Wolves in Idaho

[rick savage]

that;s what happens when man gets involved with nature, i;m glad we don;t have the wolf problem here in oklahoma, we are starting to have a problem with cougars

[M.T. Pockets]

I know there were more predetors in the ecosystem before man came, but there were also 50,000,000 buffalo and other sources of prey on unlimited real estate.

Today, the elk's habitat is a percentage of a fraction of what it used to be and they have predictable ranges that they're self contained in. With all the development and sub divisions, elk don't have the free run of a dozen states like they used to. So, this means the wolves can concentrate on these smaller areas and really raise havoc with a particular heard or population.

Take the area South of Yellowstone, before man came the elk had a natural free range to winter in. Now that same area is filled with billionaire vacation homes with mowed lawns and fences. So, the feed ground became necessary to maintain the herd through the winter. So now you've got several thousand elk in a a few areas smaller than some shopping malls. The wolves can surround the herd to prevent them from moving between the feed grounds and contain them, I'm afraid of a disease problem someday.

The Northern Yellowstone herd seems to be hit the hardest of all, the wolves must have an effecient system there.

I'm from Minnesota and am no stranger to wolves. I sure wish the Fed's would leave it to the states now on how they want to control wolves. I'm not anti-wolf but for the life of me I can't figure out why some people worship them like some type of holy animal. Go to Jackson, Wyoming or Ely, MN and you'll see what I mean. I don't want to eliminate them, but let's face it - with man in the ecosystem you have to control all the animals. You can't control some and let others go uncontrolled.

[Skyline]

There also comes a time when you have to weigh the balance of demand. Do you lower the wolf population to a level below what the area could actually support, due to hunter demand for elk or do you manage for the wolves and hunters are further down the list as far as priorities.

It can come to that. So you as hunters have to decide .....do you want to hunt elk or are you content to know that the elk and wolves are out there and you are no longer a part of the equation.

There is another aspect to this and it is non-resident hunters. They are further down the priority list than residents. If the wolf impact on the elk herds is so strong that they have to cut back on hunting allocations, then the residents are going to scream even louder than they currently do and demand that the legal harvest be kept for resident hunters. After all they live there and they pay taxes in the state and.....I couldn't blame them.

So do the non-resident hunters think that a high wolf population is more desirable than them having a chance to go out west and hunt elk?

I'm not making this stuff up.......I've seen it.

So, I guess we all need to think long and hard about just how PRO wolf we really are. I like wolves.....I do want some of them out there, but I'd rather see them kept below carrying capacity so that I can still hunt. If wolf predation is to the point that they are closing the season (It happens) or it is so bad that the resident non-first nations people are cut off.........then things have gone too far.

[rick savage]

good info to think about

[denton]

Everywhere that there are coyotes, they are seen as a nuisance. Generally, the western laws boil down to, if you see one, feel free to abate that nuisance.

Wolves are so similar to coyotes that they freely interbreed.

So, if coyotes are a bad idea, why are wolves a good idea?

[Skyline]

Uhmmmm..........because it is politically correct and, your federal boys knew that if they introduced a bunch to the area (to help supplement the existing wolves and the ones that were already migrating your way from Alberta and BC) they would expand quickly under federal protection and start hammering the hell out of the elk and bison around Yellowstone. That it would go a long way towards ending the depredation problems by wildlife from a federal park on state land (both public and privately owned).

Wolves could do what hunters could not ..... hunt in a national park or certain wildlife refuge areas..............not to mention that the new land owners from Kalifornia and anti-hunters are making it tougher all the time for hunters to access the migrating herds as they leave the park and or drop into wintering areas surrounded by acreage owners.

Unfortunately............the wolves just kept expanding and eating elk. Not really a tough sequence of events for them to have foreseen, but apparently it was acceptable collateral damage.

Sounds like some kind of conspiracy theory doesn't it?!

[royinidaho]

damadman,
"Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, three states that are being affected by the reintroduction of the wolf are simply required to come up with a Federally approved management plan and as long as they can do that then the wolf population can be held into check. "

The problem is that the Feds must approve the State's plan. The state is more locally oriented.

I don't think that eradication of the wolf, again, is the most desirable outcome. If the states could implement their management plan without excessive federal influence it would be well and things would quiet down quite a bit.

[Wolvie]

Hi All,.its been awhile,but I guess Wolvie is Here in time,...

Anyways,..Killing Wolves for being wild and being "Wolves",is kind of Redundant isnt it?

I mean if they were to attack cattle,or other "Domestic Livestock",then of course there should probly be some action taken.
But I have been to Idaho, a few times,and Elk and mule deer and antelope theres alot of!!!
Wolves would be nice in any state in my eyes,they were here before we were and should be here now.
Though I am a hunter, I also believe in life of all creatures.
Wolves serve a purpose,as do Coyotes,buzzards,and worms.

It the chain that binds us all together in one way or another.
The Food Chain,...they take out the ill,and the weak,...a healthy elk is pretty big and strong,...and if they (Wolves),were to attack an healthy bull elk,..well let me tell ya ,they would have a fight fer sure.

