Outfitters: Restraining wolves key step in Lolo elk restoration
IDFG talks up targeting habitat, predators to reverse elk decline
Free Press / Andrew Ottoson
Mike Popp (right, holding photo) led an anti-wolf protest last Thursday, May 23, on the far side of U.S. 12 from Riverfront Park in Kamiah, where the Idaho Department of Fish and Game was holding an open house as part of its elk management plan revision process. Popp lives 15 miles north of Kamiah, in his description, on the “last private ground before the Montana border 140 miles to the east.” An outfitter in that area for two decades, Popp said there are more elk “visually and according to Fish and Game’s counts between my home and Kamiah than between my home and the state line.”
By Andrew Ottoson - sports/outdoors reporter
KAMIAH - It's a truth universally acknowledged that elk herds roaming their historic range - from northeast of Pierce to southeast of Elk City clear to the Montana border - are smaller now than they were a decade ago. This decline is established by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game's head counts in the Lolo and Selway zones, and these population surveys underpin the elk management proposals circulated at IDFG's elk planning open house last Thursday, May 23, at Riverfront Park.
The cause of the decline is controversial and bi-polar: IDFG's elk management proposals cite predation and habitat as the two factors limiting elk populations across the Lolo and Selway zones.
But in separate interviews last week, backcountry outfitters Mike Popp of Kamiah (who led a roadside anti-wolf protest near the park last Thursday evening) and Wyatt Strahm of Kooskia (who attended the planning meeting) said habitat changes simply aren't on par with the impact made by wolves.
Popp, who advocated aerial gunning of Lolo Zone wolves and has long pushed for reduction in the wolf's legal status, said "the habitat at its worst supported 15,000 elk. Is it habitat after all these years? No. Our nucleus of backcountry is fantastic. We have huge wilderness areas on either side of the Darby Road. We haven't had a really bad winter since 1996. My 20 years in the backcountry, it's not like there was an illegal meat industry operating back in there. Obviously the wolves have to eat. You crunch those numbers, and you get into the millions of pounds of meat. The hoofed game was persecuted."
Strahm, who has guided wilderness trips for 23 years, believes the wolf recovery program has been "a huge mistake" and that habitat is not a primary issue for the elk herds.
"I have never opposed the wolves being there, but they should have protected the [wolf] species we had," he said. "It's the biggest ecological disaster I've ever seen. ... I keep hearing it's a habitat problem. I get sick of it. It isn't like the succession has got to where there's no elk habitat left."
Strahm added that predation has left herds more vulnerable to disease, and that certain genetic characteristics he used to see "have been wiped out."
IDFG's survey results show elk counts, elk harvests and hunter numbers have all declined by more than half in the Lolo Zone (Units 10 and 12 ) since 2006. In the Selway Zone (Units 16A, 17, 19 and 20), IDFG saw the herd shrink from 6,573 to 4,904 during a three-year span, 2004-2007.
To combat depredation across all these units, IDFG is proposing no change to the wolf management plans it already has in place, but will "develop opportunities to increase hunter and trapper effectiveness" and start working with hunting outfitters on wolf harvest.
Popp believes hunting and trapping alone are unlikely to reduce wolf numbers enough to reverse the elk decline: "In North America and globally, the governments had to come in to quell wolf populations. What didn't work was the Joe Sixpack theory. Every time I'd tell a horror story about what I'd seen wolves doing to the elk in the backcountry, someone with good intentions would tell me: 'Don't worry, Mike. We'll shoot every one we see.' Wolves were still called endangered species then, so of course that would have been unlawful. But it didn't work. The bounty system might have had some effect, but it was government distributing [the poison] 1080 that really did it."
IDFG's tentative Selway habitat strategy involves knapweed control and elk range grassland restoration. Its Lolo habitat strategy involves collaborating with the Forest Service on landscape level projects.
Since April, IDFG has accepted written input from the public and gathering information through surveys, meetings and an online chat. Based on this input, the department will present a first draft elk management plan to the Fish and Game commission on July 15, after which another round of public comments will further shape the final draft. The final draft will be presented to the commission sometime this fall and implemented in the 2014 elk seasons.
The 2013 big game seasons and rules book is online at fishandgame.idaho.gov and is available in print everywhere licenses are sold.
http://www.idahocountyfreepress.com/IFPNews2.shtml 
