An intolerable logic – trading the life of one species for another
Barred owl
Humans have created an artefactual world where critical habitat is lost, species are exploited to the point of near extinction, predator-prey dynamics are altered, resource partitioning between species has broken down, and niche overlap leads to interspecific competition. Humans then take it upon themselves to rectify the damage they have wrought by choosing the life of one species over another by killing native wild species. Will the human species ever step outside of its own inherently self-centred motivation, and leave wild nature the space to make its own decisions?
It was with unimaginable anger that I learnt about a mass cull of wolves during the period 2005-2012, initiated by the province of Alberta, Canada, ostensibly as an experimental measure to test whether predator removal would aid the recovery of wood caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou)(1). Marc Bekoff, an American ethologist and behavioural ecologist, was sickened by this experiment, published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology (2) noting that 890 wolves had been shot from helicopters, or poisoned with strychnine. He observed that other animals were also killed by the strychnine, including 91 ravens, 36 coyotes, 31 foxes, eight marten, six lynx, four weasels, and four fisher (and see (3)). Bekoff disdainfully described the death of non-target species as probably being acceptable collateral damage to the researchers, and by the journal that published the study. Like Bekoff, I was dumbfounded to read that after wolf packs had been located by helicopter, there were attempts to “lethally remove all remaining members of each pack through aerial-shooting throughout the winter”, as well as by using the strychnine bait stations (2). What rankled with Bekoff, and with me, was that the experiment, while stabilising caribou populations, did not result in an increase in caribou population. Bekoff was incredulous that the experiment was sanctioned and conducted, and regarded it as a moral failure of the Alberta government, participating universities, the Canadian Journal of Zoology, and the individual scientists who had carried it out.
Distrust that predator reduction could be effective
This trading of the lives of one wild species for those of another as a conservation measure has continued in Canada, with the province of British Columbia (BC) sanctioning a wolf cull in 2015 in two separate locations to “save caribou herds under threat from wolf predation” (4). Ministry staff aimed to remove 24 wolves in South Selkirk by shooting them from a helicopter before snow melt, and 120 - 160 wolves in South Peace by the same method. The cull was expanded in 2019 when 463 wolves were killed over the winter (5) and then renewed in the winter of 2021-22 to focus on Peace, Cariboo, Kootenay, Omineca, and Skeena regions, the cull to continue up until 2026 with an expected 244 additional wolves killed every year (6).
In December, 2021, the province released the results of an Engagement Survey of its Predator Reduction for Caribou Recovery which showed that of 15,196 surveys completed, 59% of respondents were opposed to predator reduction for caribou recovery (7). That level of opposition could have been higher if respondents had been aware of the gruesome details of the wolf culling that had to be dragged out of the provincial government. In 2022, the Fur-Bearers, a charity set up in BC to protect the wildlife of urban and rural ecosystems, used a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to obtain documents about the BC governments wolf cull for 2021-2022 and its authorisation for the following five years (8). The documents revealed the methods that government contractors were instructed to use in killing wolves, one of which had come to be known as the Judas wolf, a practice that was previously denied in 2016. Contractors were advised to capture wolves by darting or net-gunning, affixing radio-collars before releasing, and then tracking them until they returned to their pack, the whole pack then being slaughtered, but leaving the collared wolf alive. The Fur-Brearers considered this method unethical, as the radio-collared wolf would witness its family slaughtered, and then have that repeated when the wolf joined up with another pack.
