Don Jenkins
Capital Press
Washington’s wolf population grew by 30 percent in 2014 and continues to be concentrated in the northeast.
Washington’s wolf population grew by 30 percent in 2014, but the animals continue to be concentrated in the northeast part of the state, with statewide recovery still several years away, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife wolf policy lead Dave Ware said Friday.
The WDFW still projects that recovery goals won’t be achieved until 2021. Since 2012, the state has been stuck on five breeding pairs, at least 10 short of recovery.
Plus, the wolves need to be more widely dispersed.
WDFW says it may be missing breeding pairs, which may show up in future counts. Also, wolves may be poised to begin spreading out, Ware said.
“The northeast is very close to approaching saturation, so those wolves have to go somewhere else or die,” Ware said.
WDFW released a summary of its 2014 wolf census late Friday afternoon. It plans to provide a full report to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in April.
In 2014, the WDFW confirmed the presence of 68 wolves in the state, up from 52 in 2013.
Some 55 wolves were in the Eastern recovery zone, the eastern one third of the state.
There were 12 wolves in the Northern Cascades zone, and one wolf in the Southern Cascades zone.
Four breeding pairs were in the Eastern zone and one was in the Northern Cascades zone.
The state has 16 wolf packs, four more than the year before. Wolf packs have tripled since 2011.
At least 15 breeding pairs, with at least four in each zone, must be established to meet recovery goals. Until then, under current state law, wolves will remain on the state’s endangered species list.
Northeast Washington lawmakers and county commissioners are pressing the Legislature to reopen the wolf plan in light of the fact the wolves are established in that region but statewide goals are still far from being met. They also want WDFW to judge success in reintroducing wolves by the number of wolf packs, not breeding pairs.
Ware said it’s unknown whether the increase in the wolf population is the result of wolves crossing into the state or of in-state breeding.
He said the 30 percent increase in one year was on par with the experience of other states after the wolf population reached 50.
Ware said it’s difficult to count wolves and that the census reflects only wolves that biologists have detected multiple times by sightings, tracks, howls or collar detections. He estimated there could actually be about 100 wolves in the state.
WDFW has received credible reports of wolves south of Interstate 90, but did not count any in its census. “We haven’t been able to confirm, but it’s a matter of time,” he said.
Gray wolves are protected under Washington law throughout the state and under federal law in the western two-thirds of the state.
The four new packs — Goodman Meadows, Profanity Peak, Tucannon and Whitestone — were discovered east of the Cascades, where all of the state’s wolf packs are located. The state’s wolf plan defines a pack as two or more wolves traveling together in winter.
Donny Martorello, WDFW carnivore specialist, said the number of packs would have been even higher if not for the loss of the Ruby Creek pack last spring.
One wolf was struck and killed by a vehicle. The other was accepted for care by Wolf Haven International in Tenino after it was found living among dogs in Pend Oreille County.
At least nine other wolves also died in 2014. Three were killed by poachers, three died of natural causes, two died of unknown causes, and a breeding female was killed last summer during an effort by WDFW to stop members of the Huckleberry pack from preying on a rancher’s sheep in Stevens County.
Attacks on sheep by the Huckleberry pack also pushed the number of livestock killed by wolves to a record.
The pack accounted for 33 of the 35 sheep killed or injured by wolves and documented by WDFW in 2014, according to Martorello.
Ranchers say they’ve lost hundreds of animals to wolves.
WDFW, which says it recognizes actual losses are higher than the number verified to date, also documented four cows and a dog that were attacked by wolves from other packs last year.
In a WDFW press release, the department’s new director, Jim Unsworth, said wolf recovery in Washington is progressing much as it did in Idaho, where he spent much of his career in wildlife management before taking his new position in February.
“Conflicts with livestock are bound to rise as the state’s wolf population increases, and we have to do everything we can to manage that situation. So far, wolf predation on livestock has been well below levels experienced in most other states with wolves,” he said in a written statement.
Martorello said the scarcity of snow made it more difficult to track wolves late last year, complicating the 2014 survey.
“Given the continued growth of the state’s wolf population, there’s a good chance that we have breeding pairs east of the Cascade Range we haven’t found yet,” he said in a written statement.