…WDFW also should open discussions about setting an upper limit on the wolf population. “There’s got to be a top number. We can’t let an apex predator grow unchecked,” he said…
http://www.capitalpress.com/Washington/20141031/washington-peeks-ahead-to-life-after-wolves-recover
Washington peeks ahead to life after wolves recover
Capital Press
Washington will have a plan by 2018 for managing wolves after they’ve been taken off the state’s endangered species list, according to a Department of Fish and Wildlife proposal.
The agency sets the date in its 2015-21 game management plan, which has yet to be approved by the Fish and Wildlife Commission.
The document outlines objectives for managing game animals. WDFW received comments urging it to address wolf predation of deer and elk now.
Instead, the game management plan defers to the state’s wolf recovery program, which calls for establishing wolves in Washington before considering the effects on deer and elk.
The agency did for the first time set a time frame for developing a plan in anticipation the wolf population will outgrow endangered species status.
The department projects wolf-recovery goals could be met by 2021, the year the game management plan expires.
Washington Cattlemen’s Association Executive Vice President Jack Field said he was disappointed wolves didn’t get more attention in the game management plan.
“We’re going to achieve our recovery objective in Washington state,” said Field, who’s on the state’s Wolf Advisory Group. “There’s going to be an impact on ungulates.”
Field said WDFW also should open discussions about setting an upper limit on the wolf population.
“There’s got to be a top number. We can’t let an apex predator grow unchecked,” he said.
WDFW Game Division Manager Dave Ware said wildlife managers have not seen a decline in deer and elk populations in northeast Washington, where the state’s 52 wolves are concentrated.
The state projected in 2011 that once the population reached 50, wolves would take up to 630 elk and 1,500 deer a year, a fraction of the 7,900 elk and 38,600 deer killed by hunters annually.
Ware said the 2018 deadline will ensure the department has a plan ready if recovery-goals are met sooner than expected.
The head of a wolf sanctuary in Tenino, Wash., said WDFW appears set to start working on a post-recovery plan prematurely.
“It doesn’t make any sense to us,” said Diane Gallegos, executive director of Wolf Haven International. “Our focus should be on recovery and working with people who are most effected by recovery.
“We don’t know what the impacts of wolves are going to be in Washington,” Gallegos said. “We’re going to know so much more in five years that anything we do know, we’re going to have to redo.”
Conservation Northwest Executive Director Mitch Friedman agreed talks on managing an established wolf population can wait.
“It’s not a bridge we have to cross now,” he said. “It would create more smoke than light in the near term, and we would have to repeat it in the long term.”
Exposing the Big Game 
You can’t have people indiscriminately killing an apex predator either. Don’t these people have anything better to do than be obsessed with killing off wolves? We’ve returned to the wolf eradication days, and it’s proof that these poor, persecuted animals need some kind of permanent protection from these (fill in the blank). Based on the other states that have legislated an unscientific killing frenzy, I have no doubt WA will do the same – and I hope they are sued from here to Sunday, and back again.
I couldn’t agree more. Absurd and revolting redneck wildlife agencies.
They are lusting for wolf blood their now too! Just like every other state. I hate to say it but now I wish the wolf reintroductions never happened.
Biggest mistake we ever did was reintroducing the Wolf back to the lower 48 states. We don’t deserve them. We can’t manage ourselves let alone animals nor should we even try.
It’s turning out to be pretty true. Despite 80% approval for wolves in Washington’s general population, the WDFW is hell bent on killing wolves–and the Department has made it clear they answer to no one. We have had 52 wolves in our state for 3 years–that tells all of us they’re being poached and poisoned. The Governor has been quoted as saying he “isn’t interrsted” in the wolf situation. We are no better than Idaho.
Asinine Wolf Killing Called Management
Wolves never should have never been de-listed from protection by political maneuverings and now politically managed by states and ignorantly managed in western states that are hostile toward them and by agencies that have traditionally been hostile to them in particular as well as other predators. Western and midwestern states are going very far away from hunting ethics or anything that resembles fair chase to cull wolf populations down to marginal numbers. Now, in Montana and other states we are even having extended trapping/hunting seasons, and even more drastic measures, such as allowing MT landowners or their agents to kill up to 100 “threatening” wolves which is a carte blanche for wolf killing. Basically, this majestic, apex animal is being treated as a varmint by sportsmen, ranchers, state and federal wildlife agencies. Hostile western states cannot responsibly manage the wolves or even other predators. Wolves are a very healthy factor in wilderness ecological systems. Man is not. We need man-management more with regard to man’s long traditions of blood sports and war on wildlife.
Managing wolves by hunting and trapping is asinine, cruel, barbaric and unnecessary, and poor management strategy, and terrible public relations. It does not work well. It is bad public relations for Montana and other western states. It is vendetta, anti-wolf hysteria, pushed by self-serving hunters, trappers, ranchers, and wolf hating yokels, with a mindset of anti-wolf folklore over the centuries, supported by rancher politicians and rancher government officials and agencies. If Montana and other states have to hunt, why not stick with a short (normal) fair chase season and then call it good no matter what the outcome. Spare us the perverse arguments of need for management by trapping, extended hunt seasons, bounties, more than one kill ticket, use of calling devices, need to drive down the population, or use of other barbaric measures of unneeded control. Hunting and trapping are barbaric “blood sports” and a war on wildlife, not legitimate management tools. We do not do near enough or do enough about non-lethal means of control or management, which would work much better and be true wolf management and conservation.