Pacific Wild, a conservation group opposed to the cull, used an FOI to obtain photographs of wolves killed between 2015 and 2022 by gunfire from helicopters, perusal of which led Pacific Wild’s lawyer to maintain that the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals had not been complied with, since the majority of killings were not controlled head shots (9). The proof was shown in the 46 photographs released through the FOI (10). Subsequently, the Canadian Broadcast Company (CBC) obtained documents in 2023 by way of an FOI that showed that the BC government had spent more than $10 million in killing 1,944 wolves since 2015 (6). The documents showed that the province had set a goal of reducing the wolf population in targeted areas by 80 per cent. This included the elimination of entire packs so that population density was brought below three wolves per 1,000 sqkm. Further, it showed how the wolf cull had been operating, including the detail that shooters in helicopters aimed at the brain, upper spinal cord, chest, lungs and heart - second shots were at these targeted areas if the first shot was not fatal. Also included were several pages of logs tracking specific wolf culls in unspecified areas during the winter months between December 2018 and mid-March 2023. Thus, descriptions were given of the death of each wolf, an example being “wolf hit low in chest/front shoulder, gun appeared to be shooting low, so adjusted aim point and 2 more shots both into neck [less than] 5 sec dispatch time”
Returning to that Engagement Survey, 80% cited that damage to caribou habitat from natural resource extraction was the main cause of caribou population decline, with over 60% choosing habitat protection and habitat restoration as the top two caribou recovery actions (7). In this, the respondents were distrustful that predator reduction could be effective, and that there were other reasons for the decline in caribou. The Raincoast Conservation Foundation pointed in 2020 to a paper that had disavowed the findings of a previous study, and on which the expanded culling in 2019 was probably based, concluding that the government-sponsored killing of wolves and other treatments had no detectable effect (5). This reassessment of the data by scientists from the Foundation and the Universities of Alberta, BC, and Victoria, found that there was no statistical support for wolf control and maternal penning as conservation measures for endangered mountain caribou (11). Their observation was that reducing wolf populations could not be assumed to benefit all the various ecotype populations of caribou. The Deep-Snow Mountain caribou were obligately bound to forests old enough to support accessible arboreal hair lichens, and thus were more susceptible to the loss of old growth forest, whereas wolves were responsible for only 5-10% of their mortality.
The scientific explanations for the decline in caribou were well-established
CBC had reported on research that showed that caribou had lost twice as much habitat as they had gained over a 12-year period, and that continued habitat loss would drive caribou to extinction in BC (12). The research quantified changes in forest cover, as a proxy of caribou habitat, for all the caribou ecotype subpopulations in Alberta and BC during the period 2000-2012 (13). Drivers of habitat loss varied by ecotype, with Boreal and Northern Mountain caribou affected most by forest fire and Southern Mountain caribou affected more by forest logging. They also measured an increase in quantity of linear features such as seismic lines in forests, the linear clearings that were created by the energy industry for oil and gas exploration, and which increase predation pressure on caribou by facilitating predator movement. As the vegetation in these linear features begins to regenerate, they attract moose and deer, which in turn also draws in more wolves. The authors said their results supported the idea that management practices such as predator reductions would only delay eventual caribou extinction, unless effective habitat conservation, management, and recovery approaches were implemented. Further, it suggested that unless human-related habitat alterations were adequately addressed, the recovery of most woodland caribou populations seemed unlikely.
The latter research added more weight to an assertion in a study on how Environmental Assessment in BC of major oil, gas and mining developments was failing caribou (14). The authors observed that the scientific explanations for the decline in caribou were well-established and documented in the literature, that industrial development was driving caribou loss through land use change driven by forestry, oil, and gas and mining. The Valhalla Wilderness Society of BC was uncompromising in its view that killing of wolves was a cover up for destroying caribou habitat, having been involved in caribou conservation for nearly 40 years (15,16). The Society was particularly scathing about what it considered the misleading government rhetoric about wolves and caribou, and the failure of the Mountain Caribou Recovery Plan, and firmly placed human activities as the main threat to caribou not just from habitat destruction but also human disturbance through harassment and displacement from high-value habitat by snowmobiles and heli-skiing. In support of the latter assertion, I point to a study that found that the pause in heli-skiing operations in BC during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic led some endangered caribou populations to more than double their home-ranges, enabling greater access to resources (17). The authors explained it through Encounter Theory, the disturbance created by encountering humans creating risk that increased vigilance and which resulted in foregoing forage opportunities. Thus, the smaller home ranges to which they were restricted during years of normal heli-ski operations were affecting resource availability and carrying capacities, and which could cause reductions in body condition or survival.
