Wolf Nation

by Brenda Peterson

  WDFW’s Donny Mortarello had publicly defended the wolf culling and countered Wielgus’s assertions with details he stressed were really important given the tensions on all sides: “Cattle were released four miles from the den site,” Mortarello explained. Because the wolf family’s home range is 350 square miles, it was “inevitable that they would cross paths” with cattle. In an interview with the local television station Mortarello concluded that WDFW’s commitment to following the WAG’s agreed-upon protocol for lethal removal was vital to building trust among all stakeholders and that “nothing less than the future of wolf management is at stake.”

  HISTORY AND BAD BLOOD haunts fragile coalitions like the Wolf Advisory Group who are trying to find common ground between often warring factions. In Stevens County, like many places in Northeastern Washington, where a majority of wolves have settled, antiwolf politics have deep roots. It would be risky to wear a prowolf T-shirt there. Stevens County Cattlemen’s website headline was “Profanity Wolf Pack Becoming Chronic Killers,” with an illustration “Delist the Wolf.” An editorial ran in the Omak-Okanogan County Chronicle under the headline, “Wolf Kills Step in the Right Direction.” The editorial celebrated the fact that WDFW “is finally starting to see that wolves are a problem” and added, “If only the state could listen to ranchers who told them the animals were a bad neighbor all along.” The editorial claimed that the fairy tales, including “Little Red Riding Hood,” were right and that wolves were “best away from humans or dead.” Likening conservationists from the “concrete wilderness” of liberal Seattle to Jurassic Park types who, if they had their way, might also unleash a “family of tyrannosaurs… to live near humans,” the editorial concluded, “Do you really want your grandma getting gobbled up?”

  Nancy Soriano of Okanogan County has been monitoring her local government, especially the county commissioners, for years. Her husband runs cattle in the Okanogan yet also supports wolf recovery. “The wolf issue is part of a national, antifederal government agenda,” Soriano wrote me. Her county’s commissioners, she said, still fiercely resist the Endangered Species Act. “Putting wolves in the crosshairs has been a successful propaganda campaign, which is part of a much larger intention to maximize resource extraction and eliminate environmental protections,” Soriano argued. “The goal is transferring public lands ultimately to private ownership. Incumbent commissioners do not have a track record of supporting ranchers. Their policies support the fragmentation of habitat and the subdivision and development of open space, including ranches.”

  This deeper tension between states’ rights and the feds was again exposed when Ferry County commissioners, where the Profanity Peak pack lives, passed a resolution to authorize Sheriff Ray Maycumber “to kill the remaining nine members of the wolf pack if state wildlife officials don’t resume shooting wolves.” Commissioner Mike Blankenship declared, “The sheriff has that power and that obligation as much as he would with a wild dog.” He threatened to challenge the state’s Endangered Species Protections and their control over wildlife.

  Claims of success in seeing the Profanity Peak pack removed may be premature. The more ranchers and commissioners insist upon the very expensive and unpopular—but officially sanctioned—killing of entire wolf packs on public lands, the more the public turns against them. If public animosity toward ranchers increases any more, they may completely lose public support for grazing rights on public lands. Amaroq Weiss responded to Ferry County commissioners’ threats to take wolf killing into their own hands, saying, “Thumbing your nose at state law doesn’t engender a lot of respect from the rest of the public about your attitudes of living with wildlife. This isn’t the 1850s.”

  Ex-wolf trapper and author Carter Niemeyer commented on the Profanity Peak pack culling: “Public lands have to be managed differently. Those lands belong to all of us, and so do the native wildlife.”

  New research has shown that the Washington wolf cull, like much of lethal removal, won’t actually save livestock. The University of Wisconsin’s Carnivore Coexistence Lab published a recent study comparing methods to prevent predators from killing livestock. They found that nonlethal methods, especially livestock guardian dogs and fladry, “had a better track record and none of them led to more livestock losses. But lethal methods did.” Nonlethal deterrents were 80 percent more successful at warding off predators, compared to the 28 percent success rate of lethal removal. The researchers recommended that “wildlife agencies suspend campaigns like the one going on in Washington and apply more stringent criteria to future control efforts… these recommendations could keep more livestock and wildlife living and save taxpayer money.”

