The Wolf Preservation Blog

Grey Wolf in Yellowstone National Park’s famous Lamar Valley. Image by Jason Williams

Posted by Jason on Jan 10, 2015 in Field Notes

“In 1926 the last known wolf was killed within the boundary of Yellowstone National Park and in 1943 the last recorded wolf was killed in Wyoming. After nearly 10,000 years on the landscape, a key species and apex predator was gone. Though a few sightings were reported in the years that followed, it is widely agreed that for all intents and purposes wolves were exterminated from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The systematic extirpation of wolves was done by all means necessary including trapping, poisoning and shooting. The ideal of a predator free landscape made sense in the context of a culture founded on dominion over the natural world as opposed to living in harmony with it. Ranchers didn’t want to lose cattle, hunters feared the loss of game and most everyone agreed that wolves didn’t have much value.

Even the famous conservationist Aldo Leopold agreed with killing wolves until he realized through his direct observations that wolves were valuable to the natural world and health of the ecosystems in which they live. In one of his often quoted passages Leopold laments, “In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a wolf. In a second we were pumping lead into the pack, but with more excitement than accuracy; how to aim a steep downhill shot is always confusing. When our rifles were empty, the old wolf was down, and a pup was dragging a leg into impassable side-rocks. We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes—something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.”

Leopold’s realization and later observations fueled a passion for conservation and a preservation of a wild world that included the wolf. As a more modern perspective began to influence land management decisions, a movement began to reintroduce wolves back into the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Between 1995 and 1997, the Unites States Fish and Wildlife Service, with the help of the National Park Service, released 31 wolves into Yellowstone National Park. The program was so successful that future planned releases were never carried out. The wolf population increased steadily in Yellowstone and peaked at over 175 wolves in 2003. As the habitat within Yellowstone became saturated and well established packs claimed the best territory, younger wolves began branching out in search of new territory. They moved out of Yellowstone in all directions, including to the south where they found the ideal habitat of Jackson Hole.

After the release of wolves into Yellowstone it became apparent that the wildlife tourism associated with wolves was significant. According to one study (Click here to read), wolf watching in 2005 generated around 35 million dollars in revenue for the three states visited for this purpose (Wyoming, Idaho and Montana). 44% of all visitors surveyed in this study listed the wolf as one of the animals they would most like to see, second only to grizzly bears in terms of visitor interest.

As wolves became more established in Grand Teton National Park and Jackson Hole they also became more visible. Jackson Hole, including Grand Teton and the National Elk Refuge, was becoming known as a wolf watching destination to rival Yellowstone and the famous Lamar Valley. There were even wolf dens and rendezvous sites being established in places that visitors could easily watch from a safe distance in their natural environment. Places like Elk Ranch, Willow Flats and the wide expanses of the National Elk Refuge (in winter) were becoming reliable places to find wolves, often doing something interesting like hunting, chasing coyotes or even playing. By the winter of 2011/12 our guests were seeing wolves on about half of our safaris! Though some guide services had already started offering wolf specific tours in Jackson Hole, we had been waiting until the sightings were more reliable and the packs were more established and predictable. It was after the frequent and reliable sightings in 2012 that we started to design and promote wolf watching which we expected to especially benefit our shoulder seasons like spring, fall and winter when the wolf watching was often the best. All of the tour businesses and wildlife photographers agreed that the combination of more wolves living in accessible places was creating unprecedented wolf watching opportunities in Jackson Hole.

Unfortunately the steady increase in the wolf population also led to the delisting of the wolf from protection under the Endangered Species Act in September of 2012. As an endangered species wolves could not be hunted and even control actions for livestock depredation or other nuisance behaviors were more difficult as they had to be approved by federal agents. The fate of the Wyoming wolf was transferred from the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who banned sport hunting and trapping, to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, who immediately created a trophy hunting and trapping season (and predator control program) targeting any wolves that roamed outside the National Park boundaries.
According to the Game and Fish 2012 Wolf Report, at the end of 2012 at least 277 wolves in 43 packs roamed the wild country of Northwest Wyoming. That was after the loss of 136 wolves that year including 120 at the hand of people. Of those 66 were legally harvested as either trophy animals (permit required) or predators (no permit required), 43 were killed by state or federal agents, 5 were killed by cars, 4 were poached and 3 the cause was unknown. Not only were there significantly less wolves to watch, they had been taught an important lesson – people were dangerous and to be avoided!

