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Email: timberwolfinfonetwork@gmail.com
Email: timberwolfinfonetwork@gmail.com

OR: Range rider put back to work

Written by Katy Nesbitt, The Observer

Will Voss will attempt to keep wolves out of Wallowa County cattle pastures

After the state confirmed the 21st cattle death to wolves by the Imnaha pack, it put range rider Will Voss back in the saddle to monitor wolves and alert ranchers and biologists of their whereabouts.
The inability to kill problem wolves due to a stay placed by the Oregon Court of Appeals in October has Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife attempting non-lethal deterrents to quell wolf-caused livestock loss.

The Imnaha pack moved down from higher elevations in the Wallowa-Whitman National to the Wallowa Valley in recent days, according to global positioning system collar information from OR-4, the pack’s alpha male.

Saturday at 5 a.m. wolf biologist Roblyn Brown called Scott Shear of the Triple Creek Ranch on Tucker Down Road outside of Joseph. She told him OR-4 was in the vicinity of his cattle near Kinney Lake, a regular route used by the pack between the forest and the Zumwalt Prairie.

At 5:20 a.m. Shear found a dead heifer 200 yards behind his neighbors’ house in a pasture of 75 replacement heifers scheduled to be bred this spring. The rest of the heifers were bunched up and the fence was mashed in, Shear said.

The dead cow was still warm, Shear said, and he believes he scared the wolves off the kill because five wolves were seen in the area later that day from an airplane. On the ground, tracks of four or five wolves were easily seen in the snow, Rod Childers, Oregon Cattlemen’s Association wolf committee chairman said.

After the investigation, Pat Matthews of Fish and Wildlife took the carcass to the Ant Flat dump to deter the wolves from returning to the ranch. At 11 p.m. Saturday, the wolves were detected in a pasture where Triple Creek Ranch bulls were located.

Shear requested that the state put Voss back on the job as a range rider, a job he performed last summer and fall. Voss will be working overnight to try and keep wolves out of cattle pastures.

Shear said he will also be given a radio-activated guard box to scare away wolves, and fladry, electrified, flagged fencing, will soon again adorn calving pastures around the Wallowa Valley in an attempt to prevent wolf/livestock interaction. Yet Shear, who has a lot of experience with wolves on his ranch, is frustrated.

“The Upper Valley is no place for wolves; this isn’t working,” said Shear.

Many of the ranchers from the Divide Country between Big Sheep Creek and the Imnaha River west to the Zumwalt Prairie don’t believe that non-lethal deterrents are enough. Todd Nash grazes in the high country outside of Joseph and has lost numerous cows to wolves.

“There’s been quite a lot of criticism about the idea of taking out the Imnaha pack. Does that sound more reasonable now? It should,” said Nash.

The state cannot fulfill its own order to kill the alpha male and one other wolf because of a lawsuit filed in September by activist groups. However, the state mailed out renewals of its “Caught in the Act” permits that give ranchers and their agents the ability to shoot a wolf in the act of chasing, harassing or biting livestock.

Nash said he hopes other counties don’t have to endure what Wallowa County has the past two years. Until September, Defenders of Wildlife compensated ranchers for wolf-killed livestock. In August, Governor John Kitzhaber signed a bill into law that would fill the gap, but has put a halt to funding all new projects until the legislature approves a budget in the upcoming short session.

“We are a testing ground so no one else has to go through what we’ve gone through,” Nash said.

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