Please Don't Kill the Wolf that Killed Me

Have you noticed that when a person in North America is attacked by a wolf (or any wild animal), not only does it make the news, but people form groups and go out with one purpose in mind: kill the wolf!  In fact we are more likely to kill one wildlife animal for being a risk, than we are likely to kill another human being who has killed several other humans...

It does not matter what the circumstances were, the intent is to kill the wolf. You can almost hear people chanting “Kill the Wolf, Kill the Wolf”. Heck, it could be a cougar or bear, for that matter. People just seem to want revenge on the animal, or to prevent it from killing more humans I suppose.

Oh and sharks too – never mind that getting attacked by a shark is pretty easy to avoid – stay out of their water and you won't get eaten!

Let us do some animal math; there are over 7 billion people in the world. There are only 55,000 Grizzly bears, 50,000 cougars, and 100,000 wolves (most of which are in Canada).

 

If a person decides to enter bear territory, and maybe even comes between a mother bear and her cubs, and gets hurt, we blame the bear, we kill the bear, we form mobs that go out looking for the bear and are not satisfied until it is dead.

We have already pushed wild species out of the best parts of the wilderness, which we have claimed for ourselves. We build developments around the best lakes, we plop cities in the river valleys that wildlife have migrated through for generations.

Now, I am not saying I want to go out and get eaten by a wolf, bear, or cougar, I am just saying that if that ends up being my fate, please do not blame the animal. I do not want a murderous mob of people going on a wolf killing rampage through the forest just because one wolf took my life. It should not be front page news either, it is not anymore news worthy than if I die of old age, and natural causes. If we think about it, death by a wolf should be considered a “natural cause”, what's more natural than nature?

As populations of humans continue to grow and expand in to what use to be wildlife territories, we can expect to see more problems with these animals, but are they really the problem, or is it us?