I will continue to post Israeli Defense Service’s videos to help offset the terrorists Hamas’ support by the U.S. Media. Here’s an example.

Israel admits child for medical care:

Posted by Tom Remington

Reprinted by permission from the author.

Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, The University of Calgary
Calgary, Canada.

We pay close attention to large predators. We do so because we evolved as prey. It was our ancient fate to be killed and eaten, and our primary goal to escape such. Our instincts are still shaped that way.

There is thus a reason why the bloody carnage on our highways is a mere statistic, but the mauling of a person by a grizzly is news. It’s not only that so many fossilized remains of our ancient ancestors are meals consumed by large predators in secluded caves or rock niches, but also that we speciated like large herbivores. That is, our pattern and timing of forming species, of adapting to landscapes, mimics and coincides with that of deer, antelope or cattle, but not that of large carnivores. And that despite our fondness for meat, despite “man the hunter”, and despite the fact that at least on species of humans, Neanderthal man, grew into a super predator.

Large herbivores readily form new species and show a pattern of strong speciation from the equator to the poles, terminating in the cold, glaciated latitudes as “grotesque ice age giants”. Large predators do not. They evolve no grotesque ice age giants comparable to the woolly mammoths among elephants, or the massive-antlered giant deer among deer, the giant sheep, or anything else for that matter as grotesque as ourselves. Is there a more grotesque animal than man? And we did it twice, once as Neanderthal and once as Modern Man. Moreover, herbivores readily form dwarf species under poor ecological conditions such as in rainforests, deserts or predator-free oceanic islands, and they differentiate rapidly into new subspecies as they disperse geographically into new habitats. Predators form no dwarfs, on islands or otherwise. Nor do they segregate sharply into swarms of regional subspecies. Large herbivores do that – and so do humans. Also, Our bursts of speciation coincide in time with those of African antelope.

Humans grow small canine teeth, not the large combat-canines typical of apes. Canine reduction is a signature of a common anti-predator adaptation, called the “selfish herd”. In such unrelated individuals cluster together in the open as protection against predation. Herbivores form “selfish herds”, predators do not. Herbivores may “evolve away” huge combat-canines, as shown not only by us, but by deer, horses, rhinos and half a dozen extinct families of large mammalian plant eaters. Carnivores reduce no canines!

Our ancient herbivore root is still reflected in our taste preferences, for when we eat meat we flavor it liberally with plant poisons (pepper, chili, sage, thyme, curry etc). Apparently meat does not really taste “good” till it tastes of “plant”! We also have the herbivore’s craving for salt. So, watch what you reach for next time you get a sizzling steak!

While we may have evolved as hunters, we did not evolve like predators.

We have a very special relationship to large predators because of all the primates we are the only species that is able to survive large predators on the ground, away from trees. All other primates are tied to trees to escape predation. We alone can face predators on the ground day or night and we have done so despite being all but blind at night, despite snoring sleepers, crying babies or lusty lovers, or all that bone debris we collected in our campsite from scavenging and hunting. And we did this despite being loaded down with babies or with game we hunted. And we did this for over two million years. And without the ability to defy large predators on the ground there would have been no human dispersal into the treeless steppe where so may of our attributes were formed, there would have been no dispersal “out of Africa” or the incredible phenomenon of human civilization we currently experience.

Without being able to survive large predators on the ground we would never have tapped into the huge protein biomass of large herbivores. There would never have been “man the hunter”. Moreover, a species can only be as abundant as the amount of protein in its food. Gorillas can never outnumber humans, as the protein supply in their plant food is very limited.

There is excitement in anthropology about the great leap forward by humans globally about 40,000 years ago, and there is indeed much to be excited about. However, the miracle of human evolution began about two and a half million years ago at the edge of the African savannah were the trees give way to the treeless thorn-steppe, when our first ancestors, small, weak, defenseless and blind in the darkness outwitted large predators on the ground. Surrounded by nocturnally active lions, leopards, hyenas and saber-toothed cats they lived to see the sun rise. From then on hominids began to loose the morphological adaptations in our shoulder girdle for climbing, although we are still pretty good at it, as I can vouch for personally, having been treed by a grizzly bear. Developing a security strategy radically different from that of other large apes was the first step towards becoming human.

We are great killers, of course, but note: we do not kill like predators with tooth and claws. We kill with tools specialized as weapons. That is unique. And so is the mental and emotional psychic structure that flows from that. With weapon in hand we are brave, daring, dangerous. Without it we may be not. And predators sense that. United with others in bravery we become frightening, especially since we can do something no other primate can. We can mimic sounds and adjust such to the occasion. We can roar, growl and scream, and match our voices to the occasion, to the predator confronted. And mimicking sound is the biological root of language and music. It came first, courtesy predation!

It helps being big and black. Large herbivores that confront predators are notoriously big and black! And Homo erectus, our parent species, was as big or bigger than we are and almost certainly as black as any African today.

Large predators are hypochondriacs – and need to be! They cannot afford wounding as it decreases their efficiency in hunting, and may also trigger an attack by a pack member followed by a cannibalistic feast. A realistic vocal threat, consequently, impresses, even more so a blow with a weapon, but also the touch of thorns. African predators are very “thorn-shy” as we now know from some beautiful experiments. They avoid thorns. And that’s the secret to nightly survival: a thorn covered ground-nest. It helps to reinforce such with a growl, and if worst comes to worst with a sharp jab with a stick. However, the ability to form a covered thorn nest on the ground, a “booma”, requires a long history of building tree-nests in ever smaller savannah trees, till such formed a part of dense thorn bushes. It requires beyond that considerable manual and tool-using skills to build a sturdy, densely-thorned shelter. It requires close observation of elders and visual mimicry to succeed, which also came courtesy of predation. The rise of humanity depended first and foremost on survival in sea of large, hungry African predators – in the absence of trees.

It affected our psyche. During the day, one needs firm discipline when sighting a predator, as running away is suicidal! We cannot outrun predators! One must fake supreme fearlessness, especially when “man the hunter” bagged and carried home a prey. How does one discourage hungry predators at that time, as predators readily abrogate prey from one another? There would have been no “Man the Hunter” without an ability to successfully defend the prey we killed and brought home without a string of predators following! And we had to be good enough at intimidating predators so that women and children could go out foraging. And we had to be good enough to spook off predators despite meat and bones at the campsite at night.

Enter big brain, enter “planning” based on foresight, shared experiences and imagination. One must use one’s experience, as well as that of others, to minimize encounters with predators. One learns to avoid times and spaces where predators congregate and cannot be readily defeated, and one needs to pass this on to family. One needs to exploit opportunities to chase away a predator, and teach it to do likewise next time. The next step is to develop systematic harassment and punishment of predators so as to instill in them an aversion to anything human. The next step is to know when to systematically kill their helpless young so as to keep down their numbers. All this is still practiced in Africa and elsewhere, and it has been effective enough as over two million years of human history demonstrates. We did not escape being prey, we merely changed priority. We went form being a tasty, defenseless morsel, to a nasty creature of very low priority, in fact, the last in line. And that, given a rich array of prey species, is not all that bad! We thus became a prey that was smarter than the predators, which happens to be unique! Normally, it’s the other way around!

There have been failures, even massive ones!

When our lineage came “out of Africa” it spread westward along the coast of Asia and colonized Australia, repeatedly, some 60,000 years ago. That could only have been done by people possessing boat technology, and it happened quite rapidly. And then it took almost 50,000 years before North America was colonized!

What prevented us from entering North America in that enormous time span?

Humans even entered South America before North America, judging from the antiquity of archeological dates. The undisputed fact is that human colonization coincided with the collapse of the unique North American native megafauna beginning about 12,900 years ago. As long as North America’s native megafauna remained intact all through the late Pleistocene, there was no human settlement of North America. However, once the megafauna crumbled there were repeated humans entries. Moreover, other members of the Siberian fauna also moved into the ecological vacuum here, such as grizzly bear, gray wolf, wolverine, elk and moose.

How could this be?

