Wolf control action completed in the Lolo zone

Idaho Fish and Game has completed a wolf control action in northern Idaho’s Lolo elk zone near the Idaho/Montana border to improve poor elk survival in the area.

The Lolo elk population has declined from 16,000 elk in 1989 to roughly 2,100 elk in 2010, and possibly fewer than 1,000 this year, with predation and habitat changes among the chief causes of the decline. Fish and Game is focusing on habitat improvement operations, regulations on elk hunting, liberal seasons and bag limits on black bears, mountain lions, and wolves, and wolf control actions to improve elk populations. 

In February, Idaho Fish and Game requested USDA Wildlife Services conduct a control action consistent with Idaho’s predation management plan for the Lolo elk zone, where predation by several species is the major reason elk population numbers are considerably below management objectives. Ongoing wolf and elk research has shown that wolves have become the primary predator impacting calf and cow elk survival in the Lolo, contributing to a continual decline in total elk population.

The Lolo predation management plan is posted on the Fish and Game website: http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/wildlife/?getPage=325

USDA Wildlife Services specialists killed 19 wolves through aerial control in February. During the last five years, six other agency control actions in Lolo zone removed an additional 48 wolves.

This winter, helicopter crews captured and placed radio collars on additional elk and wolves in the Lolo zone and surrounding area to continue monitoring to see whether prey populations increase in response to regulated wolf hunting, trapping and control actions.

Fish and Game authorizes control actions where wolves are causing conflicts with people or domestic animals, or are a significant factor in prey population declines. Such control actions are consistent with Idaho’s 2002 Wolf Conservation and Management Plan approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Idaho Legislature.

Fish and Game prefers to manage wolf populations using hunters and trappers and only authorizes control actions where harvest has been insufficient to meet management goals. The Lolo zone is steep, rugged country that is difficult to access, especially in winter.

In addition to the animals killed in this control action, 11 wolves have been taken by hunters and trappers in the Lolo zone during the 2014-2015 harvest season. The trapping season ends March 31, the hunting season ends June 30. More than 90% of the state’s wolf packs are located outside of the Lolo Zone. 

Fish and Game has worked with the U.S. Forest Service for over 40 years on several cooperative initiatives to improve habitat for elk. Hunting has been extremely restricted since 1998 in the Lolo Zone, and is not a primary factor limiting population growth. Rifle bull hunting was reduced by 50 percent in the zone in 1998 in the zone and all rifle cow hunts have been eliminated since that same year. Additional restrictions were placed on rifle and archery hunters in 2011. Further, Fish and Game stepped up predation management efforts and has allowed increased bear and lion harvest in the Lolo since 1999 by allowing a two bear and two mountain lion bag limit, reduced nonresident tag prices, and the opportunity to use a nonresident deer or nonresident elk tag to harvest a black bear, mountain lion, or wolf. 

Restoring the Lolo elk population will require liberal bear, mountain lion, and wolf harvest through hunting and trapping (in the case of wolves), and control actions in addition to improving elk habitat. The short-term goals outlined in Fish and Game’s 2014 Elk Management Plan are to stabilize the elk population and begin to help it grow.

Here’s a link the Elk Management Plan: http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/wildlife/?getpage=324

The overall objective is to maintain a smaller, but self-sustaining, population of wolves in the Lolo zone to allow the elk population to increase.

Idaho Fish and Game does not yet have a cost estimate for last month’s wolf control action in the Lolo elk zone. The entire cost will be paid using Wolf Depredation Control Board money funded by sportsmen and women through purchase of hunting licenses.

Idaho’s wildlife professionals to advocacy groups: stop crying wolf

By Virgil Moore, Director, Idaho Fish and Game

It’s important for state agencies to understand and respect differing points of view. But when a few advocacy groups try to grab headlines by skewing Idaho Fish and Game scientific wolf monitoring data in ways that simply aren't true, it’s also important to set the record straight. 

Here are the facts:

Idaho has more than 100 documented wolf packs and over 600 wolves. Idaho’s wolf population far exceeds federal recovery levels of 10 breeding pairs and 100 wolves. 

