ri-------' -------------.-- ------

~

I: CAN THERE BE PEACE IN THE'l:;

t~!

I! :

BYTOOD WILKINSON/ CORRESPONDENT

DUBOIS,WYO.

As ranchers in oneof the most rug-ged corners of thenorthern Rockies,Jon and Debbie

Robinett have had to cope withtheir share of animals preyingon cattle. Coyotes and mountainlions prowl unfettered in the pris-tine Dunoir Valley; where snow-shod peaks jut defiantly into theWyoming sky and where lifehasn't changed that much since Jon's great-grandfather herded livestock here - likehim, from the sling of a saddle - 130 yearsago.

But two other formidable species, largelyerased by Jon's forebears, are now mak-ing a carefully orchestrated comeback.First it was grizzly bears that started arriv-ing shortly after the Robinetts were hiredto IUn the Diamond G Ranch in 1989. Thebruins struck with increasing regularity,the result of federai protection enablingthem to expand beyond the oases of nearbyYellowstone and Grand Teton nationalparks.

In response, the Robinetts bought a pairof "bear dogs" - Great Pyrenees - to pro-tect the herd. ltworked for a while, virtuallyeliminating cattle deaths, But then another

Continues on next page

A ranching couple in Wyomingoffers lessons on whether manand wolf can coexist now thatthe iconic predator has beenremoved from federal protection.

ANN HERMMTAfF

Jon and Debbie Robinett manage the Diamond GRanch in Wyoming, where they have lost pets and livestock to wolves. Nonetheless,the couple believes wolves have a rlqht to exi~:, provided ranchers (an shoot them when they attack herds.

T,",~rHRI.~TlAN SCIENCE MONITOR I JUNE 6, 2011

visitor reappeared after a 60-year absence - grayWOlves,offspring of animals transplanted into theYellowstone ecosystem in 1995. A pack of wolves

. attacked one of their horses, then killed the beardogs, before turning on a pet border collie, leavingit dead literally on the back porch. On top of that,wolves were taking 50 to 60 calves annually.

Over the years, the Robinett.s have tried every-thing to keep the lobos at bay - erecting a sophis-ticated cordon of electric wire around pastures,deploying a gantlet of police sirens and flashinglights to scare them off, and pulling countless all-nlghters baby-sitting Angus cattle. "When wolvesare hitting your place, they chew into your thin profitmargin," says Jon, reflecting the numeric pragma-tism of someone who makes a living off the hoof.

The story of the Robinetts and the wolves is atale of the modern West - of federal wildlife policiesthat have been remarkably successful in recoveringnearly extinct animals and of the hardships someof those animals have caused as a result. Now, withthe federal government taking the gray wolf offthe endangered species list (ESL),the next chapterin this long-running narrative is about to unfold,revealing how well man and predator can coexistin the changing landscape and traditional politicalculture of the West.

In same respects, it will be a unique experi-ment. The federal government has rescued numer-ous species from biological oblivion and removedthem from the ESL - from bald eagles to peregrinefalcons to the American alligator. But never be-fore has it revived a population of large carnivoresand taken it out from under the shield of federalprotection.

In May, US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar an-nounced the removal of wolves from the federalprotected list in eight states across the West andupper Great Lakes. The move highiighted - dra-matically - how extensive the comeback has beenfor an animal once exterminated from 99 percentof the contiguous United States. But it also clearedthe way for wolves to be hunted, trapped, and moreeasily killed in defense of private property - some-thing ranchers have long sought. Environmentalistsworry this will lead to a shooting gallery for wolvesand undermine One of the great wildlife recoveryefforts in history.

Will they survive in great enough numbers?How should they be managed now? And whatwill happen on ranches like the Diamond G? Theanswers will affect the fate of more than just aniconic animal and a few head of cattle. It may alsoaffect when, and how, other important wildlife areremoved from federal protection - including thefamed and feared grizzly bear.

