By Kady O’Malley  CBC Inside Politics January 27, 2012 

Listen to the interview

Alternative linke for interview

Click here for the interview 

Wolf portrayal in film not based in reality

Fleeting images from the official trailer for the new Hollywood film The Grey suggest a love story, a violent plane crash, then a flash of bristling fur, the glint of a knife blade, and, in the background, the sound of a haunting howl.

Opening in theatres this weekend, The Grey is described as the story of an “unruly group of oil-rig roughnecks” whose plane crashes in the remote Alaskan wilderness. Amid a mountain backdrop – in reality, Whistler and Smithers, B.C. – the cast, headlined by Liam Neeson, must battle mortal injuries, merciless weather and, most menacing of all, “a vicious pack of rogue wolves on the hunt.”

Before you settle in with a tub of buttery popcorn, take note that wolf experts are giving the reality factor of the production a unanimous thumbs-down.

Paul Paquet, a senior scientist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, says such a film serves to feed into negative myths that have surrounded wolves for centuries.

“I think it’s kind of an embarrassment for the studio and the producers and writers and actors,” Paquet says. “It’s such a blatant misrepresentation of reality. Unfortunately, though, there are consequences that are pretty negative for wolves.”

Portraying wolves as manhunters creates unnecessary antipathy and fear, he says. In the long term that can mean people are less accepting of wolves and may even lead to people killing them.

The very idea that wolves would stalk humans, says Canmore’s Gunther Bloch, a canid behaviour expert who has studied wolves for two decades, has no basis in reality.

“It would be extremely exceptional behaviour, and only if they didn’t have a food resource – which in itself would be rare,” Bloch says.

Wolves are opportunistic eaters whose food choices are dictated by availability and habitat. A wolf living in the northern Canadian tundra will hunt migrating caribou. In the Rockies, wolves eat deer, elk, bighorn sheep and snowshoe hares, and snack on mice and voles. In the Arctic, they hunt muskox. A West Coast wolf might feast on running salmon for several weeks.

Given the opportunity, however, wolves will also help themselves to the offerings of an urban garbage dump.

While a rabid or food-conditioned wolf might on very rare occasions lose its fear of humans and attack, a person who finds himself close to a wolf’s food source – even a kill – should not expect a fight.

“They would bark an alarm bark, a warning,” Bloch says. “They wouldn’t attack; in the end, they would run away. They would figure out how to get the pups out of there.”

For the most part, Bloch adds, wolves are very intelligent and have become well conditioned over thousands of years to fear humans who have so often – and successfully – persecuted them.

Since the 1950s, wolves have enjoyed a period of recovery from widespread “control” efforts, the result of prejudices that arrived in North America with the first Europeans. But, while attitudes have changed, in some places where the population had recovered, wolves are again in jeopardy and being targeted.

Wolves have long suffered from misconceptions, including the idea they operate exclusively by pack rules.

For the first five or so months after a litter of pups is born in April, the parent wolves individually hunt small prey, bringing meals back to the den to feed their pups. Then, once the pups have grown, they assemble as hunting groups.

Another misconception people have about wolves, Bloch says, is that wolf behaviour is restricted to hierarchy and status.

“To say that wolves congregate in a pack suggests hierarchy, when the reality is a family-type situation – mother and father, pups and older pups helping look after younger ones, functioning as babysitters,” he says. “Wolves are very close. If a member is injured, they will feed it until it is well again. There are a lot of emotional things going on.”

No one thing in the ecosystem is essential, but, as apex and summit predators, wolves interact with and influence a suite of other species, Paquet says. By extension, their presence has a profound effect on the ecosystem, as their behaviour affects not just the balance between predator and prey but also the plants their prey feed on.

They can also have a positive influence on humans.

“Nature and the wildlife it contains provide physical, emotional and intellectual benefits to people,” Paquet says. “The beauty and symbolic nature of large carnivores inspires many people. As a result, animals such as bears, tigers and wolves often form the foci of literature, poems, paintings, sculptures and dance.”

Wolves figure prominently in First Nations’ cultures, but urban people too can develop strong emotional attachments to large carnivores.

