Killing Wolves in the Pursuit of Their Salvation
As ranks swell, some run afoul of ranchers. To protect the species,
individual canines are shot.
By ELIZABETH SHOGREN – The Los Angeles Times
Jul 14, 2002
STANLEY, Idaho — At every stage of the seven-year federal effort to
reintroduce the gray wolf to the Northern Rockies, Carter Niemeyer has
been there.
He trapped wolves in Canada and brought them south to their new homes.
When one pack was getting into trouble with ranchers, he camped in the
open with them, listening to them howl all night before transporting
several farther from the temptations of livestock. When ranchers wrongly
accused them of killing lambs or calves, he argued their cases and
exonerated many.
Along the way, this gentle 6-foot, 5 1/2-inch giant developed a deep
affection for the animals he calls “big, happy oafs.” So it was with a
heavy heart that Niemeyer, 55, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official
in charge of reintroducing the wolf to central Idaho, ordered the killing
of the Whitehawk pack this spring–and then carried out the order himself.
As he did, Niemeyer plunged into the heart of the most contentious aspects
of reintroducing wolves to the Northern Rockies.
Having been all but wiped out by the 1920s, the wolves have come back
faster and proved to be hardier than federal wildlife officials dreamed
possible. In central Idaho alone, the population has swollen from the 35
reintroduced in 1995 and 1996 to 261 at last official count.
It may be too much of a good thing. The wolves have eaten hundreds of cows
and other livestock. Ranchers and local politicians had acquiesced to the
reintroduction only if federal wildlife managers agreed to kill wolves
that could not be otherwise persuaded to leave livestock alone. They are
demanding that the government make good on the deal.
But humans’ fascination with wolves runs long and deep: the myth of the
she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus before they founded ancient Rome;
the Big Bad Wolf of “Little Red Riding Hood”; the 1990 film “Dances With
Wolves.”
So when government gunners, living up to the agreement with the ranchers,
have killed the majestic animals, they have triggered outpourings of
outraged calls, letters and e-mails.
More Trouble Ahead
In the case of the Whitehawk pack, wildlife officials worked tirelessly to
deter the wolves from eating livestock. The pack’s fate was followed
closely by wolf lovers. Its home was the spectacular Sawtooth
Mountains–Idaho’s Yosemite–and its alpha (or lead) female was a
snow-white beauty named Alabaster.
By early last summer, the pack was in trouble. It had killed 16 sheep, a
calf and a guard dog. Wolf opponents were calling for the pack’s heads.
But Niemeyer had other plans. Electric fences were erected to protect the
sheep overnight. Volunteers slept with the herd for weeks on end in the
meadows below the jagged peaks of the White Cloud Mountains. Wolf managers
rigged up a device called a rag box that, in response to a signal from a
wolf’s collar, blared noises such as gunshots, helicopters and yelling
cowboys. The livestock losses stopped, and the wolves were spared.
This year, the pack moved to the opposite side of the mountain range. Ten
rag boxes were set up in pastures to scare them off.
But on March 31, the wolves ate a pet sheep penned near a ranch house.
Electronic monitors set up in the rancher’s field identified two wolves as
the culprits, and Niemeyer ordered them killed. Cracker shells, which
explode with a loud bang and a flash, were fired from a helicopter to
chase off the remaining wolves.
Nonetheless, two days later a calf was killed, and monitors fingered three
more wolves from the pack. Niemeyer ordered their deaths as well.
One more effort was made to deter the wolves, but the next morning yet
another calf was eaten.
“That’s when I made the decision,” Niemeyer said. “I felt we had come to
the point that our nonlethal efforts were futile and this pack needed to
be removed.”
Armed with a semiautomatic rifle, Niemeyer flew in a helicopter several
dozen feet above the foothills of the White Cloud Mountains in pursuit of
the five remaining members of the pack, including Alabaster, who was
nearing the end of a pregnancy.
Betrayed by transmitters in their collars, the animals were running for
their lives.
Starting with Alabaster and her mate, Niemeyer shot the wolves one after
another. “It was very surgical and humane,” he said.
Niemeyer said he got 300 angry e-mails after he killed the Whitehawk pack.
“In a perfect world, we would not kill wolves,” he said. “But this is not
a perfect world.”
Niemeyer decided to be the one to pull the trigger because he anticipated
intense criticism.
“I was the judge, jury and executioner,” he said in a morose tone.
No Thrill in a Kill
Growing up in Iowa, Niemeyer had seen a film clip of an aerial gunner
shooting wolves in Minnesota. To a boy who loved to trap and hunt, the
gunner seemed to have a dream job. “I remember feeling, ‘Wow! I’d like to
do that someday,’ ” Niemeyer said.