"The Endangered Species Act is a great tool forbringing species back that wouldn't recover ontheir own," says Ed Bangs, the US Fish and WildlifeService's longtime national wolf recovery coordina-tor. "But with wolves the question is, now what?"

~-t:~_;;.:.GI\.AYWOLVES, ONCE MUNTED TO VlRTUA.l !!XTINCTrON. NOW I>IlfMSf:R .5.700 IN THEW£orr ..•.•....O M1DWE:<;l',

,.C011RTf5Y OFTHe: V.S. FiSH ANDWltDlIFE SEfl'llCE

I

No ONE DISPIJUS THE REMARKABLE REVIVAL of the graywolf. In the early 1900s, the predator was hunted

Continues on next page

did in the West was the difficulty of the task: It re-quired transplanting wolves from Canada into areasof the US where they hadn't existed in decades.

But the process was also fraught with politics.From the start, ranchers and other antiwolf inter-___~7~__ ests tried to thwart the reintroduction program

and have wolves rounded up and removed,while conservationists fought tenaciously

to keep them alive. Both sides filed innu-merable lawsuits. Hyperbolic claims ofimpending disaster for cattle and gameanimals ricocheted through newspaper

~~;jm~~~~~~~~~~~I~~~'columns and congressional hearingrooms. Federal authorities had to pur-sue criminal prosecutions to keep wolf

poachers at bay.The delisting process has been no

less contentious. Normally, the US Fishand Wildlife Service, an arm of the Interior

Department, removes animals from the ESL basedon scientific criteria. But even before Salazar actedin May, two Western US senators, Jon Tester (D) ofMontana and Mike Simpson (R) of Idaho, took theunprecedented step of drafting legislation to forcethe federal government to give up management ofthe wolves in their states. They cited frustrationwith environmentalists' attempts to delay the pro-cess. The measure passed in March. embedded inthe federal budget agreement signed by PresidentObama.

Almost immediately, Montana and ldaho startedmaking plans for a sport "hunt this fan aimed atharvesting hundreds of wolves. Idaho also startedshooting wolves from helicopters to kill animals thatbiologists say are harming elk herds.

Environmentalists, as a result, have gone back tocourt again, arguing that the legislative removal ofwolves from federal protection is unconstitutional.They worry that it will lead to politicians. insteadof wildlife professionals, making decisions on whenand how to remove other animals from federal

Continues on next page

Gray wolf populationAnestimated 200,000 wolvesexist in 57 COUl'ltrie,.lnthe US,7,000to 11,200graywolvesliveinAlaska.Another5,900 inhabitthe continentalUSafterbeingvirtuallyeliminatedearlylastcentury-4,200 inthree GreatLakesstate, and 1,700insixRockyMountainstates.A recoveringpopulationof 42 MexicangraywolvesinhabitsNewMexicoand Arizonaandremainsunderfederal protection.

Western Great lakesMichigan 576Minnesota 2,921Wisconsin 690

Northern RockyMountainsIdaho 705Montana 566Oregon 21Utah n/aWashington 19Wyoming 343

Southwest Recoverv AreaArizona/NewMexico 42

Alaska 7,700to 11,200

SOURCes: us Ptsh and Wildllfe- s.e-rvrt;~,Def~ndm~ ofWlldlife

~ Continued from previous page

almost to extinction, largely at the hands of zeal-ous ranchers trying to protect livestock and gameanimals such as elk. At the time, the wolf was sodespised and feared that killing one was considereda badge of honor, even among people who lived incities.

The wolf's near-complete demise, its role in thebalance of nature, and its almost mythic place inliterature and lore made it one of the original spe-cies put on the list of imperiled animals created byCongress in 1973. Today, after millions of dollarsand more than 16years of recovery efforts and con-frontation in the northern Rockies. the wolf popula-tion and range the animals roam have grown evenmore swiftly than many scientists originally thoughtpossible.

