Wolves Vs Humans

Wolves Vs Humans

In the modern world today we are slapped in the face with a revolving issue of domination and co-existing with non humans. The issue at hand is about the existence history of the North American Wolves. How they have been to the point of extinction, put on the endangered species list, fought back to sustainable numbers, and now are beginning to be classified as a problem so they can be hunted again. In this article the main dualism is man Vs beast (wolves). The article is “How America is learning to live with wolves again” and was written by Suzanne Goldenberg. Here is a quote from the article that we can briefly discuss.

“They were hunted almost to extinction, but now the wolf population is growing, and man and beast are being forced to co-exist”.

I chose this article because it is an example of how the world is viewed in an anthropocentric way. How the ranchers want to co-exist and don’t want to use excessive force, but at the same time they fail to realize that they are the reason there is a problem with the wolves. If the ranchers did not come in and decimate the lands to begin with, the wolves would not be a current problem. This creates the dualism in the efforts of conservation on one side you have the government (Hierarchy/Humanism) and on the other the romantic view of the conservation alliance of ranchers. This is an example of the issue we deal with everyday that we fail to “see” that the world does not revolve around us.

In the reading by Leopold ‘Thinking like a Mountain’ he describes the effects of not looking at the whole ecosystem. When we focus on one problem we forget, or just don’t care about the results of our actions. How the ecosystem needs every part of it to survive, and every part needs to be controlled at the same time. Leopold said

“I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as mayny6 decades. So also with cows. The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain. Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.”(Leopold p.2)

The views expressed in the article of the conservation alliance of ranchers, the politician (Governor) and wolves; all prove that we really don’t know how to co-exist. This issue is based out of Montana’s metaphorical so called “wilderness” and stretches to places like Idaho and Wyoming. This is a current issue in today’s society/Government, with this article written back in December 8, 2010. The main points in the article is the problem with the wolves now threatening wildlife and farm animals, and should they be taken off the endangered species list to be hunted again. This is something we have protected since the 70’s and how do we regulate it so it does not become a problem?

This is the proof that humans and wolf will not be able to co-exist. They put the wolf in a class lower than human, to be beast like, savage, and wild to name a few. Plumwood best describes this with the master narrative of ourselves and our relationship to nature with our proper place in it. The title focuses on the issue of having to be forced to co-exist. This is one of our biggest problems; we are unable to rationally think about the consequences of our actions. We have the problem of endangerment because of our goals to tame the wild. Then we realize what we have done and then we stop the hunting to only realize again we have a problem. I found a good quote in the ‘Land Ethics’ by Leopold.

“There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations."(Leopold p. 140)

The problem with this article is they fail to realize the real issue. Even with the views of the conversationalist, they fail to realize that they are the reason that the wolf is the problem. Without the ranchers there would not be the livestock to be attacked. In the article it talks about the romantic view of a rancher named Stone who believes in the co-existence of the native wolf. He said in the article

“They are a part of the chain of life. They were here before we came so it probably makes sense that they are here [now].”

At the same time the article contradict his statement when they talk about his 2500 arcs, a fine example of the quote above. How they view the land as property and don’t realize they are classifying it as slave like.

Finally we have the hierarchy of the Government to make all the decisions whether to keep the animal on the endangered species list or allow for it to be hunted. The anthropocentric views of the Governor of Montana see the wolf as a problem and want to “declare open season on the predators”. In the article a story is told with the first encounter of the wolf to what it is today. In the past the wolf was instrumentalized by the extermination efforts to destroy the population by poisoning, trapping, and over hunting. This was done by ranchers and miners when they first came to the area who declared they were kings. This gives us a window into the minds of the people of the past who did not see the wilderness as something that need to be preserved, Cronon best described their views

“To be a wilderness then was to be deserted, savage, desolate, barren – in short, a waste, the word’s nearest synonym”…”presence of something irreducibly nonhuman,…” (CrononP.8)

In the eyes of the miners and ranchers they did not care about the lands other than how to exploit them. We can see the issues at hand are repeating themselves. Until we can truly see nature for what it is and how it needs every component in it to sustain balance, we will continue to repeat our history. Till who knows when it will be too late to repair the damage that we have caused!

Decades after its near-extinction, the wolf of Montana is back in large numbers. Photograph: Jeff Vanuga/Corbis

Another site to check out about the issue is killing the wolf at the door .