Wolf hunting controversy

Wolf hunting, whether by humans bent on preserving livestock, harvesting pelts, or just enjoying the sport of it, is a controversial issue.

Many people attempt to justify it on economic grounds, falsly labeling wolves as destructive predators. Early settlers in the United States tried to eliminate wolves entirely, and would have made the wolf extinct if possible. They offered bounties for each wolf pelt as evidence of a kill, and for several decades much of the Great Plains area and Mountain States was rid of this annoyance.

Some hunters just like shooting them. They consider them challenging game, because they can take a bullet and keep going - unlike deer, which simply fall dead on the spot. Less sporting, as some view it, is aerial hunting via helicopter. After chasing an entire herd into exhaustion, hunters land and casually walk up to wolves and shoot them at close range. "Hardly sporting."

Others, particularly ecologists and environmentalists, oppose the practice in part or in whole. Ecologists assert that eliminating wolves has bad effects on the natural balance between prey and predator, which concomitant (ripple) effects on the rest of the ecosystem. Wolves pick out the sick or crippled or elderly deer from a herd, thinning it and preventing the bad effects of overpopulation. Environmentalists and other nature lovers regard wolves as having rights and oppose all hunting of them as cruel.

See:

• conservationism
• ecology
• herd thinning
• hunting
• environmentalist movement
• animal rights