Some 4,200 wolves inhabit a trio of upper GreatLakes states (Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin)and another 1,700 wolves live in the West (Idaho,Montana, Wyoming. and, more recently, Wash-ington, Oregon, and Utah). When announcing thewolf's removal from federal protection, Mr. Sal-azar trumpeted it as a "tremendous success storyfor the Endangered Species Act," even thoughmany environmentalists viewed it as an experimentunfinished.

Officially, the delisting means that manage-ment is now handed over to the states, excluding

Few issues nave been as contentious in the Hocky MountalnWest In the past 20 years as the reintroduction of the wolf,as evidenced by these bumper' stickers en a truck outside ahunting dub In Dubois, Wyo.

500mi ,

Wyoming, which has yet to draft a plan acceptableto the federal government guaranteeing that wolveswill persist. Politicians there have, in effect, classi-fied wolves as vermin, allowing them to be shot byanyone at any time across 80 percent of the state,which critics believe could lead to their annihila-tionagain.

One reason the wolf recovery took as long as it

YO-I) CAN KEEP THE "CHANGEf'

WYOMING W9L·YiSSmoke J paok"' Da!

ANN HERMES/STAFF

protection."There will be future attacks on ·theprotections

that the Endangered Species Act provides to spe-cies that are vulnerable: says Tom France, re-gional director of the National Wildlife Federation.in Missoula, Mont. "Legislators will look for anyvehicle to provide a political solution and willcite the wolf case as an example to buttress theirposition."

The existence of another lawsuit has muted theeuphoria ranchers would normally feel over strip-ping wolves of federal protection. Jim Peterson,a cattleman in Buffalo, Mont, who also serves assenate president in the state's part-time legislature,says ranchers and sheep producers have become sojaded ave, the years that they simply don't believedelistingwill be carried out.

"It's not that we don't welcome it, but all thistalk of ranchers being given increased flexibility toproteettheir livestock is being received with mixedemotions and, frankly, distrust," says Mr.Peterson."People out in ranch country are still not really con-vinced it's going to hold up. Every time we seem tobe moving forward, environmentalists file lawsuitsand it gets stopped."

Peterson laments that wolf packs are movingout of the mountains and onto the prairie where hisown family ranches. But his fears would be less-ened, he says, by regulations giving ranchers morelatitude to control wolves without having to worryabout being charged with a federal crime.

.~.

..~.

A LITTLE MaR. COMPRoMlS,maybe just what's neededto maintain a certain tolerance for any kind of wolfmanagement now. Indeed, L. David Mech, an emi-nent wolf biologist in St. Paul. Minn., says peoplewho love wolves have to embrace a paradox; Inorder for wolves to be accepted by people in ruralareas, the problem animals are going to have todie. Sometimes it will even mean removing entirepacks, but it's better than having none at all.

Mr. Mech says he believes that environmental-ists filing lawsuits to block delisting and stop sportbunts of wolves in the West made a serious miscal-culation. They lost the support of politicians con-fronting a backlash from constituents claiming thatgrowing wolf numbers are hurting livestock andbig-game animals. It led, he believes, to tbe Tester-Simpson legislation and could have negative conse-quences for other species in the future.

Still, even some environmentalists who didn'tlike Congress making the decision to delist beJievethat wolves are ready to move out from under fed-eral stewardship. Mr. France, for one, says he'sconfident that state wildlife agencies can properlyset wolf kills and manage populations, Eventually,he believes, wolf hunts will become normalized thesame way they are for bighorn sheep, deer, andantelope.

"Wolves are not only resilient, but they'll becomemore elusive with hunters pursuing them. I thinkit's going to be difficult for states to take as manyas they want to," he says, noting that wolves couldbecome relisted if states decimate populations.

More important than setting any target numberfor wolf populations will be the impact the preda-tors are having on the ground, which can be bothpropitious and problematic. Wolves, after all, arepart of the natural balance. It's one reason theywere reintroduced in 1995 to Yellowstone, besides

:; THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR I JUNE 6, 2011

the philosophical rationale of returning a spe-cies that was once systematically erased from theworld's first national park.

