WOW!
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Wolf pack doomed by its own success
Whitehawk wolves wouldn't stop preying on ranchers' stock
Idaho Statesman
April 14, 2002


Carter Niemeyer spent the past year trying to keep the Whitehawk pack alive in the White Cloud Mountains.

On April 6, he decided his efforts had been in vain. The man in charge of restoring wolves in Idaho for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service carried out his own order and gunned down the remaining five marauding wolves from a helicopter.

It was not an easy decision for Niemeyer, an almost legendary peacemaker between wolf advocates and ranchers.

He had bent the rules to grant the pack a reprieve after it killed cattle and sheep a year before. But the wolves this year had become even more emboldened in their attacks on calves and lambs next to people´s homes, despite intensive harassment.

"I kept hoping the wolves would help us out and leave," Niemeyer said. "But they didn´t. They never do."

His act ignited international outrage from wolf advocates who have followed the exploits of the pack, led by the beautiful white wolf named Alabaster. It brought relief for ranchers along the East Fork of the Salmon River who have struggled through a month of sleepless nights and even the loss of a child´s 4-H project sheep. Yet they find no solace in the death of the wolves that had become as much a part of their life as anyone´s.

The killing of the Whitehawk pack highlights the growing challenge facing wildlife managers as Idaho´s wolf population rises to 300 and beyond.

Wolves have reached their population goal and now fill most of the existing wild lands of central Idaho.

With staff and money limited, federal officials no longer will be moving wolves when they kill livestock. If they can´t scare wolves off, they will kill them.

But in high profile areas such as the Sawtooth National Recreation Area where the Whitehawk pack ran, many people believe wolves should have equal or even preferential treatment.

"This is Idaho´s Yellowstone," said Ralph Maughan, a Pocatello wolf advocate who helped found the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. "We feel about it the way people feel about Yellowstone."

In the past 31 months, 27 wolves have been killed or moved out of the White Cloud Mountains and the East Fork of the Salmon River. Niemeyer is virtually certain another pack will move in and fill the void left by his elimination of the Whitehawk pack.

"There´s a lot of places where wolves can carry on just fine and other places where ranching can proceed just fine," said Greg Schildwachter, policy adviser in the Idaho Office of Species Conservation. "But it seems in this place you have an inevitable conflict."

Wolves started moving south from Canada in the 1970s and formed packs in Montana that began attacking livestock in the 1980s. Niemeyer was a government hunter for the Department of Agriculture´s Animal Damage Control agency, which controlled predators that attacked livestock.

The agency controlled predators mostly by trapping them and shooting them from helicopters. But wolves, exterminated early in the 20th century, were protected by the Endangered Species Act.

"Wolves showed up on my door, and we were forced to improvise," he said.

He became the federal government´s expert on controlling wolves, helping to develop non-lethal methods of keeping them away from livestock. The 6-foot-6-inch, plain-speaking Iowa native earned respect from both ranchers and environmentalists.

In 2001 he left ADC, now called Wildlife Services, putting down his guns and traps to run the program to recover wolves in Idaho. When wolves were reintroduced in 1995 and 1996, the conflicts with livestock were surprisingly few, and managers moving them out of harm´s way were glorified in magazines, on television and in documentaries.

"It was our warm fuzzy stage," Niemeyer said. "We all basked in that."

But in places such as the East Fork and near Salmon, conflicts began to increase. The population rise has reduced the importance of individual animals and made it more practical for managers to kill wolves than to move them.

"All of us knew as wolf managers the day was coming when we wouldn´t relocate them," he said.

For the Whitehawk pack, the day almost came in June. Soon after they left the East Fork after a calf-killing spree, a rancher moved his band of sheep on top of their denning site in the White Clouds.

On June 10, Alabaster had nine pups, and the pack killed a large guard dog and eight sheep. By the end of the month, the pack had killed another eight sheep and three calves.

"That´s when I should have acted," Niemeyer said. "I didn´t want the distinction of being the first one in the West to kill pups in a den."

Instead he worked with the Defenders of Wildlife, ranchers and the Nez Perce Tribe to organize a group of volunteers called the Wolf Guardians. They helped put up radio-activated alarms, electric fencing and other measures for protecting sheep and cattle. The Guardians also kept guard at night with herders, repelling one attack with gunfire, yelling and singing.

Once the Guardians showed up there were no more killings.

