Killing Canines mostly unknown.
The Fading Call of the Wild is a new report outlining still more declines in the world’s ability to sustain life. It estimates that 24 percent of all wild members of the family Canidae are in decline. And when I cite that figure I do so knowing most (not all) readers will have a muddled sense of what that means. Some will know that “Caniade” is the name scientists use for the family of mammals that includes dogs, jackals, wolves, coyotes, foxes and dholes. Currently scientists recognize 35 or 36 species of wild dogs, depending on whether or not the dingo should be considered a species separate from the gray wolf.
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How many of you can name, say, a third of them…maybe 11 or 12 species?
No marks if you answered schnauzer, poodle, boxer, hound, setter, bulldog, Rottweiler, retriever, great Dane, husky, sheepdog or any other breed of domestic dog. That’s because they are created breeds of but a single species, the domestic dog, descended from some distant ancestral wild dog species, but all a single species by any definition. This is true even though the appearance of, say, a bull mastiff, is vastly different from a Pekinese. But are the exact same species, the respective end products of highly selective breeding over a short period of time…something over 14,000 years…very short in geological or evolutionary terms. It is believed that the dog was the first animal ever domesticated. A fossil from Oberkassel, Germany, shows signs of having a shorter muzzle than wolves at that time, indicating that even that long ago humans were breeding dogs and perhaps intentionally selecting for certain specific traits.
And if, on the other hand, you answered “fox” or “wolf”, the question becomes what kind of fox or what kind of wolf?
Conservationists speak of the “charismatic megafauna”, meaning animals, usually large in size, and attractive, that most folks have heard of, but there is a multitude of lesser known or even largely unknown species, even within a well-known family like the Canids. Most (alas, not all) of us who have known the companionship of a loving family dog cherish the memories and love dogs. Periodically articles remind us how many millions of dollars we spend on “pampering” our pet dogs. But let us very briefly look at what we’ve done to entire species of dogs that most of us are not even aware exist.
At least some of those most people are aware of – coyotes, gray wolves and red foxes, for example – are sometimes so common that many are killed, either for the fur trade, or to limit their numbers as “pests” who threaten human interests, even humans themselves. And sometimes the zeal to remove them has led to just that, the absolute extirpation of entire populations.
Ironically we are putting some back, such as the gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park, although even that endeavour is fraught with controversy. To some the only good wolf is still a dead one, and the species seems to be either extirpated or critically endangered on one hand, or considered a pest on the other, with no in-between.
Few of us have ever heard of the Falkland Island Wolf, a species that evolved on the Falkland Islands with no contact with people, thus no fear of them, and was methodically exterminated in the 19th century. That’s the only known recent loss of an entire species of Canid, although some distinct races of species, such as the Newfoundland or the prairie races of the Gray Wolf, have been exterminated.
Consider the Darwin’s Fox. This is one of the most critically endangered of any wildlife species. It exists in the wild only on Chloe Island, off the coast of Chile. There are just a few hundred left although there has been discovered a small population still living on the mainland. It, too, has no fear of people and sometimes enters homes looking for a snack. I suspect that if I mention it is like a small Northern Gray Fox with short legs, a lot of people still could not conjure an image, even though the Northern Gray Fox is well distributed in North America and, in my subjective opinion, perhaps the most attractively coloured of the fox species.
The Island Fox is found only on six of the eight Channel Islands off southern California. The genetic makeup of animals on each island varies from the others, making this critically endangered species a study in evolution. Pigs are the main problem, sort of. They have been introduced to the island, attracting Golden Eagles from the mainland, which in turn will eat the small foxes. Come to think of it, that really makes the humans who put and keep the pigs there the real problem.
The U.S. is home to the world’s remaining Canid species that is critically endangered, the Red Wolf, native to the south-eastern U.S. Some consider the Red Wolf to be a population of genetically similar animals who derived originally from hybrids between Gray Wolves and Coyotes. By 1980 the Red Wolf was considered extinct in the wild, but captive breeding and release programs are slowly returning it, at least to North Carolina. There is a similar population here in Ontario, where I live, and it is popularly known as the Algonquin Wolf.
