Wolf recovery: a search for consensus
Meeting attracts ranchers, hunters, environmentalists
"You can’t publicly attack someone and think
they’ll work with you. We all need to learn to meet each other half
way."
Bill LeVere, Sawtooth National Forest supervisor
By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer
A conference held in Ketchum last Tuesday was a
significant step in getting ranchers and environmentalists to reach an
accord on wolf recovery efforts in Idaho, but federal wolf and public
lands managers said following the conference there’s still a long way to
go.
"We need to separate disagreement and
disrespect," Sawtooth National Forest supervisor Bill LeVere
summarized near the end of the conference. "You can’t publicly
attack someone and think they’ll work with you. We all need to learn to
meet each other half way."
U.S. Fish and Wildlife wolf recovery coordinator Carter
Niemeyer said in a subsequent interview that LeVere really hit home. Some
of what he heard at the conference, he said, was unnecessarily
inflammatory.
The conference, which was hosted by the Ketchum
environmental group, Boulder White Cloud Council, was well attended by
environmentalists and federal agency personnel, as well as several
ranchers and hunting advocates.
Steps were discussed that could help alleviate the growing
conflicts between ranchers and wolves, the most efficient North American
predator. Good communication between federal agencies and the ranching
community was one of the steps discussed.
Dennis Lehmann, a Wendell-based sheep rancher, grazes his
herds in the White Cloud foothills, and last summer, he blithely herded
his bands into a snare of wolves in Fisher Creek.
Before the summer was over, Lehmann lost 15 sheep, another
rancher lost nine, and one wolf paid the consequences of its pack’s
actions with its life. Two other wolves were relocated.
Problems could have been avoided, Lehmann said, if he’d
known the wolves were using Fisher Creek as a rendezvous. He said he would
not have herded his sheep so far into wolf territory had he known he was
headed for the pack.
"If we’d been advised, we could have avoided some
problems there," he said.
Warren Ririe, a range specialist for the Boise and
Sawtooth National Forests, said his agency was, in part, responsible for
the lack of communication that led to 24 dead sheep in the White Clouds
last summer.
"We were in the fault, as an agency," he said.
"We can establish a communications network and make sure that it’s
there."
All of those at the meeting said they thought such lines
of communications could help alleviate future conflicts.
Additionally, Ririe said, the Boise, Sawtooth, and
Salmon-Challis National Forests are working on regulations that would
require ranchers to keep clean camps and avoid practices that might
attract wolves or place livestock near wolf "hot spots."’
The practices would be regulated through issuance of
grazing permits, Ririe said.
LeVere indicated that the measures will be implemented on
the Sawtooth National Forest this summer. Ririe said it might be another
year before implemented in other forests.
"We have a long ways to go, but we’re far ahead of
where we were five years ago," he said.