After meeting federal recovery levels in 2002, Idaho’s wolf population grew largely unchecked for the remainder of the decade, resulting in increased conflicts with other big game populations and livestock. 

After four harvest seasons since the 2011 delisting, livestock depredations have declined. Wolf predation continues to have unacceptable impacts to some elk populations, but there are signs elk populations are responding positively to wolf management.

Wolves in Idaho continue to be prolific and resilient. Idaho will keep managing wolves to have a sustainable, delisted population and to reduce conflicts with people, livestock, and other big game populations.

Despite these facts, a few advocacy groups chose to take the breeding pair metric out of context to make claims that Idaho wolves are “teetering on the brink of endangered status once again.” That’s hogwash. And it’s the kind of polarizing misinformation that undermines responsible wildlife conservation and management in Idaho.

Confirming a pack meets U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s narrow definition of a “breeding pair” is costly and labor-intensive. With vast reductions in federal funding to the state and Nez Perce Tribe for wolf monitoring, Fish and Game has focused our effort on demonstrating Idaho has at least 15 “breeding pairs” to comply with federal recovery requirements.

Idaho closely surveyed 30 packs and confirmed that 22 of them met the breeding pair standard at the end of 2014. Because Idaho has shown it is well above federal recovery levels, we may rely on less intensive monitoring for the other 70 + packs as we complete our final 2014 population estimates. One can assume these 70+ packs include some additional breeding pairs. We will publish our annual monitoring report in March.

As trained scientists, Idaho Fish and Game stands by our data and our wildlife management plans. We manage wolves to ensure we keep state management authority and address conflicts with people, livestock, and other big game populations. 

I hope people who truly care about wildlife conservation ignore the exaggerations and misinformation and help Fish and Game focus on the real issues affecting Idaho’s wildlife.

Idaho wolf population remains well above federal recovery levels; livestock depredations down

During their scheduled meeting in Boise on Jan. 21, the Fish and Game Commission was updated on the status of Idaho’s wolf population. Staff Biologist Jim Hayden’s report offered three key messages: Idaho’s wolf population is well above all standards for a recovered population; wolf monitoring was intensified and expanded in 2014; needs and expectations for predation management vary widely across the state.

To better monitor wolf populations, Fish and Game hired additional trappers and technicians in the summer of 2014, intensified winter collaring efforts for 2015 and hired an expert wolf tracking pilot from Alaska to help locate uncollared packs. GPS collars are now being used in place of radio collars. This will provide more detailed real-time data. Personnel deployed 40 remote cameras to locate and document pack size, and field personnel collected more than 1200 DNA samples to compare with that from harvested wolves.

Monitoring efforts in 2013 documented 659 wolves in 107 packs, and no dramatic changes are expected for the 2014 report. These numbers and supporting data suggest the wolf population has decreased and the number of wolves in documented packs has decreased. Wolf-related depredations have also decreased resulting in the lowest number recorded since 2008. Data on breeding pairs continue to be collected but so far, 22 breeding pair have been documented in the 30 packs that have been examined. (More comprehensive data will be included in the annual report due March 31).

Predation management needs and expectations vary across Idaho, with highly variable base productivity of ungulates across game management units. Different GMUs provide various combinations of food sources for predators. In addition to elk, predators seek out white-tailed deer, moose, sheep, beaver, and in the case of bears; forbs and berries. Combinations of predator species also vary across the state among wolves, bears and lions, affecting deer and elk in different ways. Predation limitations were identified as high in four zones, moderate in seven zones and low in 18 zones. 

To learn more about wolf management in Idaho, go to http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/wildlife/predationMgmtBrochure.pdf.

Clearwater County receives elk restoration grant

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation awarded $276,584 in funding to Idaho for a handful of wildfire restoration efforts as well as habitat enhancement projects and research focused on a declining elk population.
 

The 2014 grants will positively affect nearly 76,000 acres in Ada, Adams, Bingham, Blaine, Boise, Bonneville, Camas, Clearwater, Elmore, Idaho, Owyhee, Shoshone, Teton and Valley Counties. There is also one project of statewide interest.

