Panel Skeptical About Reintroducing Wolves In Idaho Each Wolf Expected To Eat 16 Game Animals Per Year

Although there are 32 radio-collared wolves on the ground in the Idaho wilderness, a legislative committee remains skeptical about reintroducing the predator in the state.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials on Wednesday told the Senate Resources and Environment Committee that 20 more wolves from British Columbia were released into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness northwest of Stanley last weekend.

That is in addition to 12 collared wolves from last year’s batch of 15. One was killed near Salmon last January and biologists have lost track of others.

Sen. Robert Lee, R-Rexburg, represents the Island Park area and wanted to know how many Idaho elk wolves reintroduced in Yellowstone Park would kill each year.

Fish and Wildlife biologist Ted Koch replied each wolf is expected to eat about 16 deer or elk per year, but those game animals may already be dead or could be sick and not desirable for hunters.

Koch said the recovery target is 10 packs of wolves each in central Idaho, Yellowstone and Montana over three straight years. Each pack is about 10 animals, so they could claim about 1,600 animals a year. That is conservatively one-fifth of the estimated poaching deaths in Idaho.

“Prey populations drive predator populations,” he said, meaning the number of wolves roaming the backcountry depends on the abundance of big-game animals.

Last January, the Legislature refused to get on board for the first year of wolf reintroduction, so the Nez Perce Tribe took over monitoring them instead of the Idaho Fish and Game Department.

With the success of the first group, a project of three to five years could be completed in just two, given their reproduction rate, Koch said. He estimated the total cost of gray wolf reintroduction in the northern Rockies will be about $12 million.

After the wolves reach the goals, the government could go about the job of delisting them and handing their management to Idaho Fish and Game.

They currently are under an “experimental, non-essential” designation which means they can be killed if ranchers spot them killing livestock on private property.

Committee Chairman Laird Noh, R-Kimberly, wondered whether Idaho will face the same situation as Yellowstone in which the grizzly bear population has climbed but court challenges hamper putting strictures on them.

Koch replied wolves will fill up their niche in the wilderness quickly, while the grizzly has the slowest reproductive rate for a predator on the continent.