Gunning for the Pack

Today's Detroit Free Press reports that Michigan wolves may soon find themselves in gunsights:

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Michigan wildlife officers will be allowed to kill up to 20 wolves this year under a recently issued federal permit, the state said Tuesday.

The state may kill wolves only in response to attacks that damage or kill livestock or pets. Traps and other control methods may be used only within one mile of an attack site.

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Critter hugger that I am...I'd say it's a good thing. Not that I particularly desire to see wolves killed, but I think the measure may help the wolves' long-term recovery. Unfortunately, wolves will make some costly dents in livestock. Experiences of wildlife officials elsewhere suggest that wolves will avoid livestock where they learn there is danger associated with it. And this may mollify hunters who resent wolves making a living off "their" deer. Better to have limited lethal control than all out extermination, which was Michigan's policy until forty or so years ago. In this measure, I see acounting for varied interests, and a rejection of black & white absolutes--things too long lacking in efforts at environmental preservation.

Barry Lopez remarks somewhere that in a healthy landscape, there are de facto covenants between humans and wild animals that enable both to survive, but are never finalized: they change with circumstances. In ecology as in politics, one might say, there is a doctrine of a living contstitution. It appears one such covenant has changed. Maybe not in a pleasant way. But perhaps in a good one.

I would like to hear a wolf howl. When fishing or otherwise outdoors, I enjoy the sound of coyotes yipping nearby. Once while walking in a field near Okemos, I saw six coyote pups crawl out of a den and walk one by one to the same opening in the grass where, I suspect, Mama was waiting. Never saw the coyotes in the field again, but the place where I did became a special spot to me, where I felt I ought to pause a bit just in case the extraordinary was about to happen.