PREDATORS — Adding trapping and eliminating quotas will be on the table as Montana's wildlife regulators meet Thursday to consider proposed ways to to reduce the number of wolves in the state.

In 2011, despited a lengthy wolf hunting seasons, the gray wolf population rose 15 percent to at least 653 animals. Ranchers and hunters concerned about livestock and big-game kills complained that number is too high.

Last fall and winter, 166 wolves were killed in Montana’s first hunt since Congress removed the gray wolf from the federal endangered species list in May 2011.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks commissioners will hear a proposal to remove the statewide quota. The agency instead would shut down the hunt where officials determine enough wolves have been killed.

The proposed changes also include allowing trapping and ending the season on Feb. 28.

ENDANGERED SPECIES — A trail-cam image of a pair of gray wolves in the Methow Valley is raising the possibility that the Lookout Pack may be regrouping — and possibly reproducing.

The wolves (above) were photographed in April by a motion-activated camera put out by the U.S. Forest Service southwest of Twisp. 

Several sightings of the pair have been reported to the Washington Fish and Wildlfie Department, offering the possibility the pair may have mated and the Lookout Pack is rebuilding.

Poaching and other possible causes reduced the Lookout Pack from 10 wolves in 2008 to two or possibly three animals.

Three members of a Twisp family, whose ranch borders the area inhabited by the Lookout Pack, pleaded guilty in April to charges related to killing endangered wolves and attempting to smuggle a wolf hide to Canada.

Their fines total more than $70,000

The the photographed pair are a breeding male and female, pups could be born in early May.

“Without radio-collared animals, our next best chance of finding out more will be when the pups are old enough to leave the den and start responding to howling solicitations – probably not until mid-June,” Scott Fitkin, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist, told the Methow Valley News.

Elsewhere in Washington

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is trying to document whether wolves confirmed in about five new areas of the state have formed new packs.

WDFW biologists currently are attempting to trap and fix radio collars on wolves in the “wedge” area between the Columbia and Kettle rivers in northeast Washington.

Officials say that operation likely will move next to the Hozomeen area in northwest WA.

Efforts to put collars on wolves in the Touchet River area of the Blue Mountains likely won't begin until later this spring or early summer, officials say.

ENDANGERED SPECIES — Three members of a Methow Valley family who raised havoc with the Lookout Pack, the first re-population of wolves discovered in Washington, were fined a total of more than $73,000 in plea agreements entered in Spokane federal court.

Some conservation groups are making headlines saying they think those penalties weren't enough, arguing the family members should get jail time.

Maybe, maybe not.

But perhaps the Seattle PI online gives us a perspective on how these issues are viewed on Western Washington. There's nothing particularly wrong with the story, but the headline caught my attention:

WOLF KILLERS IN METHOW GET OFF WITH PROBATION

What do you think? 

Is accurate to suggest a family that's had to pay $73,000 in fines and restitution is “getting off with probation?”

PREDATORS — With wolf-related issues burning or smoldering all over the place, a high-level panel is coming together for a public discussion at the University of Idaho Thursday night (April 5).

The Environmental Law Society is focusing on wolves, one of the most politicized and difficult issues in environmental law.

• Ed Bangs (former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wolf Recovery Coordinator) will provide the scientific background;
• Professor Dale Goble (University of Idaho College of Law) will describe the law surrounding wolf de-listing;
• Professor John Freemuth (Boise State Masters of Public Administration Program) will talk about what public policy makers consider when negotiating their way through divergent interests to a workable solution. 

The presentation is set for Thursday, 6:30 p.m.,  Room 104, Menard Law Building

PREDATORS — Idaho's wolf trapping seasons closed March 31 in all wolf management zones, and hunting seasons have closed in all but the Lolo and Selway zones where hunting seasons remain open through June 30.

As of April 2, hunters had killed 252 wolves, and trappers 123, for a total of 375 wolves, the Idaho Fish and Game Department reports. The agency says it sold about 43,300 wolf tags for the 2011-2012 season.

For the remainder of the 2011-2012 season, hunters may use two 2012 tags, and they may take only one wolf per tag. Wolf seasons are any-weapon seasons, electronic calls may be used, and wolves may be taken incidentally during fall bear baiting.

