A growing practice of setting bounties to kill wolves in Alberta is being met with howls of protest.
Alberta Fish and Wildlife has a mandate to manage wolves, but it appears municipal governments, which are being lobbied by ranchers concerned about cattle-killing wolves, and hunting groups who blame wolves for killing the animals they want to hunt, have taken over.
Several third-party groups are paying out bounties on dead wolves.
Biologist Kevin Van Tighem said the Province is essentially abdicating wildlife management responsibility to municipalities and gaming associations – and no one knows for sure how many wolves are being killed as a result.
“Virtually anyone can kill as many wolves as they want in Alberta, regardless of whether those wolves hunt cattle or live on wild game,” said Van Tighem, a former superintendent of Banff National Park who has been involved in wolf management for many years.
“Random killing of individual wolves, which is what current wildlife regulations promote, is a recipe for continuing conflict.”
Under existing provincial regulations, any landowner can shoot a wolf on or within eight kilometres of their land, and any Albertan, without a licence, can shoot a wolf for about nine months of the year on land to which they have right of access.
Trappers and hunters must have a valid Alberta licence, but there is no bag limit for wolves – trapper and hunters may kill as many wolves as they wish.
In addition, a growing number of hunting groups in areas including Sundre, Rocky Mountain House and Drayton Valley have or do offer bounties on dead wolves since 2010.
Local municipalities such as Cardston County, Clearhill, Big Lakes and Bonnyville have also offered bounties or “incentives” for people to kill wolves in recent times.
Ranchers are concerned about the loss of livestock from wolves that get a taste for livestock, while hunters are worried about declining ungulate numbers and blame wolves for killing the animals they want to hunt.
Murray Millward, chief administrative officer for Cardston County, said council decided to put a bounty on wolves in 2012. A maximum of 10 wolves can be taken each year and the county pays $500 per dead wolf.
“Council had a lot of complaints from ratepayers in the south that wolves have been taking down cattle,” he said. “This is only the second year it’s been done and they will review it every year to see if it’s needed.”
Millward said 10 wolves were killed in 2012, but none so far this year.
He said the county’s agricultural field officer must verify wolf kills within 48 hours before the bounty is paid.
“Last year, we received an indication from the cattle association that they appreciated it and it had helped them,” said Millward.
Officials with Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development say they do not have a problem with third-party organizations putting bounties on wolves.
“The Province does not set any bounties, but they are legal for municipalities to set as long as the people submitting the wolf for a bounty have a legal hunting licence or trapping licence,” said Carrie Sancartier, the department’s public affairs officer.
The Province’s current estimate of the wolf population is around 7,000. They predict it would take approximately a 70 per cent removal of wolves in an area to result in a long-term decline in wolf numbers.
The department estimates that hunters and trappers remove approximately 15 per cent of Alberta’s estimated wolf population each year, which they say is sustainable.
They say wolves have high reproductive rates and are quite difficult to hunt and trap as they tend to avoid humans and human activity. They are also able to travel, and will fill voids where wolf populations may be low.
Sancartier said ESRD requires registration of harvested wolves in most areas of southwest Alberta – from the Brazeau River south to the Canada-US border.
“Elsewhere in the province, wolves harvested by trappers on registered fur management areas must be reported,” she said.
“With the exception of southwest Alberta, the department does not maintain records of the number of wolves hunted, or the number of wolves trapped on private land.”
Van Tighem, meanwhile, said the Province needs to reassert its authority to manage wolves in Alberta, noting current regulations are not science-based.
“Regulations that protect wolf packs that aren’t known to kill domestic livestock would be a good start,” he said.
By allowing municipalities and hunting associations to issue bounties on wolves, Van Tighem said the province is cutting Fish and Wildlife – the agency responsible for managing wildlife in the public interest – right out of the picture.
“Enlightened wolf management is possible,” said Van Tighem, who is also the author of The Homeward Wolf, to be published by Rocky Mountain Books later this year.
“But it certainly won’t happen if special interest groups or rural municipal governments continue to be permitted to override provincial wildlife policies with freelance programs that kill wolves indiscriminately.”
The Alberta Wilderness Association is also concerned that decisions on Alberta’s wolves are being made by local authorities with public dollars and hunting groups with funding from foreign special interest groups.
AWA estimates there have been at least 524 wolves killed since 2010 as a result of bounties based on figures they have compiled, though they have not been able to gets statistics from all districts.
“This isn’t a question of whether or not wolves should be controlled. It’s a question of who gets to decide what wolf numbers should be,” said Carolyn Campbell, a conservation specialist with AWA.
“Why should that be decided by incentive funding from foreign hunting groups, with no input from the Alberta public?”
According to Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) documents obtained by AWA, funding for some of these programs comes from the Wyoming-based Wild Sheep Foundation.
AWA says those documents reveal that funding is distributed to groups such as the local chapters of the Alberta Trappers’ Association and the Alberta Fish and Game Association.
“Ironically, government Fish and Wildlife staff are fully aware that there is no evidence that untargeted wolf bounties do anything to reduce livestock predation,” said Campbell.
“There are much more effective ways to deal with wolf predation than just killing random wolves.”
Spokespeople for the Alberta Fish and Game Association and the Alberta Trappers’ Association could not be reached for comment at the time the Outlook went to press.