Franz Catnenzind, a conservation biologist inJackson Hole, Wyo., and wildlife documentary film-maker, notes that before wolves were reestablishedin the park, ranchers outside Yellowstone werecomplaining about too many elk. Studies confirmedthat they were overeating the park's northern grass-lands and browsing so heavily on aspen and willowthat no young trees were sprouting, destroying theforest.

Wolvesbrought fundamental changes to the eco-system, helping to reduce the size of Yellowstone'slargest elk hero from a high of 20,000 in the late1980s to 4,600 today. The rapid decline triggereda backlash from hunting guides, who argue thatwolves have eatentoo many game ani-mals. They predicteconomic and envi-ronmental calamity.A parallel declinein elk herds hashappened in Idaho,where the state isplanning an ambi-tious culling of wolfpacks. Montana,

FOCUS

At one point, some observers predicted doom forthe moose. But both species have increased and de-creased in a cyclical pattern - and the WOlf, Meehsays, may be the one that vanishes first.

Yellowstone, of course, is a far more complicatedecosystem. It has both more animals to he eatenand more to do the eating - from mountain lionsand coyotes to grizzlies and black bears. Still, Mechsays, drive-by biologists try to rewrite natural his-tory when they say wolves will destroy prey untilthere are none left. It hasn't bappened in Alaskaand Canada, and it won't occur in the Lower 48,either, he says.

That doesn't mean wolf packs can't have severelocal effects on certain wildlife and don't need to beremoved. Douglas Smith, the lead wolf biologist in

Continues on next page

too, hopes to kill220 wolves 'in au-turnn sport hunts, orabout one-quarterof the state's wolfpopulation.

As elk numbershave dropped, so hasthe number ofwolvesinside Yellowstone,in part because of thelack of food. Researchers counted some 94 wolvesin northern reaches of the park in 1997 and fewerthan 40 in 2010.

This may well be what continues to happen - anatural rise and fall in the populations of predatorand prey. Meeh, the wolf guru in Minnesota, saysthat is what occurred in Isle Royale National Parkin Lake Superior, where researchers have studiedthe coexistence of wolves and moose for 50 years.

n-crcs 6Y ANN HERMES/STAFF

Debbie RobInett (top) watch@sforpredatorsthroughascope the family keeps 'On a tripod in their ranch home inWyoming's Dunoh-Valley, She also wears a gun on her hipwhen going out to feed the horses, in case she runs Intogrizzlie.s or other predators. Jon Robinett (above), a fourth-

generation rancher, displays a map ofwolf packs aroundthe Diamond G Ranch, which he and his wife manage fora New vcrk cwnar; The area is home to at leesr three wcifpacks and as manyas 20 grizzlies, one of which uebbteencountered once In a barn.

29

r!

~ Continued from previous page this time of year - probably anytime of year - is bestreached by four-wheel drive vehicle. The groundsconsist of two ranch houses (one unoccupied) andtwo cabins, all made of logs, as well as several bams(the main one tidy enough to be in ArchitecturalDigest magazine), and a split-rail horse pasture.The ranch was once owned by Walt Disney, but Ibetale that has unfolded here of late is anything butDisneyesque. .

Sitting in the main ranch house, where racksof antlers and horse tack hang from walls, theRobinetts spread out photographs in the kitchenthat chronicle the life of a modem rancher. Many ofthe images evoke an enviable tableau: of grandchil-dren feeding livestock and playing cowboy in thesprawling verdant meadows of a DunoirValleyfreeof outside lights. But others are unsettling - shots ofcattle and family pets mauled by area wolf packs.The Robinetts didn't take these photos for any kindof ghoulish satisfaction: Vv'yomiog will compensateranchers who lose cattle or horses to wolves - ifthey C8.n prove that wolves were the culprits.