  Robert Crabtree, chief scientist and founder of Yellowstone Ecological Research Center questions whether shooting predators really saves livestock. Crabtree notes that the science of predator control is flawed and now needs an overhaul. “Lethal control methods need to be subjected to the same gold standard of science as anything else,” he said. The federal Wildlife Services, which kills millions of animals each year—3.2 million in 2015 alone—at taxpayer expense has “a big research arm funded for forty or fifty years and they can’t seem to do any quality work. Shouldn’t someone take a look at what’s going on here and evaluate the millions of dollars spent for decades trying to justify lethal control?”

  Wolf advocates had held a rally in Washington’s state capital of Olympia to protest the Profanity Peak pack killing. The crowd joined in communal howls and waved signs saying, “Real Men Coexist with Wolves,” “Welfare Ranchers, Stop Mooching & Destroying Public Land,” and “Conserve Wolves, Not Cows.” One protester explained, “This is a hail Mary last attempt to get the governor to intervene to stop this wolf slaughter—before there are no wolves left.” Other protesters said lethal removal is bad policy and believed that “the state caved to ranching politics.” One young protester held a simple sign: “Wolves’ Lives Matter.” Others chanted, “No public wolves killed on public lands!”

  THE VOCIFEROUS CROWD at the Wolf Advisory Group meeting was certainly putting the “public” back in public lands. A silver-haired man with huge glasses read aloud a statement from Predator Defense’s Brooks Fahy, noting that McIrvin had only “hired one range rider and two foot patrols to protect four hundred cows on thirty thousand acres of rough landscape. Success would have required an army!”

  Again, the crowd applauded. A young man with a notebook full of newspaper clippings shouted out the statistic, “One million cattle and only ninety wolves in Washington state… where’s the balance?”

  There were angry murmurs and fist pumps as dozens of people waved their hands for moderator Madden to call upon them. For a moment it seemed as if everything might get out of hand. But Madden made the wise move of asking everyone to join in suggesting topics for the next WAG meeting in January, which was to revisit lethal removal protocols.

  A very elderly woman who could barely stand but whose voice was clear raised one of the most important points of all: “If there is repeat or chronic depredation in one rancher’s grazing allotment,” she asked, “then why not deny a rancher that allotment?” This put the hot-button issue of grazing allotments center stage. Several people stressed that we need national conversations, with the Forest Service getting much more involved, not just rubber-stamping traditional allotments for ranchers. This is a crucial question for the future of wolf recovery, one that Amaroq Weiss has pinpointed: “We can’t keep placing wolves in harm’s way by repeatedly dumping livestock onto public lands with indefensible terrain, then killing the wolves when conflicts arise. These allotments should be retired by the US Forest Service—or livestock losses should simply be expected, and wolves shouldn’t have to pay for it with their lives.”

  Weiss has hit on a major problem: cattle are often let out to graze loosely on public land allotments that are not at all well suited for grazing, such as the Colville National Forest where the Diamond M rancher was again running his herds. Suzanne Stone echoed this concer
n. “You have to look at any public land allotment and consider if it is really proper for grazing,” she told me.

  Stone has walked the land with a lot of Washington ranchers. “There are three times as many Washington ranchers using nonlethals,” she noted proudly. “They’re doing everything right, with little depredation. But that Profanity Peak pack ranges through four large allotments, some of which are full of downed timber and just little pockets for cattle to graze,” Stone explained. “So the cattle have to really spread out to find enough vegetation. It’s not like those big, wide-open meadows that you can fit hundreds of cattle in so they can herd together for safety. It’s a challenging place for cattle to graze—even without predators.”

