I started to write a diatribe 20 pages ago but I thought this thread was about done. But now that we got rid of the riff-raff and only the true believers remain.
Well Bro Dave, I guess I'm a little behind the Intel line. Just read this about Co.:
Wolf reintroduction to Colorado a mistake says former wildlife commissioner Rick Enstrom
January 3, 2020By
Scott Weiser
DENVER–The Rocky Mountain Wolf Action Fund submitted 211,093 petition signatures December 10 for a ballot measure mandating reintroduction of gray wolves to Colorado. Signature verification is ongoing by the Secretary of State's office with 124,632 valid signatures required to put the initiative on the 2020 ballot.
The prospect of wolves returning to Colorado alarms rural residents because of the certainty of wolf predation on livestock, big game and even pets.
Wolf predation is a big problem in other states like Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Washington, California and Minnesota, home to more than 2,400 wolves, the largest population of wolves in the lower 48 states.
Last year the cost of predation compensation in Montana was more than $241,000.
According to livestock producers this is only part of the actual losses to wolves. To be compensated requires a timely forensic examination of the carcass by state wildlife officers. Often animals on open range are not found soon enough to be able to prove wolf predation and compensation is denied.
Rick Enstrom, former Colorado State Wildlife Commissioner from 2000 to 2008 and Chairman for three years is an expert on wolves in Colorado. Enstrom also served on the first wolf working group that developed the wolf plan for Colorado in 2004. He warned against the reintroduction measure in an interview with
Complete Colorado on Thursday.
"You only have to look at what happened to the Wyoming elk population," Enstrom said. "Their herds have been knocked back to 10 percent of what it was."
Leopold wolf pack hunting bull elk. Courtesy National Park Service/Doug Smith
"I know folks in Wyoming," Enstrom continued. "The past director of the wildlife commission in Wyoming said there are two big problems; Grizzlies and wolves. 'Don't do it, don't let it happen' he said to me."
Predation is hardly the only problem with wolves in Colorado says Enstrom. The biggest issue is money. The proposed initiative calls for wolf management and predation compensation to be paid out of the Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) wildlife cash fund "to the extent that they are available."
The wildlife cash fund pays for all wildlife operations of CPW. It's replenished primarily by hunting and fishing licenses, and it's always over-budgeted says Enstrom.
Where compensation for livestock losses will come from when there is no money available in the wildlife cash fund is left unstated.
According to the state's fiscal impact statement on the initiative, just setting up the program will cost nearly $800,000.
"There are two issues," said Enstrom. "One is the effect on the people in the pickup trucks doing the Lord's work for the Forest Service and Colorado Parks and Wildlife, who are in short supply on both sides. The other big problem is that the funding structure is predicated on the sale of big game licenses."
"That's the money we [use to] manage everything, from greenback trout to Prebles meadow jumping mice to stocking trout, to the establishment of state wildlife areas and their management," Enstrom said. "Any time you do anything to a budget they just start taking it out of other budgets because there is no extra money."
Enstrom said the state Legislature is tired of allocating money to the CPW, which is supposed to pay its own way.
"We went back last year with a big increase again. When we sold that to the state legislature, there were more than a few legislators with their fingers in my chest saying, 'don't you ever come back here again.'"
But the need for funding continues to grow.
"The administration grows like a weed," Enstrom said. "When I was on the Wildlife Commission we had one legal counsel and a part time assistant. Last time I spoke with [First Assistant Attorney General] Tim Monahan two years ago I think there were 11 attorneys on the staff. Legal counsel has to be involved in everything in the CPW because it's a litigious venture.
"When I was there the senior [administrative] staff was three people, and now there are 10 or 11," Enstrom continued. "It's $200,000 for each one of those people because they have office support staff and everything else."
Enstrom is concerned with the workload on CPW field staff. One of the effects seen in Montana, Oregon and other states is diversion of wildlife workers from their assigned duties to investigating wolf predation claims. Because predation claims must be investigated promptly it's commonplace for workers to be reassigned to such claims, leaving their normal duties undone.
"We're going to see it with this wolf deal," said Enstrom. "That will fall on the neck of the district wildlife managers. They're going to have a call and they're going to have to get up there immediately."
"District wildlife managers and technicians are on a set 40-hour week. They're not allowed to work any more than that," Enstrom continued. "So if they go over their regular workweek something has to go away."
Nor are Colorado's elk and deer populations where they should be.
"Sixty-four of the wildlife districts have numbers of deer and elk that are under the amount that the habitat can properly support," Enstrom said. "We don't have a healthy elk population. We're in an ebb right now."
