Wolves making it against all odds

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, wildlife, wildlife management, wolves, biologists, naturalists, memoirs

About two decades before wolves were trucked into Yellowstone National Park, a lone female wolf made her way from Canada into the area around Glacier National Park. She was named Kishinena, Later a male wolf joined her, and the pair raised at least three litters of pups. By the time "re-introduction" was officially carried out, the Glacier NP area was host to a few packs of self-introduced wolves.

One woman witnessed it all, and continued to study wolves in and near Montana for forty years. Dr. Diane K. Boyd became the most skilled wolf trapper in America, although she never caught Kishinena. We can be generous and say that she was still learning in those early years.

At first when I was reading Dr. Boyd's memoir A Woman Among Wolves: My Journey Through Forty Years of Wolf Recovery, my mental image of a wolf trap was the cruel leg-crushing snap trap employed by fur trappers. Eventually I learned that recovery trappers use a cable trap that doesn't break any bones and seldom breaks the skin. A wolf (or mis-caught bear or other animal) that struggles for hours against such a trap can still cut off circulation to the trapped foot to cause permanent injury; this is why a biologist runs the trapline at least twice daily. 

The author tells one story of herself and an assistant, also female, tranquilizing a wolf that had become so exhausted from fighting the trap that it was practically frozen to death, and the foot was solid as a rock. The two women took the sleeping wolf into the truck, laid it across their laps, ran the engine fast and the heater all the way up. Then they took off their shirts and body-warmed the wolf, whose body temperature was about eight degrees below normal by then. Once the animal began to warm, Diane realized it was waking, but for a while it stayed still to enjoy the warmth. She carefully reached to open the door, holding the radio collar they'd put on earlier to keep that mouthful of teeth away from her face, and let the wolf bolt away. Quite a sight they must have made, two half-naked women covered in sweat and black-and-gray fur! Happy to see the wolf on the run. A visit to the area the next day to follow its tracks for a ways confirmed that the wolf didn't just run a quarter mile and drop dead; it was apparently well enough to run long and far. Radio tracking in the following days showed that it covered a lot of territory, and made kills as usual.

During her forty years with the wolves, the author saw their situation come nearly full circle. Wolves were once so universally hated they were destroyed from every square mile of the U.S. "lower 48" except the extreme north of Minnesota and Isle Royale on Lake Superior. By the mid 1990's they were much beloved by many Americans, federal legislation protected them, and they multiplied all across the northern states, from the Great Lakes to Washington state. Over the next decade or so the mood shifted again, and the fear and hatred of wolves was on the rebound. Even today, the pendulum is a bit to the side of "protect livestock" rather than "protect wolves". Nonetheless, the gray wolf has been restored as a major predator in the northern US.

Consider this list: Grizzly Bear, Wolf, Coyote, Fox, Wolverine, Mountain Lion, Bobcat. Five of these seven can easily kill a human. Only wolves are hated in a special way. This came out especially strongly at a public meeting in 2018 in Trout Creek, Montana. For more than two hours a couple hundred wolf-hating folk berated Forest Service members and supporting scientists, including Dr. Boyd. Earlier in the book she calls her treatment among wildlife biologists and forest rangers, as a young, slender blonde woman among "mountain men", a baptism of fire. But this was another thing entirely. When she had opportunity, she spoke reason, but when the crowd is unreasonable—and half are drunk—that's like tossing a snowball into a hot wind.

I don't know what the national mood is today. Where has the pendulum swung in the past seven years? I was once told by a policeman that there's a threshold of 15%: if more than 15% of the population habitually speeds, for example (and the level is more like 75%), speed laws cannot be effectively enforced. I don't know what the present level of wolf-hatred is, but if it's more than about a quarter of us, a lot of wolves are at risk. Poaching has existed all through the past 4-5 decades, but it reached an all-time high within the past decade, and I just don't know if the trend is still upward, or if it is abating.

Duck-Duck-Go's AI Assist tells me this:

As of 2024, the estimated gray wolf population in the contiguous United States is between 14,000 and 18,000, with Alaska having an additional 7,000 to 11,000 wolves. Most of the populations are concentrated in the northern half of the country.

That's a big difference from the near-zero population of the period from 1940-1970. And Dr. Boyd witnessed all of that recovery. She is an admirable naturalist/biologist, and a great storyteller.