North America’s megafauna differed substantially from that of Eurasia and Africa. It was characterized by a multitude of highly specialized, often gigantic predators and prey. Moreover, the fossil record shows a surprising amount of crushed, broken, but healed bones in the predators, as well as excessive wear and breakage of teeth. Injuries in current African predators are minimal by comparison. North American native predators were thus confronted by herbivores that were exceedingly able to defend themselves. Not only the broken bones, but the very specializations of the predators speak of the demanding life they experienced. So do the extreme anti-predator specializations of the herbivores. North America during the Pleistocene was thus a predator hell-hole compared to Eurasia or Africa! There was a predacious bear about seven feet at the shoulder, the short-faced bear, Arctodus simus. And it was assertive and not very clever, as its numerous remains in natural trap sites testify to. If a camel or horse fell down a natural hole, all sort of short-faced bears jumped in after – and perished! Grizzly bears and black bears did not do that! There was the common lion, only it was twice the mass of the African one. So was the American cheetah, compared to the Old World species. There were three species of short-faced bears, there were dire wolves larger than gray wolves, there were massive saber-toothed tigers and large, elegant, speedy dirk-toothed cats and large panthers, as well as black bears, cougar, red wolf and large coyotes. Life was hard for these predators, and they were all too willing to take risks for a meal, as sadly testified to not only in natural trap caves, but also the tar pits at Rancho la Brea.

If you were to land on the shores of North America, spear in hand, what would you do when those big, assertive predators approached you for a closer look? And how would you hunt the scarce, highly alert gigantic prey? The herbivores were not only highly specialized in evading predation, but their organs of food acquisition and processing remained exceedingly primitive. That means that the fierce predation kept them way below the potential carrying capacity of the land, so that they were able to feed only on the best, most digestible, low-fiber vegetation. There was simply no selection for more efficient feeding organs. And that means that prey populations were kept at very low density. And if you were able to kill a large herbivore, how would you defend it against these diverse, huge predators?

Our abilities to deal with African and Eurasian predators were thus likely much too limited to deal with the full array of native North American predators. They kept the continent free of humans for nearly 50,000 years, till – for reasons still disputed – America’s megafauna declined, and over about 6000 years went largely extinct. Even then the increase in humans, as tracked by the number of hearth discovered per 1000 years, increases very slow. Moreover, it is inversely related to the number of genera of megafauna still alive. It thus took some 6,000 years of hard, very dangerous living by human colonizers to create in North America a landscape reasonably safe for people.

The few remaining native American species show to this day the predation pressure of the past. White-tailed deer, great experts at hiding and rapid escapes are totally incompetent food competitors, and do very poorly in the presence of Old World deer – which are food competitors! Ditto for mule deer and elk. Pronghorn still run faster than anything on Earth! And native predators such as black bear, cougar, coyotes and raccoons are thriving in our presence, compared their Siberian counterparts which migrated into North America in the Recent, the grizzly bear, gray wolf and wolverine. The Americans are very adaptable, the ex-Siberians are not. It’s about the ex-Siberians we happen to worry most.

We may be the clever, industrious prey that turned the table on carnivores, but our relationship to large predators has remained precarious. Our ability to co-exist depends on us exploiting their fears – and woe if they call our bluff! The man-killing lions of Tsavo are but one example of predators learning how easy it is to hunt man as prey. Jim Corbet’s tales of man-eating leopards and tigers, or of lions preying on modern-day refugees in Krueger National Park or Somalia are others. Native people had quite sophisticated means of keeping safe from predators, but ultimately made recourse to killing offending predators should one transgress against humans. Still, high-density populations of big grizzly bear in California kept native people out of productive low-land sites, till Spaniards killed off the grizzlies. On the Pacific coast natives designated certain salmon streams for the use of bears and harassed such away from others. In Greenland early this century areas occupied by wolves were free of native people, and attempts to provision weather stations by dogsled failed because of wolf attacks. I was told that traditionally wolves were kept down in numbers by destroying dens, a method praised as most effective in Russia.

The history of wolves is deeply troubling, even though to all appearances grizzly bears, black bears and cougars are more dangerous having killed far more people in recent North America. In order to understand what wolves can do, provided the conditions are right, we have to go to Eurasia. It’s conditions that count! We must know these well as we have already enacted legislation here and in the European union that are based on false biological premises. And such arose from errors in scholarship. And we must know these errors, as the prestige of science and scholarship are again and again invoked to push flawed conclusions about wolves as well as flawed legislation.

The problem in North America is that specialists in wolf biology did not recognize how to use historical Eurasian information about wolves, but dismissed such as irrelevant to an understanding of wolves. They equated all such information as a result of ignorance about and malice towards wolves by an ignorant populous. It escaped them that as scientists they were ill equipped to research such matters, as this field of study resides squarely in the academic domain of history.

We can know historically of the peoples’ plight through the centuries only indirectly as we are dealing in Europe and Asia largely with illiterate populations. Illiterate people cannot leave first-hand accounts of their troubles! They can at best convey their concerns to their masters. Consequently, we have to look for summaries of their problems, be it in church records or administrative accounts. Unfortunately, tracing church records or administrative accounts can be less than fruitful as such have been usually burned by the unending warfare of centuries past. This leaves summaries of such matters, as well as the evidence for actions taken by the rulers to deal with large predators, most often with wolves. An example is the detailed encyclopedic work on hunting and wildlife management by Friedrich von Flemming published in Leipzig, Saxony, in 1719 and addressed to his Mighty Sovereign and Master, Friedrich Augusto, King of Poland, followed by a second volume in 1724. It’s sobering! The depredation by wolves led in some regions to great efforts on the part of feudal rulers to rid their land of this menace. The rulers may have been less concerned with plight of their subjects tan with concerned about taxation and the welfare of their wildlife. Miles upon miles of netting were strung to corral wolves. Special horse carriages and sheds were required to transport and house the netting. Several villages at a time were forced to drive wolves and other wildlife into nets. Professional hunters and trappers were employed to trap wolves. However, recurring wars brought back wolves, and when people are helpless, large predators are quick to know and to exploit such logically.

And it’s not only the central European experience that is sobering, so is research into this matter in Russia, Finland, France, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Korea. Tragedy results again and again from political systems that disarmed and disenfranchised its citizen. Wolves exploited that helplessness. Compared to bears, wolves were hated and that with excellent reason. Not only did they destroy livestock in the fields, but they found means and ways to break into stables in villages and kill the precious family cow or sheep indoors. Children are a primary target of wolves. Rabies was not uncommon, and a rabid wolf running amuck biting horses, cattle, people and in modern days machinery in rapid succession was a death angel if there ever was one! The bite by a rabid wolf is lethal and the bitten person died of rabies. A bitten person could only be cured since the rise of modern medicine. Before that any bite by a rabid wolf was a death sentence, and such an animal could bite dozens of people before it was killed or ran off and died.

Wolf packs came out of the “wilderness” which was detested as source of evil. The frequent wars brought wolf troubles. After the 30 year war in central Europe it took decades before some landscapes were resettles – courtesy wolves. The fairy tale by the brothers Grim of Little Red Riding Hood is thus not based on ignorance and malice towards wolves but on very real and desperate experiences. This experience drove the costly and wearying attempts to exterminate wolves through out the ages right into the last century in Europe. We may decry today the extermination of wolves in the American west, but there was reason for it and modern studies confirm how efficient wolves can become in killing off livestock. And that confirms the European historical experience. Even in modern times Wolves have been a trouble to disarmed populations and most recently in areas where they are again re-colonizing such as in Finland, Sweden and even modern Germany. Ditto in New Mexico where wolves are legally protected! Historically there is no place where wolves and people have coexisted, except where wolves were kept under strict control and were hunted, and prey was, consequently, abundant. And that’s one lesson from the North American experience we need to take very seriously. Modern research has shown that wolves switch to alternative prey species only very slowly, and that they do not target humans as long as there is prey or livestock between them and us. Moreover, wolves targeting humans and urban coyotes targeting children do so in the same manner. Surprising? Hardly! Surprising is only the argument that wolves pose no danger to people, a myth that has killed here highly educated persons that trusted science. It is timely to reassess conservation of large predators and make such safe for them and us. And that will be the subject of a future essay.

