Possessing the WILD [High Country News]
By Terrill, Ceiridwen | |
Proquest LLC |
An exploration of the world of captive wolves
(
HEN WE STARTED the 2 o'clock tour at the Colorado Wolf & Wildlife Center in the mountains above
Our first collective howl sounded more like the bawl of a dying cow, and a couple of the wolves flicked their ears as if irritated. "You guys are pathetic," the guide said. "Let's try it again." Finally a wolf stood up, shook the dust from his coat and gave a half-hearted howl. As the guide directed us toward the gift shop, where a bottle of wolf fur cost four bucks, she tossed a biscuit over the fence. The next tour would be in an hour. The Wolf & Wildlife Center hosts thousands of visitors each year in its mission to "educate the public ... about the importance of wolves, coyote and (foxes) to our ecosystem." It even takes wolves as "ambassadors" into classrooms and other public settings ranging from
Each captive wolf has its own story, as does every captive-wolf operation. It was almost feeding time when I arrived at Mission: Wolf, a remote 200-acre sanctuary nestled at the southern end of
"Get Face to Face with Wolves" is the catchy slogan of the
Heft came from
In five years of exploring the obscure world of captive wolves, I visited more than two dozen operations, driving on dusty back roads and interviewing biologists, geneticists and other experts. My quest was inspired by my own sad experience as the owner of a wolf-dog hybrid, because I realized that many of the issues with hybrids extend to captive wolves as well. Captive wolves don't get a lot of attention, as the public tends to focus on the more than 60,000 wild wolves in
People who keep or work with captive wolves are often earnestly trying to help the species. Motivated by a desire to ensure the long-term survival of wolves, they use science to educate the public about this elusive and intelligent creature - an icon of the wilderness, especially in the West. Many make enormous personal sacrifices, running their facilities with a lot of love and very little money. But not all captive-wolf owners have conservation foremost in mind. Some are motivated by commerce, or by a difficult-to-pin-down yearning to possess "wildness." It raises uncomfortable questions: At what point does kindness to animals morph into exploitation? What are the appropriate boundaries between humans and wolves? And why do we insist on testing the limits of those boundaries?
PRIORTO THE PASSAGE of the 1973 federal Endangered Species Act, which protected wild wolves beginning that year, people openly stole wolf pups from dens to supply the fur industry and zoos. Over the years, captive breeding has produced gray wolves and wolf-dog hybrids for the fur and pet trades,
There are no federal laws regulating possession of wolves. And anyone who acquires an "animal care" license from the
To exhibit wolves, you just need a primary enclosure big enough for the animals to make "normal postural and social adjustments," surrounded by a perimeter fence that's at least eight feet tall. You must also provide a species-specific diet, plenty of water, and shelter from the elements. There are no requirements for any kind of mental stimulation to satisfy the animals' natural drives.
It's difficult to determine the exact number of captive wolf operations. According to a federal database, about two dozen operations in the West have a federal license and the word "wolf in their names, ranging from the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in
The most ethical operations are nonprofits that provide a sanctuary for animals with nowhere else to go. These places try to educate visitors about wolf behavior and biology, hoping to win support for wild wolf conservation. Raising money, however - whether an operation is nonprofit or not - is an unavoidable part of the mission. WERC, for instance, solicits donations, asking people to "adopt" its wolves. The overhead for each of WERCs six wolves runs about
There's also a business side to captive wolves, one that includes not only breeding, but also buying and selling the animals and using them for photo shoots and other enterprises. "A lot of people tliink those calendar shots of wolves are wild wolves. That's just not the case. Wild wolves are too elusive,"
Even the highly respected
The pups entice tourists as well. When I visited Wolf People, a girl cuddled a wolf puppy in her arms and whispered to her mother, "Can we get one?" The puppy, like all the wolves at Wolf People, was not a rescue animal. It was born on site, the result of intentional breeding.
Wolf People has also bought animals from
Viewers of
With all the activity - including unplanned reproduction (which often occurs) and people who acquire wolves as pets and then find it doesn't work out - there's a surplus of captive wolves. Pretty much every operation is filled to capacity. When the economy tanked, affecting wolfrelated businesses,
SOME PEOPLE DEFEND keeping captive wolves by saying the animals have never known anything different and don't long for the outside world. They feel safe in their enclosures, delighted with their three hots and a cot. Yet while many captive-born, human-socialized wolves might act friendly and even loving toward people, those animals are still wild at a genetic level; their natural instincts have not been selectively bred out of them over multiple generations, as has been done with domestic dogs. They won't display tame behavior reliably or pass such behavior on to their offspring.
And everything in their evolution makes wolves want to run, not stay behind fences. Nature has designed them to travel 30 to 50 miles a day; in
Captive wolves actually demonstrate more violent behavior than wild wolves. Tour guides often refer to the more dominant (read aggressive) captives as "alpha wolves," a largely outdated term coined by animal behaviorist
Calling a captive group of mostly unrelated animals a "pack" - as many captive-wolf operations do - is misleading in a number of ways. In captivity, wolves can't cooperate to hunt together or disperse to form new packs. As Weber of Mission: Wolf points out: "Throwing a bunch of captive wolves together to observe pack dynamics is like throwing a group of prison inmates together to study family relationships." Wolf handlers sometimes receive the brunt of confinement stress and territoriality, even from bottle-fed, human-socialized wolves - getting nipped or bitten or chased out of enclosures. At
Some operations try to provide temporary stress relief by bringing in wolf puppies to cheer up captives, exacerbating the long-term problem of too many wolves in captivity. A staff biologist at one of the operations told me, "Adding new life to our exhibit maintains an active, socially cohesive pack and allows the focus of the wolves to be on the newest members of the pack, rather than the oldest members." When I pressed her to elaborate, it turns out she really meant that when old-timers "slip rank" and the younger, stronger wolves harass them, puppies are a great way to alleviate tension - at least for a while. Eventually, the old wolves have to be housed in a separate enclosure just to survive.