Few might ever see a polar bear or grizzly in the wild, but they want these animals to exist, not just for themselves, but also so their children or grandchildren might have an opportunity to see them in their natural habitat.

Large carnivores, including wolves, top the list of species people hope to catch a glimpse of when they engage in wilderness-based recreation, which can translate into people spending money to travel for such opportunities.

Unfortunately, though, Paquet says, some people harbour the attitude that wolves as predators are in competition with – and a threat to – humans.

In the case of ranchers, farmers and hunters, the potential for wolves to physically harm a person is very rare, but the competition aspect is real.

And the growth of the human population and subsequent encroachment on wolf habitat makes conflicts inevitable.

“Humans tend to push out other species,” Paquet says.

“That, in my view, has been one of the great mistakes of the conservation movement. All these years we’ve asked for tolerance, when all along we should have been asking for acceptance.”

Tofino-based surfer Peter Devries rides the waves around the Great Bear Rainforest for the documentary about the area. Photograph by: Jeremy Koreski

Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist

When a couple of sea lions swam close to Chris Darimont as he was surfing, he realized that, with his wetsuit and surf board, he looked remarkably like a marine mammal.

That is when the idea came to Darimont, science director for the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, that there should be an opportunity for surfers to speak for the marine mammals of the Great Bear Rainforest and the threats they would face from oil tankers in northern B.C. waters if the Enbridge Gateway pipeline was approved…

Read the full story  http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/Surfers+documentary+speaks+life/6068313/story.html#ixzz1ktM3meVB

By Randy Shore, Vancouver Sun

Alaskan salmon ranches and interception fisheries are damaging B.C.’s wild salmon populations, according to three Canadian conservation groups.

Raincoast Conservation Foundation, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust and Watershed Watch Salmon Society said Wednesday they plan to challenge the eco-certification awarded to the Alaskan salmon fishery by the Marine Stewardship Council.

To read the full article, please visit the Vancouver Sun website.

More Fraser sockeye populations in trouble than previously thought

New Fisheries and Oceans report identifies serious state of salmon but offers no solutions

Download the press release and backgrounder as PDF

VANCOUVER – Fraser River sockeye salmon are in worse trouble than previously thought, according to a lengthy draft report by federal fisheries scientists recently entered into evidence at the Cohen Commission of Inquiry. The report examined the current status of 32 genetically distinct populations of Fraser sockeye, also known as “conservation units”. The scientists found that eight populations are already extinct or nearly extinct. Of the 24 remaining populations, at least 7 appear to be below their lower benchmarks for abundance, or in the “red zone”, meaning they may be at risk of extinction, and only 4 were clearly in the “green zone”. The scientists were not able to fully assess four of the stocks due to a lack of data.

Despite the ominous findings in the 181-page report, necessary measures to protect the salmon are not being put in place, according to the David Suzuki Foundation, Watershed Watch Salmon Society, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, and Raincoast Conservation Foundation.The groups are calling on Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield to initiate recovery plans for the stocks at risk, as required under the federal government’s Wild Salmon Policy.

“This report is very sobering,” said Watershed Watch biologist Aaron Hill. “For reasons that are still not clear, we were blessed with a banner sockeye return in 2010. But the overall trend is down, and we can’t let healthy returns to just a few Fraser tributaries distract us from the plight that most Fraser sockeye populations are now facing.”

Conservationists are criticizing the report for failing to assign definitive status to the various sockeye populations, even though it shows the sockeye populations to be extinct or deep into the “red zone”. Pacific salmon populations, or “conservation units”, are supposed to be categorized as being in red, yellow or green zones under the Wild Salmon Policy, depending on the health of the stocks. Yet, even though the policy has been public since 2005, not one conservation unit has been categorized.

“The government must get on with developing recovery plans for populations at risk, immediately addressing threats such as overfishing, habitat destruction and open net-cage aquaculture.” said David Suzuki Foundation biologist Jeffery Young. “Fortunately there are workable solutions to these problems, but implementing them will require strong recommendations for the Cohen Commission, and leadership from Ottawa.”

