Wyoming Wolf Expert Planned;
Ranchers Still Oppose Program

JACKSON, Wyo. — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could hire a biologist to manage Wyoming's wolves as early as this fall.

The federal wolf recovery coordinator said the decision to hire a wolf biologist for Wyoming came after Fish and Wildlife Service Director Jamie Clark met with ranchers in Dubois, where wolves have killed cattle and dogs.

Ed Bangs said Clark "wanted to hear first-hand, see if we could do anything else to address their concerns. She gave me a list of things to run down. The message was clear — that we probably need to have some staff in Wyoming. That's my big job right now."

Wolf recovery efforts got underway in 1995 and 1996 when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho. Montana and Idaho have wolf biologists.

The federal agency did not hire a wolf biologist for Wyoming. Instead, it waited for state officials to get involved, but the state Game and Fish Commission decided against managing the wolf program or letting wardens help in investigations of wolf deaths or wolf predation.

"There's a clear path; the service has the money," Bangs said. "We need people on the ground."

Bangs said he wanted someone hired by this fall.

"I was given the marching orders to make it happen as quick as it can," he said.

The ranchers said they want the wolves efficiently controlled if there is a problem, Bangs added.

A male leader of the Washakie pack was killed last year for killing cattle on a ranch.

"If they attack livestock again, certainly some will be killed," Bangs said. "The bottom line is wolves are not allowed to continually prey on livestock. We've eliminated entire packs if they won't give it up."

That doesn’t fully address the concerns of stockmen, who opposed wolf introduction from the outset and have found government response to predation too slow and spotty to change their minds about it.

In Montana, some cattlemen are trying to enlist hunters in their effort against the wolf program.

"We need to get together and put aside our differences and focus our efforts on the issue at hand," said Dave Heine of the Western Montana Stockmen's Association.

At a recent meeting, the stockmen were urged to form a political alliance with hunters because of their common concerns.

"There is power in numbers," rancher and elk producer Bob Spoklie said. "We need numbers. We need sportsmen ... We need them badly right now."

The stockmen plan to meet with sportsmen's groups and take their story to the media. A letter will also be sent to Gov. Marc Racicot for more information about the numbers of game animals killed by predators.

Ranchers complained not just about the wolves but their government managers. They also contended that the wolf-depredation compensation fund run by Defenders of Wildlife is flawed because wolves too often eat all the evidence of the stock they kill.

They criticized the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as too slow to respond to reports of new wolf packs and claimed the agency is reluctant to act when wolves kill stock.

But Jason Campbell, the stockmen's natural resources specialist, maintained that wolves are in the region to stay, and instead of fighting recovery the ranchers should force the federal government to manage them in a way that respects private property rights.

He said the earlier political efforts to cut money from the federal wolf management budget may have been a big mistake.

"We want to make sure they have the tools and resources to manage wolves to our benefit," he said, suggesting a major strategic shift in rancher policy toward wolf recovery.