| Wednesday,
April 27, 2005 |
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Transcript Moderator: (Unclear) Slow here, we have a moment to get it ready, but our next speaker, actually it's really a great segway from Doug's talk and what's going on with wolves in Yellowstone ecosystem to talk in really as to what's going on with the wolf population. And I think we are fortunate to have uh Ed Bangs of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service here to really talk about the recovery of the wolf population and potential for delisting. So.. Ed Bangs: It's always tough to follow Doug. I mean, not only is he a park service employee which means he's smarter, faster, can jump higher but he's a great looking guy, he's very eloquent, Mr. Researcher. He's got a a beautiful wife and child; it's like I envy the guy so much. Doug's wolves are the wolves that are balancing the ecosystem, Hundreds of thousands people see him there on National Geographic, MTV, they are so cool. When Doug gets a call that your damn wolves just killed my dog and calf; Doug goes oh, “Those are Ed's Wolves.” Audience: Laughter Ed Bangs: So anyway, what I'll do today and how do I , do I just do the down button? Moderator: Yeah, down page there. Ed Bangs: What I'm going to talk about is gray wolf restoration and the main thing about this is there's tons of organizations and people involved in this and there has been for decades. So there's a lot of people that have worked on wolf restoration management over the years and this encompasses essentially parts of three states. It's a really large area. Another way to look at our program is another, hey it sounded good in the meeting wild management plan. Uh, we've often have been criticized that somebody said that we said that when we put wolves in Yellowstone they would stay in Yellowstone Park and of course all of us knew that wouldn't happen. And so what I do is I deal with the wolves that leave uh these core (unclear) like Yellowstone. The bottom line with wolves was that there is a lot of human history with wolves. Wolves disappeared because people deliberately killed them all off. In fact, my agency the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service got it's start and it's initial funding because we're the ones that killed the last wolves in the Western United States. So there is a long history of wolf persecution. And if the only thing you knew about wolves that they attacked children in red capes and eat pigs, uh, it's easy to see why you'd hate them. They're the spawn of Satan and they deserve to be killed and we killed them all. It wasn't until we got good information about wolves that public attitudes about large predators and wolves really started to change. And so that has only occurred really within the past 50 years. The question is why have wolves? I know you miss the Wainwrights Bobbie but they were weak and stupid people. And that's why we have wolves and other large predators. Audience: Laughter Ed Bangs: Hopefully, everyone here knows that wolves really don't attack people. But uh, there is several reasons to have wolves. The number one reason is the symbolism of wolves. Throughout, before recorded human history people and wolves have had very strong symbolic relationships. Uh, the Mongolians believed that their people arose from the mating of the gray wolf and the blue deer. Early Germanic tribes had wolf clans just like Native Americans did and so wolves have always been very symbolic to people. Think of the founding of Rome. Everywhere in the world that wolves and people interacted there's myths and stories, creation stories or whatever about wolves. If you are a hunter gatherer you like wolves. If you are an agriculturist you don't like wolves. The Christian Church during the Middle Ages used the wolf as a symbol for the dark side of human nature. And people quickly forgot that that was the dark side of human nature and began to associate all that just with wolves. And so wolves are tremendously symbolic animals and probably one of the reasons to have them around is whether wolves make your life better or make your life worse. Wolves always make your life more interesting. And so symbolically is the way most people will ever get to experience wolves. And there is a reason and I will talk about that later that wolves are so fascinating and so many people are exposed to them, only through symbols. In terms of cartoons, of pictures, wolves are the number one animal in wildlife art in North America. Uh, the stories, magazines, books about wolves are very common and the reason they're common is people buy them because they are fascinated about wolves. There's another reason to have wolves and that is personal enjoyment. I am a very avid hunter; uh, I like the outdoors. The first time I heard a wolf howl was in Mt. McKinley National Park, which has now been renamed Denali National Park. I was about 15 years old. I was fishing on the shore of Wonder Lake back in the Park when you could actually drive there; and about 2 in the morning I was fishing and a pack of wolves