Opening the Door to Wolf Recovery Heidi Ridgley Fall 1999

Home DEFENDERS Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Heidi Ridgley is associate editor of Defenders.

or thousands of years, wolves left their tracks from central Mexico to the Arctic. But when European settlers arrived to "tame" the continent, wolves were among the first wild creatures to go. Relentlessly pursued with rifles, traps and poisons -- some were even burned alive -- a population estimated at 200,000 in what is now the contiguous United States dwindled to a few hundred by the mid-1900s. But then, just before the last howl was silenced, attitudes toward nature -- presaged by the writings of conservationist Aldo Leopold -- started to change. The shift toward environmental awareness helped win wolves federal protection by 1967. In the following years, biologists captured the few remaining red wolves and Mexican gray wolves and put them into captive breeding programs, with the intention of increasing their numbers and eventually releasing their descendents. Protections were established for wild wolves remaining in Minnesota. And plans were hatched to return wolves to their ancestral homes in the Southeast, Yellowstone National Park, central Idaho and the Southwest. Today more wolves inhabit the American wilderness than have in decades. Yellowstone is the place most famous for wolf recovery, but it is not the only area where wolves are making a comeback. Wolves have also recolonized the region around Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana and northern Idaho, pushed into the mountains of northern Washington State and spread through parts of three Great Lakes states. Red wolves, a separate species that once roamed the Southeast, have been successfully reintroduced in coastal North Carolina. Gray wolves reintroduced in central Idaho and Yellowstone are poised to disperse into surrounding states including Colorado, Oregon and Washington, and reintroduced Mexican wolves in Arizona are free to roam into New Mexico. In fact, rising numbers have prompted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to consider lessening or removing the gray wolf's protection under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) this year. Wolves are currently listed as endangered in the lower 48 states except in Minnesota, where they are considered threatened. Though wolves no longer exist in most states, FWS has indicated it plans to reclassify wolves currently deemed endangered to threatened in all states except California and Nevada, where for political reasons they will be removed entirely from the endangered species list. In Minnesota, wolves would also be removed from the list pending a state management plan acceptable to FWS. The status of the gray wolves reintroduced in Yellowstone Park, central Idaho and Arizona, along with the red wolves reintroduced in North Carolina, would remain unchanged. These wolves are classified as "nonessential, experimental" populations under the ESA, which allows landowners to kill wolves caught attacking livestock. Any changes being considered would have no effect on wolves in Alaska, the only state where the species is not considered threatened or endangered. Yet wolves now roam only three to five percent of their historic range in the lower 48 states, with a total population estimated at slightly more than 3,000 -- all but 600 in Minnesota. Defenders of Wildlife, which has led the wolf recovery battle for more than two decades, is concerned that the federal government is acting too hastily to lessen ESA safeguards. "Just because the protections are beginning to work doesn't mean that FWS should rush to remove them," says Bob Ferris, Defenders of Wildlife's director of species conservation. "Without certain measures in place, removing or lessening protection for wolves could endanger them all over again -- especially when only minimum population goals have been reached. The proposed plan may even block wolf restoration to former habitat where wolves could thrive if given the chance." Ferris says FWS should have more ambitious goals, that its approach to wolf recovery is disjointed and seeks varying results across regions. "Defenders' goal is wolf restoration, not just wolf recovery in a few places. We want to put wolves back everywhere there is enough habitat and prey to sustain them," Ferris says, "including areas perfectly suited to wolves that FWS has ignored." To ensure the wolf's rebound across the country, Defenders is calling for FWS to develop a cohesive national recovery policy across seven ecoregions: the Pacific Northwest, northern Rockies, southern Rockies, Southwest, Great Lakes, Northeast and Southeast. Defenders' goal is to see wolves reclaim as much as ten percent of their original range in the lower 48 states within 20 years. The first step to getting there, according to Defenders