Contacts:
Bethany Cotton, Cascadia Wildlands, (541) 434-1463
Amaroq Weiss, Center for Biological Diversity
Jocelyn Leroux, Western Watersheds Project
Brooks Fahy, Predator Defense
Samantha Bruegger, Wild Earth Guardians
Rachel Bjork, Northwest Animal Rights Network

$15,000 Reward Offered for Info on Wolf Poaching in Stevens County

Shooting Death of Female Wolf Marks End of Washington’s Wedge Pack

SEATTLE — Conservation groups announced today a combined $15,000 reward for information on the poaching of the breeding female of the Wedge wolf pack. The wolf was found dead of a gunshot wound May 26 in the Sheep Creek area of Stevens County in northeast Washington state.

The slain wolf had given birth to pups earlier this year. Because her death occurred when the pups would not yet have been fully weaned, her litter has likely starved to death. Her death also marks the demise of the Wedge pack, which consisted of just two wolves.

The scientific literature concludes that the loss of a breeding member of a wolf pack can lead to dissolution of the pack and abandonment of territory, especially if the pack size is small to begin with.

While gray wolves were prematurely stripped of their federal Endangered Species Act protections, they remain protected under state law in Washington. Despite those legal safeguards, since 2010, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has confirmed at least 12 poaching deaths of state-endangered wolves. Annual wolf reports issued by the agency over the same time period show that another 8-16 additional wolves were found dead of “unknown causes.” Just a single poaching conviction resulted from these cases.

The department currently has an agreement with one conservation group for a standing offer of $7,500 in any wolf-poaching case. The reward amounts of $7,500 put forward today by additional groups brings the current total offer to $15,000.

“This senseless act killed a mother wolf and most likely her pups, and it has destroyed the Wedge pack,” said Amaroq Weiss, senior West Coast wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Poachers have killed far too many of Washington’s state-endangered wolves without consequence. We urge state officials to take action against those responsible before more wolves meet the same tragic fate.”

“We are angry and heartbroken to learn about the poaching of the Wedge pack’s breeding female,” said Jocelyn Leroux, Washington and Montana director for Western Watersheds Project. “This killing was cruel and senseless and we hope that whoever did this will be held accountable. Poaching of any species is appalling, but the killing of a state-endangered species that is still recovering is particularly unconscionable.”

“This is a cowardly and despicable act,” said Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense, a national wildlife advocacy nonprofit.  “It is absolutely critical that the perpetrator of this crime be caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. WDFW should aggressively pursue all leads that will help bring the individual who carried out this atrocity to justice.”

“Sadly, it’s not surprising, after months of expanded and legalized wolf-killing across the country, that a criminal would be emboldened to poach a wolf in Washington,” said Samantha Bruegger, wildlife coexistence campaigner for WildEarth Guardians. “We hope for justice for this wolf, but we know that even more wolves will die nationwide, legally and illegally, until Endangered Species Act protections are restored.”

“Washington wildlife officials put tremendous resources towards the Wolf Advisory Group citing its goal of building tolerance for wolves and acceptance between environmentalists and private interest groups, including hunters and ranchers,” said Rachel Bjork, board president for Northwest Animal Rights Network. “Eight years later, we see no social tolerance or compromise from ranchers, and we’re seeing an increase in poaching incidents. A 28% annual mortality rate of wolves is far from meeting our state’s recovery goals.”

“We have proven coexistence tools widely available, and yet some still choose the cowardly route of killing wolves,” said Bethany Cotton, conservation director for Cascadia Wildlands. “We call on law enforcement and WDFW to redouble their efforts to bring the perpetrator to justice and increase efforts to educate communities about the importance of wolves to the ecosystems on which we all depend.”

Background

Only 132 confirmed wolves lived in Washington at the end of 2020. There are 24 packs and 13 confirmed breeding pairs on lands managed by the state. Similar to last year’s annual report, the department’s official 2020 count does not include numbers from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, who consider wolves recovered on their lands and no longer undertake an official count.

