Wolf expert gets a chilly reception
Dan Hansen – Staff writer
ST. MARIES, Idaho — Where’s your wife?
“She’s home tanning those wolf hides I killed earlier.”
What’s on the menu at the Eagles Lodge?
“Wolf burgers.”
Those separate exchanges, laughed over Monday just before a meeting about wolf recovery, were indicative of the evening’s conversation.
What was suppose to be a question-and-answer session with wolf biologists turned at times into a shout-fest.
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Curt Mack, biologist for the Nez Perce Tribe, told the mostly male crowd of about 60 in the Eagles meeting room.
Because the Idaho Legislature didn’t want the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to have anything to do with wolves, the tribe is the lead contractor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the state. Mack, the tribe’s leading wolf biologist, called the St. Maries meeting because local residents are seeing wolves more and more frequently in the St. Joe River valley.
He thought they might have some questions.
Despite Mack’s requests that the meeting be alcohol-free, some attendees slipped away occasionally to grab a Bud Light or Coors from the adjoining lounge. And if anyone who sat facing Mack thought it’s a great thing that the government has brought back wolves to Idaho — well, that person didn’t speak up.
“Why do the people in Idaho have to accept wolves that they didn’t want anyway?” asked one man.
It’s the law, Mack explained, adding that neither he nor anyone else in the room could do anything about it.
“Our issue is how to live with them, how to manage them,” Mack said.
“They ought to put them in Massachusetts,” one man shouted in response.
“Washington, D.C.,” shouted a second.
“California,” muttered a third.
Gray wolves aren’t in any of those places, but they are in Idaho, and in bigger numbers than anyone expected so soon after they were reintroduced. Eliminated in the state in the 1930s or thereabouts, wolves were reintroduced in 1995 and 1996, when the wildlife service brought 35 from Canada to Central Idaho.
Mack’s best estimate now is 284 wolves in Idaho, give or take as many as 100. The population also has grown rapidly in Montana and Wyoming, and the wildlife service last week announced the critters are now officially “threatened” instead of “endangered.”
The next step, which federal officials hope to take next year, is removing wolves from the Endangered Species List altogether. Environmental groups have said they’ll sue to block that move, which would make wolf management the responsibility of the states, including Idaho, which officially opposes wolf reintroduction.
Members of the audience said they’re anxious for the right to legally shoot wolves, allowed now only if they’re caught in the act of killing livestock. A hunting season is possible if wolves are removed from the Endangered Species List.
But mostly, attendees were concerned about the impact of wolves on elk, which comprise three-quarters of the predator’s diet in Idaho.
“Probably most of the people here are hunters,” said an attendee.
Elk herds in the St. Joe and Clearwater drainages were already “in the toilet” before wolves were reintroduced, Mack acknowledged. Scientists blame that on a number of factors, from predation by cougars and bears to changing habitat due to fire suppression and logging.
Introducing a new predator is bound to knock down elk numbers further, said Mack, who denied undocumented allegations from the crowd that the government planted wolves in the St. Joe region — “dumped them here” was how the allegation was made.
The predators spread north from wilderness areas several hundred miles away, where they were initially planted, Mack said.
Mack cited studies showing that wolves kill more than they can eat only occasionally, not regularly, as wolf opponents allege. In response, he was accused of either skewing the facts or being ignorant.
“You’re wrong,” said a man in the back of the room.
“Absolutely wrong,” shouted another.