Thumbs up to the Washingrton State Fish & Wildlife Commission for taking "the heat and staying in the kitchen" in forging a Wolf management plan that Fox News would label as "FAIR & BALANCED".........The Commissioners did not bow to undue hunter and rancher pressure to unduly limit the wolf population and instead put forward a working plan that calls for 15 breeding pairs(not the current 5) to sire pups for 3 consecutive years before State endangered status would be lifted............Let me say that the Washington Farm Bureau and Washington State sheep Producers bucked the voices of many of their constituents(thumbs up) in backing the plan.......This is not a perfectly written ecological recovery plan but does show that when many voices(not just hunters and stockmen) get factored into a negotiation surrounding rewilding, it is possible for some sanity and sound science to prevail, allowing trophic predators their rightful place in the system............What Montana, Wyoming and Idaho are seeking to do with their plans is to fracture the Wolf population in their respective states and bring them down to the lowest possible levels permitted by Fed/State agreements(nothing to do with sound science and a balanced system)...........As famed Algonquin Park Wolf biologists John and Mary Theberge state in their landmark 1998 book entitled: WOLF COUNTRY: ELEVEN YEARS TRACKING THE ALGONQUIN WOLVES,,,,,, "a fractured wolf society is memory-impaired, order-attenuated, adrift like a hockey team that has traded its veterans and fired its coach"......."What remains is only what has been coded in genes, still the essence of the species and its way of doing things, but without the same synergy, cohesion, or breath of learned skills"............"For wolves to be more significant in limiting the populations of either deer or moose(and thus keep the land healthy and regenerating), their population needs to be allowed to rise upward to a level set by the availability of food, not by human political will or whimsy"..............."Our failure to understand the way nature operates can at the same time, provide the opportunity for our success"...........Nature's complexity can be, if we choose, the fount of a deep respect"..... "Trying to understand at least some of the interrelated pieces brings immeasureable satisfaction"..........."It allows us to ask better questions and provides for a platform for wonder"......"Wonder breeds caring."......."It is simple caring that leads to a cautious, sustainable, harmonious relationship with wild things, caring even for the wolf---litmus of our environmental sincerity"..................Let us hope that all of us can rise up and embrace the humanity and decency that the Theberge's say is within all of us to employ to our entire suite of trophic/apex carnivores, including the wolf

 

WA commission approves wolf management plan

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OLYMPIA, Wash. (The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission on Saturday approved a proposed plan for managing gray wolves, a decision sure to spark criticism from hunting and livestock groups that complained it calls for too many of the predators.

Members of the commission called the plan a good compromise that will keep wolf management in the hands of state officials, instead of the federal government. They emphasized on Saturday that the management of wolves in Washington was a work in progress and that the plan was merely a guide for future action.

Commission Chair Miranda Wecker said the panel shouldn't overemphasize the importance of the management plan."What matters most is how we react to wolves on the ground," she said.
Wecker said the plan is important, however, because it establishes Washington state as the authority over what happens to wolves and other wildlife in the state, instead of the federal government.
"As long as we have no plan, we are extremely limited in our management authority," she said before the vote was taken. The chairwoman said this understanding is what pushed her to vote for it after feeling very conflicted in the days before Saturday's hearing.

State wildlife officials have been working since 2007 to determine how best to recover wolves in their historic territory and ultimately delist them from endangered species protections, while reducing and managing wolf conflicts with livestock and humans.

Wolves migrated to Washington from Idaho, Oregon and British Columbia, though they are listed as endangered throughout Washington under state law and as endangered in the western two-thirds of the state under federal law.

Currently, five wolf packs have been documented in the state, all in eastern Washington. Three reside in the northeast corner, with one in north-central Washington's Methow Valley and the fifth in the Teanaway Valley of Kittitas County. Wolves have been sighted in southeast Washington's Blue Mountains, where they are believed to be crossing between Washington and Oregon.

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife released the proposal this past summer. Some 65,000 written comments were submitted, ranging from advocates who say wolves play a vital role in the ecosystem to hunters and ranchers who fear they will eat too many elk, deer and livestock. Nineteen meetings were held to gather public comments.

Ultimately, a 17-member citizen advisory group was unable to unanimously agree on the proposal despite months of discussion. Critics, including hunting and livestock groups, argued the plan simply calls for too many wolves, although the Washington Farm Bureau and Washington State Sheep Producers signed off on the proposal.

Derrick Knowles, an avid hunter who works for wildlife group Conservation Northwest, participated as a member of the wolf working group and congratulated the commission on the plan. "While it isn't any one special interest group's perfect plan, it's the right plan for Washington and I applaud the Fish and Wildlife Commission for their leadership today," Knowles said in a statement.

Jack Field, executive director of the Washington Cattlemen's Association said he had hoped the commission would vote on Saturday to delay their decision until after the federal government finished its current study — called a status review — of Washington's wolf population.
"I'm quite concerned and don't think the department and the commission have all the information needed to make an educated decision on this," Field said.

Field was not only worried about livestock; he also expressed concern about the state's deer and elk populations. That concern was echoed by some members of the commission.
Under the plan, 15 successful breeding pairs would be required for three consecutive years to remove endangered species protections. Four breeding pairs would be required in eastern Washington, the North Cascades and the South Cascades or Northwest coast, as well as three other pairs anywhere in the state.

There are provisions for killing wolves under certain circumstances when they prey on livestock or deer and elk populations.
The commission would allow WDFW to initiate action to delist gray wolves if 18 breeding pairs were documented in a single year.

The Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation opposed the proposed numbers, saying the predators could reduce elk and deer herds that tribal members rely on for subsistence hunting.
Gray wolves were eliminated as a breeding species in Washington by the 1930s, and efforts to save them have been controversial throughout the West in recent years. Earlier this year, Congress stripped federal endangered species protections from wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming and the eastern one-thirds of both Washington and Oregon. Wolves remained under federal protection in the western two-thirds of those two states.