Northernlightswolf’s Weblog

Hello World!  Welcome to the Northern Lights Wolf Centre weblog… or as we prefer to think of it: Casey’s Rant.  Casey Black was the one who started this wolf centre about a decade ago, and he has a lot of “opinions”.  It’s our job to distill his rants into compact little blogs that are fun to read, and minus the, ahem, expletives.

For those of you just stumbling upon this blog, we operate a small interpretive centre about wolves in Golden, British Columbia (www.northernlightswildlife.com).  Our two main goals are to change people’s attitudes about wolves through education, and to change legislation through letter campaigns and petitions in order to protect a very important predator…

We thought we’d fill everyone in on a project of ours that has been years in the making, but is finally coming into full and exciting life:  it’s the formation of a Canadian Wolf Coalition to put pressure on government to make legislative changes to protect our wolves.  One of the first changes we wish to push through is the formation of buffer zones around the National Parks here in the Rockies.  A buffer zone would be an area with restrictions on the hunting and trapping of wolves, ideally coupled with additional restrictions on motorized backcountry access in these areas.

Wolves are an endangered species worldwide, but not in Canada.  The situation here is that wolves are still considered vermin, and have very little protection in many areas of our country.  As a result, hunting is one of the leading causes of wolf mortality in Canada.  Trapping, transportation routes, and habitat loss or fragmentation are also major reasons for the decline in wolf numbers.

The Big Bad Wolf has long been feared and hated, but there is no evidence that wolves actually hunt humans, and they are less likely to hunt livestock than most of us think.  They are actually a vital part of a healthy ecosystem.

Why protect wolves?  Well, wolves are at the top of the food chain, and when something happens to the balance at the top, it has a “domino effect” on the plants and animals below.  We are seeing the beginning of this domino effect happening right now in the central Rocky Mountains.

It is known that even parks as large as Jasper or Banff are just not big enough to contain wolves, whose territories can be as large as 3000 square kilometres!

Seven National Parks in the central Rockies (Banff, Yoho, Jasper, Kootenay, Mount Revelstoke, Glacier, Waterton) are currently reviewing their Park Management Strategies, and accepting input from outside organizations. This provides an excellent opportunity to enlarge protected areas for wolves, whose territories extend beyond the boundaries of these parks.

Canada still has one of the healthiest wolf populations in the world. On a global basis, this provides us with a unique and vital conservation opportunity!

Do you want to help?  For more information on the Canadian Wolf Coalition, visit www.canadianwolfcoalition.com, or www.northernlightswildlife.com/bufferzones.html
September 2008 – Northern Lights Wildlife Wolf Centre