The livestock continue to hang on in Stanley Basin chewing hard to deplete the last grass of the season, a season that has been extended due to the continuation of the abnormally warm weather. Meanwhile the Stanley Pack has killed another cow calf, so wolf control is in order again. Trappers are out trying to get a couple more of the pack, apparently including the alpha female this time. She will be moved out of the area if captured. Probably two of the rest of the pack will be killed, but Carter Neimeyer, the new Idaho wolf recovery director, says the pack will not be eliminated, which is encouraging news for wolf supporters.
What is really playing out here is human social conflict. It's a complicated conflict between supporters of wild wildlife, some elk hunters and cattle and sheep growers.
Elk do not naturally winter in Sawtooth Valley or Stanley Basin. They are present because some people, including some rabid wolf haters, feed elk in the winter so as to increase their numbers. It creates a situation ideal for wolves which love the -30 and -40 degree Stanley winter weather. The wolves get fat in the winter eating the unnatural elk herd and the wolves have nice large litters in April. Notice the national weather reports, Stanley often competes with International Falls, MN, as the coldest place in the country.
In the summer elk and deer are naturally present in the area, and the area is natural wolf summer range, but the White Cloud Mountains and the floor of Stanley Basin and the Sawtooth Valley are full of livestock, creating a situation damaging to both wolves, wolf prey, and those people interested in more elk in the summer and the fall (both hunters and wildlife observers).
Right now livestock growers are complaining about the number of elk competing with cattle to eat the little remaining grass. These folks dislike not just wolves, but other wild animals too. In the East Fork of the Salmon, site of the termination of the White Clouds Pack last spring due to their killing of some cow calves of a politically prominent family, there has been a special elk depredation hunt recently. An "elk depredation," unlike a wolf depredation, is when politics decides elk have "preyed" on too much grass that livestock owners own or have a public grazing permit to.
This reminds of a popular bumper sticker. . . "Hunters, did a cow get your elk?"
The trappers haven't caught any wolves yet, and Neimeyer says the fact that it is now the general hunting season may make it difficult to trap the wolves. Although the southern end of the White Cloud Mountains was closed to the general public briefly last summer while wolf control was underway, prompting a protest and blockade by the Boulder White Clouds Council, all folks understand you don't close a hunting area because a rancher lost a cow calf. It is interesting how political power shifts dramatically in the area from issue to issue.
Update 10-13-00. The control action has been terminated because the wolves have moved out of the area and all of the hunters, woodcutters, etc. in the locale have made trapping impossible.