By Juliet Eilperin
Most wolves in the continental United States soon will be off federal assistance.
“Rather than just maintaining enough wolves to keep them from going extinct, what researchers and managers should consider is how many wolves would it take for them to be effective at influencing the ecosystem,” Ripple said. “What does it take to keep the prey populations in check, in order to maintain healthy plant communities?”
But it is unclear how much tolerance some local residents have for wolves, especially in the northern Rockies and the Southwest. Wolves have made gains in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin without sparking much controversy. There are more than 4,000 in those states, with an estimated 2,921 in Minnesota alone.
But after a Forest Service employee in Idaho posted a photo of himself with a wolf that he had trapped and shot, wolf activists erupted in outrage. And last week several groups filed notice of their intent to sue, challenging Wyoming’s right to manage wolves on grounds including that its plan would allow for wolves to be treated as predators — and shot on sight — in most of the state.
Noah Greenwald, endangered species director for the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, said that federal officials have declared wolves recovered not because they had finished the job but “because they want to avoid the political controversy that wolves generate.”
Wyoming Game and Fish Department spokesman Eric Keszler said there are “hardly any wolves” living in an area where they can be shot on sight, since the vast majority of the state’s 328 wolves live in the northwestern part of the state. The federal government will continue to oversee the wolves living in Wyoming’s section of Yellowstone, and the state will treat most wolves as trophy game, which requires a license.
“It’s not going to be the mass slaughter of wolves that some people talk about,” Keszler said.
Neil Thagard, a big-game hunter based in Cody, Wyo., who serves as Western outreach director for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, said people should let the wildlife managers decide the appropriate level for wolves and allow them to use the tools they need, including hunting. He added that many of his fellow hunters exaggerate wolves’ impact on both livestock and game.
Ashe acknowledged that the Fish and Wildlife Service had not figured out how to overcome the fact than some people in the rural West view wolves more as a threat than an asset. “If I could wave a magic wand and go back to the early ’90s, I think we had the biology right, but we didn’t build the social context for wolf conservation before we put wolves out on the landscape,” he said.
He added that his agency for the next five years will monitor how the wolves are faring.
In the Southwest, the road to recovery was even more daunting. In 1998, federal authorities released 11 Mexican gray wolves into the Arizona wilderness and, 14 years later, there are only 58.
Chris Bagnoli, interagency field team leader for the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Mexican Wolf Reintroduction Project, ticked off a long list of obstacles to the Mexican wolf’s recovery: ineffective management, illegal wolf kills, effects on livestock and game, the population’s genetic viability and health and human safety. The New Mexico Game and Fish Department, which declined comment, stopped working with federal officials to help the Mexican wolf in June 2011.
While Defenders of Wildlife has financed several programs aimed at helping cattle ranchers coexist with wolves — hiring range riders, putting up fences and compensating for lost cattle — many ranchers are losing patience with the reintroduction program.
Patrick Bray, executive director of the Arizona Cattle Grower’s Association, said the presence of wolves increases costs even when they don’t kill livestock, by making cattle nervous and forcing ranchers to move their herds frequently.
“We’re not going to be comfortable with an expanded range moving forward, with an expanded program, until we figure out how to make the existing program work,” Bray said.
By the end of the month, Fish and Wildlife will have to determine if the Mexican gray wolf is a subspecies of the gray wolf, rather than a “distinct population segment.” Colorado and Utah are fighting the subspecies designation on the grounds that it could lead to Mexican wolves expanding their range into their states. And wolves that wander out of their established areas — into the Pacific Northwest, for example — are still protected as endangered under federal law.
Defenders of Wildlife’s Clark, who helped release wolves raised in captivity into an enclosure in Arizona’s Apache National Forest 14 years ago when she headed the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the thrill she’s felt seeing wolf populations rebound has been tempered by her sorrow as the animals have failed to gain social acceptance. Wolf watching has become a tourist draw in Yellowstone and has spawned many “tchotchkes” in the concession stores, she noted, but beyond the park’s borders there are clear limits on how many wolves will be tolerated.
A century ago, Americans fought wolves for dominance of the landscape and “we won.” Now, she added, “We have to find a way to balance the needs of nature with the needs of humans.”