State officials visit with commissioners on wolf management plan
by Todd Adams in the Challis Messenger
The Idaho Wolf Conservation and Management Plan passed by the 2002 Idaho
Legislature is a good compromise that Idahoans need to support, according
to Jim Caswell and Greg Schildwachter, the administrator and policy
advisor (respectively) of Governor Dirk Kempthorne’s Office of Species
Conservation (OSC).
The two met with the Custer County Commissioners Monday, April 8, to
discuss the plan and get input from wolf ground zero. Caswell said Custer
County was their first stop on a trip to discuss wolf management with
local government officials around Idaho, due to the recent shooting and
killing of the Whitehawk wolf pack following livestock depredations on
private ranches up the East Fork of the Salmon River.
Ron Gillett, Stanley outfitter and president of the Idaho Anti-Wolf
Coalition, disagrees with Caswell and Schildwachter. “The state legislature passed a
pro-wolf management plan,” Gillett said in an earlier, separate meeting with the commissioners.
The plan is “absolutely unacceptable,” said Gillett. It may be three to
five years before wolves are delisted and turned over to state management,
he said, and in the meantime, “they’re going to kill everything we have.”
Legislators got in a hurry to go home and passed the plan without really
reading it, Gillett said, although Reps. Lenore Barrett and JoAn Wood
“hung in there right to the end.”
Gillett referred to wolves as “land pirranahs” and “wildlife terrorists.”
“We want zero tolerance for wolves,” Gillett said, adding that it’s
impossible to manage wolves due to Idaho’s steep topography.
Gillett asked the commissioners to adopt a resolution similar to one
adopted by the Fremont County (Wyoming) commissioners stating wolves are
an undesirable species.
Commissioner Melodie Baker and Clerk Ethel Peck pointed out that Custer
County passed its own Unacceptable Species resolution in 1998.
Gillett said his group is petitioning for a meeting with Interior
Secretary Gale Norton and with Steve Williams, the new director of the
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS).
Schildwachter later told the commissioners that everything OSC does
focuses on “fixing the Endangered Species Act (ESA) so it makes sense.”
Commissioner Ted Strickler said the new 45-day lethal take permits that
were issued to four East Fork ranchers after depredations by the Whitehawk
pack may not be very effective. It’s hard for a rancher to be in the right
place at the right time to shoot a wolf on his private property, as wolves
hunt at night.
Schildwachter agreed with Strickler that environmental groups will argue
the permits were an important political concession made to ranchers, even
though they might not be very practical. Wolf management has to be made
practical in a socio-economic sense to work, he said.
Schildwachter said OSC is negotiating with USFWS on options.
USFWS wolf managers admit they didn’t expect the wolf population to grow
as large or as fast as it did after the 1995 reintroduction, Schildwachter
said, and that puts the state into the best negotiating position ever. He
said the state is asking USFWS, “Why don’t you declare victory and go
home?” USFWS wants to work with Idaho, but red tape is the problem.
One idea for compensating ranchers for depredation is a system similar to
worker’s compensation, where the more benefits that are paid out, the
higher the insurance premiums rise.
Schildwachter said OSC has been working with Sen. Larry Craig’s office to
free up federal funding for wolf management. Craig is on the Senate
appropriations committee.
Since the feds reintroduced wolves, they should pay “child support,”
Schildwachter said.
The State of Idaho has to take control of wolf management, Schildwachter
said. The final plan contains language that lets the feds know the state
is “still mad” about wolf reintroduction. It is contingent upon federal
funding and has a lot of experimental ideas to manage wolves and
livestock, as well as wolves and big game herds.
Schildwachter said an important feature built into the plan is a process
for amending it from year to year.
Adoption of the plan by the Idaho Legislature is a big step toward state
management, Schildwachter said, because the USFWS now says it’s possible
to talk with the state and start working out the details of state wolf
management.
USFWS is now willing to talk with Idaho about how to handle problem wolves
and livestock depredations, Schildwachter said.
Wyoming has lagged behind Idaho and does not even have a draft management
plan, but that’s because “Wyoming got baited and switched” on grizzly bear
management, said Schildwachter. The feds held out the carrot of delisting
grizzlies from their threatened status under the ESA in Yellowstone
National Park in return for state management outside the park. That’s
costing Wyoming $800,000 to $900,000 per year, and grizzly delisting is
“nowhere in sight,” Schildwachter said. With wolf delisting and management
Wyoming is now saying “we don’t believe you” to the feds, he said.
Caswell said Wyoming also pays ranchers for livestock depredations caused
by grizzlies, a considerable expense. Governor Kempthorne has assurances
from Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer and the Wyoming Game and Fish
Department that the state understands the importance of being on the team,
but Wyoming does not want to be stuck holding the bag on funding wolf as
well as grizzly bear management.
Wolves cannot be delisted until Idaho, Wyoming and Montana all have
USFWS-approved management plans in place.
Caswell said Idaho wants Steve Williams, the new USFWS director, to be
clear that it supports delisting of wolves, not just downlisting them as
has been proposed nationwide.
USFWS officials recognize the danger that some wolves are starting to get
used to the presence of humans and are losing their fear, said
Schildwachter. In Yellowstone National Park, wolves have been known to
trail behind horses and riders, something coyotes won’t do due to their
fear of humans.
Wolves need to get the idea “real fast” that it’s not good to approach
humans, Schildwachter said.
The environmental community is not “one big happy family” of agreement on
wolves, Schildwachter said. A friend of Schildwachter’s said he was
showing a documentary of wolves stalking and killing prey in Yellowstone
National Park, and some people in the room couldn’t take the graphic look
at reality and turned away.
Baker, who is also a rancher, said people should have to look at how
wolves will eat a calf alive. She said a friend of hers watched as coyotes
ate a calf in the process of being born in the Stanley Basin.
“That’s what we’re living with,” Baker said.
The 12-year-old girl whose 4-H sheep was killed by the Whitehawk wolf pack
said she wished people knew the whole story about wolves, too, Baker said.