Geist, V. 2008. Large predators: them and us! Fair Chase. Vol. 23, No. 3. pp. 14-19

E-mail: kendulf@shaw.ca

Draft 6th of July, 2008

Essay No. 1, Fair Chase – as submitted.

It is said that Hamas had in the ballpark of 200 underground tunnels used to smuggle weapons, including missiles into Gaza. Israel has been systematically destroying them.

Tom Remington

And we thought Congress’ blind leading the blind giving away of money with no accountability was bad. This sickness of cultism is just as bad and worse. Check this out!

Tom Remington

I’m sick and tired of our own media in this country always blaming the Israelis for defending their existence. The Israeli Defense Force has opened up a new YouTube channel to post videos of air strikes. I am hearing that YouTube is censoring the IDF.

Below is the latest videos posted. I will try to keep a close watch of videos posted and get them up before they are yanked by YouTube.

Tom Remington

*Update* The video appears to come and go as it damn well pleases. Man am I glad I don’t pay for this crap!

I’ve been having great difficulty getting this new video to post. If you could, offer me some feedback on the video and audio quality your are getting from this UStream video. I also intend to upload this to Mogulus and make it available through “On Demand” library viewing. If you can see your way to click on the “Skinny Moose TV” link above, then click on the “On Demand” tab on the player. Search the library for the “Open Air – Dec. 30, 2008″ show and compare qualities. I’m trying to find out where the quality loss is coming from. Thanks.

Reprinted with permission from the author.

On November 8th 2005 a 22-year-old honors and scholarship student in Geological Engineering, Kenton Joel Carnegie, from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, was killed in northern Saskatchewan by a pack of wolves. While he was almost certainly not the only victim of wolf predation in North America in the past century, judging from conversations with native people, and a closer review of case histories, this was the best-investigated case to date . In the process of that investigation matters were uncovered that need to be discussed as they have significant policy implications for wildlife conservation and human safety. However, we need to review what happened to Kenton Carnegie, as it is relevant to considerations following.

Mr. Carnegie was in a university co-op program that allowed students to gain hands-on experience from visits to mining operations. He was flown in to Points North Landing a mining camp close to Wollaston Lake in northern Saskatchewan. Bad weather delayed his return. On November the 4th, 2005, Todd Svarchopf, an experienced bush pilot and Chris Van Galder, a geophysicists, two of Kenton’s camp companions, had an encounter with two aggressive wolves on the airfield close to camp. The two young men beat back the attack, photograph the wolves and told everybody in camp. The incident was apparently belittled, even though two days before Kenton was killed, the young men were warned at a dinner at a local lodge by an experienced northerner, Bill Topping (a part-time car pilot, that is, a guide who leads heavy trucks through the labyrinth of dirt roads in northern Saskatchewan). He admired the pictures and told his guests that they are lucky to be alive!

In fall and early winter of 2005 at Point North Landing there was evidence for circumstances facilitating an attack on humans by wolves, followed by the predictable exploratory attack by wolves on November 4th. That is, the events leading to the death of Kenton Carnegie follow the pattern predicting attacks on humans as described for wolves and earlier for urban coyotes targeting children in parks. It is a pattern of increasing observations of and habituation to humans followed by boldness and attacks on pets and livestock, followed by closing in and testing humans with skirmishes prior to the fatal attack. Both species of canids explore alternative prey in much the same manner. Unfortunately, nobody recognized the growing danger . Moreover, how wolves target people was not a question asked by current wolf biologists, probably due to the overriding belief that wolves do not attack people. Four wolves at Points North Landing had begun feeding on camp refuse that fall and were habituating increasingly to human activities.

November 8th 2005, at about15:30 Kenton Carnegie notified Van Gelder that he was going for a walk along the lake and expected to return by 17:00. Kenton had gone to the west shore of Wollaston Lake before when going fishing. This area is isolated and not open to unauthorized traffic. At about 18:15, because Kenton failed to appear for dinner, Chris Van Galder and Todd Svarchopf search for him, but could not find him in camp. Todd saw Kenton’s tracks in the fresh snow leaving camp, but not returning. About 18:30. Chris and Todd and Mark Eikel, co-owner of the camp, drove out in a truck searching for Kenton. Fresh snow had fallen and the party followed the clear footprints, which head south from camp. Because of the fresh snow, the tracks were easy to follow (this accounts for the crisp foot-prints of wolves etc. as photographed the following mid-day by Royal Canadian Mounted Police [RCMP] Constable Alfonse Noey). Kenton’s tracks headed towards the shore of the Lake. When Eikel and companions encountered wolf tracks, they reversed, and headed back to camp for Eikel to get his rifle, a more powerful flashlight and a radio. (There were no domestic dogs at Point North Landing). The party then drove to a nearby cabin, thinking Kenton might be there, but found none of his footprints. They returned by truck to where they had left of and soon saw that Kenton’s footprints left the road and headed down a trail toward the lake. There were wolf tracks on the trail. Then they saw Kenton’s footprints doubling back, and found a concentration of wolf tracks. Mark Eikel shone about with the flashlight and saw what he thought was Kenton’s body. He ordered everybody back to the truck, not wanting the others to see the sight. (Neither Todd nor Chris saw Kenton’s body). On the way to camp Mark Eikel called on the radio Robert Dennis (Bob) Burseth an employee of the camp, a long-term resident of the north and an experienced hunter. (19:00 hours) Burseth realized something tragic had happened and contacted his wife Rosalie Tsannie-Burseth who is the local coroner at Wollaston Lake, and asked her to contact the RCMP. Next, Chris Van Galder called the RCMP from camp and the company office was notified. About 19:30 Eikel and Burseth returned by truck to check on Kenton. Eikel believed that Kenton was dead, but he wanted to make sure that his mind was not playing tricks on him and he wanted to get a second opinion. They parked the truck and walked down the ridge on the edge of the lake noting many wolf tracks. Mark Eikel shone with the flashlight and both could see Kenton’s body. They saw exposed flesh and ribs, from the belt up. The pants appeared to be on. Eikel and Burseth approached to within thirty feet. They stayed only a couple of minutes and returned to camp to await police and coroner, which arrived about 21:35 PM.

Neither Bob Burseth nor Mark Eikel returned to the body till they went there with RCMP constable Alfonse Noey and coroner Rosalie Tsannie-Burseth. Kenton’s body had been moved from where Mark Eikel and Bob Burseth had seen it some two hours earlier. The distance moved was about 20 yards. Officer Noey’s hand drawn map indicating the body was dragged 20 meters, a distance which he paced out the next day. (Wolves readily move their kills – even over a mile -as I can personally attest to having observed what they do with domestic sheep carcasses. That wolves move carcasses and human victims is well established in Eurasian experience. ). Much more of the body had been consumed (there was no clothing down to the knees). Asked by Constable Noey what had consumed the body, Burseth stated wolves. Asked by Constable Noey what kind of tracks Burseth had seen on location, Burseth replied that he had seen only wolf tracks. There had been four wolves running together about camp earlier (a black one, a white one and two gray-tan ones). The four had been seen on the runway (close to camp) on the day before, on the 7th of November. Burseth also saw three wolves running across the lake towards the kill site at about 7:45 AM on the morning following Kenton’s death, that is, on the 9th of November. Eikel confirmed that four wolves had been seen near the camp and garbage dumpsite.

About 21:50 Constable Noey and coroner Rosalie Tsannie-Burseth begin securing and inspecting the site. Constable Noey took the lead, and the coroner and Bob Burseth and Mark Eikel followed him in single file. (This minimizes disturbance to the original tracks). As Constable Noey approached the site of Kenton’s body he saw two wolves near the body (he refers to sighting these two wolves repeatedly in his report and in conversations with others). He discharged two rounds from his shotgun into the air to scare away the wolves from the body. Constable Noey noted many wolf tracks on the land and on the snow of the frozen lake. Constable Noey ordered Burseth and Eikel to remain on the trail, while he and the coroner went in to examine Kenton’s body. Eikel was instructed by Constable Noey to discharge his rifle into the air, as the wolves could be heard in the bushes near to the body. Bob Buresth made a fire on the trail certain it would keep the wolves away.