This first hunt devastated the wolf watching and photography industry in Jackson Hole and shattered the potential for this multi-million dollar industry to flourish! That winter the wolves vanished from sight. They started hunting and moving at night and were being especially careful to avoid being spotted by people. That winter (2012/13) our guides and guests only saw wolves twice in the entire season! Their disappointment was palpable and our loss of revenue dramatic. Not only was this an entirely new dimension to the wildlife related tourism industry in Jackson Hole, it also coincided with our slow seasons, a time when valley businesses struggle to make sales, fill hotel rooms, restaurant seats and certainly sell wildlife safaris. It was an amazingly sudden shift and a lesson to be learned about our wild neighbors. They are smart! The wolf packs that we are starting to know didn’t lose that many members to the hunt but they saw enough of their family killed to completely avoid us. This negative conditioning will most certainly have an impact on our ability to watch and photograph these wolves for years to come.

Not only was this 35 million dollar a year activity destroyed during one fall hunt, Wyoming Game and Fish lost over $460,000 administering their wolf program in 2012! According to their records they sold 4,287 wolf tags for $107,136.00 but spent 569,271.31 on their wolf management program! Of those sold only 187 tags were for out of state hunters meaning that the vast majority of the program was for Wyoming residents and would have generated very little ancillary income for other businesses (average spends for in-state users are demonstrated to be significantly lower than out-of-state travelers).

In 2013 the interest in tags was even lower with only 2,152 tags sold generating $61,416.00 and only selling tags to 140 out-of-state hunters. After spending $541,594.86 on wolf management in 2013, the Wyoming Game and Fish lost $480,000 administering this one program! It’s no wonder the Wyoming Game and Fish is struggling financially and faced a 2 million dollar budget deficit in 2013 alone. Since 2009 the department has experienced an inflation adjusted decline of 13% according to their website.
Given these facts wouldn’t it make sense to reevaluate the way we value wildlife. Is the old paradigm broken? The idea that just because an animal is no longer officially threatened means we should immediately start killing again it is short sighted and given the numbers downright stupid. Wolves in today’s world are worth more alive than dead – the numbers don’t lie. By Wyoming Game and Fish following this old land management ethos, they are costing our community millions of dollars, wasting taxpayer money and taking away good paying jobs (not to mention encouraging people to come and take away such a valuable resource). It’s time Wyoming Game and Fish recognize that there is a better way to manage wildlife. One that is more profitable, more scientifically sound and one that requires spending a lot less money.

If you agree please send a message to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the Wyoming state legislators and let them know your thoughts. The legislative session is just starting and Wyoming Game and Fish budget discussions will be happening soon. Let’s send a clear message that these policies are bad for business and bad for wildlife!”
Representative Ruth Ann Petroff
Box 2764
Jackson Wyoming 83001
Ruth.Petroff@wyoleg.gov

Andy Schwartz
PO Box 2654
Jackson Wyoming 83001
schwartzhd23@gmail.com

Senator Christensen
220 West Alta
Alta Wyoming 83414
Leland.Christensen@wyoleg.gov

Director of Wyoming Game and Fish
Scott Talbott
5400 Bishop Boulevard
Cheyenne, Wyoming 82006

**Special thanks to “Jackson Hole Wildlife Safaris” for providing this information! (http://jacksonholewildlifesafaris.com/why-wolf-hunting-in-wyoming-is-bad-for-business/)

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By Ralph Maughan On January 3, 2015

About the politics of wolf reintroduction in the Northern Rockies-

“Jim Yuskavitch begins his book with the story of wolf B45, the first Idaho wolf to venture into Oregon. She (B45) was a first generation offspring of the wolves brought down from British Columbia for release in Idaho in 1996. Most of his examples and descriptions early on in the book center on Idaho. Most past books begin with Yellowstone National Park.

As an Idahoan, I enjoyed reading for the first time about the “exploits” of a number of the wolves reintroduced to Idaho. Their stories are as interesting as the many about the individual Yellowstone wolves and wolf pack. I had hoped someone would do this.