President Rodger Schlickeisen, is persuading FWS to incorporate several key actions into its national wolf management plan for the next century. Most importantly, FWS needs to commit to establishing core wolf recovery populations in all seven regions. Wolves moving from these areas into new territories should continue to be adequately protected. Only when their populations are large enough to ensure continued survival in a reclaimed region should protections be removed, and then only when states have management plans in place that provide for continued wolf recovery. In suitable areas where surrounding development impedes natural recolonization, FWS or the state should pursue reintroduction. Further, because many recovery sites are close to the Canadian and Mexican borders, FWS should seek an international treaty similar to the one that protects migratory birds. "Protecting fragile wolf populations from hunting and trapping on one side of the border does little good for those wolves that have territories on both sides," Schlickeisen says. Canada, home to some 50,000 wolves, encourages hunting and trapping. Such activity has already taken a toll on northern Montana's wolves, which freely crisscross the border into southern British Columbia and Alberta. Mexico has no known wolf population, but wildlife officials there -- aided by Defenders -- are in the early stages of a wolf recovery plan of their own. A solid international treaty would also help protect those animals if they cross the Rio Grande into Texas. There is little doubt that with human help and tolerance, wolves are reclaiming their place in the wild. "Defenders is simply working to ensure that federal wildlife officials do not declare victory prematurely," Schlickeisen says. "We've come so far and accomplished so much -- we can't sit back and watch it all disappear." Nowhere is that progress more visible than in the greater Yellowstone area. Wolves there have become the luminaries of the recovery effort, now numbering some 110 adults plus 45 to 50 pups born this spring. The success did not come without a fight. Wolf expert Douglas Pimlott proposed wolf reintroduction into Yellowstone in a 1968 article in Defenders magazine. In the following years, Defenders battled on the wolf's behalf, conducting public education campaigns, promising to compensate ranchers for verified livestock losses to wolves, suing FWS to force reintroduction, fighting for federal funding, garnering public support and rewarding ranchers that allowed wolves to breed on their property. Nearly 70 years after federal hunters and trappers had shot the animals out of the park, 14 wolves reclaimed Yellowstone in 1995. The following year FWS and the National Park Service released 17 more. Another 35 were given a new home in central Idaho's two-million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness during the same two years. The transplants and their offspring have received overwhelming support from the American public. And as the packs continue to breed and grow, wolf-watching has become a Yellowstone obsession, especially in the park's Lamar Valley, where one particularly visible pack regularly enchants crowds -- and boosts tourism in surrounding communities. Park officials estimate that about 30,000 visitors have spotted wolves in the wild. Yellowstone itself has benefited from having its top predator return home. Most biologists believe that wolves are the single most important predator in the Yellowstone ecosystem, and the loss of such an important element can cause dramatic changes. With no wolves to bring down the elk, bison or deer, populations burgeon unchecked, stripping vegetation from the land. Without elk carcasses, scavengers like grizzlies must look elsewhere for nourishment. And with the top predator gone, coyotes assume control, soon outcompeting smaller predators such as foxes, badgers, martens and raptors. The chain reaction turns the ecosystem into unbalanced, diversity-starved terrain. Should wolves prey on livestock -- as happened in 1997 after a particularly hard winter reduced elk and deer populations in northwestern Montana -- Defenders dips into its Wolf Compensation Trust, a fund set up in 1987 and credited as pivotal to public acceptance of wolves, to pay ranchers full-market value for verified losses to wolves. Thus far, Defenders has paid ranchers nearly $85,000. "Wolves prefer wild prey, so they generally kill very few livestock," says Defenders' northern Rockies representative Hank Fischer. "The numbers pale in comparison to the losses ranchers take because of bad weather and disease." Defenders also uses the fund to help ranchers with non-lethal methods for keeping wolves at bay -- such as supplying them with livestock-guarding dogs and electric fencing or introducing taste-aversion strategies, which condition wolves into thinking livestock are unpalatable.