Constable Noey and Mrs. Tsannie-Burseth examined and photographed the body and surroundings for 40-45 minutes. Then Constable Noey called Constable Marion on a satellite phone and advised him of the condition of the body, and of the wolves in the area, at which point Constable Marion authorized the removal of Kenton’s body and the return of the party to Points North Landing. With the assistance of Eikel and Burseth, the coroner and Constable Noey placed Kenton’s body into a body bag, which was tagged by Constable Noey with time and date. At that time Constable Noey discovered that his GPS unite was missing, and searched the immediate area of the last resting site (disturbing site – after the fact!). He instructed Eikel to insure that nobody be allowed to enter the area and was assured by Eikel that only CAMECO employees may use the road between their mine (Cigar Lake Mine) and the Points North Landing, and that they have been instructed not to get out of their vehicles close to the camp. Constable Noey next took down witness statements.

On the following day, November 9th 2005, at 13:00-14:14 Constable Noey, coroner Tsannie-Burseth and Bob Burseth attended again to the scene in daylight taking pictures, and analyzed the scene. Here are their joint results as summarized in the report by constable Noey.

1. The footprints of Kenton heading south were followed by a wolf who stepped into Kenton’s footprints (this wolf had thus cut off Kenton from the camp, as the two wolves had tried to do on November the 4th with Chris and Todd). Constable Noey surmised that this wolf was following and possibly stalking Kenton.
2. Constable Noey followed Kenton’s footprint south past the kill site, which went for a distance of about 60-80 meters (undisturbed by previous day’s activities). Here Kenton was on the shoreline. Noey surmised that Kenton, at this point in sight of the camp, may have been trying to get somebody’s attention at the camp as there was a clear line of sight to the camp.
3. At this point more wolf tracks converged on where Kenton stood, so the report by Constable Noey. The wolf tracks were coming from the south along the lakeshore. (Several wolves approached from the south while one wolf approached Kenton from the north. That looks like a hunting strategy executed by the wolves. Since several wolves approached Kenton from the south, and one wolf from the north, there must have been more than 2 wolves involved. He was thus killed by at least three wolves and possibly by all four!)
4. Here Kenton’s footprints turned back towards the road (that is up the trail, heading north toward the camp).
5. From here it is 10-20 m along the trail before the snow is disturbed, indicating an altercation. Constable Noey noted that the snow was disturbed as if somebody was rolling in the snow.
6. Footprints now head across the trail a little way into the muskeg-shrub. The footprints indicate that Kenton was running. He was half on trail, half on muskeg. There was a lot of disturbance of the snow.
7. From here it is a short distance north to the kill site, where the body was first discovered along with pieces of clothing. When seen a second time the body had been dragged about 20 yds.
8. In between were two sites where the tracks indicated that Kenton stood and shed a lot of blood. (Photos indicate considerable blood loss). A third place indicates he stood and dripped blood. The search party found the body there.

Constable Noey photographed till the battery of his camera gave out and collected all clothing pieces not found previously.

14:31 Constable Noey received a CD with photos of Van Galder and Svarchopf interacting with two wolves on the previous Friday, November 4th from Christy Oysteryk, and expresses surprise that neither had informed him of that attack. (In short, this attack by wolves, which the two young men were able to beat off – and photograph – was belittled. It was only post hoc, after Kenton’s death that the scary significance of that attack did sink in).

Two Conservation Officers from the Saskatchewan game department (SERM), Kelly Crayne and Mario Gaudet, arrived on the 10th in order to do their investigation. They stated in their report: “Officers investigated the site and found numerous wolf tracks in the area. No other large animal tracks could be found.”

In the light of what was to follow it is important to examine the nature and qualifications at tracking of the eight witnesses who were on the scene after Kenton was killed.

Mrs. Rosalie Tsannie-Burseth is not only the coroner for Walloston Lake, but also the Chief of the Hatchet Lake Band, and the Director of Education. She has three university degrees, is working on her doctorate in sociology, and has a long career in the public service. She grew up in the northern bush when her family was still nomadic and fully dependent on their skills at hunting, fishing and trapping, and was tutored by her father in tracking. This articulate, humorous grandmother still goes hunting.

RCMP Constable Alfonse Noey is, like Chief Tsannie-Burseth, a native, a hunter and a long-standing northern resident. (He produced a detailed report, based on his and Mrs Tsannie- Burseth’s on the spot investigations, as well as questioning all witnesses to the scene).

Robert Dennis (Bob) Burseth, employee at Points North Landing, has 17 years of experience in the region. He is married to the local coroner and chief Mrs. Rosalie Tsannie-Burseth. He is an avid hunter. (He killed the two wolves (at the dump) after Kenton’s attack. Shoots the bears that become a nuisance at the camp).

Todd Svarchopf, Aviation Officer and well-known bush pilot, employee of Sanders Geophysics, Ottawa, working out of camp. (He testified at the coroner’s inquiry that he had warned Kenton against going out).

Mark Eikel, the co-owner of the camp, Points North Landing, is an experienced outdoorsman and hunter. He shot the third wolf (250 – 300 yards away) after Kenton’s attack. (He claimed he would have seen a bear if it had been in the area. None had been seen for at least a month (inquiry testimony).

Chris Van Galder, geophysicist, employee of Sanders Geophysics, Ottawa, working out of the camp.

Kelly Crayne and Mario Gaudet, Conservation Officers, also examine the site on November 10th 2005. (Any black bear moving in or out of the site of Kenton’s body would have been detected in the crisp snow by these men).

Please note: the tracks and signs at the scene were thus examined by two senior native persons highly experiences in tracking, by two experienced northern hunters, by two conservation officers, by a seasoned bush pilot, and a highly trained physical scientist. Svarchopf, Van Galder and Eikel, who were first on the scene, identified only wolf tracks. They were vindicated by Bob Burseth, as he insisted that he saw only wolf tracks. He in turn was vindicated by RCMP constable Noey and coroner Tsannie-Burseth, who not only saw only wolf tracks at the site, but also saw and heard wolves so close to Kenton’s body, that Constable Noey fired his shotgun twice to spook the wolves away and asked Mark Eikel to discharge his rifle. Conservation officers Crayne and Gaudet also saw only wolf tracks. In addition, constable Noey and coroner Tsannie-Burseth, not merely identified wolves as the killers of Kenton Carnegie, but deciphered the track pattern left by wolves, showing a classic hunt pattern by wolves. The wolf pack had split and the wolves approached their prey from the back as well as from the front, cutting off any possible retreat. They documented multiple attacks and a progression of the victim to final collapse. Moreover, four wolves had been for weeks habituating to camp activity, ran in anticipation towards garbage disposal units and tore apart plastic garbage bags in the presence of humans, observed humans and staged an unsuccessful attack on two camp residents four days before they killed Kenton Carnegie.

Then came a surprise: The Saskatchewan coroner asked for the case to be re-examined by scientists, Drs. Paul Paquet, a wolf researcher, and Professor Ernest G. Walker of the University of Saskatchewan. Before their confidential report was submitted, Paquet informed the popular news media that he recognized immediately that a black bear had killed Carnegie. In pp. 29-30 of National Wildlife, February/March 2007 edition in an article entitled “Sexy Beasts” by Paul Tolmé we read: “Wolves remain a bogeyman today, as illustrated by the death of a Canadian man in 2005. When Kenton Carnegie’s mangled corpse was discovered near a remote Saskatchewan mining camp of Points North Landing, the Royal Canadian Mounted police immediately blamed wolves. The story made headlines around the world. But when noted wolf biologist Paul Paquet of the World Wildlife Fund investigated, he recognized immediately that a black bear killed Carnegie. “The problem was bias right from the start,” Paquet says. “When I looked at the photos, I immediately saw bear tracks,” Paquet says.” The National Geographic Society sent a team to film and re-enact Kenton’s death. Dr. Paquet acted as consultant. (Kenton’s parents were so upset by the resulting “documentary” that they wrote a letter of protest to the Society. Mrs. Tsannie-Burseth told me that she was upset and offended by the manner the camera and interview crew of the National Geographic had treated her. She told me she tried to speak to Paul Paquet at the inquest, but that he would not speak with here or even make eye contact with her). Victims of wildlife tragedies in North America tend to be blamed for the event , and it was not different in Kenton’s case. It greatly upset Kenton’s family, as did the brazen whitewash of wolves that could not only mislead the public, but also the judiciary. Distraught by the treatment they had received and the mis-attributions to their son, Kenton’s parents turned to four scientists and asked them to do independent investigations. Three agreed: Mark McNay ,a senior biologist from Alaska, Brent Patterson, as seasoned scientist from Ontario with considerable wolf experience, and the third was myself. All three wrote reports concluding that Paquet’s claim that a bear had killed Kenton Carnegie was untenable, and that wolves had killed Kenton Carnegie.

