Posted on 03/03/2016 5:23:26 AM PST by SJackson
In January, the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission voted not to allow the reintroduction of wolves back into the state.
That's too bad, because wolves are coming. They may already be here.
You don't think so? Then why is there a wolf-sighting form on the wildlife commission's website, and why do so many Coloradans claim to have seen canis lupus in the high country?
Theories on how top-tier predators are crucial in ordering and stabilizing landscapes have now been proven.
To understand the potential for wolves in Colorado, we can study lessons learned from two decades of wolf recovery in Yellowstone National Park.
I teach my college students that wolves brought butterflies back to Yellowstone.
I explain that wolves cut the coyote population in half. With fewer coyotes there are more small rodents and mammals aerating the soil and providing better grasses and flowers.
But the largest and most dramatic effect has been culling the Yellowstone elk herd. By 1995 the ungulates had done severe damage to the park. Wolves changed that.
As wolf packs began to hunt elk, the wapiti were slowed and caught in downed timber along rivers and streams. So elk learned safety meant higher sagebrush benches where they could see and smell better.
With fewer elk, plants recovered. Aspen thrived. And in this new thicker forest of riverine vegetation, beaver colonies established small pools, attracting other animals, insects, and yes, butterflies.
The human dynamic changed, too. Thousands of wolf watchers at Yellowstone add $35 million annually to the area's economy.
So who's afraid of the big, bad wolf?
Hunters who see fewer elk, ranchers worried about their cattle, and sheep men forced to adopt new herding techniques. I'm a big game hunter.
Why would I promote more competition for the cow elk I like to shoot? Because I believe in intact ecosystems. I believe hard science trumps superstition and false facts.
It's been more than a decade since the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission convened its Wolf Working Group. It's time for a new working group to convene and for wolf education sessions to start as well. The latter were a goal in the group's original report but they have never taken place.
Would wolves change Colorado ecosystems? Yes, but first, they have to get here, and that's anything but easy. Wolves would have to cross the Red Desert of Wyoming and Rio Blanco and Moffat counties where many ranchers carry rifles in their pickups.
A biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife told me that wolves are coming, but "there's all those guns between us and the Wyoming wolf packs."
That's why official reintroduction is important. In the Mount Zirkel, Maroon Bells, Raggeds or South San Juan wildernesses, we only need a breeding pair. A male and female with amorous intent.
In June 2004, a wolf died along I-70 after being hit by a car. Five years later, in 2009, a GPS-collared wolf traveled 3,000 miles before dying from a banned poison in Rio Blanco County. In April 2015, a coyote hunter accidentally killed a gray wolf near Kremmling, 100 miles west of Denver.
Wolves are coming, slowly.
Colorado Parks and Wildlife even has a 10-year-old plan, "Findings and Recommendations for Managing Wolves that Migrate into Colorado." Strategies involve adaptive management and damage payments for livestock killed.
What's more, "Migrating wolves should be allowed to live with no boundaries where they find habitat," and "Wolf distribution in Colorado will ultimately be defined by the interplay between ecological needs and social tolerance."
Once here, wildlife staff "will implement programs to make sure that wolves are included as a part of wildlife heritage."
If wolves are returning, why not also reintroduce them and boost genetic diversity? Yet in 1982, 1989 and again last month, the state's Wildlife Commission voted to oppose "the intentional release of any wolves into Colorado." That decision is regrettable.
If wolves arrive on their own, we'll have to live with where they appear. If wolves are introduced, there can be more flexibility on where they live and planned ecological
impacts.
Wolf reintroduction first requires a positive vote from the Colorado State Wildlife Commission. A second affirmative vote must come from the Colorado State Legislature.
When I tell my college students that wolves are coming home to Colorado, I always add that I hope I'll be around to see them take hold. We need them back.
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How killing wolves to protect livestock may backfire
BY SARAH ZIELINSKI 12:25PM, MARCH 2, 2016
A couple of years ago, biologists from Washington State University found that killing a wolf to rid a threat to livestock actually increased the chances that cattle or sheep would be killed in the following year. Only eliminating a quarter or more of the wolves in a state resulted in declines in wolves killing livestock.
Ranchers have long killed wolves to protect their animals, but the study’s results seemed to show that the practice might not be as productive as they’d like. Now a new study of wolves in the Italian Alps shows why keeping packs together could be a good move for ranchers.
Camille Imbert of the University of Pavia in Italy and colleagues wanted to know why wolves kill livestock instead of wild prey. Sheep or cattle might look like an easy meal to us, but that may not be true for wolves. And even if a goat was easy to catch, that might not be a wolf’s sole consideration when looking for something to eat.