started howling right across the Lake from me. (Maybe a couple hundred yards). And so I immediately fished my way back from the camper for I was sure I'd be killed an eaten. But that's been what 20 years now and I still remember Audience: Laughter Ed Bangs: You guys can add; I still remember those wolves howling and for a guy my age to have any memory of anything is pretty remarkable. But wolves can really enhance outdoor activities and add to a pretty rare experience. You can make a lifetime memory. One of the big reasons to have wolves back in places like Yellowstone is ecological restoration; Doug just talked about that. But wolves are scattering dead things across the landscape that provides a lifestyle for a whole scavenger guild. Uh, plants may and nutrients may be responding. There's a poem that goes “What Wittled the Antelopes So Swift but the Wolves Tooth.” If you admire elk and antelope and moose you're admiring the handy work of hundreds of thousands of years of predation. The reason moose are big and strong is cause of wolves. The reason elk bunch in groups and are alert animals is because of wolves. The foot formations of sheep and goats is because of wolves and cougars. And so when you look at these kind of animals you can take a long term ecological perspective; wolves created a lot of the big game animals and vice a versa. Okay, reasons not to have wolves is what I do. A lot of people are afraid of wolves for human safety. While we know that wolves have attacked people in North America about 20 times, there has not been anyone killed by wild wolves. So if you want a wolf to attack somebody feed it sandwiches and then one day don't give it a sandwich and it will probably nip you demanding your sandwich. Uh, so fear of human safety uh isn't a real issue or a significant issue but the fear is very real. And some surveys show 20% of Americans or Wyoming residents for example believe that wolves are a significant threat to human safety. There's also a fear of land use restrictions. I've heard many times that, Ed we don't hate wolves but we hate you Feds. We're afraid that you are going to come in here and shut down logging and mining and timber and hunting and grazing with the Endangered Species Act. And so there is a lot of fear not of wolves but of wolves under the Endangered Species Act. Today we've not had any closures of logging, mining, roading, grazing because of wolves. In the park there has been a few land restrictions to preserve viewing opportunities for people around wolf dens but wolves really don't need a lot of protection, except from being deliberately killed by people. So, but there is a big fear of the Endangered Species Act out there. The two real issues that we have to deal with is that wolves sometime kill livestock in people's paths just like mountain lions, bears and coyotes do and that's an issue that we have to reconcile. And in some situations wolves can compete with hunters for surplus big game populations. Again one of the main reasons not to have wolves, is the symbolism of wolves. A lot of people outside the park opposed wolf recovery very strongly. They feel it got rammed down their throat anyway so symbolically wolves represent a change in the politics and the attitudes about how public lands, and even private lands are managed in the Western United States. And so livestock groups or whoever opposed wolf recovery, uh, wolf restorations was a bitter pill to swallow. This is testing whether or not animals kiss. I am a firm believer that good information gives us the opportunity to make better decisions. That doesn't happen very often but we have that opportunity. And I believe the best way to get good information is to use the scientific method. That is use observations for conclusions based upon data and then do the analysis and say well it looks like 90% of the time, uh, in this system wolves were killing elk. That kind of information is invaluable, especially when you look at an animal like wolves that has thousands of years of mythology and rumor around it. One of the most interesting thing to me about wolves is that, if people said, “ Mountain Lions are going to kill every elk in the Northern Range it would be the end of life like we know it.” We would just, Ha! what an idiot. If someone says that about wolves, people will go hum, I wonder if that's true? And so wolf stuff, because there is so much mythology associated with it, people will believe things that they never believed before. And the only way to effect those attitudes is have good information and I think science gives us the capability to do that. Doug talked about all this stuff. The big issue with wolves is they have very large home ranges. And wolves are really good about finding new places to live. We've had wolves disperse over 500 miles searching for new places to live. We've had lone wolves from either Yellowstone or central Idaho going to Washington, Oregon, maybe Northern Nevada, Northern Utah and Colorado. We had one of the wolves, I think it was collared in the Park actually hit on Interstate 70 just outside of