By ASSOCIATED PRESS

State wildlife officials have confirmed that wolves killed 31 sheep on a south-central Idaho ranch over the weekend.

Carey-area rancher John Peavey tells the Idaho Mountain Express that the ewe, one lamb and two that weren’t born were also killed Sunday morning.

Idaho Wildlife Services State Director Todd Grimm says the final mortality count for kills on May 10 and May 12 was 13 ewes and 18 lambs.

Peavey says a state Fish and Game representative determined wolves were to blame. Idaho Wildlife Services has a kill order on at least two wolves in the area.

Garrick Dutcher is program director for the advocacy group Living With Wolves. He says Peavey puts his sheep at risk by practicing “range lambing.”

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By LISA DEMER

The lowest count of wolves in Denali National Park and Preserve in 26 years is causing alarm among wildlife advocates who argue that elimination of a no-trapping zone in 2010 may be costing the park one of its prized attractions.

Park researchers tallied just 49 wolves in this year’s spring count, done between February and April. While the wolf numbers fluctuate, researchers counted 70 just a year earlier. Before this year, the lowest recent count was 59 in 2010. The highest was 111 in 1991, according to the park service.

Park visitors are noticing the change, said Philip Hooge, Denali’s longtime assistant superintendent for resources, science and learning.

“We’ve been able to document a really large decrease in the viewability of wolves in the park,” Hooge said this week.

In 2010, in the months just after the Alaska Board of Game eliminated the no-trapping, no-hunting buffer, visitors had a 45 percent chance of seeing a wolf while riding a bus into the park, Hooge said. The next year, the number dropped to 21 percent. Last summer, the chance of a visitor on a bus seeing a wolf was just 12 percent, according to park research. Many tourists visit the park during their first trip to Alaska and if their experience there is good, they come back and do more, he said.

The National Park Service plans to propose eliminating sport trapping and hunting of wolves where it is allowed in the western part of the park and preserve, though those aren’t the main wolves that people see.

Denali wolves have long been a flash point in Alaska’s wildlife conflicts. To some they are an iconic symbol of nature at its wildest. Others demonize them as ruthless killers of caribou and moose, taking prey and diminishing opportunities for Alaska’s subsistence and sport hunters.

Ted Spraker, a former state biologist who chairs the Board of Game, said controversy over protecting Denali wolves has been a constant during his 10 years on the board, with many strong voices on either side. But trying to protect Denali wolves, while recognizing the needs of hunters and trappers, is complex.

“The reality is that wolves, although they live in a territory, they do move outside of that their territory, and it is primarily because of food,” Spraker said in a phone interview from his home in Soldotna.

Last spring, a trapper used a horse carcass to legally bait and trap a wolf less than a mile from the park boundary near the Savage River in what used to be the buffer zone. The wolf was a radio-collared breeding female in the Grant Creek pack, which in recent times has been Denali’s most viewed wolf pack, Hooge said.

In 2011, the Grant Creek pack numbered 15 wolves. It broke up after Wolf 1103 was killed and another breeding female died. It appears to be down to just three wolves, according to the Park Service.

So the much-viewed pack is nearly gone, and tourism officials are asking what happened, Hooge said.

“I’ve had multiple industry executives call me, from Princess and Holland America and other places,” Hooge said.

Still, Denali wolves are not at risk of being wiped out entirely, Hooge said. Wolves are good breeders.

Years ago, Spraker said, the state radio-collared a pack of 13 wolves in the Glennallen area before hunters and trappers took 11 of them. The two remaining wolves mated and produced seven pups, he said.

Even without trapping, wolf packs can’t sustain themselves when they get too large because of the challenge of feeding so many, Spraker said. Lone wolves peel off and are vulnerable to attack by other packs. Disease kills them too.

In 2002, the Board of Game put in place a large buffer in an area that the National Park Service says was recognized as important habitat. It is a notch in Denali’s northeastern corner along the old Stampede trail that is known informally as the “Wolf Townships,” according to the Denali Citizens Council. In the winter, it’s a prime caribou feeding ground, which makes it a draw for wolves.

The land was not included in the original park because of private in-holdings and other ownership issues, Hooge said.

“In the northeast portion of the area, near the existing headquarters, there are some 3 townships of state lands which are critical for sheep, caribou, and wolf habitat and should eventually become a part of the park,” according to a 1979 U.S. Senate report.

Teresa Sager Albaugh, a Board of Game member from Tok, said she was unaware of any special designation for that area. If the habitat and wildlife need more protection, Congress should redraw the park line, she said. She supported removing the buffer because, in her view, the state shouldn’t be managing its lands to meet a federal purpose. Much of Alaska is set aside for national parks and wilderness as it is, she said.

In 2010, the National Park Service proposed expanding the buffer. Instead, the seven-member Board of Game voted to eliminate it. The board also put a six-year moratorium on revisiting the matter barring an emergency.

Spraker said he twice voted to keep the buffer. But he also supported the moratorium so the board wouldn’t have to deal with the matter repeatedly. The wolf situation is not an emergency, he said.

Since then, wildlife advocates — including the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, the Alaska Center for the Environment, the National Parks Conservation Association and individuals — have unsuccessfully petitioned the Board of Game and the Department of Fish and Game to reinstate the buffer, arguing in October that the nearby trapping “has caused significant, deleterious impacts to park wolves — an Alaska game resource.”

The board twice voted by email to deny the requests, reasoning that the wolf management issue was not an emergency. The Alaska Wildlife Alliance has sued, saying the email vote violated the state open-meetings law. Spraker said the board regularly votes by email on whether to take up an issue on an emergency basis. If it did take the matter up, the meeting would be public, he said.

Not many wolves are being killed inside the old buffer, just a couple a year so far, said Doug Vincent-Lang, director of the state Fish and Game’s Division of Wildlife Conservation. And the number of wolf packs grew — an important metric, he said. Wolves likely are leaving the park because there’s not enough prey, he said.

The Park Service estimated that only three trappers operate in the area where it wanted the buffer extended. Wolf pelts are valued at $100 up to several hundred dollars each, said biologist Rick Steiner, who has petitioned for the buffer.

“At most, killing the wolves outside the boundary is a few thousand a year,” Steiner said. “Their value alive is orders of magnitude greater than that. Just from a strict financial calculation, not to mention science, aesthetics and park and wildlife integrity. Those intrinsic values for which Denali was established.”

Albaugh, the game board member, said wildlife should not be managed with the idea that one use is more valuable than another or to benefit one particular group over another. Not tourists over trappers, and not the other way around, she said.

The board considers the long-term health of the species, Spraker said, be it caribou or moose or wolves.

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Associated Press

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — A coalition of environmental groups has dropped one of two lawsuits challenging last year’s decision by federal officials to turn over management of Wyoming wolves to the state.

A notice dismissing the lawsuit was filed Wednesday in federal court in Cheyenne by lawyers for WildEarth Guardians and eight other groups. That leaves a similar suit filed by a different coalition of groups pending in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Both lawsuits generally claim that the state’s wolf management plan doesn’t provide adequate protection for the animals. The plan classifies wolves as predators that can be shot on sight in most of the state and allows regulated hunting elsewhere.

In dropping the Wyoming lawsuit, the groups decided that it wasn’t an efficient use of anyone’s resources to have two lawsuits over the same thing going on in two different places, said attorney Jay Tutchton, who represents WildEarth Guardians. “The way for us to fix that, within our own control, is what we did,” he said.

Tutchton said his clients still believe in the merits of their case, and their action also stands as a vote of confidence in the lawyers pressing the parallel case in Washington, D.C.

Wyoming Attorney General Greg Phillips wasn’t available for comment on Friday, his office said.

In the Washington case, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson denied a request last month from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state of Wyoming to transfer that lawsuit to the federal court in Cheyenne. The Wyoming case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Alan B. Johnson.

Tutchton initially filed his clients’ lawsuit in Denver, but a judge there granted a request from the state and the Fish and Wildlife Service to transfer the case to Wyoming.

Asked if he dropped the case in Wyoming because an environmental lawsuit could be more likely to succeed in Washington, Tutchton responded: “I’m not going to say that. I suspect others would, to be honest. I think that federal judges do their jobs.”

Wyoming took over wolf management from the federal government on Oct. 1 and promptly staged a wolf hunt in a zone designated for regulated hunting that borders Yellowstone National Park. State officials say there were about 300 wolves in the state outside of Yellowstone when the state took over.

The state game department has reported that hunters killed 68 wolves in the state from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31 last year. Of those, 42 were killed in the trophy hunting zone bordering Yellowstone, while 26 were killed as unprotected predators elsewhere in the state.