The researchers studied a population of wolves in Liguria, in northwest Italy, one of the few European wolf populations that has managed to survive into the 21st century and is now starting to expand its range due to new laws and efforts to restore its habitat. From 2008 to 2013, the team collected 1,457 samples of wolf scat and determined which wolf had left the poop behind and what it had eaten. The scientists also figured out whether or not the wolf had belonged to a pack, which consist of a pair of adults and their offspring.
Wolves that belonged to packs tended to eat more wild boar and roe deer and less goat and other livestock than did single wolves, the researchers report in the March Biological Conservation. Lone wolves — either young wolves that are moving to new territory or the former members of a pack that has been broken up (say, when the leaders were killed) — may not know as well what prey is available in an area as the resident pack and may therefore hunt whatever is available, Imbert and her colleagues write. Packs, it seems, can be pickier and go for wild prey when it’s available.
Not that a pack of wolves won’t hunt livestock. Pack wolves did eat goats and other domestic animals. But it seems at least a little blame can be put on Italian herders, who let goats roam unguarded and free in the mountains. And wolves will readily eat young calves born in open pastures; when birthing is done closer to home, cows tend to be safe from wolves.
To keep livestock from being eaten by wolves, the researchers make a few recommendations: Institute a few more protections for domestic animals. Promote a rich community of wild animals that the wolves can eat. And don’t kill wolves and break up packs. “Removal measures do not solve the problem in the long run,” they write.
Bs
It’s ok for wolves to kill livestock in gruesome, suffering ways but it is NOT OK for us to kill livestock in nearly painless ways for our own consumption, so says PETA and other liberal wacko groups. If one doesn’t think this is an anti-meat campaign against ranchers, then I can’t help them. Also, a plan to take land like BLM does.
Control the food, you control the people.
Those damned things were put back in Montana and within 10 years they are all over the place. Deer, Elk and Moose populations have dropped so much it is ridiculous. And there is the livestock that get killed by them too.
I heard the wolves cull the heard so even though there are less elk the one that are there are big and healthy. Is that BS?
If there are too many elk in Yellowstone, why not allow humans to cull the herd?
In some of the hunting districts, the FWP department have removed hunting of Elk, Moose, because there are gone from that area. Elk used to come out of Yellowstone to around Gardner Mt. and there was a late season hunt. the state allowed some thing around 50 bull tags and a thousand cow tags for that. Last time I checked it was 0 bull tags and 50 cow tags. The Elk are gone.
I have yet to find a prey animal that is concerned how it dies.
Wolves were eliminated for some very good reasons.
Just some more envrio wacko BS.
Yep there is so much BS in these articles. Two points, rodents don’t make better ground, they destroy it because their forage is the stems and roots of grasses and plants. And second, farmers don’t keep animals close to home because you have to keep them where the PASTURE is.
As always it’s important to note the wolves the government introduced are not native. They infested the west with Canadian Gray wolves which are much larger than the native Plains wolves.
I can’t say if the ones remaining are big and healthy ... because I don’t see them on my property anymore. And where I live used to be an elk calving grounds so there were elk everywhere. But now we hear howling wolves instead of seeing elk and moose and deer in abundance.
Oh, and I live pretty remote on a mountain in Montana. I used to do all my elk hunting on or within 75 miles of my property. I now travel across the continental divide to central Montana some 250 miles away to hunt elk because the damn wolves haven’t devastated that area yet. All of my local favorite spots are closed or on a lottery where you have no chance of drawing a tag.
I’ll take the pre wolf introduction days hands down. Hunters can cull the herds with the correct game quotas.
Brilliant study....If you don’t guard your sheep and goats, the wolves will get them. So it’s the herders fault???????
The only good wolf is a dead wolf.
Rewinding. Agenda 21. Liberals are bloodthirsty sadists on wolf forums.
also remember it’s not ok to hunt either.
I imagine they also eat earthworms which are probable the major aerators of the ground.
I don’t know about that, rats maybe. Mice and voles are vegetarians and they are what I’ve seen in open fields. They do a lot of damage to grasses, shrubs and small trees if not kept in check. The smaller wild predators or a couple of barn cats is what it takes.
Wolves were reintroduced by the liberals to advance gun control.
The liberals want to eliminate the deer and elk and moose.
The taking of these animals by humans is much better than letting these animals suffer and die from hunger and disease.
They can’t argue with the fact that taking these animals with a rifle is better than letting them suffer.
So, they want to just get rid of the deer and elk and moose.
Then, there will be no need to hunt them and thus, no need for rifles.
Control of us is more important to the liberals than some animals.
I guess wolves weren’t a problem when millions of bison were roaming the great plains.
Liberals want people to live in cities, where they can be controlled, and land being used by ranchers to raise methane producing livestock to return to natural habitat. Of course, hunting will be verboten without The King’s permission.
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