“Maintaining salmon biodiversity by protecting all of these distinct populations is critical to ensuring the long-term viability and productivity of Pacific salmon, as well as reducing the year-to-year variability in returns,” said SkeenaWild executive director Greg Knox, adding, “We must recover salmon populations at risk if we are to improve the sustainability and productivity of salmon fisheries.”

– END –

For more information, contact:

Jodi Garwood, Communications Specialist, David Suzuki Foundation, (604) 732-4228. ext. 1281

Jeffery Young, Aquatic Biologist, David Suzuki Foundation, (604) 764-6142

Aaron Hill, Ecologist, Watershed Watch Salmon Society, (250) 818-0054

Greg Knox, Executive Director, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust, (250) 615-1990

Misty MacDuffee, Biologist, Raincoast Conservation Foundation, (250) 818-2136

BACKGROUNDER

Evaluating the status of BC’s wild salmon populations

One of the main objectives of Canada’s Policy for the Conservation of Wild Pacific Salmon, released in 2005, is to “safeguard the genetic diversity of wild Pacific salmon”. The policy states that the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) “intends to maintain diversity through the protection of ‘Conservation Units’ (CUs).” These are populations of salmon that government scientists have determined are genetically unique and irreplaceable. A smaller CU, such as Pitt River sockeye, may contain dozens of individual spawning populations, while a larger CU, such as Fraser River pink salmon, will contain hundreds. To protect salmon CUs, the Wild Salmon Policy (WSP) requires that they be maintained above a “lower benchmark” – a level of abundance below which a salmon population will require significant management intervention for recovery. The “lower benchmark” is also designed to avoid having CUs listed as threatened or endangered under the Species At Risk Act.

DFO retreats from fully evaluating Fraser sockeye

Six years after the introduction of the Wild Salmon Policy, DFO has not finalized benchmarks or determined the status of a single salmon CU. The first status assessment under the WSP – for Fraser River sockeye salmon – was to be contained in a draft report recently entered into evidence at the Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Sockeye Salmon in the Fraser River, otherwise known as the Cohen Commission. An earlier draft of the report was titled Fraser Sockeye Wild Salmon Policy Evaluation of Stock Status: State and Rate. However, the report fell short of actually assigning benchmarks and status determinations for Fraser sockeye, a shortcoming that is reflected in the 181-page report’s revised title: Evaluation of Uncertainty in Fraser Sockeye Wild Salmon Policy Status using Abundance and Trends in Abundance Metrics.

Fraser River sockeye salmon

At 240,000 km² the Fraser is B.C.’s largest watershed, draining one quarter of the province, an area the size of California. Despite the damage done by more than a century of overfishing in mixed-stock marine fisheries, the Fraser River is still home to the largest number of distinct sockeye salmon populations (CUs) of any watershed on earth. The sockeye returns are highly variable, with larger returns occurring once every four years. Sockeye returns to the Fraser from 2007-2009 were some of the lowest on record, leading to the formation of the Cohen Commission. In 2010, for reasons that are not yet clear, Fraser River sockeye had their highest return since 1913, prior to which such large returns were routine.

While some Fraser sockeye populations are holding their own – like the Adams River population that made up the bulk of last year’s large return – many others are not. In their 2008 Red-List Report on sockeye salmon, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classified various populations of Fraser sockeye as “vulnerable”, “endangered” and “critically endangered”, with a few being of “least concern”.

Despite the large number of Fraser sockeye populations that now appear to be in the “red zone”, only one – Cultus Lake sockeye – has been identified as endangered by the federal government, although it was rejected for legal protection under the Species At Risk Act.

Conservationists are calling on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to immediately complete the urgent task of assigning official red-yellow-green status to all Fraser sockeye populations, so that recovery planning can be initiated for all Fraser sockeye populations in the “red zone”. Recovery plans must identify and mitigate human threats to salmon populations, including overfishing, habitat destruction and fish farms, say scientists with the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, David Suzuki Foundation, SkeenaWild Conservation Trust and Raincoast Conservation Foundation.

