Wednesday, May 28, 2014 12:15 am
Nearly 20 years ago, I served on the team that captured and released the first wolves in daho and Yellowstone National Park. Though this reintroduction effort was heralded as a significant achievement in the recovery of endangered species, we’re in a far different place today, especially in Idaho.
The state has been working to undermine this conservation success story by proclaiming its intentions to kill most of its 659 wolves.
And state officials are just getting started. Idaho Gov. Butch Otter’s recently established “Wolf Control Fund and State Board” is charged with killing hundreds more wolves, with funding coming from state taxpayers. Recently, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game adopted a new predation management plan that calls for killing up to 60 percent of the wolves living in the heart of the federally protected Frank Church Wilderness. Wilderness is defined as a special place set aside for wildlife, and visitors are expected to leave no trace. Now, Idaho is going to fill this wild place with traps and snares to kill wolves in hopes of increasing the number of elk for a few hunters.
What is truly destructive is that state officials seem bent on perpetuating a culture of fear and loathing toward wolves. They repeat tales from mythology and fail to tell the true, full story about successful ranching in the presence of wolves, or the many reasons why the elk population has declined. And livestock losses to wolves have always ranked among the lowest causes of livestock loss in the West.
I know that not everyone in Idaho hates wolves. I grew up in Idaho, and I’ve found that most Idahoans don’t know many of the facts behind the wolf conflict. I also don’t believe that rural residents are fooled by the propaganda from campaigners against the wolf.
In Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest — a sheep superhighway that is also wolf territory — Blaine County ranchers, county, state and federal agencies, and local wolf advocates have been working together to resolve conflicts using nonlethal wolf management and livestock husbandry methods. These methods include deterrents like livestock guard dogs and electric fencing that reduce or eliminate livestock losses while also building social acceptance for wolves. The results are undeniable.
After being persecuted for centuries, wolves deserve a better future in this country — and in Idaho in particular. We need to demand that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service examine how wolves have fared since being stripped of Endangered Species Act protection. Wolves in Idaho need our support to stay alive.
Suzanne Stone is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a syndicated column service of High Country News (hcn.org). She is the Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife in Boise, Idaho.
Suzanne Stone is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a syndicated column service of High Country News (hcn.org). She is Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife in Boise, Idaho.
Exposing the Big Game 
Reblogged this on SAVE Americas Wolves.
You mean Idaho continues a War on Wolves. Why? Because ID wildlife agency listens to? Hunters and fishermen, and do not listen to more complex science on, say elk numbers decline in that state, and the complex reasons why: Forest fires, forage, climate effects. Elk numbers are up in MT and WY, way up, but those state wildlife agencies are also in a war against wolves. ID-MT-WY are showing an intent to manage down (kill down) their wolf populations in an old folklore, hunter based mythology that killing down, marginalizing the predator populations will result in more ungulate harvest. It seems that wolves are scapegoats for hunters and ranchers and the red state wildlife agencies are just mirrors of these populations. Hunter license fees govern the behavior of wildlife agencies. The wildlife agencies are very reluctant to say to hunters that any decline in species is more likely a man factor such as over-hunting, climate, forest fires, global warming and disease, loss of habitat. There are really too few wolves in these states and the wilderness to have the effects they imagine; and wolves were part of the ecology for millennium and did not wipe out game herds. Man killing is not longer subsistence, it is additive blood sport killing and that is really what devastates game herds and should be the factor first considered and hunting backed off for a season or many seasons. Man sport killing should be killing the over abundance, not game farming in the wilderness, not distorting the natural and healthy wilderness ecology for game sport harvesting and license fees. The problem is man first, second, third, fourth, always, not predators. Wolf conservationists, wildlife conservationists need to address the unholy relationship of (hunting and fishing) wildlife agencies to wilderness That is the problem, then habitat loss, weather, forage, climate change; but mostly it is man, man, man.
Excellent post Roger. All of us need to blast the truth to everyone in the country over and over. I have learned, after years of seeing blank faces, that if you start off by saying, follow the money, you get people’s attention. I did a random survey a few months ago asking questions about puppy mills, Fish and Game Agencies, USDA Wildlife Services and just as I thought, the majority have no clue. They think these agencies exist to protect animals. I would love nothing better than to shut them all down. And put the agents behind bars where they belong.
The Interior Dept. really ought to step in and put a stop to this instead of travelling around the country talking about things that have very little to do with the Interior Dept. and neglecting the prime responsibilities of the department – this is not proper management of our wildlife. Out of control hunting, despoiling wilderness like never before, catering to special interests. People spent a lot of time and energy trying to right the wrong of the killing off of wolves, bison and grizzlies, and to have it all nearly destroyed is a travesty.
It’s tiresome having our wildlife and wildlands issues always put on the back burner because whatever human problem du jour takes precedence and I’m sick to death of it. The Obama Administration is particularly at fault for this. I hope the Interior is planning on standing up to those A*******s in the Rocky Mountain states regarding grizzly delisting and also the delisting of wolves in the lower 48, but I doubt it.
The writer of this piece works for Defenders of Wildlife. As part of the wolf reintroduction
agreement, DOF supported state “management” of wolves (ie, the killing of wolves) once they were removed from the Endangered Species List. Everyone knew that the kind of wolf slaughter that Idaho is engaging in would occur if the states were permitted to “manage” wolves, but DOW agreed
with it nonetheless. It’s this kind of compromise by mainstream environmental groups that is contributing to the needless killing of wolves. DOW knows there is absolutely no justification for killing wolves, other than to appease ranchers, hunters, and politicians. Indeed, wolves control their
own numbers, and they are not severely impacting livestock or ungulates. Yet I have never heard DOW publicly take a stand against the recreational hunting of wolves. I used to be a member of DOW, but until they oppose the recreational hunting and trapping of wolves, and take a stand against the killing that Wildlife Services engages in, they will never see another penny from me.