Published science regarding wolf poaching concludes that for every poached wolf found, one to two more illegally killed wolves go undiscovered. Therefore, as many as 84 wolves may have been poached in Washington in the past nine years.

Since wolves began recolonizing the state in 2007, people have been responsible for most of their losses. In addition to poaching, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife kills wolves for conflicts with livestock. Ranch hands have killed wolves spotted near livestock, and hikers and hunters have shot wolves in so-called “self-defense,” even though wolves are notoriously shy and unlikely to attack people.

Washington’s wolves were driven to extinction in the early 1900s by a government-sponsored eradication program on behalf of the livestock industry. Since the early 2000s, the animals started to make a slow comeback by dispersing into Washington from neighboring Idaho and British Columbia.

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Cascadia Wildlands defends and restores Cascadia’s wild ecosystems in the forests, in the courts, and in the streets. We envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia bioregion.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Western Watersheds Project is a nonprofit environmental conservation group working to protect and restore wildlife and watersheds throughout the American West.

Predator Defense is a national nonprofit advocacy organization devoted to protecting essential native predators and ending America’s war on wildlife. They have been championing wildlife with science, sanity, and heart since 1990.

WildEarth Guardians is a conservation nonprofit whose mission is to protect and restore the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the American West. Guardians has offices in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, and over 278,000 members and supporters worldwide.

The Northwest Animal Rights Network advocates for the rights of all sentient beings – the right to choose, to be free from oppression and exploitation – by pursuing campaigns, facilitating education, and connecting Pacific Northwest organizations.

The post Press Release: WA Wolf Poaching, Reward for Information first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Contact:      
Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands, (314) 482-3746, nick@cascwild.org

New Directive Reverses State’s Previous Rejection of Petition by Wolf Advocates

SEATTLE — In a win for wolf advocates, Gov. Jay Inslee directed the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission today to draft new rules governing the killing of wolves involved in conflicts with livestock. This action reverses the commission’s denial of a petition filed by advocates in May that called for reforms of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife’s lethal wolf-management policies.

“This is a tremendous victory for Washington’s wolves and all of us who have been speaking out against the state’s relentless wolf-killing,” said Sophia Ressler, a Washington wildlife advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re hopeful that the development of enforceable wolf-management rules will finally protect our recovering wolf population and make wildlife officials accountable to the public they serve.” 

The new rules will address the use of nonlethal measures to avoid livestock-wolf conflicts. They will likely further examine chronic conflict areas where the state has killed wolves year after year.

The state has killed 34 wolves since 2012. Twenty-nine were killed for the same livestock owner in prime wolf habitat in the Colville National Forest. After the Fish and Wildlife Commission denied the wolf advocates’ petition in June, the groups appealed to the governor, who had 45 days to decide whether to deny the appeal or require the commission to create new wolf-management rules.   

Gov. Inslee’s decision requires the commission to start a formal rulemaking process, which includes giving notice to the public and creating an opportunity to comment on proposed rules. The timeline for this process will be available on the department’s website when the rulemaking is announced.

“The governor’s decision to approve this petition is a necessary step in cleaning up the mess the Department has made of wolf management,” said Jocelyn Leroux, Washington and Montana Director for Western Watersheds Project. “This decision will give a voice to the majority of Washingtonians that do not want to see wolves needlessly slaughtered year after year at the charge of a few livestock producers.”

“Demonstrating a commitment to environmental leadership, Gov. Inslee has put the Department on notice: It’s time for fair rules, and public transparency, when it comes to Washington’s iconic wolves,” said Samantha Bruegger, a wildlife coexistence campaigner at WildEarth Guardians.

“We are so encouraged by this action from Governor Inslee. Enforceable rules around wolf management that incentivize non-lethal techniques and ensure predictable agency responses have been necessary from the beginning. Rules eliminate knee-jerk responses that inflame parties on all sides and make the agency accountable to the public,” said Nick Cady, legal director at Cascadia Wildlands.

