A year later, during the annual hunt, Max loped off into the forest in search of moose. Hunters nearby heard fierce fighting, then silence. Max’s owner, Amund Skoglund, found what was left of him: his head, spine, and paws. His hundred-pound carcass had been picked clean in less than five minutes, and Amund saw the last two wolves leaving the scene. Max had inadvertently encountered a pack of Sweden’s transplanted wolves. So much for hereditary prey. So much for Buck’s real-life expectancy in The Call of the Wild.
In 1995, the first Canadian wolves were released in Yellowstone Park and Central Idaho. Fully protected under the Endangered Species Act, threatened only by bad luck, the wolves spread dramatically. Today they’re found in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado. Shiras moose have virtually disappeared from many of their native areas. The other major herbivore on which wolves prey, the elk, are down by numbers that, were the decline caused by anything but wolf predation, would be cause for serious alarm among wildlife officials. A 70 percent decline here, 85 percent there. In some moose range, the decline is 100 percent.
To this list, add bighorn sheep and mule deer. Like a prairie fire in dry grass, the wolf plague is depopulating large areas of wildlife. Alarmist hyperbole? Consider this.
Biologists predicted the wolves wouldn’t venture outside Yellowstone because they had no need to. They spoke of the future in terms of “predetermined numbers.” However, they reckoned without the “new packs, new territories” biological imperative. In 2004, a she-wolf was killed while heading south across I-70 in Colorado. Identified by her radio collar as 293F, she became a heroine to the wolf lovers, celebrated in song and story. An anthology of wolf tales was dedicated to her memory. That she had traveled 500 miles from the transplant zone was considered an awesome miracle of nature.
What was ignored were the implications. If 293F had traveled here, how many others went east, west, and south, intent on establishing new packs even where the locals didn’t want them? Wolves don’t follow human rules.
Everyone expected the resurgent wolves to kill a few sheep and cattle, and provision was made for compensating ranchers, not because it was the right thing to do but to forestall them applying serious political pressure to remove the threat. Less thought, if any, was given to the plight of big game outfitters and guides who find their livelihoods gone if game animals cease to exist in sufficient numbers. Everyone expected a serious wolf impact on the burgeoning elk of Yellowstone; no one, it seems, gave much thought to the elk populations outside the park.
The most serious impact is in the mountains of North and Central Idaho, near one transplant zone. The Selway-Bitterroot region has been renowned for its elk since the 1920s, when a huge forest fire swept through and created the finest elk habitat in North America. Several generations of outfitters have plied their trade in the Selway, and guiding is an important industry.
Joseph Peterson, manager of the Flying B Ranch, who has guided for big game in the area for three decades, says the impact of spreading wolf populations has been devastating:
“We hunt elk in four different Units. In the Lolo Zone, we have seen the elk population decline by 85 percent. In our area of the Selway, the population has declined by 70 percent, and in the Elk City zone by 60 percent.
“Along with changes in population, there has been a significant change in behavior. Before the introduction of wolves from Canada, the elk had distinct summer and winter ranges. Our elk do not migrate per se, but had a seasonal elevation shift from river-bottom winter range to ridgetop summer range. These days they stay in the middle elevations year-round.
“The ridges and bottoms have easier travel lanes and are patrolled and ‘owned,’ if you will, by the wolves. The middle country is steep, rocky, brushy, and does not lend itself to the effortless lope of a traveling canine. The remaining elk have learned to behave like mountain goats to escape constant harassment by the wolves.
“This has a cascading effect on the population. The cows do not get the nutrition they used to, so birth rates are lower, the calves are born at a lighter weight, making them more prone to winter stress, and the resulting recruitment rates are not able to keep up with mortality. The bulls are more resistant to direct predation but are not being replaced as they are killed by
hunters or wolves and cougars.
“When I started 27 years ago, we provided service to 100 to 150 elk hunters a season. It started with archery in late August and went into November rifle seasons. We now provide service to a dozen or so elk hunters a year. Our success rates are similar, and the bulls we take tend to be very good ones, but the hunting is very physical and is more scrambling than hiking these days.
“The moose have been affected most. I have not seen one in a few years—a few tracks but no animals.”
And other outfitters in Central Idaho? Peterson writes:
“Many in our Lolo Zone have sold the business for what they could get and quit. Others just provide service to summer guests and fishing. Some who depended on the sale of their outfitting business for retirement are still scratching a living when they should have stopped long ago.”
No one disputes the decline in numbers of elk and moose, but explanations vary.
While hunters, ranchers, and outfitters blame the wolves, pro-wolf people blame everything from exploding tick populations, resulting from a lack of natural forest fires, to global warming.
In 2012, a consortium of outfitters and big game organizations convinced Washington, against all odds, that it was time to remove the wolf from the endangered species list and allow state game departments to control their own wolf populations by hunting. This is unlikely to have much real effect; originally, the wolves were wiped out by traps and poison, not by ranchers shooting them.
The one undeniable effect of the wolf delisting has been the proliferation of billboards such as the one on I-90 in Livingston, and the rejuvenation of pro-wolf “conservation” groups. If anyone will benefit, they will: Heartrending pictures of wolves combined with pleas to “stop the slaughter” should start the contributions flowing once again, and ensure the groups’ executives will continue to live well.
As it has for 10,000 years, once again the wolf sets humanity against itself. What a big smile you have, Grandma.
Wieland was 15 when he read Never Cry Wolf and fell under its spell. Over the years, he came around to a more balanced view, although he did wage a private war after a wolf killed his cat in 1996. But that was personal. That was also the year most sheep farmers in his part of Ontario got out of the business. The closer you and your animals live to wolves, the more anti-wolf you’re likely to be.
