Alaska’s Wolf Control Programs 1: Introduction
Wolves are being killed in Alaska in greater numbers, over larger areas, with more deception and more direct involvement of biologists, based on worse “science” than Alaskans themselves understand. With this entry, I begin a series of essays at varying intervals that I hope will lead to a rethinking of wolf management policies from top to bottom and help to end this dark chapter of the wildlife profession. Bears have also become a target in these control programs. My expertise with wolves and their heavier losses focus my attention in their direction for now, but much of what is exposed as senseless killing of wolves will also apply to bear control in the same areas.
Supporting detail can be found at various links on the Reports page, and I will be posting additional links on the Reports2 page. I strongly recommend reading the material at these links, especially when I single out specific reports and sections. Some of this material and the essays might seem involved, but all of it will be intelligible to most readers in at least a general way. One of the primary reasons why there is still such a problem is that the issue has been so dumbed-down. Too often biologists, journalists, and others fail to appreciate the savvy of their lay audiences and do not challenge them enough to draw it all out. And not only is “simplification” often condescending, it also commonly changes intended meanings.
A good place to begin is with three general misconceptions, concerning the extent of the killing, the level where it first should be questioned, and who is most responsible for it.
Formal and hidden control
The current formal wolf control program began in 2003 and now includes five areas totaling about 60,000 square miles (155,000 sq. km) - about 10 percent of Alaska. Refer to the map on the Reports page (General section), showing these areas in relation to national park lands. The state issues aerial shooting (and “land-and-shoot”) permits to private pilots and their gunners to kill wolves in these areas, after there has been at least a semblance of a public process via the policymaking seven-member Board of Game. Since 2003, aerial permittees have killed almost 700 wolves.
Deadlier but largely hidden control efforts are underway in the same five areas and across much of the rest of the state, and have been for a long time, using various non-aerial methods that do not require special permits. For the most part, this killing is authorized under the guise of providing routine trapping and hunting opportunities. However, board members, ADF&G biologists, and others occasionally let their guard down with comments on the record that make clear the primary intent - to suppress wolf populations in order to avoid the more difficult and contentious formal public process required for aerial killing.
The existence and scope of this hidden control can also be seen in other ways. For $15, anyone with an Alaska driver’s license can purchase a trapping license at the nearest department store and many other locations. This allows the trapper to legally kill an unlimited number of wolves, of any age or sex, from October or November through April in most areas - i.e., for at least a month after wolf pelts commonly become worthless for commercial or subsistence uses due to warm-weather shedding, rubbing, etc. The “trapper” is not required to own or use a trap or snare; with a trapping license it is also legal to kill wolves simply by shooting them, again without limit. With a hunting license, from August 10 until at least the end of March and in many areas the end of May (including just outside the boundary of Denali National Park), it is legal to shoot at least 5-10 wolves of any age or sex; in some areas there is no hunting limit.
Consider that few if any people eat wolf meat, that wolf pelts seldom if ever have any established subsistence or commercial value prior to October or November (pup pelts usually later than that), and that sport hunters are rarely interested in trophy mounts of more than 1-2 wolves. This alone, together with regulations against “wanton-waste” of trapped and hunted animals, should leave little doubt that the primary intent of these regulations is to suppress wolf numbers, i.e., to conduct hidden control, not to provide trapping and hunting opportunities.
Even more illustrative is what a hunting license allows during the wolf homesite period (May-September; see the Nov 9 blog entry). Across most of Alaska, wolf pups are born inside a den in early-mid May but do not fully open their eyes and emerge for the first time until late May-early June. They are usually not completely weaned until late June at the earliest. They are dependent on the older wolves for provisioning and protection at dens and rendezvous sites until at least October, and normally remain dependent well beyond the homesite period.
Yet it is legal for a hunter to shoot any older wolves foraging away from the homesite, which means that the pups can be legally orphaned and left to die a slow death - in May before they have even emerged from the den, and as of August 10 while they are still being attended at the den or a rendezvous site. It is legal to shoot the pups themselves (and any adults) right at a rendezvous site, near a den, and while the older wolves are moving the pups between dens or rendezvous sites. Killing 1-3-week-old or 3-4-month-old wolf pups would not be justified even if there were subsistence or trophy uses for the dead pups. The fact that there are no such uses should make even clearer the intent to subvert the public process with hidden control.
