Is killing wolves ever justified as a conservation tool? And what does it say about humans — and our relationship with wildlife — when we choose “predator reduction” over real solutions?
For over a decade, the B.C. government has been gunning down wolves and calling it caribou conservation.
Last week, Pacific Wild met with the government’s Caribou Recovery Program team to discuss their proposal to extend the wolf cull for another five years. What we heard was alarming.
Despite launching the wolf cull as a supposed short-term emergency measure, the Province continues to take a shoot-first, figure-out-the-science later approach. Eighty percent of wolves are being eradicated from large areas of the province without a clear assessment of the wider ecological impact.
Even after killing nearly 3,000 wolves since 2015, there is still no binding commitment to protect or restore the habitat that scientists — including the government’s own cited researchers — agree is the only thing that will allow caribou to survive without ongoing human intervention.
Killing wolves does nothing to address the industrial habitat destruction driving caribou toward extinction. Instead, it means killing wolves by the hundreds, year after year, costing taxpayers millions (over $13 million to date) while the root causes of decline go unaddressed. It is unscientific, unethical, and unsustainable. And it cannot be allowed to continue.
Pacific Wild is one of several stakeholders that has been invited to submit for feedback on the proposed extension by June 15th.
Click here to submit your comments for us to share with B.C.’s decision makers. It only takes a few minutes, and it matters. Tell B.C. to end the wolf cull once and for all.