But the wolves returned to their former eating habits when they returned to the East Fork. Calving begins on the ranches there in late February and early March.

Niemeyer and Wildlife Services agent Rick Williamson put in place the same alarms and fences to protect the cattle and sheep on the East Fork private land.

At first they thought it would work. But on March 31 a wolf killed a sheep that one of the rancher´s daughters was raising as a 4H project.

"She shed tears for both critters," Niemeyer said.

Two wolves were killed in response, but a calf was killed. Three more wolves were killed and the harassment was stepped up.

When another calf was killed April 5 Niemeyer decided to kill the remaining five Whitehawk wolves. The decision was his, he said, made after counsel with several experts he trusts and his boss Bob Ruesink, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Snake Basin director.

"I just saw this was heading to a major wreck," he said. "Do we take our lumps now or do we take our lumps with a litter of puppies in the ground?"

Williamson told Niemeyer the job of shooting the five animals was too much for one man. Niemeyer was forced to pick up the gun he put away when he left Montana.

"I never wanted to shoot another wolf again, but I had to," he said. "I need to lead by example."

The wolves were up the road from the ranches when they found them, he said. They didn´t suffer.

"They were shot and died instantly," Niemeyer said.

The news hit Cheri Beno of Seattle hard. She had spent June through October coordinating the Wolf Guardian program and had become close to the Whitehawk pack and to Niemeyer and Williamson.

"I was just sick," she said in a telephone interview. "It´s like a part of my family is gone."

She and her husband, Tom, Maughan and other wolf advocates spread the news that the pack was under the gun, prompting a wave of news reports worldwide.

Niemeyer was flooded with hundreds of angry e-mails calling him a heartless killer. Many of the messages came from Europe, where there is great interest in wild animals and the Rocky Mountains.

News stories about the killings were reported in German magazines and circulated widely on the Internet.

"The mentality of having a few men deciding which animals are allowed to exist and which not, is neither responsible on a global level nor appropriate anymore for the ecological surviving of the earth as a whole," said Catherine Habegger of Walzenhausen, Switzerland, in one of the hundreds of e-mails.

Even conservationists such as Maughan who recognize some wolves must be killed were shocked by Niemeyer´s decision.

"I can´t think of anything that has happened in the wolf reintroduction which has irritated more people than the killing of the Whitehawk pack because they killed one lamb and two calves," Maughan said.

Beno said she still loves Niemeyer dearly but isn´t convinced he didn´t have an alternative. She has spent hours with him and Williamson and is convinced they love wolves with a passion similar to hers.

"I can be mad, and I can be hurt, but I know how he and Rick feel," she said.

Melody Baker, a Custer County commissioner and one of the ranchers in the East Fork. did not want to comment on the wolves. She and her family have been under siege trying to protect a lifestyle and livelihood they cherish.

The wolves were reintroduced over the objections of ranchers, and they never asked for the conflict, Niemeyer said.

"Those people have been extremely tolerant of what we´ve been doing," he said.

Lynne Stone, executive director of the Boulder-White Clouds Council in Stanley, said she could relate to the loss the Bakers and other East Fork ranchers feel. But she and other wolf advocates want to buy out their grazing permits on public lands to eliminate the bulk of the conflicts. She is frustrated and hurt that the wolves near her home keep getting killed.

On Thursday, the Western Watersheds Project, activist John Marvel´s group, called on Congress to buy out all of the 25,000 grazing permits on public lands.

So far ranchers have rejected such sweeping proposals, saying they would destroy rural communities across the West. But individual ranchers have sold easements and even land for a variety of environmental goals.

"What I´m looking to see is whether willing sellers and willing buyers in the private sector can find ways to negotiate solutions here," Schildwachter said.

Easements or other land deals are under discussion in talks Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, hopes lead to a wilderness bill for the Boulder-White Clouds. But wolves have never been a part of the discussion, said his legislative director, Lindsey Slater.

Niemeyer hopes to reorganize the Wolf Guardians again to reduce the conflicts where possible. Increased staffing at the federal, tribal and state levels also will help.

But for wolf recovery to work in the West, environmentalists must get used to the reality that wolves must die, he said.

And for free market deals, wilderness bills and other solutions to work, the level of rhetoric must drop, he said.

"We´ve got to get away from the name-calling and get the humanity back in this business," Niemeyer said.