Paquet claimed the eyewitness accounts were unreliable and biased, an unsupported claim contrary to all evidence.

Paquet examining the photos of the site as photographed by RCMP constable Noey, mistook the tracks of wolves heading across an overflow on the lake ice (where the wolves stepped through a thin layer of snow resting on water, and which consequently distorted their tracks) as bear tracks. McNay and myself used colleagues highly experienced with wolves (he from Alaska, I from Finland) to double check on our identifications. All concluded that the tracks in question as photographed by constable Noey were wolf tracks, and McNay demonstrated that the pattern of the distorted tracks on the overflow were of a regular canid trotting pattern, and quite different from the track patterns left by bears. That is, three independent peer reviews confirmed what the eight eyewitnesses on the site had observed.

Paquet claimed that a number of forensic signs identified the responsible predator as bear. These were that:
(a) wolves do not drag their prey from the kill site but consume such in situ. Yet Kenton’s body, he claimed, had been dragged some 50 paces (In North America the experience of wolf biologists studying free-living wolves in wilderness areas is that wolves feed on their prey in situ. In my personal experience here with wolves killing my neighbor’s sheep is that they always move their kills into cover, up to about one mile from the sheep pasture. The European accounts of how wolves deal with prey, livestock and humans included, is that they carry or drag such into cover away from where they attacked the prey close to human habitations . The resolution of what appears as opposites is quite simple: wolves, undisturbed, consume their kill at the kill site. Wolves, disturbed or close to danger, move their kill. And that’s what happened in the Kenton Carnegie’s case. The wolves fed at the kill site till they were disturbed by the first search party. When the second party arrived, the wolves had dragged Kenton’s body about 20 m – not 50 m.).
(b) Paul Paquet is quoted in the National Wildlife article p. 30 “The clothes and skin been stripped away, indicating the so-called banana-peel eating technique common to bears”). (How could Paquet know that? How many clothed human bodies handled by wolves have been available for examination in North America? Moreover, he ignored that the four wolves in question had plenty of experience ripping apart and peeling back the plastic of plastic garbage bags, saturated with human smell, in order to reach discarded camp food).
(c) The wolves had not consumed the victim’s liver and heart, which is also very uncharacteristic of wolves. I quote from National Wildlife: “Carnegie’s heart and liver -”the most desirable morsel for wolves” Paquet says – were left intact”. (Internal organs had been consumed – namely the ones surrounded by fat. And that fits with my own observations how wolves, disrupted by approaching humans, “scheduled” their feeding on sheep they killed: fat first. Paquet did not take into account that the wolves had been disturbed twice and were not able to finish with the corps. Furthermore, on p. 48 of Will Grave’s book on the Russian experience with wolves a Russian scientist reports that wolves, in feeding on a freshly killed moose, the heart, lungs and liver had not been touched. Dr. Kaarlo Nygren from Finland made similar findings.

However, ALL forensic signs of a “bear” presume that the bear was standing or moving in about 1.5 inches of fresh snow. For instance, if a bear peeled away the clothing, then the bear must have had his paws on the ground in the snow. Also, the bear must have moved in on the kill site, leaving tracks, dragged the body, leaving tracks, ran way when the first search party arrived, leaving track, returned to the carcass, leaving tracks, and left again when the second party arrived – again leaving tracks. And he would have done so all on land. There would have been massive bear track sign of multiple entries and exits and massive trampling around the body.

There were no bear tracks!

My Finnish colleagues, spontaneously, identified a lonely fox track beside the abundant wolf tracks.

If they found the track of a fox, would they have missed the tracks of a bear?

All the forensic sign pointing to “bear”, as proclaimed by Paquet, are thus misidentifications, as the only bear that could have left such signs at the site of the tragedy must have been suspended in mid-air, as none of his paws reached the telltale snow. Furthermore, Paquet’s repeated insistence that his approach alone was in the spirit and methodology of science, and was supported by superior experience, has demonstrably no basis, as shown by three peer reviews and the coroner’s inquest.

Moreover, Paquet failed to notice that the wolves involved were not merely habituating, but were targeting people as prey. Wolves do this in the very same manner as coyotes do in urban parks when targeting children. Both canids explore humans very cautiously and over a protracted time period before mounting the first, exploratory attack, which two wolves had done four days before Kenton’s death. Ironically, while coyote biologists recognized that the smaller coyote will target people as prey, those studying free living wolves were denying that wolves were a danger to people. While the behavior of wolves thus signaled a disaster waiting to happen, nobody recognized it as such even after the failed wolf attack on Van Gelder and Swarchopf four days prior to the attack on Kenton. The belief in the harmlessness of wolves was that firmly entrenched.

The coroner ruled that only one expert witness would be allowed to testify on behalf of the Carnegies’ and chose Mark McNay. After listening to eyewitnesses at the scene, to Paul Paquet and the presentation by Mark McNay, the six-person jury rejected Paquet’s presentation, unanimously, despite his being assisted by counsel. The jury ruled that the cause of Kenton Carnegie’s death were wolves.

1 There have been other victims such as five-year-old Marc Leblond, killed Sept. 24, 1963 north of Baie-Comeau, Quebec Gerard McNebel, Noember 18th, 1963, Winnipeg Free Press, p. 12.
2 The following draft of a paper on wildlife habituation I presented at a symposium entitled “Wildlife Habituation: Advances in Understanding and Management Application”. by The Wildlife Society in Madison, Wisconsin on Sept. 27th 2005. Due to personal circumstances I was not able to finish this paper for publication. It is entitled: Habituation of wildlife to humans: research tool, key to naturalistic recording and common curse for wildlife and hapless humans. I published the relevant excerpt on wolves as Appendix B pp. 195-197 in Will N. Graves 2007 Wolves in Russia. AnxietyTthrough the Ages.(edited by V. Geist). Detselig, Calgary.

3 Baker, R. O. and R. M. Timm 1998. Management of conflict between urban coyotes and humans in southern California. Pp. 229-312 in R. O. Baker and A. c. Crabb eds. Proc. 18th Vertebrate Pest Conference, University of California, Davis).

4 The advocacy in favor of the “benign wolf” hypothesis is so powerful, that the better educated the persons, the more likely it seems that they are to become true believers and endanger themselves. So far exceptionally well-educated people have become victims of lethal attacks. Kenton Carnegie is not the only victim of the “harmless wolf hypothesis”. So was 24-year-old Wildlife Biologist, Trisha Wyman, who was killed on April 18th 1996 by a captive wolf pack in Ontario. I had a long phone conversation with Dr. Erich Klinghammer of Wolf Park. He was called in as an expert witness to examine the Wyman case, and discovered quickly that there was great surprise at her death, as wolves are not supposed to attack people. Ms Wyman had visited the park previously and spent some time studying the wolves. She was given the dream job of looking after and interpreting the wolves. She lasted three days! She and the people surrounding here, just like Kenton and the people surrounding him, were imbued by the myth of the “harmless wolves” as advocated by North American wolf specialists in the late 50’s and 60’s. Keepers of wolf packs can inform themselves by turning to the people running Wolf Park. These have been researching wolves for decades and have detailed advice on how to handle captive wolves and wolf-dog hybrids. They would have been quickly disabused of any naïve faith in conventional, but mis-presented science about harmless wolves.

