What a great article.
Please visit http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/nature-up/2013/may/17/bloodthirtsty-wildlife-documentaries-reality-ethics
to read it in whole. In essence, the author
does a great job of proving that Yukon Men and others’ like it literally lie
about wolves, wolverines, bears, etc. stating they are mean and killers in
order to grow viewership. In essence, it’s
all cruelty just for ratings. They lie
about the true nature of the majestic animals that need to be left alone. Discovery Channel can f..k off and I hope you all do not support them.
I’ve pasted some text below to summarize, but again, please
visit the story at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/nature-up/2013/may/17/bloodthirtsty-wildlife-documentaries-reality-ethics
“Frenetic edits and manic music are used to build drama,
authoritative-sounding voiceovers combine with the tightly edited words of the
on-screen characters tell how dangerous, vicious or deadly the creatures we're
seeing on screen are. I spot occasions where animal noises seem to have been
overdubbed to make them sound scarier. It makes for gripping viewing, but I
wondered if Discovery wasn't betraying its viewers who trust it to deliver
reliable, factual TV. As a trained zoologist and filmmaker, much of what I was
seeing didn't make sense to me.
Take wolverines for example: I lived in Alaska for almost a
year and never saw one. They're extremely shy and avoid humans. Although
they're capable predators of small animals and found in many cold,
high-latitude regions of the northern hemisphere, I'd never heard of a
wolverine killing a person.
I searched the web and could not find a single documented
case of a wolverine even attacking a person anywhere in the world, ever.
To double-check, I emailed Jeff Copeland of the Wolverine
Foundation, who told me that "we are not aware of any instance in which a wolverine
has killed a human, or even attempted to do so", which perhaps explains
why the wolverines in Yukon Men are doing their desperate best to get away from
their human assailants.
Wolves are a lot larger than wolverines, of course. But even
though the US and Canada hold over 60,000 wolves, I found only two records of
fatal attacks by wild wolves in these countries in last ten years; one
controversial case in Saskatchewan, Canada, in 2005, which some experts think
was actually a bear attack, and another in Alaska in 2010.
Why did the producers of Yukon Men tell their viewers that
there had been twenty fatal wolf attacks in the last ten years, implying that
these had taken place around Tanana? Why does a 'factual' show portray Alaskan
wolves as man-eating monsters straight out of Victorian fairytales, a serious
threat to life and limb, when the data show that wolf attacks are extremely
rare in North America?
Idaho-based wolf expert Suzanne Stone told me that she'd
once been surrounded by a howling pack of gray wolves while sitting by a
campfire in the twilight, armed only with a marshmallow on a stick. The animals
were only twenty or thirty yards away. Was she scared, I asked? "No, not
at all. It was an incredible experience. I howled back and forth with
them", adding that people and domestic livestock were the most dangerous
creatures she'd encountered in many years of walking in wolf-inhabited
backcountry.”
