If the breed clubs were concerned more about the welfare of dogs, and less about the sport of dogs, they could readily turn this situation around. A failure to do so puts the AKC in the dock alongside the more familiar perpetrators of cruelty and abuse.
Some breed clubs are showing the way. Ted Paul told me that when he was president of the Collie Club of America, he worked hard with researchers at Ohio State University to solve the eye disorders of collies. The Clumber Spaniel Club of America and the Portuguese Water Dog Club of America have done the same—jealously guarding the breed not just from puppy mills, but also, through responsible breeding practices, from inherited disorders.
The AKC must join that movement, just as the Kennel Club in Britain has done under pressure. Better breeding practices could solve most of these issues. Animals are not art, to be obsessively reshaped according to some dilettante’s vision of what they should look like. They are living beings, and to afflict them in a highly predictable way with chronic pain and discomfort and to cut their lives short because of some frivolous fashion is disgraceful. When it comes to dogs, the true best in show are the ones who are healthy, happy, and protected from cruelty of every kind.
CHAPTER SIX
The Cull of the Wild
I’VE SPENT TIME IN most of America’s fifty or so national parks, and each stands out in its own way—the sensational colors of ancient wood at Petrified Forest; the brilliant red rock formations at Arches; the shaggy, white mountain goats bounding up the almost vertical faces at Olympic. But for me, one park holds a special place in memory. It’s Isle Royale National Park—a rocky, out-of-the-way archipelago, washed on all sides by the cold swells of Lake Superior.
I arrived at Isle Royale in the summer of 1985 as a ranger for the Student Conservation Association (SCA). Over the next four months, I hiked almost all of its 165 miles of trails that scarcely mar this classical boreal forest. Breezes off the big lake chill the air even in midsummer, and it rarely gets warmer than 80 degrees. The same breezes stir the leaves of white pines and quaking aspens, sending a gentle flutter through the stillness of the park. There’s a solitary beauty to the place, and I found it everywhere—on long hikes, canoe trips, and very quick dips in the cleanest, coldest water in North America. For all its beauty and tranquility, Isle Royale also tested my reverence-for-life ethic, with swarms of blackflies and mosquitoes that welcomed me to the park in their own way.
The park was established by an act of Congress during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, but even by the 1980s it saw only ten thousand or so visitors a year—nothing compared to the eight million or so who entered the Great Smoky Mountains National Park or the three million who went to Yosemite. The park is so remote that at first even wildlife had a tough time getting there. Wolves loped across an ice bridge to the park around 1950, doubtless in pursuit of an abundant moose population that descends from the hardy originals who made an incredible swim from Canada. Bears never made it, and deer didn’t last. Red foxes and beavers did establish themselves, and I saw them often. Bald eagles nested there too, and the habitat is also perfect for northern loons. As a child, I had read about the wolves and moose of Isle Royale and always hoped to see the park firsthand. Researchers had discovered that wolves had an impact on the entire park ecosystem—not just the moose, but also the beavers and foxes, and in turn, the fish, birds, and even plants. Something about this cascade effect enthralled the naturalist in me—each little movement of nature affecting everything else around it.
There is a quiet in the boreal forest—it is not filled with the variety of life of a tropical forest or a coral reef. It is grudging and spare in sustaining animal life. That thrift appealed to me. It was more modest than ornate. There was no outsized feature—no huge mountain, ancient tree species, or powerful waterfall—to leave you in awe. Yet in its proportionality, the place commanded your respect.
The place had tugged at me for a long time, and when I got the SCA assignment, I was thrilled. I was just twenty years old, and soon I was not only on the island but showing tourists around like an old hand. I never saw any wolves—they were few in number, wary of people, and hard to spot in the thick forest. But I saw plenty of other wildlife. I’d pass time studying a mother moose and her calf, or watching loons make their awkward crash landings on the lakes. They were much more elegant in their movements on the water than in the air. They’d gracefully disappear beneath the surface, and I’d try to guess where they’d emerge, often on the opposite side of a large pond.
A mother fox gave birth to her kits under the cabin where six of us lived. I wondered if these foxes were driven by the same impulses as the first wolves who befriended humans—starting that fateful process of domestication. The foxes showed genuine interest in us, and we returned the favor.
One of my cabin mates, a maintenance man from rural Michigan, had been tough on me, especially when he was drinking. He often told me that my preoccupation with animals was a waste of time, and he delighted in recounting his hunting excursions, adding extra detail for my benefit. But I saw another side to him when the baby foxes appeared under our cabin. He watched them endlessly and talked about them excitedly. It was a lesson for me that the human-animal bond can touch anyone, even those who seem least likely to care.
That summer at Isle Royale came at a turning point in my life, when I was starting to think seriously about animals and nature and our duties to both. For the creatures who lived there, Isle Royale was a sanctuary from the unsparing pressures of humanity. All of the violence of nature was at work there every day, and no one clued in to the struggle between predator and prey could hold an idealized or sentimental view of nature’s operations. But there is a world of difference between animals killing animals for survival, and humans killing animals for no reason at all, except money or sport. At least here, there were no trophy hunters traipsing into the picture to bring gratuitous death, no steel traps to bring needless and prolonged suffering, and none of the other destructive influences that only human beings, at their most careless, can inflict upon wildlife.
