MAZAMA, Okanogan County — The Lookout Pack of gray wolves barely made an appearance in a far corner of Okanogan County before locals poached and killed the animals. But county commissioners are preparing a resolution asking state officials to de-list the wolf as an endangered species.
The resolution describes canis lupus as a "deleterious exotic wildlife" and will be taken up at a county commissioners' meeting on Wednesday night. It comes just as the Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife is preparing to hold public meetings on a draft plan for managing Washington's rare wolves.
"Understand, I don't advocate going out and killing wolves or anything," said County Commissioner Bud Hover, who represents the Methow Valley, site of the now-decimated pack. Hover lives on Wolf Creek Road.
Hover is raising — without supporting evidence — the prospect that government officials secretly reintroduced wolves to the valley. "I don't have anything, pictures or eyewitness accounts, that that happened," he said in an interview. "I am awful curious.""If they're moving in, reestablishing themselves in the state — great," Hover added. "But if it's the Game Department (sic) planting them, that's something."
But Mitch Friedman of Conservation Northwest, which supports wolf recovery, described suspicions about the wolves' origins as "classic red herring arguments." "The fact that they would be talking about whether the wolves were planted, or Little Red Riding Hood, or whether wolves snatch kids off porches, is disturbing," said Friedman.
The most recent draft of Fish and Wildlife's wolf management play, released this spring, states:
"Wolves were first listed as endangered by the Washington Department of Game in 1980 because of their historical occurrence in the state and subsequent near-extirpation, and because of their existing status as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act."
Hover said: "I don't think they should have been listed in the first place. They are not in danger of being extinct."
Government-by-suspicion is not unheard of in Central Washington. Local John Birchers Red-baited John Goldmark, an Okanogan County rancher, out of the Washington State Legislature in the early 1960′s. (Son Peter Goldmark is now State Lands Commissioner.) When a fume-releasing illegal dump of 2,4D was discovered just north of the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River in the late 1990′s, a Grant County Commissioner suggested that the herbicide had been "planted" there by opponents of agricultural development.
The proposed resolution, written by Okanogan County Planning Director Perry Huston, alleges that "substantial evidence exists that the Gray Wolves being introduced and managed as endangered are not a species native to the State of Washington."
The wolf is classified by Fish and Game as endangered. It also falls under protection of the federal Endangered Species Act, but only west of highway U.S. 97.
Wolves were officially de-listed in much of the Northern Rocky Mountains as part of a budget deal last spring between Congress and the White House. Hence, wolves in the Methow Valley have federal protection. Those in Northeast Washington — including packs in Stevens and Pend Oreille County — are not protected by the federal act.
Wolves were exterminated through much of the West in the early 20th Century. They were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and in Central Idaho during the early 1990′s.
In other areas, such as northern Montana, wolves have worked their way south naturally from wild upper reaches of the Flathead River on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.
An initial sighting in the North Cascades was of a wolf photographed sauntering through a playground in British Columbia's Skagit Valley Recreation Area, at the head of Ross Lake just over the border. A den was later located on lower slopes of Hozomeen Mountain, just south of the 49th Parallel.The state currently has wolf packs in Stevens and Pend Oreille Counties, as well as a pack recently discovered in the Teanaway River valley north of Cle Elum. But the Lookout Pack, which established itself in the Methow Valley, was decimated by poachers — one of whom was caught trying to ship a bloody wolf skin by Federal Express to Canada. Three members of a Methow Valley family are under federal indictment for conspiring to kill wolves.
Friedman, of Conservation Northwest, finds it curious that Okanogan County Commissioners would be taking aim at wolves — and not at the alleged human beings who killed the animals cold blood. "How can they even be considering this resolution if there is no pack in the county, and the one pack there was has been poached out of existence," asked Friedman.
The Methow Valley in Okanogan County is home to the state's largest mule deer herd. Hover is concerned about wolves' impact on the deer, and the commissioners' resolution alleges that wolves pose a danger because they carry a tapeworm.
"I hunt in Okanogan County every fall," Friedman responded. "Ethical hunters obey the law and abhor poaching. These guys could be drawing a fine line in alienating the hunting constituency."
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Carter Niemeyer
Read my memoir, Wolfer
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