Given all the above, it is depressing that a recent paper on the effectiveness of population-based recovery actions for threatened southern mountain caribou said that favouring habitat protection and restoration over interim recovery actions like the cull of wolves was a false choice (18). Their argument reduced it to a cost evaluation, that the killing of hundreds of wolves was ten times cheaper and quicker in having an effect than restoring habitat. As someone has noted, it didn’t look good that almost half of the co-authors to the paper worked for provincial or national authorities, the suspicion being that the paper put forward a convenient agenda that allowed for the unabated destruction of the caribou habitat and made wolves pay the ultimate price (19). In balance to that paper, new research shed light on how the culling in Alberta altered the surviving wolves and warns of unintended consequences. The movement of wolves in a large area of northeastern Alberta had been tracked during the period 2011-2014 before a cull took place, and then between 2017 and 2020 when 92 wolves were killed (20). What the authors found was that wolves avoided anthropogenic features following population reduction, such as the seismic lines, trails or logging roads, the easily travelled, linear features on the landscape (and see earlier). The wolves had adapted quickly, having learned to fear their normal hunting grounds. The authors suggested that this change in behaviour alone would reduce caribou-wolf encounters, but were uncertain how long the altered behaviours would remain after culls were terminated.
It is painfully obvious that it was not wolves that caused the decline in caribou habitat, nor were they responsible for the seismic lines and other linear intrusions into the forest. Consider that if 20 years ago, serious measures had been put in place to restrict further habitat loss, and promote habitat restoration. It would of course have meant that humans forewent its continuing exploitation to the detriment of wild nature.
The barred owl was described as an invader
The trading of one native species for another as
a result of anthropogenic degradation of wild nature is a recurring pattern of
human hubris. Another example is that of the Northern spotted owl (Strix
occidentalis caurina) a native of old growth forests of the Pacific
Northwest of America. The spotted owl became the focus of campaigns in the 1980-90s to
limit logging of its habitat to forestall its decline – it was often seen as a
struggle between loggers' jobs and protection of the owls' ancient forest
habitat (21,22). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) eventually gave it
protection when it listed the Northern spotted owl as threatened under the
Endangered species Act in June 1990, citing habitat loss and modification
resulting from timber harvesting activities as the primary threat (23). The
determination of Critical Habitat for the Northern Spotted Owl was published
in January 1992, and it identified 190 areas, encompassing a total of nearly
6.9 million acres on Federal lands across the states of California, Oregon and
Washington, and in which logging would be prohibited (24). There was an
unfinalized draft recovery plan developed by FWS in 1992, but it was not until
2008 that a final recovery plan was published (25). The Plan presented 34
Recovery Actions, many of which were concerned with maintaining and restoring
high quality spotted owl habitat, including establishing a network of Managed
Owl Conservation Areas (MOCAs) the final Recovery Action placing the owl and
its habitat selection firmly as an indicator of wild nature:
“Recovery Action 32: Maintain substantially all of the older and more
structurally complex multi-layered conifer forests on Federal lands outside of
MOCAs…….These forests are characterized as having large diameter trees, high
amounts of canopy cover, and decadence components such as broken topped live
trees, mistletoe, cavities, large snags, and fallen trees. Encourage
maintenance of forests with these conditions on non-Federal lands”
There were also 11 Recovery Actions that were concerned with the negative effects of barred owls (Strix varia) on the recovery of spotted owls, the suspicion being that the expansion of barred owls into new territories was pushing out spotted owls. An important Recovery Action at that time was thus to determine how these two sympatric species used their habitat and resources, including prey, in various areas, through resource partitioning, and how habitat use by barred owls and spotted owls changed as barred owl numbers increased. Two more Recovery Actions were about the removal of barred owls, expediting the necessary permission for this to take place, and designing and implementing large-scale control experiments in key spotted owl areas to assess the effects of barred owl removal on spotted owl site occupancy, reproduction, and survival. The FWS admitted in the Plan that the barred owl constituted a significantly greater threat to spotted owl recovery than was envisioned when the spotted owl was listed in 1990, but that the Plan continued to recognize the importance of maintaining habitat for the recovery and long-term survival of the spotted owl.
