Five Years Later, Fears Over Reintroducing Wolves Have Proved Largely Unfounded
	From the January 2000

Editor's note: This article ran Jan. 15 in The Missoulian, a daily paper in Missoula, Mont. We requested permission to run it in the Sun-News because there appear to be a lot of similarities between the Montana/Idaho wolf reintroduction and what Grant and Catron counties are facing now.

By Sherry Devlin
The Missoulian

Missoula, Mont.

On the day that wolves returned to the wilderness of central Idaho, Ed Bangs worried that they would not be able to walk after 74 hours of confinement in metal shipping crates. Or that they would fall through the ice while crossing the Salmon River and drown.

His critics -- and they were many -- had other, more sensational fears.

"They'll eat all the game, and we won't be able to hunt anymore."

"The government will take away our guns."

"There will be a dead child within a year."

Last week, five years after that historic winter afternoon, Bangs -- the federal government's wolf recovery coordinator -- happily conceded that everyone, himself included, was wrong about wolves.

Although wobbly-legged at first, the four wolves carried to a backcountry campground and released on Jan. 14, 1995, were sure in both stride and purpose as they disappeared into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

Joined a week later by 11 more transplants, the animals investigated their new surroundings, and formed pairs and then packs. None fell through the ice. Nearly all remained on national forest land. All but one of the females produced a litter of pups within the first few years. One female wandered east and was killed by a mountain lion near Philipsburg. One was shot by a rancher. One mated with a male wolf that left Glacier National Park in 1991 and spent five years alone near Lolo Pass.

Today, there are 11 packs of wolves in central Idaho -- and somewhere between 156 and 168 animals.

In Yellowstone National Park, where wolves were released into holding pens that same week in 1995 and later into the wild, the story was much the same.

Some of the newly formed packs produced two, even three, litters of pups a year. Most stayed within the park and away from livestock. One male was illegally killed after leaving the park with its mate. The female wolf and eight pups were captured and returned to a holding pen. By the time they were released, another male wolf was waiting outside the fence.

Today, there are eight packs and 116 wolves in Yellowstone, and 40,000 human beings have seen them.

"Do you remember the story about the boy who cried wolf?" said Bangs. "Well, every fairy tale has a basis in fact. Five years ago, there were a lot of what--ifs and hysteria. What if the population grows until there are so many wolves on the Yellowstone Plateau that it throws the world out of balance and we spin out of control and crash into the sun? What if, what if, what if?

"None of that stuff ever happened and none of it ever will."

Wolf reintroduction -- the federal government's attempt to restore healthy populations of Rocky Mountain gray wolves by transplanting animals from Canada to the backcountry of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho -- is a biological success.

"Wolves are here to stay. That's not a question anymore," said Bangs. "Now what you see is people arguing over how many wolves we should have, and where they should be, and how they'll be managed."

There are still plenty -- hundreds some days -- of complaints, he said.

"Wolves do good things and they do bad things. They aren't perfect. But overall, there have been very few problems."

"Wolves took to Idaho like ducks to water," said Curt Mack, the Nez Perce tribe's gray wolf recovery coordinator. "We've got 13 million acres of good solid habitat where wolves can recover basically without conflict with humans."

"From a biological standpoint, it makes sense," he said. "There is plenty of food available and plenty of remote country. So the wolf population is expanding at its biological maximum. Survival is really high. And everything is just positive for wolves to expand."

"This time five years ago, it was media frenzy," said Doug Smith, Yellowstone Park's wolf project leader. "It was sensationalized. It was history. It was an ordeal. It was real excitement. Having worked with wolves for half my life, I knew they were just wolves. But it was wolves on a grand scale. It was wolves in Yellowstone."

On the day that wolves returned to the wilderness of central Idaho, a Lemhi County commissioner followed the caravan of trucks and vans for 47 slow miles to the end of the Salmon River road. He carried a video camera and a long list of complaints, and even tried -- at the last possible moment -- to stop the release. He promised to document "every screwup" on videotape.

It had been a week punctuated by protests and court orders alternately stopping and starting the reintroduction. The weather was no gentler, grounding plans to fly the wolves deeper into the wilderness. Plan A gave way to Plan B and Plan C and D. "Is this my worst nightmare?" Bangs said as the wolves entered their third day in the shipping crates. "No. My experience is that things can always get worse."

As the fifth-year anniversary neared, Bangs remembered the turmoil of that first release with characteristic matter-of-factness.

"I'm pretty used to the hysteria," he said. "That's very predictable. I don't take it personally."

