Defenders of Wildlife Blog

Till next season… – The Wood River Wolf Project finished its fifth season this month, having lost just 4 sheep out of 27,305 that move through the million-acre project area—a 99.99% success rate! We’ll have a full review from project manager Suzanne Stone early next week, but also check out last Friday’s write-up in the Idaho Mountain Express. To celebrate the end of the season, our field crew was invited for the first time to participate in the annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival in Sun Valley that honors the culture and heritage of raising sheep. It was an honor to take part and shows how Defenders’ efforts are slowly gaining acceptance in the community.

Don’t shoot red wolves! – Defenders took action this week with the Southern Environmental Law Center and other groups to protect red wolves in North Carolina. The state had previously agreed to allow night hunting of coyotes in areas where wolves also live, and at least one endangered red wolf has died as a result. Red wolves are small and can be very hard to distinguish from coyotes at any time of day, let alone at night. Here’s what Defenders senior staff attorney Jason Rylander had to say:

 “With fewer than 100 red wolves in the wild, we cannot afford to lose a single one to accidental shooting. Spotlight hunting of coyotes is a new and unnecessary threat to the conservation of red wolves.”

Read more in The Mountaineer.

What’s next for Washington? – Over the weekend, the Seattle Times reported on the ongoing controversy in Washington surrounding the removal of the Wedge Pack. While there’s little agreement about how to resolve future conflicts, it’s clear that no one is happy with the current direction in which wolf management is heading. Many ranchers have been reluctant to adopt proactive strategies to prevent livestock losses, while the state has been quick to blame wolves based on shoddy evidence. Our best hope is to find ways to work directly with ranchers to help provide them with the tools they need to coexist with wolves on the landscape.

First hundred wolves killed across Northern Rockies – At least 121 wolves have been killed so far this hunting season across three states: Idaho hunters have removed 65 since the end of August; Montana hunters have taken 25; Wyoming hunters have killed 23 in the trophy game area, another 2 were lost to other causes and 8 have been killed in the unregulated predator zone. With rifle season just starting in many states, those numbers are likely to rise sharply over the next couple months. Read more in the Missoulian.

For Wolf Awareness Week 2012, we’re sharing some of our favorite facts about wolves. Help us spread the word by sharing the image below on Facebook.

It’s no surprise that the wolf gets a bad rap. For many of us, our first exposure to wolves was the “big, bad wolf” we heard about as children in bedtime stories. But did you know that Charles Perrault’s original printed version of Little Red Riding Hood had nothing to do with actual wolves? The story was told in the late 17th century court of King Louis XIV, at a time when the French aristocracy was concerned about beguiling men in the streets taking advantage of their daughters. It was meant as a cautionary tale regarding the corruption of young women, and the moral was to be wary of strangers, especially predatory men, not to have an irrational fear of local wildlife.

To our knowledge, real wolves have never blown down a pig’s house either, but such fairy tales designed to frighten people may have led to the demise of wolves in European cultures. Wolves were essentially eradicated from much of central and northern Europe during the 19th century, and prejudices against them followed to the New World. As a result, wolf populations up and down the East Coast were eliminated around the same time. In the early 20th century, government-sponsored eradication programs wiped out most of the remaining wolves from the West to make the land more suitable for raising livestock.

Today, wolves are back in many parts of the country, but Defenders is still fighting an uphill battle to overcome centuries of anti-wolf persecution. Fortunately, efforts like Wolf Awareness Week are helping us tell a new story about wolves—one that emphasizes their value as a keystone species. In places like Yellowstone National Park, we’ve seen the return of wolves have a positive and cascading effect on parts of the ecosystem. Wolves keep elk herds on the move and away from sensitive wetland and riparian areas, allowing streamside willow and aspen trees to recover in some areas. With more trees available, fish and songbirds are returning and beaver colonies are expanding. Wolves also keep coyote populations in check, which means more pronghorn antelope fawn survive and red foxes have less competition for food. Thus, more wolves = greater biodiversity = healthier environment.

It’s time to replace those old notions of the “big, bad wolf” with a fuller understanding of the important role that wolves play in maintaining nature’s balance. All of us can do our part to help set the record straight.

For Wolf Awareness Week 2012, we’re sharing some of our favorite facts about wolves. Help us spread the word by sharing the image below on Facebook.

Wolves are capable of consuming an incredible amount of meat—up to 20 pounds in a single sitting—and sometimes they do. But they don’t always clean their plate, so to speak. Much of the time, wolves will save some for later by “caching” part of their bounty in case food becomes scarce. According to the Wolf Education & Research Center, wolves will cache as little as a single piece up to 15 pounds of meat from any given meal by burying it in the dirt. Doing so prevents ravens and other scavengers from stealing the surplus so that wolves can return and feed on it later.

Wolves hunt two bull elk in Yellowstone. Photo courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service.