Two newspaper accounts shortly after the Plan was released summed up the situation (26,27). They noted that the barred owl, which had been a rare sight a decade before in Oregon, now outnumbered spotted owls by almost three to one, and seemed to be supplanting the spotted owl (and see (28)). The barred owl was bigger and more aggressive, could hybridise with spotted owls (and see (29)) had a wider dietary intake – including predating spotted owls - when the latter was restricted to woodland rodents, and the barred owl could withstand human disturbance. There was speculation that the triggers for the westward expansion of the barred owl in the early 1900s were the forests that grew as humans suppressed fire, perhaps also using trees along creeks and rivers as pathways across the Plains. Despite being a species native to the eastern half of the North American continent (30) the barred owl was described as an invader, that some viewed its arrival in the west as a non-native invasion caused by human activities. One of the accounts also described a “pseudo-experiment” on barred owl removal when advantage was taken during collection of DNA samples to observe what effect shooting had on former spotted owl territories, the owls seemingly returning 10 days after ((26) but see also papers on barred owl removal in which this is mentioned (31, 32)). That account also made the point that America had a long history of sacrificing one animal for another when it came to protecting game species or livestock, but that it was only recently that “agencies had begun trying to control one animal for the sake of another that is more endangered. But it’s happening now with increasing frequency”
In September, 2013, the FWS announced its final environmental impact statement for experimental removal of barred owls to benefit threatened northern spotted owls (33). The intent was to use a combination of lethal and non-lethal removal of barred owl from study areas in the states of California, Oregon and Washington that showed a range of barred owl presence and spotted owl occupancy. Shortly afterwards, an article in Conservation Magazine gave some detail (34). FWS had embarked on a six-year experiment whereby 71 barred owls were to be shot in the first season, a number that could grow to as many as 3,600 owls over the span of the entire experiment, and at a cost of $4m, or $1,111 per dead bird. What worried the author, Warren Cornwall, was that even if the moral thicket of killing one owl to save another could be negotiated, what would be the exit strategy? Would there have to be a never-ending cull of barred owls every year? Cornwall remarked - “We usually think conservation means saving animals. But its history is tinged with blood”. Friends of Animals (FoA) a non-profit organization that advocates for the rights of nonhuman animals, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Sacramento, California, in 2013 against the FWS (35). FoA challenged the Plan to kill over 3,600 Barred Owls in the Pacific Northwest, calling it immoral, unethical and cruel, but also illegal because the issuing of a scientific collecting permit by FWS under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA)(36) failed to identify any legitimate reason why the action would help science better understand and conserve the barred owl. Instead, because the intent of the permit was to allow indiscriminate killing of the barred owl, it was inconsistent with the aim of the MBTA to protect species like the barred owl, not to kill them. I should point out that even in the most recent revision of the list of birds protected by the MBTA, the barred owl is listed (37).
The results of first 4.5 years of the experimental cull were published as a report which stated that a total of 2,066 barred owls were removed using 12-gauge shotguns from treatment areas during 2015–19 (38). Final conclusions drawn from the experiment, and analyses of the demographic response of spotted owls to barred owl removal, were given in a later academic paper (39) and which had added in data from a similar barred owl removal effort on privately-owned working forest lands (32) bringing the total of barred owls removed up to 2,485 (39). What we learn from this grossed-up data is that the estimated mean annual rate of population change for spotted owls had only stabilized in areas with removals, with only a weak effect on recruitment, but continued to decline sharply in areas without removals. The authors wrapped this up by invoking Competitive Release whereby the spotted owl was freed from restrictions imposed on its population dynamics with the removal of the barred owl which they described as a competitively dominant invasive species. Unsurprisingly, these authors saw the barred owl as an alien predator that was more harmful to prey populations than native predators, an unsubtle but self-serving stigmatisation given that the barred owl was listed for protection under the MBTA, and indicated that long-term management of barred owls could be critical to the preservation of spotted owls. Doesn’t the poor recruitment suggest to you that it is habitat that is the real liming factor and not the encroachment by barred owls?
We cannot victimize animals for adapting to human perturbations of the environment
Last November, the FWS sought public input on a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) and a draft Barred Owl Management Strategy that addressed the “threat of the non-native and invasive barred owls to native northern and California spotted owls” (40). The California Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis) had only just received protection in February last year under the Endangered Species Act after more than 20 years of advocacy and lawsuits by environmental groups (41,42). The listing under the Act was split between the two distinct population segments (DPS): Endangered for the Coastal-Southern California DPS; and Threatened for the Sierra Nevada DPS (43). The call for comment noted that the FWS had prepared the draft EIS and Barred Owl Management Strategy using information and comments received during a public scoping period and using the best available science, including results from the large-scale barred owl removal experiment that I described above. It noted that six alternatives for action had been analysed in the draft EIS (44) and rather tone-deaf, announced that it had picked Alternative 2, its own strategy – so why bother with listing the other alternatives?
