I read this yesterday and began thinking about hunting. I think that if
people hunt in order to eat the meat from killing the animals they hunt, it
is acceptable. But just hunting for the fun of chasing and killing animals
and hanging an animal's head on one's wall, is unethical. But it has
certainly been traditional in England and here in the US. What does that say
about human nature?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of S. Kashdan
Sent: Sunday, December 20, 2015 12:17 AM
To: Blind Democracy List
Subject: [blind-democracy] Animal Rights Activists Employ New Tactics to
Thwart Hunters
Animal Rights Activists Employ New Tactics to Thwart Hunters
By Beckie Elgin
Earth Island Journal, Saturday, December 19, 2015
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34063-animal-rights-activists-employ-new-
tactics-to-thwart-hunters?tmpl=component&print=1
Stephanie looked in her rear-view mirror and watched as the black Suburban
descended upon her Jeep. She punched the accelerator in an effort to put
some distance between the two vehicles, but the Suburban kept gaining.
Matthew, riding shotgun, turned in his seat to watch it.
"She's trying to come up beside us," Stephanie said.
The Suburban swerved hard left, then right, nearly hitting another vehicle.
A forty-something woman was driving. Her face was an angry blur, her mouth
open and shouting. She lifted an iPad, evidently in an attempt to capture
some photos or video of Matthew and Stephanie.
"She forgot to turn it around," Matthew said as the hulking Suburban sped up
to them. "She's taking pictures of herself."
Stephanie kept her eyes on the road as she hit the gas again. When they
reached a four-way stop on the two-lane road they had been driving along,
she turned right to return to their home base in the village of Barron, a
Wisconsin farming community north of Eau Claire. The woman in the Suburban
made a U-turn and headed in the direction she had come from.
Stephanie and Matthew (who didn't want their last names used for security
reasons) could pass for brother and sister. Both are 25, slight, dark haired
(Stephanie's has a wide streak of blue through it), and look younger than
they actually are. And they both share a passion for protecting wild
animals--especially wolves. It was December 2014, about a month after the
two had joined forces with an outfit called "Wolf Patrol," founded by Rod
Coronado, the legendary eco-warrior--or, as some might say, infamous
eco-saboteur. Wolf Patrol observes and documents wolf hunts in the United
States with the goal of exposing the cruelty of wolf hunting. The idea is to
help change public policies and, when necessary, reveal illegal activities
on the part of hunters. Stephanie and Matthew had been on a hunting
observation mission that winter day, which is what got them involved in the
high-speed chase.
Earlier that day, Stephanie and Matthew had come across a group of hunters
parked alongside a rural road. CB antennas stuck out from the cabs of their
trucks, a telltale sign of a hound hunter. One of the pickups had built-in
kennels, and it rocked back and forth with the movement of the hounds
inside. Three men stood hunched over something that lay within the folds of
a blue tarp. They lifted the tarp, the center of it sagged, and Stephanie
noticed a patch of what looked like grey fur. The pair slowly drove past the
truck, trying not to stare. "I bet it's a wolf," Stephanie said.
Wisconsin is the only state that allows hunters to use hounds to pursue
wolves, but the 2014 through 2015 hound hunting season hadn't opened yet. If
the hunters had killed a wolf with the help of hounds, they would be
poaching, and finding poachers is a top priority for Wolf Patrol. Stephanie
and Matthew turned their Jeep around and drove by the hunting party again.
By then, the men had dropped whatever was in the tarp into the back of one
of the trucks and were leaving the scene. The Wolf Patrol members followed
the pickups until it seemed that the hunters had become aware of their
presence. The pair had been trained by Coronado to de-escalate potentially
threatening situations, and they decided to break off their pursuit. But
within moments the swerving Suburban was on their tail.
When Matthew and Stephanie later debriefed the scene with Coronado and other
Wolf Patrol members, they figured that one of the hunters must have called
the woman, who, irate at the intrusion of ogling strangers on her home turf,
went after the Jeep. It's possible she knew Matthew and Stephanie were with
Wolf Patrol. News of the group's presence had spread quickly in rural
Wisconsin, and the locals appeared to be doing their own surveillance of
Wolf Patrol's anti-hunting vigilance--the watchers themselves were being
watched. Pro wolf-hunting Facebook pages were filled with threats against
Wolf Patrol and its members. Most of the posts were seething with anger. One
recent post read: "Kill ALL The Wolves. You pathetic losers will never save
one wolf. I have two Yellowstone wolves hanging on my wall with more to
come. Ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa."