The wildlife cash fund depends on hunting license revenues, and that depends on having enough game to attract out-of-state hunters.
"At a certain point it becomes a quality of experience for the folks who want to buy those licenses," said Enstrom.
Enstrom says this is an irreversible decision that will damage wildlife management, decimate big game herds and cause plenty of uncompensated damage to livestock.
"Once it's done it's done, and then the ranchers and the license buying public is left to pick up the pieces," said Enstrom.
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In the summer of 1971 I worked on Isle Royale National Park, Mich. on the Peterson wolf/moose study. I was a forestry student (Mich Tech Univ) and worked on the fire succession eco-system portion of the study doing data collection, vegetation transects, soils work, and the like. At that time there were about 26 wolves on the island and 600 moose. The wolf to moose populations had already been documented as cyclical. They had data that went back to when there were no wolves and no moose on the island at all. It was very interesting and the whole impetus was to study the natural predator/prey relationship unsullied by human activity.
Over the years there have been many expansions and contractions of the moose populations. When the moose expanded the wolf soon followed suit. When the wolves over populated the moose contracted from excessive predation. Then the wolves soon followed suit. I think the ranges for wolf was from around 10 to 40+ and moose were 150+ to 1100. Don't hold me to the numbers as it has been too long ago.
This study has been going on for close to 50 years (job security?). In the last 10 years the wolves have been in steady decline from disease and inbreeding and the moose population has grown to about 1900. Last year there were two wolves left and they were a none breeding pair. This year the NPS with the help from the wolf study staff decided that the moose were going to explode and cause significant habitat damage (a human concept not found in nature). Their logical answer is to artificially re-introduce wolves thus totally screwing up the whole point of 50+ years of data collection and losing the opportunity to see how nature would respond to a wolf die off. Our tax dollars at work.
In the winter of 1973-74 I was working for a logger out of Seeley Lake (I was a faller). It was a brutal winter. We would go to work if it was -20 degrees and we still only worked 4 days in January. It was so cold and the snow so deep that the wolves came out of the high country and spent the rest of the winter picking off white-tail on the west side of Seeley and Salmon Lakes. It was great to watch the wolves (3-5 in number) in the moon light traveling up and down the ice on the west shore.
In 1986 I was the forest manager on the Blackfeet Reservation. The Chief Biologist
for Glacier Park told me they were watching a pair of wolves denned up but they were 200 yds. on the reservation and he thought I should know.
When the wolf re-introductory program got started (1992?) The US Fish and Wildlife Service and the MFWP all stated that we needed to re-introduce because outside of an occasional lone wolf passing thru there were no breeding populations in Montana. The whole re-introductory program was predicated on a lie and that is my biggest objection to the whole thing.
I went to the public meeting that was held by the USFWS in Cut Bank and listened to the presentation that was given by the head of the wolf program, I think. I listened to the very interesting presentation with all of the kill projections etc.. During the Q/A I said that according to his numbers there would be no Gardner special season in 10 years and asked if that was the intent. He said, "Oh no there will always be a Gardner hunt." I was wrong. As I recall it only took them 8 years to end the hunt.
The wolves that they trapped to release in Montana came from the Banff, B.C. area and would have been the same gene pool as those already in Montana (oh I forgot there weren't any). But what the experts did not take into consideration was what would happen when you re-introduce wolves into a protein rich environment. The whole time the wolf biologists kept saying that a pack of 3-5 would only have a recruitment rate of one to two pups a year with only the alpha female having the litters. They were blown away when the litters were 6-10 and even the subordinate females were bringing off litters. When wolves have an unlimited protein supply they will fill the void.
Twenty-five years later you can't go into mountains and not cut a wolf track ( if there are any prey there). Whole drainages that used to be Mule Deer heavens are wiped out. The Rob Cr. and Ledford Cr. drainages which are prime Mule Deer habitat are void of deer. I traveled the length of these drainages about 13 miles everyday for a week for the last two seasons and have never seen a mule deer. I have cut an occasional track in the mountains and they are always headed out. I can cut wolf tracks everyday. If you find elk tracks you will find wolf tracks.
Here on the front the Mule Deer are in steady decline. Then you read articles like in the October (or Nov.?) Montana Magazine that predation only accounts for 1-2% of mortality. Do you no any one that believes this BS? But if you repeat it enough it is the facts. Wolves eat MD for scoobey snacks.
There is no balance in nature it is a study in extremes. There is no landscape that does not exhibit the hand of man, even what we call wilderness.
What I really object to is the powers that be, take my hard earned money and then lie to me in the name of science. That burns me up.