Cascadia Wildlands defends and restores Cascadia’s wild ecosystems in the forests, in the courts, and in the streets. We envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia bioregion.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Western Watersheds Project is a nonprofit environmental conservation group working to protect and restore wildlife and watersheds throughout the American West.

WildEarth Guardians (www.wildearthguardians.org) is a conservation nonprofit whose mission is to protect and restore the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the American West. Guardians has offices in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington, and over 278,000 members and supporters worldwide.

The post Gov. Inslee Orders Rework of Washington’s Wolf-killing Policies first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

For Immediate Release
May 11, 2020

Contact
Nick Cady, Cascadia Wildlands Legal Director
(314) 482-3746, nick@cascwild.org

Legal Petition Seeks New Rules to Reduce Washington Wolf-killing

SEATTLE — Conservation groups petitioned the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission today for rules limiting when the state can kill endangered wolves for conflicts with livestock. The state has killed 31 wolves since 2012, relying on a protocol that skews heavily toward lethal and ineffective outcomes.

“Washington’s trigger-happy wolf program favors livestock owners and ignores sound science,” said Sophia Ressler, a Washington-based staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s a broken system. Enforceable rules would make wildlife officials accountable and give us a clear understanding of how and why they decide to kill wolves.”

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife currently uses its “Wolf-Livestock Interaction Protocol” to decide when to kill wolves. These rules are a product of the department’s negotiations with the Wolf Advisory Group (WAG), whose members are hand-picked by the department.

Today’s petition urges the wildlife commission to amend its rules to require that livestock producers use appropriate non-lethal deterrence methods to prevent conflict between livestock and wolves. The new rules would ensure that the state kills wolves only as a last resort.

The petition also proposes additional safeguards in areas where there have been repeated conflicts, such as in the Kettle River Range. Of the 31 wolves killed by the state since 2012, 26 were shot in the Kettle River Range on behalf of the same livestock operator. “Wolf pack after wolf pack has been slaughtered in the Kettle River Range, but wolves keep coming back,” said Ressler. “It’s a horrendous example of the futility of Washington’s wolf policies.”

According to the state’s recently released annual wolf report, a new pack has already established itself in the same area where the department killed the entire Old Profanity Territory pack in August of 2019 and where it wiped out the Sherman pack in 2017 and the Profanity Peak pack in 2016.

The petitioning groups do not agree with, or condone, killing Washington’s endangered wolves to protect livestock. “We chose to propose rules to work within the department’s flawed framework, but we hope their amendments strengthen the current management and stop the senseless slaughter of this state-endangered species,” Ressler said.

The commission has 60 days to respond to the petition for rulemaking. If it’s denied conservationists may appeal the decision to Gov. Jay Inslee, who has told the department that repeated killing of wolves in the same area is “simply unacceptable.” If the petition is granted, the commission would open a comment period to seek public input on the new rules.

“Putting in place enforceable guidelines for when the state uses public funds to kill wolves is simply a no-brainer,” said Nick Cady, legal director of Cascadia Wildlands. “This rule creates a reliable and predictable response from the agency that will work to reduce conflict surrounding the issue and guarantees wolves are not being killed at a rate that stagnates ongoing wolf recovery.”

Both the commission and the WAG have continued to meet on a virtual platform throughout the COVID-19 outbreak. The commission adopted new cougar-hunting regulations at its April meeting, and the WAG continued its discussions on potential updates for the wolf-livestock interaction protocol at a meeting on April 30.

“Washington is better than this wolf management mess,” said Samantha Bruegger, wildlife coexistence campaigner, WildEarth Guardians. “The Wolf Advisory Group isn’t improving wolf-livestock protocols, the Forest Service isn’t improving wolf-livestock protocols, and the grazing season has already begun. Meanwhile, stock growers are knocking on the door demanding to collar more wolves. This has to stop. It is time to manage wolves in a way that is reflective of Washington’s values and the best available science.”

