The article below appeared in the the Idaho Falls, Idaho Post Register on May 3.
'Lethal control' - Wildlife Service could begin killing troublesome wolves
Actually most of this isn't really news. The population of Idaho wolves and Yellowstone area wolves has grown to the size where lethal control may be more readily applied if wolves kill livestock. This is according to the rules of the reintroduction. Moreover, lethal control will probably have little impact on wolf recovery because the populations are growing rapidly and there is lots of public land backcountry still without wolf packs, especially in Idaho, despite Herberger's quoted comments. For example, there are no identified wolf packs in the vast backcountry between the Sawtooth mountains in the Boise mountains. There are no identified packs in western Idaho or eastern Idaho. Most of the vast Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness has no wolf packs.
What is interesting to me, however, is the remarkably low incidence of wolf depredation of livestock in Idaho so far. All this complaining from Salmon, Idaho is over less than ten proven cattle kills last summer and three this winter. Almost all were calves.
It is also news that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is talking about waffling on wolf recovery goals. The deal is ten packs for three years in a row in the Idaho, northern Montana, and Yellowstone recovery area each. To give up on northern Montana is a violation of the terms of the agreement, and I think it could have serious repercussions.
Folks should also understand that there should be a difference between wolf depredations on public land and private land. On public land, ranchers essentially graze their livestock for free. They pay only $1.38 per cow or cow and calf a month, down almost 300% in inflation adjusted terms from a decade ago. Every state land department charges much more than this for state pasturage and private pasture is even more expensive. One of the deals is that public lands grazers put up with recreationists and predators on our public lands. Think about what ranchers pay the next time you shell out $3 here and $10 there to recreate on your public lands. There is also the matter of government-subsidized competition with private land ranchers.
It will be interesting to see whether the wolves are killing the missing livestock in Salmon, or the livestock fall prey also to cougar, coyotes, bear, poison plants, disease, and lazy herding. Curt Mack's study mentioned in the article is an important one. Maybe the wolves killed all the missing livestock, but I bet not.
Here is my article from last summer on the missing cattle in the Salmon/Challis area.
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