Your thoughts on this?

[Gerritt]

I get things need managing... But nature has a way to manage itself. It always has, long before man came along and discovered black powder...

 

I'm on the fence with this one... While I see the views for the need of management.... I also feel this is nature and it should run its course, as it always have before man started meddling...

 

 

http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/topstories/b-c-wolf-cull-will-likely-last-5-years-deputy-minister-says-1.2952556

 

Should encourage a healthy discussion

 

G

Edited February 11, 2015 by Gerritt

[limeyangler]

long before man came along and discovered black power...

 

 

 

 

 

The revolution is still coming brother!

 

[crappieperchhunter]

My only knowledge of this is the link you provided G. Seems very wrong to me. It also appears that this is something that will go on forever as it is suggested that it is not a permanent solution. It appears we have screwed up the habitat bad enough that the Caribou can no longer self sustain.

 

I'm a dollar and cents kinda guy. At the end of the day when I look at something like this and all the money that will get poured into it....all I can think about is how it could be used in so many better ways to help people.

[Gerritt]

 

Lol!!! Thanks for the interesting way of showing my typo.... Made me laugh my butt off lol

 

 

The revolution is still coming brother!

 

[Old Ironmaker]

Just a bit of trivia Limey, the man standing on the metal podium is one Tommy Smith, he came to Hamilton and signed with the Ti Cats shortly after the Olympics. He could not believe that 90% of the black population in Hamilton then were all playing on the team. It was a culture shock for him for sure.

[Canuck2fan]

Just another time where people ruin the environment and have to kill off nature's ultimate scapegoat the BIG BAD wolf, to try to fix what they did.... Sad, since it probably won't work anyway.

[limeyangler]

Just a bit of trivia Limey, the man standing on the metal podium is one Tommy Smith, he came to Hamilton and signed with the Ti Cats shortly after the Olympics. He could not believe that 90% of the black population in Hamilton then were all playing on the team. It was a culture shock for him for sure.

 

 

Cool bit of trivia Old Ironmaker…thanks for that. I have known who these two guys are (John Carlos is the other guy) since as long as I can remember. It was the olympics that happened a year after I was born. I was born in Toronto and one parent was black the other white, black power was not just a headline to read in our family, one of my uncles was involved in the panthers in New York…my dad disapproved….lol.

[bare foot wader]

I think it can be very easy to misunderstand issues on the other side of the country. Wolves are apex predators, and much like killing grizzlies or muskies, people form opinions not based on sustainability or science, but more with emotions. Perhaps with dogs being man's best friend, that stirs up more emotions about predator hunting.

 

In my respectful opinion, I think it's naïve to expect nature to sort itself out, there are very few places left in the world where that is true. Nature can only resolve and sort itself out, if human activities are fully removed from the equation, but society is simply too involved in the wild, directly and indirectly. Natural resources and wildlife need to be managed, and there a lot of views on how to do that.

 

These wolves are not anything like Algonquin wolves, they are not endangered, they are not rare. I live in the South Peace and I've had a few lucky glimpses of the Moberly caribou, and also another herd near Grande Cache across the AB border. The number one track we see in the woods...wolf tracks. In the past hundred years we've gone from one extreme to another, extermination to full protection, even protection against the benefit of other species, there needs to be middle ground. Trapping has a stigma against it, not many people have the time to run a trap line nowadays, and the average hunter effort is not effective on wolves. Wolves get a free pass to expand and run rampant. Logging, exploration, and backcountry snowmobiling are huge factors that put the odds in favour of the wolves, essentially creating highways for wolves to travel easily.

 

This cull is simply trying to improve odds for the caribou, giving them a fighting chance, without the cull the caribou will lose.

