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Trouble In Paradise
Wolves, Grizzlies Not Adequately Protected Outside Yellowstone Park
By David Gaillard
PCA's slogan is, "Saving a Place for America's Predators." The idea is that it is not enough to protect the individual animals, we must also protect their habitat. This protection has occurred in places such as national parks and Wilderness areas, but outside of these areas, habitat protections are much harder to achieve. The national parks and Wilderness alone are too small and isolated from each other to support viable populations of wide-ranging predators. The best lands to provide these protections are public lands, which are supposed to be managed for the public's wildlife. Fortunately, the vast majority of the northern Rockies is under public ownership. Unfortunately, special interests, especially commercial livestock grazing, have traditionally taken priority in many areas of public land outside of the parks and Wilderness areas.
Montana's Paradise Valley is one such place. Carved by the Yellowstone River draining north out of Yellowstone Park, this wide, open valley is flanked by the breathtaking peaks of the Absaroka and Gallatin Mountain Ranges. This is a place of first-class fishing, whitewater rafting, bald eagles, abundant deer, elk, and grizzly bears. And now the wolf is beginning to make a comeback here as well.
Unfortunately, during the last few months of 1999, a total of eight wolves from two packs were killed in this area. The wolves were known to have killed two domestic calves and six sheep.
In October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) killed four wolves - three pups and the alpha male - of the Sheep Mountain Pack just north of Yellowstone Park. Their first and only offense was that one of them, or their pack members, killed a single domestic calf. The calf was grazing on public lands managed by the Forest Service - lands that should be safe for public wildlife, especially an imperiled species like the wolf. The cows were due to leave the area within ten days of the predation. Nonetheless, FWS ordered the shooting of these wolves to reduce the risk of any further livestock damage. It did not work.
In November, FWS ordered the shooting of two additional wolves, because it found evidence of another calf killed by wolves on nearby private lands. Two female yearling wolves were killed several days later, miles from the calf predation, their stomachs full of deer.
In December, FWS ordered the killing of two wolves from the neighboring Chief Joseph pack, due to their return to a ranch where they had killed sheep in November. As a result, two male pups were killed. As in the case of the three pups killed from the Sheep Mountain pack, it is unlikely that these wolves were directly involved in the sheep predation, since older and larger pack members typically do the hunting and killing. FWS is just hoping that killing any two wolves from this pack, days and miles apart from the livestock depredation site, may keep the rest of the pack from preying on livestock again.
Conflicts are occurring elsewhere on other lands surrounding Yellowstone National Park, where there is abundant natural prey and the habitat wolves need to survive. In the Du Noir Valley southeast of Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, FWS granted a private rancher a permit to kill up to two wolves, regardless if they had preyed on livestock on his property. Another example occurred south of Yellowstone within Grand Teton National Park, where even in a national park, nearly 1000 cow-calf pairs were allowed to graze right next to the den of the Teton Pack's alpha female and her five newborn pups this summer (see The Home Range, Fall 1999). Fortunately, neither of these actions resulted in any dead wolves this year, but these are typical agency "fixes," whereby the managers trap, relocate, or kill the wolves, and then cross their fingers and hope wolves will not return.
These conflicts were foreseeable and avoidable; the latest incidents in a disturbing pattern. Yellowstone National Park is not big enough to support a recovered population of the wide-ranging wolf, so wolves venture outside the park for food and a place to live. When they leave Yellowstone's borders, they inevitablyencounter livestock. Rather than changing livestock management practices, FWS has tried to prevent conflicts by changing wolf behavior.
Similar problems are facing the threatened Yellowstone grizzly bear population, whose protections outside of their core recovery zone are increasingly under assault. A recent interagency report identified seven key areas where grizzly bears are getting killed due to conflicts with people and their property. The report found that livestock operations are responsible for creating conflicts in four out of seven of these areas (the other three incidents were primarily due to bears getting into human food and garbage), and the situation has become worse in recent years:
"The number of reported livestock depredations by grizzly bears has increased from 8 in 1992 to 68 in 1998. Over the last 3 years (1996-1998), livestock depredations have comprised 61% of all grizzly bear-human conflicts reported in the Yellowstone ecosystem, a significant increase from 26% during the 3 year period 1992-94... Future management should address both the overall increasing trend in grizzly depredations on livestock as well as the increasing trend for livestock depredations to occur outside of the existing Recovery Zone."
Unfortunately, rather than address the livestock management on these allotments to resolve these conflicts, the federal and state agencies are busy reducing bear protections. We detailed three examples in Fall '99 of The Home Range: (1) FWS has adopted a new "nuisance bear" policy to kill bears outside of the recovery zone in Wyoming, (2) the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has a new contract with USDA Wildlife Services - the program that kills 100,000 predators each year - to manage grizzly/livestock conflicts in specific areas of Wyoming, and (3) FWS- new "Habitat-based Recovery Criteria" document proposes no protections for grizzly bears outside of the recovery zone boundary, despite extensive bear use of areas outside the boundary.
There are alternatives. FWS has authority over both wolf and grizzly bear recovery and the U.S. Forest Service manages the land that the wolves and bears need. It's time these agencies get serious about their duty to service the public's endangered wildlife and habitat needs on public land.
Starting immediately, these agencies should identify all areas outside of Yellowstone where wolves and grizzly bears can be expected to conflict with livestock, and revise allotment plans to reduce the risk of conflicts. Management changes could include: more herders to monitor and move livestock; the use of guard animals to assist the herders; the removal of livestock carcasses before wolves and bears can find and scavenge them (which may "condition" the animals to prey on live cattle and sheep); and temporary or permanent relocation or removal of livestock from those public lands that are critically important for wolves and bears.
We must balance the needs of livestock management with wolf and bear recovery, at least on public lands, which are supposed to be managed for the public’s wildlife. Killing eight endangered wolves - four of them on public land - because of two dead calves and six sheep, and with no assurance that the responsible wolves were killed is no balance.
Sure signs of progress are apparent in restoring both the wolf and grizzly bear to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. But this is no time to relax. Instead we must redouble our efforts to develop, implement and enforce reforms of livestock management and other activities that continue to threaten the survival and recovery of these native predators. It is not enough to want to save the wolf and grizzly bear in a few national parks and Wilderness areas; we must also be willing to share the remaining patches of "paradise on earth" with them by modifying our activities to meet their needs. "Paradise" is not complete without the wolf and grizzly!
grizzly bear | forest
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