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Ask about the destroyed habitat...ask Imperial Mining and their Chinese buddies.

All the wildlife in that region is under stress from loss of habitat.

I'm not a wolf hugger by any stretch, and think they are now out of control many places. My elk spots in NW MT are gone because of wolf pack explosions...the Fisher drainage area...


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There has been NO real mining in that region since the '70s, I know, I was born and raised there and wasin the bush there last October.

Logging, HAS had a serious impact on these animals, but, the major problem IS predation by a hugely increased wolf population.

Many of the comments on the CBC article linked to are based on ignorance and "hippy" attitudes and these people are WHY we cannot have appropriate wildlife managemet here in BC.

I am going to spend some time alone in the mountains there in March/April and do what I can with my .220 Swift.

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Shoot straight! wink


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Shoot straight and often..


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And shoot a lot of them wolves.

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I figure wolves have killed MOST of the ungulates in some of my hunting area's, wolves move freely like a panzer division along the network of logging roads.
I dont care what anyone says, wolves have adapted to the roads and will simply run until they come across a fresh track/s then start hunting.

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Good, get em' all!. I live about 40 mi SW of there and they have been a real pain for the game as well as the ranchers hereabouts. Muddy

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Destroyed habitat is often the root cause of species imbalance.

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The concept that some sort of mystical "balance" exists between various organisms in the Biosphere, is specious and one of the major problems in convincing the public of the value of projects such as this cull.

Wolves, bears, wild cats and other "apex predators" will kill prey whenever they are instinctively motivated to do so and some alterations in their habitat can/will/often does modify this behaviour. This, is the situation here and in other parts of BC, where extensive resource "development", mostly logging, has left roads that ease their winter travel....and, attract prey such as Caribou.

While, the mature Engelmann Spruce stands, with the associated "Cladonia" which form the base of the Caribou's winter diet have been greatly reduced in amount by BCFS determined "clear cut" logging, it is the roads in the VERY deep snow that pose the most serious aspect of the problem, along with the salted highway which lures some to death by motor vehicle collision.

This cull is a "last gasp" attempt to save some breeding stock from the increasing number of wolves that are extirpating them and, while I think that it is "too little, too late", I strongly support ANY programme that will halt the rapid decline in local ungulate populations....including much tighter restrictions on hunting, beginning with cutting "non-resident alien" hunting allocations.

Poaching, by "sportsmen" was a serious issue here and I saw this happen but BC has never had the COs in sufficient number, OR, with enough political authority to really prevent it.

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I agree with snap....What is this balance of nature and what do you have to compare it to?
Is it 100 years ago?
Is it pre-contact?
The so called balance of nature is changing always and works in a cyclical nature, coming back to the beginning of its cycle and then starting over.
Some of these activists are professional bser's... I have witnessed them tugging at the hearts of people in the hopes they can sway public opinion, showing photo's of wolf pups playing.
At a recent wolf seminar... I even witnessed a photo of a wolf and a grizzly bear sniffing noses, the photo looked real then it was known to be doctored to make it look "cute".

Most if not all of the folks in attendence have never seen a wolf in the wild, let alone spent any real time in the bush, or witnessing how a wolf or pack of wolves kill and sometimes eat their prey.
The notion that they only kill the sick and weak is simply not true, they consistantly kill healthy adult ungulates...slowly.

The closest thing to this mystical notion of "balance" is brought about by fire burning everything to ash...then beginning a new cycle. The land was burned uninterupted for thousands of years...until recently when every fire is jumped on right away causing the land and everything on it to become stagnant, also causing a pine beetle epidemic which would be destroyed and kept in check by fire, they blame the beetle on global warming, nonsense.

I agree the government is to blame because they allowed the wolves to propagate to an unmanagable level....
The focus is on the caribou,,Why? the wolves have devastated the elk, deer, and moose pops too in many area's,, studys show 1 wolf will kill on average up to 15 elk a year, the math is easy to figure out,, it took after game is almost wiped out before the slow wheels of government to act on this issue....I say they are 10 years to late for this wolf kill.

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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? confused

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

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Originally Posted by SNAP


Logging, HAS had a serious impact on these animals, but, the major problem IS predation by a hugely increased wolf population.



I'm not sure where exactly you learned this but it simply is not true. Logging increases habitat with food.

A few years ago I was helicopter logging in Idaho and some of the local hunters were upset claiming my chainsaw was scaring the elk out of the country.

I invited two hunters to follow me into the logging unit I was cutting.

I positioned them just above me on a game trail and told them to be ready because when the elk hear my chainsaw fire up they'll come running to eat the fixings off of the felled trees.

Within 5 minutes the two hunters were standing over a dead 6X6 elk.

Good hunters also know the best place to find elk are the areas that have been logged the year before. This is because logging is condusive to creating a more prosperous food environment.

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Caribou eat lichen from old trees so it is somewhat true in that case. Other animals benefit from logging however.


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Originally Posted by Shodd
Originally Posted by SNAP


Logging, HAS had a serious impact on these animals, but, the major problem IS predation by a hugely increased wolf population.



I'm not sure where exactly you learned this but it simply is not true. Logging increases habitat with food.

A few years ago I was helicopter logging in Idaho and some of the local hunters were upset claiming my chainsaw was scaring the elk out of the country.

I invited two hunters to follow me into the logging unit I was cutting.

