1983
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service releases the Rocky Mountain Wolf Recovery Plan, calling for wolf reintroduction. Idaho rancher John Faulkner, who serves on the recovery team, joins Yellowstone's chief biologist in opposing reintroduction. Only a few lone wolves wander into Idaho from Canada and Montana. No livestock are killed by wolves in Idaho.
1995
Wolves are released in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.
2002
The Idaho Legislature approves the Idaho Wolf Management Plan with the support of ranchers. Officials estimate the wolf population at 285 wolves. The year before, 10 calves, one cow, 62 sheep and one guard dog were killed.
2006
The wolf population is above 650 animals. Idaho Fish and Game reports 41 head of cattle, 237 sheep and four dogs killed.
2007
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says in January that it will propose delisting. Idaho prepares to take over wolf management in March 2008. The wolf population has soared to 788.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is on schedule to issue its final decision on delisting Rocky Mountain wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, parts of Utah, Oregon and Washington in Feburary.
In January, federal officials will issue a new rule that will make it easier for states to kill wolves that are reducing wildlife populations. The new rule also will make it easier for ranchers to kill wolves harassing their livestock.
The agency received more than 260,000 comments on both rules. Based on those comments, changes will be made in both rules, said Ed Bangs, Wolf Recovery Coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Environmental groups have vowed to challenge the delisting in court before it goes into effect.
John Faulkner was still finding sheep in October that had been scattered by marauding wolves near Fairfield.
Wolves attacked Cascade cattle rancher Phil Davis' herd six times this summer, killing five calves. And Hailey sheep rancher Mike Stevens had to scramble to find another place for his sheep when wolves built a den in the middle of his grazing allotment.
When the federal government was planning to move wolves into Idaho, no group opposed that more than Northern Rockies ranchers. They used their political clout to delay the release of wolves into Idaho and Yellowstone National Park for more than a decade.
They went to court in 1995 in a last-ditch effort to keep out the controversial predators their grandfathers had eliminated at the turn of the century.
Finally, when wolves were rapidly expanding beyond Idaho's backcountry, ranchers helped persuade the Idaho Legislature in 2002 to pass a plan to manage them, including additional authority for ranchers to kill wolves that attack livestock. Now, federal officials may soon remove wolves from the protection of the Endangered Species Act, which would give Idaho and other states control over the animals
Faulkner, Davis and Stevens have different views of the wolves that came into the state and their lives over the past decade. Each has learned to live with the wolves, but all say it's not easy.
"This summer we had five different packs working our sheep," said Faulkner, a Gooding sheep rancher. "These wolves are becoming a hell of a problem."
HE SAW IT COMING
Rocky Mountain wolves walked into Faulkner's mind long before they showed up among his sheep. The Gooding sheep rancher had been tapped to serve on a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf recovery team in the early 1980s, when federal biologists were considering the idea of reintroducing wolves.
Faulkner opposed the idea from the start. The initial plan had called for placing the wolves in Yellowstone and Idaho's wilderness - when they left, they would be killed. Faulkner considered the idea unrealistic. Wolves would quickly expand beyond the artificial boundaries.
"I just compared wolves to dogs," Faulkner said. "You know how they proliferate."
He has 16 bands of sheep spread from Prairie to the Boulder Mountains in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, all of which has become prime wolf country since 1995.
For 10 days in July, a new pack of wolves, the Phantom Hill Pack, harassed a band of his sheep, killing 19. Another 20 went missing.
Simply killing the wolves was not an easy option. The pack, the first to carve out territory in the Big Wood River Valley north of Ketchum, had become celebrities. Ketchum and Sun Valley residents regularly watched the wolves eat road-killed elk along Idaho 75.
Faulkner's herders sought to keep the wolves away using shotguns with rubber slugs and their skilled guard dogs. Finally the wolves left but not without costs.
One of the wolves was wearing a radio collar, so the herders could tell the predators were often in the vicinity. The sheep knew, too, and they spent days bunched up instead of spreading out and grazing efficiently.
They over-grazed some spots and quit gaining weight, Faulkner said. When he sold them at the end of August they were lighter than usual.
"We figured the wolves lost us four pounds a head," Faulkner said.
But wolves are just one of the challenges he and other ranchers have faced in the last decade.
Lawsuits by the Western Watersheds Project and others have limited traditional public grazing locations and how many sheep he can graze there. The U.S. Forest Service, he said, also has tightened its restrictions on grazing and has fewer experienced range staff.
"I've got more concerns with the Forest Service than the wolves," Faulkner said.
CAN LIVING WOLVES RAISE THE VALUE OF A LAMB?
