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Wildlife officials respond to heat over managing Huckleberry wolf pack

Phil Anderson, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife director, responds to criticism wolf management and other issues in a Sept. 18 Inside Washington interview.
Phil Anderson, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife director, responds to criticism wolf management and other issues in a Sept. 18 Inside Washington interview.

UPDATED with link to "wolves and ranching can coexist" commentary.

ENDANGERED SPECIES -- The West Side of Washington appears to be in a tizzy over the state's management of gray wolves in Eastern Washington.

State wildlife officials killed one wolf in August during a month of effort to control the Huckleberry Pack that killed at least 24 sheep grazing on private Hancock timber lands and some state lands in Stevens County.

The pro-wolf groups are focusing on claims that the rancher did not do enough to prevent the wolves from getting a taste of his sheep, especially those that were grazing on public land, and thus prompting the killing of an animal protected by state endangered species laws.

Those laws, by the way, give the state some leeway to manage endangered species to protect the public and private property.

Also, the sheep were mainly on a private land grazing allotment and open range laws apply to the sheep that strayed onto state land, WDFW officials say.

The other pro-wolf talking point -- or should I say ranting point, considering a few phone calls I received today -- was highlighted in an unsigned opinion piece ran last week in the The Olympian and the Bellingham Herald claiming that lethal removal of the pack's breeding female was “catastrophic” and would cause “chaos” in the pack.

That's not necessarily true and certainly hasn't been proven. (The state didn't target the breeding female, but it weighed less than 70 pounds and could not be distinguished from other members of the pack by the shooter in the helicopter.)

Stevens County officials and livestock producers also are critical of the state's wolf management for the opposite reasons.

The Stevens County Commission passed a resolution saying residents have a constitutional right to kill wolves under some circumstances to protect their property followed by an other resolution that condemned the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for its wolf management.

Today the Stevens County Cattlemen's Association demanded changes to allow Washington wolves to be managed locally rather than by the state.

WDFW director Phil Anderson, who had been responding to criticism this month through written statements stepped up his communication in the past week.

In a Sept. 18 interview filmed on TVW and with FAQs posted online yesterday, WDFW officials challenge contentions that the operation was a “another mistake” and the removal of the breeding female was “catastrophic” and would cause “chaos” in the pack. The charges are overstated, they say, pointing to research done in Alaska.

Washington was never going to be some hippy wolf nirvana nor Wyoming with its predator (free) zone, but despite the years of effort on the part of ranchers, hunters and wolf groups spent coming up with a management plan for recovering the species and dealing with their impacts, things may be unraveling.

“Frankly,” Anderson told Jenkins, “I’m very concerned that our opportunity is beginning to slip away to be successful to have the people on all sides of this issue work together toward a common outcome of making sure we have  recovery of wolves, have a healthy and sustainable population of wolves, but doing so in a way that maintains lifestyles (and) economies in rural areas … The livestock industry is huge to the employment of Ferry County, Stevens County, Okanogan County, Pend Oreille County, those areas up there, and I don’t mean to miss other areas where it is as well.”



Rich Landers
Rich Landers joined The Spokesman-Review in 1977. He is the Outdoors editor for the Sports Department writing and photographing stories about hiking, hunting, fishing, boating, conservation, nature and wildlife and related topics.

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