I just got off the phone with one of the world’s leading wolf experts Dr. Val Geist, Professor Emeritus in Environmental Design, Adjunct Professor of Biology, University of Calgary. I have grown quite tired of the misinformation and personal attacks from the wolf advocates. I am not going to go into the whole conversation as I am setting up an interview to be filmed with Dr. Geist in the future. I will hit a few of the highlights, though.
There has been some suspicion that there were remnant packs of native wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains during the introduction of the Canadian wolves. Dr. Geist has heard the reports but doesn’t believe it is possible to confirm since the introduction happened 16 years ago.
Dr. Geist said the one of the biggest misconceptions was that of the benign wolf. He said North America has never had to deal with large wolf populations like in Europe and Asia. He mentioned a single year in France where there were in excess of 3000 documented fatal wolf attacks on humans. He said that with introduction “we have let the mouse into the cheese factory.”
Using this example he did dispel the notion hunters and myself have had that the wrong wolf was used for introduction. Dr. Geist said we could have used a smaller wolf but with the enormous food supply available any wolf put into this environment would grow quite large and have a similar impact on our elk and moose.
There is a problem in the U.S. with wolf study because wolves have been kept under strict control until now. You must go to Europe and Asia to see the real impact wolves can have on an ecosystem and humans. The problems start to arise when the natural food supply starts to run short, like is beginning to happen in Yellowstone National Park. Wolves historically begin sizing up humans. I have reports of this happening in the East Fork as early as last summer. They will sit and stare at humans and according to Dr. Geist, “this is a prelude to an eventual attack on humans.” I asked about all the people filming and photographing wolves in Yellowstone and he said, “when the food supply begins to run short, some of those filmmakers and photographers are going to be attacked and killed by wolves.” “Wolves have killed countless people throughout history, just not so much in North America because they are a very different animal when they are shot at and when their numbers are low,” Dr. Geist continued.
I also asked about our elk populations. I told him about the calf:cow ratio of 11:100 in the West Fork and he was startled. That ratio is lower than any place he has ever encountered. I asked about how to manage the elk going forward and Dr. Geist responded, “you have to lethally manage the wolves in a manner that would blow your mind!” I followed up by asking what do you mean by blow your mind? He responded, “you need to kill over half of the wolves each and every year! Otherwise the elk will be next on the Endangered Species List.”
There is also the issue of an extremely contagious disease carried by wolves and transmittable to pets and humans. Dr. Geist has warned in a published paper that this isn’t a bogeyman like wolf advocates describe but rather a real threat to people, especially children, living in rural Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. The disease is potentially fatal. Echinococcosis, also known as Hydatid Disease, is a potentially fatal parasitic disease caused by tapeworm of the genus Echinococcus – including Echinococcus granulosus and Echinococcus multilocularis. Research data indicates that 62% and 63% of the wolves tested in Idaho and Montana respectively between 2006 and 2008 were infected with the tapeworm.
I will be interviewing other biologists who have extensively studied wolves in the near future. I will post small parts of the interviews but most will be retained for another project. In the end, the facts will come out. And they won’t resemble the “Fairy Tale” being told in some circles. Those circles manipulate science and take small pieces to use completely out of context. The real science in it’s entirety, will “Blow your Mind!”
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There were two documented wolf attacks/death in 100 years in North America that involved humans and wild wolves not in captivity. One might have been a bear There were 3 others where wolves were chained and not in the wild. There were close to a hundred fatal bear attacks in the same time period and more cougar attacks than wolves. Wolves posed the lowest threat. Get your facts straight. Wolf haters always hate wolves despite evidence that wolves are shy and stay away from humans. Don’t you have something better to do than think about killing wolves, what a sad thing.
Louise
Maybe you should get your facts straight. Where in this story did it mention wolf attacks in North America? There have been thousands of humans killed by wolves in other parts of the world. Learn to read and comprehend before commenting.
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