The War on Wolves - an Animal Welfare Issue

Predators occupy quite a space in the human psyche. Humans have been “at war” with many of them since the earliest days of livestock domestication. While the lion occupies the imagination people everywhere, in North America no predator is more symbolic of this war than the wolf. Our attitudes are ever fluctuating. There are websites and social media gatherings where the full range, from “kill them all” to “full protection” is on display.

These two very opposite views about them were written about another pack-hunting wild canid, in this case the African wild dog.

In 1914, one R. Maugham wrote: "Let us consider for a moment that abomination - that blot upon the many interesting wild things - the murderous Wild Dog.  It will be an excellent day for African game and its preservation when means can be devised for its complete extermination." 

These words could easily be used by the anti-wolf crowd in 2013. 

Dr. Kobus Raath's ;picture of wilfe dogs in Kruger N P

The other view, also resonates for many folks. They were written in 1997 by  David MacDonald of Oxford University.  “To nominate one sight as the most beautiful I have seen might, in a world filled with natural marvels, be considered disingenuous. Yet, of images jostling for supremacy in my memory, it is hard to better the bounding forms of African wild dogs, skiffing like golden pebbles across a sea of sunburnt grass at dusk.”

A group of concerned, but balanced individuals has recently launched a website that examines some of the many issues . They are particularly concerned about some of the aspects of wolf management in Alberta, and by extension elsewhere in North America. 

Myrna Pearman's beautiful picture is one of the site's headers.

As you skull around the site you will find links and articles by people who have had an enormous amount of experience with wolf management and are concerned with the way that things are developing.

Among them are Dr. Lu Carbyn, noted world wolf authority, who has expressed deep concerns and  published an article critical of the province's wolf bounty program in the Journal of the Canadian Society of Environmental Biologists.

There are very obvious animal welfare issues at hand. Dr. Jose Diaz of the University of Calgary, who is an accredited specialist in animal neurology examines the effects of snares in his piece in the Gallery of Shame http://www.wolfmatters.org/articles.html -

Dwight Rodtka, who worked with wolves for his entire career has contributed pieces to the site. Dwight expresses deep concern not only about the Alberta government’s whole wolf program but very specifically about snares, which he states in his piece The Truth About Snares  are “archaic and torturous devices which should have been banned years ago.”

Dr. Garcia examines the damage. The lion died as he arrived on scene.

I have seen the aftermath of snaring in several African countries but perhaps the most dramatic one was of a dying lion in Tanzania’s Serengeti. The animal’s end was witnessed by friend and former student Dr. Patrick Garcia. 

Gruesome fits the scene well.

It is much more than just snares and traps. My own contribution to the debate is also from an animal welfare perspective. It is about poisoning and comes straight from things I witnessed in Kenya 45 years ago. 

You can read the piece at the link above, but if your time is short here is my opening:  

The debate, seldom polite, often vigorous, about the wolf and its presence among us often becomes a “to poison or not to poison” matter. The subject waxes and wanes, but today, in parts of Alberta and British Columbia, indeed in many parts of North America, it is indeed the question, and strychnine is the apparent sling and arrow.    

I suspect that most people who espouse the poisoning route have never seen the effects of this deadly substance on any animal.

Unfortunately I have.

In the body of the article I quoted wolf biologist Bob Hayes about the “by-catch” effects of strychnine. They are horrific. Bob worked in Canada’s Yukon for many years on wolf control. His 2010 book Wolves of the Yukon is a very worthwhile read.

 

I closed with this:

If the rancher who cannot prevent wolf attacks by other methods (which do exist) and has to use this deadly substance to “take arms against a sea of troubles” caused by livestock predation then we are in a sorry state.

Strychnine poisoning is very definitely an animal welfare issue. Its use is inhumane. 

 

I am by no means alone in this view and I hope that other veterinarians feel the same. If they do, rather than write to me I hope they will comment on the Wolf Matters page

Of course poisoning of predators is nothing new. I photographed this Calgary Herald page in 1995.

Scary, or what?

An interesting view is taken in the Earth Island Journal, which heads its piece with this extraordinary picture that first appeared on Facebook.

You can read the rest of the article at the link and of course find links within that that take one further. It reminds me of a video scene I witnessed during the emotional times of the translocation of wolves from Banff National Park in Canada in 1995 to Yellowstone and Idaho. A witness at a hearing in Wyoming said: “The wolf is The Saddam Hussein of the animal kingdom.” She was serious.