“Livestock grazing on public lands can’t be a death sentence for Washington’s native wolves,” said Jocelyn Leroux, Washington and Montana director, Western Watersheds Project. “If commercial livestock use on Washington’s public lands is not compatible with healthy, native ecosystems, the burden should not be on native wildlife to adapt.”

Today’s petition was filed by Cascadia Wildlands, the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, and WildEarth Guardians.

Cascadia Wildlands defends and restores Cascadia’s wild ecosystems in the forests, in the courts, and in the streets. We envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, a stable climate, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia Bioregion.
Check us out at www.cascwild.org

The post Press Release: Legal Petition Filed to Regulate Washington Wolf-killing first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

The post Official 2017 Washington Wolf Count Released first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Contact:
Nick Cady, (314) 482-3746, nick@old.cascwild.org
Noah Greenwald, (503) 484-7495, ngreenwald@biologicaldiversity.org

Reward Boosted to $20,000 in Search for Killer of Two Washington Wolves

Groups Push for Increased Federal Law Enforcement

SEATTLE — The Center for Biological Diversity and Cascadia Wildlands today increased a reward to $20,000 for information leading to conviction in the killing of two wolves last month in northeast Washington.

The groups also called for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to step up its law enforcement efforts to investigate poaching incidents in both Washington and Oregon.

“Poaching wolves or other wildlife is a deplorable crime,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center. “We need people to come forward and help put a stop to the killing of these endangered animals.”

The two wolves killed were part of the Smackout and Dirty Shirt packs. Information on their loss and a $10,000 reward was issued by another conservation group, Conservation Northwest, on Saturday. These killings follow the poaching of three other Oregon wolves over the past several months. Wolf populations in both Washington and Oregon remain small and poaching could have a serious impact on their continued recovery.

“Poaching represents a real threat to the recovery of wolves in Washington and elsewhere on the West Coast,” said Nick Cady, legal director with Cascadia Wildlands. “It’s time for federal and state law enforcement to meaningfully act and catch and prosecute these lawless poachers.”

Following a government-sponsored campaign of poisoning, shooting and killing, wolves were wiped out from all lower 48 states except a small corner of northeast Minnesota. With protection under the Endangered Species Act, wolves have made a comeback in portions of their range. They began returning to Washington and Oregon in the past 10 years or so, now numbering between 100 and 150 animals in each state.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.5 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Cascadia Wildlands defends and restores Cascadia’s wild ecosystems in the forests, in the courts, and in the streets. We envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia bioregion. Join our movement today.

The post Reward Boosted to $20,000 in Search for Killer of Two Washington Wolves first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Late last month, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that it would shoot up to four wolves in the Harl Butte pack.  Again. In August, following conflicts between wolves and livestock in the same area, the Department killed another four wolves from the same pack.

The Harl Butte territory is no stranger to conflicts between wolves and livestock.  This is the same area formerly occupied by the Imnaha pack along the Imnaha River near Oregon’s border with Idaho.  The Imnaha pack was wiped out last year by the Department, after numerous other kill orders over several years.

It is important to keep in mind that the number of wolf/livestock conflicts remains incredibly low when compared to livestock animals lost to coyotes, cougars, and wild dogs. It shrinks to insignificance when compared to the number of animals that die from the weather, disease, traffic accidents, or good ole-fashioned cattle rustling.  Regardless, killing wolves remains the persistent agenda of numerous commercial lobbyist groups in the Pacific Northwest, and our Fish and Wildlife Departments all too often oblige.

It is also critical to remember that ranchers are getting compensated, at full market value, for any livestock they lose as long as they show they attempted to proactively reduce conflict between wolves and livestock.  That generous cash program is subject to ongoing investigations of questionable payments being made to some of these producers.