Actually, hunting wolves is asinine. A hunt and trap season is indiscriminate in killing. Wolves causing no problems are killed. Alpha males and females are killed. Wolves are a very social family with special roles assigned. Families are disrupted. Juveniles are left to learn on their own. Wolves are family units. Younger wolves spend up to 25% of their younger years being schooled by the adults. Wolves and packs that are leaving humans alone are killed. Animals are wounded and not killed. Many hunters and trappers take a sadistic pleasure in how they kill. Hunting and trapping disrupts families and leads to more breeding. Some younger wolves are not given the opportunity to learn from adults to stay away from human domains and how to hunt their natural prey. Wolf packs are fragmented and de-stabilized. Wolves do not need to be managed by hunting or trapping at all. They will fill up wilderness niches and limit their own populations relative to prey and territory as they have in Yellowstone Park. Montana, Idaho and Wyoming are giving themselves a black eye with the rest of the nation with an anti-tourism, anti-science, anti-wolf hysteria.
Trapping is cruel even if done legally, even if it is a tradition, even if seen as a management tool. Traps are cruel. It should be banned for the public, allowed as necessary for wildlife officials who use it vastly too much with a pervasive kill attitude of their own. Why should animals suffer for private economic gain on fur sales or to artificially farm (boost), a mistaken notion, elk herds (elk farming)? In the USA over 4 million animals are trapped each year for “sport” and millions more for “management” and millions more as collateral damage. Hunters worldwide kill over 100 million animals annually. USDA Wildlife Services sees killing animals, for control or management, as their mission. USDA Wildlife Services kills 3-4 million animals a year.
The western states are locked into a mindset of quotas or no quotas and attempting to marginalize wolf populations by hunting and trapping and other lethal methods. Quotas for delisting were based on outdated figures for sustainable wolf populations. Wolves have not harmed game populations or significantly harmed stock populations (statistically zero, .0029%), contrary to repeated and repeated anecdotal opinion. Elk populations are up, from around 89,000 in 1989 to over 140,000 plus in 2014. Hunters have great seasons on killing ungulates in Montana and Wyoming with a 20-25% success rate. Elk numbers are generally up, 100 to 127% per MT FWP (March-April Montana Outdoors 2014). Wolves regulate their own populations as they have in Denali National Park and Yellowstone. Problem wolves and problem packs may have to be “managed” but usually not always by lethal means and not by hunters and trappers and free wheeling ranchers. Wildlife agencies seem only to have a kill mentality wanting to control predators by hunting and trapping and other lethal means. Wolves belong in the wilderness and are good for the ecological systems. Wolves are natural parts of the wilderness ecology for millennium, good for it and belong in the wild. Man creates an unhealthy distortion of ecology by his (additive) sports and management killing. Hunters, trappers and ranchers and their state wildlife agencies are leading a war on wildlife.
Wolf number regulation by hunting asinine: WDFW like the wolf jihad states (MT-ID-WY-WI) does not understand that wolves do not need management by general hunting seasons to drive down their numbers or is that just an excuse to get to killing them. Wolves regulated their own numbers in Glacier, Yellowstone, and Denali National Parks. Wolves will fill up available wilderness niches then stabilize if these wildlife agencies would just leave them alone. You would think that state wildlife agencies, and federal, would know this, but there is no evidence that they do. The problem may be the basic conceptual framework of wildlife agencies which is generally management (killing) by hunters and trappers and hunting seasons of sport animals and predators. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every (perceived) problem is a nail. Of course a secondary not so hidden agenda is licencing and tag fees and justifying their own existence. I think MT and WY and ID cannot wait, wait with anticipation they are, the delisting of grizzlies so they can have another trophy animal to “manage”.Wolves will self-regulate by need for pack elbow room. Wolf deaths are 65% by other wolves, 13% being killed by the animals they hunt (being kicked and trampled). WDFW has an unfounded fear as do the other wildlife agencies that wolves just proliferate and take over the state. Wolves are not like coyotes and will not become city or suburban wolves. They will not even go into areas, they will check them out, that are not wild enough for them. The question that WDFW should have to address is will they stabilize on their own? The answer is yes. So, give it a try.
Wolves are probably here to stay. It is more of question of how much they will be persecuted and marginalized by redneck wildlife agencies as they do all predators. Around 32,000 black bears are killed annually in management. Right now, in Maine, non hunting citizens are rightfully irate about the cruel bear hunting season there which allows baiting, trapping, dogs. Wisconsin allows hunters to use up to six dogs each to hunt wolves. The problem of managing wolves and lions and bears and even having balanced wildlife ecology is the wildlife agencies, and their marriage to hunters and trappers and fishermen and sports game and fish farming that results from this liaison.
WTF?????? And they say they know about apex predators???????
Reblogged this on Sherlockian's Blog.
Are you kidding me?? Washington’s wolf population is SHRINKING!! We just lost 3 wolves in the last couple months, and the population hadn’t grown in two years! There is so much poaching going on that its unlikely we will see any real population growth anytime soon.