Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?
If you’re like me, you’ve always been bummed by some fairy tales. Specifically, stories like Little Red Riding Hood, the Three Little Pigs, and many others never sat right with me because in these stories, wolves are the villain. The architype of the “Big Bad Wolf” has become ubiquitous because of these kinds of stories and that bothers me. I like wolves.
I like the majesty of wolves, the way they look and as a kid, would read everything I could about them. There’s a parallel timeline in which I became a wolf researcher. On one of our first adventures together, the woman who would become my wife took me to a wolf sanctuary and we spent the afternoon watching these creatures play and howl.
That said, I understand why wolves are the antagonists of folk tales. Back when medicine prescribed chewing on a root for minor injuries and amputation for major ones, wolves and other predators were a legitimate threat. Considering most people relied on farming and livestock to support their family, a wolf eating your cow was like losing your refrigerator and car simultaneously. Wolves were the enemy in story and real life.
In response, we hunted wolves and other predator to near extinction. Our species has never been good at moderation. Naturalists of the time saw how removing apex predators impacted other species and the ecosystem at large which gave rise to conservationist hunters. Teddy Roosevelt, among others, loved the wild and wanted to protect these animals by setting up game preserves. Without these early efforts, countless species would have been lost before any of us were born. Many modern hunters make the same claim, equating hunting with environmentalism.
Don’t let that fool you though. The original conservationist hunters were some of the first modern protectors of wildlife and we owe a lot to their efforts, but these were rich white men interested in saving animals so that they could be hunted later. Referring to them as “environmentalists” is a bit of a stretch. Not to mention, that was over a century ago. We have ways of protecting the environment without shooting it now.
Fast forward a few decades, past The Endangered Species Act, the rise of proper environmentalism, and some of the species have started to come back from the brink of extinction. In Illinois and our neighboring states, we’ve seen the return of bears, bobcats, and my beloved wolves. The immediate response has been to take up the hunt again.
You may have seen the article last Thursday about the wolf hunt in Idaho hoping to reduce wolf numbers by 90%. Again, we’re great at moderation. There were two big reasons the article gave for the hunt and they are repeated every time a hunt of predators is proposed.
It’s about protecting a farmer’s livestock. I’m sympathetic to that. Farmers have it tough enough as it is. I have little issue with them defending their property. There’s probably a better answer than keeping a species at near extinction but I’m sympathetic.
The other big reason was that the wolves reduce the numbers of caribou for hunters. To that I say boohoo. You don’t get to wipe a species of the planet because it makes your hobby more challenging.
Let me be clear, I’m not opposed to hunting. Given the state of the world, that’s how most of us will get our food before long. Hunting apex predators is unnecessary and ecologically disastrous, though. We don’t live in a world of straw and stick houses. We don’t need to be afraid of the big bad wolf.
