
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 8, 1993                   TAG: 9307080462
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RICHARD S. CROFT
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PREDATORS HELP KEEP BALANCE IN NATURE

AN ASSOCIATED Press story on July 1 in the Roanoke Times & World-News ("Alaska board approves a new wolf-kill plan") stated that Alaska's Game Board has approved a plan to kill "up to 150" gray wolves in the Fairbanks area. While it did not state the reason for the killing, I recall an earlier story about the impending decision that suggested Alaska's governor wanted to increase the size of the caribou herd for hunters. If this is the case, Alaska's policymakers are making a serious mistake.

Here in the East, many hunters of white-tail deer rightly feel that they are providing a positive role in game management by taking the place of natural predators that have become extinct. Evidently the big-game hunters who venture to Alaska claim no such moral defense, since the state intends to reduce competition from those same natural predators.

Removal of predator pressure may have an undesirable effect. Even for animals as powerful and cunning as wolves, killing a large powerful caribou takes considerable work, and exposes the hunter to the danger of potentially fatal injury from the prey's hooves. Consequently, for most of the year, the mainstay of wolves' diets is mice and rabbits. Only during winter do wolves form packs to hunt larger prey, and then they take the slowest and sickest - not from some noble impulse, but because it takes the least effort to catch them and presents the smallest danger of injury. Elimination of wolves from this picture results in a larger prey population; but weak, sick or otherwise unfit specimens represent the increase. The weak may eat scarce food that may have fed healthier individuals. Introduction of big-game hunters probably will not restore the balance, for a trophy hunter is not likely to take interest in a worm-ridden animal with broken antlers. The unhealthy condition of the grossly oversized deer populations in some areas, such as Pennsylvania, bears sad testimony to the results of predator extinction.

One may be tempted to trust in the expertise of game-management officials in this matter, but for decades federal and state officials have continued to make unsound decisions regarding predator management. As a result, gray wolves occupy territory in only three or four of the 49 states they previously ranged, with automobiles and hunters providing the only checks on deer populations. Neither of the human agencies is as effective in culling the sick as natural predation. If the size of the caribou herd genuinely concerns Alaska's officials, they should direct their attention to human development, particularly such obstacles to caribou migration as the oil pipeline, and seek means of correcting the impact of such development. Thinning or eliminating predator populations is a poor course of action.

Richard S. Croft of Christiansburg received a bachelor's degree in forestry and wildlife from Virginia Tech, specializing in predator-prey relationships.

by CNB