[Canuck2fan]

 

 

These wolves are not anything like Algonquin wolves, they are not endangered, they are not rare. I live in the South Peace and I've had a few lucky glimpses of the Moberly caribou, and also another herd near Grande Cache across the AB border. The number one track we see in the woods...wolf tracks. In the past hundred years we've gone from one extreme to another, extermination to full protection, even protection against the benefit of other species, there needs to be middle ground. Trapping has a stigma against it, not many people have the time to run a trap line nowadays, and the average hunter effort is not effective on wolves. Wolves get a free pass to expand and run rampant. Logging, exploration, and backcountry snowmobiling are huge factors that put the odds in favour of the wolves, essentially creating highways for wolves to travel easily.

 

This cull is simply trying to improve odds for the caribou, giving them a fighting chance, without the cull the caribou will lose.

 

I get the logic behind killing some wolves to save some caribou... What I don't get is why something wasn't done before the caribou were put on the brink. Are the people who profited from mining or selling land that caused the caribou population to crash going to suffer in anyway for what they did? NOPE not ever. They will just move somewhere else and exploit the environment there until they can't bleed anymore cash out of it, and move again after that.

 

Aside from all the emotion about the wolf, caribou and ruination of our countries wilderness for profit. Why is it that the wolves have exploded in numbers when their food source has be decimated in numbers. Isn't that the opposite of what should be happening?

 

Will the wolves find another source of prey if the caribou are gone, that will allow them to stay at the numbers they are currently at. Why isn't the destruction of the habitat hurting their numbers too?

 

Is it just the end of the line for the caribou from an evolutionary standpoint and there is no way of saving them because nature itself has no further use for them?

 

Obviously a short article can't even begin to explain how a really strange situation got the way it is, so it is hard to know what effect the cull will have. They just better hope those wolves aren't like coyotes though. The more man does to destroy them the more prolific they become. Now you can't go for a 30 mile drive around here without seeing a pack of them. Never saw one in this area for the first 40yrs of my life now they are everywhere?

Edited February 11, 2015 by Canuck2fan

[bare foot wader]

What I don't get is why something wasn't done before the caribou were put on the brink. Are the people who profited from mining or selling land that caused the caribou population to crash going to suffer in anyway for what they did? NOPE not ever.

 

Why is it that the wolves have exploded in numbers when their food source has be decimated in numbers. Isn't that the opposite of what should be happening?

 

Why isn't the destruction of the habitat hurting their numbers too?

 

 

the BC gov't is largely to blame for the first point, especially the liberal government the past few years...Christy Clarke and her "world class environmental standards" is a joke, look at mount polley....giving Nestle free ground water to provide a whopping 17 jobs to the economy in Hope, BC...BC hydro selling power to the US for cheaper than residents, not following through on promises following flooding valleys for hydro dams....foreign owned guide outfitters donating to the liberals campaign and then we see game allocations shifted from residents to the outfitters...but that's a huge other subject lol

 

wolves are opportunistic, caribou, moose, elk, deer, cattle...moose numbers are hurting in certain regions of BC for the same reasons as the caribou

 

many resource companies also do fund enviro projects

 

wolves don't rely on habitat the way ungulates do, opening up huge tracts of land from logging, pipelines, etc create easy travel highways for the wolves to cover more ground...wolves can cover upwards of 50km per day, ungulates cover much less

 

backcountry snowmobiling also provides tracks for many animals to follow, wolves included...wolves have the advantage in deep snow over ungulates....ungulates tend to have a migration and winter ranges in the mountains, they need to stay with their winter food sources or starve, and at the same time the wolves can travel greater distances much easier in winter

 

the wolves are not the only reason, and certainly not the largest reason behind the decline, but at present time they are the largest threat to the recovery plan...land is now protected, much tougher standards to get permits approved, but the caribou need to live long enough to rebound

 

in the 70's and 80's aerial culls were common place and populations were more balanced...a lot of the opponents criticise the cull based on other similar projects claim to have failed in recent years, but it takes upwards of a decade to see the results....the critics don't seem to mention how things worked out in Ft Nelson back in the day

[cram]

Let's trade them half of our cormorants for half of their wolves.

[glen]

Animals could manage themselves in land without people.

 

Look at all the food people provide for animals. Upset the balance. Now cull.