Lawmakers: $2M aimed to kill more than 500 wolves

[bearpaw]

If one wolf eats 17 elk per year (a widely accepted number) and if the average hunter success is 20% then 17 elk saved from one wolf would provide recreation for 85 additional hunters. Guided non-resident elk hunters leave approx $5000 per hunter in Idaho (outfitter fees, plus license and tags, plus 6% sales tax, plus travel, lodging, and meals before and after the hunt). Unguided non-resident elk hunters likely leave $1000 to $2000 ($1500 average) in Idaho. I would imagine that unguided resident hunters spend at least $500 to elk hunt in Idaho and probably closer to $1000. If half the hunters are unguided residents @ $500, 1/4 are guided @ $5000, and 1/4 are unguided non-residents @ $1500, then the average elk hunter in Idaho likely directly brings in about $1875 per hunter directly in commerce.

Multiply $1875 x 85 additional hunters and that means one wolf is likely costing Idaho $159,375. If Idaho removes 500 wolves as the article mentions that could allow as many as 42,500 additional elk hunters which means nearly 80 million dollars per year could be spent by the additional elk hunters.

2 Million is a small price to pay. Praise governor Otter for his economic wisdom!

[huntnphool]

Wrong approach.

I love the co-op idea, let the hunters/trappers create their own economy rather than blow that kind of cash down the toilet for a temporary reprieve. 

No kidding, why not just open a year around, shoot on sight season for them, and save the money?

I'm thinking Idaho finally did the math and realized that 'wolf watching" is not generating as much revenue as they lost in hunting related revenue.

[bearpaw]

      Last I heard, not one elk outfitter has sold a wolf watching trip.

[huntnphool]

     Last I heard, not one elk outfitter has sold a wolf watching trip.

Where is that pinhead (can't remember his name) that was forever preaching to us how many hundreds of $Millions were generated in this state by whale watching and the same thing would happen with millions of people flocking to Washington to watch wolves?

[Sitka_Blacktail]

If one wolf eats 17 elk per year (a widely accepted number) and if the average hunter success is 20% then 17 elk saved from one wolf would provide recreation for 85 additional hunters. Guided non-resident elk hunters leave approx $5000 per hunter in Idaho (outfitter fees, plus license and tags, plus 6% sales tax, plus travel, lodging, and meals before and after the hunt). Unguided non-resident elk hunters likely leave $1000 to $2000 ($1500 average) in Idaho. I would imagine that unguided resident hunters spend at least $500 to elk hunt in Idaho and probably closer to $1000. If half the hunters are unguided residents @ $500, 1/4 are guided @ $5000, and 1/4 are unguided non-residents @ $1500, then the average elk hunter in Idaho likely directly brings in about $1875 per hunter directly in commerce.

Multiply $1875 x 85 additional hunters and that means one wolf is likely costing Idaho $159,375. If Idaho removes 500 wolves as the article mentions that could allow as many as 42,500 additional elk hunters which means nearly 80 million dollars per year could be spent by the additional elk hunters.

2 Million is a small price to pay. Praise governor Otter for his economic wisdom!

Math evidently isn't your strong suit. Why you ask? How about we reverse engineer your figures? First you infer that every elk supposedly saved by killing wolves is an elk that a hunter will kill. Not realistic. Those 8500 elk you think will be saved?  With the estimated population of about 117,000 elk in 2011 ( http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/wildlife/elkPlan/state.pdf) the statewide harvest was just over 15,000 elk for a exploitation rate of about 13% of the total herd. So if the herd gained 8500 elk, with an exploitation rate of 13%, that would mean hunters would actually take about 1105 more elk, except those 8500 elk you supposedly saved? A good percent of them will be cows and calves which may or may not even be legal to take depending on where they live.

So say only about 800 more elk are going to be killed by hunters from the elk that you may be saving. Idaho has 29 elk zones and 78 units. That means on average each Zone might have 25-30 more elk killed. I hardly think that will equate to 42,500 more hunters hunting in Idaho. At a 20% hunter success rate 800 extra elk killed would equate to about 4,000 more hunters, about 10% of your estimate.

My question to you though, is, even if your numbers were correct, is that what you really want for Idaho elk hunting? 42,500 more elk hunters? That's over 50% more elk hunters than in 2011. I'm sure local hunters would beg to differ with that. There were over 74,700 elk hunters in Idaho in 2011. Add your total of 42,500 new hunters and you'd get 117,200 elk hunters. That might be a good deal for a guy like you who makes money off of more hunters, but it would sure take away from the total experience for guys who don't like circus style hunting. Personally, I know I'd rather hunt in an area with less animals and less hunters than more animals and more hunters and all the negative things that go with crowding in the woods, from camping spots, to feeling like you're in a race to beat someone to where you want to hunt, to garbage in the woods, to more drawing hunts, etc etc.

[KFhunter]

Wrong approach.

ID needs long term predator management,  not a $2 million temporary band-aid.

I love the co-op idea, let the hunters/trappers create their own economy rather than blow that kind of cash down the toilet for a temporary reprieve.  In the meanwhile Elk populations will boom drawing in more wolves as they disperse from neighboring states, which in turn will boom then you're looking at another 2 million dollar wolf removal project.

