Leave wild animals alone

Consider a vast pool of water suspended over society’s head, an immense water tank hovering over your region. Yet, in spite of appearances of a decent stream of water flowing your way, only a drop arrives at your doorstep!

All around you the living landscape is withering, slowly dying, with over 70 per cent of all wildlife populations, even species, in sharp decline, already endangered or becoming extinct. All as a consequence of human over consumption and industrial exploitation of and destruction of biocapacity.

Now transpose this analogy to wildlife research.

There exists an immense body of wildlife and ecosystem knowledge available to humans and governments. Well over 100 natural resource science and management journals print thousands of “papers” annually, the vast majority claiming (falsely) to report results that are “new,”, or “innovative;” almost inevitably researchers conclude “there is a need for further research.”

Satellites now dump an animal’s whereabouts and activity to someone’s computer every minute or five minutes. One grizzly bear study recently pointed to 175,000 data points, yet made reference to “we still know very little” and “rarely been quantitatively assessed.” Grizzly bears are endangered or extirpated in one third of the province, and there’s not an enforceable regulation to be found protecting roadless landscapes upon which long term bear survival is entirely dependent!

Everyone is intrigued by cameras on caribou, placed there ostensibly to advance our knowledge so we can protect them from human excess. Really! Did it matter what southern Selkirk caribou, all three of them, were eating last winter?

Spying on animals has become big business. Let me clarify some terms so we can separate legitimate research from frivolous pursuits.

I consider it spying, and hobbyism, when the results of the effort are largely inconsequential to the conservation of wildlife populations, the habitat they need, and the regulations that control human interactions with, and subsequently prevent or control impacts, on those animals.

Pictures of an animal burdened by a camera or a radio transmitter are common. Few relate this to the traumatic circumstances that follow biologists capture efforts, often through pursuit by helicopter, immobilization by net or chemical injection, or restraint in a box trap, exposure to in-your-face, handson physical handling by humans, with human voice overlay, aggravated by extreme noise from a helicopter.

The consequences are fear and terror, then pain, shock and subsequent soreness or injury, lasting sometimes for days, or in the case of muscle myopathy, weeks. And occasionally, always dangerous separation from young and lifetime members of their social group.

The question now should be, to what avail? Who benefits?

No longer can it be claimed these traumatic practices automatically result in conservation benefit.

Of course monitoring the abundance and distribution of wildlife populations is necessary but that can be done relatively accurately with camera and hair “traps” in the employ of competent and accountable civil servants and academics.

The complication arises with the immense gap between information availability and its noticeable absence in regulatory and legal application for land and wildlife conservation.

With rare exceptions, there is no longer acceptable justification to burden animals with technology.