The State’s wolf killing is designed to prevent future depredations, but we are experiencing livestock losses repeatedly in the same areas.  The same story is playing out in Washington, where the State has killed wolves three separate times at the behest of the same livestock producer in the same region. The question remains: Why are we forced to kill wolves in the same areas, again and again?

The Cattlemen’s Associations contend it is because the wolves have developed a taste for beef and teach the ways of the burger to their pups.  But Oregon and Washington continue to wipe out entire packs. Depredations resume the next year when new wolves move into the vacated habitat.

It is not because beef is delicious that wolves are targeting cows. Pervasively across the West there are areas where wolves and livestock are in close proximity without conflicts. If wolves prefer beef, there would be conflicts any place where wolves and livestock interact. But this is not the case.

Instead, it appears to be a product of there being too many cattle on the landscape.  Rob Klavins, a close friend and employee for Oregon Wild, lives out in this Harl Butte/Imnaha area where he and is wife run the Barking Mad B&B (check it out if you’re ever near Enterprise). He maintains a series of wildlife cameras on public lands where Harl Butte and Imnaha wolves were regularly seen. When talking with him about this recent kill order, he shared that in reviewing his tapes, of all the different wildlife that pops up on his motion activated cameras, well-over 90% are cows.

Is it that wolves are eating cows because bovine are the only viable prey species left in that area?  When cattle are intensively grazed in the specific areas, they drive out the deer and elk that otherwise might comprise the majority of a wolf’s diet. This also drives the herds of deer and elk down into agricultural lowlands, where they munch on farmers’ fields. This can lead to frustrated farmers poaching loads of elk.  It seems likely there are simply too many cattle grazing in these particular areas during the grazing season, which is driving out other game.

Now I know you are saying to yourself, “wait, commercial agriculture overusing a resource? This would never happen.”  But just maybe this is what is occurring.

Regardless of why wolf-livestock conflict continues in these particular areas, shooting wolves in response to depredations simply is not a long-term solution. It is a money-pit and bad policy.  Every year our Fish and Wildlife Departments will continue to shoot wolves, spending tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars each kill order, in response to a few dead cows, only to see it recur time and time again.  

And yet the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is going broke, or is already broke.  They increasingly rely on general fund taxpayer dollars. The Department is coming to the conservation community with its hat in its hand.  The conservation community works with the Department to recover habitat and protect non-game species that include many of the imperiled species in the state on the verge of extinction.  The conservation community wants to work with the Department on these species.

However, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife spends 2% of its funding on non-game species, even though these comprise 88% of the species in the state. Only three of the agency’s 1,200-person staff work on non-game species. Their requests for money remind me of  National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, where cousin Eddie promises to get you something real nice with the Christmas gift money he borrows from you, but you know that gift is going to be a hastily dug trench filled with dead carnivores.

It is past time for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and its Commission to deal with this issue in a direct manner, instead of bending like a willow to interest groups.  But this will not happen on its own! Oregon’s wildlife needs strong leadership from Governor Kate Brown. She appoints the Fish and Wildlife Commission that makes the calls on these issues, and she needs to send a clear message to this floundering agency and its Commission.

Give Governor Brown a call: (503) 378-4582. If you like wolves, tell her to stop killing them.  If you decry government waste and hate to watch the Department endlessly dump public money into a problem of its own creation that it has no intention of solving, give her a ring.  If you enjoy the film Christmas Vacation, let her know.  Governor Brown was just awarded the Environmental Champion of the Year Award by the Oregon League of Conservation Voters. Let’s see if she will put her money where her mouth is.

The post The Deja Vu of Killing Wolves first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Lawsuit Challenges Washington Wolf-killing Protocol

Injunction Sought Against Further Killings After State Nearly Wipes Out Three Packs for One Livestock Owner

OLYMPIA, Wash.— Two conservation groups filed a lawsuit today seeking to stop the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and its director, James Unsworth, from killing any more state-endangered wolves.

