Matthew Weaver
Capital Press
Rancher Dave Dashiell moved his flock of sheep from near the Huckleberry wolf pack earlier this summer after dozens were killed and others went missing. Now he’s uncertain what his next moves will be following the winter.
LIND, Wash. — Eastern Washington rancher Dave Dashiell made headlines over the summer when the Huckleberry wolf pack began attacking his flock of 1,800 sheep near Hunters, Wash. The state has confirmed 32 sheep killed by wolves, but Dashiell says more are still missing.
The sheep were on leased private grazing land near Hunters, Wash. The Dashiells released the flock in late June and pulled it off a month early in September. Once the killing began, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife provided four staff members and a range rider to increase the human presence, and killed an adult female wolf Aug. 23. The department put plans to kill four wolves from the pack on hold in September after Dashiell removed his sheep from the area.
Dashiell and the Stevens County Cattlemen’s Association maintain that he should have been privy to radio collar location data on the pack so he could have moved the flock out of harm’s way. The department says it’s working on an agreement with the nearby Spokane Tribe of Indians, which collared a wolf in the Huckleberry pack and has authority over the collar data.
Dashiell is also the outgoing president of the Cattle Producers of Washington and represents the group on the state wolf advisory group.
He and his wife, Julie, spoke with the Capital Press Oct. 22. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. At a recent Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife meeting in Colville, Wash., you estimated you lost 200-300 sheep. Is that still the number?
Dave Dashiell: As far as we know. We’ve only counted them one time, when we loaded them out. We don’t know the breakdown as far as lambs and ewes. But we’re still in that 200-300 range. We went out there with about 1,800 and we counted about 1,500 in the truck.
Q. Do you have an estimated cost in losses — the lost sheep, the stress on the flock?
Julie Dashiell: It’s getting closer to $100,000.
Q. Have wolf supporters made threats?
DD: I don’t know that we had any directly, but we unplugged our phone at home because there was too much foolishness going on. Of course, now I think it’s backed off some. I don’t know if you can call them threats, but they thought we were dumber than a box of rocks.
JD: It was the Craigslist identity theft thing that was troubling to us. One of them promoted a three-day party at our house. Free beer, free food, free parking, free camping on Labor Day weekend. And then they had Googled our ranch and how to get there. Luckily, I had three neighbors who were on the computer 24 hours a day and posting everything they knew was a scam as quick as they could. I requested more police presence driving by our home. It was more just of a precaution.
Q. What kind of shape are you in to get through the winter?
DD: I think we’re in OK shape, but it’s all for the wrong reasons. We had to pull out of there a month early and I had to call in a favor to make (this) work. It’s a good thing I have a good relationship with these guys.
Q. In Colville you mentioned you’re worried about returning to the same grazing allotment next spring?
DD: I don’t know that we’ll be able to go back to the same area because the wolves are right there. I heard that last year, when we didn’t think we were having trouble, (the wolves) were 8 or 9 miles south of where they were this year. I don’t know where they’re going to be next year, and I don’t know where we’re going to be next year.
Q. In Colville, (state Department of Fish and Wildlife director) Phil Anderson offered to go with you to talk to the timber company about using its grazing allotment again. Would that help?
DD: I haven’t talked to him lately, but we talked to him in the middle of all of this. At that time, he was still wanting us to be there and have a future in the deal, but he’s not calling the shots, either. They’re a timber company and the same people are going to get on them, and they’re going to say, “We don’t need you anymore to have this bad publicity coming our way,” so I don’t know what’s going to happen. I guess we’ll get through the winter and see what happens. If nothing else, the sheep should be worth more in the spring than what they are now. Then to have the department give us all these wolves and say, “Yeah, we created the problem and now we’re going to fix it for you,” well you see how they go about fixing it. They couldn’t wait for me to find someplace else to go and then the pressure was off them. The problem was solved! They didn’t have to make any hard decisions after that.
Q. Is there anything at this point you would have done differently?
DD: If we knew the wolves were there, we wouldn’t have been there, we would have gone the other direction. But you have to be some place. I don’t know if there’s tons we would have done differently, but I sure would have had (the department) do stuff differently.
Q. What could the department do differently?
JD: I would have had a different range rider, I would have had one that was pro-sheep and -us instead of a kid from (wolf sanctuary) Wolf Haven. I would have had an unbiased person.
Q. What nonlethal steps did you take?
DD: I was herding the sheep from day one. If I wasn’t, (Julie was) and sometimes there was both of us. We had the guard dogs out there. We were running around all day on a four-wheeler making a racket, hollering at dogs.
JD: The human presence did not scare the wolves away. Once they got a taste for sheep, it was game on.
DD: The wolves would hear you over there, and they would be over here killing sheep at the same time. Human presence did not slow them down at all.
Q. Would flagging help?
DD: In that country, no. It’s full of timber. It’s straight up and down, it’s rough country. All the ribbons tied on the brush wouldn’t do any good. All that stuff is just very temporary. It’s like bailing out the ocean.
Q. Are your neighbors having any problems?
DD: My cousin’s cows have been harassed. It was cow behavior that was really unusual. They haven’t lost anything that I know of. We had some cows that kind of did the same thing. Something’s been going on.
Q. How long can you go under these circumstances for your operation?
DD: I don’t know if I can go another year or not if we’ve got to do it all over again.
JD: Some of those people that want wolves, would they give up one-third of their income? That’s what we did. I don’t think any of them would jump on that. They want their paycheck, but one-third of ours is gone.
DD: Wolf recovery has a cost. They’re going to have to figure out, are they going to pay it? Or are we just going to disappear off the landscape? You can’t go on like this for very long. The state’s going to have to step up, is what it amounts to. They’re going to have to do what has to be done instead of taking a vote. (The comments made at a recent WDFW meeting in Lynnwood) didn’t surprise me a bit. It’s way easier to want wolves when they have absolutely no effect on you. They think they might have skin in the game, but they don’t. It’s just a warm, fuzzy feeling that there’s a wolf out there howling some place. It gets ugly real fast. I noticed in (the department’s) slideshow they had that dead sheep where the only thing left of her was some wool and bones, they didn’t show any of the fresh killed ones that were torn to pieces, or had a big hole in their side or the ones we necropsied that were just a big, bruised carcass. I know they had pictures because I stood there and watched them take them.
Q. You’re ending your term as president with CPOW. Is there anything that organization can do?
DD: I don’t know anything CPOW or sheep producers can do. You can jump up and down and yell to do something, but in the end the director is the one calling the shots. (Anderson is retiring at the end of the year.) I have no idea what we’re going to get after that. It isn’t going to be easy. It’s not easy when there aren’t any wolves. We’ve already got coyotes, bears, bobcats, eagles, ravens and everything else. They all get their share. You put the apex predator in on top of that. … Next year how many dead sheep are there going to be before they decide to do anything again? If they decide to do anything.
The Dashiells are filing for state compensation for their lost animals. Dashiell wasn’t certain if he will be compensated for just the confirmed kills or the sheep that are still missing.
“When they see (the request), they’re probably going to hit the ceiling,” he said. “But that’s what wolf recovery costs. They better figure it out.”