Policymakers, biologists, and others often profess ethical revulsion at the thought of allowing “denning” to kill wolves. Digging newborn pups out of a den and bashing their heads in with the shovel is repulsive. But orphaning pups of this age inside the den, or at the same site 3-4 months later while they are still dependent, is not? The pups killed via denning are the luckier ones; they die quickly. Opponents of wolf-killing expressed outrage recently about a “barbaric” proposal to the Board of Game to allow denning. Apparently most are unaware of the other, already-legal, barbaric ways to kill even more pups each year, all of which remain largely unchallenged.
Deception and misunderstanding also characterize the widespread use of snowmachines (“snowmobiles”) to kill wolves. This likewise illustrates the major role of hidden control programs in Alaska. I will consider the details in another entry.
It would be next to impossible to separate out the hidden control totals accurately, if only because of the loose reporting requirements (e.g., few if any specifics required about locations, dates; trapping information not required until 30 days after the season). However it is safe to conclude that hidden control generates a high percentage of the so-called trapping and hunting totals. Altogether, at least 1,500-2,000 wolves are killed in Alaska each year, including a conservative estimate of unreported kills. Even if half of this total could be attributed to normal hunting and trapping, the kill due to hidden control since 2003 would still be much higher than the 700 or so wolves killed by aerial hunters.
No one should underestimate the devastating impact of aerial hunting, especially in remote areas. Stopping it is of great importance, via a bill pending in the U.S. House of Representatives - though not with the current version’s badly flawed “biological emergency” provision (I will explain shortly, in an upcoming entry). But it is important to keep aerial hunting in perspective as only one of the methods being used in the wolf control programs that are currently underway. Together these involve much more than the 10 percent of Alaska and 700 dead wolves the state has acknowledged. There should be a major effort to stop all of the unjustified control programs, regardless of the killing methods.
Where to begin the questions
The formal wolf control programs usually begin with claims about alleged low, declining, or “stagnating” moose or caribou populations and/or moose-hunting or caribou-hunting problems. ADF&G biologists eventually expand upon these claims in “predation control implementation plans” that they write for the Board of Game. See, for example, the predation control and related sections in the board’s January 2006 findings (January 2006 link on the Reports page) about the need for control in the five formal areas that are still active (with expansions).
So long as Alaskans are left to think that the moose, caribou, and hunting problems alleged in state findings such as these are real, “remedial” wolf/bear control programs are likely to follow. But this is usually also where the state’s case is most vulnerable. Alleging a problem is easy. Showing beyond a reasonable scientific doubt that it actually exists - to justify actions as severe as wolf and bear control - is another matter. If it can be shown that there is little or no quality scientific information in support, other important arguments will stand a better chance of being heard. If it can be shown that the alleged problem really doesn’t exist, few if any other arguments will be needed. In either case, the questions should begin with the alleged problem(s).
To show there is a moose, caribou, or related hunting problem for which predator control is needed as a solution among other things requires good population data and data sufficient to identify a “predator pit” condition. ADF&G biologists haven’t met these requirements for any of the control areas (see especially the March 2006 and May 2006 links on the Reports page).
Other than in one area (Fortymile), where ADF&G added a caribou objective in 2006, moose objectives exclusively drive the formal control programs. That is where I will focus my attention for this discussion. Go to the February 1999 link on the Reports page (bottom section) for a discussion of ADF&G’s continuing claims about a Fortymile caribou problem. The 1999 review is still directly applicable. ADF&G biologists convinced the Board of Game to triple the size of the Fortymile wolf control area for caribou objectives in 2006 with virtually the same arguments that launched the previous Fortymile wolf control program in 1996.
I emphasize that it is possible to examine alleged problems only with regard to the formal control programs. The state usually doesn’t say anything about the problems it is visualizing - moose or caribou - when it comes to the more expansive hidden programs.
Since the 1970s, biologists have developed moose censusing procedures that, when applied properly, produce reliable estimates of moose numbers and trends with accompanying measures of their accuracy and precision (in lay terms, their “margins of error”). The value of these censusing procedures in producing high quality moose population estimates has been apparent for decades in Game Management Unit 20A (south of Fairbanks), for example. However, the moose estimates for the five formal wolf control areas are another matter; they are not reliable, for at least two major reasons:
• ADF&G biologists use the improved procedures to census moose in a portion of each area but then extrapolate the resulting estimates, meaninglessly, to the entire area. In the Game Management Unit 13 control area, they still rely heavily on the old methods that prompted other biologists (mostly from ADF&G) to develop the improved procedures in the first place.
