YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK––The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on February 2, 2006 recommended removing gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains from the federal endangered species list, 10 years after the first of more than 60 wolves translocated from Canada were experimentally released into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho.

As of 2004, there were officially 153 wolves in Montana, 260 wolves in Wyoming, and 422 wolves in Idaho. There are now nearly 1,000 wolves in the three states, said federal wolf recovery coordinator Ed Bangs. The species recovery targets were met in 2002, Bangs said.

“Federal agents and livestock owners have legally killed more than 300 wolves in the region that were confirmed or suspected of having preyed upon livestock,” wrote John Miller of Associated Press. “In 2005, federal wildlife agents investigated 93 rancher complaints, with wolves confirmed or suspected of having killed 181 sheep, 18 calves, six cows, and 11 dogs. That compares to 2003, when wolves were blamed for killing 118 sheep, 13 calves, and six dogs.”

The delisting would include all wolves in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, the eastern third of Washington and Oregon, and part of north-central Utah––everywhere that wolves from the Yellowstone region are known to have wandered, except Colorado.

“In 2004 a young, radio-collared female wolf from Yellowstone was found dead near Idaho Springs, Colorado,” recalled Denver Post staff writer Kim McGuire. “A year later, the state wildlife commission approved a plan to manage packs that come into Colorado. That plan says the state will let wolves roam where they choose, but urges killing wolves who prey on livestock.”

Polls indicate that about two-thirds of Colorado residents favor wolf recovery. Defenders of Wildlife in September 2005 offered to compensate Colorado ranchers for livestock losses if reintroduction proceeds.

Defenders of Wildlife has paid ranchers more than $500,000 for confirmed livestock losses to wolves in connection with the Yellowstone region reintroduction and the reintroduction of Mexican gray wolves to Arizona and New Mexico. Defenders also pays for stock losses to grizzly bears.

Ranchers argue, however, that they lose many animals whose remains go unfound, meaning that the losses go uncompensated.

Albert Sommers of the Upper Green River Cattle Association told Casper Star-Tribune correspondent Cat Urbig-kit in January 2006 that “total calf loss due to grizzly predation from 1995 to 2004 was estimated to be a minimum of 520 calves” Urbigkit wrote, “with a financial impact of $260,000. Compensation was provided for only 235 calves, for a total of $117,500. Total calf loss from wolf predation was estimated at 177 calves, with a minimum financial impact of $88,500. Yet only 28 confirmed wolf-killed calves, with a value of $14,000, were eligible for compensation from Defenders.”

Sommers argued that grizzlies kill 3.8 calves for every one whose remains are found, and that wolves kill 6.8.

“The Wyoming Game & Fish Department pays compensation for 3.5 calves for each confirmed kill,” Urbigkit said.
Defenders of Wildlife representative Suzanne Stone told Urbigkit that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed 429 cattle deaths and 1,074 sheep deaths in the northern Rockies due to wolf predation from 1987 to 2004. Defenders paid ranchers for the loss of 416 cattle and 1,323 sheep.

Predators in Wyoming
Among the states included in the federal delisting proposal, only Montana and Oregon have state plans that will “continue to maintain wolf populations in a responsible manner,” said Defenders of Wildlife in a prepared statement.

“The potential delisting cannot be finalized until Wyoming’s wolf management plan has been approved,” said Fish & Wildlife Service director Dale Hall. “We cannot move forward until Wyoming’s plan ensures a viable wolf population.” Hall said that Wyoming must classify wolves in a manner enabling Wyoming Game & Fish Department to limit human-caused wolf deaths, and must “clearly commit” to accepting 15 resident wolf packs, including those within Yellowstone, whose management will remain a federal duty.

Wyoming currently classifies wolves as predators, subject to extermination by the state Department of Agriculture except on federal land.

The Yellowstone bison are descended from one of the few remnant

herds left in the wild after the bison slaughters of the late 19th century.

They have been protected since 1902,

when only 22 to 30 remained. (Kim Bartlett)

“I do not intend to yield to federal blackmail,” responded Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal, to Mike Stark of the Billings Gazette, “and I believe the legislature is going to be no more inclined than I am.”

Wyoming attorney general Patrick Crank in March 2005 argued in a legal opinion that predators, including wolves, “are considered wildlife and are held in trust by the state. Further, the state has given local predatory animal districts control over predatory animals, including those that prey upon wildlife––not just livestock,” summarized Brodie Farquhar of the Casper Star-Tribune.