Wolves are known for their skilled hunting of larger prey, but they’re also opportunistic scavengers. It takes a lot less effort for a wolf to feast on the cached remains of a dead animal than it does to try to take down a live one that’s five to ten times its size. Further, food is often scarce during certain times of the year and in certain places, so it pays to keep a stash hidden for those lean times. If you’ve ever seen a dog burying a bone in the backyard, they’re following the same instinctual behavior from their canid ancestors, the wolves.

Because of their incredible sense of smell, wolves can easily detect old meat that’s been buried in order to locate their food caches. Unfortunately, this behavior can also get them into trouble. Livestock producers will often maintain open carcass pits of animals that die from a variety of causes—bad weather, disease, birthing complications, fatal injuries—and these pits can attract wolves from miles away. Some pits are fenced off or buried deep underground, but many of them are not protected at all. Once a wolf gets wind of an open carcass pit, they will often return again and again, treating it as their own personal food cache. As a result, ranchers greatly increase the likelihood that wolves will eventually come into conflict with any other livestock using the area.

One of the most important wolf coexistence strategies Defenders employs is helping ranchers identify major attractants like carcass pits and cleaning them up. By properly disposing of dead animals off-site or burying them deeper underground, ranchers can greatly reduce the chances of wolves becoming routine visitors to their livestock operation. These actions have been critically important in the Northern Rockies and adjacent states like Oregon and California where wolves have only recently returned. We’ve been able to help ranchers avoid disaster by cleaning up old carcass pits before wolves discover them, increasing the odds that wolves can share the landscape with livestock without turning them into dinner.

For Wolf Awareness Week 2012, we’re sharing some of our favorite facts about wolves. Help us spread the word by sharing the image below on Facebook.

What’s the key to a wolf’s survival in the wild? The answer is right under its nose.

Wolves have a very acute sense of smell that they use to detect other animals more than a mile away. A huge part of a wolf’s brain is used to process smell, just as a huge part of our brain is used to process visual information. The olfactory centers in a wolf’s brain are about the size of a fist, while in humans they’re about the size of a pea.[1] There’s even evidence to suggest that wolves dream in smell!

Part of the reason wolves have such a finely tuned nose is that it helps them keep track of other wolves. Wolves have special scent glands near their tails that emit a smell unique to each wolf. They use the scent as their personal calling card, making it easier for wolves to identify their pack mates and any potential rival wolves from another pack. Dogs have the same scent glands since they’re descended from wolves. So next time you see dogs sniffing each other’s rear ends, you’ll know what they’re up to. That’s just their way of getting acquainted, similar to how we introduce ourselves by shaking hands, looking someone in the eye and saying our names to improve the chances of recognizing someone the next time we see them.

A female wolf follows her nose through the Wood River Valley of central Idaho.

A wolf’s strong sense of smell can also be used as a nonlethal deterrent–a way to keep wolves away from livestock without placing them in danger. Wolves can pick up the scent of a human upwind, and that is often enough to keep wolves away. Our field technicians on the Wood River Wolf Project use this to their advantage by camping upwind of a band of sheep, so any wolf that approaches will know a person is there too.

Researchers have started to experiment with using scent as a deterrent in other ways as well. In theory, the scat or urine of other animals, or even other wolves, can be used to create a “bio-fence” to keep wolves away by marking a territory with an unfamiliar scent. However, as with many deterrents, wolves can become habituated to the smell unless it is coupled with negative reinforcement. The smell of a human, or another wolf, will only discourage wolves if they perceive the source as a threat to their safety.

That’s why Defenders is working with ranchers and herders to make sure they’re implementing nonlethal deterrents effectively and remaining vigilant. A wolf’s nose can detect danger, but ultimately it’s boots on the ground that prevent conflict.

Come back on Wednesday for another Wolf Awareness Week fact, and more on how we work with ranchers to protect them.

The lone male wolf known as OR7 will receive immediate protections under the California Endangered Species Act.

OR-7 gets state protections – OR-7, California’s lone wolf, can breathe a sigh of relief. On Wednesday, the state Fish and Game Commission voted 3-0 in favor of moving forward with a petition to list gray wolves under California’s Endangered Species Act. That means wolves will get immediate protection while Department of Fish and Game completes a full status review.

For the time being, OR-7 and any other wolves that might wander in California are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act as well. But those protections are likely to disappear if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issues a delisting later this year. Additional protections are needed to ensure the long-term recovery of wolves in the Golden State. Read our press release here.

California Department of Fish and Game will now conduct a thorough status review, and a final listing decision will be made next year.

Wedge Pack backlash – Apparently, we’re not the only ones who think Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife acted hastily to remove the Wedge Pack last week. State Sen. Kevin Ranker, chairman of the Senate Natural Resources and Marine Waters Committee, openly criticized the department and a local rancher for not working to find a better nonlethal solution. Washington’s Fish and Wildlife Commission will hold a public meeting this afternoon to figure out what went wrong. You can stream the meeting live from the Seattle Times’ website starting at 1 p.m. Pacific.

