By Matthew K. Jensen
A retired wildlife management specialist who addressed a full house at a campus lecture Tuesday night says wolves are here, and they’re here to stay.
Carter Niemeyer, a former predator specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and author of the new book, “Wolfer,” told an audience at Utah State University how a congressional act in the 1990s brought the gray wolf back to the Northern Rockies and how the decision has stirred farmers, ranchers and private property owners.
“Where can we find middle ground?” says Niemeyer. “Right now everyone is extremely polarized. Sportsmen are upset because they’re worried about deer and elk herds. Ranchers are worried about sheep and livestock. Pet owners are concerned about animal safety.”
And while wolf advocates are happy the animal is back in the lower 48, Niemeyer says they’re not happy about how wolves are being managed.
In his book and lecture, Niemeyer says his objective is to dispel myth and misinformation about wolves. After working around the animals for three decades — stocking them, sleeping in tents in the middle of their territory, even trying to dart them — the Boise resident says wolves are not people hunters.
“Neither myself nor my colleagues have ever had a close call with wolves,” he said. “They are potentially dangerous but I have never had a wolf stand its ground or be aggressive around me in any way shape or form, let alone attack.”
Tales of woodsmen fleeing packs of angry wolves are fiction, says Niemeyer, and scare tactics that come from legislative rhetoric about the danger of the predators is “madness.”
“Don’t believe everything you read or hear because there is a tremendous amount of misinformation and embellishment going on to paint wolves in very dim light,” said Niemeyer.
Hunting laws in Idaho, for example, allow Gem State residents to hunt or trap a total of 10 wolves each year. New rulemaking could bump that number up to 20 for the 2012/2013 hunting season. At the end of the most recent season that ended March 31, Idaho hunters trapped or killed a total of 362 wolves — roughly 40 to 50 percent of the gray wolf population in that state.
When the animals were reintroduced in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana in 1995, wildlife technicians released 66 wolves that were captured in Alberta and British Columbia. Today there are 1,700 wolves in the lower 48 in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin and an estimated 52 Mexican gray wolves near the Arizona-New Mexico border. Wolf sightings have also been confirmed in Washington, Oregon, California and Utah.
With a growing population, however, wolf hysteria is in full swing.
Ranchers report hundreds of wolf sightings and cattle depredations and say devastating the predator’s population is the only way to effectively tackle the problem.
“A lot of people hate wolves,” says Niemeyer. “They don’t just dislike them — they hate them. There are people hunting wolves right now who aren’t after a rug or a taxidermy mount. It’s because they hate them.”
Niemeyer says his pet peeve is hearing people offer anecdotal wolf management solutions in bars and barbershops.
“It’s not based on science, it’s not based on data, it’s based on people’s agendas,” he said. “If we’re going to do wolf control, it should be based on confirmed evidence and not anecdotal evidence or poor investigations.”
Solutions abound, Niemeyer says, and many farmers and ranchers are willing to talk about the issue with an open mind. Various techniques, including fladry have proven to keep wolves away from livestock. Fladry is the use of boundary flags that form a perimeter around livestock areas. The simple technique has been used to keep wolves away for hundreds of years. Another solution that was recently developed is the use of radio-activated guards, or RAGs. The technology requires wildlife technicians to place radio collars around the necks of several wolves. When the animals approach the perimeter of a livestock grazing area, radio signals from the collars activate an electronic device that produces loud noises and pulses of white light. The technology has been shown to scare the animals away.
There are positive aspects of wolf reintroduction as well. Niemeyer says vegetation patterns in Yellowstone National Park have returned to normal since fewer elk herds are grazing on saplings throughout the park and other ecosystem improvements are numerous. In addition, having wolves in the park has attracted large numbers of tourists that watch wolves. Last year, Yellowstone had a record-breaking attendance of 3.6 million visitors.
Overall, Niemeyer says wolves will likely once again be a permanent feature of the Northern Rockies in the U.S.
“I’ve learned that wolves are resilient and prolific,” he said. “It will be very hard to get rid of wolves unless we poison them and get back to all the old tools that were employed in the first place.”
Niemeyer ended with a quote from historian Dayton Duncan, saying, “the wolf refused to be our friend and we’ve never forgiven him for it.”