Originally Posted by
brianspetcare
I am a biologist and in my ecology class in college they discussed what happens when things are signficantly changed. When you add or remove a species it has drastic changes to the whole ecosystem. When I went to Yellowstone years ago (as a driving through the park visitor) I learned that because of the wolves the herbivores stopped eating the plants by the streams because they were too out in the open (easy prey for the wolves). This let the plants grow more, which shaded the streams, which cooled them, which allowed the trout to return. This sounded good to me and really demonstrated the far reaching effects of a top predator. I even had a question on a college exam about this exact situation.
In this case when you introduce a predatory species that has been gone for decades, which allowed its prey to increase in numbers, you will get a HUGE increase in the population of the predator. It will be so big that it will drive its prey almost to extinction. The long term effect of the drop in prey is a big drop in the predator. Then the prey comes back, then the predator, etc. Eventually you will hit a more natural balance (which still usually goes through cycles). The problem is that this is on a very long term scale (many decades to centuries).
To me it seems like hunting the wolf is an absolutely perfect way to keep their population from rising so sharply that they bring their prey within sight of extinction. They were there before, in balance, but it would be a LONG time for it to ever reach that naturally, if it did.
In my opinion someone should have the right to keep animals on their own property under control. I know when the squirrels get out of control here (literally chewing on the deck and house) the problem doesn't last long...
Brianspetcare- You are thinking of the study done on the wolves and moose on Isle Royale, for many years biologist used this study as a balance ecosystem, it wasn't until a few years ago that it came out as bunk. Those wolves were lock on an island and the cycle that you described above did happen. On the other hand with unmanaged wolves on the main land there is No such cycling of the up and down as wolves have an unlimited supply of prey, meaning in cattle country they can hit livestock while they continue to hit the game herds. the end result is the wolves will put the game herds in a predation pit. Predation pit is where elk, deer etc. sink so low there is no way for them to recover. The wolves will not die down from starvation as on an island. When the wolves wipe an area clean they will move on, this has happened in parts of the Yellowstone, the wolves left a barren landscape with not even the chirp of birds.
As far as hunting to control wolves in the lower 48 it cannot be done, 70% of the wolf population needs to be killed each year to keep the wolves from expanding. Alaska is a good example where wolves are hunted and trapped and still yet they have to have special hunts to keep the wolves from killing whole caribou herds off. They found out with the wolf hunts in Idaho and Montana just how hard it was to hunt and kill wolves. Like IDFG said a while back without the use of airplanes and helicopters it would be impossible to do control efforts on wolves killing livestock, even with radio collars on some of the wolves it is very difficult, and there are hundreds of wolf packs that are undocumented, which means of course no collars. If the USFWS and IDFG would have been honest from the beginning these wolves would never have been introduced and even after the introduction if the wolves would have been managed at the levels that were "promised" then perhaps we would have a managed population. But instead they lied
, and now the American people will be stuck cleaning up the mess.