  Wolves prefer to hunt wild game that is running away, like elk and deer, and not a close herd. Cattle expert Temple Grandin argues that ranchers need to learn to “rewild” cattle and “rekindle” their herd instinct to “stand their ground” and group together against predators. “Ranching done right improves the environment and wildlife habitat,” she wrote.

  When cattle are grazed in allotments with sparse forage, heavy undergrowth, and downed trees from fires, they get stressed and easily separated, vulnerable to predators. Cattle grazing near the Profanity Peak den often had to then fend for themselves in a very difficult and rugged terrain. Stone hopes that in response to this highly controversial culling, the Forest Service in northeastern Washington will carefully review grazing allotments to decide whether there are “much better places for livestock than in remote and heavily wooded public lands.”

  But that’s always been the challenge, she adds: “If we start talking about ‘get the cattle off public lands’… you know, there will be huge political resistance. The livestock industry has deep roots and a lot of power. Generations of ranchers have grown used to grazing their cattle on public lands without much oversight from the public.” With growing demands for ranchers to coexist with wolves, “We’ve got to find a way to bring ranchers along with us on this, not make them feel like this is about kicking them all off public lands.”

  In conflicts such as these, no stakeholder gets exactly what he wants. It’s compromise and endless negotiation. As Stone pointed out, the public must come to understand both sides of wildlife coexistence. “You can’t stuff a hamburger in your mouth while you’re yelling about the ranchers out there shooting wolves. We vote every time we go to the grocery store for what we believe in.”

  AT A QUICK BREAK in the WAG meeting a fisherman took me aside. He owns a cabin in northeastern Washington’s wolf country. “Listen,” he said, “if I go hiking on public lands and get attacked by a grizzly or mountain lion, the feds or state certainly don’t have to compensate me for my medical expenses. My hiking public lands was a risk I took. Well, ranchers who choose to graze on public lands—where the public really wants wolves—must accept livestock loss as just a business expense.”

  As the public continued with their suggestions for the next WAG meeting, one of the range riders in a buckskin vest confided in me, “There’s too much heat in this room, and there have been death threats, even against my family.”

  There was heat, but there were also now very practical and even ethical arguments made against lethal removal as a wolf-management tool. A Vietnam vet stood up and demanded, “Why hold an entire wolf pack guilty by association? This reminds me of whole Vietnam villages destroyed because a few of the village’s soldiers went after us.”

  A schoolteacher in the crowd took the microphone as if to lecture the WAG members: “What we’re trying to say is that public lands now must be managed first for wolves, not ranchers. Our beautiful public lands are where wolves, not cattle, belong. Where there is wilderness, there should always be wolves.”

  As the crowd exploded into applause, the WAG members heard just how deeply the public is supporting the return of the wild wolf to the West. In this very room a profound cultural shift was taking place—one that evoked grief and fury and even a hard-won peace. Witnessing this, I remembered the 1993 Wolf Summit speaker who addressed a raucous crowd of Alaskan hunters, hell-bent on aerial wolf culls, predicting that it would be “public perception that most determines the future of wildlife policy.” Two decades later we are the future, and the people are loudly demanding that wolf management on our shared lands be now shaped not just by ranchers but by the public as well.

  The response to the Profanity Peak pack culling shows us that many voices are now needed to advance the conversation, to change at last this cultural and historical bias against wolves—lawyers to represent wolves, negotiators to broker agreements, and the public to get actively involved. Those who want change can apply to sit on wildlife and county commissions, can financially support nonlethal deterrent programs, and can learn about how complex these wolf politics really are—they are not just simplistic reactions either pro- or antiwolf. “We really have to all keep working together,” Stone emphasized. “Lawsuits don’t permanently change the culture. It’s a victory that doesn’t assure real change in people’s behavior. It took us generations to get where we are now.”

  Wildlife politics mirror an increasingly polarized America. The challenge is not just about learning how to coexist with wolves; it is also about figuring out how to coexist with one another.