No other animal inspires such intense emotions, Bangs said. "Mountain lions kill more big game than wolves. Lions attack livestock. Lions even kill people. But all you hear is a little grumbling: 'Yeah, the lions killed all the deer, ate all the chickens and chased little Bobby. That's what they do.' The same guy will hear there's a wolf in the next county and be on the phone to the governor."

Wolf advocates can be just as strident, he said. "We had to remove a couple of wolves north of the park, and I got hundreds and hundreds of e-mails. Overnight, I had succumbed to the evil ranching forces and become a wolf murderer."

The controversy over wolves has nothing to do with wolf biology, said Hank Fischer, the northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife and one of the longest-heard voices for wolf reintroduction.

"People look to the wolf as a symbol of the federal government cramming endangered species down their throats," he said. "There is so much unnecessary controversy over wolves, and that kills them as surely as do poison or bullets. When you can get people to sit down around the table and talk, it's not so hard to solve these problems."

Fischer is the architect of a program, financed by Defenders of Wildlife, that compensates ranchers for livestock losses attributable to wolves. In the past 11 years, he has paid ranchers just over $100,000. The payments, he believes, have been repaid with a generous measure of tolerance.

"Most ranchers are practical people," Fischer said. "They understand that wolves are here to stay. The focus of our organization has shifted. We got wolf reintroduction. Now we need to ask how we can blend wolves into the landscape, socially and biologically. And how do we prevent predation in the first place? How do we avoid wolf-livestock conflicts?"

Just before Christmas, Fischer bought a dozen guard dogs that will -- next summer -- try to protect the more than 8,000 sheep on Margaret Soulen Hinson's ranch outside Weiser, Idaho. Wolves can easily overpower or elude one or two guard dogs, Fischer said. But what if there are six dogs with a band of sheep?

Soulen Hinson has suffered more livestock depredations than any other rancher: 30 the first year, 29 the next, then none, then 39 last year. "When we heard that wolves were going to be reintroduced, we were pretty sure we'd have depredations," she said, "and we have. It's hard to say that I hate any animal. Anyone who enjoys the outdoors doesn't want to see an animal eliminated. But there is some fear on my part about what will happen if the numbers continue to increase. It's not so much a fear of depredation as it is worrying whether reintroduction will lead to land-use restrictions. That always weighs in the back of my mind."

Defenders of Wildlife has been good to her operation, she said. But other ranchers have not been as fortunate. "I feel for the cattle producers," she said. "They cannot always document the losses. I've heard some grumbling."

Wolves simply aren't going to be able to recolonize every piece of ground they choose, said Fischer. His group also is helping to finance an effort to map good wolf habitat -- and existing livestock allotments and density.

Beginning in northwest Montana, where wolves returned on their own, biologists should soon be able to match wolves and habitat -- livestock-free habitat.

"I've gotten so tired of all the arguing about wolves," Fischer said. "The problems really are solvable. They aren't that bad."

On the day that wolves returned to the wilderness of central Idaho, the Nez Perce people welcomed home a brother. A tribal elder offered a prayer and a blessing at the airport in Missoula.

"The spirit of the Nez Perce is in this animal," said Horace Axtell. "It is good to see our brothers able to come back to this land where they have become rather extinct."

The story of the gray wolf is not unlike the story of the Nez Perce, said Jaime Pinkham, treasurer of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee.

"White settlers tried to cleanse and tame the West by removing any threat or barrier to their way of life," he said. "Through warfare and diseases and policies removing Indian people to reservations, we became a suppressed people. The gray wolf was also a threat to this new way of life, so the wolf was annihilated as well."

With the wolf's return to the wilderness, the Nez Perce people began a more optimistic journey, Pinkham said last week. "Both the wolf and the Nez Perce are regaining our rightful place, socially, politically and spiritually."

When the state of Idaho refused to participate in wolf reintroduction, the tribe took the lead in central Idaho. "To take responsibility for bringing a predator back into the natural environment is a big challenge," Pinkham said. "We've proven that we have that ability. Wolf reintroduction gave our community a flagship. It gave us hope."

One young Nez Perce woman went to college and became a wildlife biologist because of the reintroduction. Now Marcie Steiger works for the tribal wolf office. "The reintroduction program helps remind us of our purpose in life: to serve a community, to protect an environment that has always protected us," Pinkham said.

Mack, the tribe's wolf recovery coordinator, said his program is in transition. "For the past five years, we've concentrated on the biology, on assessing how successful wolves will be at recolonizing habitats in Idaho. Now we know. Wolves will successfully recover. Now the question is will humans allow wolves to survive? Ultimately, it will be the level of tolerance we afford wolves that determines how many animals survive."

