Analysis: Idaho’s new law reignites decades-old debate about how to manage wolves

Federal authorities’ decision to review whether to relist gray wolves in the West under the Endangered Species Act challenges new anti-wolf laws passed in Idaho and Montana.

Sportsman and conservation groups said the laws represented an “overreach” by the two states, dominated politically by livestock interests that have struggled since wolves were reintroduced in 1995. More significantly, the laws kicked over a hornet’s nest of outrage from wolf lovers worldwide, and led to the petitions and legal action that prompted the review.

Idaho’s new law removed previous limits on hunting wolves.

“I told them when they passed this last session, they were risking something like this to happen,” said Jonathan Oppenheimer, of the Idaho Conservation League, referring to the Idaho Legislature.

Idaho Republican House Majority Leader Mike Moyle has been the recipient of some of the wolf lovers’ anger. He said he has received death threats and other egregious responses. Someone sent him a letter with excrement in it, he said.

“I think the feds were coming in anyway once (President Joe) Biden was elected,” he said.

Idaho Senate Bill 1211, which was introduced in early May, quickly passed through the Legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Brad Little on May 10. The law removed the 15-per-year wolf limit on hunting and trapping, allowing unlimited killing. It also authorized the Idaho Wolf Depredation Control Board to hire private contractors to kill wolves they deem a threat to livestock or wildlife.

The Montana law allows hunters and trappers to kill an unlimited number of wolves, use metal neck snares and bait wolves to traps, and brings back a wolf bounty system by reimbursing hunters and trappers for kills.

In both states, wolf pups can be killed in their dens.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said a listing may be warranted because the laws allow more wolves to be killed and, in Montana, bounties to pay people to kill them. Wildlife advocates presented in a petition what the agency called “substantial information that potential increases in human-caused mortality may pose a threat to the gray wolf in the western U.S.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that 75% of the wolves under consideration for protection live in Idaho and Montana and that the states’ plans “may be inadequate to address this threat.”

The passage of the two bills ended an uneasy “truce,” in the words of ICL Conservation Director John Robison. Conservation groups, sporting groups and ranchers found common ground on other issues like water quality, sage grouse, wildfire and bull trout management.

Other groups, such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the Defenders of Wildlife, fought for wolves nationally, but the Idaho Conservation League and the National Wildlife Federation could work collaboratively on other priorities. Now they, too, are backing efforts to protect wolves.

Ranchers still feel effects of wolf reintroduction

Ranchers saw wolf numbers rise, but in spite of low official counts of losses — 84 livestock in 2020 — many saw depredations on their herds of cattle continue, with the evidence concealed by scavengers and other predators, they said.

Watching the calves he raised killed on the open range by wolves sickened rancher Steve Sutton, of Midvale. The losses also have had a lasting impact on his profit margin. Wildlife Services, a federal agency that kills wolves in response to livestock killings, will take out a couple of packs and the killings drop temporarily, Sutton said.

“By the time the problem gets dealt with, I’m still going to get my a-- kicked,” Sutton said.

He asked the Idaho Department of Fish and Game in 2020 to open the wolf hunting and trapping season year-round in areas of chronic depredation like where he grazes his cattle, to help reduce wolf numbers. After pressure from former Republican Sen. Bert Brackett, the commission complied.

Sutton was not involved in pushing the new law. He said management should be focused on the chronic depredation areas, not necessarily statewide.

“I don’t think from a practical standpoint it will make a difference,” Sutton said.

Hunting groups divided after Legislature’s ‘big step’

At the same time, sporting groups have become increasingly divided over the issue of wolves. Elk numbers in popular hunting areas like the North Fork of the Clearwater River had dropped from historic numbers even before wolves were reintroduced and have not recovered.

Other areas, such as parts of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, have seen elk numbers drop since reintroduction.

But overall, the elk population has grown. In 2020, the elk harvest was up 12% from the 10-year average, the seventh straight year that Idaho hunters have harvested more than 20,000 animals.

There remains a perception among many hunters that wolves have hurt their hunt, either by reducing the numbers or by moving the elk into farm areas out of the backcountry.

But most groups opposed the new law because, in particular, it took management away from the Idaho Fish and Game Commission, which has had control over the state’s wildlife since a 1938 initiative, said Brian Brooks of the Idaho Wildlife Federation.

“It was the first time in commission history,” Brooks said. “This was a big step.”

Lawmakers rubbed salt into the wound by allowing the wolf population to be cut from 1,500, which was the estimate by Idaho Fish and Game, to as low as 150, which was the number set in the Idaho Wolf Management plan in 2000. Almost no one in the ranching, hunting or trapping community thinks that lower number will be reached, though.

But Carter Niemeyer, a former trapper for Wildlife Services and former wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, worries that paying Montana trappers and hunters to kill wolves could give them an incentive to kill pups in the dens when they are most vulnerable. And he is skeptical of Idaho Fish and Game’s population estimates.

“I don’t think there are as many as they say there are,” Niemeyer said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must decide by the end of May 2022 whether the new laws and other factors warrant the listing of wolves again.

“I’m hopeful that wolves will eventually get the protection they deserve, but the Fish and Wildlife Service should have stopped the wolf killing now,” said Andrea Zaccardi, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity based in Victor.

Neither the states nor the federal government is going to satisfy anyone over an issue so fraught with emotion. Meanwhile, wolves continue to spread out where humans let them, in California, Colorado and elsewhere.