Now he loathes it. “At times like that, I’d just like to disappear. It’s
not thrilling to kill a wolf, like I imagined as a kid.”
Nonetheless, he and other federal officials working with the wolf program
believe that killing individual wolves with a taste for livestock is
essential to ensuring the long-term existence of wolves as a species in
the Northern Rockies, where many people remain dedicated to their demise.
Killing wolves is likely to become much more common when the three states
where they have been reintroduced–Idaho, Montana and Wyoming–take over
their management. That will happen after the wolves are removed from the
federal endangered species list, which could come as early as next year,
said Ed Bangs, Niemeyer’s boss as the wolf coordinator for the Northern
Rockies.
The important thing, Bangs said, is the survival of the wolves as a
species, not the survival of individual wolves.
That’s not so easy to get the public to accept.
“Wolves are so much like us that we tend to strongly identify with them,”
Bangs said. Wolves are caring parents and good spouses. They hunt and eat
together in packs and look after one another. They jealously guard their
territory, repelling outsiders.
The environmentalist most closely involved with the reintroduction,
Suzanne Laverty of Defenders of Wildlife, fears that when the states take
over they will shoot first instead of trying nonlethal means to control
the wolves. “It can’t be acceptable to kill pack after pack,” she said.
The Whitehawk pack had migrated into this region after the members of two
other packs were killed or moved out of the area for attacking livestock.
Just two months after the Whitehawk pack was shot, there were several
reports of new wolves in the area.
Environmentalists argue that wolves should have special protection at the
Sawtooth National Recreation Area because the federal government set it
aside as a special place to enjoy wilderness. But ranchers have leased the
meadows for grazing for decades.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill ruled last month that the law
establishing the Sawtooth National Recreation Area gave wolves and all
other wildlife precedence over livestock. The local environmental groups
that brought the case now have asked the judge to block long-standing
grazing permits in the Sawtooth Valley.
The national environmental group Defenders of Wildlife, by contrast, has
looked for ways for ranchers and wolves to live together. It supplies
ranchers with huge white Great Pyrenees dogs to guard herds. It teaches
ranchers simple techniques to avoid losses, such as burying animals that
die of natural causes and gathering animals at night.
It even compensates ranchers for lost livestock. In the last 14 years,
Defenders of Wildlife’s wolf compensation program has given 198 ranchers
more than $227,000 for more than 900 animals killed by wolves across the
Northern Rockies.
Flagging Offenders
Defenders of Wildlife is working with federal agencies this summer on a
new tool to control wolves, called fladry. It consists of unlikely
barriers of red fabric strips a few inches wide and about 18 inches long,
hanging from cords like the flags that mark racers’ progress in swimming
pools. No one knows quite why, but wolves are afraid to pass through
fladry.
Faye and Eron Coiner have agreed to host a fladry experiment at their
remote ranch high in the mountains.
Laverty and Niemeyer visited the ranch last month. Within minutes of their
arrival, Eron Coiner rode up on a horse and, without a word of greeting,
announced: “Found a dead calf this morning–there wasn’t much of it left.
“So, they’re back,” he said in a monotone, referring to the Jureano
Mountain pack.
Overnight, the wolves had feasted on a 250-pound calf on a high mountain
meadow covered with lupine, wild clover, geraniums, larkspur and other
wildflowers.
The visitors were quietly pleased by the early kill, because they hoped it
would ensure a solid test for the fladry.
The Coiners were not. They fear they could lose the $15,000 they earn for
grazing another rancher’s cows if their ranch gets a reputation for wolf
kills.
“I thought the wolves ought to stay in Canada,” said Coiner, 65, wearing
jeans, rubber boots and a sweat-stained cowboy hat.
He is willing to give fladry a chance, but his hopes are not high. “They
might stay away for a little while,” he said, “but they’ll get used to it
just like anything else.”
To Coiner, that day’s kill was just the latest proof that wolves will prey
on livestock as long as they live close together. “They eat meat, and a
calf is a very easy target.”
With the Jureano Mountain pack’s record of killing livestock, Niemeyer
could have ordered some or all of those wolves killed. The fladry study
was a good excuse to keep the pack alive.
Over the next two nights, two wolves–the alpha male and a yearling
female–were caught in traps. Both were given new collars, which will help
officials monitor the success of the fladry study.
“It was a happy ending,” Niemeyer said. “We could have killed some wolves
there. But killing wolves is easy to do. We’ve got a great opportunity now
to see if a nonlethal means of control works.”
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