WILD BILL
Not a Smooth Move, Idaho
By Bill Schneider, 1-19-06
We all know anything containing the word “wolf� is controversial, and controversial is just another way of saying political. Knowing this, you’d think public officials in Idaho would start slowly and carefully after “making history� on January 5, 2006 when the state took over management of Canis lupis from the dreaded federal government.
But no, only a week later, on January 12, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game announces a plan to kill 75 percent of the wolves in one area in north-central Idaho. The cover story was something about reducing predation on elk, but more likely, it is, as usual, all politics—and not a smooth move at that.
Interior Secretary Gale Norton jetted out from the Beltway to join Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne in signing the historic document. The governor obviously already had a wolf-killing plan in his back pocket before signing, and you’d think he could wait for the ink to dry before pulling it out.
Nobody really objects to state wildlife agencies taking over the management of endangered species. That’s basically the goal of the Endangered Species Act. Even the most touchy-feely wolf lovers expect this to happen. But the prospect of state management worries the greens because states like Idaho didn’t want wolf reintroduction in the first place and most state-level politicos constantly spew anti-wolf, anti-feds rhetoric from the podium. In 2002, for example, the Idaho legislature passed, and Governor Kempthorne signed, a resolution calling for the eradication of wolves in Idaho "by any means necessary."
On the other hand, lots of people like wolves, like watching wolves, and simply like knowing that the Big Dog is out there enjoying the Wilderness and making lots of little wolves and the ecosystem whole. They consider wolf reintroduction a classic conservation success story. But they’re worried the state wildlife agencies will be under too much political pressure, particularly from the livestock industry, to manage wolves the old-fashioned way—kill them. Sooner or later, they fear, we’ll be back in the same spot, déjà vu, so many wolves “controlled� that we have to start restoration all over again; the evil feds come in and take over management again; and it starts to feel like riding a carrousel.
Usually, when we start a new relationship where everybody is suspicious about the other party’s intentions, we take the go-slow approach—you know, like finally getting your dream job and wanting to get started on the right foot. In Idaho, apparently, this would mean going up to the Big Boss’s office the first morning on the job and telling him he has mismanaged the company for decades, has too many assets, and should donate 75 percent of them to charity to be more socially conscious.
Right now, nobody disputes the fact that Idaho has a healthy wolf population. The original 35 wolves introduced have been quite prolific, ballooning the population up to about 600 animals. Killing 51 of them is not a major problem or going to bring back federal control, but it sure sends the wrong signal at the wrong time to all those people watching and already doubting that the states can be trusted with wolf management. You always try harder to make things go well on the first date—unless you’re from Idaho, that is.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must approve Idaho’s wolf-killing proposal because the wolf is still an endangered species. The FWS will probably get a million comments during the public involvement phase and probably 90 percent of them will oppose the wolf killing and the FWS will probably approve it anyway because most comments were form letters from people who didn’t matter.
But why make the state takeover so controversial? Why not start slowly, get everybody comfortable, and then gradually and gracefully work toward state management goals instead coming out of the chute with big negative headlines?
Elk numbers have declined in the Clearwater Basin targeted for wolf reduction, but are wolves to blame? Research coming out of Yellowstone indicates that wolves are only one factor in declining elk numbers, and in fact, not the major factor. In Idaho, green groups believe agencies should prioritize improving and protecting habitat to boost elk populations. With a poor habitat base, you can kill all predators and still have declining elk numbers.
The ultimate goal, everybody’s victory, is of course eventual removal of the wolf from the Endangered Species Act. Idaho’s high-profile, politically un-cool move certainly won’t help de-listing efforts.
Idaho, incidentally, also wants to take over management of the grizzly bear, currently a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, and we can expect this to happen sometime in 2007. The big bear has just as many fans as the wolf does, so can the bear people expect Idaho to want a 75 percent reduction in bear numbers a week after taking control? Will Idaho’s performance on wolf management affect the federal decision to hand over grizzly management? Will dissatisfaction with Idaho’s audacious approach slow down approval of similar hand offs in other states?
Let’s agree for a moment that we really do need to kill 75 percent of the wolves in this one area. That’s not the point. The point is, Idaho could at least wait a month or two or three for the dust to settle before shooting the moon. Maybe getting to the end zone one first down at a time is a better game plan than sprinting out on the field and throwing three Hail Mary passes from your own one-yard line. But I guess that’s how they do it in Idaho.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
Add your comment below
The Alberta Plains Wolf introduction program was one of the most ill planned and poorly executed fiascos carried forward for the sake of touchy feely politics that most people in Idaho's backcountry have ever seen.
In the dead of a hard winter with ice storms coming in fast and furious, the USFWS leader, one heck of a bulltrout specialist with little or no knowledge of the requirements of grey wolf, had wolves trapped and prepared for transport to Lemhi County.
