Before killing more wolves, the B.C. government needs to show that the cull is actually helping the caribou population, Karen McAllister and Kristen Weiss write.Zac Mills/The Wildlife Collective
Karen McAllister is the Executive Director of Pacific Wild. Kristen Weiss is a conservation scientist and Wildlife & Forests Campaigner for Pacific Wild.
On a frozen winter morning in a remote valley of British Columbia’s interior, a young wolf runs for her life through deep snow, ears twisted toward the WHOOSH-WHOOSH of helicopter blades. She doesn’t understand what this predator is, but she is terrified.
The thuds of rapid-fire bullets are the last sounds this yearling will ever hear. She stumbles to the ground, blood staining her milky-white fur, as the helicopter circles to inspect the kill, then speeds off toward the next target.
Every year, hundreds of wolves are killed this way across B.C. – gunned down by government contractors, financed by taxpayer dollars.
This past winter alone, 300 wolves were shot under the province’s predator reduction program.
What began in 2015 as a “short-term, emergency measure” to help the caribou population recover has become a decade-long cull spanning 15 management regions. More than 2,800 wolves have been killed since the program began, costing more than $13-million.
Now the B.C. government has proposed extending the cull another five years, with no plan for how or when it ends.
This lands at an unusually exposed moment. Last month, Global News interviewed Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship Randene Neill about the public backlash. She said her ministry wouldn’t run predator control that scientists and animal welfare experts didn’t consider humane, adding she’d welcome a closer look, including an audit.
No such audit has happened previously.
For more than a decade, the province has told British Columbians wolves are shot cleanly by trained professionals, without ever proving it. Cull photos our organization obtained through FOI requests showed several gunshot wounds through the chest, rather than the clean head or spine shots veterinary guidelines recommend.
Animal welfare auditors say a program like this is exactly what third-party auditing exists for, but the province has simply never allowed it.
In recent weeks, thousands of British Columbians wrote to Ms. Neill, making the scientific, ethical and economic case against the cull.
She seems to have taken notice. Now her promise needs to become a commitment before the province locks in another five years.
The cull’s defenders use euphemisms like “predator reduction” and “management.” That obscures the reality: wolves are social animals with complex family bonds. Some are deliberately radio-collared and released as “Judas wolves,” tracked back to their pack where the whole family is killed together.
This isn’t removing animals from a landscape; it’s dismantling families from moving aircraft, where a clean single shot is difficult to guarantee.
If B.C.’s methods really meet the humane standards claimed, an audit should be easy to pass. That the government has resisted one for a decade tells us something.
The ecological case is just as shaky. Habitat loss and fragmentation, not wolf predation, is what conservation biologists broadly agree drove caribou declines. More than 135,000 square kilometres of caribou habitat has already been lost to logging, mining, oil and gas, and roads; this destruction continues right alongside the cull.
That leaves the province killing thousands of wolves while still permitting the habitat destruction that caused caribou declines. B.C.’s failure to protect caribou habitat reflects a troubling trend: the federal government recently proposed weakening the Canadian Species at Risk Act by removing a key safeguard against projects that jeopardize the survival or recovery of endangered species, opening the door to industrial development even when it puts at-risk wildlife in danger. The Syilx Okanagan and Xatśūll First Nations, meanwhile, have petitioned Ottawa for emergency federal action to protect their last remaining caribou herds.
Before the province can extend the cull, it needs a new Wildlife Act permit, a decision due by fall. There is still time for public pressure to shape the outcome.
Ms. Neill has said, publicly, that she’d support an independent audit. Many organizations, including the BC SPCA, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and the more than 80 entities that co-signed our open letter to the minister, have called for the cull to end. Before killing more wolves, the province should have to prove the program does what it claims.
If Ms. Neill meant what she said, now is the moment to find out.