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Cover photo credit: TJ Watts, last photo of Takaya
March 24, 2021 will mark a year since the famous west coast wolf known as Takaya was killed by a hunter on Vancouver Island. Two months before his killing winter storms had taken him by strong currents to an urban Victoria community, where he was trapped and relocated to the west coast. In an oddly anthropomorphic statement to the press, the BC Conservation Officer Service declared that the wolf had “left the islands for a reason” to justify not returning him to the islands that he had occupied for eight years. For those who had been following Takaya via local media and a documentary, there was a surety that he would die by a bullet or a trap.
A Freedom of Information request filled in some details about the predictable killing of Takaya. The hunter had been searching for a friend’s lost cougar hounds, missing for days, on Mosaic Forest Management private property near the community of Shawnigan Lake. The wolf that came out of a ditch on a spur road to greet his own dog wore a yellow tag in his left ear.
“He expected the wolf to run off as he had seen them do on many occasions, but instead it stopped on the side of the road and stood there looking at the truck. He knew wolf season was open, so he decided to try to kill it…He is planning on having a taxidermist friend come over and skin the wolf tonight.” Statistics on wolf kills in the province will not be found in any government data, other than their own aerial killings in an attempt to help disappearing caribou. Hunters are expected to self-report their kills and to stay within “bag limits” of three to no limit within their hunting regions. Equally impossible to quantify is the number of wolves that live in the province, some of whom travel between our borders with the US.
The provincial government relies on the anecdotes of hunters regarding wolf population numbers. It’s unknown how the data from reported wolf kills is compared to the estimated population numbers, if at all. No species license is required to kill wolves, therefore the province has no idea how many hunters are active at any time.
A lack of scientific rigor on the part of the BC government has led to citizen culls of wolves across the province. Motivated by anger towards a species that “competes” with several thousand hunters on the land, many have taken to social media to hate monger and to encourage others to kill every wolf they see, posting graphic photos of their wolf kills.
With her documentary and subsequent book “Takaya, Lone Wolf,” Cheryl Alexander gave the world a new view of a wild wolf. Far from a salivating villain determined to eat everything in his path, Takaya was a remarkably intelligent, resourceful, shy individual who was only curious about the humans and their dogs that he occasionally encountered as he lived out his life on the small Discovery/Chatham Islands, 3 miles east of Victoria, BC.
Hunters and conservation officers alike accused Cheryl Alexander of taming the wolf. Preferring the long-held, and certainly ancient reputation of the wolf as a fearsome killer, they were deliberately deaf to her message that he was an individual who’s life ambition was to simply live. Had he been returned to the islands after the January 2020 storms, it’s certain he would have lived out his days as he had for eight years, living resourcefully from the islands he occupied, safe from hunters and conservation officers due to First Nations protection of the islands.
The life and death of Takaya provided British Columbians with an important lesson. Namely, that our wildlife are not the fairy tale monsters that the hunter narrative portray them to be. They have their own agency, their own niche in ecosystems that we have proven ourselves century after century to have never understood.
You can sign a petition in support of a wolf hunting moratorium in BC here.
Kelly Carson
Victoria Animal News
Leave the animals alone! Do not kill any more wolves! What kind of peoples & country we are? Barbaric? Please treat animals & nature with respect!
The money is worth more to those in power than the well being. Eco system and history of the province. Shame is their ignorance. They’re excuse is apathy while the coffers are filled And history ecology dies. Absolutely shameless what’s happening.
History will condemn those now in power allowing this to happen. If there’s a hell. They’re going
Such egotistic callous murders, have no morals or ethics when gun in hand and trigger happy they go about looking for thier next load of innocent victims to gun down ,and slaughter with no remorse or shame ,of the catastrophic impact to ecosystem, of Wolves, coyotes ,taken to earn thier qouta. They call it conservation, when what it really is about is thrill killing hate campaign of a species of wild life , they compete with for thier prey and food source , using this revolting kind of justification for thier macarbe ,way of life , that is crucifying and crippling natures natural chain of life, at a staggering rate! This abhorrent wave of cruelty , has not spared even people beloved pet dogs, that have fallen victim in the wake of cruel trapping and killings , that they so easily boast about and pose on fb with grins accross thier face as if they had just earnt a title or gained an oscar award for thier Atrocity! They are cueless, when it comes to any real accomplishmentor achievement , let alone knowing why these animals , are here inn the first place , or the pivotal role they play in natures necessary chain of life! Certainly not here for them to practice animal abuses on , that they find so entertaining, Wer they only toknow what it states in acclesiastics about this very subject, and the consequences they face with God himself as a result on the appointed day,of reckoning,
These cowardly thrill killers are an insult to real men and hunters, and a dirty marr on the very meaning of mankind,! They are clueless as to why these animals are here in the first place, in ecosystem, and further want paid for thier atrocity, and do not have an iota of remorse for thier heinous activity , of inflicting suffering on natures necessary beings , that are here for higher reasoning,that thier fickle mindedness, could ever contemplate! They also seem to suffer from eyesight defects as they find it too,hard to distiquish between a dog, someones pet or coyote or wolf ! These sociapathic parasites, are a menace to any descent society or moral way of life, and an insult to humanity in all all honesty! This is abhorrent and should not be permitted! It is in no way conservation or management,to the contrary is cruel saddistic abuse,based on a hate regime and competion for the ugulates . Natureis self regulating and needs no added afliction from sickos,
men with guns, bloodlust and cowardice. they deserve to be outed and shamed. Killing animals for fun and ‘recreation’ so there are more of others to kill for fun and recreation. One word – psychopathic.