Wolf Country

by John Theberge

  Although their decision was made for immediate reasons, it had broad, even international, significance. The scientific literature in conservation biology is full of examples of the need to do a better job protecting large carnivores in all large parks, worldwide. Transboundary movement and killing are global problems, not just for wolves, but for wild dogs, lions, tigers, cheetahs, grizzlies. As human populations make increasing demands on the available space, and parks become isolated fragments of nature in a sea of urbanization and agriculture, without added protection these species will lose ground even in parks.

  Yet nowhere that I know of, certainly not in North America, has any government extended special protection for a park population of carnivores beyond park borders. The three-township success may seem small, but it is huge — precedent setting.

  We speculated about what had happened to cause this unexpected turn of events and, with time, pieced together the answer. At the meeting were two MNR people strong enough to operate from their own convictions. John Johnson, MNR area manager for the townships in question, had made up his mind that he would not accept the mindless slaughter of any species in the area where he was in charge of wildlife management. It was a courageous decision. Ray Bonenberg, his supervisor, backed him. When people like them with a high level of integrity act on their convictions, governments do things right.

  But what had caused this sudden about-face only two weeks after Jim MacLean had written that the MNR would not act? In due time, another leaked memo provided the answer. It was written by director Al Stewart to an internal “Distribution List,” and it read: “We are receiving a number of signals that John Theberge is gearing up for a major press conference around wolves.… Most of his claims are accurate and we are vulnerable. Everywhere the wolf thing raises its head anywhere in Canada or the U.S. it becomes a major issue.… We need to ban trapping these creatures (at least around Algonquin Park). It will upset some rural municipalities, but for the most part there is no farming bordering the Park, the pelts have no value, and there is certainly no shortage of natural prey species. We will prepare a note as soon as possible to get this proposal into the system.”

  The decision to protect wolves, in other words, had been made even before the meeting. Anyway, we had accomplished partial protection outside the park, so at the time we did not care how it happened.

  As weeks went on, however, despite our success, the more we thought about the meeting, the more we felt that we had been manipulated into giving them a “bottom line,” the minimum area to protect. Al Stewart’s memo indicated that the MNR had been prepared to protect wolves all the way around the park. Our mortality data were most convincing for those three townships, but even back then, many wolves had been killed elsewhere. By 1998, just as many wolves have died in other townships, and those numbers continue to mount. We especially regret not having included Airy Township, with the town of Whitney in it, to prevent the MNR’s own employees from ever again slaughtering the East Gate pack. Airy Township was a poignant omission too, when the following winter a trapper snared Annie Bay 3 and a wolf travelling with her. When we went to pick up their carcasses, we felt like we had betrayed them. It was also a mistake not to include Alice and Fraser townships near Pembroke, and we can only say sorry to Mathews 7, who went missing there, and Mathews 8, who died a bloody mess all over the snow in a neck snare. It was a mistake not to include all the townships around the park: sorry to Basin 7 — shot; McDonald Creek 6 — shot; Pretty 8 — shot; Travers 7 — shot. However, all we can say is that we were taken off guard, and the wolf deaths in the winter deer yard provided our most convincing numerical data. We intend to rectify that.

  The ban order was written as an amendment to the game regulations in the Huntsville office of the MNR and was to be sent to Toronto for Minister Howard Hampton’s signature. It was early December and the order needed to be signed by December 15 to go into force that year. Just before the deadline, somewhere between Huntsville and Toronto, the order “got lost,” as it was explained to me over the telephone. Nobody could do anything about it. Very unfortunate. Sorry.

  I telephoned an ally who worked as an adviser in the minister’s office. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll see that the minister signs it.”

  He did.

  WINTER OF HATE

  JUST THE thought of wolves works an evil alchemy in the minds of some people that penetrates deeply into the psyche, locks on to hidden fears and frustrations, and magnifies emotion. Maybe subliminally we remember when the competition was more equal, ancient struggles before humans took command. Maybe because we do not condone overt racial discrimination, some people need something to master and condemn.

