Lambing season, grazing leave sheep vulnerable
by KATHERINE WUTZ
Carey-area ranch owner John Peavey has a dozen orphan lambs on his hands following a wolf attack last week that killed several of his sheep.
Jerome Hansen, supervisor of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Magic Valley Region, said wolves belonging to the Little Wood Pack near Carey had reportedly killed seven ewes on private land. Though Hansen declined to name the property owner, Peavey later confirmed that the sheep were his, some of many roaming on his Flat Top Ranch.
“Last year, [the depredations] were in the fall,” he said. “This year, it’s in the spring.”
The timing is poor for Peavey, whose ewes are lambing. The ones killed had already given birth—mostly to twins. Methods for trying to keep orphaned lambs alive do exist, he said, but can be expensive, time-consuming and sometimes ineffective.
“You try to find another home for them, but it’s a lot of work and effort and a lot of times it doesn’t work and you lose the lambs,” Peavey said.
Peavey’s ranch made headlines in livestock depredation last year as well, when what is believed to have been the Bell Mountain Pack attacked and killed a calf on his property. Three wolves were killed as a result of a subsequent kill order for Wildlife Services.
Hansen said another kill order has been issued, this time for two adult wolves—though there may be more in the area.
“We understand that the producer has seen four wolves in the area,” he said. “I assume they are adults or sub-adults.”
Peavey said he personally hadn’t seen any wolves, but one of his herders had spotted the animals in the area.
Suzanne Stone, spokeswoman for wildlife advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, said her staff isn’t certain if the pack that attacked Peavey’s sheep was the Little Wood Pack that existed last year.
“We’re still trying to document that pack, if there is a pack, [and find out] are they localized, are they denning?” she said.
She said wolves that are denning are tied to a certain area, and any pups are likely to be under a month old.
Complicating the issue is the fact that there are no longer any radio-collared wolves in Blaine County. Last season, Idaho was home to more than 100 radio-collared wolves, which Stone said made wolf monitoring much easier.
“Pretty much every pack had a collar in it,” she said.
Now, she said, only 30 wolves are collared.