The draft Management Strategy evaluated the status of barred owls to determine if they met the definition of an invasive species in the ranges of the northern and California spotted owl, the details being given in Appendix 1 (45). The FWS admitted that there was little contemporaneous documentation on the westward expansion of the barred owl, and then went on to speculate on theories, such as the anthropogenic impacts from fire exclusion and suppression, bison and beaver extirpation, deer and elk overhunting, establishment of riparian forests, and extensive planting of trees and shelterbelts in the northern Great Plains and southern edges of Northern Boreal Forests, all of which may have contributed to tree and forest expansion. It concluded that it was an alien, the barred owls introduced unintentionally through dissemination across the previous barrier to movement created by the generally treeless conditions of the Great Plains and harsh conditions of the Northern Boreal Forest - “This movement was made possible by human-caused changes to the Great Plains and Northern Boreal Forest”. The FWS believed that in itself was the reason on the basis of its reading of an Executive Order from 1999 on Invasive Species – I paraphrase the sentence in the definitions section of the order which is its justification “unintentional …..dissemination….. of a species into an ecosystem as a result of human activity” (see Section 1e in (46)). Having made that determination, it was then easy to lay out a seemingly 30-year plan to remove barred owls within identified General Management Areas in the states of Washington, Oregon and California. In a wishy-washy paragraph, it said that the removals were designed to minimise numbers, but it didn’t anticipate complete removal, just at a level that would be lower than without removal, but which allowed for increased spotted owl survival and recruitment. As explained in Appendix 2, lethal removal would be accomplished by attracting the barred owls with recorded calls and shooting birds that responded and approached closely using a 20 gauge or larger bore shot gun. Usefully, the FWS required that all individuals conducting removal under the Strategy would need to show evidence that they were able to tell the difference between a spotted owl and a barred owl, or to have undergone training.
I find it hard to identify what the level of culling would be from the Strategy, but there were tables in the EIS for Alternative 2 that suggested it would be 477,695 over 30 years in the northern spotted owl range and 2,550 in the Californian spotted owl range (Table 3-7 and Table 3-8 in (44)). In reaction to the proposals, a letter was sent last March on behalf of a coalition of 75 animal rights and wildlife protection organizations, including the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, to the U.S. Interior Secretary Deborah Haaland asking her to scrap what they described as a “colossally reckless action” (47). It put the cull at half a million barred owls and said that the practical elements of the plan were unworkable, that scaling up from prior experiments was doomed to fail, and that there was no bank of practical experience in conducting such an immense and complicated control program. Moreover, there would be adverse collateral effects from incidental killing, night-time disturbance, disrupted nesting behaviour for animals, continuing lead poisoning from shot dispersal until the use of lead was finally phased out, and a rapid dispersal and social chaos among many other species, all of which would ripple throughout these forest habitats from the forest floor to its canopies - “Implementing a decades-long plan to unleash untold numbers of “hunters” in sensitive forest ecosystems is a case of single-species myopia regarding wildlife control… We cannot victimize animals for adapting to human perturbations of the environment”
Barred owls didn’t destroy spotted owl habitat. They were also not responsible for the changes in land use that facilitated their migration westward, and the anthropogenic nature of which the FWS conveniently used as a discriminating factor in determining the barred owl to be an alien invasive, even though it is protected under the MBTA that only lists native species. As the coalition observed, it seemed far easier, as a political matter, to authorize the mass killing of barred owls than to provide enduring and consistent protections of key habitats where there is a major political and economic influencer pushing for an expansion of logging opportunities.
Norway’s most endangered species
Europe is not immune to this trading the life of one native species for another as a conservation measure. I first came across Arctic fox (Alopex lagopus) in 2010. It was one of the strictly protected species under the Habitats Directive that we used in a report for the Scottish Government on wildland in Europe, to test whether our maps of wilderness quality were indicative of the natural range of highly interactive species and the biophysical reality needed by their habitat requirements (see Fig. 5.6a in (48)). At that time, both Sweden and Finland had 10 protected areas designated for the Arctic fox encompassing 35,599 sqkm, all of which appeared to be in areas of highest wilderness quality. Norway is outside of the EU, but as a signatory to the Bern Convention, which lists the Arctic fox under the strictly protected fauna in Appendix II (49) it was obligated to identify protected areas as part of an Emerald Network to parallel the network of protected areas under the Habitats Directive. The Børgefjell National Park and Landscape Protection Area of 1,447 sqkm was identified in a pilot project as being the most important site for Arctic fox in mainland Norway, considered to be one of Norway’s most endangered species (50). Hunting for their highly lucrative fur up until they were protected in Norway in 1930 almost caused their extinction, but numbers had not increased since then, and now Børgefjell was the only place with a viable population of Arctic fox (51).
