Will Officials Science-Wash Wolf Hunts to Bypass Federal Protections?

Last week, Rocky Mountain gray wolves got their Endangered Species Act protections back, much to the dismay of the anti-wolf crowd in Idaho and Montana. With the news that wolf season was cancelled, wolf-hunting proponents put their heads together to find a way around the federal protections. One of the options they came up with was to keep hunting wolves, but call it "research."

Montana wolf program coordinator Carolyn Sime said that a federally permitted "research hunt" would help them better understand the effect of public hunting on wolf populations. Government agents and ranchers have killed more than 1,200 wolves over the past 15 years, but they want to know if "a regulated public harvest could accomplish the same task."

Whether a wolf is killed by a rancher, a government agent, Joe Hunter or a "researcher," the animal is still dead. Is anyone really supposed to believe that hunting wolves to see what it might be like if people hunted wolves is valid research?

It seems they've taken a page from the Japanese, who get around the international whaling ban by slaughtering about 1,000 whales a year for "research." Japan claims to be researching population, feeding habits, and migration between breeding grounds and food patches. Unsuprisingly, the necessity of hunting whales for that research was debunked by a group of real researchers earlier this year. Not that it ever made sense that the animals needed to be dead to understand their habits in life, but Japan's stated research goals sound reasonable compared to "we want to kill them to see what it would be like to kill them."

Mike Leahy, Rocky Mountain director for Defenders of Wildlife calls the concept of research hunts "obviously erroneous." He says, "They're trying to be too clever by half."

But science-washing is a popular way to legitimize animal cruelty in our society. In addition to "research hunts," of course, there's the entire field of animal testing, including such asinine experiments as proving that mice feel pain. As long as it's in the name of science, officials figure people will swallow anything. (And sadly, they often do.)

Idaho is also considering a research hunt, but state Fish and Game Deputy Director Jim Unsworth said the idea "hasn't got much encouragement" from federal wildlife managers. That's because there's no such thing in the U.S. as a permit to hunt endangered species for research. In case the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forgets that, environmental groups are standing by with their lawyers.

Photo credit: dalliedee