9/14/2023 0 Comments Idaho gray wolfLegislation passed by the Idaho Senate on Wednesday and now moving speedily through the state House would increase funding for private contractors to cut the wolf population from about 1,500 to as few as 150. The Republican-controlled Idaho Legislature this week laid the groundwork for an aggressive cull of Idaho's wolves. The wolf population in neighboring Idaho is much higher - around 1,500 according to Idaho Department of Fish and Game estimates. The number of Oregon counties with wolves stayed the same at 12 and the number of wolf packs also held steady at 22 in 2020. While the population of Oregon wolves increased, they occupied similar ranges to prior years. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife said it directly counted 173 wolves this past winter, an increase of almost 10% from the year before. The Washington population update was released a day after Oregon unveiled its new tally of the wolf population in the state. Wolves returned on their own from Idaho and British Columbia beginning in 2008. WDFW killed three wolves in the Wedge pack last year, the entire known pack, because of repeated livestock depredations by those animals.įur trapping, hunting and predator control bounties extirpated wolves from Washington state around the 1930s. Several lawsuits have challenged the federal delisting, but in the meantime states and tribes are calling the shots literally and figuratively.ĭuring 2020, seven Washington packs were blamed for attacks on sheep or cattle. States took over full responsibility for gray wolf management at the beginning of this year when the outgoing Trump administration declared the species recovered from endangered status in the lower 48 states. Tribal hunters killed eight wolves in 2020, according to the WDFW annual report. A few years ago, the tribe authorized wolf hunting by its members. Given the uncertain timeline to full recovery, it is also unclear when policymakers in Olympia might accede to persistent requests from ranchers and sportsmen to be able to hunt wolves, as is the case in Idaho.įorty-six of the wolves counted in the latest wolf census were reported by the Colville Confederated Tribes on their north-central Washington reservation. Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife "I just don't know the timeframe and how long it will take." "As more packs establish in the North Cascades, it'll be far easier for wolves to make that jump south and get into the South Cascades," Maletzke said Friday. Under state rules set a decade ago, the gray wolf is not considered recovered until the species also recolonizes the South Cascades and Olympic Peninsula region.īiologists can't predict when packs might fully disperse throughout their historic range statewide, said WDFW wolf specialist Ben Maletzke. The majority of the state's wolves are still concentrated in northeastern Washington. "For the first time the North Cascades wolf recovery area has met the local recovery objective - four successful breeding pairs - during 2020." "Washington wolf recovery continues to make solid progress," said WDFW Director Kelly Susewind. A combination of in-migration from neighboring states and Canada plus births within existing packs probably accounted for the increase, biologists told the state Fish and Wildlife Commission during a briefing Friday. The gray wolf population in Washington state increased by 22% in the past year, raising the minimum number of wolves documented by state and tribal biologists to 178 in 29 packs - up from 145 wolves and 26 packs at the end of 2019. The rate of increase was more than double what Oregon reported earlier in the week for its wolf population in 2020. The number of wolves in Washington state rose strongly last year, according to an annual report from the state Department of Fish and Wildlife released Friday.
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