  Perhaps it is simpler than that. A hunter goes hunting for moose or deer and comes back empty-handed. A farmer loses a sheep — or worries that his flock is in danger. Parents raised on fairy tales and myths fear for the safety of their children. All blame wolves. Whatever the reason, the wolf-killing ban did not bring out the best in many people living in the Round Lake area. If the wolf holds up a mirror, what it reflected was ugly.

  Consider these headlines from local newspapers such as the Eganville Leader, Barry’s Bay This Week, and the Pembroke Observer:

  “Wolves Spark Feud In Ontario Park.”

  “Big Bad Wolf.”

  “Wolf Killing Ban Annoys Council.”

  “Residents Angry Over Ban On Wolf Trapping And Hunting In Local Townships.”

  “Wolves Mangle Deer In Residential Area.”

  “Something Has To Be Done About The Wolf Ban.”

  “Tell Us The Whole Story, Professor Theberge.”

  The writers of these newspaper articles expressed frustration over outsiders “telling local people what they can and cannot do.” Local Member of the Provincial Parliament Sean Conway encouraged this complaint at a meeting of the Barry’s Bay Fish and Game Club, where he was quoted saying, “You elect me, you don’t elect John Theberge to make decisions and I am, quite frankly, just getting more and more ticked off.” And, he continued, “the minister and his senior advisers accepted the advice of Dr. Theberge without any input from anyone else, particularly people familiar with the wildlife situation in the Round Lake area. Part of my frustration in this particular issue is that Dr. Theberge isn’t here.”

  The club’s president obviously had not told Mr. Conway that he had turned down our offer to make a presentation. Conway, an Opposition party member, went on to criticize the government for its continual interference with local people. Other examples he gave included the proposed new wilderness zone for the east side of Algonquin Park, and the nearby Madawaska Highlands Land Use Plan that threatened to restrict what people could do on their own land. He could have cited other issues that were receiving media coverage in his riding, such as the unpopular pickerel quotas, or the proposed regulations that would require woodlot owners to employ the services of a government tree marker before they logged their land. The wolf-killing ban, he said, was the last straw. The club presented him with a thousand-name petition against the ban.

  Some students of democracy say that the current shift to decentralized decision-making and power to the local people has its strong points, that it provides a greater sense of control, and that is an important antidote to alienation in our increasingly globalized world. Any apparent gains at the local level, however, may be offset by losses at the provincial or national levels in being able to act on broadly held standards or ideals that may be embodied, for example, in a system of parks or wildlife preserves. Can local people be expected to make decisions that they do not perceive as immediately good for them or that restrict their freedoms, in the interests of broader societal objectives?

  The MNR made a tactical decision: they chose public explanation over public consultation. The public goes to meetings labelled consultation in the expectation that their opinions will be weighed into the outcome. Explanation, however, is based upon a decision that has already been made. Explanation is normally th
e route followed for annual changes in game regulations.

  In the weeks before the ban, MNR officials met with township councils and local people to explain the decision. The combined townships of Sherwood, Jones, and Burns immediately wrote the minister complaining that the decision was based on only one researcher’s results and therefore was invalid. They petitioned the MNR to remove the ban, based on the prediction “that there will be a total decimation of the deer population in this area and possibly a dramatic increase in the loss of livestock due to wolves.” I was sent a copy of the petition and asked to attend the next meeting “to enlighten us on your studies of wolves in Algonquin Park.” The council apparently did not recognize the transparency of its motives by acting first and requesting information later. They wanted an argument, not information, so I declined.

  Most vitriolic was one large public gathering at Round Lake ironically held in the basement of the Catholic church. Area manager John Johnson thought it was best that we not attend, thinking that our presence would only provoke greater controversy. Instead, he asked us for a set of slides and graphs of our data. To some extent, government officials are experienced at taking public abuse, and at that meeting they took a lot. One member of the audience asked what the MNR would do if they caught somebody breaking the law. When John answered that they would charge him, the person responded that he was going to do it anyway. The crowd applauded. One person was quoted saying, “If I see a wolf, I’ll squeeze the trigger, because I didn’t get to shoot a deer this year.” Another person pleased the audience by saying, “I’ll tell you right now, any that I see I’ll kill them. You can charge me, you can do anything.”