Hunters must report killing a wolf within 72 hours, and they must present the skull and hide to an Idaho Fish and Game office within 10 days.

Wolf trapping seasons opened November 15 in the Panhandle zone, except for units 2 and 3; in the Lolo zone; in the Dworshak-Elk City zone, except Unit 10A; in the Selway zone; and the Middle Fork zone. Unit 10 A was opened to trapping on February 1.

All trapping seasons ran through March 31 and are now closed.

The 2012-2013 wolf hunting season will open throughout the state on August 30, and the trapping season will open November 15 in some wolf zones.

PREDATORS — Hunters and trappers can be their own worst enemies.

The World Wide Web saw red this weekend as animal rights groups took great pleasure in spreading photos of hunters and trappers posing in bloody scenes with their wolves.

The most offensive features a man keeling and smiling. In the background, in a circle of snow tinted with blood, is a wolf, its tongue hanging out, its foot clamped in a leg-hold trap. Men posing with dead wolves is sufferable. In this case, the guy is mugging for the camera while the wolf suffers in the background.

Then the idiot posted the photo on the Internet.

Here's a Reuters story on the outrage, which of course is being spread by animal rights group giddy with the opportunity.

Read on for a few terse thoughts about the extremes in the wolf issue.

WILDLIFE — A major elk herd that migrates between Yellowstone National Park and Montana suffered another steep decline last year due to a hard winter, predator attacks and hunting, state and federal scientists said Tuesday.

An Associated Press report says new data from wildlife agencies show the Northern Yellowstone elk herd is down to about 4,174 animals, a 10 percent drop from the prior year’s count. That follows a 24 percent drop in 2011.

Yellowstone biologist Doug Smith said the herd remains healthy despite its smaller size. The number is more in line with historic levels since wolves were reintroduced and grizzly bears and mountain lions returned naturally, he said.

The herd peaked at about 20,000 animals in 1992, a few years before wolves were brought back from Canada after being absent from the region for decades. Since then, the herd has declined about 80 percent.

Read on for details from the AP.

ENDANGERED SPECIES — Up to 10 wolf packs could be roaming in Washington, according to a new wolf recovery map (above) posted by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

If the evidence leads to confirmation, that would be 100 percent increase in the state's verified wolf packs over the past year.

Most of the wolf activity is in northeastern Washington, but the pack activity is being found in the Blue Mountains and even the North Cascades.

A good update on the Washington wolf situation, summarizing the presentation state wildlife officials made at the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commisison earlier this month, has been posted by Andy Walgamott of Northwest Sportsman Magazine.

The Washington Fish and Wildlfie Department recently introduced an online wolf-reporting tool that enables the public to help alert wolf researchers to expanding wolf activity.

Click here to listen to the audio transcript of the March 9 wolf presentation.

PREDATORS — The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation wants wolves to be more aggressively managed in Montana and they’re offering state wildlife officials at least $50,000 to contract with federal trappers to kill more of the predators.

RMEF President David Allen tells the Missoulian the state isn’t using remedies allowed under the wolf management plan to the fullest.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokesman Ron Aasheim says the agency is still considering the offer, according to the Associated Press.

Mike Leahy with Defenders of Wildlife argues that assistance from conservation organizations should further conservation, not undermine it.

Despite months of open public wolf hunting and some Wildlife Services action to kill wolves causing livestock losses, biologists estimate Montana’s wolf population grew by at least 15 percent last year compared to 2010 levels.

The state had at least 643 wolves at the end of 2011. FWP Director Joe Maurier has said the goal in Montana is about 425 wolves.

HUNTING — A federal appeals court today rejected a lawsuit from conservation groups that want to block wolf hunts that have killed more than 500 of the predators across the Northern Rockies in recent months, according to a just-filed Associated Press report

The ruling from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Congress had the right to intervene when it stripped protections from wolves last spring.

Lawmakers stepped in after court rulings kept wolves on the endangered list for years after they reached recovery goals.

Michael Robinson with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued to restore protections, said an appeal was under consideration but no decision had been made.

Read on for more details from the Associated Press.

PREDATORS — Idaho has posted its 2011 annual summary of wolf monitoring.

