673;
Top of the morning to you sir, hopefully this snowy first Sunday in February finds you well.
The concept of a "balance" is indeed a nebulous one and a handy term to be bandied back and forth without examining just what must take place to achieve such a Utopian condition - as if it were possible to do so.
As you well said, most of these folks have never seen a wolf in the wilds and for sure and certain have never seen a kill in progress. Honestly while there's been wolves in our area for some years now, I've yet to lay eyes on a local one and then by extension haven't seen a kill either.
We have witnessed the immediate aftermath of coyote kills on deer and I'm going to say it must be close to a wolf/moose or wolf/caribou interaction.
To my mind and from some of what I hear from that part of BC, back country snowmobiling may be contributing as well since the wolves have learned to travel on those conveniently packed trails too.
Now how big a problem that constitutes I can't say exactly - but logically it has to be somewhat of a factor to winter predation.
We really suffer from the input of true believers who are admittedly "iconizing" wolves and grizzly bears. A head of one of the multitude of "wilderness societies" said exactly that when he was interviewed on Communist Broadcasting Corporation radio when the cull was announced.
At least he was transparent about it.........
Honestly if it was up to me we'd have been culling for awhile now but not announcing it to the world. For the life of me I can't understand why Christy's crew felt the need to shout it from the rooftops?
Anyway sir lets hope this buys the caribou some time to recover and it's not too late though like SNAP I fear the worst here.
All the best to you this week sir.
Dwayne