Based on that view, the Wyoming state house Joint Agriculture, Public Lands and Water Resources Interim Committee on February 16 asked the state legislature to approve a $10 million expansion of the state predator control program. The Wyoming Animal Damage Management Board, formed in 1999, had a 2005 budget of $230,000.

Commissioners in seven Montana counties in January 2006 approved resolutions recommending that Montana should take similar measures.

Idaho wants wolves gone
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on January 5, 2006 turned over wolf management in Idaho to the state Department of Fish & Game. Within days Idaho officials pledged to kill as many as 51 of 60 wolves living along the Montana border to boost the number of elk available to human hunters, and sought federal permission to radio collar 16 wolves from six packs in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, after tranquilizer darting them from helicopters.

U.S. Forest Service regional director Jack Troyer said the wolf collaring plan required further study.

“Wolves are the biggest single issue we’ve heard from hunters, almost since the day of reintroduction. They’re the folks who pay the bills at Fish and Game. So we listen to what they say,” Idaho Fish and Game Wildlife Bureau chief Jim Unsworth admitted to Miller of Associated Press.

The elk population north of Yellowstone has fallen from about 17,000 to 9,500 since 1995, according to research by Michigan Technological University wildlife ecologist John Vucetich––but Vucetich concluded that even though wolves eat mainly elk, “You don’t need wolves in the picture at all to explain the drop,” due to regional drought.

Historical data suggests that elk took advantage of abundant second growth after fires and logging to far exceed their usual population levels in northern Idaho during recent decades, and could be expected to decline as the new forest matures.

The Idaho Department of Fish & Game blames wolves for the elk population crash. Among 64 adult elk cows whom the department radio-collared between 2002 and 2004, wolves killed eight of the 25 who died.

Nez Perce Tribe natural resource manager Aaron Miles told Associated Press that the study was “junk science,” with “no peer review, jumping from one conclusion to the next.”

But Idaho Anti-Wolf Coalition founder Ron Gillette told the Spokane Spokesman-Review that he intends to petition to place on the next state ballot an initiative seeking to extirpate wolves from Idaho “by any means possible,” and to close the state Office of Species Conservation.

The Idaho state legislature in 2001 passed a resolution asking that wolves be removed from the state.

Bears, wolves, bison
Similar controversy surrounds grizzly bears, whose numbers in the Yellowstone region have increased from about 136 in 1975, when they were listed as an endangered species, to circa 580 in 2004. Grizzlies are also widely blamed in part for the elk decline.

Restoring wolves and grizzly bears in the northern Rockies has certainly not lastingly reduced the Yellowstone National Park bison population, which reached a record high in the first winter after wolves returned to Yellowstone, fluctuated for several years, and is again at a recorded peak.

Both wolves and grizzlies are major predators of both bison and elk. In theory, this should cause ranchers to welcome the predators’ recovery, as a first line of defense against brucellosis, endemic among both bison and elk in the Yellowstone basin.

Called undulant fever in humans, brucellosis can cause stillbirths and miscarriages, and is much feared by the livestock industry. By federal law, livestock transported out of states with brucellosis among domestic herds must be tested, to avoid spreading the disease. This cuts significantly into the often thin profit margins for open-range beef.

Because bison are closely related to domestic cattle, ranchers tend to be especially anxious about contact between them––although there has never been a confirmed case of brucellosis passing to domestic cattle from wild bison.

For that reason, the Montana state government has long struggled to keep bison from entering the state from the northern edge of Yellowstone. Immigrant bison have been killed by a variety of methods over the years, none popular with the public and many attracting strong protest despite the hardships of staging demonstrations in the depths of a Yellowstone winter.

From January 10, 2006 to February 16, 935 bison were captured by federal and state personnel at Yellowstone’s northern boundary. Eighty-seven calves were held at a research station in Corwin Springs, Montana. The remainder, amounting to 17% of the estimated record Yellowstone population of 4,900, were trucked to slaughter.
The USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service distributed meat from the bison to 28 Native American tribes in six states, reported Mike Stark of the Billings Gazette.

At least 40 bison were shot by hunters participating in the first Montana bison season since 1991. The public bison hunt ended on February 15. Participants were required to hunt on foot, and were not escorted by game wardens, unlike in past Montana bison seasons.