Lion Guardians Good news

Last December I was with my family in Kenya’s Maasai Mara and had a wonderful time. We saw all sorts of wild animals and of course my grand daughters thrilled to the sight of lions. I asked out guide, a young Maasai moran named Ben, if he had ever had to kill a lion. “Yes, three times” was his brief reply. I did not press further as he seemed somewhat embarrassed about it. He would have done it for one of two reasons.

In 2006, Leelah Hazzah, then a PhD candidate working for the Lion Guardian program on the Mbirikani group ranch beneath the majestic peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro, wrote in her thesis that there are two basic reasons why Maasai hunt lions.  The best known is their ritualized Olimayio ceremony, when young men pass into manhood. The other is for revenge, and is called Olkiyioi.

It is a really nice change to be able to write a positive report about an African conservation issue. In The Trouble With Lions (TTWL) I expressed tentative hope that the Lion Guardians program in Kenya’s Maasailand would reverse the long trend of lion killing, by spear or poison, that has been going on for far too long. A hundred and more years ago, when lions ruled the roost and terrorized humans throughout sub-Saharan Africa the Masai, Nandi and other cattle herding tribes had little choice but to try and control the depredation wreaked upon their livestock. They did it with spears in ritualized hunts that “blooded”, sometimes literally, the young men whose initiation involved a lion hunt. They were the warriors sent out to fight the enemy.

The sort of outcome that occurred was recorded by Teddy Roosevelt’s cameraman in the very early part of the 20^th century. A group of Nandi had surrounded a lion and speared it The attached picture, scanned from the book’s pages, show the results.

In TTWL I recorded the information gleaned by several scientists about the decline in lion numbers throughout Africa since about 1950, when there were about half a million on the continent. By 1975 there were about 200,000. By the end of 2006 there may have been 28,000.

Since those spearing events new ways to kill lions have emerged. Of course “white hunters” took their trophy toll with heavy rifles, but these were by no means the only methods. The most insidious are snares and poison. These two lions, poisoned with Furadan, a compound banned in the USA and Europe, were photographed by Amy Howard after the killers had stripped their manes. I have blogged before about Furadan and you can find those stories by going to the index at right.

A typical snaring may take a lot longer to kill a lion, or any other victim. This one had been snared in the Serengeti NP when veterinarian, friend and former student Dr. Patrick Garcia came across it and watched its death throes. 

The good news is that in parts of Maasailand the killing has stopped and young men are now actively engaged in lion conservation. You can read all about it, and a whole lot more, in the Lion Guardian’s annual report here, and I urge you to take a look at it, even at the risk of taking you away from my own page. Check out the 2011 report to see how things have changed. This is an important stuff!

Here is the picture taken by Leelah Hazzah of a moran named Mokoi using a telemetry receive to track one of the lions on the ranch.

Leelah, now more properly known as Dr. Hazzah, after receiving her PhD, is now the Lion Guardians Director, but of course the credit for initiating all the work goes to Dr. Laurence Frank of the University of California, Berkeley who has worked on large predators for over 40 years and is the Living With Lions Project Director.

As I said, a happy story. Long may it continue!

 

Snares and poachers

Link
In my post of June 10 I wrote about the real situation in Kenya’s Masai Mara and the decline in wildlife numbers. I also referred to poaching and the numbers of poachers caught on a regular basis. Poaching is so widespread in Africa that one hardly knows where to start, but I did refer to the experiences of one park warden in the Serengeti. This was Myles Turner, who was there for 16 years and documented his work in his fascinating 1987 book titled My Serengeti Years: The Memoirs of an African Game Warden. I suggested that his book might just as easily have been subtitled The Poaching Wars.

One of the major tools for poachers is the snare. Here are a few examples of ones I have seen in various places. In Namibia’s Etosha National Park there is even a sort of “rouges gallery” in the park offices where this display case shows various types of snare that have been found over the years.

When I worked on an elephant project in Rwanda in the 1970s we found that 27% of the animals had injuries related to snares. There was one that had a cable deeply embedded in the creatures leg, while several animals had lost part or all of their trunks because they are ever curious and made the mistake of picking up snares meant for buffalo and the like.

When I was with veterinary students in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park we never failed to see animals damaged by snares, or find snares, usually at waterholes. We were able to free this warthog after immobilizing him, but I do wonder how he got on.