Wood River rancher pitches in for reward – Setting differences aside is the key to good collaborative partnerships. At our year-end meeting last week for the Wood River Wolf Project, the Flat Top Ranch offered to match Defenders with $500 for a reward in connection to the poisoning of two dogs in the area. Ranch owner John Peavey says there are better ways to deal with wolves than resorting to poison. “The introduction of wolves has presented our community with many challenges,” said Peavey. “We must meet them within the framework of our laws. Those responsible need to be brought to justice.” (Read more in the Idaho Mountain Express and NBC News.)

Flat Top is the same ranch that lost sheep last spring to wolves because of lambing practices that prevented the use of nonlethal deterrents. Since then, our Wood River Wolf Project team has been helping the Flat Top herders implement nonlethal strategies to successfully protect their sheep from predation.

The hunt is on – Hunters are making quick work of wolves across the Northern Rockies, where the season is now open in three states. The first wolf was killed in Wyoming on opening day on Monday, and another five had been killed as of Wednesday afternoon. As of yesterday, seven wolves had been killed in Montana, including one near Glacier National Park where the season is now closed. Twenty-three wolves have been killed so far in Idaho, bringing the grand total for season to 36 in the three states.

By John Motsinger

WDFW wipes out Wedge Pack – The hunt is over, and tragically the Wedge Pack is no more. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife announced yesterday that they have completed their mission by removing a total of six wolves this week, including the alpha male and female. (See their FAQ for more details.) If there are any wolves left, they might be wise to heed the advice of the Seattle Times editorial board and seek refuge north of the Canadian border.

With the conclusion of this sad chapter, we must redouble our efforts to work with the state and local ranchers to make sure this scenario does not play out again next year. But it won’t be easy. Watch this report from NBC affiliate King5-Seattle to see what we’re up against:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dog killed in attempted wolf poisoning – It’s one thing for wolf opponents to complain about the return of a native predator to landscape; everyone’s entitled to an opinion. But it crosses a serious line when anti-wolf sentiment results in illegal actions that harm people or their pets. That’s why Defenders is working with local partners to offer a reward for information leading to the conviction of parties responsible for poisoning two dogs in Blaine County, Idaho. Both animals had ingested chunks of meat which had been laced with an artificial sweetener known to be toxic to wolves. One dog died as a result, while the other survived after vomiting was induced at a local animal shelter. The county sheriff believes the poisoning was intentional, and many believe wolves were the intended target, not the dogs.

Blaine County, home of Defenders Wood River Wolf Project, has generally been very supportive of wolf recovery. The enthusiasm of many community members is what propelled the Phantom Hill pack to national prominence several years ago, and interest in wolf recovery has remained high ever since. Further, the willingness of open-minded sheep ranchers in the area has been instrumental in demonstrating the effectiveness of nonlethal deterrents as a method of preventing conflict between wolves and livestock. But clearly, we still have work to do to promote tolerance and help educate local residents about the value of having wolves.

Trigger (un)happy – Just two years ago, wolves across the entire lower 48 were federally protected under the Endangered Species Act. But this fall, five states will allow hunting of the recently delisted species. More than 500 wolves were killed in Idaho and Montana during the last season, and now wolves in Wyoming, Wisconsin and Minnesota will be in hunters’ sights as well. In addition to regulated hunting, starting this Sunday Wyoming is set to declare open season on wolves in the “predator zone” that encompasses about 85 percent of the state. Any wolves found in this area can be killed anytime by almost any means.

While we don’t oppose legitimate fair-chase hunting outright, we do think many of these states have been much too quick to cull so many wolves unnecessarily. We also agree with the authors of this great editorial in the Chicago Tribune that Congress should “lengthen the distance from endangered species to ready, aim, fire.”

“In the last century, Americans nearly exterminated one of its most ecologically valuable and majestic creatures. Ours will be a tamer, poorer nation if this century continues the slaughter.” – Chicago Tribune editorial, Sept. 23, 2012

Northern gateway to Yellowstone turns against wolves – Despite the protests of many conservation groups and concerned citizens, Gallatin County is moving forward with an aggressive predator plan that endorses getting rid of all but a small handful of wolves in the area. Nevermind that elk and deer herds are plentiful and that there have been zero livestock losses in recent years. The Commission has apparently succumbed to the fear-mongering of anti-wolf extremists, ignoring entirely all the positive benefits that wolves bring to the region.

Fortunately, the decision is mostly a token gesture since the state, not the county, is ultimately responsible for managing wolves. But it doesn’t bode well for the future of wildlife in what has typically been a pretty progressive part of the state. Gallatin County includes the city of Bozeman, home to many leading environmental organizations including Defenders’ Rocky Mountain office. It’s also the northern gateway to Yellowstone National Park, which draws thousands of tourists who spend millions of dollars every year to see native wildlife, including wolves.

Gallatin County commissioners should recognize that wolves are a boon to the environment as well as the bottom line the way their counterparts to the south have. Teton County, Wyoming, the southern gateway to Yellowstone and home of Jackson Wyoming, has embraced wildlife as their number one value and will likely benefit from Gallatin County’s misstep by attracting more wildlife tourists and businesses instead of thumbing their nose at them.