• Few if any of the censused areas include the entirety, most, or even a known portion of the annual range of the target moose population or subpopulation. Thus the highly variable annual migrations that characterize moose can produce year-to-year estimates for these areas that fool biologists into concluding there have been predation-related, hunting-related, or weather-related changes in numbers and/or sex-age ratios or that mask such changes. So important and overlooked is this specific issue that I strongly recommend going to the Reports page and reading pp. 4, 6-7 at the March 2006 link, pp. 1-3 at the May 2001 link (bottom section of Reports page), and especially pp. 38-43 of Appendix A at the May 2001 link.
In at least three of the five areas, the board and ADF&G promoted and began aerial wolf killing based on unsubstantiated claims about hunter hardships as well as low and/or declining moose populations. The most striking example is from the McGrath (GMU 19D east) wolf control area, where annual moose-hunter success rates (percent hunters reporting success of the number reporting) have remained high for at least 15 years, with a stable or increasing trend. The McGrath rates are as high as or higher than in the state’s best moose-hunting area, GMU 20A, which ADF&G regularly touts as one of the most successful moose management stories in North America. This flies in the face of the claims about a severe 1990s areawide moose decline and related subsistence hardships in the McGrath area. Biologists and board members reply that McGrath-area hunters must now spend more time and money traveling further afield to get a moose. There are no data to support this claim, but even if there were, the bottom line is that the local hunters continue to enjoy high success within the overall management area. It is nonsensical to argue that they should be able to do this forever right off the back porch, in only a portion of the area.
A moose population cannot provide a sustainable yield for hunters if it is within a low stable state, aka “predator-pit,” range of densities, a condition that ADF&G biologists refer to (uniquely) as a “low density dynamic equilibrium.” This is the only condition that might necessitate predator control to allow the population to generate sustainable yields. ADF&G has not shown that there is or was a moose or caribou low stable state in any of the control areas, and the available information argues more against than for the possibility. Refer to pp. 13-23 at the March 2006 link and pp. 1-4 at the May 2006 link (both on the Reports page) for details.
I am in a reasonable position to judge ADF&G’s assumptions and interpretations about low stable states. It was through my doctoral research at the University of British Columbia that colleagues and I introduced this and related systems thinking to wildlife science, with a components-of-change, recruitment-based emphasis for exploring the overall stability properties of wolf-ungulate systems. We published this work extensively in 1976-1981, and it still stands as the most comprehensive exploration of wolf-ungulate interactions via simulation, based on field data, reported to date.
One of the most serious problems for ADF&G’s claims about low stable states is the absence of reliable moose population estimates (above) with which to interpret inherently ambiguous, counterintuitive recruitment changes. For example, calf ratios (moose or caribou) decrease with population increases at high and low densities but also increase with population increases at densities in between. Recruitment can be low but still generate positive net annual increments sufficient for further accelerating increases, without predator control, at low or moderate population densities.
In reality, ADF&G’s conclusions about current low stable states in the control areas and elsewhere are not based on area-specific considerations. They arise primarily from unscientific generalities - long-ago-debunked “rules-of-thumb” - as to the threshold moose densities where low stable states should occur. As discussed in detail at the links mentioned above, these thresholds can vary widely over time, within and between systems, with changes in habitat, alternative prey, moose reproductive responses, and other variables as well as in predation and hunting levels. It can be seen from the simulations on page 15 at the March 2006 link that under one set of circumstances without wolf control a moose population would not be in a low stable state even at an areawide density well below .08 moose per square mile (.03 moose per sq. km). But under another set of circumstances without wolf control the same moose population would already be in a low stable state at an areawide density of about .58 per sq. mile (.23 per sq. km) if not much higher.
Dynamical systems of many kinds - biological, physical, mathematical - shift at varying intervals among stable states (“lows,” “highs,” other alternatives) and oscillatory and chaotic modes. The trick in managing wolf/bear-ungulate systems is to recognize the importance of these natural patterns of variation, including the lows, and adapt to them with scientifically creative, variable ungulate harvest policies over broader scales of space and time. This would be in accordance with the sustained yield management requirement of the Alaska Constitution. The present thinking, which focuses on trying (usually without success) to eliminate the variations with predator control programs and in other ways, is not.
