By K.C. Mehaffey
World staff writer
OLYMPIA — Gray wolves may be largely an Eastern Washington concern, but lawmakers in Olympia are likely to hear plenty about them in the next couple of months.
After just three weeks in session, eight separate bills dealing with management of gray wolves have been written and sent on to committees.
Some of the measures — like creating a special wolf license plate to help fund measures to prevent conflicts with livestock owners — appear to have bipartisan support.
Others — like the Senate bill aimed at allowing county commissions to declare that wolves are an imminent threat and provide for lethal removal by an agent of the county — are sponsored by just Republicans.
And one — a measure requiring cooperative agreements with livestock owners for preventing wolf kills before allowing compensation — have sponsorship from West-side Democrats.
Joel Kretz, an Okanogan County Republican who sponsored or co-sponsored all of the House bills, said he’s hoping to see his bill pushing to delist wolves gain support.
He said under the state’s current management plan, the state needs at least three breeding pairs of wolves in each district for three consecutive years in order to begin the delisting process.
“We’ve got eight wolf packs in Eastern Washington, and most of them are in my district,” he said. Kretz predicted it could be a decade or longer before enough wolves populate the southwestern portion of the state before they are no longer endangered statewide.
“We could have 40 or 50 wolf packs in my district by then, and that’s not acceptable,” he said.
Kretz said the whole suite of House bills on wolves that were sent to its Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources will have their first hearing on Tuesday.
The eight bills are:
Senate Bill 5299/House Bill 1500: Creates of a special license plate dedicated to raising revenue to fund preventive wolf management efforts. Plates would have a picture of a wolf, and would cost $40, and a renewal fee of $30, to be dedicated to preventing conflicts with wolves.
Senate Bill 5193/House Bill 1219: Adds wolves and black bears to a list of big game species for which compensation can be awarded for losses. Those species now include elk, deer, mountain goats, caribou, mountain sheep, antelope, mountain lions and grizzy bears. The bill also removes the word commercial from the definition of those who can file a claim for compensation.
Senate Bill 5187/House Bill 1191: Protects livestock from predator attacks by allowing the owner, a family member, or the owner’s agent or an employee to kill a predator regardless of its endangered status without a permit or other form of permission. The protection of livestock from attack would be allowed on all lands, public or private, where livestock occur.
Senate Bill 5300: Promotes coopertive agreements between the Department of Fish and Wildlife and livestock owners. Agreements must include non-lethal management efforts to prevent wolf kills, which must be in place in order for the livestock owner to receive compensation when livestock is killed.
Senate Bill 5188: Allows counties the authority to declare wolves as an imminent threat to commercial livestock if they have been involved in two or more separate incidents on private property. The county’s legislative authority may authorize killing the wolves by its sheriff or an agent of the county without permission from the Department of Fish and Wildlife.
House Bill 1501: Builds on a program to provide funding by allowing the state to accept gifts, donations or grants for compensation for livestock injured or killed by wolves. The state would keep a list of livestock damages that have not been fully paid, and pay those claims in the order in which the damage was confirmed to be caused by wolves.
House Bill 1258: In a jab to lawmakers who strongly support the return of wolves to Washington, this bill would encourage the state to “translocate” wolves across the state to areas with at least 50 square miles of suitable habitat to “accelerate the pace by which all Washingtonians can enjoy the ecological benefits of an intact food web with a healthy population of apex predators.”
House Bill 1337: Prohibits the state Fish and Wildlife Commission from classifying the gray wolf as endangered or threatened in any area of the state where it is not also classified as endangered or threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act. Currently, wolves are not federally listed in Washington east of Highway 97.