Opinion

Environmental groups downplay wolf attacks

William Perry Pendley President, Mountain States Legal Foundation
Font Size:

Sixteen-year-old Noah Graham of Solway is lucky to be alive after being attacked without warning by a wolf while sitting at a campfire with friends last month on Lake Winnibigoshish near the town of Bemidji in far northern Minnesota.

“I had to reach behind me and jerk my head out of its mouth,” he reported, after which he leaped to his feet and fought back until the wolf fled. He suffered a four-inch gash on his scalp, closed with 17 staples — “the worst pain of my life” — and required a series of rabies shots. Meanwhile, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) officials, who called Noah’s experience the first documented serious-injury wolf attack on a human in Minnesota, jumped to the wolf’s defense asserting that a wolf killed nearby — it may not be the attacking wolf — had a “jaw deformity.”

Defenders of Wildlife (DOW), which might as well call itself Defenders of Wolves — they even have a statue of one outside their headquarters — said it was “surprised” by the attack. DOW went further than the DNR noting not only that the wolf “had some malformation of its jaw” but also that it was “reportedly habituated to humans.” But DOW downplayed the incident contending that “only two known deaths have occurred from wild wolf attacks across all of North America in modern history.” That is a bit of an understatement and far from a full and accurate accounting of the dangers to mankind from wolves, but DOW has come a long way in truth telling about the wolf since the 1990s.

Back then, DOW persuaded the Walt Disney Company to include the following disclaimer in its 1991 film adaptation of Jack London’s novel White Fang, the tale of a young man’s adventures during the Alaskan gold rush and his friendship with a wolf: “Jack London’s White Fang is a work of fiction. There has never been a documented case of a healthy wolf or pack of wolves attacking a human in North America.” That was followed by a statement bemoaning so-called “persecution” of the wolf and calling for the introduction of the wolf into “wilderness areas.”

Thanks to lobbying efforts like these, and the willingness of the Clinton administration to accede to the demands of DOW and other environmental groups, wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in 1994 and quickly spread over a 500-mile radius to all corners of Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Earlier this month, a pack of wolves stampeded 176 sheep — two were bitten and killed; one was half eaten; the others died of asphyxiation.

Notwithstanding DOW’s disclaimer, how likely was it that in the half a millennium since Europeans arrived in North America, a wolf had never attacked a human being? A quick check revealed the truth: not likely at all. Renowned painter John James Audubon reported a wolf attack upon two men — one of whom was killed — in Kentucky in about 1830. Noted historian George B. Grinnell investigated and confirmed a wolf attack on an 18-year old girl in 1881 in northwestern Colorado. A North Dakota newspaper reported an attack by wolves that killed a father and son near New Rockford in 1888. In 1942, a section foreman for the Canadian Pacific Railway was attacked by a wolf as reported by an Investigator Crichton, a conservation officer. In 1987, a 16-year-old girl was bitten by a wolf in Algonquin Provincial Park in Ontario. Then, in 1996, a family was attacked by a wolf; the family’s 12-year old son had his face torn open and permanently disfigured, despite four hours of surgery and 80 stitches.

Confronted with this evidence, DOW defended its disclaimer by asserting that all attacks by wolves on humans in North American had not been “scientifically” documented; were the result of attacks by “tame” wolves; were not “attacks” since DOW “did not characterize” instances where people had been bitten by wolves as “attacks” or were not “serious” attacks. In addition, DOW presumed both that an attacking wolf was not healthy unless its health was documented “scientifically” and that an attacking wolf was not wild unless documentation exists that it was never in captivity.

Perhaps DOW abandoned its White Fang disclaimer because the evidence to the contrary was so overwhelming. After a wolf attacked and repeatedly bit a 6-year old boy in April of 2000 near Icy Bay, Alaska, the State of Alaska began a study of 80 wolf-human contacts in Alaska and Canada, which it published in 2002. Since then, the reports continue to pile up. In November of 2008, in an episode called by one expert, the “best investigated case to date,” a 22-year old honors and scholarship student, Kenton Joel Carnegie, was killed in northern Saskatchewan by a pack of wolves. In March of 2008, Candice Berner of Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, a special education teacher in Perryville, Alaska, was killed near Chignik Lake by at least two wolves. In October of 2011, a North Idaho grandmother on a hunting trip for elk was attacked by a 100-pound wolf; she unholstered the .44 Magnum on her hip and shot and killed the animal. In December of 2012, a wolf attacked a trapper riding a snowmobile near Tok, Alaska; Lance Grangaard fought back but sustained a three inch gash on his arm and underwent rabies inoculations. And so on and so on and so on.

In spite of these documented cases, DOW continues to label wolf attacks on humans “exceedingly rare.” As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Whether or not the number of wolf attacks actually meets that definition, they’ve at least downplayed certain incidents, leaving the public misinformed, and potentially at greater risk.

William Perry Pendley

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel