COEUR d’ALENE – James Peek, a retired University of Idaho wildlife resources professor, said society’s different attitudes toward large predators depend on how the animals affect the well-being of individual people.
Those who suffer damage to property, or to the game species they exploit are more likely to support reductions in populations, Peek said. He spoke Tuesday night about predator management to more than 50 people at a meeting of Coeur d’Alene Chapter of the Audubon Society at Lutheran Church of the Master, at 4800 N. Ramsey Road.
“You go out there, all you see is wolf tracks and no elk, and my God, the wolves are eating them all up,” Peek said. “That has nothing to do with whether that’s happened or not, it has to do with your hunting skills, where you hunt and how you’re used to hunting and that kind of stuff.”
Peek is professor emeritus of wildlife resources in the department of fish and wildlife resources at the University of Idaho. He retired in 1999.
Most of his research has been on wild ungulates, including moose, elk, mountain sheep, mountain goats, mule deer, and white-tailed deer.
What Idaho and other states need to do more of is coordinating hunter harvests with mortality caused by predators, Peek said.
“Which means in a lot of cases we would be reducing the hunter harvest, and you don’t say that too often in most of Idaho,” Peek said.
A large majority of people in the U.S. and Canada are not involved in hunting and trapping, he said.
“Controversial (hunting) practices contribute to declining support for hunting,” Peek said. “And hunting is an important management tool.”
Each of the large predators present challenges for state and federal agencies managing harvest, he said.
“The wolf is a difficult predator to deal with because they are” prolific as a breeder, Peek said.
Bears, the grizzly in particular, is just the opposite of the wolf. Sometimes it takes female grizzlies up to age seven or eight before they reproduce, he said.
“With that slow reproduction that’s certainly different,” Peek said.
The cats are in between, he said.
“They don’t have the big litters that the wolves do,” he said. Mountain lions need to stake out a territory before they’re ready to mate, he said.