First, he decided to dis-include the tribal unit that actually had tribal rights in the area and to make the deal a Nez Perce action. The Lemhi’s with their fellow Sho-Bann’s slowed the movement of the convoy down on Lost Trail with threats that they would attack any Nez Perce medicine man who attempted to do a TV show prayer on Lemhi Tribal ground. The convoy of Shoshone protesters surrounded the BLM building below S Hill in Salmon and made reference to the fact that it was the site of the last Nez Perce incursion into their territory and that Nez Perce bones still rotted in the soil from that occurrence.
So at the Idaho Border in the snow, the Nez Perce prayer was said and their contingent beat feet home to Lapwai. The day lost to this piece of brilliance was the only day on which weather breaks that would have allowed helicopter transport happened.
USFWS was in active consultation with Lemhi County on sites for introduction and on the requirements that the local government had for their plans. They had agreed to drop points on the West Bank of the Middle Fork, well inside of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area. But to hit the media window for the hype of the ‘efforts’ of the agency to see a ‘comeback’ for wolves, they were stuck with a period when they could not use air transport.
There was absolutely no snow plowing of the roads that lead to the edges of the Wilderness in Lemhi County. The contingency that ground transportation would be required in the dead of winter was not even considered in the plan. For two days, the poor wolves were kept drugged in their tiny aluminum cages in a warehouse attachment to the BLM buildings while USFWS tried to figure out what to do.
Heber Stokes, Chairman of the Lemhi County Commission, was called in, as was the County Sheriff and those of us on the Land Use Planning Committee to try to come up with some sort of a way to get the wolves to a release point. The only real option was the Road down the Main Stem and USFWS proposed that they try to use the Shoup Bridge across the Salmon River, a foot bridge that leads into the mouth of the Middle Fork. The County Road Crews were dispatched and the road along the middle fork was cleared and sanded, all the way down to Road’s End at the put in at Corn Creek.
That next morning Commissioner Stokes, Sheriff Barslou and I lead the convoy to the designated bridge site, a place where not one person from USFWS had ever been before. We had suggested to them the night before that the site was not likely to be suitable but by that time the wolves had been under extreme sedation for so long that another day would be likely to kill them. One look at the site and the wolf handlers informed the leaders of the Introduction Team that there was no way they could get the cages across the bridge. Heber suggested that they take the convoy, which by that time had a long tail of environmental activists and TV news crews, further down river to Corn Creek for the release, since there was absolutely no way that a turn around and wait for better planning could be accomplished.
The road crews had not planned for this massive a group and had not plowed out the parking lot at the Forest Service rafting site. There was no place to release the wolves that was not under heavy snow, so the large contingent of greens were told to park a little further down the road and the idea was generated to push the released wolves over the edge of the embanked roadway into the trees beside the outhouses and near the A frame housing for the camp area. Corn Creek looks like your average resort, heavily built up for the high tourist traffic it receives during the summer and autumn rafting seasons.
The first few wolf cages were pulled from trucks and carried to the road margin, the gates lifted and a sharp stick inserted on the closed side and the contained animals jabbed out into the deep snow. As each wolf got unsteadily to its feet, the green crowd would howl with a hundred voices, the wolf would stare and begin trying to get through the deep snow to get as far away from the crazy humans as he could possibly get.
That is until the very last wolf’s cage was unslung. The female B15 was not interested in being released. The handler jabbed her with the sharp prod, but all the howling frightened her, so she turned and attacked it in her cage. The handler removed the back piece to the cage and jabbed her some more, but still she hunkered down and refused to exit. Finally they shook her out of her cage and tried to attach a loop over her head to drag her to the edge and over into the trees, but in a surprise move, she attacked the USFWS prod man, who ended up throwing her over the bank into a tree to get her away from him.
She stood up and glared up the embankment at the assembled people, the howling group in the background, shook the snow from her fur, turned her bloody rear flanks wounded by the prod to the crowd. Then she trotted off leaving bloody paw prints in the snow by the Forest Service outhouses.
The bottom of her cage was covered in dry blood, where she had attempted to dig her way through the aluminum and as one USFWS biologist hauled it back to the trucks, the Sheriff worked on binding up the bitten wolf handler, as the excited environmentalists headed for their cars and the TV crews loaded their gear and got going to send out the exciting news of the day.
Not one of the news reports showed pictures of what I can only describe as animal torture. Instead they all waxed poetic on the release of wolves into what they described as Pristine Wilderness. They were all very careful to suggest that the release was done ‘despite dangerous local opposition’. No mention was made of the County’s work to clear the road or of the hours of assistance given to the USFWS to get the job done. No mention was made of the Lemhi Tribe. No mention was made of the release occurring in a built up tourist area.
The ground release at Yellowjacket, where the County road crews were required to plow a route into avalanche country to a release site and the coordination of the Commission and County Planning for the air drop release were never covered. The disappearance of the Hat Creek pack of native wolves following the introduction was never mentioned. The later fights between the tribes over the large funding for the program handed to a tribe without rights in the area were never even brought up in the media.
And that is how Alberta wolves came to Central Idaho.
As you complain of the State taking management and the ‘concerns’ of wolf advocates, I can only shake my head.
Don't mean to bother you with a Civics lesson, but the Governor doesn't sign House Joint Memorials. And, said memorials have the effect of a "hankie in the wind".
Jeff