Wolf Patrol is one hub of a loose network of North American and European
groups that use citizen monitoring to bring public attention to the practice
of trophy hunting--which they say is little more than state-sanctioned
animal cruelty. The new wave of animal rights activism is a far howl from
the actions of EarthFirst! and the Animal Liberation Front, both of which
are known for breaking the law to defend animals and the environment. Unlike
the by-any-means-necessary ethos of those organizations, Wolf Patrol is
scrupulous about following the law. The group doesn't spring animal traps or
block roads, nor does it in any way interfere with the activities of
hunters. Rather, Wolf Patrol acts as a kind of backwoods neighborhood watch:
It keeps a close eye on hunters to ensure they aren't breaking state and
federal hunting regulations, and when it does encounter illegal behavior,
reports it to the appropriate authorities.
Wolf Patrol's avoidance of EarthFirst!-style monkey-wrenching marks an
evolution for the group's founder, Rod Coronado. Longtime environmental
activists might recognize his name. In 1986, when he was 20 years old and a
member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Coronado and a comrade
spent a freezing November night sabotaging a whaling facility in Iceland.
Dressed in dark rain gear and wearing ski masks, Coronado and his companion
smashed the computers and destroyed the equipment of the Hvalfjordur whaling
station. They then opened the seawater control valves on two of the
station's four whaling vessels, sending the ships to the bottom of the
harbor. The attack involved no harm to any person, but it did cause more
than $2 million in damages.
Coronado, who had fled to London after the sabotage, never served any time
for the Iceland anti-whaling operation. But eventually his illegal
activities caught up to him. In the 1990s and early 2000s Coronado was a key
part of "Operation Bite-Back," a nationwide campaign waged by EarthFirst!,
the Animal Liberation Front, and the Earth Liberation Front against hunting,
animal testing facilities, and other alleged animal rights violators. In
1995 he was convicted of participating in an arson attack against a Michigan
State University research facility and sentenced to 57 months in prison. In
2004 he was indicted on three charges of dismantling mountain lion traps,
and just a year later he was convicted of destroying property belonging to
the US Forest Service.
While serving an eight-month sentence, Coronado experienced a change of
heart and came to the conclusion that property destruction and other forms
of sabotage were ineffective and counterproductive strategies for social
change. In an open letter to other practitioners of direct action that he
penned from his jail cell, Coronado wrote, "I still see the rationale for
what I've done, only no longer do I personally choose to represent the cause
of peace and compassion in that way." His tactical conversion was, in part,
the result of becoming a father. "Don't ask me how to burn down a building.
Ask me how to grow watermelon or how to explain nature to a child."
Following the law isn't always easy for Coronado, however. In a recent
interview with Black and Green Review, an "anarcho-primitivist magazine,"
Coronado describes an episode in which he and his crew observed someone
setting a wolf trap. Coronado and his companions rigged up a trail camera in
the hope of catching footage of a captured animal, footage that they could
then use to expose the brutality of trapping. But that night Coronado
couldn't shake the regret that he could have done more. He told Black and
Green Review: "As we drove back to camp, I started thinking about the wolves
in that area, in particular, that one wolf that might happen upon that trap
and be caught and killed. I thought about it, thinking that somewhere there
was a wolf right at that moment catching the scent placed on that trap and
possibly traveling towards its imminent threat. I started crying because I
felt horrible. I consider myself a cousin to the wolf. He is my relative and
I care about him. And here I was walking away from a threat placed
specifically for him and all I could do was take pictures of his suffering.
I cried struggling to rationalize my actions, knowing if I did more, I might
go right back to prison."
Coronado's newfound lawfulness sometimes alienates potential allies. Not
long after he launched Wolf Patrol in the fall of 2014, he was joined by a
young man who had previously been a member of Britain's Hunt Saboteurs. When
Coronado told the new recruit that if he found a wolf in a trap he would
have to leave it there, the guy split, unwilling to abide by the rule.
Coronado had worked with Hunt Saboteurs before (he had helped popularize the
group's work among North Americans), and in some ways the British
organization serves as the global model for those determined to expose
hunting practices. The Hunt Saboteur Association was founded in 1963 with
the primary purpose of ending fox hunting in Great Britain. The Hunting Act
of 2004 put new restrictions on hunting with dogs, but the traditional
practice continues at many hunting clubs. Historically, Hunt Saboteur
members--known as "sabs"--would monitor and document the hunts. Sometimes,
they would interrupt them. Most often this was done by trying to distract
the hounds by, among other tactics, blowing a hunting horn to confuse the
dogs or sprinkling lemon oil on the fox trail to mask its scent. Sometimes
they would play a recording of baying hounds through a loudspeaker, which
would send the hounds running in the wrong direction and, following behind
them, a confused (and annoyed) group of mounted hunters.
