The Canis Lupus Olympics

Wolf recovery doesn't come easy, but the Northern Rockies experience proves it's possible for the Southwest too

Witnessing the process of Northern Rockies wolf recovery was something akin to watching an Olympian, 20-way tug of war that lasted for more than two decades, until finally, the species leaped off the endangered species list and management authority was handed over to the states.

Wolves were long gone from the Northern Rockies by the middle of the 20th century. They were virtually eradicated in the 1930s, but their spirits persisted in folklore, good and bad. The federal government declared the species endangered in 1973 and imposed regulations to attempt to save the wolves from extinction.

Delistings of an endangered species are rare. The process is protracted and demoralizing, and it typically goes nowhere. That's not what happened with gray wolves in the Northern Rockies. A blip of wolf activity in northwest Montana in the mid-1980s became the catalyst of colonization, followed by rapid recovery.

Wolves from the Northern Rockies came back—now populating Oregon and Washington, as well as the initial recovery states of Montana, Wyoming and Idaho.

For 22 years, I was the natural resources and political reporter at the Daily Inter Lake in Northwest Montana. Wildlife managers charged with recovery of the Mexican wolf in the Southwestern US are keenly aware of the Northern Rockies experience, even sharing a key player (see page 16), and that's a good thing.

These life-and-death games involved a potent brew of politics, legal maneuvering and media coverage. There were instances of livestock kills by wolves and the consequential lethal responses, and I had a front-row seat to the survival of a nearly-lost creature.

It all started with the Magic Pack, a fabled clan of wolves that migrated across the Canadian border along the northwestern boundaries of Glacier National Park. Criss-crossing the transnational boundary, the pack persevered, and by 1986, they denned for the first time in Glacier Park and produced offspring that led to other packs.

It was a slow process, but starting in the mid-1990s, canis lupus proliferated, compounded by government introductions of wolves into Yellowstone National Park.

The Yellowstone experiment became quite glamorous, because wolves could be seen and photographed by international audiences in places like the Lamar Valley—with clusters of elk and bison.

But in the mountainous, forested canopies of Northwest Montana, that isn't how things are. Yellowstone wolves migrated into Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, some of them killing sheep and cattle along the way. And all the while, their numbers grew. Initially, there were only a handful of packs believed to be progeny of the Magic Pack. By 2004, a dozen known packs lived in the northwest part of Montana, but by 2008, there were 65.

In retrospect, wildlife managers believe a perfect storm had come together—wolves reached adequate numbers to disperse and create new packs, and the whitetail deer, a main food source, had recovered from a devastating winter kill in the late '90s.

In late 2008, an exceptionally large pack of 27 wolves was exterminated by USDA Wildlife Services. The Hog Heaven Pack had killed too many livestock southwest of Kalispell, and the punishment was fatal.

Wolf advocates were furious, calling the response heavy-handed and warning that it would create unsustainable conditions for the species.

Many hunters viewed the sheer size of the Hog Heaven Pack—the largest ever to be documented in Montana—as proof that wolves were out of control. Even worse, Northern Rockies wolves had far exceeded recovery goals, yet they still remained protected under the Endangered Species Act. When Montana began wolf recovery in the 1990s, the goals were clear: reach recovery goals, then delist, then move to state management (including a regulated hunt). Yet, it wasn't happening.

Then, a tangled series of courtroom games began. Wolves were initially delisted in 2009, but in 2010, wolf advocates challenged that move in federal court. They argued that the delisting was illegal because it applied only to Montana and Idaho wolves, and not wolves in Wyoming. The judge agreed that it was not legal to delist just part of a protected population, but he also said that wolves were biologically recovered.

As a result of that ruling, wolves were relisted in 2010, and that led to an unprecedented event: politicians passing legislation delisting wolves in the Northern Rockies. It was the first time Congress ever removed a species from protection under the ESA, but the Fish & Wildlife Service had long felt that delisting was warranted. Regulated wolf hunts resumed in 2011.

Michael Jamison, formerly a reporter for the daily Missoulian newspaper, is now a program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.

The result of the legal and political maneuvering, Jamison observes, is fatigue and disenchantment.

"The people who are being asked to coexist with these protected species begin to see the wolf not as a native part of wild nature, but instead as an extension of a regulatory and arbitrary government they already do not trust. Wolf is not wolf but instead is a representation of government," he says.

Jamison notes the importance of the annual hunts "both as a management tool and a social balm…The hunt, it seems to me, is as much a social pressure relief valve as it is a management tool, and that's important given how central hunters are to this conversation."

As the wolf hunts were ramped up in the three Northern Rockies states, wolf advocacy groups predicted that "extermination" and "slaughters" were on the horizon.

From my standpoint, there were obviously thousands of wolves to the north in Canada, where wolf hunting regulations are more liberal. It was clear that the sustainability of wolves in Montana depended on a widespread desire to keep them from ever being listed again.

