Topic of wolves raises hair on both sides.

Diane Daiute

Wolves a bad fit for Oregon

Wolves made the front page of the Albany Democrat-Herald recently for killing two cows. Huh?

Oregon is home to just 23 confirmed wolves and more than 1.3 million cattle. Last year, more than 55,000 cows were killed by disease, from the weather, by the truck drive from ranch to slaughterhouse etc. Many more were stolen. How come that didn’t make the front page? Cattlemen fail to care for their herds – 55,000 dead or lost as a result.

Twenty-two cows were lost to wolves this year. That’s it! 22. But, oh boy, the ranchers are all up in arms and want to kill, kill, kill all wolves. All cattlemen, in case you weren’t aware, are reimbursed at fair market value for all cattle killed by a wolf. Some question whether compensation and killing programs provide a perverse (I.e. sick) incentive for anti-wolf livestock operators NOT to take effective measures to protect their livestock.

Veterinary science shows that better than 80 percent of livestock deaths are caused by disease or nutrition issues.

How about we kill every cattle rustler? Modern-day cattle rustling is alive and well in southeast Oregon.

One rancher lost 150 cattle to thieves three years ago. A total of 1,240 cattle worth $1.2 million have been stolen by rustlers over the past three years from Malheur County ranches alone. Now that’s more front-page news.

I have to say here that my husband and I had a gray wolf for 14 years. Felix (awful name, I know – I didn’t do it) went everywhere with us, to work with Gene every day, etc. and never ever any problems. In fact he was collared and leashed only twice in his life. A friend of ours had a coyote; again, no problems. So I have an emotional stake in this and, in fact,

Felix is how my awareness of and undying, ever-escalating hate for hunting/hunters began.

As a cautionary, since I’m here, after Felix we had a supposed half-breed wolf/German shepherd (Malcom, hey, I didn’t do it) and he was the polar opposite.

He was stupid as mud and became so viciously protective of us and unpredictable that we had to put him down. The take away there is … don’t mess with perfection.

Diane Daiute lives in Sweet Home.

Wolves a bad fit for Oregon

By Eric Rouse

Who’s afraid of Canis Lupus Occidentalis (aka Canadian timber wolf)? If you raise livestock, you have good reason to be!

These wolves were introduced into Yellowstone and central Idaho from Canada, and have since migrated to other states, including Oregon. They are not the animals that were originally here. They are a bigger subspecies of the gray wolf than the 80- to 90-pound Cascade mountain wolf that used to live in Oregon. Their territories bordered those of the 90-pound southern Rocky Mountain wolf, according to my research.

Once the larger Canadian timber wolves find how easy it is to kill livestock, their diet will change. I have seen this happen. I was raised in Canada where these wolves lived, so I’m familiar with them.

My family and I lived in northern and central B.C., where I worked on cattle ranches, guided and trapped. We moved to Oregon in 1993. I was shocked to hear that Oregon planned a vote to ban dog hunting for cougar and bear. I just couldn’t believe it would pass, but like all other things that require common sense, the city-dwellers, who don’t have a problem with these animals, passed the law.

Rural areas now have a population explosion of cougars, even though bears aren’t much of a problem in our area.

Wolves are a much bigger threat to livestock and wildlife. There are questions you need to ask yourself: 1. What keeps wolves in check? 2. Do they have natural enemies? 3. How many animals does a pack of 10 kill in a week? 4. Do they eat all they kill?

I’ll try to answer from my experience: 1. Availability of prey 2. Only man 3. Roughly three to four deer per week 4. Most of the time, but in birthing seasons they kill a lot of the young and just eat brains, tongues and sometimes livers. Most of this killing is done by young wolves learning to kill. Some people have called this surplus killing but I believe it’s training young wolves to hunt, because they don’t come back to the kill.

We’ve been sold the line that they only take the sick and weak. I’ve seen differently while living with wolves as neighbors. I saw them leave a bull moose with a broken front leg all winter while they killed healthy animals, mostly cows and calves, in the same area. I felt like they did this because the injured moose would be easy to catch anytime game was scarce.

Wolves are definitely intelligent. They are not easy to trap. I also got a kick out of the ODFW’s plan to put up a wire and flagging around a ranch’s livestock. This might be a deterrent for about a week, if there was no rain to destroy man’s scent. The wolves are used to seeing wire and flagging in their travels. Many of man’s deterrents are short-lived since wolves learn quickly how to get around them.

It may seem that I’m against wolves, but that’s not true. I believe they have a place in the big parks or wildlife refuge areas. When they leave the parks, I’m not on their side. When the Yellowstone packs got too big, they left the park to find more prey. That caused problems for livestock owners. Due to the Endangered Species Act, wolves were protected. Livestock owners are handcuffed by this law.

There is no doubt that wolves find Oregon welcoming with a buffet of deer, elk, antelope, wild horses, sheep, and beef. The Imnaha wolf pack keeps killing cattle in Wallowa County. Their recent kills show a “significant” change in the pack’s behavior, according to the Wallowa Valley on-line newspaper. The wolves find beef easier to catch since cattle won’t jump the fence like elk or deer, so beef becomes a significant part of their diet.

Robert Klavins, from Oregon Wild, says ranchers should learn to live with the wolves. His phone number is 503-283-6343, ext. 210, if you care to give him comments.

I remember when Mr. Paul Watson came to B.C. to interfere with the aerial wolf hunt. The Canadian people at the local airport refused to sell him any fuel for his group’s airplane. They felt controlling the wolf population was imperative to the survival of their ranching and outdoor sporting economy. The wolves destroyed so much livestock and game.

They still have wolves there, but they have ways to manage them. They are the same species of wolves, and from the same area, that were introduced into Yellowstone and Idaho. The Canadian trappers who caught them were more than happy to see them go stateside!

There are four packs of wolves in Oregon, according to ODFW. They have tracking devices on them. Did Fish and Wildlife inform the rancher, whose cattle were the latest to be killed, of the wolves’ proximity to his ranch house? After the attack they could tell by GPS monitoring that the alpha male wolf was within 300 yards of the ranch house.

To allow this predation to continue will have disastrous consequences for the rancher and sports hunter. We need to have some representation in Salem that is in the corner of rural Oregon.

If the hunters and ranchers don’t stand up for themselves, who will? If hunters take a year off from buying licenses, tags, or putting in for draws, I think it would send a clear message to ODFW to change the laws concerning predator control. If ranchers need a non-lethal method to keep wolves away, I may be able to help. I’ve never tried it on coyotes, but it might work.

Contact me at [email protected].

Eric Rouse lives in the Holley area.

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