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PREDATORS — Wolf culling has ended for the season in the Lolo Zone as aerial gunners, trappers and sport hunters have killed a total of 42 wolves since spring 2011, Idaho Fish and Game Department officials reported this afternoon.
With moose and elk populations at critical low levels, Idaho went to the extraordinary measures of enlisting aerial shooters from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlfie Services to kill 14 of the wolves from a helicopter in early February.
State officials say the Lolo Zone wolf numbers have been reduced by about half but as may as 50 or so still remain in the zone bordering Montana.
As of today, Feb. 22, hunters and trappers have taken a total of 318 wolves across the state since seasons opened last fall.
See an followup story with reaction from wildlfie groups here.
Read on for more details.
Over three days in early February, Wildlife Services agents killed 14 wolves from a helicopter. The action is part of, and consistent with Idaho’s predation management plan for the Lolo elk zone.
In the Lolo zone, hunters have taken 11 wolves, trappers have taken 11, control efforts earlier in spring 2011 took six, and the most recent control effort took 14 for a total of 42 wolves.
The control action is part of continuing efforts to reduce excess predation on elk herds in the Lolo zone. Elk numbers in the Lolo zone have not met objectives in recent years with predation being the most important factor limiting elk.
In recent years wolves have been identified as the primary cause of death in female elk and calves over six months old. But the habitat in the area is capable of supporting an increased population, Deputy Director Jim Unsworth said.
“We’d like to see one of Idaho’s premier elk populations recover as much as possible,” he said.
In September, 2010, Fish and Game submitted a proposal to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to allow wolf control actions in the Lolo elk zone under a provision of the Endangered Species Act. The initial target of that proposal was the removal of 40 to 50 wolves.
In May, 2011, after wolves in Idaho were removed from the endangered species list, Fish and Game resumed management and initiated the first control action guided by the predation management plan for the Lolo and Selway elk zones.
Fish and Game will continue to monitor elk, moose and wolf populations, and will manage predation with an objective of increasing the Lolo elk herd.
Wolf populations are not in jeopardy in the Lolo zone, but Fish and Game intends to maintain wolf numbers at a level that will result in reduced elk mortality.
Before the start of the hunting season last fall, the population was estimated at about 75 to 100 wolves, with additional animals crossing back and forth between Idaho and Montana.
Elk will be monitored to see whether the population increases in response to regulated hunting, trapping and wolf control actions.
No more aerial control actions are planned at this time. The wolf hunting season in the Lolo continues through June, and the trapping season continues through the end of March.
The cost of the action is estimated at $22,500 in license funds.
News, field reports and insights on the Great Outdoors.
Rich Landers – hunter, animal lover, hiker, paddler, angler, naturalist and conservationist – has been covering the outdoors beat for more than three decades. His versatility and field research as a trails and waterways guidebook author help him connect issues to a wide range of interests.
Rich Landers writes, photographs and gathers information for a wide range of Outdoors coverage, with a special feature package in the Sunday Sports section. Landers' outdoors column runs Thursdays in the Sports section.
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madcowboy on February 23 at 11:43 a.m.
Killing Wolves Eliminates Barrier That Protects Our Food and Water
When attempting to manage wolf populations today, we must admit that the threat of prion contamination in our watersheds and food chain now poses a much greater risk to several industries, human health, and homeland security than our god-given wolves ever did. In fact, predators are one of nature’s few defense barriers against the deadly spread of prion disease.
Prions are a deadly protein that builds up in the cells and bodily fluids of people and animals afflicted with various forms of prion disease, including mad cow disease, chronic wasting disease, scrapie, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Prions now are such a formidable threat that the United States government enacted the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 to halt research on infectious prions in the United States in all but two laboratories. Now, infectious prions are classified as select agents that require special security clearance for lab research to keep prions and other dangerous biological materials away from terrorists who might use them to contaminate, food, water, blood, equipment, and entire facilities.
Dr. Stanley Prusiner earned a Nobel Prize in 1997 for identifying deadly prions. President Obama awarded Prusiner the National Medal of Science in 2010 to recognize the growing significance of his discovery.
We now know that various forms of prion disease already are spreading around the world. Prion disease has been found in livestock and a variety of wildlife species across the Rocky Mountain region, the northwest U.S., and southwest Canada (gray wolf habitat). Reducing wolves in these areas below natural numbers will open the door to the deadly spread of prion contamination in the environment.
The prion pathogen spreads through urine, feces, saliva, blood, milk, soil, and the tissue of infected animals (not to mention soil and water). With those attributes, prions obviously can migrate through surface water runoff and settle in groundwater, lakes, oceans, and water reservoirs. There is not a known cure for prion disease and allowing sick animals to wander the wild unchecked by wolves will further contaminate entire watersheds – increasing the pathway to humans, livestock, and wildlife downstream.
If prions must be regulated in a laboratory environment today, the outdoor environment should be managed accordingly. Wolves and other predators represent one of the few natural barriers to help minimize the spread of prions in the environment and within our food chain. Accelerating the killing of wolves and other predators for profit and pleasure is a foolish experiment in prion management and a reckless platform for safeguarding wildlife, watersheds, and homeland security. In fact, the National Park Service studied the issue and concluded that “as CWD distribution and wolf range overlap in the future, wolf predation may suppress disease emergence or limit prevalence.” (The Role of Predation in Disease Control: A Comparison of Selective and Nonselective Removal on Prion disease Dynamics in Deer.)
Now, more than ever, wolves are part of a healthy ecosystem and a healthy future. It’s time to develop a comprehensive prion management strategy that maximizes safeguards for human health, food, water, and wildlife around the globe. The stakes are too high for fragmented and misguided prion policies. Just ask the Canadian cattlemen what a few prions did to their industry. Ask the U.S. cattle and dairy industries if they want to increase prion pathways in the watersheds that feed our public and private lands. My guess is that a prion in the soil or water doesn’t care if it attaches to a cow, sheep, deer, elk, or human. It kills them all with the same efficiency. Dilution of this pathogen is not a solution. Ignoring this pathogen is not a solution. Let wolves do their job in the food chain without human interference. This is no time for people to play god.