Shortsighted pack hunts down wolves
O n March 28, the federal government removed Rocky Mountain wolves from the endangered species list, where they had been protected against hunting. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game Department immediately began planning the first ever official wolf hunt in this state for sometime this fall. The department set up meetings around the state to explain how the hunt would be conducted.
I attended the meeting in Sandpoint on May 14. I was disturbed and puzzled by many of the numbers the department used to calculate what it called its mortality goal, which includes deaths from all causes. The goal was used to set wolf-hunting quotas. It became clear that Fish and Game did not have accurate figures for wolf population, number of packs, breeding pairs of wolves and a lot of other information needed for these purposes.
The department’s data were, at best, estimates based on an inadequate number of observations, questionable formulas and just plain guesstimates.
During my testimony at the Sandpoint meeting, I suggested that, considering the shakiness of its data, the prudent thing for Fish and Game to do would be to use the most conservative and likely numbers available in setting limits for the first wolf hunt. If these proved too low, the numbers could be raised for the 2009 hunt and no harm would be done.
I also warned that the intricate social network of the wolf packs could be seriously damaged if a high proportion of the animals were killed. This could lead to unintended consequences, such as actually increasing killing of livestock by wolves.
Wolves depend more on learning than any other critters we know. Without elders to teach them to recognize their natural prey – elk and deer – or how to hunt them properly, young wolves might turn to killing livestock.
Ironically, the killing of livestock by wolves in Idaho has been negligible up to now, amounting to less than 1 percent of all livestock killing. In North Idaho there has been no wolf killing of livestock for at least the past two years, perhaps longer.
The Fish and Game professionals set an overall wolf mortality goal for the state at 328 wolves for 2008. Many biologists, including me, warned them that this goal was too high to maintain a viable population and could not be justified from a scientific point of view.
We were therefore shocked to see that the Idaho Fish and Game Commission, at its May 21 meeting, apparently overruled the department’s professionals and raised the mortality goal by 100 wolves. The round number is a strong indication that this decision was not based on scientific evidence.
In addition, in order to reach their 2009 population goal of 518, Fish and Game had to assume a growth rate of 29 percent. There has never been such a high growth rate in Idaho in the 10 years since wolf reintroduction. In fact, the growth rate was 8.8 percent last year. Using this latest figure, I project a population of fewer than 370 wolves for 2009, a loss of almost 50 percent.
This is no longer a wolf management plan, but rather a wolf eradication plan, produced by a politically motivated commission, appointed by Gov. Butch Otter, the man who wanted to shoot the first wolf, and who apparently wants to shoot the last one, too.
If this order stands, the Idaho wolf population will no longer be biologically viable and possibly will become extinct within a few years.
These remarkable animals were brought back from near extinction in 1996 at great expense and effort. Every poll I have seen shows that a healthy majority of Idaho citizens want them to be part of our forest environment. Now it seems that a small group of small-minded men are determined to eradicate the wolves.
This is a sad state of affairs. Many Idahoans had looked forward to having our forests as they once were, with these magnificent animals once again playing their age-old role as keystone predators and according ourselves and our posterity the privilege of knowing them once again, this time without fears fueled by ignorance.
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