Recently I watched the movie The Grey and was again struck by how the media depicts wolves. In spite of years of research into this shy, human avoiding canid we are still demonizing it in popular movies and books. Why? What is it about wolves that make them the target of such misinformation? Why are they still the predator we love to fear?
Our ancestors hunted the wolf to near extinction in the United States? Our fairy tales depict them as killers. Even in these most “enlightened” times controversy about their release back into their former habitats engenders passions ranging from indignation to pure hatred. Why does the wolf pose such threat that grown men go weak in the knees at the thought of them skirting the edges of civilization? Are they the revenge ridden killers depicted in moves like The Grey and Frozen? Are they waiting in anticipation of their next juicy human meal? Should plane crash survivors and ski enthusiasts tremble at the thought of being lost in a frozen landscape? What do the statistics tell us?
Fifty-nine people have been killed by bear attacks in the U.S. since 1990. Cougars have killed eleven. During the last sixty years there have been over 350 injuries from alligator attacks. One hundred and fifty people die from bee stings. Nearly eight thousand people are bitten by venomous snakes each year. Man killing man, 13,800 in 2011. Number of wolf attacks in the last ten years? Two! One attack is controversial as indications of bear were also found at the site. DNA evidence confirmed however that the other victim was indeed killed by wolves. (I want to express here that I feel deeply the death of Ms. Berner. It must be absolutely terrifying to be attacked by any animal including man. My deepest sympathy goes out to her family and friends.) What does the statistical evidence indicate? Wolves do not deserve their “Big Bad Wolf” reputation. We are low to nonexistence on their list of valuable food resources.
Why was Ms. Berner attacked and killed? We will never know for sure, but there were several indicators at the scene to what might have happened. Ms. Berner was jogging alone on a path with underbrush. It seems that the wolves and Ms. Berner encountered each other in a blind curve. The wolves should have been aware of Ms. Berner’s presence as the wind was blowing in the wolves favor. At some point the victim turned to retrace her steps. When encountering strange domestic dogs the big no, no is to turn and run. It triggers a prey response. Could this have happened in Ms. Berner’s case? She was a small woman. Did she start to scream? I am certainly not making excuses for what happened, but after years of working with dogs I have learned you stand your ground, turn your body slightly away from the dog and do not make eye contact. You never ever run.
Once I was out with a group of women canvasing door to door. When we were halfway up the sidewalk of one particular house, a large mixed breed dog came running around the house from the rear area. This dog was bordering on the red zone. The other women turned and ran for the car. I stood still, lifted one arm and pointing directly at the dog, shouted “no.” The dog stopped in its tracks. I then slowly backed up, continuing to face the dog until everyone was safely in the car. I have no doubt that had I not been there someone would have been badly bitten. What would have happened in Ms. Berner’s case had she stood her ground we will never know. We do know from the evidence that the wolves were not stalking her. It was a chance encounter that ended tragically for both Ms. Berner and the eight wolves that were killed as a result, only one of which was subsequently proven to have taken part in the attack.
The Grey depicts wolves as being revengeful and relentless, even in the face of fire and human aggression. They kill not for food but from some vaguely suggested desire to defend territory. In Frozen the wolves hang around for hours waiting for the slim possibility that a human is going to fall from the sky. None of these scenarios are even vaguely probable. As I always tell my husband when watching a particularly foolish film “You must suspend reality.” These moves take a lot of suspending. So why when it is obvious that humans are far more likely to dispatched by a bees than wolves, are wolves still viewed as venomous?
First there is simple economics. Wolves occasionally kill livestock and livestock equals dollars. In an article discussing predation in Montana, wolves accounted for the second highest rate of death from predation in calves and lambs (coyotes get the number one spot.) However, the same report indicated an increase in predation from bear and mountain lions. But who was blamed for even these deaths? Wolves! The reasoning being if wildlife management didn’t spend so much time concerned with wolves, they could take care of those other pesky predators. Wolves it seems really are the root of all evil. So what are the costs economically for allowing wolves to roam in one such state, Montana?
There are 2.5 million cattle in Montana and 225,000 head of sheep. With the average price for a feeder steer going from 150.00 to 220.00 a head and a lamb selling for 121.00, let’s just see how much wolf predation is costing the farmers of Montana. Of the 2.5 million cattle in Montana in 2010, wolves took 458 calves. Of the 225,000 head of sheep, wolves ate 796. So wolves cost cattlemen (let’s be generous and say each calf killed was valued at 225.00,) $10,305.00. They cost sheep herders $9,950.00. About 1300 animals were lost in one state in one year from wolf predation. However, if the rancher reports the kill within twenty-four hours and it is determined that the animal was indeed killed by a wolf, the rancher is reimbursed the fair market value of the animal. A lot of the land these cattle and sheep are grazing on is publically owned and leased to ranchers at a minuscule rate. The livestock displace many of the wolf’s naturally occurring prey. As one rancher put it “If it don’t benefit man, what good is it?”
That statement brings us to the second reason wolves are so feared, ignorance. Kentucky is without a wolf population yet a man recently claimed to have shot a wolf. How did he know it was a wolf? He stated that he knew it was a wolf because it was vicious. Are wolves vicious? What is the normal reaction of wolves when encountering humans? Healthy wolves which have not become habituated to people avoid them. When wolves are habituated to people such as from feeding at garbage dumps (one sees similar behavior in bears,) they are more likely to behave aggressively if they perceive the human as doing something unexpected or threatening. They are also much more likely to be aggressive if the human is accompanied by a dog. Mark E. McNay complied information on 80 wolf/human encounters in Canada, Alaska, and Minnesota. What he discovered was that in 39 of the encounters healthy wolves demonstrated some element of aggression, 29 encounters proved nonaggressive and 12 involved rabid wolves. Sixteen encounters resulted in healthy wolves biting people or their clothing. McNay states that most of the bites were minor and none life threatening.[i]
Habituated wolves can and do bite people but so does the family dog. Dogs kill on average 12 people per year in the United States. We bring dogs into our homes and that is where most fatal dog attacks occur. Wolves have killed (that we are aware of) one perhaps two people over the last ten years, dogs have killed well over 100 people yet we do not view dogs as vicious and expendable. They are not depicted as soulless monsters seeking the destruction of helpless human prey. Since gray wolves have been removed from the Endangered Species list, states like Montana are once more aggressively working to eliminate wolves from the lower forty-eight states. Before the ban on hunting there were around 650 wolves in Montana, 650 wolves compared to 2 million cattle and 200,000 sheep. Wolves are neither furry angels nor fanged demons. Do they benefit man? Are they worth defending? Do we need them? Perhaps the real question is, can we accept them for what they are, wild canids, nothing more nor less, which are part of the natural world.
[i] M. McNay, “A Case History of Wolf-Human Encounters in Canada and Alaska,” http://146.63.61.200/static/home/library/pdfs/wildlife/research_pdfs/techb13_full.pdf, accessed 10/30/2012.
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