Wolf Management

Wolf Management

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
In the UnionBulletin.com the headline reads: “Oregon wildlife commissioners adopt wolf management plan: Hunters and ranchers, and environmentalists and wolf advocates squared off over when wolves can be killed, why and by whom. The article begins: Oregon wildlife commissioners have approved the state’s long-overdue Wolf Management Plan after years of revisions, contentious meetings, an outside mediator and half the stakeholders abandoning talks.

 

Idaho has had a Wolf management plan for years. Here’s Roger Phillips, Public Information Supervisor, Idaho Fish and Game: “We've been hunting, and unlike other big game animals, trapping wolves for about a decade now. So we've been kind of adjusting our management as we go along. when they were still federally protected we saw that those populations increased to pretty good levels and then we started hunting and trapping and we've seen them kind of stabilize or go down a little bit. So it's awfully hard to say what would happen because wolves also happen to be territorial. And when you get x number of wolves in a given area they're going to start turning on each other. So we started seeing some of that wolves. I wouldn't say managing their own populations at all. But there's not unlimited growth there for them as a species because of their territorial nature.

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