Alertness to predators is a constant necessity atthe Diamond G. The area is home to at least threewolf packs and roughly 20 grizzlies. The Robinettsoften sleep with their windows open so they canhear if anything might be spooking the cattle.They keep a high-powered scope on a tripod in thekitchen to monitor the distant herd. Debbie alwayswears a pistol on her hip and carries pepper spraywhen going out to feed the horses, a practice re-inforced the day she walked into the barn to find a

Yellowstone, says wolves have cut into the numbersof elk and moose, though a host of factors - includ-ing drought, other predators, and big-game huntingoutside the park - are all contributors. Yet one posi-tive effect of the loss of elk has been the return ofbeavers - once a prevalent and important memberof the park's wildlife clan.

" 1

i

,"!,

AN~ H~ME..SlSTAFr'

lto; RANCH THE ROSINEns manage, owned by a NewYorker, lies at the end of an unpaved road that at

:1,:~

grizzly. (She and Jon concluded it was a "lazy" onesince its claws were long, suggesting it was lookingfor easy food instead of scavenging, like most of itsbrethren, for berries and insects.)

Despite the constant surveillance and frequentintrusions, the Ro binetts are pragmatists ratherthan polemicists in a debate over wolves that hasfell' moderates. They don't hate wolves, at least Jondoesn't. Debbie is less charitable when the conver-sation veers to lost pets. They have helped US Fishand Wildlife authorities tag and count wolves ontheir property. Jon can identify some of the preda-tors by name.

He believes the ESL is one of the most fore-sighted wildlife protection measures in the world.The fourth-generation rancher just rues that it hasbecome so fractious.

"Congress came up with what was supposed tobe a sure way to negotiate coexistence, but we'veturned it into a weapon to beat each other over thehead with," he says.

Out West, incivility and rawemotion over the issue continueto abound - much more so thanin, say, Minnesota, which has afar larger wolf population thanany Western state. One reason,speculates France, a nativeMinnesotan, is the struggle oftrying to make a living in theunforgiving landscape of the

Continues on next page

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 1 JUNE 6, 2011

AMELIA NEWCQM!I

West. "In the upper Midwest, you hear all of thesame arguments you do in the Rockies," he says."Butat some level,they [Midwesterners] have beenhaving debates longer and interacting with very ro-bust wolf populations and realizing that the worldas they know it did not come to an end."

Demographics may playa part, too. Surveysshow that residents in urban areas tend to havemore favorable opinions of wolves than those whoJivein remote and sparsely populated places, whichapplies to much of the wolf's range in the West.

It's perhaps notable that no major politician inWyoming,Montana, or Idaho has ever won an elec-tion on a pro-wolf platform, though all three statelegislatures are filledwith candidates who vowed tomake them go away.

And the wolves are hardly invisible.WhilemanyAmericans think the predators inhabit only remoteareas, the fact is that of the 1,700 wolves in theWest today, only 100or so take refuge in national

parks. The same holds true for the major packs inthe upper Midwest. "The vast majority live nearpeople," says Mr. Bangs of the Fish and WildlifeService.

Yet part of the dissonance over the issue mayhave nothing to do with wolves at all. It mayjust reflect a deeper divide in American culture.Susan Clark, a natural resource instructor at YaleUniversity in New Haven, Conn., recently led stu-dents on a road trip across the West using wolvesas a way to learn about differing perspectives.They talked to ranchers, big-game outfitters, gov-ernment biologists, and environmentalists. Ms.Clark says her students were stunned to discoverthat, as individuals, most were nice, thoughtfulpeople.

"Theproblem is not about wolves but how peo-ple understand and relate to one another in theworld," she says. "Citizens continue to shout pasteach other. Neither side is really willingto listen tothe other. It's the same with wolves as it is for talk-ing about the future direction of the country."

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR I JUNE 6, 2011

No need to convince the Robinetts of that. Afterthey lost dogs to wolves and expressed concernsabout the safety of their grandkids, local environ-mentalistsphoned and apologized,which the coupleaccepted as a generous gesture. Yetlater, when theyasked the federal government to remove wolvesre-lentlessly preying on their livestock, they receivedanonymous death threats, presumably from someinthe same save-the-wolfcommunity. "People can bemore frightening than animals," Jon says.

