Northern Lights Wolf Centre

As we drove towards Revelstoke we saw a sign to the Wolf sanctuary. They have four wolves, all born in captivity and rescued.They cannot be released back into the wild and the centre uses them for education purposes. The Wolves are regularly allowed out and go for unleashed walks on the property.

Whilst we were there I bought a book "Of Wolves and Men" by Barry Lopez. I think it was originally published in the 1970's, The book tells how man has relentlessly persecuted the wolf to the point of extinction in many parts of the world and looks at The Big Bad Wolf reputation.

This is a Karelian Bear Dog .The Centre has several of them and are trying to persuade the British Columbia government to use them in controlling problem bears.
One sad fact they told us that in BC this year over 3000 "problem" bears had been shot as this was the cheapest solution. Now I realize this is only one side of the story....but 3000 bears seem like a lot of bears!

Here is their argument for the use of Dogs to deal with problem bears.

Karelian Bear Dogs were bred in Russia and Finland to hunt bears. Here in some parts of North America, bear dogs are part of bear management programs aimed at rehabilitating "problem" bears. Karelian Bear Dogs can be used to teach the bears to respect and avoid human areas. People create problem bears. If people are not careful with food and smelly garbage around their property or camp, it attracts hungry wildlife like bears. When bears learn to associate people with food, and learn that people are not scary, they become "habituated". A problem bear = "nuisance" bear = "garbage" bear = "habituated" bear.
A trained team of bear dogs and a dog handler work with the Conservation Officer (CO), usually in a chase situation. The bear is chased to a safe distance away, at which point the chase is called off. This tells the bear that it is a territorial dispute and not a predatory attack. The bear learns recognize the boundary of our territory and learns to stay away.
The problem in British Columbia (BC) is that it is illegal to chase bears with dogs because it is considered harassment of wildlife. But - the Hunting & Trapping Regulations allow off-leash chases of bears and cougars by dogs. So... a CO is not allowed to chase a bear with a dog. Instead it is chased by a gun.
October the 14th -22nd Is Wolf Awareness week.