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Email: timberwolfinfonetwork@gmail.com
Email: timberwolfinfonetwork@gmail.com

WY: New wolf management law passed

BY: Andrew Setterholm

The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission (commission) announced an addendum to the Wyoming Wolf Management Plan (plan) on March 5, two days before Gov. Matt Mead signed Senate File 41 into law to place wolf management in the hands of the state.

The addendum is intended to clarify the Game and Fish Department’s (G&F) management strategies to keep the population above recovery levels, after a peer review group raised questions. Though four of the five reviewers approved it, one asserted that it was unclear how G&F would maintain a stable population of 10 breeding pairs and 100 total wolves outside of Wyoming’s national parks and reservations.

In the addendum, the G&F describes managing wolves for a “population buffer.”

“At this time, (G&F) does not intend to develop a predictive model to estimate the total wolf population or breeding pairs; rather we intend to make management decisions based on known minimums. Consequently, a positive buffer is inherently build into our management and decision making process,” it says.

The G&F later states that the buffer’s size will be gauged through an adaptive management approach that might fluctuate, given the wolves’ current population dynamics and effects of management actions. This will allow the G&F to resolve livestock or domestic animal damage cases and provide a public wolf-hunting season. The agency also clarified that the buffer refers only to wolves counted outside of Yellowstone National Park (YNP) and other areas where wolves are not counted toward the state’s minimum required population numbers.

The G&F adaptive management strategy involves increased monitoring of the wolf population due to an anticipated increase in mortality.

“(G&F) intends to monitor the wolf population more intensively than the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) has in the past because of additional human-caused mortality … of both collared and uncollared wolves,” the addendum says, requiring increased monitoring to gather adequate information.

To ensure genetic connectivity and a minimum of one effective “migrant” per generation as designated in the state management plan, G&F clarified that it would bolster connectivity if and when necessary. The amended plan looks for “reducing mortality quotas in dispersal corridors or reducing total mortality quotas over a series of years to increase the probability that any migrants into the population will survive and reproduce.”

Mortality rates – natural and human-caused – were a subject of question by peer reviewers and the addendum addresses both. In the case of a natural mortality factor – such as disease – being unexpectedly high, the G&F might reduce mortality quotas, close wolf-hunting seasons or limit lethal control after livestock depredation.

Human-caused mortality was estimated in the management plan to approach 36 percent of known wolf deaths, which concerned some reviewers. The G&F explained in the addendum that they “do not intend to use this rate for decision-making purposes.”

A human-caused mortality rate is needed to stabilize the growing wolf population outside the YNP and reservations, it states.

“Therefore, (G&F) intends to utilize peer-reviewed publications to determine an appropriate human-caused mortality rate during the 2012 wolf-hunting season-setting process and apply what we learn through adaptive management to future season-setting processes,” the addendum says.

Peer-reviewed publications cite rates from 22 percent to 48 percent as the mortality “requirement” to stabilize a delisted population. Using its earlier stated intention to operate on known minimums, G&F states in the addendum that it will operate closer to the 22-percent rate.

“The department intends to allow human-caused mortality … in the range of 22 percent to 35 percent in the first year,” the addendum says. After the first year, the G&F will annually reassess the effectiveness of that rate to find a number that “will result in achieving the desired management goal.”

“Human-caused mortality” refers to any human action that results in the death of a wolf, including agency lethal control actions, hunting, vehicle collisions and illegal kills. These will be monitored through hunting harvest quotas, reported predator kills, documented lethal control cases and collared wolf deaths.

Gov. Mead moved Wyoming’s wolf delisting plan one step closer to activation by signing SF 41, the wolf management bill, on March 7.

The next step was for G&F to develop and publish their regulations and quotas for this year (which they did on March 9). FWS delisting is expected to follow by early fall, soon enough for a late-fall hunting season, G&F employees have previously stated.

The recently signed law contains $300,000 for damage payments in wolf-livestock depredation cases and $200,000 for control actions by the animal damage management board.

In a statement, Mead said, “I thank Wyoming’s lawmakers for their work on this bill and for their support of this plan. This has been a long journey and while we are not at journey’s end yet, we are closer than we have been in years to having Wyoming control wolves.”

Also March 7, the FWS released its 2011 Annual Report for the Northern Rocky Mountain (NRM) Wolf Population. In it, the FWS estimates the NRM wolf population, including “Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, the eastern one-third of Washington and Oregon and a small portion of north-central Utah,” has grown to 1,774 wolves and 109 breeding pairs.

While wolf depredation on livestock cases remain virtually unchanged from 2010, state and private agencies paid $309,553 in compensation, the report says. In Wyoming, 36 “problem” wolves were removed by agency control.

The FWS reiterated in a release that they proposed delisting of the gray wolf from the endangered species list, following the May 5, 2011, congressional delisting in the rest of the NRM.

“We expect a final determination regarding this proposal to be made by fall of 2012,” it says.

The FWS 2011 annual gray wolf reports are available at http://westerngraywolf.fws.gov.

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