And life in an enclosure can last a long time. Take Sabertooth, at the time I met him a 15-year-old "geriatric" wolf living at Mission: Wolf. Already he had lived three times longer than the average wild wolf. His hips were going out, and he had sores on his ears. He was what Weber calls a "lifer," which for a captive wolf could mean 16 years or longer.
It's tempting to think that setting captive wolves free would be kinder. But aside from the political furor that would erupt over any attempt to introduce still more wolves into their native habitats, releasing captives amounts to a death sentence, as biologist Heft explained after Chemukh escaped from WERC. Some wolves would lack a natural wariness of people and be shot as a threat when they drifted too close. And wild wolves, highly territorial animals, would likely see the strange wolves as intruders and kill them. Also, wolf pups learn to hunt from their parents, so former captives would probably lack the skills to hunt large prey like elk and moose; instead, they would likely go after easier targets like livestock.
In 2006, a wolf-like "mystery predator" roaming central
TO ATTRACT PAYING VISITORS, even some of the most respected facilities blur the line between conservation and entertainment. They argue that providing some amusement - pettable wolves, wolves with hokey Indian-style names, and "trick wolves" that jump through hoops and balance on teeter-totters - keeps the tourists interested and helps educate them.
Wolf People - on
In one visit to Wolf People, I was in a group of about 10 tourists. We climbed into our cars to caravan to the wolf enclosure a couple miles up the road. Once we arrived, however, we were told to stay in our cars. A gangly young employee, his face pale with worry, was scouring the compound: A wolf had escaped its enclosure. Ten minutes later, it was caught and returned to its pen. (I learned afterward that a white wolf had escaped a few weeks earlier by digging under a fence; it still hasn't been found.) When the tour finally started, our guide hauled out a large tub of hotdogs so the wolves would "get their lazy butts up" to the fence; some leapt four vertical feet to snag a hotdog. The guide spent the entire hour-long talk telling us about the care of the captives - certainly a subject of interest - but said nothing about wild wolves and their plight on that day or the next, when I attended a second tour.
But Taylor and her employees clearly mean well and care about wolves. Although the enclosures are only 5,000 square feet (about an eighth of an acre), most have plenty of trees, so the wolves can hide if they wish, and thanks in part to some top-shelf meat from
Animal caretakers at Wolf Haven follow a stringent protocol to prepare wolves for life in the wild. Visitors never see - much less touch - wolves destined for release. Staff are permitted in the pre-release area only to provide food and water and perform maintenance on the enclosure. Remote cameras allow staff to monitor the animals without interacting with them. As Spencer put it: "These wolves must retain their innate wariness of humans. A habituated wolf (in the wild) is a dead wolf."
Wolf Haven's conservation director,
Other captive-wolf operations are considering changing their practices to better help wild wolves.
I MET MYOWN WOLF-DOG,
In my arms, in my house, or in a kennel, living in
Scientific research told me she was an animal compelled by instinct to be free and constantly traveling over new terrain. A graceful athlete and great partner on wilderness or rock-climbing adventures, she was miserable in the everyday life of city neighborhoods, where in spite of two-hour daily runs and miles of trekking, her howling and repeated escapes got us evicted from house after house. Even on remote acreage, she attacked livestock and neighboring dogs, genetically driven to hunt and defend her territory.
When
After
I've learned that we need accurate scientific information in order to treat wild animals humanely. And Fve also learned that, with canines, there is a simple credo: If you love dogs, you keep...
RIGHT: Orion, a wolf-dog, howls in his enclosure at Mission: WOLF,
BELOW: Young wolves at the Wolf People compound in
Captive wolves don't get a lot of attention, as the public tends to focus on the more than 60,000 wild wolves in
ABOVE: Two wolves jump at the gate to their enclosure at Wolf People in northern
RIGHTrAWoIf People volunteer prepares meat for feeding time. MAHMlLLS MCKNIGHT
RIGHT: Zephir howls at Mission: Wolf near
BELOW: Signs like this one at Wolf People help lure visitors into captive wolf facilities. CEIRIDWEN TERRILL
I watched as some animals paced inside their fences, treading the same pattern over and overwearing trenches a foot deep in some places.
TOP: Volunteer Adam Sievering with Abraham, a wolf-dog, at Mission Wolf, ch ris SCHNEIDER
ABOVE: Visitors greet a captive wolf at Wolf People.
At the end of the day, Apollo trots in his enclosure at Mission: Wolf. The facility is wellregarded, accepting only wolves that would have otherwise been euthanized,
"Throwing a bunch of captive wolves together to observe pack dynamics is like throwing a group of prison inmates together to study family relationships."
-
Ceiridwen Terrill isan associate professor of science writing and environmental journalism at
Copyright: | (c) 2011 High Country News |
Wordcount: | 5356 |
WHY PRIZE? THE SURPRISING RESURGENCE OF PRIZES TO STIMULATE INNOVATION [Research Technology Management]
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News