The importance of maintaining diverse and abundant salmon populations

Recovering depleted salmon populations will likely bring economic benefits. A landmark 2010 study by fisheries scientists at the University of Washington showed that in places where managers have maintained a diverse “portfolio” of salmon populations, overall abundance remained high from year to year, resulting in more frequent fishing opportunities and economic stability for the fishing industry. The principle is similar to that of a diverse portfolio of financial investments allowing for stable returns under various economic conditions. Different salmon populations have evolved to thrive under different sets of environmental conditions, so conditions on any given year will favour some populations but not others.

By Chris Genovali, Paul Paquet and Chris Darimont

In western Canada, wolves are routinely, baselessly and contemptuously blamed for the demise of everything from marmots to mountain caribou. Given that attitude, we at Raincoast Conservation Foundation are appalled, though not surprised, by Canada’s proposed strategy to recover dwindling populations of boreal forest caribou in northern Alberta’s tar sands. Essentially, the plan favours the destruction of wolves over any consequential protection, enhancement, or expansion of caribou habitat (“Federal recovery plan for caribou suggests thousands of wolves stand to die,” Winnipeg Free Press, September 12, 2011).

To read the full article please visit The Huffington Post website.

by Paul Paquet

Guardian.co.uk,  Saturday 17   September 2011

Wolves are routinely, baselessly and contemptuously blamed for the demise of everything from marmots to mountain caribou in western Canada. Given that attitude, we at Raincoast Conservation Foundation are appalled, though not surprised, by Canada’s proposed strategy to “recover” dwindling populations of boreal forest caribou in northern Alberta’s tar sands territory. Essentially, the plan favours the destruction of wolves over any consequential protection, enhancement or expansion of caribou habitat.

Clearly, the caribou recovery strategy is not based on ecological principles or available science. Rather, it represents an ideology on the part of advocates for industrial exploitation of our environment, which subsumes all other principles to economic growth, always at the expense of ecological integrity. Owing to the breadth of the human niche, which continues to expand via technological progress, the human economy grows at the competitive exclusion of nonhuman species in the aggregate. The real cost of Alberta’s tar sands development, which includes the potential transport of oil by Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipelines is being borne by wolves, caribou and other wild species.

Consistent with Canada’s now well-deserved reputation as an environmental laggard, the caribou recovery strategy evolved over several years and many politicised iterations, carefully massaged by government pen pushers and elected officials who did their very best to ignore and obscure the advice of consulting biologists and ecologists. So, the government should quit implying that the consultation approach provides a scientifically credible basis for decisions. Apparently, scientists can lead federal Environment Minister Peter Kent to information, but they cannot make him think.

Egged on by a rapacious oil industry, the federal government has chosen to scapegoat wolves for the decline of boreal caribou in a morally and scientifically bankrupt attempt to protect Canada’s industrial sacred cow: the tar sands.

To read the rest of this article please visit The Guardian website.

B.C.’s Open Season On Wolves: Ranchers Relieved But Critics Rankled By Suspect Science

The Chronicle Herald

 B.C. wolf hunt raises hackles 

The Guardian – PEI

 Ranchers relieved but critics rankled by B.C.’s open season on wolves

News 1130 Radio

 BC’s open season on wolves has supporters and critics

Sympatico.ca News

 Ranchers relieved, critics rankled by open season on wolves

Metro U.S.

 B.C. Interior wolf hunt raises hackles

Penticton Herald

 Ranchers relieved but critics rankled by B.C.’s open season on wolves

CTV News

 Critics rankled by B.C.’s open season on wolves

By Misty MacDuffee and Chris Genovali

BC’s coastal grizzlies often have a hard time securing their life requisites, as humans interfere with their day-to-day existence.

Grizzlies face a myriad of threats, from the degradation of their habitat through industrial forestry to their direct killing via trophy hunting. They also face fierce competition for their most important food source, wild salmon, from commercial and sport fisheries. That competition may have gotten more extreme this summer, as BC’s north coast commercial salmon fishermen have discarded over 20 per cent of their catch, including 1.4 million pounds of chum salmon. Many of these fish are from stocks that fisheries scientists have described as “conservation concern.”