However there are three wild Canids on the world endangered list, and they are the African Wild Dog, the Dhole (sometimes called the Asian wild dog), and finally, yet another American species, the San Clemente Island Fox. The latter illustrates the conundrum of politically motivated wildlife management decisions. The fox is found only on San Clemente Island, California, which is also the sole nesting ground of a critically endangered and quite distinctive subspecies of the Loggerhead Shrike. So, the fox is trapped and removed to help protect the shrike.
Photo: Martin Harvey
One of the most beautifully patterned and handsome of wild dogs, the Ethiopian Wolf (pictured), is down to only a few hundred animals, although that is more than there were a few years ago when it was listed as critically endangered, but the species is still officially listed as being at risk, particularly from a new threat, rabies, a fatal and transmittable disease that was brought into the region by domestic dogs, which in turn were brought by people.
No species better illustrates the threat to wild Canids than the African Wild Dog. Splotched and spotted with a harlequin pattern of black, white, gray and tan – no two alike – these boldly attractive animals were entirely wiped out of the entire Serengeti ecosystem in a catastrophic decline that seems most likely to have been the introduction of rabies from domestic dogs, some twenty years ago. Their population is now badly fragmented, meaning there are populations that accumulatively may number at most in the low thousands, but with individual, isolated populations much smaller, and separated into units that cannot reach other populations, a situation referred as “fragmentation”. While receiving legal protection in most of their range, in fact they are still shot, trapped and poisoned as predators of livestock. While they are officially endangered, there is no control in their trade under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and yet recently it was found that there is relatively large-scale international trade to zoos, especially to China. Top conservation organizations were not even aware of this drain on dwindling numbers of the species. Scientists tell us about half the mortality of adult animals is caused by humans.
The Dhole, native to a vast region of Asia that extends from central Russia to Java, is nonetheless down to probably around two or three thousand animals overall. It is questionable if most of those isolated groups contain enough individuals to create a gene pool diverse enough to survive a rapidly changing world.
The bizarre Maned Wolf, of South America, has long, stilt-like legs, and is listed as endangered in Argentina and near-threatened elsewhere. Also from South America is the stubby-legged little creature called the Bush Dog, found from Panama to southern Brazil, and sadly reduced to a few thousand individual animals. At least it, unlike the rarer and more sought-after African Wild Dog, is protected by CITES from commercial trade. Also near-threatened is another South American fox-like creature, the Short-eared Dog, also called the Short-eared Fox. Like Bush Dogs and other wild Canids, it is very hard to find, and may well be rarer than we think. The Sechuran Fox, from coastal regions of Ecuador and Peru, is also near threatened, and undergoes large variations in population size. This gray-coloured fox is trapped by locals so its hide can be used in local handicrafts, many sold to tourists.
The pretty little Swift Fox is now endangered in Canada, where a restoration program is slowly reinstating the species, once extirpated. In the U.S. they may well warrant similar endangered status in much of their range. The San Joaquin race of the equally small and very similar Kit Fox is listed as federally endangered, as is the Oregon population of the species. In Mexico agriculture is replacing the prairie dog communities that sustain these small foxes.
We are really not at all sure of the status of the Tibetan Fox, which is certainly hunted and trapped in its range in central Asia. The Indian Fox, nearly confined to the subcontinent for which is named, is declining in numbers in many areas. Little is known about the Pale Fox, a pretty little creature with a huge, bushy tail that is found in a narrow band across the Saharan region of Africa.
I could continue naming wild Canids that most of you have never even heard of, who are in decline in at least parts of their range, and under increasing pressure. But here’s a sobering thought. The document that inspired this blog, The Fading Call of the Wild, reports that as bad as it is for the wild dogs of the world, with one quarter of all species in decline, think about the wild cats of the world.
There are 37 species of wild cat, of which no less than 86 percent are in decline! And in addition to the ones you know….lions, tigers, leopards…most are also species you have probably never heard of. But they exist, for the time being, in a busy world ever more crowded by us, to the increasing detriment of our non-human neighbours, most of whom are quite unknown and invisible to us, even among the dogs and cats who were here long before the domesticated creatures we think of when we hear those terms.
Now here’s what you can do to help. Drop a quick note to your elected officials or perhaps call their offices and speak to an aid about how important this legislation is to the very survival of these rapidly declining animals.
H.R. 411 Great Cats and Rare Canids Act of 2009 »
Blogging off,
Barry Kent MacKay