UBCIC’s Misguided Wolf Management Resolution

The Union of BC Indians Chief (UBCIC) resolution 2022-09 “Support for BC First Nation Territorial Management and Protection of Caribou and Wolf Populations” is very misguided.

The UBCIC advocates for not a full-stop to wolf culls but a selective approach because the chief’s correctly blame the Province of BC’s mismanagement of caribou habitat. Their solution is that the only alternative for many First Nations is to protect caribou from predation by supporting selective wolf culls.

So much for the wolf is our brother and the wolf has great cultural importance to our people!

While it is very unfortunate that caribou was the traditional food for some FN peoples, the wolf did not destroy these herds but human industrial activity did. FN people and their organizations must realize and accept that caribou are doomed because of climate change, their habitat is continually being destroyed and CWD. Their numbers and habitat have been so decimated that despite their zoo in the wilderness approach will not bring the caribou back to any sustainable numbers. The West Moberly FN and Saulteaux FN zoo in the wilderness approach by using maternal pens and collecting their food (lichen) is not a sustainable or a natural conservation approach. It is another goofy human attempt to increase caribou numbers so they can eventually hunt their traditional food. The FN people from both these nations have stated that as their goal.

So the FN groups endorse this brutal aerial wolf slaughter program so they can eventually eat caribou meat but wolves can’t! How unethical!!

The UBCIC and Kootenay FN groups are blind to the destruction that CWD will do to the caribou populations. Wolves are Nature’s best defence to the spread of the deadly CWD disease and if you continue to endorse wolf killing, ask yourself this question; How do you think your caribou conservation will do once CWD gets into those caribou herds?

BC will need to do what Norway did in 2016 when they detected CWD in one of their reindeer herds (reindeer & caribou are the same species – Rangifer tarandus) and they slaughtered 2,000 reindeer in this herd. Only for it to come back in 2020. Way more destructive than wolves will ever do.

UBCIC and FN people, you need to take a much stronger advocacy position and endorse a full-stop to BC’s brutal aerial wolf slaughter program. Remember the wolf is your brother!

Gary R. Allan
President, Tundra Speaks Society
SWELL Wolf Education Centre