Praxis speaker advocates for wolves

By Anna MacPhee Collegian Freelancer

Reintroducing wolves into American forests could decrease property damage, disease, and even car accidents, said Dominic Parker in a Praxis lecture on Nov. 17.

“Wolves have been enemy No. 1 for civilizations for a long time,” said Parker, who is an applied economics professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

“But some of the research I’ve been working on shows wolves have a lot of economic benefits and can save human lives.”

According to Parker, wolves could economically benefit American counties by decreasing the deer population.

“Deer damage crops and landscaping,” Parker said. “They are also possibly involved in the spread of Lyme disease through deer ticks and chronic wasting disease. And they’re one party of deer-vehicle collisions, which do a lot of damage to the vehicle and cause human injuries and fatalities.”

In counties where wolves were reintroduced, animal-vehicle collisions decreased by about 25%, according to Parker.

Parker said wolves could reduce these costs not only by hunting deer but by causing changes to deer behavior.

“Wolves try to minimize the costs of travel, so they travel on the flatter features, such as streambeds, gullies, and roads,” Parker said. “One possibility is that deer learn to stay away from those areas when wolves are around.”

Charles Steele, associate professor of economics and faculty adviser to Praxis, said he appreciated Parker’s research on the indirect economic effects of reintroducing wolves.

“As far as I know, no one has ever asked this question before, about these other effects of wolf reintroduction,” Steele said.

Junior and Vice resident of Praxis Alec Stamm said he appreciated the economic approach to understanding wolf reintegration projects.

“Having an economic perspective on something you would consider a biological or scientific issue is very helpful because econ teaches you how to think through those policies,” Stamm said.

According to Parker, wolf reintroduction remains a very controversial issue because those who benefit from wolves do not always pay the costs. Farmers whose livestock are killed absorb the costs of wolves, Parker said.

A conservation group called Defenders of Wildlife are addressing this issue, Parker said. The group set up a program to compensate farmers for any livestock killed by wolves.

“If farmers have losses due to wolves, but you pay them, they’re more willing to put up with the wolves,” Parker said.

Despite potential setbacks to wolf reintroduction, Parker said it is a policy worth considering.

“If wolves recovered over the historic range, which I’m not sure we would want them to, the savings would be $3.1 million per year, and there would be about 9,000 fewer human injuries and 60 fewer deaths due to car accidents,” Parker said.