Wyoming has committed to maintain at least 10 breeding pairs of wolves and at least 100 animals outside of Yellowstone and the Wind River Indian Reservation. If populations fall below those numbers, it would trigger a return to federal control.

State wildlife officials have said they need to reduce the number of wolves killed by regulated hunting this fall to make sure that the number of wolves doesn’t drop too low.

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Agency issues kill order for predators near Carey

By KATHERINE WUTZ
Express Staff Writer

The owner of the Flat Top Ranch near Carey said Wednesday that he recently lost more than two dozen sheep to wolves over a two-day period.

John Peavey said numerous lambs and ewes were killed by wolves on Friday, May 10, and Sunday, May 12.

Idaho Wildlife Services State Director Todd Grimm said Thursday that the final mortality count was at 31—18 lambs and 13 ewes.

Peavey said a Fish and Game representative determined that wolves were to blame, rather than another type of predator. As a result, Grimm said, Idaho Wildlife Services is carrying out a kill order on “at least” two wolves in the area.

Peavey said the sheep are currently vulnerable because they are in lambing season, when young lambs and birthing ewes can become easy prey. One of the ewes killed was in the process of birthing triplets, he said, and one of the lambs killed was the first—and only—one of the triplets to be born.

“The guy was probably out of the womb five minutes,” he said. “It was really a heartbreaker.”

Peavey said the lamb, the ewe and the two unborn triplets were killed Sunday morning.

Some wolf advocates argue that Peavey’s method of lambing leaves his sheep especially vulnerable. Peavey said he practices “range lambing,” which he calls a “fairly revolutionary” process. In the process, the herd ranges free, feeding on wild forage. As ewes give birth, they are split into smaller groups of ewes and lambs.

“Every day, you create another little nursery,” he said.

Peavey said the nursery groups help socialize the lambs to other sheep, and that he protects the bands with people, spotlights and guard dogs that are meant to deter wolves and other predators.

“There’s only one way to range lamb these sheep, and that’s what we’re doing,” he said. “We’re putting lots of extra help out at night, sleeping with the sheep in several locations.”

However, he said he cannot put up flagging—also known as fladry—to deter wolves, because it tangles in the sagebrush and is rendered ineffective and difficult to gather back up. He said guard dogs are effective against coyotes and other small predators, but that they are less effective against wolves.

“Our dogs seem not to want to confront animals bigger than they are,” he said. “If the guard dog stands up to the wolves, they are going to end up probably dead.”

Suzanne Stone, program manager for the Wood River Wolf Project, said range lambing inherently makes sheep more vulnerable to predators because of the high number of small groups scattered across a landscape.

“He would have to have a few hundred people out there spread over 15 miles, probably even more than that,” she said. “As long as they are going to use that practice, they will continue to have high losses to predators. You are putting unguarded sheep with newborn lambs and scattering them.”

Peavey said his lambs are not unprotected; the protections have not been effective, he said, and certainly not effective enough to prevent the wolf attacks. Still, Stone has stated that the Wood River Wolf Project cannot and will not help Peavey reduce losses if he does not change his practices.

Garrick Dutcher, program director for the advocacy group Living with Wolves, said Thursday that the only foolproof way to keep lambs and ewes safe is “shed lambing,” in which ewes give birth in structures that can be more easily protected.

Dutcher said one option for Peavey could be to allow ewes to give birth in enclosed pastures adjacent to homesteads, where producers can hear potential conflicts and dogs can more easily alert producers to danger.

Range lambing, he said, is the equivalent of placing a meal in front of carnivores and expecting them not to eat it—there’s little attempt to effectively separate carnivores and sheep in that way.

“If you put a lamb burger in front of me, you’d expect me to eat it,” he said. “People of the Wood River Valley want to see their wildlife protected, and hope that livestock producers would implement the necessary measures to prevent conflicts with wildlife.”

Dutcher added that he is sorry to hear of Peavey’s losses.

Peavey said he switched to range lambing several years ago as a financial choice. He said the operations he’s seen in Nevada that use the method are “prosperous,” and that allowing sheep to graze on the range while lambing allows him to save money on feed.

Without range lambing, he said, he’d be paying $100 per ewe during the season for feed.

