Year Of The Wolf Officials Say Program A Success And Plan To Release More Animals
After a halting start, the first year of wolf reintroduction in central Idaho’s wilderness is being declared a success.
Most of the 15 Canadian wolves released along the frozen banks of the Salmon River last January are alive, still in their recovery zone and pairing up.
“All of these little pluses add up to one big success,” said Ted Koch, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf recovery program in Idaho. He and other federal biologists are preparing for a second batch of animals to be released this winter.
“We don’t have a schedule yet, but we’re coordinating with British Columbia to obtain their assistance to gather more wolves sometime this winter,” he said. “We can speculate it might occur the same time it did this year, in January.”
That means the wolves likely will be a focus of courtrooms and legislative chambers once again. The prospect of wolves in the backcountry brought howls of protest right up to the moment their transport boxes were opened in January.
“Politically is where it becomes cumbersome. There’s so much emotional baggage attached to wolves on both sides of the debate,” Koch said. “Wolves are either a deity or a devil. That’s what drives up the expense and the time and the effort.”
The Farm Bureau Federation unsuccessfully went to court to prevent the 1994 wolf releases, a challenge that still is pending. And the Idaho Legislature refused to allow the state Fish and Game Department to oversee the recovery, abdicating that job to the Nez Perce Indians.
The tribe has submitted a recovery plan to Fish and Wildlife, allowing it to mark or transplant the Idaho wolves if necessary.
The new wolves would be captured in British Columbia instead of Alberta where the first ones were taken. The idea is to preserve the Alberta population and the genetic diversity of the American transplants. Fifteen will go to Idaho and 15 to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.
The latest overflights have located 10 of the radio-collared Idaho wolves, all in the reintroduction zone. One was killed in January near Salmon. One has been missing since March and three others since early fall.
Increased flights during this hunting season may turn up the absent wolves. Three wolf pairs remain together in Idaho. Biologists hope they will breed and jump-start new packs.
But the long-term project still hinges on congressional funding. ‘I’ve heard everything from cutting funding completely to not,” Koch said.
Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., wants to shift $200,000 - about one-third of the coming year’s wolf money - to research on the whirling-disease afflicting trout in his state’s Madison River.
If federal cash did dry up, the only recourse would be private money from conservation groups, Koch said.
Wolf recovery has cost $6 million through the first releases and could run another $7 million to complete.
The finish line for reintroduction is a minimum of 10 packs with 10 wolves each for three consecutive years in each of the three recovery zones of central Idaho, Yellowstone and Montana. That is expected by about 2003.
With another reintroduction in 1996, and continued success like this year in Idaho and Yellowstone, the program could end ahead of time and under budget, Koch said.
Fish and Wildlife would then begin erasing wolves from the endangered species list and handing their management over to the states.
A year ago, ranchers envisioned roving packs ravaging their livestock and some sporting groups warned they would decimate elk and deer herds.
But Koch estimates that a fully recovered wolf population would probably consume 1,600 head of deer and elk a year - most of them dead or dying, while state studies indicate poachers illegally kill 10,000 healthy deer and elk annually.