VICTORIA – When the B.C. government last resorted to shooting wolves from helicopters in the 1980s, an emotional public outcry forced a retreat.
In the B.C. tradition, sensation-seeking urban media and protesters led the way. An outraged reporter named Pamela Martin marched a BCTV crew off the road near Fort St. John to expose this presumed crime against nature. With a metre of snow and temperatures dipping to -40, they didn’t get far, but public sentiment was aroused enough for politicians to overrule wildlife biologists.
This winter, while snow reveals the wolves’ location from the air, the choppers and rifles are out again. And my heart goes out to the biologists and First Nations hunters who face this grim task.
The South Selkirk mountain caribou herd, which ranges between B.C., Idaho and Washington, has been the target of intensive conservation efforts by governments on both sides of the border. Six of the remaining 18 animals now wear radio collars. There were 46 in 2009, only 27 by 2012, and wolves have killed two more since last spring.
Targeted hunting and trapping haven’t been sufficient, so up to 24 grey wolves are to be shot from the air before the snow melts.
There are seven caribou herds in the South Peace, with the Graham herd the largest at about 700. It’s the control group, left to fend for itself as a measure of wolf removal for the rest. The Burnt Pine herd is down to one bull, effectively extinct. The province and Treaty 8 First Nations are working on a plan to kill 120-160 wolves in that region.