From The Seattle Times:
Wildlife officials say the Northern Rockies gray wolf population has decreased for the first time since the animal was reintroduced to the region 15 years ago.
A census of the endangered species released Friday by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service showed the number of wolves fell by about 5 percent in 2010, to 1,651 animals.
Fewer wolves in Idaho accounted for the entire drop, as wolf numbers were up slightly in Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and Washington.
The decline is set against a backdrop of rising political pressure to allow more hunting of the predators, which have aggravated ranchers and sportsmen with attacks on livestock and big game herds.
The number of attacks on cattle was virtually unchanged. Sheep losses dropped sharply from 721 in 2009 to 245 last year.
Idaho is the reason for the population drop?
Well, Idaho does have a very active anti-wolf community, led by a Dale Gribble type named Ron Gillett:
Hope those red necks go to extinct sooner the better. Ho, sisters, don’t make babies with these apes! And I’m serious.
You just love Dale, don’t you, Scottie? We’ve got a couple of those out here, sort of neighbors. Got a lecture from one on microchips being the mark of Satan once.
Dale and Alex Jones are so much fun.
I should have used “Rusty Shackleford.”
Now that I work at a vet clinic that does so much work with cattle ranches, I have less and less sympathy for the “OMG THEYS KILLZ ALL THE LIVESTOCK!!” hysteria.
Wolves have killed, at most, a couple dozen cows in Oregon in the last year or so. Human error killed thousands. Overcrowding or poorly managed feedlots, ranchers too cheap to buy quality feed (or any feed at all in some cases), or too cheap to vaccinate. Things that need to be fixed before I can get worked up over a few cows or sheep lost to ‘nature’s tax’.
I understand its difficult in general to be a farmer in America. But wolves are just a convenient target.
My mother’s family raised sheep in West Virgina.
You know what killed a lot of sheep?
Dogs.
Dog are hell on sheep, and because dogs don’t fear people at all, they go after the sheep more easily.
I love how much wolf predations on stock have dropped in he past few years. We’re obviously doing what is necessary to prevent these problems.
My only issue with wolves is they do kill dogs. Bear hunters in the Midwest and Northern Rockies do lose dogs to wolves.
But where I live our larger mixed coyotes don’t generally bother dogs.
I think the reason is this: We have hunts against coyotes using foxhounds. I should call these chases, because virtually no one kills a coyote with hounds.
I think we should haze wolves the way they do nuisance bears to teach them to leave people and dogs alone. I could see a bunch of guys getting together with about 50 hounds and then running the wolves and shooting them with rubber bullets. Do it in August when the pups are able to move and the wolves aren’t bound to a den.
I think this could be prove to be a successful way of keeping wolves in the ecosystem and to prevent problems between wolves and people.
Great book:
Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators
Yes, wolf attacks upon dogs have been on the rise. Hunters are advocating for more culls, however… it seems illogical to me since based on the hunters’ accounts of the witnessed attacks:
1) It’s the hounds, pointers, spaniels and retrievers that are being slaughtered by the wolves.
2) Elkhounds, West Siberan Laikas, Karelian Bear Dogs and the Australian Cattle Dogs are smart enough to avoid being grappled by a wolf while in combat. There’s a Boxer cross too that survived a wolf assault.
3) There’s no increase in attacks upon humans. Only dogs.
So… based on the second pretense, it makes more sense to train a bunch of bear dogs to haze wolves in a similar fashion how park rangers use them to haze bears.
Why advocate for cullings just because wolves are brave enough to prey on beagles and coonhounds, yet smart enough to stay away from people?
Er… was talking about in my area.
Although I very much love wolves(and not just from afar–I have had a good bit of actual experiences with the animals, including wolf-hybrids), some of my following comments are not going to sound like it! First of all, the BEST natural control of wild wolves is–other wolves! They WILL balance their own numbers out given the chance–but what they and Nature consider a balanced number of wolves, modern humans having to live near them may not! If reintroductions and allowing wolves to repopulate areas where they were previously extirpated are to continue and be successful, we MUST allow for the killing of wolves that habitually depredate livestock, and perhaps a limited “sport” hunting(much as I grit my teeth as I say the latter, as I personally could never kill a wolf for “fun”)–otherwise you are going to get too many human VOTERS angry and hating wolves(more than already exist, and there are already plenty!), and the whole wolf repopulation that is going on now COULD, in a heartbeat, get reversed again. In some areas, wolves SHOULD be protected and left strictly alone, but where they conflict with humans, they are going to HAVE to be controlled–or it will go bad for ALL wolves–that is only fair. Much as I hate the thought of sport hunting wolves(because of my own prejudices/preferences), some sport hunting in areas where wolves can be a problem will help keep wolves from becoming too habituated to humans, which if they do, could well lead to more wolf attacks on humans as well as livestock. And if more wolf attacks on humans start,(and they certainly could) peoples’ benevolent attitude towards wolves are likely to take a nose-dive, moreso than bear or cougar attacks, for whatever strange, psychological reason. Wolves tend to stir up much more reactional emotions in people; they always have throughout the centuries…..
