Province Seeks Input On Wolf Control
Thursday, November 15, 2012 @ 3:53 AM
Victoria, B.C. – The Province is calling on the people in B.C.to make their comments known towards a draft plan on wolf management in BC.
The plan proposes a balanced approach to wolf management in BC which, according to the release," ensures self sustaining population where wolves can fulfil their ecological role, and meet the cultural, recreational and economic needs of society".
The government says it is committed to helping stakeholder’s ranchers and First Nations manage the impacts of wolves on their livestock.
The Ministry says at present about 1300 wolves are being taken every year by trapping, hunting and wildlife management. Biologists suggest that upwards of 30% of the population could be taken every year without hurting their numbers.
Wolf populations in the Thompson, Kootenay, and Okanagan regions appear to be increasing while the populations in the Cariboo, Skeena, Omineca and Peace appear to be stable.
To make your thoughts known, you can go to this site ;http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/fw/public-consultation/grey-wolf/
Comments
I don’t support hunting wolfs from helicopters at all. If they limit it to bow and arrow I say have at it.
Shooting wolves from a chopper while tethered and using a RRA AR15 would be awesome. Sign me up!
Put a bounty on them and we will take care of the over populated critters. There are far too many and it has been that way for a number of years. Introduce “baiting” for these predators in BC and the problem will go away in a few years. Other provinces let hunters use bait for a number of animals. Here in BC they would rather let the population get out of hand so they can hand out tickets and fines to anyone who shoots one of them. BC has many problems when it comes to hunting and wildlife. One of the reasons is that we have to support 70% of the total RCMP in Canada. No wonder we are broke in this City. Check out the new RCMP building. The cop shop is supposed to be a place you don’t want to go to.
Where is Paul Watson when you need him? Remember him? Flew in on a helicopter and got dropped off on some lake in the wilderness.
Totally unprepared for the environment he was in and really not knowledgeable about life in the north. But, he was determined he had a solution how to control the Wolf and Moose issues of the day some 30 years ago.
Remember it well. He said he was going to snowshoe into the area and get in the way of the helicopters that were going to shoot wolves. He went about 100 yards to get out of the sight of cameras and then headed back to the hotel for the night. What a jerk. Only in it for the money.
My first thought on seeing the headline is that if the provincial government is only now waking up to the impending wolf over population problem in parts of B.C. lord help us all. At the speed those people move the budding problem will be much more severe before anything constructive is done. The only effective way is to shoot them from a helicopter. Not something I would normally advocate, but poison bait will harm many other creatures, hunting from the ground is fine, but is not an effective technique if the goal is desreased population, the wolves are too fast and too smart for any significant number to be taken.
There are several large packs of wolves just north of P.G. they travel through the Salmon Valley area on a regular basis, ask any trapper or farmer in the area. Many of us believe that wolves are partially responsible for the declining moose population in this area, asinine hunting regulations and poachers are probably a larger problem, but there is no denying it, the wolf population is increasing.
Do we wait until many more domestic animals are taken by wolves, or do we begin modest population control now?
metalman.
There are a lot of wolves, and they are very hard to kill. It’s natures cycle and this winter they will be getting hungrier. There already is a bounty in place. I say do some shooting from helicopters.
Take away the regs, No closed season, no bag limit, and no baiting requirements. In Sweden where they have 500 wolves (instead of 15,000-20,000) they had a season in 2010 and 23,000 hunters chased 22 wolves. In 2 days the season was over. In BC I doubt there is 230 hunters who actively hunt wolves.
If we don’t act on it the ungulate population will continue to decline and the wolves we don’t kill will starve anyways.
Also a big thing we need to look at is more habitat enhancement for ungulates in the form of burning off areas of non merch timber.
Comments for this article are closed.