Denver. And so these wolves are very good at showing up in new places. And wolves are also showing up in parts of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming that have very high densities of livestock and people and that's not a good place for a wolf to try and make a living. So our program essentially deals with the wolves that leave this really core (unclear) of Yellowstone. So far we've had a minimum and these are minimum numbers; These are confirmed kills over 400 cattle, a thousand sheep, a bunch of dogs, a few goats, some llamas, even four horses killed by wolves since 1987. Before we ever put wolves in the greater Yellowstone System, livestock producers told us that they lost 8,300 cattle and 13,000 sheep a year to a host of causes. Most of that is not do to predation; most of it is poison weeds; bad weather, birthing problems, those kind of things. Since we put wolves back in the Greater Yellowstone System, we've lost an average of about 20 cattle and 50 sheep a year. About what we predicted. So to the livestock industry wolf predation is absolutely insignificant. Makes no difference at all. If you were the guy losing sheep and cattle, it's a huge deal. And some producers can be significantly impacted by wolf depredation. What we see is that wolves tend to show up in the same places over and over and the same ranch has the same problems over and over. So wolf predation is disproportionally focused on a few individuals within the livestock community and we recognize that and we do our best to minimize the negative effect of having wolves around. Since 1987 and the early days of recovery moved wolves. We relocated problem wolves to try and break that pattern of livestock depredation. We really don't do that anymore; we haven't moved a wolf since 2001. One reason is there's nowhere to move them too. All the core habitant is filled up with wolves. The really good stuff, the easy place to have wolves, we now have wolves. And so now if we have problem wolves, we kill wolves and we've killed about 300 wolves since 1987. That averages about 6% of the population a year. It hasn't stopped population growth. The wolf population continues to increase but it does keep problems at about ½ of what they actually, we thought they would be. So, wolf control is a part of wolf management, uh, outside the park. We have wolf regulations that allow private individuals to take care of their own problems. Right now in the Greater Yellowstone Area, on your private land, or on your federal grazing allotment, you can shot and kill a wolf that is attacking your livestock, livestock herding animals or your dog. And we've had about 20 wolves killed by ranchers who were legally protecting their livestock and pets. And what that does is empower local people to take care of their own problems and what better way to focus on the problem wolf is if a guy shoots it while its got it's teeth in his cow. There's also a compensation program run by defenders of wildlife that pays livestock producers for livestock killed or guard dogs killed by wolves. Since 1987 they've paid out just about ½ million dollars. Recognize that compensation is not 100% compensation. If you have a calf killed in the Spring, they will pay you the full market value for that calf. But a lot of times a guy will just come out of the woods; he'll be a couple of extra calves short; there's no payment for those calves. Those are simply missing. So this kind of compensation, I think the people that want wolves back put their money where their mouth is and it takes some of the sting out of wolf recovery and wolf damage. But it doesn't totally compensate livestock producers for the cost of having wolves around. We'll look at the number of ungulates, I think they'll be a lot of other people taking about this; the bottom line is the number of elk or any other ungulates pretty much dependent upon habitant conditions and weather and conflict with people. The reason the Northern Elk Herd is down to about 8,000 elk is because Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, purposely shot off the elk herd to match their elk numbers with caring capacity and to minimize property damage. That's why we hunt elk and deer to minimize property damage. So, but predation can have an effect. Predation normally accelerates declines in elk population or whatever caused by other factors and it slows increases. So if you're a manager, you've got to pay more attention to elk populations because once they start down wolves and other predators can continue that decline longer than it would normally stay and keep it at lower levels than it would normally occur without predators. What I tell people is that agriculture works. If you want to raise elk, vaccinate them, feed them in the winter, uh, keep everything else including non-resident hunters from killing them and they'll be more for you to hunt. The main thing about wolves, and the thing I find most fascinating, is wolves make people absolutely nutty. People are fascinated, obsessed with wolves and the high publicity around wolves distorts the