The Phantom Hill Pack made Mike Stevens' life more difficult this year, too. Stevens is the president of Hailey-based Lava Lake Land and Livestock Co.
The company, owned by San Francisco Bay area residents Brian and Kathleen Bean, runs sheep on 800,000 acres of public and private land in some of the same area as Faulkner. The owners are conservationists who wanted to leverage their control over rangeland to protect it and wildlife, Stevens said.
They bought sheep operations from several prominent sheep ranchers and kept many of the same herders, foremen and other staff. Lava Lake developed ambitious conservation programs to protect the rich, unique wildlife habitat that stretches from Craters of the Moon National Monument north to the Pioneer and Boulder mountains.
But the sheep operation is a business, and the Beans and Stevens are committed to making it profitable. Stevens, a biologists and former Nature Conservancy staffer, didn't think profits and sustainability were mutually exclusive.
Lava Lake doesn't give its sheep added growth hormones or antibiotics or feed them animal byproducts. Some are raised organically, and the ranch advertises its commitment to avoid killing predators. These practices add value to their lambs, especially to the growing local market they have in Idaho.
"We realized there was a direct synergy of the old school ways of raising sheep and what society was demanding from its food," Stevens said.
Predator-friendly grazing systems and a lighter touch on the land by the reduction of the number of sheep they pastured also made them more attractive to these specialized customers.
They successfully used the techniques and equipment provided by Defenders of Wildlife to stop losses from wolves in the Big Lost River Valley in 2005. They gathered their flocks in nighttime pastures with shiny fencing that repels wolves. They bumped up the number of guard dogs they used and armed their herders with shotguns loaded with rubber slugs.
It worked. Wolves came within a quarter mile of the sheep but didn't take a single one in either 2006 or 2007
When the Phantom Hill Pack built its den in Lava Lake's Boulder grazing allotment, Stevens decided not to use the area for grazing this year.
Stevens was not just avoiding a public outcry like Faulkner. He was making a business decision.
"We knew there would be a lot of concerns from our customer base if we got into a situation where wolves were killed," Stevens said. "So we had a huge incentive to avoid a conflict."
But this summer, much of the Lava Lake grazing area was suffering under drought conditions. The Castle Rock Fire near Ketchum also prevented the ranch from using range it normally could have.
Stevens was forced to ship his lambs two weeks early, which was costly.
"Maybe in a wet year, we could have avoided thousands of dollars of lighter lambs," he said.
But Stevens isn't complaining. Agriculture is always an uncertain business.
"But the issue for us is: What does coexistence look like in a wolf-saturated landscape?" Stevens said.
Right now, Lava Lake is committed to avoid killing wolves. But Stevens said that they may have no choice but to protect their investment.
"We may arrive at that point sooner than expected," he said.
CATTLE KILLERS
Phil Davis is skeptical that killing wolves will be enough. Government trappers have had little success controlling the wolves around his 6,000-acre spread near Cascade.
He's had annual problems since 2003 that he acknowledges are harder on his and his family's emotions than their finances. He has no love for wolves after seeing what they do to his cattle.
"They're an opportunistic, brutal, ugly killer," Davis said. "They don't like it unless they're bleeding and bawling."
He's convinced wolf problems will grow as the animals spread into the lowlands, including around Boise, down to Payette and into Owyhee County.
HELPING TO EASE PAIN
Wolf advocate Suzanne Stone of Defenders of Wildlife Stone expects chronic wolf problems for ranchers to remain isolated.
Her group has compensated ranchers when they confirmed their livestock was killed by wolves. It has provided a suite of innovative tools and techniques to reduce ranchers' losses and keep them from having to kill wolves.
Stone, the state's most outspoken wolf advocate for more than a decade said wolves impact few ranchers and even those who are affected lose more livestock to disease and other predators. But she acknowledges wolves have changed ranchers' lives.
"Most producers that are in wolf country are having to adapt their animal husbandry practices, some slightly, some dramatically," Stone said.
But as Idaho's wolves spread into new areas, more ranchers will have to do what Faulkner and Stevens must are doing to limit their losses. New research may make it easier for ranchers to coexist with wolves. Wolf biologist Timm Kaminski and others have been studying wolf depredation on cattle.
Their research shows that most attacks are on calves and yearlings, which unlike older, experienced cows, run when wolves arrive and trigger their attack instinct. They hope to use this knowledge to develop new techniques to protect cattle and reduce wolf killing.
That may help make living with wolves easier. But for now, ranchers they have little choice except to quit keeping livestock.
"You've got to remember nobody asked us to do it," Faulkner said. "But it it's a good life."
Rocky Barker: 377-6484
