Fish and Wildlife uses lethal force on cattle-killing wolves
Dennis L. Clay
The question was, will they really kill a wolf if necessary? Indeed they will and now they have. Fish and Wildlife officers have killed a wolf from a pack in northeast Washington.
This pack had attacked a herd of 400 cattle, leaving one calf dead, five cows injured and at least two others missing since mid-July.
The Washington Wolf Conservation and Management Plan outlines a range of management options to address wolf-livestock conflicts.
These include both non-lethal and lethal management options. Implementation of these will be based on the status of wolves to ensure that recovery objectives are met.
Non-lethal management will be emphasized while the species is recovering and will transition to more flexible approaches as wolf recovery advances toward a delisted status. The plan includes a program to compensate livestock producers for livestock that is killed or injured by wolves.
Under this plan, compensation would be paid for confirmed and probable wolf losses.
The plan includes a two-tiered payment system, with higher payments on grazing sites of 100 or more acres where Fish and Wildlife determines it would be difficult to survey the entire acreage, because it may be difficult to find carcasses on larger sites. Standard payments would be paid on smaller sites of less than 100 acres.
The plan also includes working with a multi-interest stakeholder group to evaluate development of a program to compensate livestock owners for unknown losses.
The ability to pay compensation, according to the plan, will be dependent on available funding. The plan also identifies tasks to pursue a variety of potential funding sources.
Although non-lethal methods are emphasized, Fish and Wildlife is living up to the plan and using deadly force when necessary.
The wolf killed was a non-breeding female member of the Wedge Pack. After the first wolf was killed, Fish and Wildlife staff stayed in the area in an attempt to shoot a second wolf.
The decision to take lethal action was made only after the department determined the action would not adversely affect wolf recovery objectives.
Before using lethal methods, Fish and Wildlife had tried a variety of non-lethal efforts to protect livestock from attacks by the Wedge pack.
These included using specialized electric fencing to protect calves this spring, attaching a radio collar to the pack's alpha male and maintaining a regular human presence in the area.
In addition, the livestock operator employs five cowboys to frequently check on the herd, which consists of 210 cow-calf pairs.
The plan, approved last December by the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission after five years of public involvement, specifically authorizes Fish and Wildlife to take lethal measures to address repeated attacks on livestock. The plan states when lethal removal is necessary, one or two wolves may be removed initially.
Several wolf-related incidents have been documented in the range of the Wedge pack. In 2007, wolves killed two calves from the Diamond M herd. Since then, livestock operators have reported wolf presence in the area and higher-than-normal calf losses.
Earlier this year, Fish and Wildlife documented wolf activity around a calving operation. In July, wolves killed one calf and injured a cow and another calf. Two other injured calves were found and confirmed to have been attacked by wolves. The rancher also observed two additional injured calves, but was not able to capture them. Last week, a calf was found with a laceration and bite mark that wildlife managers determined were the result of a wolf attack.
The reason for killing one and perhaps two was to reduce the size of the pack and break the pattern of predation.
Gray wolves are classified as endangered under Washington state law, but are no longer protected in the eastern third of the state under the federal Endangered Species Act.
As of July, wildlife biologists had confirmed eight wolf packs within the state and suspect there are four additional packs based on public reports and observed tracks. The number of confirmed packs represents an increase from two in 2010, indicating the wolf population is rebounding, which also increases the potential for wolf-livestock conflict.
Indeed, the wolf pack is not only rebounding, but growing in leaps and bounds. There were two confirmed packs in 2010, and in 2012, the number has increased to eight. This is quite an increase.
Will the next two years see another four, six or eight packs? Is there a link between the loss of livestock and the loss of deer, elk and moose? There must be. If the packs aren't eating livestock, they must be eating big game animals. The sooner we can use hunting as a wolf management tool the better for hunter and the deer, elk and moose herds.
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