reality of wolves. If you ask people in Montana, “What kills cattle?” My guess is that wolves would be one of the top three things on that list. In reality, wolves are not even in the top twenty but when there is a coyote depredation, Mountain Lion depredation, or even grizzly bear depredation, do you ever read about it in the newspaper or hear it on the news; you ever see T.V. Interviews? Nah! If there is a wolf killed calf, it's a front page news story. When we kill that wolf, it's a front page news story and those stories go on for weeks sometimes. So the high publicity and people's fascination with wolves distorts the reality of wolves. The bottom line is wolf recovery has been a howling success. We are jumping for joy and the question is What Next? Wolves are here to stay. There's going to be wolves in Yellowstone forever. But wolves can't be everywhere. And the problem we deal with is where do you decide what's suitable wolf habitant and what's unsuitable wolf habitant. For me, a wolf pack living on your ranch maybe tolerable; for you it may not be. And so it depends on how your (unclear) as to how you are going to feel about wolves. But the bottom line is people will decide where wolves will get to live and where they won't. Yellowstone is a no brainer. The public lands around that are up for grabs. A lot of private ranch lands wolves aren't going to be allowed to live there because there's going to be to much conflict. And this is the reason. Each dot represents 10,000 cattle and calves in the United States. If you look at the areas in the mid-west where we have wolf recovery, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan about 3,500 wolves; the northern Rocky Mountains over about 800 and the southwest where we only have about 50 wolves the program is just kind of getting on it's feet. We can see that in the United States wolf recovery has occurred where there is the lowest cattle density. Uh, Kansas, Nebraska get wolves back there is going to be pretty tough, unless people don't mind them eating livestock. The bottom line is, if you look at Wyoming there's a lot of places in Wyoming and you've heard these attitudes where there's a lot of livestock and people are concerned whether wolves really have a place there and this is true for much of the country. So, the United States as a whole, the lower 48 is so developed that there probably aren't going to be a lot of places that we as a society are going to let wolves live. And a lot of that is cultural. There are places in Spain, Portugal, and Italy where there is essentially no wild country. They still have 100's of wolves but some of those wolves diet is 90% or better livestock (unclear) carion or depredations. But in the United States as controlling as we are there's going to be very few places where we really allow wolves to live. The bottom line is 85% of all wolf morality we know of is caused by people. That's the same everywhere in the world. When you mix people and wolves, the mix always comes out the same especially if there's livestock involved. So the bottom line with wolves, wolf habitant is in the human heart. It's where we'll tolerate them and if they are eating your'e pets and your livestock your tolerance goes down pretty quickly. The wolf population really has recovered under the Endangered Species Act. It's been a very successful program. The question is “How do we handle success?” We tried to reclassify wolves, and lower the protection from endangered to threaten status. Uh, we just lost a law suit on that. A court in Oregon ruled on some legal terms in the Endangered Species Act but the emphasis in the court ruling seemed to say the Endangered Species Act requires you to have more wolves in more places. And I think that's going to be pretty tough. There's not any other Yellowstone or central Idaho's left in the lower 48 States. So if we're required to have more wolves in more places , it's going to be a much, much, tougher issue than having wolves the worlds first National Park. We looked at delisting wolves in the Northern Rockies, and so we asked the three states to prepare wolf management plans. The only reason that wolves disappeared was because we deliberately killed them all. The only reason they recovered, is that we protected them enough that human cause morality was not excessive. The only reason that wolf populations would go down or become threatened again is because the states didn't regulate wildlife cause morality. Normally, the states regulate the number of elk killed moose killed, lions killed, bears killed. So we asked the states, “ show us how you would Montana and Idaho did wolf management plans. Managed them pretty much like mountain lions and black bears; good plans we approved those. Wyoming legislature got involved; the Wyoming plan we didn't feel was sufficient protection and so we rejected their plan. This said, The blue bird of happiness long absent from his life Ed visited by the chicken of depression. Audience: Laughter Ed Bangs: Because we rejected the Wyoming plan, that means that we're not able to propose delisting of wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains at this time. So at his time Wyoming took us to court; they lost that at the district court. They are appealing it to the 10th circuit; uh, but the bottom line is wolves are going to stay in the Endangered Species Act for probably years until this all gets resolved. So we're stuck with listed wolves which, I think, uh, isn't appropriate right now. I'm a firm believer in state management of animals (uh, in terms of) and also included regulated public hunting; to get more people involved in wolf management and take some of the mystique away from wolves. This says, “Do you see do you see what happens when someone misses a block; this was a setback; it's kind of put us off track a little bit but in the interim we modified the experimental rules for Montana and Idaho because they had good state plans. And what we did, was made it easier for people to defend their private property. Uh, even on Federal Grazing Allotments and we're allowing the states to remove wolves if wolves are impacting their big game populations. So what we tried to do was make it easier for people that actually have to live with real wolves to live with those animals. We're also turning the program over to states to manage. We have a cooperative agreement with the State of Montana where they'll essentially do all the field work in Montana on wolves and the pros and cons of wolf management. I'm a firm believer in Ying and Yang. Your strengths are also your weaknesses. And this is exactly true with the state. Uh, the state management allows for more flexibility; but it doesn't allow for public hunting which is an important tool for the states. The State Fish and Game Agencies have a big group of professional employees, biologist, researchers, educators. The down side of that, you've got a diverse group of people that have a lot of different interests and keeping everybody marching together kind of in the same direction, as Yellowstone knows, is a very difficult thing to do. So I think state management is going to be a good thing overall, but there's also going to be some draw backs to it. The bottom line, on the ground management as long as wolves are listed probably, won't change that much. But with states, you'll have people that know people better and have a lot more people distributed throughout the landscape. So I think that's going to be a good thing for wolf management. The reality of wolves is that people find them fascinating. So no matter whether it's State Management or Federal Management wolf issues are going to be, uh, absorbed with symbolism. Everything we do has been litigated. I'm becoming quite the little legal authority now because of all the litigation we've been involved in and wolf stuff and media hype is the day. That's what happens. Everybody spins their story about wolves. So getting accurate information is still the most difficult thing we have. To kind of wrap the talk up and put a plug maybe for Doug, although I hate to do that. The bottom line is that if you don't have good information, you're just fighting this wild (unclear) right and left and we'll lose because there is much of this stuff floating on. So what the kind of work that Doug does and the kind of work we do in the other area it gives us good information. We're not trying to educate people. I'm not smart enough to do that. What we do is present the best information we have and we let people decide for themselves what that may mean for them. But in the long run, that is what has caused wolves to go from Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs to National Geographic Specials and people having a much better appreciation of large predators and wildness. That's it, Thanks. Audience: Applause Moderator: We have time for a couple of questions for Ed. Anybody? Ed Bangs: Yes Audience Member: Ed, the figures you have for the wolf predations on livestock, are there similar figures available for domestic imperial (unclear) Ed Bangs: There are. The U.S. Department of Agricultural National Ag Statistics has break downs of all that. Oh, dogs by far kill Audience Member Interrupts: How can we get those figures? Ed Bangs: Go on line and look at National Ag Statistics and you can find out how many livestock are killed by coyotes, and bears and dogs and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, wolf predation is just a tiny, tiny fraction. Only 2 ½ % of all livestock death in cattle is caused by predators. Coyotes cause about 70 – 80% of that. In Sheep, all the sheep that die about 1/3 are actually killed by predators. Coyotes cause like 90% of that. Uh, so all that stuff is available. So wolf predation itself is insignificant; unless it's your calf and then it's a big deal. Another question? What an easy audience. Yeah, thanks. Audience Member: I don't actually have I question, but I just wanted to say I think you are much better looking than Doug is. Audience: Laughter Ed Bangs: I can see you are wearing glasses. (Laughter) I know better than that. |
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