New novel questions Canada's no-kill wolf policy for national parks

Don't Run's protagonist encounters a realistic spectrum of regional attitudes toward wolves

 

In April, 1996, newly-graduated biologist Patricia Wyman was mauled to death at her “dream job,” tending captive wolves at the Haliburton Forest Wolf Centre Sanctuary. Commenting on the fact that she had entered the wolf enclosure alone, a wolf biologist rather delicately commented, “Her love of wolves perhaps made her a little more bold than she should have been.”

Was Wyman’s “boldness” linked to a common belief that (rabies-free) wolves don’t attack or kill people? The image of the harmless-to-humans wolf was promoted by Canadian conservationist Farley Mowat in his internationally popular 1963 best-seller, Never Cry Wolf, a fictional account of the author’s experiences spending a solitary Arctic summer bonding with “mouse-eating” wolves.

Mowat’s “myth of the benign wolf” was comprehensively unpacked in a 2008 article for the conservation site Boone and Crockett Club by the late wildlife behaviour expert Valerius Geist. Biologists knew Mowat’s romantic homage was bunk, Geist writes, but it nevertheless became a “politically correct ‘truth,’” even “apparently upheld in the science community,” which might explain Wyman’s fateful insouciance.

In fact, as honest biologists know, where wild prey becomes scarce for natural or manmade reasons, wolves will turn to what is at hand: if deer are unavailable, dogs, livestock and even — yes — humans. Habituation to humans emboldens them.

These conditions have prevailed on Vancouver Island for decades in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve (PRNPR) Long Beach Unit, including tourist town magnets Tofino and Ucluelet. In the early 1900s, wolves were hunted for fur. Later, through stringent government population policies, they were almost wiped out. Around 1970, they began to reclaim Vancouver Island. An estimated 350 wolves live there today. Meanwhile, the human population has grown to about 800,000, with most residents on the shoreline. Heavy logging reduced deer foraging, starving out wolves’ preferred prey, but for a quarter of a century, the wolves rarely crossed paths with humans.

Then, between 1997 and 2003, there were 51 “worrisome encounters” between humans and wolves, including seven fatal dog attacks and one severe human wounding. Recent incidents of open dog-stalking suggest the problem might be coming to a tragic head.

That is certainly the view of zoologist Susan Crockford, a longtime Vancouver Island resident with academic specialization in wolf evolution. Crockford is also a lively storyteller. Her latest just-published novel is titled Don’t Run, as in, if you encounter a lone wolf, stand your ground and scare him away if you can. When wolves stare at you, they aren’t seeking friendship, they’re sizing you up as potential prey. It’s a slightly futuristic fiction, based largely in fact: a fascinating primer on wolf behaviour, but also a dramatized exhortation to privilege reason over emotion in wild-animal conservation policy.

Don’t Run is set in the Tofino-Ucluelet Pacific Rim corridor in the winter of 2029. Driven by hunger, “superpacks” of wolves — 30-40 instead of the usual six or seven — have been attacking dogs, decimating livestock and even killing and eating people. The novel’s protagonist is a RCMP safety specialist sent to investigate the escalating wolf aggression. The stakeholders he encounters — lifetime residents, livestock owners, Indigenous people, tourist parents of victims, Parks Canada reps — represent a realistic spectrum of regional attitudes toward wolves. It’s a pacey, plausible read that subliminally asks the reader to take a policy stand.

In areas of B.C. not controlled by Parks Canada, people are permitted to kill aggressive wolves to protect livestock and dogs. A sensible response to the story’s crisis on beaches and trails under the authority of PRNPR would be to kill the problematic wolves. But recourse to this straightforward solution is thwarted in the novel by residents’ sensitivity to the traditional Indigenous belief in the wolf as a “spirit animal” that merits special protection.

B.C. is not an outlier in the “wolf wars,” which are as near-global as wolves themselves. A (politely) fierce war between wolf romancers and avid hunters living along the forested Sweden-Norway border has gone on for years. According to a documentary on the subject, some hold extreme views. “The wolf is nature’s terrorist,” says one sheep farmer. “They need to be extinct.” At the other extreme are conservationists who revere the wolf through a romantic Mowat-style lens.

The ”villain” in Don’t Run is the PRNPR, whose no-kill wolf policy in their jurisdiction is central to their “reconciliation” mandate. A (real) paper about their “Wild About Wolves” 2018-launched project explains that “wildlife management is as much a socio-political endeavour as a biological one.” Thus, responsibility for solutions must be ceded to “the right people,” in this case the Nuu-chah-nulth nation, “rights-holders within their unceded territories.” They see the wolf is a sacrosanct “cultural keystone species,” for some elders equivalent to kinsmen. Consequently, PRNPR’s public safety ceiling is “preventative action.” Which so far has resulted in an emollient Parks Canada bulletin, advising visitors to “keep children close,” carry bear spray, “stay alert” and the like. Hmm.

The no-kill attitude of the wolf romantics is foolish and risk-enabling, while the all-kill attitude of the eradicationalists is repugnant. What is wanted is study of countries with centuries of wolf behaviour literature, such as Russia, for example, conducted through a secular, scientific and pragmatic lens, with a bias toward public safety claims, but respecting legitimate claims for animal welfare. Policies should emerge that ensure conditions separating the two species remain optimal for both. They certainly shouldn’t be based solely on fiction or cultural myth.