I positioned them just above me on a game trail and told them to be ready because when the elk hear my chainsaw fire up they'll come running to eat the fixings off of the felled trees.

Within 5 minutes the two hunters were standing over a dead 6X6 elk.

Good hunters also know the best place to find elk are the areas that have been logged the year before. This is because logging is condusive to creating a more prosperous food environment.

Shod

Shod


Good hunters know the best place to hunt is a burn, whether recent or of some time passed.
Logging is the next best thing to fire,, however with the logging comes roads,, and a 200% increase in game is reduced when somebody drives up and shoots the game,, similiar to wolves, people use the roads to hunt

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Logging, DOES NOT benefit Caribou in this region and I ...got... that from 60+ years of personal bush experience, including stints working for the BCFS, the Alberta Forest Service, BC Fish and Wildlife briefly and my various bio. courses at Selkirk College, located IN that area.

The FACTS are that SOME species/populations,SOMETIMES, enjoy some increased habitat from logging, but, Caribou, are dependent on "Cladonia" lichens for their winter food supply.

This lichen grows on "old growth" trees and NOT on "regen", natural or planted, thus, removal of said trees by logging can, does and has limited this food supply to this population.

In any event, the Caribou, there are almost certainly doomed to be merely a memory, much like some fisheries lost due to spawning creeks damaged by the building of logging access roads, and the decline in numbers of, for example, Elk, due to several limiting factors caused by human agricultural and industrial activities.

The most egregious example here is the impact of the accursed Columbia River Treaty dams on Kootenay and Arrow Lakes....and, this is now under discussion to re-do that atrocity as the USA wants more water, etc, from a new treaty.

The issue here, is the Wolf cull and it is NOT as well received in BC as knowledgable, serious conservationists would like....a situation that, IMO, will probably worsen.

"We have met the enemy and he is us".......

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Wolf populations are blamed for reduced numbers of all sorts of big game even where wolf populations are sparse. Today's hunters would never want to even consider that over-hunting, range degradation, excessive road building, or intrusion by motorized vehicles could ever be at fault in any way. The Selkirk caribou herd was considiered to be at risk forty years ago. GD

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Originally Posted by greydog
Wolf populations are blamed for reduced numbers of all sorts of big game even where wolf populations are sparse. Today's hunters would never want to even consider that over-hunting, range degradation, excessive road building, or intrusion by motorized vehicles could ever be at fault in any way. The Selkirk caribou herd was considiered to be at risk forty years ago. GD


Undoubtedly road building /access plays a part, but are you trying to say wolf populations haven't exploded in BC in the last 10 years?

The area I hunt, we'd see herds
of 20 mule deer daily. Moose populations were fairly stable, not the numbers of the '70's to early 90's but stable.

The wolves moved in about 5 years ago and have almost cleaned everything out. I was up there for 3 weeks and saw 12 mule deer and 1 cow moose. My buddy got his bull luckily.

The roads have been there for years, I don't blame access.
There aren't even that many coyotes there anymore. Lots of wolf tracks though.

I say don't stop there with the cull, keep going.

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Originally Posted by greydog
Wolf populations are blamed for reduced numbers of all sorts of big game even where wolf populations are sparse. Today's hunters would never want to even consider that over-hunting, range degradation, excessive road building, or intrusion by motorized vehicles could ever be at fault in any way. The Selkirk caribou herd was considiered to be at risk forty years ago. GD


Forty years ago, you never saw Wolves in the area where these Caribou, live; there WAS some overhunting and that resulted in closure of all hunting for them years ago.

My cousin, a fifth-generation "Kootenay" is 55, a VERY keen and active hunter and VERY successful as the large pile of huge Elk racks in his shop at Bealby's Point at Nelson, will attest. He has the large trap lines covering much of the area where the Caribou live and has spent over 30 years in the bush there.

He told me last November, that he had just returned from an extensive trip all through there, then up the Duncan to the Glacier Park boundaries and saw almost NO ungulates OR tracks in the fresh snow. BUT, he saw Wolf sign everywhere and we NEVER saw this until the past few years.....

Simply put, here in BC, "apex" predators are at the highest population levels since anyone now living can recall, there is a major decline in ungulate numbers and culling MUST happen, along with a major cut to "non-resident alien" and even resident hunting to rebuild these stocks of gsme.

If, such measures do not happen and SOON, we face an end to our wildlife heritage as we have known it and I cannot accept that.

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No idea who you are snap, but you seem to have seen what I have.

Let me give you some back ground on me.

The place I hunt, my dad has been going to the same patch of ground... heck, the same camp for over 60 years. He found it and kept going back before I came along. He knows the area and the game.

Me? It's over 30 years. Same camp, same game.

I spend 3 weeks up there now during hunting season but before I had a kid I'd spend over a month up there every fall. He has school so I can't keep him away that long or his mom gets on my case!

Anyway, I've seen the changes. The roads, the logging, the pine beetle, the natives that don't care, mismanagement by governments that sell off our game to the highest bidder... all of it. Now it's the wolves. We have to manage them. It's nuts how many there are.

In the '50s there was a poisoning program that killed them off. Not completely obviously since we export them to repopulate areas with none.
Ungulate populations grew and that's why hunting was so good for the last 40 years.

It's time for a province wide cull again.

Not wipe them out by any means but down to a level to let the Ungulate population recover IMHO.

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