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Posted on 10/20/2009 7:25:32 PM PDT by jazusamo
Authors of the plan called the process that produced it wrenching and polarizing. In short: a flashpoint issue.
When it comes to attitudes about wolves, there seems to be no middle ground.
Hunters are afraid wolves will decimate elk and deer populations. Ranchers fear the state’s newest alpha predator will wreak havoc on their livestock. Conservationists worry that hunters and ranchers will shoot the wolves despite state or federal protections.
A recently released draft management plan by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife sets minimum standards for downlisting and delisting wolves in Washington, where they are federally protected in the western two-thirds of the state and state-protected across all of Washington.
It provides guidelines for moving wolves to keep their populations at sustainable and manageable limits, dictates how and when wolves may be scared off or killed, and outlines how the state will balance the wolves’ needs with the desires of sportsmen who pay hefty fees to hunt the very deer and elk the wolves do.
It also calls for a generous compensation package for owners whose livestock has been killed by wolves. But even members of the citizens’ working group that devised the plan question where that money will come from.
Several working-group members described the plan as a compromise.
It was “a way to find some common ground,” but doesn’t qualify as a perfect plan for any of them, said Derrick Knowles of Conservation Northwest, which works to preserve wildlife habitat.
Former state wildlife commissioner Bob Tuck of Selah doubts any single group member agreed with all facets of the plan. But he calls it “a good plan ... in a complex wildlife issue, in which society has multiple responsibilities.”
Wolves’ ebb and flow
The state’s two existing wolf packs, the Lookout Pack near Twisp and the Diamond Pack in the state’s northeast corner, are a far cry from the thousands that once lived here.
By the 1930s, aggressive hunting — often with bounties being paid — essentially eliminated gray wolves in Washington. In 1973, they were federally listed as endangered.
After federal reintroduction efforts, the wolf population grew to more than 1,500 in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming over the past 15 years. With thousands more in British Columbia, it was only a matter of time before packs expanded into Washington. There is no clear estimate when wolves might reach the Yakima area.
Not everyone wants a repeat of what has happened in Idaho.
Eric Johnson, a self-described “hard-core hunter” from Pend Oreille County, is adamant that wolves have taken a heavy hit on elk and deer in Idaho and will do the same in Washington. When that happens, he said, the hunters — not the wolves — would pay the price.
“It sounds like (state officials are) going to manage to recover these wolves, and if deer and elk populations get hurt, the first thing they’re going to do is cut the hunting seasons,” Johnson said.
“Wait until (wolves) start showing up in Yakima. Those wolves will be cutting into the biggest herd in the state — that’s when it’ll get people’s attention. It’s out of sight, out of mind, until they show up in your neighborhood. When you’re out hunting and they’re howling in the woods and you haven’t seen an elk in five days, it’ll hit home.”
Effect on deer and elk
But working group member Tommy Petrie, president of the Pend Oreille Sportsmen’s Club, has heard that argument a lot and isn’t convinced.
“I hate to say (wolves) are going to devastate the elk population, but on the other hand I don’t know,” Petrie said, adding that in general, hunter harvest “is still pretty good” in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming — three states in the Northern Rocky Mountains’ regional wolf recovery program.
The wolves have “definitely changed the dynamics of how you go about hunting the elk” in Idaho, he noted. “By (the year) 2000, when we really started seeing wolf activity, you could go to any one of the six or seven different drainages we hunt pretty heavily and you could run into elk sign. Now the tactics change a little bit — you might go through a few different drainages and not find any elk, but when you do find them, it’s the mother lode.”
Working group member Duane Cocking of Newman Lake, near Spokane, said it felt like he, as a hunting advocate, was “fighting city hall the whole time” during the draft-plan process. “The (state wildlife) department definitely wants wolves,” he said. “There’s that worry on my part and on most hunters’ part, that the emphasis would be on recovery of the wolves rather than protection of the deer and elk.
“I’d much prefer to see a hunter harvest an animal than a predator (kill the same animal).”
About the numbers
But when Cocking declared in a working-group meeting that the state wildlife department should be more focused on providing hunting opportunities than on limiting them with an increased predator presence, Tuck disagreed.
“(The wildlife department’s) job by statute is to manage the fish and wildlife and their habitat. That’s their first responsibility. Providing recreational opportunities is secondary,” said Tuck, the former state wildlife commissioner. “And it makes no difference if the department wants wolves or not, because the wolves are here and now we have to manage them.”
But how many should the state manage? The proposed plan calls for a graduated lowering of state-protected status based wolf population expansion, with delisting to take place once the state can document 15 successful breeding pairs for three consecutive years, spread throughout the state.
The 15-pair minimum number is “way too high,” said working-group member Jack Field of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association. “In my opinion, that’s completely out of whack.”
Field also took umbrage with the plan’s allowing livestock owners to kill a wolf only if it’s “in the act” of attacking livestock — biting, wounding or killing — not just chasing or pursuing. “The concern I have is that a livestock producer is going to be prosecuted for illegally killing a wolf,” Field said. “I think that’s one of the key issues that will draw a lot of attention and discussion during the comment period (which lasts until Jan. 8), and perhaps the department will reconsider that.”
Where to from here?
Working-group member Greta M. Wiegand of Seattle said the plan wasn’t “something we can lay down on the table now and walk away from. ... We do not want to end up with a wolf population that is not genetically sound, not enough different wolf families in there. We all hope that will be watched very carefully — nobody wants genetically unsound wolves running around out there. That wouldn’t be good for anybody.”