A study in 1989 sought to understand why there had not been a recovery in the population of Arctic foxes since they had been protected, noting that red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) where abundant all over Scandinavia, that Arctic foxes only bred in small numbers above the tree line, and that the southern limits of the Arctic fox were determined by competition with red foxes. (52). Seeking illumination of this, protracted observations of the interactions between the two foxes were made at an Arctic fox den site in Norway and another in Sweden. There were seven observations of aggressive interactions between the two fox species, such as predation of Arctic foxes and harassment. On only on one occasion did an Arctic fox succeed in chasing away a red fox. A subsequent study, based on surveying Arctic fox den occupancy in Norway, discounted the notion that competition from red foxes through displacement was the main reason for the non-recovery of Arctic fox populations (53). The study confirmed that the red fox had successfully colonised the lower alpine region in Norway, and in doing so had occupied many former Arctic fox dens, the latter being absent from the lowest lying dens of its former distribution area. However, because so many dens, probably along with their surrounding territories, remained unoccupied by either species, the authors did not believe that competition with the red fox for either food or dens was sufficient to have prevented at least partial population recovery by the Arctic fox. Instead, it suggested a level of co-existence. Their alternative hypothesis was that over-hunting had lowered the population density of Arctic fox to such a level where demographic allee effects - the reduction in fitness for survival that happens at low population levels - could cause local extinction during the low years of the lemming cycle on which the Arctic foxes were dependent. Red fox would thus be one of the factors that could possibly have contributed to local extinction of the small Arctic fox populations, but which would not affect large populations should they recover.
The Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management produced an Action Plan for the Artic fox in 2003 (54). It noted that following protection, Arctic foxes had maintained most of their former distribution, but appeared to have existed at a constant low population level. There had been no sign of any recovery during the post-protection period. A combination of different threats was seen to be the likely cause for non-recovery, the former persecution being the main reason for the original decline. Based on seven potential hypotheses put forward in the Plan, fragmentation/isolation and displacement by red foxes were considered the major threats. Projects on monitoring and mapping Arctic foxes and their dens in the Plan were to be implemented. Red fox control and supplemental feeding of Arctic foxes were not recommended in the Plan, as they were considered conservation actions that would require continuous activity without any clear end point, or were unsupported by firm scientific hypotheses/data. However, it stated that that position would be revisited in light of the Swedish experience with those actions. I would point out that one of the other hypotheses put forward in the Plan was the threat posed to Arctic foxes from coming into contact and breeding with Arctic foxes that had escaped from fur farms, those foxes having originally been imported into Norway from Alaska and Greenland. Escaped breeding foxes may have the potential to transmit diseases and parasites to the Arctic fox. In addition, if there was cross breeding, then there may be an impact on the wild population's genetic structure. Thus, another action in the Plan was to develop a genetic test that could differentiate between farmed and mountain foxes.
It didn’t take long after that Plan before Norway started culling red foxes. Red fox killing started in Finland and Sweden around 2000, and in the Varanger Peninsula in Norway in 2005 where an average of 92 red foxes were killed per year between 2005 and 2011 (55). The claim was that the number of Arctic fox litters in Varanger increased over the two 5-year rodent cycles that occurred during the study period, but that there was no increase in the number of Arctic foxes in the three other areas in Norway where there was no culling. While the latter appears supported by the data, the increase in Varanger was pretty weak compared to study areas in Sweden and Finland, but there was supplemental feeding as well as red fox culling in Sweden.
No true wild Arctic foxes left in Southern Norway
The Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA) took on a number of projects funded under the Action Plan, including checking on occupancy of Arctic fox dens recorded in the Norwegian national database of fox den sites, as well as collecting biological material from foxes for DNA analysis. In its progress report on monitoring activities in 2007, it recorded that checks were carried out on a total of 355 fox dens, and finding that there was breeding of Arctic foxes in 16 of these dens (56). Based on this, the Arctic fox population was assumed to consist of a minimum of 32 adult individuals, but if adjusted for activity at dens without breeding, then that number of adult Arctic foxes in Norway would be around 50. During the monitoring program, 17 young red foxes were recorded in alpine habitats, significantly higher than the previous year, and probably linked to the high availability of rodents and lemmings. The Arctic fox monitoring program received more than 450 samples of biological material from foxes, of which 195 were revealed by DNA analysis to have been from Arctic fox. Worryingly, all Arctic fox samples from southern Norway had a DNA composition that was not naturally occurring in the wild Fennoscandian Arctic fox population, which confirmed that there were probably no true wild Arctic foxes left in Southern Norway, probably because of crossbreeding with Arctic foxes escaped from fur farms.
