Wolves must be managed better

Inter Lake editorial

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's next effort at removing wolves from protection under the Endangered Species Act must be better than the last, because the time for delisting wolves in the Northern Rockies is overdue.

Montana's wolf population has proliferated at an exponential rate and the impacts have become obvious and could become worse. All indications are that Northwest Montana's whitetail deer population has been in decline for the last couple years after growing at a healthy rate for nearly a decade. That prey base has supported an expansion in the number of wolf packs in the same region from 12 in 2005 to 28 this year.

But again, that prey base is in decline due to wolves, along with healthy mountain lion and coyote populations and hunting regulations that allowed for more than 5,000 doe tags to be issued in the region this year. If this winter carries on with subzero weather like we've seen over the last week, the decline of the whitetail population is likely to accelerate.

A prolific population of wolves faced with a depressed prey base is bound to become troublesome, with potential to turn more and more to domestic livestock. That was the trend for 2008, with federal trappers killing 245 wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming - a 31 percent spike over last year's control actions.

Most recently, 27 wolves in the Hog Heaven Pack were killed after eight separate livestock depredation incidents west of Kalispell. Environmentalists claim the overall pressure on wolves is excessive and a good reason to keep them on the Endangered Species List. We disagree.

Recovery goals for wolves have been far exceeded for years, and the species has amply demonstrated its ability to reproduce and expand its range even when faced with aggressive control actions.

Montanans deserve at least a sense of empowerment over wolf populations, considering how the state and a task force of conservationists, hunters, farmers and ranchers produced a wolf management plan that allows for a wolf hunt and the ability of livestock owners to protect their animals. That plan was developed in good faith, with an understanding that the state would assume management and maintenance of a sustainable wolf population.

Montana should not be held up by the failures of Wyoming to produce an adequate management plan or by litigation that exploits any and every possible angle to prevent delisting. The conservation of any species depends on a certain amount of goodwill from the citizens who shoulder most of that burden.

And with wolves, that burden is mostly carried by the people who live on the same landscape, not city-dwellers who are happy to write checks to ensure that the wolf litigation industry thrives, but farmers, ranchers and other rural dwellers.

Carolyn Sime, Montana's wolf recovery coordinator, summed up the need to manage wolves in order to have them as neighbors: "It's not a national park. We live here."