Denali's Wolves

Argumentative essay

12/15/2004

Denali's Wolves

For many years my family and I have traveled around the country to visit our national parks and view the wildlife they protect. I've been from Hawaii to Maine to the Virgin Islands. My favorite memories as a child are those of camping with my family in these national parks. One of the few parks I have not had the pleasure of visiting is Denali National Park in Alaska. Last year while reading a magazine, I learned of something that troubled me very much. There was an article about wolves and how you can see them living in their natural habitat just by driving through the park. After reading this article, I wanted to visit Denali and see these amazing creatures, but these wolves are being slowly eradicated. Our national parks are supposed to protect wildlife, and preserve a small portion of land for our children. If we allow these wolves to decay into history we will be disrupting a fragile ecosystem and disappointing future generations. If enough people support the outright protection of these creatures we will be able to share their beauty with the world forever.

Our society has adopted a belief that no one person can make a difference. Americans see negative things happing in our country and hope that someone will make changes, but are afraid of taking action themselves. This kind of thinking is called deindividuation. Deindividuation into a group results in a loss of individual identity and a gaining of the social identity of the group. The three most important factors for deindividuation in a group of people are: Anonymity, so I can not be found out. Diffused responsibility, so I am not responsible for my actions. Group size, as a larger group increases the above two factors (Deindividuation). Our society has made anonymity, and diffused responsibility part of our everyday lives. If you choose not to help conserve the wolves of Denali you won't be discovered or persecuted, you can go on living your life. Anonymity is something we need to make it through the day or we would be bothered by everyone with a different request. Diffused responsibility is where we can find most of our society's problems. There is always that voice in the back of our heads telling us that someone else feels the same way we do and is going to do something about it. We rationalize with ourselves and put the blame on society. When we feel in our core that something must be done but brush the responsibility onto society's shoulders we are lying to ourselves.

Denali National Park is home to the majority of our nation's and the world's most frequently viewed wolf population. This summer alone 30,000 tourists experienced these wolves without even leaving their vehicles. Denali is Alaska's number one tourist attraction, and covers more than 6 million acres. It began as Mt. McKinley National Park in 1917, but wasn't until 1980 that the name was change to Denali National Park. People travel to Denali to view Mt. McKinley (America's highest mountain) and its famed wolves.

Wolves are amazing creatures that stack up to be more than your average canine. Wolves can stake claim to territories recorded to be over 800 miles. Average wolf packs usually consist of 8-10 wolves, but one Denali pack recorded 27 members plus 3 pups. They have the ability to hunt caribou, moose, Dall sheep, beaver, and ground squirrel. They use howling and scent marking to scare of rival packs. They also show us their rank in the pack by the position in which they carry their tale. They accomplish all this with a brain twice the size of a domestic dog, and extremely developed social skills. Not only are these wolves the most famous in the world, one group is the world's oldest known family lineage of any nonhuman social vertebrate in the wild.

These wolves belong to the Toklat wolf pack. They are the first group of wolves to be studied in their natural habitat and are of major scientific significance. They have been seen and photographed more then any other group of wolves. If they die, so do the memories of thousands of people. Another famous Denali wolf pack is the Margaret pack. Named after Mount Margaret this pack lives nearest the park entrance and main road. The Margaret pack is the fifth pack in the parks history to inhabit this area. The first four packs were eradicated by trappers and other humans. Due to the history of the wolves before them, if any wolves need our protection it's the Margaret pack. They are the first wolves you see as you drive into the park and this is an experience which must be preserved. In a state where tourism ranks as one of the top industries, surely these two wolf families can be protected for wildlife viewing benefits. This equals just 11 wolves out of approximately 7,000 believed to exist in the State! (Protect Denali'sÐ'...).

How important is it for Alaskans and visitors to be able to view wolves in the wild, particularly wolves that are so approachable that they all but pose for photos? And if it can be established that a particular group of wolves has a 60-year lineage versus a five-year span, what difference does that make? Does an historic i.d. make them any more worthy of protection from hunters? These are several of the questions currently dividing Alaskan environmental activists and government scientists (Christiansen). The wolves of Denali have never been aggressive toward humans so why are we killing them? The number of wolves in the Toklat pack are at their lowest ever. These wolves can venture into state lands where they can be hunted, trapped, or contract diseases from domestic animals. In 1983 an entire pack known as the Savage were completely eradicated by one hunter.

In 1996, Alaska's voters banned the practice of shooting wolves from aircraft (Under the Gun). Just when it looks like Alaskans' are beginning to wise up and realize that wolves are more then cattle you can mow down they compromise. despite of recent public support to limit predator control measures, the Alaska Board of Game just passed a regulation that allows hunters to shoot wolves from a moving snowmobile (Daerr). Do our representatives really believe it's fair for us to be able to kill wolves from snowmobiles? Hunters would say that they are allowed to do this because it's too hard to find them unless you can cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. Well, maybe it's too hard to kill them because we're not supposed to kill them. We already use firearms that shoot hundreds of yards, now we're allowing hunters the opportunity of killing these animals without even standing up.

Wolves have been contracting a virus called the