Human beings were welcome guests in the park, drawn there by a sense of exploration, fascination, and a spirit of stewardship. The handiwork of the ages, and of the Creator, had left us something that could not be improved upon. I felt proud that the American people had set aside this place and, in fact, an entire system of national parks—ensuring that some places would be protected for all time. Wild animals needed more places like this, and so did we. At summer’s end, when I pushed off from Isle Royale for the last time, I felt that I had been given a glimpse of human stewardship at its best. And whatever work lay ahead for me, I wanted to see more of it, and I was committed to do my best to make that happen.
Unfaithful Stewards: Betraying Yellowstone’s Bison
YELLOWSTONE WAS A FAR more mixed and conflicted experience for me, the kind that shows you the world as it is, rather than how you want it to be. My first trip there, in the summer after college graduation, was memorable in the best way—a tourist’s panning of the park’s treasures. The place is like a fireworks display of the natural world—the herds of bison, the water of Yellowstone Falls disappearing into a froth in the canyon below, the panoramic views of the Lamar Valley and regular roar of Old Faithful. Hiking down to a lake in the park’s center, I even spotted a grizzly bear a few hundred yards away. If Yellowstone had just a subset of these wild animals and geological and floral features, it would be impressive enough. But to have all of them in one place seems miraculous, and it helps explain how Yellowstone inspired the very idea of a national park system.
On my second trip to Yellowstone, it was winter and bitterly cold, and everything about the trek was more harsh and raw. I traveled there to help the bison, and to publicize a problem that surfaced there in 1989 but sadly remains unresolved more than two decades later. Montana agriculture and wildlife officials had decided to allow the sport hunting of bison straying from the park—even though Yellowstone had been meant as
the final refuge for the few bison who had survived the market hunting onslaught of the nineteenth century.
These officials viewed the growth and roaming of the northern herd not as a sign of species restoration, but as a dangerous intrusion of trespassers. Yellowstone’s northern boundary was a demarcation line, and no bison were to cross it. Not only did state officials think that bison would compete with cattle for grass and knock down the ranchers’ fences, but, most important, that bison might also spread disease to the state’s cattle industry—jeopardizing Montana’s certification as a brucellosis-free state. When I became national director of the Fund for Animals in 1989, I went straight to Yellowstone to help shame state authorities into halting the hunt. Here was a creature best known as the classic example of human excess and callousness in the treatment of wildlife. And yet there were still men who looked at bison and wanted to shoot them.
To reach the fertile valleys beyond the park, the bison followed the groomed pathways, plowed roads, and trails packed down by snowmobiles. Their destination was a quilt of lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and private ranchers. At a lower elevation than the park, these border areas had less snow, which bison could dig through to feed on the grass below. There were no cattle here during winter—and very few during the summer—but state officials were convinced that bison would pass on brucellosis, a bacteria that causes cattle to abort. About half the bison had the disease antibodies, but not the disease itself, and the idea of bison transmitting brucellosis to cattle was far-fetched—and a practical impossibility for the male bison, since brucellosis is spread through placental material.
The state planned a lottery hunt, with the winners of the $1,000 permits not only getting a freezer full of meat, but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shoot the last free-roaming bison in North America. Like Civil War reenactors, only with real guns, they could replay a defining moment in American history, slaughtering the bison for sport. State and federal authorities would choreograph the exercise, with Montana wildlife officials serving, in effect, as hunting guides.
I showed up at the park without announcing my purpose to the hunters or state authorities, though they found out soon enough. I came with video camera in hand and said I was there to document the first hunt of free-roaming bison in the twentieth century. A number of journalists had arrived, from the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and other newspapers, so my presence, while suspect, was not conspicuous.
On the hunt’s first day, I hopped in the back of a state truck with the hunters and a few reporters and made small talk as the vehicle bounced down gravel roads toward scattered groups of bison. We passed through extraordinary country—broad mountains covered in thick blankets of snow, the Yellowstone River with its fast current cutting through the valleys, and the famous open sky of Montana. But the majestic scenery was all backdrop that day. All concerned were focused on the hunt, but for different reasons: the state personnel wondering how the nation would react to this experiment; the hunters calculating where to fire their first shots on such massive quarry; and me dreading the carnage about to unfold.
Montana wardens had been sent out as scouts to locate the bison and then to radio their whereabouts to our driver. Once the vehicle was close enough to the bison, he stopped the truck, and the hunters hopped off. One by one, they spotted the bison, readied themselves, and took aim with their large-bore rifles. The sound of gunfire filled the air, in what seemed a “hunt” only in name: it looked more like an execution. The bison didn’t have a chance, and one after another they fell in a heap.