  It was just the kind of public meeting that has characterized wolf conservation efforts everywhere — Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon, Montana, Wyoming, North Carolina. Supporters of wolf conservation in all those places have the same stories to tell. They hear the same arguments against the wolf, the same refusals to obey the law, the same out-of-control anger.

  In Pembroke, John Johnson faced another loud and abusive crowd, and after that he encountered a hostile Alice and Fraser Township Council. Through it all, he maintained that wasted and useless killing of wolves was unacceptable in his jurisdiction. He explained at these meetings that even he had taken part in wolf-control programs in the past, but times and attitudes had changed, and the viability of a park wolf population, not just any wolves, was at stake. The public criticism bothered him though, as it did us. Later, however, in summarizing his experiences, John staunchly retorted, “That’s my job,” and left it at that. He deserves much praise. Supporting him and present at all the meetings was his supervisor, Ray Bonenberg.

  Oblivious to the storm of controversy around them, the wolves went about their biological business. December 1993 was mild with little snow. The deer drifted more slowly than usual towards their Round Lake wintering area, hanging back on oak ridges along the way. That was the year of a bumper acorn crop; never had we seen anything like it. Walking down an oak slope was like walking on ball bearings. Deer pawed for acorns as the snow became deeper and bedded among the high oaks. There they had the advantages not only of food, but of detecting wolves more easily and running from them downhill.

  For a while most of the wolf packs stayed on territory hunting the deer that remained. One wolf from the Jocko Lake pack made a foray down to the edge of the deer yard, possibly to check out the prey situation there, and returned. The Basin Depot pack killed a deer on Basin Lake, where they shared it with a red fox and a bald eagle. We watched for some long, cold hours at daybreak from our truck parked in the pines nearby.

  Soon the Jocko Lake pack came out of the park, but instead of entering the yard as in the previous year, it remained in the snowy hills on the periphery with the deer. The single remaining McDonald Creek female, having dispersed to the Grand West territory during the summer, came down with two other wolves and killed a big deer at the edge of a bog.

  By early January, the time-tested deer trails were grooved with fresh tracks. While many deer entered the core of the yard, others stayed back, still feeding on acorns. Local people, seeing fewer deer around their houses, were quoted in the newspapers as saying that the deer population had crashed and the wolf ban was to blame. Conservation officer Blake Simpson spent a day with us back in the park where we knew there were still plenty of deer, so in his dealings with the local people he would have some observations to counter their speculation.

  We were beset by newspaper reporters attracted by the demonstrative people speaking out against us in local newspapers. We prepared a full explanation of our research results showing the need for the ban, and it was featured in the Eganville Leader. Instead of setting the record straight, our article fuelled more controversy, eliciting heated comments about bleeding-heart environmentalists and our failure to “get the facts straight.” The “facts” included such things as the increased danger to human safety, and a belief that in one year there would be “no more deer.” In a frightening miscalculation, a local medical doctor and long-time anti-wolf advocate explained that “a timber wolf in captivity will devour one deer a week.” In fact, this is a metabolic impossibility: a wolf that maintained that level of consumption — more than 6.8 kilograms (15 pounds) a day — over a period of weeks would be in danger of exploding. Wild wolves normally consume between one-third and one-half that amount.

  Occasionally we would see a newspaper letter expressing support: “If I went outside on a cold, clear winter night knowing I would never again hear a wolf howl, it would make the world for me a lesser place to live”; “Canada’s wolves deserve better”; and “live and let live.” A nearby township, North Algona, even went on record as supporting the ban. One councillor said, “A lot of wolves are blamed for things they do not do” and “I’d like to see them do more study.”