Today’s suit, filed on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversity and Cascadia Wildlands, asserts that the agency’s killing of wolves from the Smackout and Sherman packs in northeastern Washington relied upon a faulty protocol and failed to undergo required environmental analysis. The suit was filed in Superior Court of Washington for Thurston County.

“We can’t sit by and watch Washington wildlife officials kill more wolves from the state’s small and recovering wolf population,” said Amaroq Weiss, the Center’s West Coast wolf advocate. “Washingtonians overwhelmingly want wolves recovered, not killed. The Department of Fish and Wildlife needs to listen to public opinion and consider the dire environmental costs of killing more wolves.”

In June of this year, Fish and Wildlife officials adopted a revised “wolf-livestock interaction protocol” for determining when to kill wolves in response to livestock conflicts. The protocol provided for the state to kill wolves more quickly than in prior years. As the lawsuit notes, the protocol was adopted without any public input or environmental review, in violation of the state’s Environmental Policy and Administrative Procedure Acts.

“Reasonable minds can differ on when we should and should not be killing wolves, and whether the killing of the wolves in these two packs was justified,” said Nick Cady, legal director for Cascadia Wildlands. “But there is no question that we should be fully analyzing the efficacy of these actions, welcoming public and scientific input, and be able to hold the state accountable. This is a state agency spending taxpayer dollars.”

The department has since relied on the protocol to order killing of wolves from two packs, with two wolves from the Smackout pack and one wolf from the Sherman pack killed to date. At the time of the Sherman pack kill order, only two wolves could be confirmed as comprising the pack, one of which the department has now killed. The department has temporarily paused killing wolves from both packs, but will resume if there are more livestock losses.

Overall, since 2012, the state has killed 18 state-endangered wolves, nearly 16 percent of the state’s current confirmed population of 115 wolves. Fifteen of the wolves killed since 2012 were killed on behalf of the same livestock owner; those kills have now led to the near eradication of three entire wolf packs, including the Profanity Peak pack last year, and the Wedge pack in 2012. The rancher in question has been a vocal opponent of wolf recovery and has historically refused to implement meaningful nonlethal measures designed to protect his livestock from wolves.

Washington’s wolves were driven to extinction in the early 1900s by a government-sponsored eradication program on behalf of the livestock industry. The animals began to return from neighboring Idaho and British Columbia in the early 2000s, and their population has grown to 20 confirmed packs as of the end of 2016.

But wolf recovery in Washington is still a work in progress. Wolves remain absent from large areas of the state and although the population has been growing, it remains small and vulnerable. Given the continued endangered status of wolves, the state and livestock operators should stick to nonlethal methods as the sole means for reducing loss of livestock to wolves.

“We appreciate that many livestock owners already are using nonlethal methods, said Weiss, “since the science shows such methods are more effective anyway.”

Plaintiffs are represented in the case by attorneys from the law firm Lane Powell.

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.5 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. Recognizing the ecological importance of wolves, bears and other carnivores, the Center uses science-based advocacy to defend these magnificent animals from persecution, exploitation and extinction. Find out more about our Carnivore Conservation campaign here.

Cascadia Wildlands educates, agitates, and inspires a movement to protect and restore Cascadia’s wild ecosystems. We envision vast old-growth forests, rivers full of wild salmon, wolves howling in the backcountry, and vibrant communities sustained by the unique landscapes of the Cascadia bioregion.

The post Cascadia Lawsuit Challenges Wolf Killing in Washington! first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
600 Capitol Way North, Olympia, WA 98501-1091
http://wdfw.wa.gov/

Contact:
Donny Martorello, (360) 902-2521

WDFW plans to take lethal action to change wolf pack’s behavior

OLYMPIA – State wildlife managers plan to remove members of a wolf pack that has repeatedly preyed on livestock in Stevens County since 2015.