The sabs continue this work today as they seek to expose illegal fox hunts.
The website of the Hunt Saboteurs Association says: "One of our greatest
weapons is now the video camera--enough instances of hunts breaking the law
caught on camera and hopefully not even the blinkered politicians will be
able to ignore it." Wearing their signature black facemasks and travelling
across the countryside in groups, Hunt Saboteurs can be a fearful sight. But
their appearance doesn't deter the red-coated hunters from sometimes
attacking them. The animosity between the hunters and the sabs is as intense
as that between rival gangs, and it's most often the sabs who get hurt
(though there have been injuries on both sides in the course of
confrontations). In August 2014, for example, a young woman protesting a
hunt was run down by a huntsman on horseback. She suffered seven broken
ribs, a collapsed lung, and trauma to her shoulder.
Despite the dangers involved in being a sab, the Hunt Saboteur movement
continues to grow. In recent years, knock-off groups have formed in other
European countries, the US, and Canada. The hunting saboteurs are, in a
sense, warriors for wildlife.
The mixed-used landscape of western Wisconsin would seem an unlikely home
for wolves. It's farming country, with barbed wired pastures holding cattle
and thick-coated horses. Farm houses are scattered here and there, most
looking like they've come to terms with their ultimate return to the earth.
The terrain doesn't much resemble the wolf-heaven of Yellowstone's Lamar
Valley or the dense forests of northern Minnesota. Yet wolves do, in fact,
live in Wisconsin--plenty of them did, before the hunting began. They've
adapted to find cover in bogs, parcels of uncut forest, and the strips of
timber that sandwich the creeks.
Grey wolves were extirpated from the state by the 1960s--the victims of a
relentless campaign of trapping, hunting, and poisoning. But slowly wolves
returned to the Badger State as lone dispersers and then whole packs
traveled southward from the timberlands of Minnesota. They thrived under the
protection of the federal Endangered Species Act. By winter of 2011, there
were somewhere between 782 and 824 wolves in the state, according to a
census by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. But when federal
protections for wolves in the Great Lakes Region were lifted in January
2012, a hunting season was quickly established. That year, 117 wolves were
killed. In 2013, the number was 257. By the end of the 2014 through 2015
season, a total of 528 wolves would be lost to trapping and hunting.
When I traveled to Wisconsin in December 2014, it was the last week of the
wolf-hunting season. Hunters had already filled the wolf quotas in four of
the state's six game units, and they didn't have much time left. Wolf Patrol
expected a lot of activity.
The days start early for Wolf Patrol as they shadow the hunters. We hit the
road at 5 a.m. to begin the patrol of Zone 3, a section of western Wisconsin
bordering Minnesota. Four other Wolf Patrol members were scouting nearby in
two other vehicles, all communicating via cell phone. If one group came
across hunters, they were to call the others to join them, the goal being
not to harass or interfere, simply to observe and record the hunters'
activities.
I'm in a beat-up Toyota 4Runner with Coronado. At 49, he's trim and fit, the
coppery glint of his skin hinting at his Pascua Yaqui Indian background. As
he drives the back roads he is busy scanning the horizon with his typical
unswerving intensity.
We spend six hours in the car, but the only hound hunters we see--dressed as
expected in camouflage and worn, heavy boots--are the ones enjoying a
leisurely breakfast at a local cafe. We watch them through the windows, not
wanting to blow our cover. The beds of the hunters' parked trucks hold
wooden hound boxes, but we see no dog faces poking out, nor do we hear any
whining or baying. There has been no new snowfall, and the old snow is
mostly gone. These conditions, I'm told by Coronado, aren't ideal for
setting a pack of dogs onto the trail of a wolf. The hounds are likely at
home.
Coronado drives on, through miles and miles of country, over dirt roads, on
private land and then on public land. He stops to review a map, then goes on
again. There is likely at least one hound hunter in the area and Coronado is
determined to find him. He speaks on the cell phone with his crew. They
haven't seen any action either. There is talk about the quota. Some game
zones have gone over their allowed number of kills, so Wolf Patrol initiates
a phone campaign to the Department of Natural Resources to demand a halt to
the hunting season. (More than 200 calls were made to the agency, we later
learn.) The sun is melting the remnants of snow and warming the air. Nothing
much happens.
Back on the road after a short break to stretch our legs, Coronado gets a
call. The 2014 Wisconsin wolf-hunting season is officially closed. The
quotas in all game zones have been met. Hunters have killed 154 wolves, but
at least it's over. As Coronado points out, "It's a hollow victory. The
hunting is over but the training continues."
