Fierce fight over wolves

Wolves might have a dangerous reputation, but it’s the people who love or hate them who seem to be causing anxiety for the federal officials organizing a public hearing today in Spokane Valley on the fate of wolves in the Interior West.

“We have hired extra security,” said Tom Buckley, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Buckley insisted the guards aren’t for Ed Bangs, the agency’s wolf recovery coordinator. Bangs, whose life has been threatened and whose likeness has been hung in effigy for his role in shepherding the return of the wolf, will be at the hearing to answer questions.

“We want to be sure the people who come to these can have a sense of security,” Buckley explained.

Since being reintroduced to the northern Rockies in 1995 and 1996, gray wolves have made a comeback. The federal government now believes enough wolves are living in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming – at least 1,250, according to the latest estimate – that they can be removed from the endangered species list.

Should wolves be delisted, management will be turned over to the states, which are clamoring for more flexibility in controlling wolf populations. Some worry that states seem a little too eager – Idaho Gov. Butch Otter recently said he wants to be first in line to buy a wolf hunting tag.

Mike Petersen, executive director of The Lands Council, has been encouraging members of the Spokane conservation group to attend the meeting and oppose delisting.

“It’s reckless to hand over management of the wolves to ranchers and hunters,” Petersen said. “We almost exterminated wolves once before. It was the ranchers, and it was the hunters who did that.”

Todd Bartlett, a longtime trapper and backcountry guide in the mountains of North Idaho, said wolves in recent years have taken a huge bite out of big game herds, especially in the St. Joe River area. Before wolves returned to the drainage, Bartlett said, it was common to see scores of deer and elk this time of year grazing on snow-free south-facing slopes.

Last month he visited the Red Ives area. “Usually there’s hundreds of elk in there. We were in there 10 hours. We did not see one live animal.”

Many wolf paw prints were spotted, however, as was a young, recently dead wolf. The animal was not yet stiff. It was mostly skin and bones, said Bartlett.

In Bartlett’s view, the starved wolf is evidence the predators have already overeaten game herds and must be managed. The state of Idaho agrees and has proposed reducing the number of wolves in the state from an estimated 650 to 100.

Jim Peek has also noticed changes in the big game herds near the Salmon River, where he hunts. Despite the growing presence of wolves, the populations of elk and mule deer are increasing in some areas, said Peek, a longtime hunter and professor emeritus at the University of Idaho. For more than two decades, Peek has studied plant and animal ecology in the Idaho backcountry.

Peek attributes the increase to better forage conditions created by huge wildfires in recent years. Elk are declining in the Clearwater, Lochsa and St. Joe river areas not because of predators, but because there haven’t been big, forage-producing fires in these drainages for 70-some years, Peek said. Killing wolves won’t reverse the decline, Peek said.

Peek supports state management of wolves, but he worries the animals will be used as a scapegoat and hunted based on politics, not science.

In coming months the Fish and Wildlife Service will have to reconcile hundreds – perhaps thousands – of comments like these as it decides whether to remove federal protections for gray wolves. Agency spokesman Tom Buckley said it’s doubtful delisting would occur this year.

Should wolves be delisted, environmental groups have vowed to fight any state plan that calls for widespread reductions in wolf numbers.