  BY EARLY OCTOBER the cattle were coming down from their remote and mountainous grazing allotments to more easily patrolled pastures. Conservation Northwest’s Mitchell Friedman hoped that “maybe the trauma is over.”

  Donny Mortarello of WDFW announced to the press, “Removing the two adults that are known to be in the pack and leaving the pups would not be a humane path for us and we wouldn’t go down that road. We reassess and look at the conditions every week.” There had been no further wolf depredation, and so there was a possibility that no more wolves in the Profanity Peak pack would be killed. In late October WDFW announced that lethal removal of the Profanity Peak pack had been called off—with the promise that in 2017, if wolf depredation occurred again, there would be renewed efforts to kill more wolves. “With the pack reduced in size from twelve members to four, and most livestock off the grazing allotments,” said WDFW director Jim Unsworth, “the likelihood of depredations in the near future is low.”

  The four surviving members of the Profanity Peak pack on their Colville National Forest territory included an adult female and three pups. Many wolf advocates worried that after such a devastating loss and destabilizing of the Profanity Peak family, the remaining adult female would not be able to hunt with and feed such young pups—that they would simply starve. Other conservationists fear that the Ferry County sheriff will make good on his threat, authorized by the county commissioners, to kill all of the surviving Profanity Peak pack, now that the state has stopped its lethal management.

  The Profanity Peak pack killings are still a lightning rod for wolf issues in Washington and a central focus of the January 2017 WAG meeting, with much more public participation. The Forest Service has at last signaled that it will get more involved in reconsidering grazing allotments. That is the next crucial step for the future of wolves in America, especially now that the public, not just ranchers or hunters, are participating in wildlife policy. But the public needs to keep the pressure on both state and federal wildlife managers to give the wild wolf equal value on public lands.

  Stone concluded our interview by saying that livestock producers are always going to lose some livestock. “But if ranchers don’t address what’s making their livestock vulnerable to predators in the first place, killing wolves is a temporary fix. New wolves eventually move into the territory and kill more livestock. If the headlines are always ‘Wolf Kills Cow, Wolf Gets Killed’ and it never moves beyond that, it’s not real coexistence—just a never-ending death trap.”

  Stone wishes that Defenders of Wildlife could expand its program of nonlethal deterrents to many other states, but it doesn’t have the funding. She also believes that Wildlife Services itself should seriously commit to
more nonlethal strategies for protecting livestock. “Helicopters and aerial shooting are high-ticket items,” she says. “That comes from public dollars.” What if those public dollars were reserved for ranchers who were most successful at coexisting with wolf recovery on public lands?

  Stone’s comments remind me of the Virginia cattle farmer Elizabeth who said livestock farmers must, first of all, hold themselves accountable for predation and learn nonlethal strategies. Prevention is always better than after-the-loss lethal management. The Lava Lake sheep ranch, which has so successfully protected its livestock through nonlethal deterrents, is an example of an attitudinal shift among ranchers who also hold themselves accountable. “The goal was not to just keep the sheep safe but also to keep the wolves safe too,” explained Lava Lake’s director. “If those wolves were dead, it would reflect poorly on sheep operators in this area.”

  The commitment is not an easy one, however. “Living with wolves for a rancher is a headache,” admits Douglas Smith of the Yellowstone Wolf Project. He believes there needs to be some form of compensation for livestock loss and notes that in America there are private organizations that do just that. Smith explains that in Sweden the government actually compensates for “allowing reproduction of carnivores in your areas where you raise sheep and cattle. If you can prove that wolves and bears have reproduced, you get paid. So we have to shift some of these costs from individuals to society to change and bear the burden collectively, not individually.”

  Fernando Najera, a PhD scientist and wildlife veterinarian from Spain who was a lead manager on the Wood River Wolf Project, wrote, “I want to believe that with proper information, people will quit blaming wolves for most livestock losses and stop demonizing them in the media and among agricultural groups. I hope that these people will see that lethal control is more expensive, less effective at protecting livestock, and works against nature, instead of with it, as we do with non-lethal deterrents.”