John Shivik - The Predator Paradox: Ending the War with Wolves, Bears, Cougars, and Coyotes

Ending the War with Wolves, Bears,
Cougars, and Coyotes

JOHN A. SHIVIK

BEACON PRESS, BOSTON

For my son, Fox

The prey must have the predator,
just as the predator needs the prey.
One without the other eventually
becomes something less. The wolf
becomes the dog. The deer becomes
a cow. And what does man become?

LARRY MARCHINGTON

Address to Keepers of the Hunting Spirit Melbourne, Australia
June 1991

CHAPTER 1

THE BATTLEFIELD

Spanish Fork, Utahs glass and steel reflected the red morning light, sparkling like scattered rubies. On the other side of the aircraft, under the rising sun, stretched a stark, dark contrast of wilderness terrain. The pilot navigated over the narrow edge: the interface of wilderness and humanity.

The slopes, rocky and rugged, stood too tall and steep to be colonized by people, but the asphalt and concrete constructions of humanity to the west were equally challenging to invasion by wild animals. The view from the helicopter created the illusion that the boundary of wilderness was as razor sharp and distinct as the heights of the Wasatch.

If one looked closer, however, intrusions became evident; the edge dulled and blurred. On a ridgeline, ski tracks ran down the face. Figure eights wove in and out of an avalanche chute. The interlopers had managed to dance down the virgin snowfield without being swallowed by it.

Where humans broke trails in, animals loped their way out. Coyotes enjoyed an advantage from the intrusion, as snowmobiles created firm paths through the depths of Utahs greatest snow on earth. Paw prints on packed powder led to town, where dispersing canids could find a snack of domestic house cat. Cougars followed deer that were drawn to the rosebuds of lush suburbs. When the bears awoke, they would find their way to apple trees on the edge of town. The human-wildland interface below me wasnt a razor-edge solid border but a porous ecotone.

Our machine flew over mooseone, two, three. A mother with her calffour, five. Number six, reduced to a mat of hair and jumble of bones, the hide chewed, processed, and defecated in adjacent scats. This was the reason for our flight: reports of wolves just outside of the suburban sprawl. We found a carcass, tracks, and evidence, but no proof strong enough to identify true wolf from feral dog or hybrid.

The southwest corner of wolf-range in Wyoming was barely one hundred miles away, only a mornings walk for a wolf. We did not yet know if it was a jaunt or sortie, or if wolves had actually reestablished themselves and bred in Utah, but the line between humans and predators was blurring. It was long past time to ask the question: Could or would we learn to live with mammalian predators as close neighbors? Between past and future were a myriad of considerations.

Beginning in the 1600s, European settlers came to the New World, bringing their God-given mandate to tame the wilderness. In addition, they carried within them generations of myth, fear, and violent reaction to predators such as the wolf. By the turn of the twentieth century, agricultural heavy-handedness had imposed nearly two hundred years of ecological emptiness, and expanses of the American West had become devoid of top predators. We had forgotten in a very deep way what it meant to have among us animals that made their livings eating other sentient things. By the 1950s, largely through actions of federal trappers, we had killed off nearly every wolf and grizzly bear in the contiguous United States and had similarly decimated black bear, cougar, and even coyote populations in some places.

Soon after the time of the 1962 publication of Silent Spring, the pendulum of public opinion swung back, carrying with it a crying Indian, the Endangered Species Act, and Earth Day. In barely a generation, many North Americans had developed a sense of environmentalism and a depth of ecology that lacked such a concept as varmints (except perhaps humans). They wanted coyotes, bears, cougars, and wolves to exist. Even more, they wanted people to stop killing them.

I was studying wildlife biology as the field grew rapidly and diversified. The discipline had been utilitarian, hook-and-bullet, strictly about game management, but all of a sudden it was adding elements of pure and deep ecology. As a graduate student in the 1990s, I captured, radio-collared, and followed coyotes because I believed that studying predators would lead us on the path toward coexistence. An MS, a PhD, and dozens of students and studies later, I am still sorting out the paradox of desperately wanting to conserve and increase populations of the animals that we spent so much time and energy exterminating.

In North America, we think differently about predators than we used to, especially on the burgeoning, suburbanizing coasts. It puts us humans on a collision course with remaining and rebounding populations of wolves, bears, cougars, and coyotes. The rapid sprawl of civilization forces the issue: Is there anywhere else for predators to go if they cant live on humanitys doorstep? Are there options that would allow us to have carnivores in our kingdom while we protect our livestock, property, and people? Finally, who is going to jump in the fray between people and predators and end the feud?

My God, theyre beautiful, Lynne Gilbert-Norton gasped, seeing a coyote for the first time.

The coyote was a few yards away, on the other side of a fence, standing broadside to us. Its black-furred back faded to tan, then brushed into the red that lined the outer edges of its pointed ears, which flittered up like furry pyramids focusing sound. The yellow fires of its eyes did not look away from Lynne in deference, but peered back, insubordinately, into hers. Black lines, like Cleopatras eyeliner, ran from their corners. Superfluously painted and defiant, the coyotes eyes had the duality of menace and allure.

Lynne, of the University of Exeter, had been sent to study something uniquely American. She acknowledged that coyotes werent animals normally studied by her colleagues and professors. Im a psychologist, a Brit, she said. I read, but still dont feel like I know much about coyotes.

Hardly anyone sees a coyote close up like this, I said. Even Americans. I prodded, So youre lucky. The question is, What are you going to do with them?

The issue, of course, was much more complicated than my innocent inquiry suggested. I was asking Lynne to find out how to live with animals that have no qualms about eating our livestock, our property, even us. How do we outsmart them on their own playing field? I knew it was going to take more than one or two biologists or a few grandfathers of conservation biology to find the answers. It would also require an army of young diverse minds, everyone from foreigners to farm boys.

More than a hundred coyotes responded to my question. Waves of rapid ululations and high-pitched barks and yips filled the air. Lynne froze, uncertain. It sounded like the home team had scored in a nearby football stadium.

Above us stood natures castellation, the raw edges of the Bear River Range. The United States had towering castles and cathedrals as did England, but ours were geological. Everywhere the new world collided with the ancient. The road leading to our location weaved between fields, one flooded with water and white-faced ibis, others yielding young stalks of corn. An inconspicuous blue and white sign marked state property, Utah State University Millville Wildlife Research Center, alongside a humble plaque reading, United States Department of Agriculture, Wildlife Services, Predator Research Facility, indicating the collaborative federal pens and buildings sharing the land.