Although much of this was reported last week, here are some compilations and updates:

• Idaho wolf numbers are down for the second consecutive year.
• At the end of 2011, 746 wolves were documented in 101 Idaho wolf packs, down from a high of 856 wolves at the end of 2009. At the end of 2010, the population estimate was 777 wolves.
• 24 documented border packs were counted for Montana, Wyoming and Washington that established territories overlapping the Idaho state boundary and spent some time in Idaho.
• Of the 63 packs known to have reproduced in Idaho, 40 packs qualified as breeding pairs by the end of the year.
• 10 previously unknown packs were documented during 2011, but the overall net increase was only six packs in the state, with four other packs removed during the year.
• 296 wolves were confirmed killed in Idaho during 2011. Of known wolf mortalities, hunter and trapper harvest accounted for 200 deaths, and agency control and legal landowner take in response to wolf-livestock depredation accounted for 63 deaths.
• 18 wolf deaths were attributed to other human causes, including illegal take. The cause of 12 wolf mortalities could not be determined and were listed as unknown, and 3 wolves were known to have died of natural causes.
• Livestock losses to wolves included 71 cattle, 121 sheep, three horses, six dogs and two domestic bison. Probably wolf kills included 19 cattle, 26 sheep, one horse and one dog.

In addition, since the beginning of this year, 145 wolves have been killed in Idaho by hunters and trappers, 14 were killed in a Lolo Zone aerial control action, nine have been taken in other Wildlife Service control actions around the state and one died of parvovirus.

That brings the 2012 toll on Idaho wolves to 169 as of Monday.

• Idaho's 2011-2012 hunting and trapping seasons in MOST remaining open areas including the Panhandle end March 31.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Northern Rocky Mountain wolf progress report includes reports from Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

WILDLIFE — Yellowstone National Park officials say the park’s wolf population has stabilized at about 100 wolves over the last two years.

The Billings Gazette reports that represents about a 60 percent reduction from 2007 wolf numbers as elk populations have also declined.

In December, Yellowstone officials said the herd numbered just more than 4,600, a drop from their peak of 19,000 decades.   Most people agree that 19,000 elk was too many for the area.  The current elk population, however, is cause for concern to many hunting groups outside the park.

The largest Yellowstone wolf pack last year was the 19-member Molly Pack that usually stays in the Pelican Valley in the park’s interior.

But officials say a lack of snowfall made it harder to kill bison so the pack migrated to the Lamar Valley.

That forced competition with wolf packs already in the area, and officials say six wolves with radio collars have been killed in pack rivalries.

Officials estimate about 25,000 visitors to the park last year saw wolves, mainly in the Slough Creek and Lamar Valley regions.

Quotable

“I hear from environmental groups all over the United States when we started our very successful wolf hunt, that, 'Why was I killing all those wolves, and how beautiful they are.'

“You respond back to them and say, 'When was the last time you came to Idaho and spent some money to look at a wolf?'”

Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, testifying before Congress on the need for the federal government to provide more funding to states for wolf management.
- Idaho Statesman

ENDANGERED SPECIES — This map, included in the latest U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report on wolf populations in the Northern Rockies, shows current territories of the packs in Washington and Oregon, where wolves are still protected.

Washington has five documented packs and 27 wolves going into the pupping season.

Oregon has five documented packs and 29 wolves.

See this blog post for more details just released regarding wolves throughout the Northern Rockies.

PREDATORS — Montana’s wildlife commission is soliciting ideas to make next season’s wolf hunt more effective.  

The Fish, Wildlife and Parks commission invited county commissioners from across Montana to participate in a work session in Helena to discuss what additional measures can be taken to fill the wolf quota during the next hunt. 

FWP had aimed to reduce Montana’s wolf population to 425 animals with the 2011 hunt. But only 165 wolves were killed out of a quota of 220, and the population actually increased by 15 percent. 

FWP officials say no option is off the table for discussion but commissioners will not vote on any proposals until May.

Some actions, such as trapping, would require a change in state law. 

Idaho added trapping as a harvest option this season.  

PREDATORS — Today the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released its 2011 annual report on gray wolf populations in the Northern Rockies.

Going into 2011, wolves had increased by more than 120 across Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and portions of Eastern Washington and Oregon and a small portion of northcentral Utah.