Vietnam spiders overtake Singapore's

 kw: blogs, blogging, spider scanning

After posting a short item I looked at the stats. The past 24 hours saw more than 10,000 views. Very unusual! Here is the breakdown for the past week:

All but a couple of thousand views were in the past day. There must be multiple actors here; this entire blog consists of less than 3,000 pages.

Looking at a one-day view, the views that originated in (or passed through a VPN in) Vietnam ran steady at about 850 per hour for 18 hours, then dropped, just an hour ago. Interesting!

Philosophizing AGI

 kw: simulated intelligence, ai, artificial intelligence, companies, philosophy, artificial ethics

In the recent issue of Wired, in an article about the company Anthropic, where the founders plan to develop AGI (artificial general intelligence), this photo and caption appear. The caption reads, "Amanda Askell / A trained philosopher who helps manage Claude's personality". Claude is the AI agent that the Anthropic folks are trying to develop into an AGI that is benevolent and ethical.

The first thought I had was, "Trained philosopher? Huh! What does an untrained philosopher look like?" My inner philosopher immediately replied, "Like a human being."

My second thought: "Who decides what is ethical?" In a hyper-divided America, struggling to stay afloat sociologically in a chaotic world, we find this spectrum (not at all autistic…):

• Radical (these days, Woke Leftists) - The bleeding-edge elites define ethics, to which you'd better kowtow, or else.
• Liberal - Liberty, the most freedom for the greatest number, favoring plenty of government care and oversight.
• Moderate - "Leave us alone."
• Conservative - Don't change what works; keep government out of most affairs.
• Reactionary - Whatever I say is good, is good. Contradict me at your own peril.

This doesn't even touch on religions, which have their own ethical standards, based on whatever god or scripture they believe. BUT! One thing is for darn sure: I don't want any trace of "what is ethical" to be decided within government.

A fresh take on the biosphere

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, life, biology, earth science, philosophy

For many people with a naturalist inclination, this fellow has a dream job. Others might rather be using snorkel or SCUBA in the sea, or perhaps winkling out the scarcer life to be found in deserts (my favorite).

If my memory serves me right, Dr. Peter Godfrey-Smith has taken on the role of naturalist in all three realms, and more. In his new book Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World, the third of a series, his vivid writing brings his experiences and musings home to us.

This book is a survey of life on Earth, its history, ecology, and possible futures. How he squeezed so much into a 300-page book is a marvel to me (26 of the pages are end notes, well worth the reading. And he touts a second set of end notes available online).

Contrary to my usual practice, I didn't take notes, nor bookmark any pages. I just read, and read, and enjoyed. There are just nine long-ish chapters. The first is introductory, followed by the obligatory historical survey, which culminates in the debate that's been going on for a couple of generations: How far do we push the Gaia idea? Is it a metaphor, a reality, or a phantom? It introduces a theme of the book as a whole, that biology and geology interact, and they interact a whole lot more than scientists of all stripes usually imagine.

The strong point is made that humans are part of nature, so it's better to speak of our fellow-beings not just as "animals" but as "other animals", because we are animals also. The middle section of the book, "Who We Are", Chapters 5 and 6, reveal how dominant humans have become. The majority of larger animals living today are the cattle, swine, and fowls that we have domesticated, plus our pets. We may not yet have brought a majority of the fishes into "fish farms", but we are well on the way.

In a strong analysis of farming practices, the author points out that the lives of the great majority of domestic animals is, quite simply, a living hell. The only mercy is that such lives are kept short. Though he writes a lot of "humane farming", he isn't sure it is possible on a large scale. I think of Malabar Farm and similar experiments, and I wonder how widespread they could become, and would we be willing to pay substantially more for food produced that way?

Can we re-wild any substantial part of Earth. Should we? Could we do so without taking over the management of all the lives in the new wilds? (For my part, I think of the experiment carried out at Biosphere 2. Keeping the place livable was such a struggle that much of the original agenda had to be scrapped. The problem was concrete; it both absorbs and emits carbon dioxide and oxygen in a somewhat faster-than-geological manner. Nearly every surface that wasn't glass was concrete, or dirt lying on concrete. The land area of Biosphere 1, the Earth, to date is covered by less than 3% concrete. Also the Earth's surface is 3/4 ocean, but B2 had hardly any. A poor semblance of an experiment!)

We are faced with the dilemma that it looks rather hard to be human and ethical. Yet no other animals muse about ethics. Some carry on a tit-for-tat "fairness" stance; only humans have elaborated morality to a high level.

All of us who have children have produced hostages to the future. What kind of taskmaster will that future be? Dr. Godfrey-Smith remains guardedly hopeful.