NINA produced a progress report on Arctic fox conservation biology in 2009 that had an extensive report on its captive breeding program, the intent being to release these animals to reinforce low population areas, but also return them to areas where the Arctic fox had been lost (57). The report stressed that Arctic fox populations fluctuated with the rodent cycles, with peaks occurring every four years or so. Outside of those peaks, reproduction rates fell, but also young would die from starvation. The report reflected on the outcome of two phases of a collaborative project funded by the EU between Norway, Sweden and Finland, and which had documented positive effects from supplemental feeding and red fox control. However, NINA saw that the results clearly emphasized that little or nothing was achieved with half measures, that if supplemental feeding was to be used to mitigate the low points in the lemming cycle, then it should be done throughout the year, and especially in the marginal winter months. Furthermore, red fox control had to be repeated over many years as well as being systematic in time and space. It concluded that the indications were that the Arctic fox populations were too small to persist in the high alpine mountain areas. It was thus important to focus the efforts in reintroducing or strengthening Arctic fox populations towards the areas where there was the greatest chance of survival and re-establishment. This also held true for red fox control and supportive feeding trials. It asserted that size and connectivity of areas were keys to establish natural migration between populations, that a population size of a minimum of 500 adults, and connectivity allowing migrations between populations, were probably a presumption for the successful long-term conservation of the Fennoscandian Arctic fox.
Norway produced a follow up five-year Action Plan in 2017 as a result of an agreement that was signed in 2015 between Norway and Sweden with the aim of strengthening collaboration for Arctic fox conservation through a set of common guidelines for measures (58). The long-term vision was to create a stable and viable population that did not need further conservation measures. Specific goals were defined in the short term (to 2021) and in the long term (to 2035). The action plan proposed the continuation of established measures such as breeding and release of arctic foxes, supplementary feeding and red fox control, as a follow-up to the action plan from 2003. The Plan gave reasons for the red fox's increased presence in mountain areas, and recommended measures to prevent the expansion of red foxes into those areas. Breeding and releasing, and possibly translocating Arctic foxes between sub-populations, were recommended as measures to demographically strengthen small populations, establish arctic foxes where the species is extinct as stepping stone areas, and reduce the degree of inbreeding. After 2021, the Norwegian Environment Agency and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency would jointly assess whether the action plan period should be extended with or without revision of the measures in the plan.
Human greed in hunting Arctic fox brought the species to near-extinction in Norway
Returning to those reasons for the expansion of red fox, the Plan noted that there were many indications that increased human activity through heavier infrastructure such as roads, railways and power lines, as well as new construction of tourist cabins, had created new, easily accessible food resources, such as birds dying from collision with power lines, roadkill, refuse and food waste, but there was also fallen game from reindeer husbandry, and the slaughter waste from hunting deer and moose. Reducing and eliminating these human derived food sources would be combined with withdrawal of individual red foxes in areas with active Arctic fox dens, and if they regularly visited feeders, or had established themselves in Arctic fox dens. It was noted, though, that where the red fox was a persistent threat, the causes of the red fox's occurrence should be mapped, so that measures could also be targeted at the causes. Such measures could be expected to have a more long-term effect than the withdrawal of individuals. In addition, the local population and local hunting associations would be encouraged to hunt more red foxes in order to reduce the immigration of red foxes into important Arctic fox areas.