Three participants were cited for alleged unsportsmanlike conduct, including former Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, & Parks chief of operations Charles “Rich” Clough. Clough, retired since June 2001, pleaded innocent to allegedly illegally shooting a bison on January 16 near Gardiner, 173 yards outside the designated hunting area.

Wrote Scott McMillion of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, “Clough told wardens he did not know he strayed outside the boundary, but there was a post on the line with a sign on it, Park County attorney Brett Linneweber said.”

Conflicts among the federal bison capture teams, Montana hunters, and protesters led by the Buffalo Field Campaign were reportedly few, peaking in early January when 40 bison stampeded over frozen Hebgen Lake, near West Yellowstone, allegedly after staff from the National Park Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks Department, and Montana Department of Livestock hazed them away from the park boundary with snowmobiles. Fourteen bison fell through the ice; two drowned.

High as the bison toll was in 2006, it remained short of the 1996-1997 toll of 1,087 killed. Only 101 were killed in 2005, as an easier winter meant fewer bison tried to leave Yellowstone.

South of Yellowstone, National Elk Refuge manager Barry Reiswig told Becky Bohrer of Associated Press that the 948 bison now dividing time between the refuge and Grand Teton National Park represent the documented high.

“Our society now has to make a choice between how many elk and how many bison it wants. The pie is only so big,” Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance executive director Franz Camenzind told Bohrer.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and National Park Service in mid-2005 proposed introducing bison hunting to the National Elk Refuge to help reduce the bison herd to between 450-500 animals. Wyoming already permits hunters to shoot bison who leave the refuge. The annual toll is 30-50.

Elk & CWD
Problematic as bison are, controlling the brucellosis threat from elk is even more difficult, not only because elk are more difficult to contain, but also because hunters want abundant elk, the most hunted trophy species throughout the Rockies.

For decades the risk of elk spreading brucellosis was ignored. In 2003 and 2004, however, elk are believed to have transmitted brucellosis to cattle on several western Wyoming ranches.

The Wyoming Game & Fish Depart-ment in February 2006 began capturing and testing female elk for brucellosis at the Muddy Creek feeding station near Yellowstone. Brucellosis carriers are slaughtered. The exercise is intended, in part, to find out just what percentage of elk may be brucellosis carriers. The expected number of elk to be killed this winter is about 300. Depending on the findings, more elk may be killed in the future.

“We shouldn’t be trying to slaughter our way out of this problem when there is an obvious and much less draconian solution, which is to phase out the feeding which causes these high disease levels in the first place,” EarthJustice lawyer Tim Preso told Ben Neary of Associated Press.

Represented by EarthJustice, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, and the Wy-oming Outdoor Council on February 10 filed a lawsuit asking that the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management be required to do an environmental review of elk feeding.

“The bottom line is, with elk being shipped to slaughter due to brucellosis, and with chronic wasting disease looming on the horizon, business as usual is not acceptable any more,” Preso told reporters.

Chronic wasting disease, first identified among captive-reared deer and elk in Colorado in 1966, now occurs throughout the Rockies, is established as far south as White Sands, New Mexico, and has jumped to other states where ranched deer and elk are often hunted, including New York and Wisconsin.

“The prevalence of CWD in free-ranging elk in Wyoming has ranged from 2% to 3%,” reported Casper Star-Tribune staff writer Jeff Gearino on February 18, after the Wyoming Game & Fish board of commissioners approved a new CWD management plan.

“Experts warn that the disease could occur at much higher rates among elk on feedgrounds,” Gearino continued, “because feeding concentrates animals in artificially high numbers. Originally, the draft plan warned that ‘scientific research has indicated that the prevalence of CWD in captive elk can exceed 50%,’” Gearino said. “The 50 percent figure has been removed from the revised plan,” in an apparent concession to elk ranchers.

Early test results indicate that up to 36% of the elk congregating at the Muddy Creek feeding station are now brucellosis carriers, up from 29% according to samples drawn between 1993 and 2004.

The Muddy Creek feeding station, the National Elk Refuge, and more than a dozen other elk feeding sites were established early in the 20th century to help maintain high winter populations for the benefit of hunters–– and to keep starving elk from invading ranches, competing with cattle for hay and forage.

The feeding stations proved so successful in preventing winter die-offs that after wolves were exterminated in the Yellowstone region, along with most grizzly bears and pumas, Yellowstone rangers culled 26,000 elk to prevent overpopulation between 1935 and 1968. Another 45,000 elk were shot by hunters just outside the park. ––Merritt Clifton