
If you were a gray wolf, your New Year’s resolutions may have wisely included ādonāt get shot.āĀ That resolution may get harder to keep as the year wears on. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) has proposed dropping all gray wolves from the Endangered Species list in the Lower 48 states. It is expected to act in March.
āWeāre going to be watching what the administration does with its proposal to de-list wolves from the rest of the country,ā says Defenders of Wildlife senior attorney Jason Rylander.Ā But he notes Trumpās is ānot the first administration that has considered trying to remove wolves.ā
Wolves in the northern Rockies, which includes Idaho, Montana, Wyoming outside Yellowstone National Park, eastern Oregon and Washington east of Highway 97, have already been delisted. During the George W. Bush administration, when the USFWS had tried earlier to delist wolves in most of the northern Rockies, federal courts shot the agency down. But in 2011, Congress took matters into its own hands, delisting northern Rockies populations by majority vote as part of a budget deal to keep the federal government open.
The delisting language in the budget bill was introduced by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho). In other words, it had bi-partisan support. That marked the first time Congress had ignored science and legal precedent and just decided, as a matter of politics, that part of a listed species had recovered.
Closer to home, where wolves are still federally listed west of Highway 97 and are listed by the state throughout Washington, prospects may ā or may not ā look somewhat better. If wolves lose all federal protection, they still have the state. But state policy looks uncertain. At the end of September, Gov. Jay Inslee wrote to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), arguing ā[w]e must find new methods to better support co-existence between Washingtonās livestock industry and gray wolves in our state,ā Inslee said in the letter. āThe status quo of annual lethal removal is simply unacceptable.ā
āLethal removal?ā Yes. Although wolves have a place on Washingtonās endangered species list, the stateās wolf management plan says that if a wolf kills domestic livestock, state employees may kill it. And state employees do. Last year, the state basically wiped out one pack and decided to target some wolves from two others. (Of course, anyone who catches a wolf in the act of attacking livestock, pets, or people can ā and presumably would ā simply shoot it.)
In the context of protecting livestock, itās tempting to say, āno one really wants to shoot wolves,ā but that would be wildly untrue.Ā āThe 2011 de-listing of the wolf as an endangered species [in the northern Rockies] has led to wholesale slaughter, as it is now left to the states to allow or disallow trapping, snaring, baiting, and poisoning,ā writes Melissa Kwasny in Putting on the Dog. āHatred of them is fierce: in 2013, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks issued 24,479 wolf-hunting licenses.ā The actual number of wolves killed was only in three figures. And the number of applications may reflect not a hatred of wolves but a desire to kill one as a trophy.Ā Still, whatever the reason, plenty of people would clearly love to bag themselves a wolf.
In Washington, some people assume that the owners of a single ranch in northeast Washington, the Diamond M, have been gaming the system. āTwenty-six of the 31 eradicated wolves [under the stateās wolf management plan] were killed after the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife deemed that members of their packs had attacked Diamond M livestock,ā Richard Read wrote last month in Phys.org. āEnvironmentalists say the ranch not only fails to take preventive steps to safeguard its herds, but in some cases also brings on the bloodshed by leaving cattle near known wolf dens.ā
A nation-wide de-listing would ājeopardize this fragile recovery that is really just getting started,ā says Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) wildlife protection manager Amanda Wight. But what is recovery? Thatās āa tricky question,ā Wight says. Itās ānot just about numbers.ā
Itās also about occupying habitat. A lot of the United States is no longer plausible wolf habitat. But a lot still is. Wight concedes that not all historic range is still habitat, but nearly 70% of the suitable habitat that remains isnāt occupied.
When I was a little kid in the Bronx, I imagined wolf packs racing down the basement hallways of tall brick apartment buildings. Toward me. It was not a comforting thought. Now, I rather like imagining wolves roaming the abandoned corridors of bankrupt shopping malls.
I realize that probably wonāt happen, but if we wanted to, we might let wolves go back to places that seem almost as unlikely. An āessential question,ā says Defenders of Wildlife senior attorney Jason Rylander, is āare we going to restore wolves everywhere?ā He notes that their historic range includes New England and upstate New York.ā
In Washington,ā the recovery is going very well,ā says Conservation Northwest (CNW) science director Dave Werntz. The stateās wolf population is growing at an annual rate of about 28 percent. āWashington could be considered a success story,ā Werntz says, especially compared to our neighbor states [where] they’re still managing them down to right above [population levels] where they would have to be protected [again] by the Endangered Species Act.ā
CNW executive director Mitch Friedman notes that officially the state has about 147 wolves in 27 packs. āWe believe that’s undercounting data,ā he says. āI tend to think that there’s, let’s call it 200 wolves in the state. Let’s call it 30 packs.. Ninety percent of the packs havenāt been involved in conflicts and therefore havenāt been killed. āThat gives us 90 percent that havenāt been shot,ā he says. āThat’s not bad. Take that [one Diamond M Ranch] family out of the picture, and the state has killed very few wolves.ā Heād like to keep it that way.
