Yet another citizens’ cull of wolves in British Columbia is underway in 2021. Knowing that the optics of their violent hobby will do damage to public opinion of hunting, groups and individuals are careful to post to private social media platforms. At least one hunting group makes posts of their intentions, then removes them to avoid a record of their activities on their public Facebook page.

The Kootenay Elk Hunting Association makes a habit of posting, then removing, contentious content on their Facebook page. Registered as a BC Society last year, they inspire their followers to kill wolves and bears with inflammatory posts. These are a few of the posts from 2021 that they have posted to their Facebook page, then removed to avoid public attention.

The Province handed over wolf management to the BC Cattleman’s Association on January 1, 2016, freeing the BC Conservation Officer Service to spend more time on other public complaints. More than fifty trappers work under the Livestock Protection Program, having taken a three day course by the BCCOS.

The hunting community has taken on their own version of wolf management, secure in the knowledge that the province has no limits in place for the trapping of wolves. Raising funds to purchase killing snares, or simply making their own, hunters have been killing untold numbers of wolves for years. The claim is that wolves are competing with the hunters for ungulates.

In February of this year several wolves had been trapped and killed in Sooke BC by an individual calling herself the Inked Huntress. The Province learned of the killings during a media conference some days later. In her response to the killings Minister Conroy, Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, stated that she would consult with the BC Wildlife Federation (a hunting group) and the BC Trapper’s Association regarding a “loophole” in wolf trapping regulations. At this writing, December 2021, there has been no communication by the ministry to the public regarding changes to the current regulations. The citizen culls continue, unsupervised and unregulated.

The most recent (2020) count of hunters in BC was 107,073, and growing as the hunting community “recruits” more hunters, including women and children. That’s a lot of hunters competing with BC wolves. We have never heard one of these 107,073 hunters suggest that they themselves could be the cause of ungulate population decline. While ungulate population declines are blamed on habitat loss, the growing threat of Chronic Wasting Disease, urban sprawl, off-road recreation, mining exploration, increasing wildfires and vehicle strikes on roads and rails, at no time has the hunting community suggested that their own activities should be examined with a true and honest count of ungulate losses by their own hands; legal or illegal, with gun, trap, snare or bow.