Bruce Tutvedt, a Republican state senator and rancher, was a member of a state citizen task force that took a practical approach, as many did, deciding that the only option was state rather than federal management.

"It's very difficult for the ranching community and the affected parties to understand that they are going to have the wolf; they just have to figure out how to make the plan work," Tutvedt says.

"My goal was to get in a position to manage them, and if one of my friends shot one, they wouldn't have the heavy hand of the federal government on them…If [wolves] were attacking their dogs or cattle, they would be able to do something."

Arlene Montgomery, conservation program manager for Friends of the Wild Swan in Northwest Montana, generally views recovery in the Northern Rockies as being successful, but with reservations.

"I question whether they are recovered or if they will remain that way," Montgomery said, adding that she was sickened by the political machinations that led to wolves being delisted.

Yet even then, there's an upside.

"Wolves did naturally recolonize," she says, adding later, "I think that's a testament to having wildlife corridors and having ways for animals to move."

From my perspective, all of the struggles involved with wolf recovery have been moving the packs and people toward an equilibrium of compatibility. The wolf population of the Northern Rockies is sustainable and secure, and societal acceptance has been gradually evolving.

I recall helping a friend pack out a large bison he had shot north of Yellowstone National Park in 2005, during the resumption of a delayed legal hunt. It was an eight-hour job that went well into the night. While we were doing that, a howl, and then more howls, came from within the park. It was a hauntingly beautiful experience, enough to make us stop, listen and wonder. Their right to a position on the landscape was undeniable.

Although there have been regulated wolf hunting and trapping seasons since 2011, wolf numbers have persisted. The 2014 Annual Report for Northern Rockies Wolves, coordinated by the Fish & Wildlife Service, found a minimum of 1,657 wolves in the Northern Rockies, along with 77 wolves in Oregon and 68 wolves in Washington, well beyond the minimum management threshold of 450.

So a firm foothold has been established, but it has been a volatile journey for wolves and society.

New SW supervisor brings NW wolf recovery experience

Keeping tabs on growing numbers of wolves over a vast region, and working with warring factions of the public over the entire pursuit of wolf management, is no easy task, but it is a job that Kent Laudon is built for, and people like him have been a key to wolf recovery in the Northern Rockies.

And this month, Laudon begins work as a federal field supervisor for the Mexican Wolf Recovery Project in Arizona and New Mexico.

Laudon is a biologist, a trapper, a detective, a data cruncher and a public relations specialist, all rolled together, with each part depending on the other. At 51, he's been around the block and all over the country, learning from mistakes and success.

When he started work with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks as a wolf specialist for the northwestern part of the state in 2004, after doing research on wolves, elk and deer for the Nez Perce Tribe and the state of Idaho, Laudon was elated about the challenges he faced.

"It was fun when I first got here. That was a big thing for me: 'I am going to try to find a pack that nobody knows about.' Little did I know, but I would have plenty of opportunities to do that," Laudon says.

At the time, there were just 12 known packs in the area Laudon was assigned to. That changed quickly.

"Through the mechanisms of dispersal, wolves are very good at putting themselves in places," Laudon says.

By the end of 2013, Laudon had identified 64 packs in the same area, sprawling over some 13,000 square miles. And the work doesn't stop with identifying the packs. It involves keeping track of them, which requires that at least one wolf in the pack be fitted with a radio or satellite collar, a feat that relies on successful trapping and release, and then constant aerial monitoring of the pack's numbers and movements.

Laudon recalls looking for one pack that he suspected to exist near the Idaho border, then spent two weeks in fruitless search. He was about to give up but then checked an out-of-the-way game trail. He found wolf scat everywhere. Soon after, he was howling for wolves on that trail after dark, and they responded. Within days, he put a collar on a female wolf, which helped wildlife managers keep tabs on the pack.

"You do all this, pack after pack. It's very difficult but very rewarding," he says. "Find the pups. How do you do that? There are ways you can do it, and over time, I've gotten a sense about how you do that."

Laudon is a distance runner; he has completed a Boston Marathon and run in many other events. A big part of his training involves trail runs, where he often encounters signs of wolves, sometimes leading to successful trapping and collaring efforts.

Monitoring populations also requires help from the public—reported wolf sightings or unusual accounts are recorded. During the fall big game hunting season, for example, Laudon relied on thousands of eyes in the woods, and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks established online reporting systems and used the data to narrow down possible pack locations.

But in the volatile world of wolves and how they are perceived, Laudon says he's seen good and bad from wolf advocates and critics and people in between.

"You develop these relations with the folks, and I like that," he says. "For them to have access to a government guy helped a lot. I'm a regular guy. I'm not like the Wizard of Oz guy, pulling strings behind a curtain."

