By BRIAN SMITH
BOISE • Have some “grit” and stop “exterminating” Idaho’s wolves.
That was Pam Marcum’s message to Idaho Fish and Game commissioners Wednesday night.
Marcum’s charge was echoed by numerous other biologists, wildlife advocates and enthusiasts, many of whom questioned the science and ethics behind Fish and Game’s predator management plan.
Many locals complained that the commission was solely focused on boosting elk populations and keeping hunters happy instead of balancing the state’s wildlife. Some said wolves can have a positive impact on the ecosystem, despite hunters’ claims to the contrary.
“Use peer-reviewed science, not political science,” Marcum said.
Several hunters spoke in support of state wolf control. Stabe Hedges said it was upsetting to see so many people supporting an animal that harms Idaho’s economy. He advocated for increased wolf hunting opportunities.
“I personally would like to see the numbers of wolves reduced by 40 or 50 percent,” Hedges said. “I would like to see some of the elk numbers rebound. I hiked 32 miles this year before I saw a single elk, and that’s a vast difference from years gone by.”
The public comment hearing preceded today’s annual commission meeting, which was open to the public.
The commission is set to hear a legislative update and presentations from Fish and Game staff on wildlife such as elk, turkeys, chinook salmon and deer today. Later in the day, it will hear a budget preview and a report on a wildlife collision reduction project.
At 9:35 a.m., the commission is to consider approving its new elk management plan. The plan, last updated in 1999, is a guide for season-to-season management of the state’s many herds.
The plan also addresses changes in elk habitat, how growing elk populations damage crops, and how to more aggressively target predators such as bears, mountain lions and wolves.
Idaho Conservation Leauge’s John Robison said his organization is “deeply concerned” about the elk management plan and its impacts on wolves.
Robison asked for a show of hands from the audience to see who was angered by a recent pack killing at state expense in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. Most people in the packed room raised their hands.
“We believe that this unprecedented public outcry about this decision should force the commission to stop and reassess its approach on wolves, wilderness and predators,” he said.
The commission also should reduce its wolf-trapping program, said Ken Cole, a National Environmental Policty Act coordinator with the Western Watersheds Project. It should require trappers to check their snares more often, he said.
“These animals should not be out there suffering for more than 72 hours,” he said.
Not so — the areas where wolf trapping is allowed should be expanded in southern Idaho, said Pat Carney, president of the Idaho Trappers Association.
“Instead of the state having to pay trappers to go in and trap these other wolves, it would be better if locals could go in and do it instead of having tax dollars pay for it,” Carney said.
The decision to kill wolves in wilderness areas doesn’t make sense “economically and ecologically,” said Jennifer Pierce, an associate professor of geosciences at Boise State University.
“As scientists who have worked in the Frank Church area for decades, the eradication of large predators from this ecosystem is potentially detrimental to all parts of the ecosystem,” she said. “Was there a science-based rationale for killing wolves in wilderness? If so, what was it?”
Exposing the Big Game 
Reblogged this on Ravens-Tree.com.
It’s about time people spoke up ..the hired gun has been out there for a month bringing misery upon the wolves …These hunters have gone stark raving mad in their illigical urge to kill. This is a crime against nature.
The fellow that walked 32 miles looking for a elk can just go to some hayfields and find the elk browsing on farmer’s hay…there have never been more elk ..this guy was obviously looking in the wrong place..they are also along roadways…just because they weren’t where he thought they should be is justification for killing the wolves and their families…?
Where is the SCIENCE? I think this is the big question? That and the fact that nobody who wants the wolves alive has no money on the table..those that hunt elk put their money down to do so …so in the end the commissioners will listen more carefully to the grumblers that paid…Let’s get a non consumptive user fee fund instituted so we can give voice for all our wild friends…It’s the MONEY! ..show me the MONEY and then we can get talking…! and stopping these crimes against our friends and the Earth!
I’m not sympathetic with people like Stabe Hedges who are stuck in the past. So the world isn’t the same as when he was a kid? Everything is supposed to be perpetually static? In fact, this guy who reminisces for the good old days when he could kill 1, 2, or 3 elk the first day he tried (which is what I recall him saying in his testimony) is stuck in some time warp, longing for the days when everyone looked starry-eyed at killers and no one challenged their vicious self-centeredness and brutality.
I suspect the myth that only hunters contribute to conservation is crap. I took a quick look at the Idaho Fish & Game budget, and it looks to me like about half of the funds are provided by the feds. I did not delve any further, but that certainly suggests that the rest of us are propping up F&G through our federal taxes, even though F&G answers only to hunters and trappers (which includes the majority of the legislature). I certainly would be willing to help pay for habitat and species protection — and in fact I think Idaho residents can contribute through a check-off on the annual state tax form — but not as long as Idaho F&G manages those funds. And when I discovered that the Idaho Conservation League aligns with trappers, that was the end of my membership and support. I realize that there are reasonable arguments for making a deal with the devil, but trapping is where I draw the line. No compromise.