“With the dairying that Idaho is experiencing, you have an incredible demand for high-quality hay,” he said. “The prices are not going to go down that much. It costs less than a dollar a day to feed a ewe out on the range.”

Grimm said there are other producers that use this method, but noted that those producers are not as vulnerable to wolves as Peavey is.

“They are not the only ones who are range lambing, but they are the only ones that are exposed to wolves coming on their private land,” he said.

Grimm said the kill order will be in effect through mid-July, but that it could be extended if the Peavey ranch loses more sheep. Sheep were killed in three separate incidents on the Peavey ranch last year during lambing season.

As of last year, the Little Wood Pack located in the Carey area was estimated to have two to three adults and no pups. Grimm said Thursday he’s not certain there is still a cohesive pack near Flat Top.

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Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review

“Wolves are the most challenging wildlife issue on the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department’s plate this year, bar none,” says Nate Pamplin, assistant director. “And we don’t want to be alone in it.”

Wolves also pose the most divisive wildlife issues, he said in a presentation to sportsmen in Spokane last week.

Moose also are a species of concern this year, as states to the east through Minnesota are devoting millions of dollars to study declines in the largest member of the deer family, said Rich Harris, the agency’s special species specialist.

“We haven’t documented a decline in Washington moose,” he said. “But we we’re working to get a better picture.”

Understaffed and underfunded Washington Fish and Wildlife Department biologists are asking the public to help monitor both of these marquee species.

People who definitely see a wolf or a moose are requested to devote a few minutes online at the agency website’s observation reporting pages, where visitors can see other reports compiled on a state map.

The plea comes as the agency ramps up to manage a booming apex predator as well as a prized big-game species that’s still spreading across the state but could be reaching its peak in numbers.

Top-tier wildlife officials offered insight on their challenging obligation to manage these critters during a program for the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council.

“Of all topics we deal with in the Wildlife Program – including private lands access, hunter education moving from enforcement to wildlife, master hunters, land restoration – wolves are the one topic that does not bring us together as wildlife managers and sportsmen,” said Pamplin.

The state is obliged to deal with wildlife according to law. Sportsmen have a special interest in the appetite wolves have for big game. That puts wildlife managers and sportsmen on the same side of the fence, but with their britches hung up on different points of barbed wire.

“Wolves are naturally moving into Washington and we need help from people knowledgeable about wildlife to dispel the myth that we’re trapping and introducing them,” he said.

Since the first wolf pack was confirmed in 2008, at least 10 packs have formed with territories of up to 300 square miles. Wolves are close to saturating their habitat in northeastern Washington, he said. That means some wolves will continue seeking to create new packs in other areas.

“They’re booming,” he said, noting a 30-40 percent annual wolf population growth rate. “We don’t see that with other wildlife species.”

The agency must take measured steps in dealing with wolves and their impacts on big game as well as livestock according to the state’s Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, adopted by the state Fish and Wildlife Commission in December 2011.

The state held 23 public meetings and received 65,000 comments as that plan was developed by a 17-member citizen panel and peer reviewed by scientists, he said.

“For comparison, there were 3,000 comments on the $40 billion state budget proposed by Gov. Gregoire,” he said.

The plan directs the agency to allow for a sustaining population of wolves while maintaining a healthy prey base and managing conflicts with livestock and impacts on big game.

More staff will be hired and devoted to wolves this year, he said. Public wolf observation reports will help the agency direct their attention to new pack territories where wolves can be trapped and radio collared to collect data and improve management.

“We won’t know the actual impact of wolves on anything until we get out on the ground and do the research,” he said.

“Washington has sufficient ungulates (primarily deer, elk, moose) to support wolves through recovery and beyond,” he said. “But at times wolves will impact populations and keep them down in some areas.”

He promised more research and monitoring on the region’s big game and said sportsmen will continue to be key in providing some of that information through observations reporting and volunteering for surveys.

“It’s been pretty lonely out there (for wildlife managers) in the wolf debate,” he said.

Last year, when the agency made the controversial $76,500 decision to use helicopter gunners to eliminate the cattle-killing Wedge Pack in northern Stevens County, the public perception in Olympia appeared lopsided, he said.

The Washington governor’s office received 12,000 emails in 24 hours from organized pro-wolf groups opposed to killing wolves, he said, noting that only one sportsmen’s group sent a letter to the governor’s office supporting the management action.

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