Reports from savvy people have been particularly helpful, especially hunters who know the territory.

"The most enjoyable thing is basically the field work," Laudon adds. "Part of it is that you get to see some amazing things, and they may have nothing to do with wolves. You really pause and say, 'I can't believe I get to do this for a living.' This is an unusual kind of thing. Not a lot of people get to do this."

Can Mexican wolves bounce back the way northern wolves did?

Ample similarities exist between Mexican wolf recovery and what transpired in the Northern Rockies, but the effort in the Southwest is really a whole new enchilada.

Will Mexican wolves proliferate in Arizona and New Mexico, as gray wolves did in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming? Experts say the populations could pick up, but they don't expect a repeat of the Northern Rockies here.

The most glaring difference is that Mexican wolves are being reintroduced from captive facilities, and they are not supported by a large contiguous population of wild wolves, says John Oakleaf, the field projects coordinator for Mexican wolf recovery with the US Fish & Wildlife Service.

The agency listed the subspecies of Mexican wolves as endangered in 1976, after decades of unlimited hunting, trapping and poisoning, even offering bounties for their hides in some areas.

When the Mexican wolf recovery effort got under way in 1982, all wildlife managers could imagine was establishing 100 wolves in a 5,000-square-mile recovery area. Anything beyond that was unfathomable at the time. Now, an estimated 110 wolves live in the area, a number Oakleaf calls "pretty impressive."

"We've hit that imagination level, and now we have to write a recovery plan that says what the recovery goals are that allow for the states to take over management," Oakleaf says, adding that regulated wolf hunts could eventually be part of the mix here.

Federal officials this year made a fourfold expansion of the recovery area, a broad swath across the central sections of Arizona and New Mexico, with the northernmost boundary for New Mexico crossing Albuquerque's latitude. The expanded area has room for a larger, more genetically diverse population of wolves, and it may also minimize impacts on livestock operators, local communities and wild prey.

An official population target has yet to be identified, but the new rule points to a "population objective" of 300 to 325 Mexican wolves.

The potential increase depends on available prey. And the best natural prey bases of elk and deer exist along the Mogollon Rim, which includes national forests in Arizona and New Mexico.

But wolves could disperse and set up up shop in other areas, like game-rich areas north of Santa Fe.

"Where whitetail deer are very abundant in the Southwest, wolves would persist in those areas," Oakleaf says.

"There's a lot of elk when you get into the mountains north of Santa Fe, and where there are a lot of elk, wolves tend to do good," he says.

The social challenges are very similar in the Southwest compared to the Northern Rockies— wolves not only hunt wild prey, they also feast on easy-to-catch, slow-moving cattle as they graze. In the Southwest, cattle grazing season is longer.

As a result, the number of livestock depredations per 100 Mexican wolves is about four times higher than for their gray wolf brethren. Federal programs to pay ranchers for cattle killed by wolves are necessary to deal with what Oakleaf calls "very real impacts to people who are grazing cattle."

Varying cooperation by state wildlife agencies has been part of the equation, as it was in the Northern Rockies, where Wyoming did not go along with the federal effort before delisting. New Mexico was involved with the Mexican wolf recovery effort from 1999 to 2008, but the state pulled out after that, Oakleaf says, adding that Arizona has been involved from the start of the effort in 1998.

That means most of the recent reintroduction programs in the Land of Enchantment have relied on private partners with the federal agency, who then have to ask for permission from the state for most activities.

And recently, relations between the state and the feds have been more dicey. In early May, the New Mexico Game Commission denied a permit for Ted Turner to continue providing a captive rearing facility for Mexican wolves on his Ladder Ranch in southern New Mexico.

Soon after that vote, 46 conservation groups in 13 states and Washington DC sent a letter to Gov. Susana Martinez, imploring her to reverse the commission's vote. So far, the governor and the commission haven't budged.

The groups say Ladder Ranch has been a key part of the success of Mexican wolf reintroduction over the last 17 years and claim the state is interfering with philanthropic activities that otherwise would be borne by taxpayers.

And that's not the only bureaucratic hurdle. Some question whether there is an adequate road map to recovery for Mexican wolves in the Southwest.

The permit for the Turner ranch, for example, applied only to the ability to raise wolves in captivity, kind of like a state menagerie license. Releasing wolves from captivity into the wild requires an entirely different permitting process.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference in the Northern Rockies and Mexican wolf recovery efforts can be found in the critters themselves. Adult gray wolves weigh up to 110 pounds and have black, white or silverish coats. Mexican wolves weigh around 85 pounds and are larger than coyotes, with coats that can be highlighted by hues of red.

"Wolves are smaller down here," says Oakleaf, "but by and large, the behavior and social aspects of wolves are very similar...They have the ability to travel far, and start new packs, and grow in their numbers."

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