By Scott Sandsberry
Yakima Herald-Republic
How Washington’s rural residents can legally defend their family, pets and livestock from state-protected gray wolves has been a sticky issue since the first pack showed up in the Methow Valley five years ago.
Under the state’s wolf management plan, only with a state-issued “kill permit” could livestock producers shoot a wolf in the act of going after their sheep or cattle — and only two such permits have been issued.
Proposed legislation enabling anyone to shoot an attacking wolf has died in committee, its supporters blaming the failure on the political and philosophical differences dividing urban and rural.
Two weeks ago, though, a wolf attack on a Methow Valley man’s pet dog may become a tipping point of sorts in this emotionally charged political arena.
John Stevie was awakened at 1:30 a.m. March 10 at his rural home by loud noises and frantic barking coming from the kitchen. When he raced there, he found the larger of his two husky-wolf hybrid dogs, a 100-pound male, barking and throwing itself at the glass doors trying to get outside. Stevie looked outside to the back deck, where what looked like a large canine was attacking his other dog, a 60-pound female.
“So I opened the door and here’s this wolf, it’s got her pinned, its jaws around the head, and it’s 2 feet from me,” recalled Stevie, 47, who said he wasn’t “exactly sure what it was” until he reached down to try to wrest it off of his pet and the animal turned and looked up at him, its eyes a yellowish green and its teeth bared. “Then,” he said, “I knew what it was.”
Stevie’s home is out in the country, four miles south of Twisp at the foot of McClure Mountain, where locals routinely see bears and cougars, and he had gotten his large pet dogs primarily as protectors for his son Seth, now 8 years old. McClure is also known as Lookout Mountain, from which the Lookout Pack got its name, and Stevie has seen wolves on several occasions, often in broad daylight.
This dark-of-night face-to-face meeting, though, was his first close encounter with one. It didn’t last long, as Stevie and his male hybrid dog were able to chase the wolf off, though not before the smaller female dog, Shelby, suffered puncture wounds and lacerations to her head and neck.
Last Wednesday, Stevie was in Olympia testifying on behalf of a bill that, if passed, might have allowed him to shoot the wolf.
“I think we’ve got a better chance (of passage) this time,” said state Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda, who also testified in support of Senate Bill 5187.
“Everybody can identify to a certain extent with cows and livestock, but when you hear about a guy opening his door and there’s a wolf weighing more than 100 pounds that has his dog by the throat right there on the porch, that’s something that hits close to home,” Kretz said.
Stevie, with Shelby — healing, but her wounds still visible — along for visual evidence, testified alongside Kretz, Rep. Shelly Short, R-Addy, and the bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Smith, R-Colville. A similar bill in the House had died in committee, but Rep. Brian Blake, D-Aberdeen, chairman of the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, said he fully supports SB5187 and hopes it will gain some traction in light of the Twisp incident.
“I think there’s a chance,” Blake said Thursday. “I was already there; I already understood the need. But for others, it might be that tipping point.”
Dave Ware, game division manager for the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, gave what might be described as the department’s conditional support for the bill, now that it calls for the Fish and Wildlife Commission to determine the conditions under which people could kill wolves in the act of attacking.
“I think the thing that gives us the greatest comfort (with the bill) is the ability to (establish the criteria) for when people can kill wolves in the act of attacking.”
If the bill becomes law, the new rule could be in effect by late summer.
As far as Stevie is concerned, that day can’t come soon enough.
“I know of other (Methow Valley residents) that have had dogs killed by wolves,” he said.
Jay Kehne, an Okanogan County commissioner who serves as the county’s outreach coordinator for Conservation Northwest, said it would be a mistake to give citizens the right to shoot a wolf.
“The thing that happened in Twisp to the dog is unusual. Very unusual,” he said. “It’s not like some milestone to say, ‘Hey, see, it’s already happening, we’ve got to do something.’ The odds of that happening again are not huge, so it’s in my mind a lot of this is politics.
“What we really need is for wolves recovered (to the minimum standards established by the state’s wolf management plan) so they can be managed, and we’ll get to that quicker if we don’t take steps to kill them.”
Eight of the state’s verified or suspected packs are in Eastern Washington, and two more are on the eastern slopes of the Cascades, the Teanaway Pack in the hills of Kittitas County and the Lookout Pack in the Methow Valley. Seven members of an 11th pack, the Wedge Pack in northwestern Stevens County near the Canada border, were killed by state officials after they had spent months attacking livestock; two other wolves, either new arrivals or remnants of the previous pack, are still confirmed to be in the area.
The state’s recovery plan calls for continued state protection of wolves until Washington has a minimum of 15 breeding pairs, spanning each of the state’s recovery areas, for three consecutive years.
That time will come sooner, Kehne said, if SB5187 doesn’t pass.
Kretz counters that rural residents will feel safer until that time if the bill passes.
“They feel helpless right now, and feel like they have no tools to deal with the reality of the fact that there are wolves around them,” Kretz said.
“What we’re talking about here is, when we hear our dog getting snatched off the front porch in the middle of the night and attacked by a gray wolf, we have some recourse to defend our pet.”