The rhetoric Onthe other side has been no lessdelicate. Some ranchers have promoted the sur-reptitious poisoning of wolves and resorting to theold Western saw of "shoot, shovel, and shut up" tomake the animals go away.Tbe leader of the RockyMountain ElkFoundation said that wolfreintroduc-tion has caused one of the greatest ecologicaldisas-ters in the history of the continent.

Idaho recently passed a bill declaring wolves"an emergency disaster" in the state to make it

easier to eradicate them.The legislation said in part:"The uncontrolled prolifera-tion of imported wolves onprivate land has produced aclear and present danger tohumans, their pets and live-stock, and has altered andhindered historical uses ofprivate and public land, dra-matically iuhibtting previ-ously safe activities such aswalking, picnicking, biking,berry picking, bunting andfishing."

MH. CAMENZ1ND, THE BIOI.OGIST,

says he believes the publicanger and overheated rheto-ric - brought on in part byfellow environmentalistswho fought the delisting too

long - could lead to an overkill of wolves. "Weare in the middle of wild swings of the pendulum,andfor the next few years we may be having a lot ofdead wolves tbat didn't need to die," he says.

The Robinetts chafe at the extreme views onboth sides as well. Tbey Seewolves as neither thedemonic scourge that conservative ranchers pur-port them to be, nor the benigo wonders of thewoods that conservationists ennoble them as. ToJon, a genial man with a whisk-broom mustache,wolves have a right to exist in the West, but their

FOCUS

numbers need to be controlled: Ranchers shouldbe able to shoot the ones that get into their herds-something that doesn't easily happen if an animalis on the endangered species list.

"The challenges of coexisting with wolvesand grizzlies isn't a fairy tale abstraction to theRobinetts," says Bangs. "Real wolves cause realproblems that demand real solutions."

One thing that could ameliorate some of thehostility is for Washington to put more money intomanaging wolves and other animals after they areremoved from federal custody, If compensationfor livestock lost to wolf attacks were more gener-ous and the process involvedin getting it were lessonerous, then SOmeranchers might be more recep-tiveto putting up with the predators.

Similarly,some states might be less resistant totheir presence if tbey had belp with the millions ofdollars in expenses of managing recovered popula-tions. But the one thing Washington doesn't havethese days is money.

Instead, the enduring wolf war, once the law-suits are done and the hysteria diminishes - if itever does - may come down to a test of tolerance.The fact is, more wolves now share the forests andprairies with humans than at any time since theclose ofthe frontier in the late 1800s.The NationalWildlifeFederation's France says itwill require bothto adapt. In most places, he predicts that wolveswillexist without people even realizing they are there,except for tbe occasional track in the snow and dis-tanthowl.

The Robinetts don't have a problem with that -as long as the howl does, in fact, remain distant,

"My great-grandfather would probably beshocked in seeing what Debbie and I have doneto share tbe same space with wolves," says Jon."When Iwas a much younger man, Iwouldn't havehesitated to say the answer for all wolfproblems isa bullet. But ifthey're not bothering you, they oughtto be given some latitude. We can make this thingwork. I know we can." _

, .COl)lImy OFTHE us, FISHANOWllDUfE SERVtCE

Wildlife biologist Franz Camenzind leads wclf-vlewlnqtrips in Yellowstone National Park (opposite page, top}.A [one wolf blends in with the flaxen-coloredenvironment of Yellowstone (opposite page), where

the predator was reintroduced, after a nearly eo-yearabsence, starting in 1995. An elkgrazes near TetonNational Park (above/ left). Dwindling elk herds dueto a rising wolf population have inflamed antiwolfsentiment in the West. Douglas Smith (above), the leadwalfbiologlst lnvellowstone, <necks the radio collar on atranquilized lobo.

31