Jim Unsworth, director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) authorized his staff to take lethal action against the Smackout wolf pack, based on four occasions where wolves preyed on livestock since last September.

Unsworth said that action, set to begin this week, is consistent with Washington’s Wolf Management Plan of 2011, which authorizes WDFW to take lethal measures to address repeated attacks on livestock.

It is also consistent with the department’s policy that allows removing wolves if they prey on livestock three times in a 30-day period or four times in a 10-month period, said Donny Martorello, WDFW’s lead wolf manager.

That policy was developed last year by WDFW and its 18-member Wolf Advisory Group, which represents the concerns of environmentalists, hunters, and livestock ranchers.

“The purpose of this action is to change the pack’s behavior, while also meeting the state’s wolf-conservation goals,” Martorello said. “That means incrementally removing wolves and assessing the results before taking any further action.”

The Smackout pack is one of 20 wolf packs documented in Washington state by WDFW in 2016. At that time, the pack was estimated to consist of eight wolves, but it has since produced an unknown number of pups.

Martorello noted that the state’s wolf population is growing at a rate of about 30 percent each year.

The pack’s latest depredation on livestock was discovered July 18 by an employee of the livestock owner who found an injured calf with bite marks consistent with a wolf attack in a leased federal grazing area.

During the previous month, the rancher reported to WDFW that his employee had caught two wolves in the act of attacking livestock and killed one of them. The department has since determined that those actions were consistent with state law, which allows livestock owners and their employees to take lethal action to protect their livestock in areas of the state where wolves are no longer listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Over the past two months, radio signals from GPS collars attached to two of the pack’s members have indicated that those wolves were frequently within a mile of that site during the previous two months, Martorello said.

“This rancher has made concerted efforts to protect his livestock using non-lethal measures,” Martorello said. “Our goal is to change the pack’s behavior before the situation gets worse.

Since 2015, WDFW has documented that wolves have killed three calves and injured three others in the same area of Stevens County.

Gray wolves are classified as “endangered” under Washington state law, but are no longer protected in the eastern third of the state under the federal Endangered Species Act. The state’s wolf plan sets population recovery objectives and outlines methods for minimizing wolf-livestock conflicts

For more information on WDFW’s action, see Update on Washington Wolves at http://wdfw.wa.gov/conservation/gray_wolf/.

WDFW’s Wolf-Livestock Interaction Protocol is available at http://wdfw.wa.gov/conservation/gray_wolf/livestock/action_criteria.html.

Persons with disabilities who need to receive this information in an alternative format or who need reasonable accommodations to participate in WDFW-sponsored public meetings or other activities may contact Dolores Noyes by phone (360-902-2349), TTY (360-902-2207), or email (dolores.noyes@dfw.wa.gov). For more information, see http://wdfw.wa.gov/accessibility/reasonable_request.html.

The post Washington to Kill Wolves first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

In 2012, following the creation of the Oregon rule, Cascadia Wildlands then turned its eyes to Washington state.  Washington at the time had approximately the same number of wolves as Oregon (60), but had yet to experience the wolf/livestock conflicts that had caused so much polarization in Oregon.  Conflict between wolves and livestock in Wallowa County ultimately led to the livestock industry introducing wolf kill legislation, threats of poaching, and threats of secession. 

The post The Saga of Wolf Recovery in Washington first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.

OLYMPIA, Wash.— Eight conservation groups filed a petition late Friday requesting that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife enact rules that sharply limit the use of lethal control of wolves to respond to livestock depredations. Most prominently the petition asks the state to require livestock producers to exhaust nonlethal measures to prevent depredations before any lethal action can be taken. In 2012 the Department killed seven wolves in the Wedge Pack despite the fact that the livestock producer who had lost livestock had taken little action to protect his stock.

The post Press Release: Petition Filed to Require Nonlethal Steps to Control Washington Wolves first appeared on Cascadia Wildlands.