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| chatnoir... |
 Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 2:28 am |
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wolf-hunt25-2009oct25,0,3043567.story
headline:
Montana wolf hunt is stalked by controversy
The demise of a much-studied pack raises questions about lifting the
hunting ban in areas bordering Yellowstone park
Reporting from Gardiner, Mont. - Wolf 527 was a survivor. She lived
through a rival pack's crippling 12-day siege of her den. When another
pair of wolves laid down stakes in her territory, she killed the
mother and picked off the pups while the invader's mate howled nearby
in frustration and fury.
She was not a charmer. But successful wolves are not known for their
geniality. She was large and black and wary -- and cruel when she
needed to be. As the alpha female of the Cottonwood Creek pack, she
also was equipped with a radio collar so wildlife biologists could
track her movements, making her one of Yellowstone National Park's
best-known wolves.
Then she ventured outside the park boundaries.
Wolf 527 was killed Oct. 3 by a hunter on Buffalo Plateau north of
Yellowstone, less than three weeks into Montana's backcountry elk
season. Wolves often stalk elk outside the park and are attracted by
entrails the hunters leave behind. But this year, the elk season
coincided with the opening of the state’s first wolf hunt in modern
times.
"She was a genius wolf in her tactics," said Laurie Lyman, a former
San Diego County teacher who has spent the last five years tracking
the recovery of the endangered gray wolves that were reintroduced into
Yellowstone in 1995. "Her strategies were just unbelievable. She knew
how to survive anything, but she didn't know how to survive a man with
a gun."
Park officials believe four of the Cottonwood pack's 10 wolves --
including 527's mate, the alpha male, and her daughter -- died during
those first weeks, in effect ending research into one of the park's
most important study groups.
"Whether the pack exists anymore or not, to us the pack is gone," said
Doug Smith, the biologist in charge of the Yellowstone reintroduction
program that helped bring wolves back from the brink of extinction in
the Northern Rockies. Cottonwood "was a key pack on the northern
range," he said, giving researchers a window into the existence of
animals that had little or no interaction with humans.
State wildlife officials, caught off guard by the ease with which the
wolves were cut down, called off the backcountry hunt along a section
of Yellowstone's northern boundary for the rest of the year.
But the general wolf hunting season opens today throughout much of the
rest of Montana, including other areas bordering the 3,468-square-mile
park. Wildlife advocates have sought, so far unsuccessfully, a buffer
zone to protect Yellowstone's storied wolf packs.
With more than 1,600 wolves now in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, state
officials are allowing hunters this year to take up to 75 in Montana
and 220 in Idaho. Federal protections remain in Wyoming.
"We've got quite a number of other border packs. So people need to
decide how hunting's going to occur on the park boundaries," Smith
said. "Whose wolves are they? Are they national wolves? Montana
wolves? And we have to decide what is the value of our research on
wolf populations that are not affected by people."
Conservationists fear that allowing the wolves to be targeted just
four months after they were removed from the endangered species list
could damage the recovery process. They have argued for delaying a
hunt until at least 2,000 wolves have gained a foothold in the region.
Yet residents who have seen livestock and elk plundered say the quota
of 12 wolves in a small area immediately north of the national park is
too modest to control a predator that under federal protection has
broadened its territory and become shockingly adept at killing.
"Those wolves they're talking about in Yellowstone are all over the
place out here. They're traveling everywhere," said Ryan Counts, a
hunting guide and team-rope rodeo rider from the town of Pray, Mont.
He shot Wolf 527.
"They're just decimating our elk herd and everything else. They're
bothering cows all the time," Counts said. "Twelve ain't going to do
any good at all, you know."
In Dillon, Mont., 180 miles northwest of Yellowstone, a rancher in
late August found the carcasses of 122 purebred adult sheep strewn in
bloody heaps in his pasture. It was the worst livestock predation in
memory -- an example of the ability of wolves to kill for the pure
pleasure of it -- and wildlife officials authorized the killing of the
entire pack.
Here in the Paradise Valley, which winds through snow-dusted peaks on
either side of the Yellowstone River, many blame wolves for the
destruction of the northern Yellowstone elk herd, whose numbers are
down 60% since the predators were reintroduced to the park from
Canada.
Federal biologists say bears, drought and hunters are partly to blame
for the decline, but it's hard to find anyone in these small towns who
doesn't blame wolves.
"We're starting to see the wildlife just disappear," said Randy
Petrich, a rancher and big-game outfitter.
"I had a couple clients out goat hunting. We were back in country
that's traditionally just beautiful elk country, and we never even saw
an elk track. But it was just full of wolf tracks," he said. "If all
these people who are for the wolves only knew what was out here now.
It's dead. It's beautiful country, but there's nothing living in it.
No deer. No elk. I think it's going to be a brutal winter." ... (cont) |
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