The Wolf Crisis
- While sportsmen in the Rocky Mountain states are getting totally fed up with an ever-increasing wolf population that has devastated the moose, elk and deer populations in some areas, the 2009 hunting season may be a pivotal point in this heated controversy when prudent wildlife management finally wins the day -
By Jeff Lampe, North American Whitetail, Oct 2009 [here]
Tim Craig began his career as a hunting outfitter in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of central Idaho. For 32 years Tim has faithfully returned to the remote wilderness. The main draw has always been elk hunting and the wildness of this 1.3-million-acre roadless expanse of trees and rocky peaks.
“That’s where I cut my teeth; that’s where my heart is,” says Craig, who operates Boulder Creek Outfitters out of Peck, Idaho.
But Craig is fortunate to have several other areas to hunt because, by necessity, he’s on the verge of giving up on the Selway-Bitterroot.
“I never used to ride on a horse for eight hours and only cut only one or two elk tracks,” Craig said. “But that’s what happens now, and you can’t take clients into that kind of situation. I’ve pretty well come to the conclusion that it’s time for me to move on. And I know of eight or nine other outfitters getting out of there as well. I’d be surprised if anybody is still there within five years. It’s that bad.”
While biologists point to invasive plants and hard winters as key factors in big-game declines, Craig and others who spend months camped in the woods single out another, toothier problem — wolves. The Selway-Bitterroot was an original-release location for wolves in 1995 and 1996. In the years since, Tim says, the wilderness area has been hard hit by the resurgence of these predators.
“Wolves come in and run the herd out,” Tim said. “I’ve been here for 32 years in the same areas, and we’ve got some spots where there are totally no elk or deer. “In the backcountry areas, the deer were the first thing that went once the wolves went in. Now they’re just hammering the elk. It’s pathetic.”
Since being reintroduced to the northern Rocky Mountains, wolves have steadily spread into haunts they had not roamed since the 1930s. At the end of 2008, some 1,645 wolves were documented in the Northern Rockies. This includes parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, the eastern third of Washington and Oregon, and part of north-central Utah.
Federal surveys show that Idaho has the densest concentration of wolves, with at least 846. Next high are Montana (496) and Wyoming (302).
In recognition of those numbers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delisted wolves in early 2009 for the second time in as many years. Though the latest delisting met with predictable lawsuits from anti-hunting groups, indications are that the Obama administration supports the plan. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar needed less than two months to affirm the USFWS decision in early March.
In response, Idaho and Montana plan to have wolf hunts this fall. The states hope hunting wolves will help offset potential losses in hunting income that recent surveys estimated could be as high as $15 to $24 million. Others hope hunting will make the presence of wolves more palatable to hunters who have witnessed the big-game losses.
“It’s way past time to do this,” says Ed Bangs, the USFWS biologist who has overseen the reintroduction of wolves to the west. “(Wolves) should be managed and that management should include hunting. The wolf population can’t keep growing. All the suitable habitat is filled now. So instead of having me in a helicopter shooting wolves after they eat a guy’s cow, you can have hunters pay for the same privilege. By having hunting as part of the equation, you can have a more effective program that’s cheaper.” … [more]