Most of the discarded fish are not expected to survive because salmon hauled up in nets and onto decks need careful handling to be released back to the water unharmed. But in competitive fisheries with short time limits, careful release of unwanted salmon puts fishermen at a disadvantage.  This disincentive means tens of thousands of salmon die from stress and injury, losing their one chance to spawn after returning from the Pacific Ocean. One-half of these chum discards (335 metric tons) came from areas in and around the Great Bear Rainforest.

There are several problems with fisheries that discard “bycatch” in the manner described above. The abundance of many stocks of chum salmon on the central and north coast is too low to withstand significant fishing pressure, so there is a conservation concern.  Secondly, the discarded chum could have fed bears, eagles, wolves, and dozens of other wildlife species in our coastal rivers. Specifically, there are growing concerns over the impact that low salmon abundance has on coastal grizzlies, other wildlife that rely on salmon, and the healthy functioning of salmon-dependent ecosystems.

The massive amounts of nutrients and energy that salmon bring back to BC’s watersheds every year can be likened to the wildebeest migrations of the Serengeti.  Similar to their African ungulate counterparts, spawning salmon provide an essential seasonal food to many species.  For coastal grizzlies, the health of individuals, the number of cubs per female, and population densities are all strongly related to the consumption of salmon. Grizzlies have smaller and less frequent litters in lean times. Given that chum used to provide a high percentage of salmon to these bears, its decline could mean fewer bears and less resilient populations over time.

Bears also drive productivity within coastal streams and forests by transferring salmon carcasses from streams to the forest floor.  They are riparian gardeners; providing nutrients and energy to stream bank food webs, including insects, birds, mammals and other fish.  In terms of nutrients, 335 metric tons of discarded chum salmon translates to 9 metric tons of nitrogen and 1 metric ton of phosphorous, 80 per cent of which would have been of delivered by bears.

The economic value of spawning salmon is significant and undeniable. The rising popularity of wildlife ecotourism suggests that salmon may be worth more to coastal economies alive than dead. Wildlife ecotourism has grown impressively in the past 20 years. The number of operations bringing tourists to see BC’s coastal bears has more than quadrupled since the 1990s and local First Nations have been an important component of this growth. However, this promising economic activity requires abundant salmon populations for bears and other wildlife drawn to fall streams.

Changing the way we fish for salmon could significantly reduce impacts to stocks of concern, like chum salmon in the Great Bear Rainforest. This could be achieved by moving fisheries away from “mixed-stock” areas where it is impossible to target strong stocks while avoiding weak ones, by employing proven selective fishing techniques, and by transitioning to quota-based fisheries.

Misty MacDuffee is a biologist with Raincoast Conservation Foundation. Chris Genovali is Raincoast’s executive director.

By DENE MOORE The Canadian Press
Sun, Sep 4

100 MILE HOUSE, B.C. — Hunted to near-extinction in North America by the 1950s, the British Columbia wolf population has long since rebounded.

Now, this secretive nocturnal predator finds itself in the glare of the public eye once again after the provincial government lifted hunting restrictions on wolves in a region of the province.

Ranchers in the Cariboo region say they’re relieved that they’ll be able to hunt and trap wolves preying on their cattle, but critics say the open season is bad management based on poor science…Paul Paquet, a biologist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, said the ministry doesn’t even have the information it would need to make that decision.

“What they’re basing it on is entirely anecdotal,” said Paquet, an adjunct professor in the faculty of environmental design at the University of Calgary.

To read the full article please visit the Chronicle Herald website.

Island Tides Sept 8, 2011

By Misty MacDuffee and Chris Genovali

click here for the complete Globe and Mail story

The Huffington Post

100 MILE HOUSE,  B.C. – Hunted to near-extinction in North America by the 1950s, the British Columbia wolf population has long since rebounded.  Now, this secretive nocturnal predator finds itself in the glare of the public eye once again after the provincial government lifted hunting restrictions on wolves in a region of the province.

Ranchers in the Cariboo region say they’re relieved that they’ll be able to hunt and trap wolves preying on their cattle, but critics say the open season is bad management based on poor science.

Read the full article at Huffington Post

Click here for the pdf version BC’s Open Season on Wolves- Huff Post