I think that they should be hazed while they still are protected and people cannot hunt them.
However, I do think we can have a sustainable harvest with them. It’s been going on in Alaska for decades– until they started in on the heliocopters.
I was on a wolf study program offered by the Univesity of Montana in Missoula many years ago, when wolves were just beginning to recolonize the Northern Rockies on their own–there were already packs in Glacier National Park, and in a few other areas, and at least one wolf had actually been filmed in Yellowstone–this LONG before the controversial release program in Yellowstone National Park. Our instructor/mentor Bob Ream(super super, great guy) was all for letting the wolves do it on their own–it would have taken longer, no doubt, but it would not have caused the uproar with ranchers, hunters, and others who DID NOT want wolves to be reintroduced. Nor would it have cost the taxpayers a cent! But nobody listened, and they pushed the descision through, causing all manner of resentment and bitterness of the locals. This program was wonderful–we backpacked all through the Rocky Mountain front area in the Bob Marshall wilderness(where, at that time–1982–we found no wolf sign), then went up into southern Alberta, where we found wolf sign EVERYWHERE! The main place we were were on consisted of private cattle ranches, and part of the program was to interview local Canadians about how they felt about wolves. We met only one fellow that might be termed a “red-neck” as mentioned above–he wanted to kill every wolf, coyote, cougar, and bear in the world! Everyone else, all ranchers, laughed about the American concerns on wolves–they had been living with them non-stop for centuries. They were very practical if blunt in their attitudes–they left the wolves alone if the wolves left their cattle alone, which the wolves mostly did. There were lots of deer and beaver in the area; and wolves tended to prey on that and ignore the cattle. And these cattle were polled Herefords out on the range–no fences, herders, or any protection at all! Having calves right and left, and the wolves mostly ignored them! However, sometimes a pack would start killing cattle, and if they persisted, the ranchers would concentrate on killing that one pack–no thought of exterminating all wolves. I remember one rancher saying rather contemptuously that American ranchers were “sissies” about wolves! Hey, Canuck! Them’s fightin’ words! But these guys were very sensible and practical, and there were wolves, wild game, and cattle all over the place, all living quite compatibly in the same area!
…And as for dog livestock depredations–they certainly ARE bad–tend to be much worse than wolf depredations, at least as far as frequency and overall damage goes. Suprisingly, though, it isn’t usually totally feral dogs that cause the worst damage, but peoples’ pets running loose unsupervised! I have had experiences with all types of loose-running dogs, and I categorize them into 3 types–peoples’ pets out for some fun; strays that have been recently dumped or abandoned, but that have had some close association with humans in their lifetime; and really, totally wild, feral dogs–born and raised in the wild with no allegiance to mankind at all–these latter are actually quite rare, and need special circumstances to survive on their own–they are not as capable as wolves at surviving on their own in the wild, and seem to need to haunt human sources of food to get by–dumps, or garbage cans in developed areas, or lots of vulnerable livestock to raid. I got to observe and track some of these completely wild dogs over the years where I grew up, and they were as shy and elusive as wild wolves–I rarely got a glimpse! They raided farms regularly and killed livestock–they got quite a few rabbits and chickens from me! I did my best to protect my animals, until my rabbit and chicken pens looked like prison camps, with coild barbed-wire and sharpened stakes, etc. trying to keep the wild dogs out!! When the wild dogs came–always late at night, you never heard a thing, and they took just what they could grab quickly and were gone–you’d be lucky to find a tuft of fur or feathers or a bone in tracking them. Compare this to peoples’ pets or recent strays, who showed up anytime, day or night, yapping and carrying on in excitement, some of them wagging their tails happily when I rushed out to stop them! I could never kill a dog over such, but if they had I. D., I had no qualms about confronting the owners and insisting they pay for any critters that got murdered! I eventually got so good at making dog-proof enclosures, that I stopped having anything actually killed. But what a contrast between the different dogs! Peoples’ pets would massacre EVERYTHING they could get their teeth in, and leave the bodies scattered everywhere! This is not something the truly wild dogs ever did. I have been around a good bit of both dog and coyote predation on a Deer Farm(mostly Fallow deer) I worked on–again, the coyotes would kill ONE deer(and virtually always, there was SOMETHING wrong with that deer–a slight limp or other health issue–it was uncanny!), and feed on the carcass until it was totally consumed–usually about a week. Dogs(obviously peoples’ pets or recent strays) always killed multiple animals, and rarely took a bite–they got caught in the act and shot by the owner frequently. You never heard or saw the coyotes–I don’t think that owner ever got a coyote, despite his constant efforts to do so!
…and as for the guy in the video–only one word to describe him–Sheesh! Boy, it’s a good thing the Europeans got to America when they did, or all those meanie wolves would have surely killed off ALL the other animals on the continent!