Page 39 - Canadian Geographic

YUKON WOL VES

archeological records — since the A wolf on the hunt for caribou in
time when extinct giant mammals WOLF-HUMAN CONFLICT northern Yukon’s Barn Mountains
such as the woolly mammoth (opposite) is interrupted by a northern
roamed the grasslands of what we DID NOT BECOME A MAJOR ISSUE harrier protecting its nest. Siblings
now call Beringia, during the socialize near their den (above).
Pleistocene Epoch. But like the UNTIL THE KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH
mammoths, the Beringia wolves ungulates, too. In the 1920s, trap-
vanished sometime during the tran- BROUGHT THOUSANDS OF pers were authorized to set out poi-
sition from the Pleistocene to the sonous strychnine baits for wolves,
Holocene, 12,000 to 6,000 years ago. NEWCOMERS TO THE AREA. and a system of wolf bounties was
Modern wolves, Canis lupus, subse- set up.
quently migrated up to the territory Eventually, the government took
from southern North America as the ice the territory until the 20th century, after control of the strychnine programs,
sheets receded, clearing the way. the Klondike Gold Rush brought thou- rather than allowing trappers to free-
Wolves, a source of both fear and sands of newcomers to the area. After lance the process, and efforts to poison
respect for Indigenous Peoples in the the gold rush, trappers in a booming the wolves into submission continued
region, were often featured in imagery and busting fur industry began to com- for decades. In his book, Hayes
and stories. (Many First Nations people plain that wolves were harming their describes arriving by helicopter on the
today, particularly in southern Yukon, business; a growing number of sport scene of a strychnine bait site in 1985:
belong to the Wolf Clan.) Wolf-human and subsistence hunters blamed the “There was a sow grizzly bear crumpled
conflict did not become a major issue in wolves for the shrinking herds of in the trees, two wolves, 10 ravens and

CANADIAN GEOGRAPHIC 39