Haphazardly killing them down to 500 total isn't the correct approach,  you'll destroy established packs and create a vacuum.  Any stabilization of ungulate/predator relations will be on a roller coaster and impossible to stabilize.   I'd rather see wolves dispersed state wide but pack sizes very small and heavily controlled by trapping/hunting.

At $4000 bounty per wolf you'd have so many trappers in the woods you couldn't turn around without bumping a trap, a smaller bounty would suffice and you could increase/decrease on the needs of the state.  If the population ever drops where USFWS start threatening action ID could drop the bounty to nothing.  As they start gaining raise it.

Actually, it sounds like it will be funneled into wildlife services and will not go as a $4k bounty per wolf.

I do agree with you, that it would make much more sense to greatly broaden the trapping season and let that be the mechanism by which numbers are reduced.

Should this money be authorized, there is a very good chance that a lawsuit will be filed and I think a very substantial chance that the wolf delisting could be jeopardized because Idaho is supposed to go five years under their approved plan without substantially altering it.

I think this is as much playing to Otter's constituency and a political show as anything.

That $4000 bounty was in reference to post #4 and I was trying to explain how I'd rather see the money go to hunters/trappers than paid hunters for USFWS who would mostly come from out of state.  Probably the same guys who killed the Elk at night in WA recently.  I really dislike contract killing of animals in this way,  especially Elk. Should have explained that better I guess.

I think they could get it done for 1/10 of that.

$400 per wolf bounty year round would put a lot of trappers and hunters in the field.  Wolves will be pushed into the back country where they belong, anywhere there is roads and easy access they'd be shot on sight.  Not mention fur prices on top of that,  which would put trappers out in the winter when fur is prime..A good time to help out the Elk herds in their winter ranges huh. Think breakaway snares setup around a carcass.

If I were ID.gov I think I'd want to encourage a culture of wolf trapping and hunting. 

heck Id take a couple weeks off work in the winter and try to make me some $   


edit:   And I think your right about Otter pandering to the voters,  this bill doesn't "feel" like a bill that has a chance of passing,  more like a bill to make a statement.

[JLS]

If one wolf eats 17 elk per year (a widely accepted number) and if the average hunter success is 20% then 17 elk saved from one wolf would provide recreation for 85 additional hunters. Guided non-resident elk hunters leave approx $5000 per hunter in Idaho (outfitter fees, plus license and tags, plus 6% sales tax, plus travel, lodging, and meals before and after the hunt). Unguided non-resident elk hunters likely leave $1000 to $2000 ($1500 average) in Idaho. I would imagine that unguided resident hunters spend at least $500 to elk hunt in Idaho and probably closer to $1000. If half the hunters are unguided residents @ $500, 1/4 are guided @ $5000, and 1/4 are unguided non-residents @ $1500, then the average elk hunter in Idaho likely directly brings in about $1875 per hunter directly in commerce.

Multiply $1875 x 85 additional hunters and that means one wolf is likely costing Idaho $159,375. If Idaho removes 500 wolves as the article mentions that could allow as many as 42,500 additional elk hunters which means nearly 80 million dollars per year could be spent by the additional elk hunters.

2 Million is a small price to pay. Praise governor Otter for his economic wisdom!

Math evidently isn't your strong suit. Why you ask? How about we reverse engineer your figures? First you infer that every elk supposedly saved by killing wolves is an elk that a hunter will kill. Not realistic. Those 8500 elk you think will be saved?  With the estimated population of about 117,000 elk in 2011 ( http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/wildlife/elkPlan/state.pdf) the statewide harvest was just over 15,000 elk for a exploitation rate of about 13% of the total herd. So if the herd gained 8500 elk, with an exploitation rate of 13%, that would mean hunters would actually take about 1105 more elk, except those 8500 elk you supposedly saved? A good percent of them will be cows and calves which may or may not even be legal to take depending on where they live.

So say only about 800 more elk are going to be killed by hunters from the elk that you may be saving. Idaho has 29 elk zones and 78 units. That means on average each Zone might have 25-30 more elk killed. I hardly think that will equate to 42,500 more hunters hunting in Idaho. At a 20% hunter success rate 800 extra elk killed would equate to about 4,000 more hunters, about 10% of your estimate.

My question to you though, is, even if your numbers were correct, is that what you really want for Idaho elk hunting? 42,500 more elk hunters? That's over 50% more elk hunters than in 2011. I'm sure local hunters would beg to differ with that. There were over 74,700 elk hunters in Idaho in 2011. Add your total of 42,500 new hunters and you'd get 117,200 elk hunters. That might be a good deal for a guy like you who makes money off of more hunters, but it would sure take away from the total experience for guys who don't like circus style hunting. Personally, I know I'd rather hunt in an area with less animals and less hunters than more animals and more hunters and all the negative things that go with crowding in the woods, from camping spots, to feeling like you're in a race to beat someone to where you want to hunt, to garbage in the woods, to more drawing hunts, etc etc.

Idaho only sells a maximum of 10.5k non resident elk tags.