Man is no longer an apex predator and few in numbers. We are way past subsistence hunting and most of the world has been for hundreds of years. Yet I still hear subsistence arguments. Albertsons has a meat department. Actually, the world and our own health would be better if we minimized meat eating. Now hunting is sports killing and that is the reason they are out there dressed up in their hunter orange and camouflage with scoped powerful rifles, supported by 4-wheelers and off road trucks. They are pretending to be great white hunters (Elmer Fudd Nimrods in reality). Yes, they maintain the argument that they need to drive the wolf numbers down so they will have more elk to kill. There is no proof of this and it is an old myth, but they keep repeating it, like Lewis Carroll, “Anything I say three times is true”. Actually elk numbers are up, way up in Montana since wolves’ comeback. There were around 89,000 elk in Montana in 1989 and now there are over 140,000. Wyoming has had 10 years in a row of record elk takes. Elk numbers are up in every state wherein there are wolves. There are too few wolves in Montana, around 600, spread over a large area, too few for any major impact. Besides, predator and prey have worked out balancing systems over the millenniums. Who is man to think that he has to manage nature? Wolves are good for the wildlife ecology. Man no longer is since his hunter-gatherer days. Man killing is additive, doing more damage than good. When there is a decline in “sporting” targets it is man over-hunting that should be considered first, then weather and forage, now climate change, and just normal movements and ebb and flow of game. But the first thing Nimrods call out when they do not easily discover and kill “their elk” is big bad wolf. The wildlife agencies are in effect farming elk for Nimrod. Why not just have elk ranches where Nimrod can go shoot his elk and chicken farms where Nimrod can go choke a chicken for thrills, and rabbit farms, just all kinds of game farms where he could go do his “subsistence hunting” and use his guns and bows and maintain his wholesome bloodlust and killing traditions. The wildlife agencies should stick to managing man, encouraging a true wilderness existence of apex predators and prey and all in between and habitat preservation. Anytime or place where game animals seem to be in decline the wildlife agencies should severely back off hunting for a few seasons but they are reluctant because they are wed to the license fees and the stores want the equipment sales. We have marketplace traditions to consider. Actually, wildlife viewing is far more wholesome and far more money making but the wildlife agency-sportsmen-rancher liaisons have distorted this truth and promoted the myth that they are wildlife managers and even conservationists.
Wildlife “managers” = wildlife manipulators and exploiters. The Idaho Fish & Game Dept answers to the Idaho F&G Commission, which answers to the Idaho governor, a lifetime member of Safari International per his online bio. Get the picture?
Within the last couple of years there was a little scuffle about the composition of the Commission. A woman was nominated, and she was criticized and rejected because she was not enough of a killer! She was a killer, but not up to the high standards of the killers extraordinaire who make up the Commission. It’s a bunch of white men, mostly middle aged and older. Bored, disinterested, impatient — I suppose — to get back out there and have some fun killing and torturing animals.
So Roger, if you go to the comments re the killing of wolves in idaho wilderness,(Idaho statesman) you will see the same argument over and over. That being that the hunters PAY to hunt and they are paying for their elk to be managed by the officials and we had better have elk for our money. It is their constant refrain. we pay for all of this they say …
So,the pro wolf/wildlife have science, but have no money or fund they can point to and say hold on there dudes, we have ‘skin” in this issue too and we do not want to see our wildlife killed.
This is America, money is the founding capitalist message taken all the way into our wilderness and wildlife. We need to tell our officials we want to pay a non consumptive users fee to protect our interests as well. Otherwise, we don’t get to holler and get heard. I really think it is a way to shore up a contingency or group like ourselves that want to see the wild kept wild. The enviro groups probably don’t want this as much because they depend on our dollars to keep them afloat. we can do both, but most folks too short sighted to see that hunters group pay to be members and have lobbies and pay the govt to kill, hence their consumptive use.
But that paradigm doesn’t seem to be working for us and we have become increasing ineffectual, when it comes to stopping the hunting/sportsman lobby! . .So why fight them, join their model and pay like they do …we have the non consumptive model and they have the consumptive one.
I do not live in the US, and perhaps have not got the gist of this, but I blog a lot in support of wolves and I, from a distance, cannot see the logic in their arguments. Actually, I have a question. How many elk can a few widespread packs of wolves kill in one year (no doubt – barely a dent in the population) and how any elk DO hunters kill in one year? It seems to me, elk numbers WILL drop dramatically if they keep shooting them, as they will if wolves kill them; but who is really doing the damage. And their argument of ‘not enough for us, the wolves got there first’ is just preposterous. Who is on whose territory! The wolf is a natural predator, those pathetic little gun-toters out there are not. They have chosen to prey upon defenceless animals (both elk and wolf). I would also like to add that I do not advocate killing in any form unless it is part of nature’s rich pattern of survival. Killing for pleasure does not fall into this category. Greed, blood-lust and personal agenda seem to be triumphing again.
I don’t have the figures in front of me, but as you suspected, FAR MORE elk are killed by hunters than by wolves.
No surprise there then. It is all so wrong. Thank you for all you do for the wolves and other animals. 🙂
Thanks, and the same to you.