'I live in Alaska because there are wolves'

By Nick Jans

Somewhere to the north, a wolf howls. The cry echoes in the arctic night and, a half mile east, another answers. I lie in my sleeping bag, suddenly wide awake. Far above, the aurora flickers pale green against the stars. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Then another short call, far upriver, so faint it's almost lost in the wind.

I lie alone in the night, feeling lucky. Though I've lived in Arctic Alaska for 17 years, where wolf tracks are a common sight, I've never taken them for granted. This is one of the last places in the world where, outside the boundaries of parks or preserves, large predators roam free, part of an ecosystem that's changed little in centuries.

I live here because there are wolves, not in spite of that fact. It's somehow comforting to know there's something out there that hunts as I do, something that could, if it wanted, hunt me.

Just a few centuries ago, wolves ranged across the sweep of Asia, Europe and North America, the most successful and widespread carnivore species on Earth. Today, they exist in remote pockets, pushed back into places where roads, cities and people are still few. Places like Alaska.

A common misconception is that wolves are an endangered species. Certainly in the lower 48, but there are thousands of wolves in healthy, even expanding populations farther north. In Alaska, the latest estimate by state biologists approaches 10,000; Canada has at least five times that number. Despite steady pressure from sport hunters, subsistence users and commercial trappers, the Alaskan wolf count has risen steadily over the last decade. There are so many wolves, in fact, that until two years ago, the Alaska State Department of Fish and Game regularly practiced what it calls "predator control."

The logic is simple: Fewer wolves mean more caribou and moose for humans. In a state where guided sport hunting is big money and hunting for the table ("subsistence" is the favored term) is a way of life, most folks support the idea. In fact, public demand is the main reason predator control exists in the first place. We want a bigger piece of the pie.

A wolf needs at least several dozen caribou a year. Knock off a couple of hundred wolves in a given area, and prey populations increase geometrically. The idea isn't to eliminate wolves, just to decrease their numbers in specific areas, allowing local prey populations (depressed by severe winters, overhunting or calf mortality) the chance to grow. Once the moose and caribou have rebounded, predator control stops. Wolves, quick to reproduce, go to it. The theoretical end result is more moose, caribou and wolves.

Hunting, snaring and trapping are all approved methods of "control." In past decades, biologists favored gunning from small airplanes until public outcry halted its official use. Snaring with wire cable met the same fate a couple of years ago, after a nationally publicized videotape showed a state biologist messily dispatching a captured wolf. After that public relations fiasco, Alaskan wolf-control programs were suspended entirely, by order of the governor.

In November, a referendum appeared on the state election ballot. The question wasn't whether wolf control should exist at all. Pro-wolf forces knew better than to challenge that. They simply sought to restrict aircraft use in private citizens' wolf hunting, while restating Alaska's right to manage wolves, though only in cases of emergency. And they won.

Meanwhile, Alaska's wolf-control program remains suspended, awaiting the results of a study by the National Academy of Sciences. Private hunting and trapping of wolves continue to be legal; in my remote Eskimo village of 325 people, three dozen wolves are killed in an average year. Across the state, as many as 1,000 are taken each winter.

In a perfect world, maybe no wolves would be killed at all. However, I know that's unrealistic. Hunting and gathering from the land is a way of life I support and take part in, along with virtually all rural Alaskans. What I propose is less problematic and makes perfect sense: The state of Alaska should extend the current suspension indefinitely and get out of the predator-control business for good.

Leaving human emotions out -- and wolves are nothing if not an emotional lightning rod -- state management of wolves makes little sense. Why risk tinkering with the last intact, large-scale ecosystem we have, one that's worked for millennia? Haven't we committed enough ecological hubris elsewhere? Populations of moose and wolves may rise and fall, but we need to trust nature to do what it's always done without our help. As it is, current moose and caribou numbers statewide are close to an all-time high, without, in most cases, any predator control at all. Managing human hunting makes more practical and ecological sense. We can cheaply and reliably tell people how many animals they're allowed to take, according to available surplus. Some folks might not get "their" moose one year, but, contrary to rhetoric and political arm-waving, that's more a matter of inconvenience than survival. For once, we ought to leave well enough alone. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves.

Nick Jans is a contributing editor at Alaska magazine and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

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March 5, 2003