Landers: Wolf management requires a team effort

Allowing gray wolves to naturally reestablish packs in Washington is one of the most divisive wildlife management goals in state history.

Some people love wolves for their unique social structure while others hate them for the threat they pose to livestock or the competition for big game.

That will never change, except perhaps in degrees.

Dealing with the federal- and state-listed endangered species also is wildly expensive, costing the state Fish and Wildlife Department more than a million dollars a year.

Even though wolves aren’t being actively introduced or hunted, the protected predators must be monitored, attacks on livestock must be addressed and methods of preventing wolf conflicts must be explored.

State and federal law requires the state to allow wolves to reestablish a viable population in the state, where they were trapped, hunted and poisoned out of existence more than 70 years ago.

The goal is to reach population levels allowing wolves to be delisted under the state’s Wolf Management Plan and managed like other wildlife species. That could include hunting.

State wildlife managers are criticized from one camp or another on virtually any decision they make regarding the gray wolf.

Killing a couple of cow-killing wolves can result in thousands of protesting emails to the governor. Not killing a cattle-attacking pack raises the ire of the livestock industry, county commissioners and East Side legislators.

The Fish and Wildlife Department needs advice in making wolf policy decisions and educating the public to find consensus.

For that, the state has appointed a 17- to 18-member Wolf Advisory Group, composed of representatives from polarized groups as well as from people who fit somewhere in between.

Janey Howe, a Colville junior high school science teacher, was appointed to the WAG in 2015. Howe has gone beyond her responsibilities to write an occasional column in the Colville newspaper to help give insight into the group.

From the inside, she noticed right away that public perception isn’t always in synch with what’s going on in wolf management.

Howe has seized the historic revival of wolves professionally and personally.

She’s used wolf-related topics in her science classrooms for eight years and has volunteered for Fish and Wildlife wolf monitoring projects. For the past three summers, she’s been range riding to provide human presence to help deter wolves and other predators from attacking grazing cattle.

Her insights have contributed to the WAG recommendations on making these programs more feasible for other producers.

Since September, the WAG has been developing plans that can be customized to keep a producer on the landscape and in business after being impacted by wolves. The plans include preventative measures. They also spell out mitigation if they don’t work.

The WAG made a field trip to the grazing allotment to help balance hope and reality involved in the plans.

“Benefits to having an individual producer plan include providing certainty to livestock producers because if the time does come for lethal control, it will hopefully be more widely accepted as necessary given all that was done to prevent depredations,” Howe said.

“Certainty also is given to environmental groups by assuring that producers put high-quality preventative measures in place at the beginning of the grazing season, rather than after depredations occur.”

Howe believes the WAG is promoting good stewardship and land management, showing that interest groups can come together to solve issues and keep livestock producers in business.

“An expectation of WAG members is to value all stakeholders’ perspectives and opinions,” she said.

Field trips sometimes take members out of their comfort zones to experience a diversity of operations and perspectives.

Last year, field trips included visits to three livestock producers, as well as to Wolf Haven International, an advocacy group and wolf facility in Tenino, Washington.

Wildlife managers consider the success of the WAG so important, the state hired Francine Madden for an $83,000 position as the Human-Wildlife Conflict Facilitator.

Professional guidance helps group members explore current nonlethal livestock-wolf protection practices, evaluate what works and what doesn’t and recommend potential improvements.

This is all done in the kind of civil discussion that can be hard to find in a free-for-all public meeting.

During a meeting last year in Spokane, the group heard expert speakers on the topic of wolf hunting.

“Shane Mahoney, a (Canadian) hunter and conservationist, reminded us all of the role hunters played in the conservation of species through the history of North America,” Howe said. “He outlined that it was outstanding leadership of hunters that provided the halt of wildlife destruction, and the leadership hunters must continue to play in wildlife’s future.”

Rob McCoy, a biologist from the Makah Tribe, discussed with the group how his people were preparing for the potential arrival of wolves. Some tribal members are subsistence hunters who are concerned about wolf impacts to their game, he said.

“The tribe is already dealing with shrinking hunting lands,” Howe said. “This WAG venue gave the tribe a voice that they might not have had otherwise.”

Kaitlyn Burnsworth, the daughter of Jim Burnsworth of “Western Extreme,” a hunting television show, spoke to the WAG about the importance of hunting to her family, not just as a livelihood but as a tradition.

“She emphasized the whole experience of hunting from practicing with her bow and preparing for hunting season to the connection she has with her family spending time in nature,” Howe said.

“Her father taught her the values of respect and responsibility to the wildlife and the landscape.”

The last topic for discussion at that Spokane meeting was Damage Prevention Cooperative Agreements for Livestock.

“WAG members and staff were broken into two groups to discuss how to prioritize the distribution of available funds and property specific qualities of nonlethal deterrent measures,” Howe said, noting that the meeting closed without a resolution to either of the topics.

Nobody said it would be easy.

But long term, Howe says, the WAG should build more trust between groups as philosophically far apart as the Washington Cattlemen’s Association and the Defenders of Wildlife.

If those groups find more common ground, the firmer footing can help balance public perception.

Contact Rich Landers at (509) 459-5508 or email richl@spokesman.com.