Just a few weeks later, on December 23, 2014, a federal judge would return
Endangered Species Act protection to the Wisconsin wolves. But Coronado's
work continues. Despite its name, Wolf Patrol doesn't monitor only wolf
hunting. In Wisconsin, bear hunting is also a popular tradition--and big
business for guides and outfitters--and Coronado and his crew spent much of
2015 watchdogging the activities of bear hunters.
Often, bears are hunted after being baited with an irresistible lure. Bear
bait can consist of cookie dough, donuts, candy, grease, chocolate, or a
concoction of all of the above (or a commercially prepared high glucose
paste made especially for this purpose) that is stuffed in a hollowed-out
stump at a bait site. A Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources survey of
bear hunters determined that 4.63 million gallons of bear bait were dumped
at 82,300 sites in 2014 alone. Coronado explains that not only do bears
become habituated to bait sites, but deer do as well. And where there are
deer, there are wolves, creating the opportunity for deadly run-ins with
hunters and their hounds.
Then there are the run-ins between Wolf Patrol and area hunters and law
enforcement. While monitoring bear baiting in eastern Wisconsin in the
summer of 2015, Wolf Patrol was accused by the Polk County Sheriff's
Department of being in violation of Wisconsin's hunter harassment law,
though no charges were filed. Then, in September 2015, Wolf Patrol members
were caught in a heated confrontation with some local hunters. Videos shot
by Wolf Patrol members show the build-up of tensions between the group and
hound hunters.
In one video, which was filmed on a rural road in the Chequamegon-Nicolet
National Forest, Wolf Patrol's vehicle is purposefully blocked in for half
an hour by a hound hunter's truck. When Coronado backs up in an effort to
leave, the hound hunter drives in closer, preventing his escape. Another
video, shot just two days later, shows at least a dozen hunters angrily
confronting Coronado and his group. One hunter asks Coronado if he's a
convicted felon. Coronado says, "Yep, done my time." The hunter responds,
"Once a felon, always a felon." Coronado displays restraint. He appears calm
and confident, and he doesn't back down. Coronado is anything but a rookie,
and he knows how to de-escalate a potentially dangerous situation. He
engages the hunters without inciting them. Eventually some local sheriff
deputies arrive and the situation is defused.
A new Right to Hunt bill, introduced in the Wisconsin legislature in
October, reflects these growing tensions, and is a direct response to Wolf
Patrol's monitoring activities in the state. If passed, AB 433 would
strengthen Wisconsin's existing hunter harassment law by adding protections
to hunting-related activities like scouting, dog training, and animal
baiting. It would also criminalize engaging in "serial conduct" that is
intended to "impede or obstruct a person who is engaged in lawful hunting,"
including photographing or filming hunters, maintaining proximity to
hunters, or approaching or confronting hunters.
In addition to angering hunters, Wolf Patrol's confrontational tactics are
controversial among some wildlife advocates too. Even in the close-knit
community of wolf defenders, Wolf Patrol isn't always welcomed. Some people
feel the group is undoing years of effort to build relationships with those,
especially ranchers, who aren't fans of Canis lupus. A staffer with a
well-established wildlife advocacy group, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, told me: "Wolf Patrol is stirring the pot. Their work is
antagonistic and polarizing and now we have to deal with it." This person
said Wolf Patrol's presence in Montana in the fall of 2014 was one of the
reasons an effort to create a "Montana Wolf Stamp" failed. The measure would
have allowed non-hunters to buy a $20 "wolf stamp"--sort of like a fishing
license--to support wolf conservation programs in the state. But in
September 2014, after receiving more than 50,000 comments on the issue,
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks dropped the idea. According to some wolf
proponents, Wolf Patrol's sudden presence in the state and the ensuing
controversy caused the state agency to shy away from any activity that would
appear unsympathetic to the ranching and hunting community.
Others in the wolf advocacy community applaud the efforts of Coronado and
his crew. Wally Sykes is a wolf advocate living in northeastern Oregon, home
of Oregon's natal packs. He is the co-founder of Northeast Oregon Ecosystems
and a member of the Wallowa County Wolf Compensation Committee, as well as a
member of the Pacific Wolf Coalition. When I asked Sykes for his opinion of
Wolf Patrol, he said, "I support the Wolf Patrol groups in the Upper
Midwest. I believe the campaign to ensure significant and healthy wolf
populations, free of persecution for sport and profit, needs both soft and
hard power. Too much effort and money is spent on trying to reason with and
accommodate wolf-haters and not enough to actually oppose those who go out
and kill wolves, and what could be more effective than to have people out
there looking over the shoulders of the hunters and trappers to expose their
methods and acts?"