Most of the stateās wolves live in northeastern Washington. The stateās first pack in 70 years appeared in the Methow Valley in 2008. Werntz says the ārecovery in the North Cascades has been slower [than expected] largely because of the horrific poachingā that all but destroyed that first documented pack. The pack was a victim of poaching.
The story, which made headlines, could be seen as grist for either a horror film or a dark comedy: A Fed Ex driver refused to take a package from a business in the Omak Walmart when he saw blood seeping from it. The package turned out to contain a very fresh wolf pelt. Gray wolves were still federally protected in eastern Washington then, and the FBI got involved. The trail led swiftly to a guy in Twisp, who had video on his home computer showing that he had also killed a second wolf. He, his wife and his father all wound up pleading guilty to federal offenses; they were fined, but no one went to jail.
Now, āa big goal, Friedman says, āis to get wolves south of I-90. āIn the south Cascades, hunters see them [and] residents see them,ā but thereās not a documented pack. āOnce you have a reproducing pack in the south Cascades, you will know it,ā Werntz says. āWe will see them.ā
And once they do get south of I-90, the living should be relatively easy. Theyāll find ālots of industrial timberland,ā Friedman says, plus: ālots of elk with hoof disease and a lot fewer cattle.ā
āPoaching is [still] the main threatā to wolf recovery, Werntz says. āIt’s a cultural thing; itās more likely to happen when people feel as though their concerns are not being addressed by the agency and by society, being ignored.ā Recent history suggests at least some of the people out in ranching country do feel heard. āWe’ve seen an uptick,ā Werntz says. āMore and more livestock owners are working with the agencyā on deterrence.
āDeterrenceā ā that is, scaring or hassling wolves away from livestock instead of shooting them after they attack ā stands at the core of Washingtonās wolf-management plan. Research shows, Wight says, that deterrence is actually a more effective way of protecting livestock than just shooting wolves. And shooting them can have unintended consequences: Itās widely accepted that a lack of wolves is the main reason why we now have coyotes virtually everywhere.
Friedman wants to keep the state focused on deterrence. In order to do so, he somewhat paradoxically hopes the state doesnāt turn away from ālethal controlā entirely. āThe way we see lethal control,ā he says, is that itās āwhat gets us buy-in from the ranchers on deterrence. If you’re not actively trapping, poisoning, or killing [wolves] north of 40 or 50 percent a year [as people are doing in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming], they’re going to expand. We want to avoid those kinds of mortality rates. Weāre interested in having healthy, unmolested old-growth wolf packs. Stable wolf packs tend over time to develop behaviors that can’t be attained by highly transitional wolf packs.ā To avoid a landscape populated by those transitional packs, āwe want to keep mortality rates low through deterrence that can only be done by the ranchers.ā
āYou need all the ranchers investing in deterrence efforts early and often,ā Friedman says. āThe only way to do that is, we hold up our end of the bargain.ā The way to measure success, he says, is to look at the number of ranchers who have signed on to the deterrence program, the size of the stateās overall wolf population, and its geographic spread. He thinks the signs are good: Washington has a human-caused wolf mortality rate of only 10 percent.
Most conflicts between wolves and livestock take place on public land. In Washington, much of that land is owned by the federal government and leased for grazing under federal forest management plans State policies arenāt all that relevant. But there are big questions of how that federal land should be managed. Government could just order the relatively few ranchers who graze livestock at subsidized rates in national forests to keep their livestock out.
There is, Rylander says, a āphilosophical question about how that land should be managed . . . . āWhere should there be cows?ā he asks. āThat is a subsidy to a private industry.ā There are āsome places, perhaps, where cattle should not be.ā
CNW āwould like to see the state double down on range riding,ā Friedman says. WDFW does spend money, but the agency is under-funded. The question shouldnāt be whether or not there are range riders Friedman says, but ādo we have enough riders per acre? Are they employed the full year, rather than two months?
āNon-lethal deterrents have not been fully tried,ā Rylander agrees. He attributes this to āa lack of will more than lack of funding . . . [We] have tried to work with wildlife agencies to get federal resources to non-lethal [deterrence]
The ābest thing that could be done for wolves,ā Rylander concludes, āis to leave them alone.ā
A really comprehensive article, Dan, thanks for your recent posts on this site. There is still a sizable element of the “sportsman” crowd that simply enjoys killing wildlife. The wolf over the years has had bad P.R.; many people still think they hunt and kill people. Some of that seems to be fading in more recent years, due to articles like yours, but the combination of bad P.R. on the behalf of wolves (you would think they would get a handle on that) and blood-lust on the part of some humans is quite toxic.