5 See pp. 87-104. chapter six in Graves (2007) ibid.
6 James Gary Shelton 1998 Bear Attacks. Pogany Productions, Hagensborg, BC. Shelton makes a point of how viciously victims of predatory attacks have been pursued and maligned in Canada and the US by enumerating such in some detail.
7 Will Graves 2007 chapter six. ibid
8 in an e-mail of March 28, 2007 Dr. Nygren wrote to me: “They (the wolf pack) ate one ear and tip of the tongue when waiting for their turn in the abdominal cavity. The fore-stomachs were left largely untouched until almost all the good stuff was taken from the intestines. So did the liver, heart and lungs. They were taken out almost ten hours later when all the pups and their mother were lying flat around the place with their stomachs full. Then, almost in the midnight, the male came in starting to rip the carcass in pieces. A bite and a kilogram or two. He ate as much as he pleased, then pulled out the liver, ate some of it and dropped. Soon, he started to walk towards the sleepy pups who immediately jumped up and hurried to meet him with cheerful faces, tails wagging and showing submissive gestures. They looked funny with their round bellies and saw-buck like appearance. A roundish white spot cranially from their thighs on the belly coat had appeared and was visible even in the dim light of autumn. This seems to be a good visual sign of a well-fed wolf. When they poked the father’s lips with their noses, he threw up everything what was in his stomach. The pups immediately ate up it. and returned to their beds. The male walked back to work, filled his stomach and did the feeding procedure several times. He seemed to have a pet among the pups. It was the smallest, a female always chased out first by the mother and siblings. The female never fed the pups like the father. In the next morning, the flesh of the prey was practically stripped off with bare bones protruding and some legs completely cut off the carcass. So, the fat reserves seemed to be the preferred bits, not the liver, heart and lungs. We have seen the same many times in the field. Guts first. Even the dogs are usually first opened from the belly and the abdominal cavity emptied. I have seen many dogs cut in two around the diaphragm, caudal halve eaten completely or transported somewhere. Heart and lungs are, in many case, were left inside the breast cavity”.
9 Baker, R. O. and R. M. Timm 1998. Management of conflict between urban coyotes and humans in southern California. Pp. 229-312 in R. O. Baker and A. c. Crabb eds. Proc. 18th Vertebrate Pest Conference, University of California, Davis).

Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, The University of Calgary
Calgary, Canada.
V. Geist
Ph/fax: 250-723-7436
e-mail: kendulf@shaw.ca

Draft April 22nd, 2008.

Essay no. 2. Fair Chase

I’ll leave whether or not Republican National Committee candidate Chip Saltsman’s CD he sent out to members of the RNC is appropriate or not but before you decide, do some homework on the history of “Magic Negro”. Tasteless? Racist? You decide but what burns my behind is that all of a sudden, the position of the President of the United States has to be respected.

Of course the left is outraged by this and yet they were the ones who made and promoted such bumper stickers as “F*** Bush” and Kill Bush while promoting signs and posters displaying Bush being beheaded and the list goes on and on. There existed not one ounce of respect for the Presidency of the United States. That cannot be denied but now with “The Anointed One” soon to be sitting in that office f*** Bush…..all hail Obama.

Does vomit into your keyboard ruin your laptop?

Help here and here.

Tom Remington

Below is a press release issued by the National Park Service on proposed alternatives to managing the elk herd within the Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Available is the Draft Elk Management Plan and the Environmental Impact Statement. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be enough of the right kind of proposals being presented.

Immediate Release Valerie Naylor
701-623-4466

December 17, 2008

Draft Elk Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement Released

Theodore Roosevelt National Park has released a Draft Elk Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and is soliciting public comment.

The draft plan/EIS analyzes four action alternatives for initial herd reduction, as well as a “no action” alternative and one alternative that could be used in combination with others for herd maintenance. The draft EIS does not identify a preferred alternative.

“The alternatives represent a range of reasonable options for managing the elk population,” said Superintendent Valerie J. Naylor. “Because we want to encourage public input on the alternatives presented, we are not going to select a preferred alternative until after the public comment period.”

One alternative for initial herd reduction focuses on sharpshooting elk, using government employees, contractors, or skilled volunteers. Under a second alternative, elk would be rounded up and euthanized. A third alternative focuses on rounding up elk, testing a representative sample for chronic wasting disease, and shipping live elk to other entities. Shipping live elk has been done twice before by the park, prior to concern about chronic wasting disease (CWD). Now, shipping could only take place after a representative sample (approximately 375 elk) are killed, tested, and found to be negative for CWD. In all cases, elk meat would be donated to food banks or other organizations after testing. A fourth alternative encourages hunting opportunities outside park boundaries and would require cooperation from the North Dakota Game and Fish Department and local landowners.

Hunting within the park boundaries is not allowed under the law and is not being considered.

“This plan will not only establish elk population levels that are in balance with the park’s ecosystem,” said Naylor, “but it will determine how we will maintain that population level to protect natural resources within the park and land uses outside the park boundary.”

A series of public meetings, including a presentation on Theodore Roosevelt National Park’s elk management planning process, will be held across the state to provide project information and gather comments about the draft plan/EIS. Meetings dates and locations will be announced after January 1.

More information and an on-line version of the EIS are available at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/thro. Comments can be submitted via the website or they can be mailed to Superintendent, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, P.O. Box 7, Medora, North Dakota 58645 or e-mailed to thro_forum@nps.gov.
Printed copies of the EIS are available for review at park visitor centers.
Contact the park at 701/623-4466 for a hard copy or an electronic copy on a compact disc (CD).

-NPS-

__________________________________
Bill Whitworth
Chief, Resource Management
Theodore Roosevelt National Park
P.O. Box 7
Medora, ND 58645
701-623-4730 ext 3407

Last week I referenced the work of Dr. Valerius Geist in my article title, “Myths of Wolf Behavior“. Below is the full manuscript with references as provided to me by the author.

Reprinted by permission from the author:

Valerius Geist, 2008. Commentary. The Danger of Wolves. Wildlife Professional Vol 2, No. 4 pp. 34-35. Winter 2008 edition.

E-mail: kendulf@shaw.ca;

February 14th 2008

Below is the original manuscript. Note the end-notes!

Who and What killed Kenton Carnegie?

Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science, The University of Calgary
Calgary, Canada.

On November 1st 2007 a six-member coroner’s jury in Saskatchewan ruled that wolves killed Kenton Carnegie, a 22-year-old 3rd year honors and scholarship student in the Co-op program in Geological-Engineering at the University of Waterloo. He was killed on November 8th 2005 at Points North Landing near Wollstone Lake in northern Saskatchewan. Though he was the best-investigated human victim of wolf predation in North America in the past century , there have been other victims such as five-year-old Marc Leblond, killed Sept. 24, 1963 north of Baie-Comeau, Quebec , and more according to native people. It is they who pointed out in conversation that wolves “eat the evidence” and also disperse it, making detection and confirmation of cause of death very difficult. In addition there have been a number of attacks on people in Canada and Alaska in recent years , and more are expected as wolves become more numerous and disperse after decades of control.

Victims of wildlife tragedies in North America tend to be blamed for the event , and it was not different in Kenton’s case. It greatly upset Kenton’s family, as did the whitewash of wolves that could only mislead the judiciary and the public . They thus asked two (Correction: three!) scientists to look independently into the matter. One was Alaska biologist Mark McNay, the other was Brent Patterson of Ontario, the other was myself. At the coroners inquest only one expert witness was allowed to testify on behalf of the Carnegies and the court chose Mark McNay. His presentation was effective!

The Kenton Carnegie case is significant as it points to deficits in scholarship pertaining to wolf/human interactions, and consequently to flawed assumptions underlying wolf conservation legislation her and in Europe. As alluded to above, a sideshow to be noted in passing is an attempt to blame black bears for Kenton Carnegie’s death . However, this assertion failed to survive scrutiny by peers and by the court. Nevertheless, it was reported in important popular outlets and remains uncorrected in such, thereby still misinforming the public . There is a danger of a parallel to Farley Movat’s book “Never Cry Wolf” which was quickly exposed as erroneous by Canadian scientists, but whose informed voices were ignored by the public and the literati, which even now accepts that book on face value .