The wolves increased despite extended seasons for hunting in Montana, plus hunting and trapping in Idaho.

The increase is despite 166 wolves killed by officials in relation to livestock predation.

Here are some of the numbers from the 2011 report, compiled by cooperating federal, state and tribal agencies:

• The NRM population increased to 1,774 wolves and 109 breeding pairs, up from 1,651 wolves in 244 packs, and 111 breeding pairs reported after 2010.
• Private and state agencies paid $309,553 in compensation for wolf-damage to livestock.
• Confirmed cattle depredations were essentially the same in 2011 with 193 cattle losses compared to 199 cattle killed by wolves in 2010.
• Confirmed sheep depredations declined from 245 sheep killed in 2010 to 162 sheep killed by wolves.
• 166 “problem” wolves were lethally removed by agency control, which includes legal take in defense of property by private citizens.
• Montana's toll included 64 wolves killed by agency control, 121 wolves killed by hunters.
• Idaho's toll: 63 wolves killed by agency control, 200 wolves by hunters.
• Wyoming's toll: 36 wolves killed by agency control.
• Oregon's toll:, 2 wolves by agency control.
• No wolves were removed in Washington or Utah.

“The Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population is biologically recovered, having exceeded recovery goals for 101 consecutive years. In addition, the population fully occupies nearly all suitable habitat,” federal officials said in the report.

HUNTING – The numbers resemble the parameters for wild turkey hunts — but it’s the 2012 Idaho Panhandle wolf hunting and trapping proposals that have just been released by Jim Hayden, Idaho Fish and Game Department regional wildlife manager in Coeur d’Alene:

Hunting

• Bag limit, five wolves (up from two last year).
• Season on public land, Aug. 30 – March 31 (same as last year).
• Season on private land, July 1 – March 31.

Trapping

• Bag limit, five wolves (up from three last year).
• Season, Nov. 15 – March 31 (same as last year).
• No trapping in Units 2 and 3 (same as last year).

The proposals will be discussed at public meetings starting this weekend to discuss a range of big game hunting proposals, including proposals for elk.

The new proposals would focus more pressure on wolves that are moving in near people on private lands, Hayden said.

The increase in bag limit will remove restrictions of some of the more successful wolf hunters and trappers.

”While relatively few reach the current bag limit regardless, this change will keep our most successful hunters and trappers afield, Hayden said. 

Read on for the schedule of public meetings in the Panhandle.

HUNTING — I'll bet wildlife mangers are wishing prey species such as elk and deer were this resilliant.

Despite months of open hunting, Montana's grey wolf population increased by about 15 percent in 2011.

A report issued by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks said the state has at least 653 wolves, with 130 verified packs and 39 breeding pairs, well above the state's wolf plan objectives of a minimum of 15 breeding pairs and 150 wolves.

Here's the story from the Associated Press and Missoulian, along with links to related stories.

  

WILDLIFE ENCOUNTERS — A wolf was caught on tape by a police cruiser's dash cam roaming through northwest Kalispell.  The video and tracks were confirmed as a radio collared wolf by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologists.

Tough neighborhood.

Read the story in the Daily Interlake.

PREDATORS — Idaho hunters and trappers have killed a total of 58 wolves in the Idaho Panhandle region with another five weeks left in the seasons that started last fall.

At least 318 wolves had been reported killed by hunters and trappers across the state as of Wednesday.

The graph above includes the Idaho Panhandle harvest though Wednesday, with projections to the end of the season based on the average take the past four weeks, said Jim Hayden, Idaho Fish and Game Department regional wildlife manager in Coeur d'Alene.

Hayden explained:

Right now it looks like the final harvest should be pushing 80 wolves in the Panhandle.  That’s a significant number.  From 1998 through 2009, the Panhandle wolf population grew by at least 26 percent per year (and probably pretty close to this number).  Based loosely on areas where we do have decent information, it appears that the final reported harvest will probably be a little over 30 percent of the pre-season wolf population.  That harvest rate may be enough to hold the population in check in general, within limits of local variation.

In this region, we’ve conducted 15 wolf trapping classes, with two additional final classes scheduled by the first of March.  Nearly 450 folks will have gone through the wolf trapper education program this year.  As experience builds, this group will become more and more effective in helping to manage our wolf population.