Whether the state will be able to follow up its ambitious plan with active management, though, is a legitimate question at a time when the wildlife department has had to cut its budget by large chunks. Working-group member John Blankenship, once a regional deputy director with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department, has his doubts.
“It’s all going to fall on its face, because there’s no money to pay for depredation (repaying ranchers for livestock killed by wolves), and the legislature and the commission haven’t demonstrated they’re going to come up with any,” Blankenship said. “In fact, they kind of laugh when you ask them.”
Whether anybody will be laughing Thursday night, when the state holds its Yakima forum on the plan, is another question entirely.
• Scott Sandsberry can be reached at 509-577-7689 or ssandsberry@yakimaherald.com.
Public forum Thursday
What: Public forum on the state’s proposed plan on the state’s wolf management plan
When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Red Lion Hotel Yakima Center, 607 E. Yakima Ave., Yakima
Would some FReeper please find out if the Blankenship is a vet?
If so, he worked on the “Endangered Florida Panther” program. There, a Vet achieved bureaucratic perfection when he signed Blankenship, DVM to a capture report of a female juvenile cougar weighing 60 or 70 pounds. Said female actually was a male, with fully descended testicles, lainly visible.
Perhaps those testicles are why the vet found the cat was “non lactating”.
Should it be the same Blankenship, the elected officials should be notified of his level of bureaucratic performance of his “professional” duties.
Oops! “lainly” should be “plainly”.
Blankenship is a wolf lover and the exec director of Wolf Haven. Sounds like he can’t get wolves in numbers back into WA fast enough.
http://www.wolfhaven.org/team.php
Actually that is middle ground. Allowing ranchers to shoot wolves after their livestock is as natural as allowing wolves to feed on elk. It sets up a dynamic that forces the wolves back to their natural prey and discourages them from human interaction. That is in the best interest of both.
It is irritating for a necessarily part-time hunter to have to compete with full-time ones for his share of the elk herd but I don't know a lot of hunters who can't cope. The real difficulty is with romantic ecozealots whose aim is to restore the wolf population to some imaginary level that simply isn't reflected in the natural population dynamics. The packs eat the herd, the herd shrinks, the packs shrink. Not allowing the packs to shrink sets up an impossible situation. And federal laws prohibiting ranchers defending their stock sets up precisely that.
Excellent post and that’s exactly the problem. The econuts want wolf populations back to the numbers they were more than a century ago when the western states were sparsely populated with humans. They don’t understand that as more people settled here the wolves were killed off because they not only competed for wildlife but killed our livestock and the wolf will do the exact same thing now if they’re allowed to repopulate in numbers.
The econuts keep saying the wolf has to come back in numbers to benefit the ecosystem, I believe that couldn’t be further from the truth. The ecosystem has done fine without them in the West for the better part of a century and there was no crisis to justify bringing them back.
Say WA? Evergreen State ping
Quick link: WA State Board
FReepmail sionnsar if you want on or off this ping list.
Ping sionnsar if you see a Washington state related thread.
“Conservationists worry that hunters and ranchers will shoot the wolves despite state or federal protections.”
Seen any spotted owls recently? No, you haven’t.
We need these wolves in Massachusetts. We are so overwhelmed with a sickly and overpopulated deer herd bursting with Lyme disease that they need to get a big whack from an apex predator. Our scrawny coyotes just aren’t up to the job.
I hear you. I can’t believe the game depts in the Eastern states don’t thin the deer numbers when they have the overpopulation of them and the lyme disease problem. Do the econuts raise a fuss and keep them from managing the deer populations?
I have it on reliable authority that an employee of the Fish & Wildlife Dept confirmed off the record that there’s been a gray wolf pack on Mica Peak in the Spokane area for almost a year. I have a less reliable report, though from a usually reliable source, that up to 20 head of cattle were taken down in one night this summer by wolves in a rural area about 15 miles from Mica Peak.
It wouldn’t really surprise me. ID has had wolves and wolf problems for quite some time and there’s been little said about them in WA, they’ve had to of been here for some time.
Don’t know about the 20 head of cattle being killed, you’d think something like that would have hit the news but if the rancher was paid off for the kills I suppose it’s possible he agreed to keep quiet about it.
Yeah, a friend of mine was elk hunting in the St. Joe area during the recent archery season. He’s been going to the same area for decades. He started reporting wolf problems a few years ago, including last season when a lone hunter was surrounded by a half dozen wolves that he was able to scare off by shooting one of them. My friend says that this year was the worst yet. The wolves were howling on and off all night every night, and often very close by. The hunters in the area saw more moose than usual, but hardly any elk. One hunter claimed that while in his tree stand he watched a small group of wolves kill a moose cow and her baby almost right below him.
I think the environazis have so romanticized the wolf that it might shock a lot of their sympathizers if they could actually see a typical wolf kill. Wolves are one of the few predators that kill purely for sport. They kill by severing the achilles tendon of their prey, crippling them so they can’t escape. Then they debowel the prey while its still alive. As often as not, they’ll just leave behind dead but uneaten carcasses.
I agree with you also that the report of the 20 head of cattle is suspect, though the source is usually reliable. Given that Fish & Wildlife is taking great pains to keep the wolf pack on Mica Peak some kind of state secret, it might not be too surprising that someone would pay off a rancher pretty handsomely for his silence. Time will surely tell.
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