Are the wolf advocates wrong? The data may relieve the hysteria

By Norman Bishop

Kerry White (column, Feb. 9), questions the agenda of wolf supporters. The agenda for wolf restoration is simple, not of "environmental elitists," but of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), as directed by the 1973 Endangered Species Act, and by the U.S. Congress. It is to conserve endangered and threatened species and the ecosystems they depend upon. Those of us who can remember back 24 years will recall that most wolves now in Montana descended from those that recolonized the state on their own, beginning in 1979.

A recovered wolf population in the greater Yellowstone area was predicted to kill about 19 cattle, 68 sheep, and up to 1,200 ungulates per year. In the years 1995-2001, wolves from Yellowstone took an average of six cattle and 43 sheep. Pre-wolf, of the 354,000 cattle present in the greater Yellowstone area, 8,340 were lost to all causes annually. From 1995-2001, wolves had caused one in 1400 of those losses. And of the 117,000 sheep present in the greater Yellowstone area, 12,993 were lost to all causes annually. Of those losses, one in 355 are now attributable to wolves. These statistics do not support White's "Ranchers with no options available to them are losing livestock everywhere wolves are present."

No options? Solutions to livestock depredations are not perfect, but depredating wolves are being dealt with. From 1987 to 2001, 117 wolves were moved, and 103 wolves killed by federal agencies in the three states for livestock depredation (42 were moved and 34 killed in the greater Yellowstone area). FWS encouraged producers to utilize private compensation programs. From 1987 to 2002, Defenders of Wildlife paid producers in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming $250,100. Federal rules provide that producers may harass wolves, may kill wolves caught killing stock on their lands, may receive permits to kill wolves on public lands, and any person may kill a wolf in self-defense. States or tribes may also kill or move wolves for excessive predation on big game. No land-use restrictions were imposed on private lands to enhance wolf recovery. No wolf managing agency or advocate is pushing for high wolf numbers in areas of livestock use.

We should know in a few years if wolves are "devastating ungulate populations." Montana State University and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks are studying wolf-ungulate interactions in the Gallatin, Madison, and upper Yellowstone. Meanwhile, in Yellowstone National Park, wolf project staff reported that wolves on the northern range killed an average of 1.8 elk per wolf over a 30-day study period during winter from 1997-2000.

I know of no "Friends of the Wolves" who predicted population growth of 6 to 8 percent 10 years ago. The 1994 Final Rule said, "Wolves have a relatively high reproductive rate, ... (six packs of wolves) would provide a wolf population increase at or near 22 per cent per year." White predicts that the high growth rate of the first several years post-reintroduction will continue unchecked. Such growth has never been documented in the scientific literature.

White takes a report on Yellowstone northern range wildlife from Agri News as gospel. A stable population of elk of 19,500? Hardly. A 1975 population of 12,354 built to a peak of 19,316 in 1988, then dropped 44 percent after the drought, fires, and severe winter of 1988-89 to 11,148, and a 1994 high of 19,359 fell to 11,736 after the severe winter of 1996-97. The December 2002 count of 9,215 was, like those in '76 and '91, a poor count, because lack of snow made elk hard to see from the air. Not "a remnant of just 40," the bighorn sheep population from Point of Rocks to Lamar has been relatively stable, with counts around 140, in the last six years. Their population was cut from 500 to 200 by a 1981 pinkeye outbreak. No wolves are being seen where bighorns live.

Gallatin National Forest Gardiner District wildlife biologist Dan Tyers writes that landscape level changes in vegetation caused by the Hellroaring and Storm Creek fires of 1988 caused a decline in moose that won't change until forests mature again. FWP biologist Kurt Alt told me that moose populations were at very low levels prior to wolf reintroduction in the upper Yellowstone, Gallatin, and Madison, due to the '88 fires, logging of winter range, and harvest, and he expects them to remain so.

Antelope abundant? Where has Agri News been? The 250 pronghorn north of Yellowstone have been in a tenuous, shrinking habitat for decades. Dr. Doug Scott reported 10 years ago that coyotes killed 95 percent of fawns. The good news is that unpublished data show that pronghorn closest to wolf dens now have the lowest fawn mortality from coyotes.

White goes on to say the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) 2002 report tells us the antelope population is a small fraction of what it was. Indeed (page 102), "less than 15% of that in the early 1900s." That has nothing to do with wolves. He says, "The mule deer populations are also reportedly in trouble." Nonsense. NAS (pages 100-101) summarizes ups and downs of mule deer, and concludes that winter severity determines fluctuations. Then White inserts a quote, "These ongoing biological disasters are all because of the introduction of wolves." That statement is not in the NAS report, "Ecological Dynamics on Yellowstone's Northern Range."

Norman A. Bishop is the International Wolf Center field representative for the greater Yellowstone region.

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