Before you are through reading In Wolf Country, he has discussed almost every issue surrounding wolf restoration to the Northern Rockies. Most of these have been topics in The Wildlife News. Our readers will find the book to be a fine companion giving the factual history, the various controversies about the wolves, the players, the politics, and the world view of the ranching and hunting interests that largely dominate the management of the outdoors east of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada and west of the Missouri River.

The author shows in detail how wolf management is just barely about wolf biology. Instead it deals with people and politics, many of which are guided by beliefs about wolves that include few facts, many errors, and a lot of emotion. I have wondered for years why wolves raise so much hostile emotion in some groups of people. One answer he finds is that the controversy for many on the anti-wolf side is a stand-in for different worldview. Wolf supporters, according to the ideology found in many writings and opinion pieces, value animals over humans. They would push God off his throne ruling over all, but giving  to “man” dominion above all else. Support for predators presumably means hostility to property rights and guns, belief in a overpowerful federal government. Wolves are pretty much a plot to destroy the rural West.

Of course, he is careful to point out that there are ranchers and hunters who do not subscribe to idea that wolves-put-on-ground represents some cosmic battle between good and evil. Many just go along with what they see as the dominant opinion where they live or work. In the rural towns social pressure makes it hard to differ on this subject and often costly for those of their number who have a less emotional view to speak up. An example he uses is the Wallowa County, Oregon unsuccessful attempt by the Barking Mad Farm Bed and Breakfast to get a conditional use permit to expand onto property zoned for agriculture. The application was made into a much larger issue and something to be stopped because the kind of tourism the expansion might generate, it was argued, would bring the wrong kind of people as visitors to the county and give support for wolves. It would threaten priority of ranching there. If I recall correctly, that this dominance of ranching was explicitly stated by opponents of the permit.

He also retells Don Peay’s successful effort in Utah to extract large sums of money from the Utah Legislature to lobby to prevent the federal government from introducing wolves to Utah, something no one was asking the government to do. Peay, who founded Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, was also successful getting a Utah ballot proposition passed making it so that it would take a supermajority (2/3) in future for any other ballot proposition to directly change the rules and take of hunters and fishers.

To date, not many books have written about the work in Idaho by the Nez Perce Tribe (Tribal Wolf Recovery Team) which was tasked with managing the reintroduced wolves when the Idaho Legislature rejected doing so, though they claimed that role later. A major task, and one that continues to a lesser degree, was to estimate the number of wolves and wolf packs in Idaho each year and collect information on their whereabouts and habits for the Department of Interior to asses the degree to which the recovery effort had succeeded.

Yuskavitch was able to go on a number of trips to the woods with the Team. His observations were interesting, both of finding the wolf packs, and finding the people who actually feared them in remote and small, Elk City, Idaho. I can testify to the correctness of his observations because at the time I had an in-law who lived there. Observing the fear his girlfriend had of the unseen menace, and how hard it was to abate it, shocked me. She had seen what she thought were wolf tracks on her property. I told her I found something far worse she needed to pay attention to — spotted knapweed just getting started.

This author, like many others, debunks the common idea that wolves are especially dangerous to people. No, it is not the case that they are fixin’ to eat us, but want to eat all the other animals first. He relates his conversation with Utah State University Professor Dan McNulty pointing out that wolves are quite weak for large carnivores; far from being killing machines. Compared to the cougar, for example, they are less muscular, have a weaker bite, have weak legs when it comes to attacking. Their legs are “just sticks,” and they cannot rotate them at the knee. Their claws do not grab or hold.

He has two chapters that are pretty much about hunting; wolf hunting and hunting deer and elk. There is a chapter on the return of wolves to the Pacific Northwest with stories about “Journey,” wolf OR7 and other important Oregon wolves.

He concludes that “Wolves are Here to Stay,” and that hunting wolves actually facilitates their dispersal to places far from their birth.

I have only touched on the many topics of the book which is available in paperback for order on-line. It was released just before the New Year. It is hardly a dull academic tome despite its many facts and analysis of the policy controversy. For the person greatly interested in wolves on the ground in the West, the book should be of intense interest.”

About The Author

Ralph Maughan

Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides.

“In Wolf Country,” important new book by Jim Yuskavitch

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