There is no denying that human greed in hunting Arctic fox brought the species to near-extinction in Norway. That human actions were likely responsible for holding back a resurgence in population after the ban on hunting is linked to the expansion of red fox into Arctic fox territories. Two recent papers lend further weight to this. One study analysed 12 years of snow-track transect data between 2003-2014 covering a 27,000sqkm area of Hedmark County, Norway, to identify factors associated with red fox distribution and population dynamics (59). It found that landscapes with high human settlement density and large amounts of gut piles from moose (Alces alces) hunting were associated with higher red fox abundances. The authors concluded that human land use was a dominant driver of red fox population dynamics in the boreal forest. A second study used a combination of methods: observing the presence of red and Arctic foxes by their tracks in the snow along transects running parallel at increasing distances from a road; camera traps baited with trimmings from slaughtered reindeer placed to observe the transects, areas outside the transects, and the road itself; and inventoried road verges parallel to snow tracking transects for edible food items of anthropogenic origin and road-kills (60). The results showed that the red fox used areas close to roads more actively than areas further from the roads during winter, both towards and into alpine tundra areas, whereas arctic foxes showed no explicit pattern. Red fox occurrence increased with the number of edible items of anthropogenic origin located along roads, whereas Arctic fox occurrence decreased. The authors saw this as an anthropogenic food subsidy over and above roadkill for the red fox, and recommended actions focusing on informational campaigns, improved refuse disposal facilities and routines, and imposing fines for littering, to reduce negative impacts on vulnerable species.
It was not red foxes that originally reduced the Arctic fox population to near extinction, nor was it the fault of red foxes that, in exploiting the increasing anthropogenic food subsidies, they had expanded their range into that of the Arctic fox. Natural resource partitioning would likely have kept them apart (61). Until recently, the impact of humans on mammalian resource consumption and partitioning has largely been restricted to single species or local scales. However, a study was carried out on seven apex and meso-carnivores across a gradient of human disturbance in the temperate broadleaf and mixed forest biome of the Great Lakes region in eastern America (62). Based on stable isotope analysis of biological samples (hair and/or bone) it showed that individual carnivores consumed more human food subsidies in disturbed landscapes, leading to significant increases in trophic niche expansion and trophic niche overlap among species. What it was observing was a breakdown in niche partitioning, a primary mechanism regulating coexistence in many communities. Increasing niche overlap brings carnivores into interspecific competition leading to intraguild predation – there is a decoupling of predator-prey dynamics as the dominant species start killing the others.
Humans have created these tensions between native species
You may wonder why I have the temerity to be critical of other countries when the dogmatic orthodoxy of mainstream nature conservation in Britain is littered with examples of trading one native species for another, based as it is on maintaining artefactual species distributions that have resulted from anthropogenic modification of wild nature, such as the removal of native vegetational species assemblies, and the deletion of mammals inconvenient to human land use (63-66). Perversely, predator control, such as the killing of corvids, stoats, weasels, red foxes, and cormorants, is heralded as a conservation necessity in Britain, this attitude arising mostly from hunting, shooting, and fishing interests (67-70) but even an alleged conservation organisation has traded the life of species in pursuit of its sectional interests (71-73).
I explored the examples of trading native species as a conservation measure in Canada, America, and Norway, because all three were clearly about how humans have created these tensions between native species, and that, unlike in Britain, the strategies and action plans, and their purported reasonings, were in the public domain. That predominantly animal welfare organisations led the protest against culling wolves and barred owls is not what distinguishes them as examples– unfortunately, the red fox in Europe doesn’t have an emotional pull when it is so freely persecuted. However, it is not about animal compassion, it’s that humans made choices that wild nature should make, first either by destroying the living space of wild nature, or by exploiting a wild species to near extinction, and then by trying to rectify it by sacrificing the life of another wild species. It is an intolerable logic.
Some years ago, I wrote about giving autonomy back to wild nature and divining a moral ethic for it (74). A good deal of the argument I used rested on what American environmental ethicist Eric Katz had observed about humans creating an artefactual world, much of which I still adhere to. I am sure he too would see this trading of species as an intolerable logic. Will it be logicians, ethicists, moral philosophers, or ecologists, that are persuasive in showing us the falsity of this logic? I wonder, though, whether the human species can ever step outside of its own inherently self-centred motivation, and leave wild nature the space to make its own decisions. You could make your own mind up to do so, based on what I have given above.
Mark Fisher 1 July 2024
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13/5/2022
(71) They shoot foxes, don't they? Self-willed land January 2007
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(72) RSPB accused of hypocrisy for killing hundreds of birds on its reserves, Damian Carrington, Guardian 13 June 2013
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url:www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/trading_lives.htm
www.self-willed-land.org.uk mark.fisher@self-willed-land.org.uk
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