We found a collection of wire snares including the nasty tin can lid type that is designed to ride up an animal’s leg if it is unfortunate enough to stand upon the thing. Just have a look at the picture and imagine what will happen.

It is easy enough to condemn the poachers, but the issue is not that simple. "Poacher" is a term used by landowners to describe people who might otherwise be known as hunters. If you have no source of protein, virtually no income, and a family to feed, and a wild animal hangs out near your home, what are you to do? This is not the same as the commercial, crime syndicate type of poaching that has led to the decimation of rhino and tiger populations, to mention but two of hundreds of species.

The news about a major highway that will cut through the heart of the Serengeti has been simmering for quite a while, but now seems to have surfaced in major print media. More on this when I drop by again.

Gorillas, snares and wildlife blogs

Linkhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7549444.stm


One of the very best blogs on which to keep abreast of developments in gorilla conservation is the one run by the park staff in the DRC’s Virunga National Park. This blog is regularly picked up by the BBC and features on their main web site

While this blog is specific to gorillas and particularly gorillas in the DRC, a more general blog is that at Wildlife Direct which collates news from around the world. Today’s Wildlife Direct post covers good news about wild dogs in Zimbabwe, news about snares and the capture of poachers, and a post from the Lion Guardian program in Kenya’s Masailand. The post on gorillas issues goes wider after the arrest of the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, which, it is hoped, will bring the killing to an end. Not just the killing of gorillas as reported in last year, and which showed this ugly picture credited to Altor IGCP Goma, but the death of a ranger after an attack by Mai Mai geurillas

The snare issue is unlikely to go away any time soon. I have written about it in The Trouble With Lions, and like any visitor who delves a bit into Africa’s wildlife scene we have seen snares ‘up close and personal’. There is a blog that covers snares in the Masai Mara and has not yet appeared on the Wildlife Direct site. Thelatest post is headed Entries in Poachers & Snares (34). I’m not sure if this means that there have been 34 snare reports, but it is of course under the more general Mara heading.

The whole snare thing needs highlighting. I’ll have a go at that in a day or two, but right now we are getting ready to head out for the airport en route to Nairobi.

Living With Lions

The annual report of the Living With Lions program in Kenya has just arrived. This program, headed by Laurence Frank of the University of California Berkeley has been growing from strength to strength over the last three or four years and shines a bright light on conservation in Kenya that gives one some real hope for the future of Africa’s most charismatic species. Living With Lions has expanded in its two main areas of activity, which are in the Maasai country around Amboseli and in Laikipia district, west and north of Mount Kenya. Some work has also started up in the Masai Mara conservation area, where lions are under heavy threat.

A quote from the report is another from the ongoing litany of conservation messages makes a sad comment on modern life: ...lions, hyenas and other large predators are disappearing under the onslaught of spears, guns and poison. This grisly photo was taken by veterinarian Dr. Patrick Garcia in the Serengeti National park. He and the film crew with whom he was working witnessed the dying moments of a lion caught in a snare.

There are a couple of blogs that give one information about the activities of the group, and currently the most active one is about the Lion Guardians.

To quote the report

“On the Kenyan side, lions are under severe and increasing pressure, as people are spearing and poisoning lions at a rate which threatens population extinction within a few years.”

This photo, taken by Amy Howard, one of the report’s authors, shows two male lions that had been poisoned a couple of years back.

An interesting change has occurred in Kenyan Maasailand, and this quote from the report tells most of the story.

"Sadly two of our study animals, Amber and Sangale were poisoned in January 2008. Because the Lion Guardians had made these animals very familiar to the local people, the Maasai community was incensed at the loss of these well‐known individuals, and the man responsible for their poisoning was shamed by his neighbors. The Lion Guardians and various members of LWL participated in the lions’ post-mortem and follow up investigation. Our work contributed to the perpetrator being found guilty of illegally killing these lions. This is one of the first incidents where a Kenyan court has handed out a guilty verdict on a poisoning case. Use of poison is currently the single greatest threat to Kenya’s lions.

”

The buy-in by the Maasai is clear when one sees this photo, taken by another LWL team member, Leelah Hezzah, is of Lion Guardian Mokoi using an antenna to track a radio-collared lion.

It is conservation programs like this one, which has involved the local people at every step, that have a chance of working. Long may it continue and continue to grow.