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For Immediate Release - May 28, 2014
Animal Planet Cancels Man-Eating Super Wolves Show;
Program Nominated for Scat Award by
International Wolf Center
Contact: Tom Myrick, communications director
Office: 763-560-7374, ext. 225
Cell: 763-567-1907
[email protected]
Following sharp public criticism, Animal Planet removed its Man-Eating Super Wolves show from previously scheduled air times on Tuesday evening, May 27, and Wednesday, May 28. The program was a part of the special series Monster Week, which routinely demonizes real and imagined predators.
"The show was irresponsible," said the Center's Executive Director Rob Schultz. "Producers blended distorted facts, fabricated details and unreliable resources to confuse the public and incite fear and hatred of wolves."
It is because of these damaging distortions that Man-Eating Super Wolves has been nominated for the Center's 2014 Scat Award, given for the worst portrayal of wolves in the media, literature or cinema.
"Left unchecked, these distortions can cause people to make poor and misinformed decisions that affect the future of wolves living in the wild," Schultz explained.
Renowned Senior Research Scientist and wolf expert L. David Mech, of the U.S. Geological Survey, denounced the program as "Total nonsense and a real disservice to the wolf, to science, and to the public.
Mech, who has spent his 55-year career studying wolves in many areas of the world, says that the program is one of the most sensationalistic, exaggerations of the real wolf that he has ever seen.
"If wolves were so dangerous to humans," Mech asked, "how have Minnesotans canoeing and hiking survived throughout the Superior National Forest and other parts of northern Minnesota, where some 2,500 or 3,000 wolves roam? Or throughout most of Canada, where an estimated 60,000 wolves live?"
Photo Caption: Mech takes behavioral notes on an arctic wolf during a research expedition. He carries no gun and never felt he needed to do so.
"Wolf attacks on humans are uncommon and extremely rare," says Schultz. "To suggest that wolves have consumed all of their natural prey and are beginning to feed on humans is ridiculous and demonstrates a lack of understanding of our natural world."
The Scat Award was last given to the movie The Grey in 2013.
The International Wolf Center advances the survival of wolf populations by teaching about wolves,
their relationship to wildlands and the human role in their future.
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