Biologically, there could be 400 wolves in central Idaho in another five years, Mack said. "Realistically, I don't think the numbers will be very much different than today. They definitely won't be as high as people fear. There won't be 2,000 wolves in the state of Idaho. There isn't that much physical space, and there isn't that much tolerance."

Mack said he's a little surprised that wolves rebounded so quickly. This will be the third year with at least 10 breeding pairs of wolves in central Idaho -- the recovery goal. Only 35 wolves were reintroduced -- 15 in January 1995, 20 a year later. Originally, the plan called for three to five years of reintroductions.

Pinkham said he's grateful for the "considerable tolerance and patience shown by the citizens of Idaho whose livelihoods depend on the land. While there is not broad-scale acceptance of wolf reintroduction, there is considerable tolerance."

In the years ahead, wolves will increasingly disperse into new territories, both in Idaho and Montana, Mack said. There will be more conflicts with humans. There will be more concern about livestock and game animals. There will be a move to take wolves off the endangered species list.

Delisting will inspire a new wave of hysteria, Bangs predicted. "In 1988, it was no wolves, no way. Now most people realize there are going to be wolves. Now we have to decide how many and where. And how we are going to manage them. When we start talking about hunting, things will get pretty lively again."

"Some people cannot imagine why anyone would ever want to kill a wolf," Bangs said. But over the long term, wolf management likely will include the hunting of wolves.

"The fear, of course, is that once we start shooting wolves, we'll never stop," he said. "Delisting will bring those fears to the forefront. My job is to stay in the middle -- to run a program that recovers the wolf, but is also responsive to the people who have to live with wolves."

The state of Idaho will likely want to take over management of its wolves after delisting, but Pinkham said his tribe will be reluctant to relinquish the program. "We raised this program as we would a child," he said. "You can't just come and take our child away."

"The Nez Perce see all the benefits of wolf recovery," said Mack. "To them, it just makes sense, makes sense, makes sense. To them, it's a real honor to have the opportunity to help one of their brothers regain his rightful place."

On the day that wolves returned to the wilderness, everything changed.

"Wolves affect everything in the ecosystem, from top to bottom," said Smith, the wolf project leader in Yellowstone Park. In Yellowstone, the changes have taken place on the world's most remarkable stage -- on the ridgelines and in the meadows of the Lamar Valley.

"Maybe the biggest surprise of reintroduction has been how visible the wolves are," Smith said. "Almost every place else, wolves are secretive and shy. In Yellowstone, 10,000 people a year watch them go about their business. This has become the best place in the world to see wolves."

And to see how other animals respond to the return of their ecosystem's most important large predator.

Before they were eradicated by federal trappers early in the 20th century, there were an estimated 35,000 wolves in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Every other animal was affected by the wolf's presence.

And will be again, particularly in the coming five years, Smith said.

"Wolves provide meat -- carrion -- for magpies, ravens, golden eagles, chickadees, grizzly bears, mink, wolverine, lynx, black bears, carrion beetles -- all the scavengers," he said. "Before the wolves returned, those animals relied on winter kill. Now they have a year-round source of fresh kills."

"A whole diversity of life lives on these carcasses," said Bangs, the Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf recovery leader. "The presence of wolves will increase the diversity of life in Yellowstone Park and in central Idaho."

In Yellowstone, 90 percent of the wolf's diet is elk. The predation will increase the vigor of the herd.

"We had this old-age elk herd, all these old grandma gummer elk," Bangs said. "They're wolf food now. They're vulnerable. The healthier, younger elk will survive. They'll produce more calves, and eventually, wolves will have a tougher time bringing them down."

Hunters are worried that wolves will decimate game populations in central Idaho and Yellowstone. But Bangs asked for patience. "There will be a lot of change in the future," he said. "All the relationships between all the animals are going to change."

So far, the effect on Yellowstone's coyote population has been most dramatic. Coyote numbers are down 30 percent; wolves kill coyotes because they are competitors.

Eventually, every animal will respond to the wolf's return, Smith said. Just as they did for hundreds of years before white settlement.

"In the next five years, wolves will become a more integral part of the ecosystem," he said. "They have already become our marquee animal. They've replaced grizzlies as the animal everyone wants to see. What's important, though, is that all the original fauna is now intact. The ecosystem is complete."

"There are only a few places left where we have all the large animals that were here when Columbus stepped on shore," Bangs said. "Wild areas are certainly the most rare thing on the planet. Having a place where a person can experience a wolf -- every American should have that opportunity."

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