What’s really the problem? Too many wolves? Too many or too few elk? Perhaps the core issue isn’t wildlife but Homo sapiens, especially the two subspecies rancher and farmer?
In Idaho, killing wolves is profitable. The Foundation for Wildlife Management, a non-profit organization that also receives funding from the state, pays $1000 to people who “harvest wolves.”
The Idaho Fish and Game Commission granted the Foundation for Wildlife Management $23,065 this year to help fund the payments for wolves harvested in target elk recovery areas. [...]
Justin Webb, executive director of the Foundation for Wildlife Management, says the program helps reduce wolf populations in places where the IDFG wants to boost elk numbers — like the Lolo area in Northern Idaho. In 2018 the IDFG killed 10 wolves in the Lolo area to reduce elk predation.
Wolves’ preferred prey is elk, although differences in prey vary by what is available. After a visit from an Oregon wolf in 2011 (OR-7, the first wolf seen in California in nearly a century), the state DFW studied the suitability of habitat for wolves in the state. An important factor identifying high quality wolf habitat was the presence of native ungulates (elk and deer). Wolves were intentionally re-introduced in Idaho in 1995 and so successfully colonized the state that they were delisted from the ESA in 2011 and the state took over management from USFWS.
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When the USFWS removed wolves from the ESA in Idaho, Idaho opened up hunting season on wolves.
“Our plan is to manage wolves as we do other big game,” Idaho Fish and Game Director Cal Groen said. “This is good news for wolves, elk, rural communities and hunters. I believe this action will help defuse the animosity and anger associated with wolves when we can manage wolves in concert with our other big game species.”Fish and Game will apply the same professional wildlife management practices to wolves that it has applied to all big game species, which all have recovered from low populations during the early 1900s, he said.
Conservation groups disagree.
Suzanne Stone with Defenders of Wildlife isn’t buying it.
“It’s really troubling that the state of Idaho is doing this,” says Stone. She believes this decision is a sign of something much bigger: that the state is treating wolves differently than other predators. For example, she says there’s no bounty program for mountain lions, and hunters and trappers can take far more wolves than cougars. This year, IDFG also expanded hunting and trapping opportunities for wolves.
“One person if they’re a hunter and trapper can kill up to 20 wolves in a year,” says Stone. “The limit for mountain lions is two.”
Stone says this goes against what the state of Idaho promised when the species were removed from the Endangered Species List in Idaho back in 2008, which was to manage wolves like bears and mountain lions.
Cattle are not wolves’ preferred prey, they’d rather eat elk. And some parts of Idaho have so many elks that the state is paying $1.9 million for wildlife depredation in 2019, which includes the single largest claim every paid — $1.028 million by Don McFarland.
McFarland reported that herds of up to 500 elk had eaten his organic Kamut wheat and organic potato crops, compacting the soil in the process, at his Little Camas Ranch farm in Elmore County. [...]
In FY 2016 there were 32 claims, with IDFG paying out $359,100.01. In FY 2017 there were 58 claims, and IDFG paid out $708,287.44. In FY 2018 there were 59 claims filed, and IDFG paid a total of $754,833.83.
“I think the reality is that there are more elk in the ag interface than there were 10 years ago,” Toby Boudreau, IDFG wildlife bureau chief, said of the increasing number of claims and high payments. “Our dairy industry in Southern Idaho has been growing by leaps and bounds over the past decade, and their need for corn has grown with it.”
Maybe the problem really isn’t wolves or elk but how ranchers and farmers are using the land and not paying attention to existing natural situations. Different areas of Idaho have different relative levels of elk, wolves, ranchers, and farmers. But from the IDFG perspective, the problem lies in elk and wolves and the solution lies in human actions. But as always, when wildlife are seen as problems, it’s because they interact with human use of the land for profit.
I propose that instead of funding a Big Game Depredation Trust Account and the Foundation for Wildlife Management, Idaho create a Commission to Manage Ranchers and Farmers. That Commission should consider wildlife as essential components of the ecosystems instead of “game.”
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