  When Brian McAndrew, the environmental reporter for the Toronto Star, phoned us, we saw a chance to explain the need for the ban to a larger audience, so we agreed to a three-day visit along with photographer Dick Loek. Some people who spend time with us luck into good wolf experiences, others come away with a blank. Brian and Dick were lucky. The first morning we tracked Basin 9 McDonald to a ten-point buck with the largest antlers we had seen. Its remains lay scattered under a big balsam fir where tree limbs had been broken during its final struggle. Later that day we tracked the Jocko Lake pack across LaFleur Lake into a tangle of alders where they had also killed a ten-point buck. While we were photographing the kill, two or three wolves howled from down the lake, their serenade softened by the wind. The next day we located the Mathews Lake wolves on a half-consumed deer in a little clearing close to a concession road.

  Dick was keen to set up a blind to photograph the Mathews Lake wolves, so we strung up two large, blue plastic tarps on a knoll in the conifers about thirty metres from the carcass. Behind the tarps we put a deck chair for Dick to sit on with his big 600-mm lens sticking out. At 5:30 A.M. on a blistering cold morning, we drove to the concession road and walked quietly by flashlight to the blind. There we sat, Mary and I on our knees in the snow, while first our hands and feet, then our legs and arms grew numb. Our face muscles stiffened, and our blood seemed to congeal. Unprotected from any wolf eyes behind or to the side of us, we could not make a move.

  Ever so slowly daylight roughed out the fir trees and outlined the clearing. The carcass had been dragged a few metres during the night, but no wolves were visible. One or two blue jays called as they flew over. A few ravens, unsure about making a final descent, circled before settling into the trees. After a while the first rays of sunlight struck the treetops and inched their way down, missing us with their weak warmth. Just when the sunlight reached the clearing and illuminated the carcass, a wolf stepped out from the shadows. Head up, scenting the air, it walked directly to the carcass. Dick hunched over his Nikon camera, then swore softly. The shutter was frozen. Like any good photographer though, he had a second camera in a bag at his feet. He twisted the
camera off the tripod, and suddenly the telephoto lens fell forward, rustling the crisp plastic tarp. The wolf looked up and was gone.

  Reporter Kelly Egan and photographer Wayne Cunningham of the Ottawa Citizen spent a cold, sunny day with us radio-tracking a Vireo Lake wolf. The subsequent article and a colour photograph appeared on the front page of the Citizen with the headline “The Rising Howl Over Wolves.”

  These articles were generally well received. There was some counter-argument in local newspapers, such as, “He’s supposed to be a professor of some kind but I wouldn’t send my child to him.”

  Pretty 4, a yearling female, seemed to live a charmed life, bent, as she appeared to be, on testing the wolf-killing ban. Unlike the Jocko Lake pack, the Pretty Lake pack wandered widely throughout the deer yard during the last half of the winter. We tracked them by day as they walked ahead of us on concession roads and listened to their howls at night. Most unwise was their use of Joe Mask’s property. Joy and her assistant, Andrew Hawke, got cross-bearings on Pretty 4 and asked Joe for permission to track her. Joe refused, saying, “There’s no place for wolves on my land.”

  We were surprised by his reaction, remembering the apparent softening in his attitude the winter before, so Mary and I drove to his farm. Mrs. Mask answered the door and invited us into the kitchen. Joe appeared, hesitated when he saw us, and, without offering his hand, asked us what we wanted. His eyes hardened and we knew our hopes for him had been wrong. We made our request and suggested he accompany us, but he refused and started in about wolves being no good and that he killed them in the past and always would. Mary pointed out that we were only trying to learn what the wolves are doing, so people have some facts to go on. We explained that we were trying to find out the condition of the deer they killed, but he said, “The fewer wolves and the farther away the better” and “We don’t want any university professors around here.” He went on to say that it was the intention of local people to stop our research. This was a reference to a campaign mentioned in a newspaper spearheaded by a local logger to get enough no-trespassing signs up that we would be stymied. Mrs. Mask asked and answered the familiar question, “What good is a wolf anyway? They’re no good to anybody.”