For his part, Coronado seems unfazed by the controversy, just as he seems
unaffected by positive publicity. But he admits that he finds the negative
reaction divisive. "They need to be less mad at us and more mad at the
problem," he says.
On September 7, 2015, a video appeared on Facebook of a grizzly bear
struggling to escape the shots of trophy hunters. The clip was less than two
minutes long, but it felt much longer. The scene begins with a lanky, dark
brown bear making his way down a mountain slope when shooting starts. Hit in
the hindquarters, the bear twirls in circles, then straightens and runs. The
animal is hit again, and then a third time. A hunter is heard saying, "You
shot behind him!" The shooting resumes and the bear drops to its side, alive
but mortally wounded. Streaks of blood stain the snow below its body. The
hunters are heard laughing as the bear rolls down the hill like a log until
it stops, presumably dead, against the side of the mountain.
In the space of just a few days the video received more than three million
views. A 25-year-old surfer and wildlife advocate named Tommy Knowles had
posted the video after stumbling across it on YouTube. Then Facebook removed
the video, citing a possible copyright infringement. But the graphic footage
had already served its purpose. The video was covered by The Huffington
Post, theNew York Daily News, and The Independent in the UK, and it helped
to launch the fall hunt-monitoring campaign of the Wildlife Defense League.
In 2010 Knowles had been on his way toward earning a business degree at
Okanagan College in British Columbia when he learned about the annual
dolphin hunts in Taiji, Japan and started to sour on the idea of a
traditional career. After Sea Shepherd accepted his application, Knowles
served as a deckhand in the waters of the Faroe Islands, monitoring the
pilot whale hunting there, and later on the Steve Irwin during the group's
Antarctic whale defense campaign.
After the Steve Irwin made port, Knowles returned to BC and, in 2014,
started the Wildlife Defense League. The group's first campaign was
"Operation Great Bear." At the invitation of the Klabona Keepers--members of
the Tahltan First Nation who live near Iskut, BC--the defense league helped
create and then sustain a road blockade to keep non-Native hunters out of an
area the Tahltan call "the Sacred Headwaters" in northern BC. The blockade
was successful, though it led to a couple of tense confrontations with
hunters seeking moose, wolves, bear, and caribou. On one occasion, a hunter
tried to storm through the blockade but stopped when WDL members sat down in
front of his truck.
Knowles says his group is dedicated to direct action, which he defines as,
"Any action that has an immediate effect on the protection of humans,
animals, or the environment." The mission statement of the Wildlife Defense
League reads: "To defend wildlife from exploitation while abiding by
international conservation law and laws set out by First Nations. Wildlife
Defense League uses non-violent tactics to document, monitor and expose
those who attempt to destroy wildlife." The group's goal, Knowles says, is
to ban trophy hunting in Canada.
Like Rod Coronado and Wolf Patrol, Knowles believes that exposing what he
says is the unnecessary cruelty of trophy hunting will eventually lead to
halting the practice. And, also like Coronado, Knowles is committed to
remaining within the boundaries of the law. Wildlife Defense League monitors
and documents trophy hunting, but its members (usually about a half dozen
people in the field at any one time) will not interrupt the actions of
hunters. "We can interfere with the hunt for one day and be arrested and
taken out of action," Knowles says. "Obeying the law is much more
sustainable."
So far--at least as measured by public attention and support--the strategy
seems to be working. Earlier this year Knowles ran an Indiegogo campaign
seeking $10,000 for food, fuel, and communications equipment to sustain the
hunt monitoring; just two days after the grizzly-hunting video was posted on
Facebook, the campaign exceeded its goal and raised $16,000. Knowles is now
working with another Canadian environmental group, Pacific Wild, founded by
photographer and filmmaker Ian McAllister. This winter they will begin
filming the BC government's program of wolf culling, including its use of
helicopters to track and then destroy wolf packs.
And the videos themselves--of wolves dying in traps, of bears gunned
down--have unquestionable power. Before Facebook removed the video from its
site, I watched the clip of the grizzly shooting in BC, sickened by the
image of the struggling animal and the flippant comments of the hunters, and
was relieved that one click would remove me from the scene.
"I can't imagine seeing wolves being gunned down from helicopters," Knowles
told me during one of our conversations. "It is such a tragic and inhumane
killing and to bear witness will be the most challenging thing I've ever had
to deal with."
That, of course, is the point: To make sure that we all have to bear witness
to the harsh reality of trophy hunting, until we can't stand to look
anymore, and finally decide, as a culture, to do something about it.
Beckie Elgin is a freelance writer living in Southern Oregon. She blogs at
WolvesandWriting.com.
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