Back Off!

The state clearly recognized that the main reason elk had declined was that the woods had matured. “The second thing was probably black bear predation,” Bangs told me. “The number three thing may have been wolf predation. Or it may have been lion predation. Wolves are part of the equation, but the driver—the old mantra of wildlife management—is, ‘It’s the habitat, stupid.’ Our response was, ‘Man, the rule says that wolves have to be the primary cause. You didn’t meet that standard.’ They withdrew that proposal and are gathering more data to see if they can meet the standard.”

None of the rhetoric or management proposals issuing from Idaho and Wyoming inspire much confidence in wolf advocates. Peggy Struhsacker, wolf team leader for the eminently rational and restrained National Wildlife Federation, got right to the point when I asked her if wolves should be delisted in the northern Rockies now that the population is three times the recovery goal: “No!”

The Fish and Wildlife Service has performed well but not perfectly. In 2003 it tried to cut a corner by delisting what it proclaimed was the “eastern population segment” in 21 states, from the Dakotas to New England. This despite the fact that wolves hadn’t been seen for years in most  of the area. The National Wildlife Federation, Maine Audubon, and others sued and won on grounds that the service had violated federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, which provides that distinct populations must be defined by biological, not political, boundaries.

That case law makes the service’s recent proposal to delist wolves just in Idaho and Montana extremely vulnerable to litigation. But Bangs is convinced that by the time you read this, Wyoming will have come around and submitted a management plan he can live with. Struhsacker is convinced it won’t. “The service is trying to pressure Wyoming,” she says, “but the politics there are just not going to allow decent management. It’s hard for some of us working on this issue to believe how long people can hold grudges. After all these years it’s still, ‘The feds brought these wolves in, and we didn’t want them.’ ”

If Wyoming is granted management authority and pursues its current whim of knocking wolves down to the bare minimum, it’s going to have to spend millions on close monitoring to prove to litigants that it hasn’t placed wolves in jeopardy. “They’re managing themselves into a very costly operation, and then holding that up as a reason we shouldn’t have wolves at all,” says Franz Camenzind, director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance. “We have a process that’s being driven by maintaining minimum numbers, unlike every other species. It’s very frustrating. It’s not science-based. I don’t believe it’s sustainable in the long term.”

It’s hard to figure why Wyoming and Idaho are so hell-bent to kill off wolves. In the best wolf range, the opportunity for livestock depredation has significantly decreased thanks to the National Wildlife Federation, which has purchased and retired 474,627 acres of federal grazing allotments in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Wolf depredation, which amounts to less then one percent of all livestock losses, is compensated by Defenders of Wildlife if a rancher can produce evidence that wolves were responsible. And in Idaho the U.S. Congress has arranged for a $100,000-per-year slush fund that compensates ranchers even if they can’t produce evidence. Finally, under a special provision of the Endangered Species Act, wolves that prey on livestock are swiftly and legally killed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s  Wildlife Services division.

In most of the northern Rockies, elk are too numerous for their own good and for the good of other wildlife and even livestock. Hunters can’t have it both ways—they can’t brag about performing the ecological function of natural predators and simultaneously demand that those predators be eliminated. Hunters are seeing fewer elk, not because wolves are reducing the population but because they’ve made elk skittish—that is, predators are causing prey to behave naturally. No longer do elk stand around in the open gawking at pickup trucks. Road hunting doesn’t work anymore. The smart, successful hunters have figured this out and have changed their strategy.

“The management objective for the Jackson Hole elk herd is 12,000,” Camen-zind says. “We’re about 1,000 animals over that. And elk hunting success in Wyoming is still highest of any of the three states by far—close to 40 percent.” In an effort to prevent overabundant elk from spreading brucellosis to cattle (a disease cattle originally spread to wildlife) the state proposed an experiment in which it would vaccinate elk in the Jackson National Elk Refuge. When the Fish and Wildlife Service denied permission, the state sued. Camenzind’s group intervened on behalf of the federal government, which prevailed. Then the service flip-flopped and allowed the state to vaccinate elk anyway. “We’re just afraid this pattern is going to repeat itself with wolves,” says Camenzind. “I met with the [service’s] regional director Mitch King, and my impression is that he was put in for political purposes to resolve some of these issues. I see that as a description, not a criticism. We have an ecosystem that’s 22 million to 28 million acres, depending on where you draw the lines. If we can’t have wolves here, where can we have them? This is land that everyone owns, not just Wyoming. And everyone should have a say in what happens on it.”

In Montana, where wolves are much more difficult to manage because there’s more ranchland interspersed with wolf habitat, everyone did have a say. Good wildlife management cuts across party lines. In 2000 Governor Mark Racicot, a conservative Republican and ardent Bush supporter, appointed a Wolf Advisory Council, comprised of 12 citizens who represented everyone from hunters to stockmen to Indians to animal-rights activists to general wildlife advocates. The council heard from 49 states and collected 10,000 comments, then submitted everything to Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks. The agency’s plan lets the wolf population grow wherever it doesn’t conflict with human activities. “Montana has basically hired all the good people who worked for the federal government,” says the National Wildlife Federation’s Struhsacker. “They’re great negotiators, great proponents for wolves. They know how to talk to ranchers.”

I asked Carolyn Sime, Montana’s gray wolf program coordinator, what makes her state so different. “Wolves recolonized Montana on their own 25 years ago,” she said. “So we began our planning with a different question than the other two states. It wasn’t: Should we have wolves? It was: Wolves are here to stay; we’re the appropriate entity to manage them after delisting. How should we do that?”