfriend and I at the exhibit and he and I locked eyes as I watched him pace back and forth on a 6″ deep x 12″ wide groove the wolves had cut by pacing along the fence line at the front 30-feet of the enclosure. These are animals that have home ranges of up to 500 square miles and regularly travel between 20 and 50 miles in a single day. Talk about pent up energy which leads to stress, anxiety, and depression. His angst was palpable as was, I’m certain, my own. Today, some thirty years later, I can still sense his pieycing, highly intelligent eyes looking straight into my soul. I distinctly recall marveling at his masterfully efficient gait as he paced. I honestly believe he could feel my sadness and empathy for his situation. I require a lot of personal space to be comfortable and mile upon mile of open space in order to recreate and live happily. As much as I wanted to stay and observe both he and his incredible pack, we were there for just ten or fifteen minutes. When we were done at the zoo, we spent the evening having dinner and talking about a new class my girlfriend was about to start teaching. She was a chemistry professor at a Christian college in Denver. I do not remember what it was that ended the relationship other than the fact that I’d soon be moving to Durango but we weren’t together long enough for her to hear of my aversion to zoos. She had had a good time and that was all that I had cared about. The someday for telling her my genuine feelings never came. My current and by any and all means, final wife, and I feel almost exactly the same about wild things and wild places and our mutual love of nature is one of our primary connections. We prefer dogs to kids.

It has been another thirty-plus years and I’ve not been to another zoo, not even to take my daughter when she was young but all too impressionable. She’s twenty-six now and I don’t believes she’s gone to one of her own volition. She is her father’s daughter. The same goes for aquatic theme parks, though her mother once took her to the grand opening of a Sea World, near San Antonio. While knowing of my feelings on the subject, she took our then seven year-old daughter without informinng me of her plans (taking her out of state without informing the other parent was a clear breech of our parenting plan). Suffice it to say, it had the desired impact on me. What some people will do in the name of pure vindictiveness.

Between zoos and many of the conservation programs which work with them, we have literally researched many important species to death (or, followed them as they made their debut onto the threatened or endangered species lists) with just five to thirty years remaining on their respective clocks. Make no mistake, I am all for research and education, but when it comes to the treatment of the creatures involved, there must be limits.

I want to be clear. I am certainly not opposed to conservation programs. That would be nothing short of just plain stupid. They need to continue but without a reliance on zoos. Almost like the separation of church and state, they should continue on parallel path with more aggressive conservation efforts put in place to expedite the issues around key species that are almost gone and putting a real end to poaching and outright slaughter, and habitat loss as it relates to prioritized species. As an example, the American Wild Horse and the African Wild Dog. rhinos, highland gorillas, the Big Cats, wolves, elephants, and, of course, the dhole. These are but a few of the species that can still be salvaged but action needs to take place in the present, not after we’ve researched these animals for yet another ten years. I’m sorry, but they may no longer be here to study. Education and study efforts should be ongoing but targeting the next wave of species that are clearly in trouble, mostly having to do with loss of habitat. Establish new programs surrounding the next wave of creatures that will one day soon require intervention. I see it as a two-pronged approach. Long-term research and education on creatures not yet in their 11th hour, and short-term aggressive conservation measures to provide absolutely necessary aid to species in dire need of our help. In the end, we cannot save every species but we can still save many. We just don’t have the kind of conservatiion programs in place to ramp things up as it becomes necessary to save the most endangered species today. And last but not least, these programs must be afforded “teeth” so that when it becomes necessary to fight for the animals they’re trying to protect they are able to react with more than just words.

For the sake of discussion, let’s say that my childhood reaction to zoos and what I think of them is valid. I realize that zoos have enabled us to study many species that would otherwise be diffucult to study in the field, but for how long and at what cost? After so many decades -long studies have aready gathered the necessary information surrounding the long-term survival of many keystone animals, I believe we’ve got to put an end to zoos. We are long past the point of diminishing returns. If we take all of what I’ve said above as fact, we need to take an urgent look at this huge and amorphous issue and put some definition around it. To take a sound, pragmatic approach to mitigating the vast expanse of damage we’ve already done. We need to set worldwide protocols and place definitive timelines (deadlines) around the species that are at the highest risk but could still be saved. And. we need to be able to fire back when fired upon!

This is extremely difficult for me to even say, but in looking at wildlife conservation as a whole, there simply isn’t enough time remaining relative to current funding levels and tactics to save every species on the endangered species list. It’s already too late for certain species. We need to take a much more pragmatic view based on what is truly possible. What could be accomplished if we went at this global problem much more aggressively and if we did all the right things from this point forward and started today?! We won’t know until we engage the problem head-on, in a highly structured manner, and provide hard push-back to anyone or anything that gets in the way.

In the meantime, we can look for the most proactive wildlife programs currently operating and find out what we can do to help expedite things in real time with an emphasis on the word “NOW”! When it comes to species that have been on the endangered species list for decades, there simply isn’t enough time remaining for what amounts to political diplomacy.

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Thank you.