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http://www.thebigskyweekly.com/node/370
headline:
Elk season opens
October 23rd 2009
Wolves have made a mark
By Tom Dickson.
Photos by Faith Malpeli.
Last hunting season was Damon Almond’s worst in the 13 years he has
lived in western Montana. The Missoula-area firefighter hunted 21 days
during the bow and rifle seasons and failed to see, much less kill, a
single elk. “A lot of times I get an elk with my bow, and if not, then
usually during the rifle season,” he says. “Last year I tried all my
areas”—up and down the Bitterroot and Sapphire ranges, south of
Missoula, and in the Seeley Lake area—“and never even saw an elk. But
I saw wolves or wolf sign every place I hunted. I’m not a biologist,
and I know I don’t have all the answers, but what I experienced proves
to me the issue is wolves.” .
Almond isn’t the only one concerned that western Montana’s growing
wolf population may be reducing deer and elk numbers. In February,
dozens of hunters gathered in front of the Montana Fish, Wildlife &
Parks regional office in Kalispell to protest the prolonged delay of
Montana assuming management over gray wolves. “Feds and Wolves, out of
control,” read one placard. “Wolves are now the top concern I hear
about from hunters around here,” says Craig Jourdonnais, FWP wildlife
biologist in the Bitterroot Valley. In the Gardiner area, hunters have
for years denounced the federal reintroduction of wolves to
Yellowstone National Park, predicting lower elk populations and fewer
hunting opportunities throughout the area..
Are wolves killing elk and deer and affecting hunting opportunities in
parts of Montana? Definitely, say FWP biologists. But wolves are by no
means the only factor driving prey populations and hunting success.
What’s more, FWP is committed to maintaining wolves on the landscape.
That puts the department in the challenging position of trying to work
out a fair and sustainable balance for both wild ungulate and large
carnivore populations. .
Rapid recovery
..
Wolves are native to Montana and were commonly seen by early
explorers. Market hunting nearly eliminated wolves’ natural foods—
bison, deer, and elk—in the late 19th century, so the carnivores began
preying on sheep and cattle. In response, homesteaders and government
agencies poisoned, trapped, and shot wolves under a bounty system. By
the 1930s, wolves had been eliminated from Montana. Under protection
of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, the carnivores began naturally
recolonizing Glacier National Park from British Columbia. By the
1980s, two packs lived in the North Fork of the Flathead River
drainage. In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS)
released 66 wolves into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho to
hasten the pace of wolf recovery. Wolves have since spread south from
Glacier, north and northwest from Yellowstone, and east from Idaho,
filling in available habitat. Wolf restoration has succeeded faster
than anyone expected. Montana’s population has been growing at what
FWP biologists call a “robust” rate, increasing in size from 70
individual wolves in 1996 to a minimum estimate of 497 at the end of
2008. In March 2009, the USFWS delisted the Rocky Mountain gray wolf
in Montana and Idaho, giving those states full management authority..
No one argues that wolves hunt, kill, and eat deer and elk to survive.
Studies in northern Minnesota and southeastern Alaska estimate a wolf
kills 19 to 24 deer per year. One Minnesota study found wolves kill
roughly 6 percent of the whitetail population where the two species
coexist. “Combined with severe winters, habitat degradation, and
hunter harvest, wolves definitely can contribute to locally declining
whitetail populations, especially in areas that already have low deer
densities,” says Dan Stark, wolf coordinator for the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources, which keeps tabs on that state’s
3,000 wolves. Ken Hamlin, recently retired FWP wildlife research
biologist in Bozeman, estimates each wolf in the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem (GYE) kills from 11 to 35 elk annually, depending on winter
conditions and pack size. Studies conducted in the GYE over the past
decade by FWP, Montana State University (MSU), and federal agencies
found that in areas containing high densities of wolves—such as the
upper Gallatin Canyon, Madison River headwaters in Yellowstone
National Park, and the park’s northern winter range—the carnivores
made significant inroads into elk populations, killing up to 20
percent in some areas. “Where you had a high ratio of wolves per 1,000
elk, we found decreased elk calf recruitment and population declines,”
says Hamlin, who led the FWP studies. (Recruitment is the percentage
of young elk that survive their first year and add to the population,
usually measured as the number of calves per 100 cows counted at
winter’s end.) The most well known example is the large elk herd in
northern Yellowstone National Park, which has dropped from a record
high of 19,000 in the mid-1990s to 7,000 today. (High hunter cow elk
harvest throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s contributed to that
decrease).. ... (cont) |
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