'Skunk lady' a fan of wolves too
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It would seem that wolves are our favourite wild animals as they decorate many throws and T-shirts, yet they are the very animal that man tries to hunt to extinction. On a moonlit night some people love to hear the haunting howling of the pack, while others have nightmares. Where did this love hate/relationship come from?
DNA shows that man’s closest friend, the dog, originated from the wolf. Millennium ago, man, the hunter/gatherer, used wolves as companions and to hunt with. Over time, we started using permanent dwellings, planted our own crops and eventually started raising sheep and cattle.
We had bred our dogs from wolves and no longer needed them in our lives. Wolves were now expected to stay in the forest; but we started taking the forests away so that we could have more food and homes and wolves had difficulty knowing the difference between what prey was wild, and what was domesticated.
In Europe an all-out battle began against wolves which came to North America with the settlers. White men did not learn to live with the wolves as the Natives did; in fact the few white people who had a kinship with wolves were sometimes burned as witches. We had a need to control and dominate nature. Well, we pretty much control nature now. But what have we actually done to it?
You have heard that if you remove the species at the bottom of the food chain’s inverted pyramid, the whole pyramid will collapse. Well, removing the opposite, at the top, will also cause a collapse.
Wolves are pretty much at the top of the food chain. We removed the wolves, so the populations of their prey, like deer, skyrocketed and the land around us was altered. It has been this way for so long, however, it is what we think is natural.
Thousands of people have been to Yellowstone National Park in the U.S.; we have all seen pictures of the wilderness there. Wolves have been gone for over 70 years so what we saw, was not the ‘normal’ wilderness.
Aldo Leopold observed what was happening more than 60 years ago in the Southwest: “I have lived to see state after state extirpates its wolves. I have watched the face of many a new wolf-less mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails. I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddle horn.”
So, what did the land look like before man eliminated the wolves? You can actually see it yourself today, for wolves have been re-introduced into Wind Cave, Jasper, Alberta; and Yosemite, Zion and Yellowstone south of the border, which is the study we are following.
When wolves were reintroduced the deer would not go in the valleys where they were now, easy prey. So the trees grew higher and more trees started in valleys as deer were no longer eating everything. Songbirds, amphibians and beaver returned.
Beaver are ecosystem engineers and their dams provided home for muskrats, otters, and amphibians and provided needed water in drought. All these animals had disappeared and now returned.
More vegetation began growing along the streams, which allowed them to once more meander and caused less erosion, and created more pools of water. This stabilized the stream and riverbanks and allowed for deeper waters, more fish and other aquatic insects, and plants, all of which supported the lives of other birds and animals. Butterflies, bees, and dragonflies returned and the forests began regenerating.
Without the wolves the ecosystem had stagnated. Their return breathed new life into the land and allowed the return the creatures that kept it healthy. Wolves had even changed the flow of the rivers. Who would have thought one species could affect so much?
But how do we live with wild animals, especially those like wolves, bears, cougars and coyotes? Chief Dan George said: “If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them, and what you do not know you will fear. What one fears one destroys.”
To talk to them, you must take the time to learn about them. Watch the birds, squirrels, raccoons, skunks and chipmunks in your neighbourhood. Understand that their main purpose in life is survival, which means food, water and shelter. If you are providing what they need, especially food, on your property, they will be there. If you do not want them, remove the food and they won’t come. Most animals big and small either feed off the food you put out for your pets or the birds, or they feed on those that eat the birdseed. It is another cascading effect.
When you learn and understand an animal, you will not fear it and will not have the need to destroy it. Humans are supposed to be guardians of all of nature, it is time to learn how to live with nature and nurture it.