A few survivors ran away after hearing a shot or seeing a herd mate fall, but most just stood there befuddled. These animals were used to seeing people, and before that moment had never been harmed by them, much less slaughtered in a sneak attack. In a second large volley, hunters shot an entire group of about a dozen bison, and the animals were all splayed on the ground, with blood streaming from their bodies and then soaking into the snow and the exposed ground. I walked with the hunters through the field, surveying the warm carcasses steaming in the cold winter air. One hunter had shot a pregnant bison. I walked toward him as he started cutting her up, and watched as he put his arm inside and pulled out the fetus of an already well-formed bison. As I looked on wordlessly, he grinned and said, “It’s a lot of fun.” You’d think that such a sight might have awakened some capacity for remorse in a man, but not this fellow. He didn’t seem troubled at all and apparently considered the unborn calf a kind of bonus.
I got back into the truck, and the state officials drove a fourteen-year-old boy to a clearing unobstructed by trees. They instructed the young hunter to shoot at one of three bison standing about two hundred yards away and offering us a perfect profile. It was a long shot, and it struck me as madness that this kid was being told to attempt a feat that would test the marksmanship of even the most highly skilled adult.
The boy took aim with his scoped rifle, squeezed the trigger, and sent a bullet in the bison’s direction. The gun’s kick knocked him back a step. Several moments passed before we realized the bullet had struck the middle bison. What a shot. She went down but was not dead. It seemed that she had been shot in the spine. Bison are famously tough creatures, and she tried to get up, only to fall back down again. She made another valiant but unsuccessful attempt. She kept at it, again and again. Stan Grossfeld, a reporter and photographer with the Boston Globe, was standing beside me, and he started counting her vain efforts to stand up—he logged more than forty failed attempts to rise.
The men seemed unfazed by the spectacle—they just stood around watching the crippled animal struggle. The kid was elated, and the group stood around for a good ten minutes reliving the moment and congratulating the young marksman. At length, they got into the truck and made their way over to the dying animal. About twenty minutes after the whole scene had begun, the boy completed his achievement with a final, point-blank shot to the bison’s head.
When I wasn’t documenting the slaughter, or publicizing it to the press, I was shepherding bison back into the park. I’d clap my hands and throw rocks behind them to herd them past the park boundary, where they’d be temporarily safe. Unbelievably, I saw National Park Service personnel doing the opposite, trying to scare them in the opposite direction. Here were the people entrusted by the American public with stewardship of the bison, and yet they were shooing the creatures out of the park and into the line of fire. These guys thought the bison herd had grown too large, and they were quite happy to herd them along so that the state could finish them off. I had always seen the Park Service as a force for good, but not this time. They brought discredit to their mission and to their uniforms—the ones bearing the National Park Service insignia, with the noble bison right at the center.
Hunters shot 569 bison in the winter of 1988–89, and the few surviving bison in the state retreated back to the park as spring approached. Montana had accomplished its short-term purpose of clearing out the animals one way or another, but the news reports had not been favorable. The whole spectacle had repulsed the public, who saw hunting bison as the sporting equivalent of shooting a zoo animal.
In the face of withering criticism, the state abandoned the public hunt the next year, worried not about the welfare of the bison but about tarnishing the image of hunting. The killing went on, with Montana officials taking over the task. In some years, few bison left the park, but every few years, there would be a larger exodus, and the public controversy would flare up again. Still, Montana authorities would not relent and, working with the National Park Service, actually began capturing bison to ship them to slaughterhouses. The state even contemplated an extermination of the entire Yellowstone bison population and repopulating the park with bison unexposed to brucellosis. There were congressional hearings after the major kill of 1989, and also in later years, especially as state and federal authorities began to manage the bison like a rancher handling a cattle herd.
In March 2007, nearly two decades after my first trip to Yellowstone, Representative Nick Rahall, a West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, convened a hearing on the fate of the bison. His opening statement captured the thoughts of many Americans: “Is it any wonder then that the American public periodically looks on in horror at footage of employees of the United States Department of the Interior participating in the slaughter of Yellowstone Bison?” he asked. “The general public is under the impression that these animals are being sheltered and protected by the federal government, not rounded up and shot. And the obvious question is why. Why is the Department of the Interior murdering its beloved mascot?”
Ironically, one rationale for reintroducing wolves into Yellowstone was to bring back a major predator of bison, elk, and other prey animals to keep their populations in check. But the political reaction in Montana to wolf reintroduction was hostile and swift. Ranchers, hunters, and their allies did not want a single wolf to step into the state.
But this was a federal matter, with the Endangered Species Act legally requiring the restoration of species listed as threatened or endangered. And in the case of Yellowstone, the crown jewel of the national park system, the restoration of wolves was a powerful symbol of correcting a wrong of the past and making the park whole again. President Bill Clinton’s interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, an ardent environmentalist, argued for the reintroduction plan in the name of good stewardship and ecological integrity. So with great local controversy but also with much national fanfare and celebration, government officials trapped wolves in Canada and transported them to Yellowstone and parts of Idaho in 1995 and then released them in an experiment to restore what had been lost.
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