The coroner’s inquest in Saskatchewan, however, only answered the narrow question of who killed Kenton Carnegie. To this the answer is: wolves. Change the question to what killed Kenton Carnegie and the answer is: the belief that wolves are harmless and do not kill people. Yet, I must confess that I too embraced a similar view during my career and well into retirement, having been taught such even in graduate school, and reinforced by years of experience with painfully shy wilderness wolves. However, a misbehaving pack on Vancouver Island, and a review of historical matters, taught me otherwise . The myth of harmless wolves is a well-established modern dogma. It is deadly! Belief in this myth has killed at least three persons in North America alone in the last decade, two of which were bright, educated young people.

Nobody at Points North Landing noticed that the wolves involved were not merely habituating, but were targeting people as prey . Wolves do this in the very same manner as coyotes in urban parks when targeting children . Both canids explore humans very cautiously and over a protracted time period before mounting the first, exploratory attack. This two wolves had done four days prior to Kenton’s death. They attacked a bush pilot and a geophysicist outside the camp, but the two young men beat back the wolves and photographed them. While the behavior of wolves signaled at Points North Landing a disaster waiting to happen, nobody recognized it as such even after the failed wolf attack. The belief in the harmlessness of wolves was firmly entrenched.

Ironically, while coyote biologists recognized that the smaller coyote will target people as prey, wolf biologists were denying that wolves were a danger to people. A wolf biologist in the service of the Saskatchewan coroner likewise failed to recognize that wolves, habituated to camp garbage delivery, were also targeting people .

How could one uphold the view that wolves are harmless to people, despite centuries of recorded experience to the contrary in Russia , Finland , Scandinavia, Germany , India , Afghanistan , Korea , central Asia, Turkey , Iran , France or Greenland ? In the first instance, the overwhelming experience in North America is that wolves are very shy, difficult to see creatures that avoid people. The causes of such were normally not investigated, although some authors pointed to the facts that wolves were very much prosecuted and thus rare in 20th century North America, and that North Americans are usually armed and quickly eliminated troublesome wolves. Moreover, the killing of wolves in rural settings is not newsworthy, as I can attest to from personal experience . It is thus very difficult from North American accounts to decipher the conditions when wolves are dangerous to people and when they are not.

What about Eurasian wolves? Are they different, and is their behavior thus irrelevant to an understanding of North American wolves? Or are the accounts of wolf attacks on people exaggerated and untrustworthy, and the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale by the brothers Grimm based on misunderstanding, ignorance and exaggerated fears? A respected Canadian biologist, Dr. C. H. Doug Clarke, decided to investigate . He concluded that the killing of people by wolves in Europe was real, but that rabid wolves caused all the attacks. In exonerating healthy wolves, Clarke fell back on his experience with shy Canadian continental wilderness wolves, an experience much as my own and shared by others. One can trace the origin of the “harmless wolf myth” to him . And yet Clark erred! He failed to notice the distinction in behavior between attacks by rabid and by non-rabid wolves. There are differences!

Historically, the most frightening aspect of being bitten by a rabid wolf was the certain death of the victim from rabies. In modern times quick medical intervention can save the victim. Rabid wolves, so it was noted historically, attacked swiftly with great ferocity, bit multiple victims as well as livestock and non-animate objects, and aimed their bite at the face and head of the victim. Consequently, any survivor of a wolf attack could not have been bitten by a rabid wolf. Secondly, rabid wolves do not stalk, sneak or hunt, nor complete an attack, nor drag the victim away for consumption. Yet some victims were saved just in time after having been attacked, subdued and dragged away by wolves. Therefore, these were attacks by non-rabid wolves. Such occurred with sufficient frequency that a pattern of selectivity emerged: in predatory attacks, wolves targeted primarily children . Rabid wolves made no such choice . Also, adults could escape most attacks by single wolves, but never that of a pack.

The second problem is that accounts of wolf attacks are, of course, not scientific data. They are usually reports by witnesses as recorded second hand by the police, priests, doctors and county clerks. As there were few literate persons about in past centuries many attacks must not have been reported. The records are most subjective. There is suspicion that some reports, especially in newspapers, may have been padded or are somehow not trustworthy. Whether it is so is not for scientists to decide, but for historians! Records of predation on humans require the expertise of historian scholarship to locate, verify, clarify and place into perspective. What scientist can do subsequently is to winnow such reports for patterns and trends that relate to what happens to be known about wolf biology. And our modern understanding of wolf biology has been and is changing.

However, North American wolf biologists did not seek the assistance of historians. They also faced language and cultural barriers, and were prematurely enthralled by early insights based on young captive wolves. They also had an abiding respect for Clarke’s sterling authority. Consequently, they did not investigate foreign historical material systematically. Had they done so, they would hardly have concluded that the fairytale of Little Red Riding Hood was based on ignorance, misunderstanding, malice or an exaggerated fear of wolves! Where wolves are de-facto protected by an unarmed populace, where the prey base is diminished and livestock is not abundant, wolves focus on humans – then as now – with frightening consequences. No sovereign would expend the high costs, accept the losses in economic activity or the meager results of wolf control in centuries past were it not for telling reasons .

To the above one must add two factors, the first being: the global impact of a very popular book by a famous Canadian author, Farley Mowat, depicting wolves as harmless, lovable mouse eaters. While Canadian biologists did not fall for this prank , the literati did and are still falling for it. Secondly, this book was most welcome to the Communist Party in Russia, which had systematically suppressed information about man-killing wolves since 1917, but especially during and after World War Two, in order to forestall the call for arms by the populace. So western environmentalists and eastern communists shouted with one voice praising the harmlessness of wolves. The Russian scientist Mikhail P. Pavlov disclosed the matter in a book on wolves after the fall of Communism . His work, upon translation into Norwegian, was denounced with furor leading to the responsible ministry destroying the translation. It was subsequently published in Swedish . An English translation lingered unpublished, as nobody wanted to touch it. It has recently been published .

The historical and current evidence indicates that one can live with wolves where such are severely limited in numbers on an ongoing basis, so that there is continually a buffer of wild prey and livestock between wolves and humans, with an ongoing removal of all wolves habituating to people. The current notion that wolves can be made to co-exist with people in settled landscapes (in multi-use landscapes surrounding houses, farms, villages and cities) is not tenable. Under such conditions wolves becoming territorial will confront people when such walk dogs or approach wolf-killed livestock. In addition even well fed habituated wolves will test people by approaching such, initially nipping at their clothing and licking exposed skin, before mounting a clumsy first attack that may leave victims alive but injured, followed by serious attacks. While a healthy man can fight off a lone wolf with some chances of success, a lone person cannot defeat a pack. And such killed Kenton Carnegie.

1 Kenton Carnegie’s death was investigated on location on November 8th and 9th 2005 by by Constable Alphonse Noey of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, with Rosalie Tsannie-Burseth, coroner at Wollaston Lake, with witness statements by Chris Van Galder, Todd Svarchpf, Mark Eikel, and Robert Dennis (Bob) Burseth, as well as forensic investigations. A second investigation on location was carried out by Kelly Crayne and Mario Gaudet, Saskatchewan Conservation Officers on November 10th 2005. The case was reviewed for the chief coroner of Saskatchewan in a confidential report by Drs. Paul C. Paquet and Ernst G. Walker, August 6th 2006. The case was reviewed for Kim and Lori Carnegie, parents of deceased Kenton, by Mark E. McNay who produced a report and testified at the coroner’s inquest. A second scientist asked to investigate the case was Valerius Geist who submitted a two-part report, but was precluded from testifying at the coroner’s hearing. (Correction: A third scientist was Brent Patterson. We three came to similar views). All these reports plus a time line of the tragedy and a critique of Paul Paquet’s position are accessible …….??????(How do we make them accessible???).