RMEF volunteers in Idaho raised the project funding through banquets, membership drives and other activities.

In Clearwater County, the RMEF grant will provide funding for extensive landscape and elk habitat restoration in the Clearwater Basin of north-central Idaho where elk populations continue their steadily decline over the past three decades because of a substantial loss of early-seral habitat, human pressures and the reintroduction of wolves (also affects Idaho County); and provide Torstenson Family Endowment (TFE) funding for a multi-year elk nutrition study in the Clearwater Basin that includes capturing and collaring wild elk, establishing a land use habitat matrix and applying the new Oregon-Washington elk nutrition and habitat models for a monitoring program (also affects Idaho County).

Conservation projects are selected for grants using science-based criteria and a committee of RMEF volunteers and staff along with representatives from partnering agencies and universities. RMEF volunteers and staff select hunting heritage projects to receive funding.

Partners for the Idaho projects include the Boise, Caribou-Targhee, Idaho Panhandle, Nez Perce-Clearwater, Payette and Sawtooth National Forests; Bureau of Land Management; Idaho Department of Fish and Game and various sportsmen, wildlife, civic and government organizations.

Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population report released

The 2011 Interagency Annual Report for the Northern Rocky Mountain Distinct Population Segment (NRM DPS), compiled by cooperating federal, state and tribal agencies, estimates that the NRM population increased to 1,774 wolves and 109 breeding pairs. The NRM area includes all of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, the eastern one-third of Washington and Oregon and a small portion of north central Utah. 

“These population estimates indicate the credible and professional job Montana and Idaho have done in the first year after they have assumed full management responsibilities, as well as successful cooperative efforts to manage wolves in the remaining portions of the range,” said Steve Guertin, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) Regional Director of the Mountain-Prairie Region.  “We believe the management plans developed and implemented by the states will maintain a healthy wolf population at or above our recovery goals.”

The Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population is biologically recovered, having exceeded recovery goals for 10 consecutive years. In addition, the population fully occupies nearly all suitable habitat. Wolf packs, especially breeding pairs, typically remain within the three core recovery areas in northwestern Montana/Idaho Panhandle, central Idaho, and the Greater Yellowstone Area, but breeding pairs were again confirmed in eastern Washington and Oregon.

Private and state agencies paid $309,553 in compensation for wolf-damage to livestock in 2011.  Confirmed cattle depredations were essentially the same in 2011 with 193 cattle losses compared to 199 cattle killed by wolves in 2010.  Confirmed sheep depredations declined from 245 sheep killed in 2010 to 162 sheep killed by wolves.

In 2011, 166 “problem” wolves were lethally removed by agency control, which includes legal take in defense of property by private citizens. During the year, Montana removed 64 wolves by agency control and harvested 121 wolves in their hunting season; Idaho removed 63 wolves by agency control and harvested 200 wolves by public hunting; and in Wyoming, 36 wolves were removed by agency control. In Oregon, 2 wolves were removed by agency control, but no wolves were removed in Washington, or Utah.

“Hunters have played a key role for decades in helping to manage and sustain dozens of game populations in North America, and they can do the same for wolves. Combined with efforts to remove wolves found to be predating on livestock, they can help reduce conflicts with humans,” said Guertin. “The reduction of these conflicts is another crucial element in our ability to sustain the wolf’s recovery in the Northern Rocky Mountains.”

The Service delisted wolves in the NRM DPS (except Wyoming) on May 5, 2011.  In October 2011, following approval of a revised wolf management plan by the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, the Service proposed to remove the gray wolf population in Wyoming from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife.  We expect a final determination regarding this proposal to be made by fall of 2012.

The report is posted online at http://westerngraywolf.fws.gov and is composed of seven Sections: 1) Montana; 2) Wyoming; 3) Idaho; 4) Oregon, 5) Washington, 6) Service overview of dispersal; wolves outside of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming; funding; litigation; and recent publications; and 7) tables and figures of wolf population, wolf pack distribution, and wolf depredations and wolf control.