Abstract
Few animals provoke as wide a range of emotions as wolves. Some see wolves as icons of a lost wilderness; others see them as intruders. As the battle continues between wolf proponents and opponents, finding solutions that resolve conflicts while supporting the integrity of nature is challenging. In this essay we argue that we need to make room for wolves and other native carnivores who are re-colonizing areas from which they were extirpated. Strategies that foster coexistence are necessary and wildlife agencies must consider all stakeholders and invest adequate resources to inform the public about how to mitigate conflicts between people/domestic animals, and predators. Values and ethics must be woven into wildlife policy and management and we must be willing to ask difficult ethical questions and learn from past mistakes.
Highlights
Ethics in our Western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relations of man to man
Because the return of the wolf to the conterminous states is so laden with human values, attitudes, and beliefs, we argue that this historical moment presents a unique opportunity for reflection about the ethical issues involved in wolf restoration and the development of practical models for how humans can learn to coexist with wolves in an increasingly humanized landscape
While many agree that ethics must play a central role in any project involving the use of animals [11,16,17,18], it is interesting to note that in many books on human–animal interactions and carnivore conservation there is often no mention of ethics
Summary
Ethics in our Western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relations of man to man. Wolves are viewed as vicious predators with malicious intentions and are better off dead Such deeply held beliefs about a large carnivorous mammal that was exterminated throughout most of its historic range in the conterminous United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has stirred an impassioned debate that is bound to become even more heated as the U.S. government considers removing wolves from the federal endangered species list and turning management over to the states. USFWS rule, restoring the endangered status to gray wolves (except in Minnesota, where they are listed as “threatened” under the ESA) Despite this ruling, the U.S federal government continues to seek delisting of gray wolves in the lower forty-eight states and animal advocacy and conservation organizations continue to challenge the proposed delisting, arguing that the federal government has failed to develop a comprehensive range-wide strategy for recovering gray wolves [6]. A comprehensive wolf recovery and conservation agenda addresses animal protection, ecological concerns, and socio-political processes
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