2 Gerard McNebel, Noember 18th, 1963, Winnipeg Free Press, p. 12.
3 Mark E. McNay 2002. Wolf-human interactions in Alaska and Canada: review of the case history. Wildlife Society Bulletin 30(3):831-843. Mark E. McNay 2002 A case history of wolf-human encounters in Alaska and Canada. Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, Wildlife Technical Bulletin 13). J. Beatty. 2000. Vargas Island wolves too used to human contact, observer says. The Vancouver Sun, July 5th, pp. A1-2. Dan Kerslake and Dan Zakreski 2006, reported on the attack on Fred Desjarlais in Saskatchewan, CBC News Online, March 7th 2006. There was a wolf attack in Alaska on Becky Wanamaker on 7 July 2006. See Katie Pesznecker, Anchorage Daily News, July 13th, 2006. September 6th 2006 a lone wolf attacked and wounded six people, four of which were children, in a provincial park near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontariao, The Hamilton Spectator, Sept 7th 2006. Larry Pynn. 2007. Port Moody kayaker fights off starving, predatory wolf. Vancouver Sun. August 1.
4 James Gary Shelton 1998 Bear Attacks. Pogany Productions, Hagensborg, BC. Shelton makes a point of how viciously victims of predatory attacks have been pursued and maligned in Canada and the US by enumerating such in some detail.
5 pp. 29-30 of National Wildlife, February/March 2007 edition in an article entitled “Sexy Beasts”. by Paul Tolmé. Also a video produced by the National Geographic Society, whose misrepresentations upset the coroner Rosalie Tsanni-Burseth, as well as Kenton Carnegie’s parents
6 Paquet, Paul C. and Ernst G. Walker 2006. Review of Investigative Findings Relating to the Death of Kenton Carnegie At Points North, Saskatchewan. Office of Chief Coroner, Saskatchewan Justice, #920, 1801 Hamilton Street, Regina, Saskatchewan. S4P 4B4, Canada.
7 Paul Tolmé, ibid. & National Geographic. Ibid.
8 Banfield, A. W. F. 1964. Review of F. Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf. Canadian Field Naturalist. 78:52-54; Pimlott, D. H. 1966. Review of F. Mowat’s Never Cry Wolf. J. Wildlife Management. 30:236-237.
9 Geist, V. 2003. Vancouver Island wolves. The Virginia Wildlifer, June 2003, pp. 35-39.
10 Geist, V. Sept. 29th 2007 When do wolves become dangerous to humans? & statement by Valerius Geist pertaining to the death of Kenton Carnegie…(website???)
11 Baker, R. O. and R. M. Timm 1998. Management of conflict between urban coyotes and humans in southern California. Pp. 229-312 in R. O. Baker and A. c. Crabb eds. Proc. 18th Vertebrate Pest Conference, University of California, Davis
12 Paquet and Walker 2006 ibid.
13 See Will N. Graves 2007(edited by V. Geist) Wolves in Russia, Detselig, Calgary. Mikhail P. Pavlov, 1982. “The Wolf in Game Management”, 2nd edition 1990; Publisher: Agropromizdat, Moscow.
14 The historian Dr. Antti Lappalainen (opetusneuvos.lappalainen@kolumbus.fi, +35895416946) published his research findings on lethal wolf attacks on humans in Finland under the title “Suden jäljet”, The Tracks of the Wolf, ISBN 952-5118-79-7. Capstick, 1981. Maneaters, Safari Press, Ca. pp. 108-114.
15 Hans Friedrich von Flemming. 1749. Der Vollkommene Teutsche Jäger, Leipzig. P. 108. Brehms Tierleben, p. 137 in my condensed ed. 1952, Safari Verlag, Berlin. D. Müller-Using, M. Wolf and E. Klinghammer 1975 p. 203 in Grzimek’s Animal Encyclopedia, Vol. 12 Mammals III, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co. New York.
16 Jahala and Sharma 1997 Child-lifting by wolves in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India. J. Wildlife Research 292:94-101). Jahal 2003 Status, Ecology and conservation of the Indian wolf Canis lupus pallipes Sykes J. Bombay Natural History Society 100 (2&3) Aug.- Dec. pp. 293-307). See also Rajpurohit, K. S. 1999. Child Lifting: wolves in Hazaribagh, India. AMBIO 28(2), 162-166.
17 Roy Stewart (2004) In his book about travels in Afghanistan “The Places in Between” ( p. 123, Harcourt Books). On the Internet newkerala.com Kabul 18 Feb 2005, It was reported that hungry wolves were driven by freezing cold in the mountains to invade Afghanistan’s villages and have killed and devoured four people in the last two weeks. This was reported by the official Bakhter News Agency (BNA). Heavy snowfall is driving wolves from the mountains toward villages and in addition to four people being killed by wolves 22 have been bitten in Paktia Province which borders Pakistan.
18 The Korean experience is summarized by Robert Neff in Devils in the Darkness, 2007/05/23, copyright 2007 Ohmy News. http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=362934&rel_no=1&isPrint=print
19 Also on the internet on timberwolfinformation.org/info/archieve/newspapers on 2/27/05 from Ankara Turkey it was reported that a ten year old boy named Onur Bahar was killed by a wolf in a field near his house on the outskirts of Talas. The wolf went for the boy’s throat and torn his left arm off.
20 An Iranian colleague reported that in rural areas of Iran villagers were disarmed and lived in great fear of wolves. Possession of weapons during the Shah’s regime was severely punished by the secret police.
21 (French) Moriceau, Jean-Marc (2007). Histoire du méchant loup : 3 000 attaques sur l’homme en France. pp. p.623. ISBN 2213628807. (added subsequently!)
22 Freuchen, P. 1935. Arctic Adventure. Farrah & Rinehart, New York. Peter Freuchen lost a companion to wolves (p. 23, pp. 329, 332) , shot a wolf stalking his children (pp. 347-348), had harrowing experiences with wolves trying to enter his cabin (pp. 16-19). His writings support an observation made to me by a long time resident and hunter in Greenland: where there are wolves, there are no people and vice versa!
23 A report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation of responses by the listening public to their airing of the Kenton Carnegie case. Here is a sample of cases of Wolf/Human interactions that were never aired by the Canadian new media. http://www.cbc.ca/sask/features/wolves/3.html CBC Sakatchewan copied July 2nd 2006.
24 The view of “harmless wolves” was first popularized in Lenin’s and Stalin’s Communist Russia apparently to justify keeping the rural population disarmed (see Pavlov 1982). It was subsequently developed independently in North America, and it is the North American version, which was transplanted later to Europe, becoming a dogma in the process.
25 In an unpublished paper entitled “The Beast of Gévaudan” Dr. Clarke concluded: “Down the long list of recorded attacks by wolves it becomes clear that the Russian baron in his troika is folklore, but the rabid wolf is grim fact. The pattern is universal. The famous wolves of medieval song and story were all rabid”. P. 26 of Russell J. Rutter and Douglas h. Pimlott 1968 The World of the Wolf. Lippincott C. New York.
26 (French) Moriceau, Jean-Marc (2007). Histoire du méchant loup : 3 000 attaques sur l’homme en France. pp. p.623. ISBN 2213628807. (added subsequently)
27 For an account of how rabid wolves act see Chapter 6, Wolf Attacks on Humans by Will Graves (2007) (edited by V. Geist) Wolves in Russia, Detselig, Calgary. Pp 87-103.
28 Hans Friedrich von Flemming in 1749. Der Vollkommene Teutsche Jäger, Leipzig.
29 Banfield 1964. ibid; Pimlot 1966 ibid. See also John Goddard 1996 A real whopper (cover story). Saturday Night, May issue Vol 111 Issue No. 4, p46, 8p, 3bw.
30 Pavlov, Mikhail P. The Wolf in Game Management;; Date of Publication: First edition 1982, 2nd edition 1990; Publisher: Agropromizdat, Moscow; Chapter 12, “The Danger of Wolves to Humans” (pp 136-169); Translated from Russian by Valentina and Leonid Baskin, and Patrick Valkenburg. Edited by wildlife biologists Patrick Valkenburg and Mark McNay. Dr. Leonid Baskin is a well-known Russian zoologist with whom I have worked and co-published in the past. Appendix A. Pavlov’s chapter in Will N. Graves 2007. ibid..
31 Elis Pålsson 2003 Vargens Näringssök och Människan. ISBN 91-631-3651-1, Älmhult.
32 See Appendix A in Graves 2007. ibid.
33 C. D. C. Linnell et al. 2002 The Fear of Wolves, Norse Institutt for Naturforskning. NINA
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