More "wolf" news!
A "FWP regional wildlife manager" --- that would be one of those PhD, statistically sound, scientific method, "qualified to speak guys" right? I'm still bettin' the old guy up in Hinton, Alberta (where the transpanted wolves were trapped) is still just splitin' a gut!
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By SCOTT McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer
HELENA -- The winter elk hunt in Gardiner will be cut from 1,180 hunters to 148 hunters, mirroring the steady downward spiral of the Northern Yellowstone elk herd, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission decided here Thursday.
The hunt is likely to be discontinued altogether in the future, said Kurt Alt, FWP regional wildlife manager.
"It's probably going to go away," he said.
He cited the heavy density of wolves in and near the park, coupled with other predation, as a reason for cutting the hunt by more than 90 percent by January, 2006.
The northern Yellowstone herd hit a peak of about 19,000 animals in 1994. The next year, wolves were reintroduced and elk have been on a steady decline ever since.
"It's just one more mouth to feed," Alt said of the wolves.
As recently as 2000, FWP offered more than 2,800 tags for the late hunt, which aimed to harvest mostly female elk that migrated out of Yellowstone National Park.
"We expect to observe less than 8,000 elk during this December's count," Alt said. "Wolf lovers will have a hard time accepting that wolves are having such an impact."
He noted that in 1968, when the National Park Service stopped culling elk inside the park, there were about 4,000 elk there. By 1975, the year the late hunt commenced, the number had climbed to 12,000. In those years, there were no wolves, about half as many grizzly bears as there are today, and a lot fewer lions, Alt noted.
He said that, with the abundance of predators in and near the park, he fears that "one bad winter" could drop the elk herd to the 1968 level and the smaller herd would then face all those predators.
Critics of wolf reintroduction have pointed to reduced elk numbers for years and blamed wolves for them.
Now it turns out they're right, at least partly.
Recent studies in Yellowstone have shown that 70 percent of elk calves die from predators by the end of September of their first year.
Bears, both black and grizzly, account for about 60 percent of the calves that die in the first few weeks of their lives in the jaws of predators. After the calves become more mobile, wolves begin killing more of them and bears kill fewer, the studies show.
Springtime counts over the last three years have shown that between 12 and 14 calves per hundred cows have remained alive through the first year of their life.
A calf/cow ratio of about 20 is needed for a herd to sustain itself, Alt told the commission.
FWP commission chairman Dan Walker asked him if he expected to see that level reached within the next 10 years. Alt said "no."
The commission also approved Montana's statewide elk plan, which focuses on ways for people to harvest more elk, if necessary. Unlike the area just north of the park, most elk hunting districts in the state contain more elk than guidelines call for, leading to landowner complaints.
It's possible that some districts could be limited to antlerless elk only, in efforts to reduce populations.
Alt said he is not concerned about wolves causing similar big drops in elk numbers in other parts of the state.
It hasn't happened in northwest Montana, he said, or along the Rocky Mountain Front, where wolves have lived for years.
Wolves will continue to spread out from the park, but a significant number will get get in trouble with livestock and likely will be killed, Alt said.
"Whether they are listed (by the Endangered Species Act) or not, wolves will be managed on landscapes where people live and work," he said.
FWP is taking over many wolf management duties from the federal government.
Once delisted -- a step that could be years away -- Montana hopes to install limited hunting and trapping seasons for wolves, he said.