Vancouver, BRITISH COLUMBIA (Enviro Snowflake Brief)— British Columbia officials are scrambling to explain why they killed 463 wolves this winter to protect endangered forest caribou in the face of scientific researchers at the University of Alberta concluding killing wolves wasn’t saving the caribou.
Province officials are now saying, if Rob Serrouya’s study (University of Alberta), which the government cited as proof of why killing wolves works to save caribou was flawed and wrong, the public should not worry because we have a “hunch” 463 wolves release a lot of methane emissions (no study exists).
According to the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, “B.C. citizens should think of our wolf-cull as their environmentally conscious B.C. government tirelessly finding ways to address climate change, while still protecting our logging and oil-and-gas extraction industries.”
Despite widespread condemnation from conservation groups and scientists, the B.C. government is set to continue shooting wolves from helicopters.
The highly controversial government wolf-cull relied heavily on Serrouya’s study. A new group of scientists has reassessed the statistical findings of that paper. Their rebuttal published in July in Biodiversity and Conservation, shows that a simple statistical oversight doomed those 463 wolves with little benefit to saving caribou- zero statistical support.
An Interior Logging Association spokesman’s press release today stated “no matter the efficacy of the wolf-cull, our industry has now fulfilled its caribou-conservation requirements.”
In addition, a government spokesman for British Columbia’s Oil and Gas Association told the Vancouver Sun, “We support reducing wolf methane emissions to help offset the essential oil-and-gas activity that makes BC great.”
The ecological storm the government has created for forest caribou in high risk areas is not about wolves, but habitat loss. If you want to save the caribou, if not too late, cut less trees, build less roads, and start limiting extraction activity.
“The wolf cull, maternity pens, it’s all part of the talk-and-log process that’s going on,” says Craig Pettitt of the Valhalla Wilderness Society. “We know damn well that the caribou need habitat and, as we talk, they are logging their habitat.”
(ESB-NOT REAL NEWS)
Editor Note: Learn more about the unscientific, immoral wolf-cull from hard working B.C. organizations, such as, https://www.wolfawareness.org/ and https://www.vws.org/ , and other Canadian advocacy groups.
