Nov. 5 and wildlife

Our jaded sense of political reality usually leaves us thinking that elections are nothing more than mid-course corrections followed by an inevitable settling back into politics as usual. But in the always-controversial world of wildlife management, Nov. 5 stands out as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a significant change in the way we think about – and manage – Maine’s wildlife.

More than a half-century of research has failed to offer the slightest challenge to two basic principles offered by Aldo Leopold, America’s premier wildlife scientist-philosopher. The first principle is that the size of the prey population determines the numbers of predators. And the second principle is that predators define the quality of the deer herd – by culling the weak, sickly, and genetically less fit. And yet, despite repeated proof of these two principles by Maine’s own biologists, we continue, as Ted Williams [a respected outdoor writer and hunter and angler] says, to “wage a war on Maine’s coyotes” that defies natural laws – an unseemly war in the name of the decent people of Maine.

For nearly 20 years, Maine’s massive experiment on coyote-deer relations has accomplished nothing except to vindicate Leopold and to damage the reputation of one of the nation’s best wildlife agencies. To suggest that it will take more research, more information, more data, before the war can be stopped, ignores the record, and ignores the fact that such research has been estimated (by the state’s leading predator biologist) to cost upwards of $1 million in order to have any scientific validity.

To simply wait for “new information” would be a callous response to the department’s own new information that Maine’s coyote purge is unbelievably cruel and inhumane. None of the scientific facts, and none of the cruelty facts are secret or hidden – they are common knowledge. To perpetuate the war (let’s stop calling this a “program,” it is a pogrom, a cleansing of Maine’s woods) in the face of the facts, would be a glorious vindication of politics as usual.

When the game of power politics is removed from the debate, there can be little doubt that Maine will do the right thing and return to the enlightened leader it was before granting a snaring exception, for all the wrong reasons, in the late 1970s. This legislature has no obligation to endorse past mistakes. This legislature can take a giant step by doing the right thing – the appropriate thing for any legislature to do.

It is time to recognize not only that coyote snaring is flawed in its science, but in its conscience – or lack thereof. Matthew Scully, in “Dominion” reminds us that cruelty to animals is part of a moral continuity that leads inexorably to cruelty toward humanity.” If this Legislature condones extreme cruelty to wild animals such as coyote snaring, then this legislature can have no cause for alarm when it is faced with rising reports of cruelty toward pets, farm animals, captive animals, and humans.

When an action of government is incapable of standing the glare of full public exposure, no amount of “new information” is going to suddenly make that program necessary. Nov. 5 can mean a new day for Maine’s wildlife – an overdue appreciation of the necessary role of predators – but only if newly-elected public officials and their appointees are willing to place science, humanity and the state’s image, above the demands of those who lobby for cruelty.

Will LaPage teaches ethics and issues of park management at the University of Maine in Orono.