It would not be surprising to find moose populations that are in low stable states due to overhunting, because of the decades-long absence of proper censusing and monitoring efforts in many areas. These human-caused lows would almost certainly confound and degrade the important natural variations. Distinguishing between human and natural causes for an existing low stable state could be more difficult than confirming the low itself. In any case, the human-caused lows can and should be avoided henceforth.
The importance of focusing first on the alleged problems underlying control proposals apparently is not so obvious. Opponents usually assume there is a problem and launch into arguments about causes, relative hardships, killing methods, who should do the killing, and so forth. Wolves didn’t cause the moose decline; it was sport hunters, or hard winters, or something about the habitat. We don’t want wolf control, but the local natives will suffer unless the state rebuilds the moose population. Reduce wolf numbers by sterilizing instead of killing them; move the bears to another area instead of killing them. Make state biologists do the aerial gunning instead of giving permits to private pilots.
When this starts, the battle is almost lost. Without even asking, the state is allowed to walk around what should be one of its highest hurdles, to all but ignore the major portion of its burden of proof. Turning to the other arguments so soon also tends to drown out the voices that are willing and able to ask these questions. As I said in the second paragraph of this section, a good first round of questioning as to whether the alleged problem actually exists might be all that is needed. If not, the other issues can still be raised and might get a better hearing. Unfortunately it isn’t likely to work as well in the other direction.
Who originates the control thinking?
The prevailing view among opponents of predator control is that the Board of Game originates most of Alaska’s wolf and bear control programs. They argue that changing the board’s name and the composition of its seven-person membership to better represent non-consumptive users would rectify the problem. I strongly disagree on both counts.
The thinking behind wolf and bear control programs and related heavy killing, especially the biological “support,” comes primarily from active and retired ADF&G biologists, who also occupy most ADF&G management positions at the lowest, middle, and uppermost levels. Retired ADF&G biologists guide and often direct the Alaska Outdoor Council, a powerful statewide, pro-predator-control, lobbying organization. Retired ADF&G biologists are occasionally appointed to the Board of Game; two were on the board from 2003 until a couple of weeks ago (one remains), during which time the board authorized the present control programs.
It is difficult to imagine how anyone who reads the predation control implementation plans (e.g., in the January 2006 board findings mentioned earlier), the various predator control “white papers” and other advocacy documents posted at the ADF&G Web site, and numerous other ADF&G reports and publications would not see the primary role of ADF&G biologists. The technical detail of the implementation plans alone (these plans are a statutory prerequisite for control) should make clear who is conceiving and writing the arguments.
This “science” survives to “justify” the control programs largely because the board process shields it from meaningful peer review, i.e., an open external process. There are no external peer review requirements for any of it. The board holds public hearings, but almost never do other qualified scientists get more than five minutes to testify. ADF&G biologists usually get as much time as they want prior to or during the hearings; then they get exclusive, ongoing input throughout the 1-2-week board deliberations afterward. Formal external written reviews submitted on the record do not fare any better. As indicated in the March 2007 affidavit (Reports page), the board did not give the slightest consideration to my detailed March 2006 and May 2006 technical reviews (both Reports page).
Policymakers (the board as a whole), legislators, the governor, and others contribute to and compound the problem. But virtually all of it, including the related “intensive management” statutes, originates one way or the other with biologists, their reports and publications, their lobbying efforts (e.g., via the AOC), and their failure to meet professional obligations to provide guidance even when it is their colleagues who are generating the bad science.
I will elaborate in later essays.
Feb 18, 2008
A state-permitted aerial wolf hunter in Game Management Unit 13, Alaska, February 2007. A small ski-equipped airplane can fly low and slow enough to shoot a wolf from within 30-50 feet (9-15 m). The gunner, in the rear seat, opens the right-side door and blasts the wolf with a 12-gauge shotgun. The spray of 00 buckshot leaves massive, gaping wounds, often in the rear-end of a fleeing wolf. A mortally wounded wolf can struggle for a long period before it dies or is dispatched, especially when the airplane is still pursuing other fleeing wolves of a family group; the hunters know the wounded wolf won’t get far by the time they finally land to retrieve it. Killing wolves from the air does not normally involve any “sharpshooting” or use of rifles, contrary to the way opponents often describe it.