The goverment has stuck their hands in so much of the free world,that now they are about to naw off their own limbs for do so.
When I see articles like this,it just tells me the same thing over and over,...let man and beast live as they have and stop the culling of animals that dont need it,..and start 'Culling" the goverment officials that dont do crap except make up more rules and BS laws.
They need to worry about our boys over in Iraq,and start bringing them home,...we arent there for the reason we set out to be there for,which is Osma Bin Laden,...
Sorry got off track there,...
I say let the Wolves be,...WOLVES LIVE unless they crose the line into Domesticated killing,..just let them live.

Later All
SAFE HUNTIN~

[M.T. Pockets]

I don't want wolves to divide hunters, but I think it's best we let the people in the states that have wolves decide on how to manage them. It's easy to like wolves as long as they're in somebody else's backyard, chasing & killing the animals someone else plans on hunting this fall.

I might as well talk about the white elephant in the living room.

Where there are wolves there is less opportunity for the sportsman to hunt animals. Personally, I like to hunt big game animals and more wolves or wolves being introduced into areas where they haven't been for 100 years, is going to limit hunter opportunity. Is this selfish on my part ? Maybe. But I'll take a stand on it and live with it. For example, in Sweden & Finland up to 50% of the moose population can be harvested in a given year. They don't have large predators.

I don't want to eradicate the wolf, but I don't like the idea of "reintroducing" them where they haven't been for a long time. I think they should be hunted where there is a sustainable population, the grizzly bear too. The ecyosystem has changed too much. With sport hunting in the scene now, the role of the large predator in the ecosystem has also changed. Uncontrolled, the wolf will have devestating effect on hoofed animals in a given area.

[fabsroman]

Looks like the President is thinking about taking the grey wolf off of the endangered species list.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060316/...sc/gray_wolves

I think I am going to have to agree for a controlled amount of hunting. We have a problem with whitetails here in Maryland, and it would probably be good to have some wolves here. Since there are no predators of whitetails in our area, the population has exploded and hunters can take tons of deer every season. All of this when 20 years ago the limit was one antlered deer. Now, they want hunters to take does, and bunches of them. Resident geese were also introduced about 20 years ago, and when hunting first started for them, we were allowed to kill a couple a person and the season began September 1. Now, Maryland's DNR has proposed an August 1 start date, a 15 bird limit, no possession limit, and the use of unplugged guns because the population is getting out of hand.

Wolvie,

In the end, the ecosystem cannot manage itself anymore because man has had way too much influence on it and we continue to influence it more and more each day. We destroy fields and move deer into pockets of woods where they tend to flourish because there is no hunting and they love the homeowner's shrubs and other high dollar landscaping. I almost ran into one on Monday while driving over to my aunt's house, and there were three more waiting to cross the road. There are more auto accidents caused by deer in the county I live in than by other motorists.

Wolves, if left unchecked, would end up getting themselves into trouble. See, it isn't like the old days when man wasn't around. If the food supply (e.g., elk herd) got too low, there would be nowhere else for the wolves to turn to for food, so some would die through starvation. Same goes for the elk herd if there is not enough grazing to live on. The problem today is that a starving wolf that cannot find any elk to eat can find cattle, sheep, a dog, a baby, a cat, a person, etc. Things that weren't around before man, but things that man will get really pissed off about if the wolves eat them. I know I wouldn't like a wolf to eat my dog, much less my child.

We live in a pretty residential area, but we have a wetland "preserve" behind us where I see deer, ducks, geese, groundhogs, and foxes. To meet, it is great to see these animals. I even got to see a pair of mallards this evening wading through the marsh grass. However, I am sure that the neighbors with their small dogs are scared to let them off their leash for fear of one of the foxes grabbing them. Me, I let Nitro run around without a leash because he is much bigger than those foxes and I have seen the foxes run when Nitro approaches, but I do worry a little about a rabid fox.

At the end of the day, life is too complicated not to have laws, and the more complicated it gets, the worse it will get. 100 years ago, there wasn't nearly as many issues as there is now. We didn't have to worry about copyright infringement from a teenager downloading a protected song over the internet onto their IPOD. Barely even had to worry about auto accidents, and the few horse collissions that we had weren't all that bad. The laws are a result of people not knowing how to behave and one person's moral values being different than another.

As far as the war in Iraq is concerned, I think we should leave the troops over there until Iraq settles down. We never actually went into Iraq to find Osama Bin Laden. The reason we went into Iraq was because of weapons of mass destruction, and we didn't find them. Maybe, if we stay over there and the Iraqi people get their freedom, we might not have to worry about the middle east as much. Who knows. I love how people think that ending the war in Iraq will make all their problems go away. One of my clients, a real estate agent, made a comment that if we brought the troops home and ended the war, the economy would probably get a boost from it. I was dying to ask him how that could be, but I bit my tongue since he is a client. Of course, he doesn't blame the markets sluggishness on the fact that realtors helped driving the price of homes into the unaffordable range or that with the interest rate increases, what the realtors and new home contractors made barely affordable became unaffordable. Nah, we always find something else to blame. I truly hope that the new home contractors, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers saved up their money from this 3 year boom they had because I think they are in for some slim pickings over the years to come.