[pianoman9701]

Sounds to me like they'll have to do this every 3-4 years if they're successful in culling that many, which I doubt. Or, this will be an ongoing expenditure that will never end. Wait until WA reaches our goals and see what happens. We're going to be in worse shape than ID and we don't have a governor who'll be willing to declare an emergency when the ungulate populations are declining everywhere. What a great combination we have - an added apex predator, continued loss of ungulate habitat because of NF logging restrictions, and a liberal, wolf-hugging administration which has no clue of what's ahead.

[AspenBud]

we don't have a governor who'll be willing to declare an emergency when the ungulate populations are declining everywhere.

That's because our economy isn't so dependent on hunting revenues. It's a lot harder to make a living in Idaho these days than here.

[pianoman9701]

we don't have a governor who'll be willing to declare an emergency when the ungulate populations are declining everywhere.

That's because our economy isn't so dependent on hunting revenues. It's a lot harder to make a living in Idaho these days than here.

Our I-5 economy may not be, but that's not so true in the E. part of the state. As well, those hunting revenues are very important to keep the WDFW funded. License sales make up a huge portion of the wildlife management budget in this state, the very budget which allows us to to coddle these elk-eating machines. The WDFW with their hyper-aggressive wolf plan may have just written their own epitaph. Once the department has to start spending the kind of money that's being spent in ID, they're screwed. See if the wolf huggers pay the bills that hunters have been paying forever. Let me give you a hint: WA isn't Yellowstone (where many people pay to see the wolves), and these patchouli wearing wolf-hippies won't put their money where their mouths are when hunting declines ahead of license revenues.

[Hunter Dug]

The reasoning for needing to do this is because hunters and trappers are not getting the job done.  Since delisting the population of wolves in the state of Idaho has tripled. This is a request on top of hunting and trapping.  The state has to much wilderness, and to many areas for the average trapper or hunter to access to make a large enough impact on the population.

[boneaddict]

We do such a dang good job at eradicating coyotes with 24/7 365 seasons, why would an animal twice as smart and cunning be easier to get rid of with conventional hunting methods.  Notice I didn't include trapping, since of course Washington has outlawed that already for the most part.   

It makes you wonder where we come up with these idiots.   

[AspenBud]

we don't have a governor who'll be willing to declare an emergency when the ungulate populations are declining everywhere.

That's because our economy isn't so dependent on hunting revenues. It's a lot harder to make a living in Idaho these days than here.

Our I-5 economy may not be, but that's not so true in the E. part of the state. As well, those hunting revenues are very important to keep the WDFW funded. License sales make up a huge portion of the wildlife management budget in this state, the very budget which allows us to to coddle these elk-eating machines. The WDFW with their hyper-aggressive wolf plan may have just written their own epitaph. Once the department has to start spending the kind of money that's being spent in ID, they're screwed. See if the wolf huggers pay the bills that hunters have been paying forever. Let me give you a hint: WA isn't Yellowstone (where many people pay to see the wolves), and these patchouli wearing wolf-hippies won't put their money where their mouths are when hunting declines ahead of license revenues.

I'm not disagreeing, Heck, there's any number of studies that show if eastern WA were to become it's own state it would be one of the poorer states in the union.

I'm just pointing out that if you take away hunting from Idaho, that's huge problem from the little guy all the way up to state tax revenues. In WA it's not nearly as much of an issue from the perspective of Olympia since it's not a big revenue generator compared to the rest. It would take a special governor to really get up in arms about wolves here the way Idaho's has.

When people in the eastern half of the US talk about "going out west" to hunt they talk about North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho far more than Washington or Oregon. That's not a recent phenomenon.

I think Olympia puts WDFW very low in their priorities.

[AspenBud]

We do such a dang good job at eradicating coyotes with 24/7 365 seasons, why would an animal twice as smart and cunning be easier to get rid of with conventional hunting methods.  Notice I didn't include trapping, since of course Washington has outlawed that already for the most part.   

It makes you wonder where we come up with these idiots.

Something I haven't seen yet is whether wolves here will be as good at adapting to urban life as coyotes. Part of the problem with yotes is they can live anywhere and blend in. I saw two sunning themselves right off SR-14, near Vancouver, about 4 months ago. Apartments were right behind where they were laying.

[Sitka_Blacktail]

If one wolf eats 17 elk per year (a widely accepted number) and if the average hunter success is 20% then 17 elk saved from one wolf would provide recreation for 85 additional hunters. Guided non-resident elk hunters leave approx $5000 per hunter in Idaho (outfitter fees, plus license and tags, plus 6% sales tax, plus travel, lodging, and meals before and after the hunt). Unguided non-resident elk hunters likely leave $1000 to $2000 ($1500 average) in Idaho. I would imagine that unguided resident hunters spend at least $500 to elk hunt in Idaho and probably closer to $1000. If half the hunters are unguided residents @ $500, 1/4 are guided @ $5000, and 1/4 are unguided non-residents @ $1500, then the average elk hunter in Idaho likely directly brings in about $1875 per hunter directly in commerce.

Multiply $1875 x 85 additional hunters and that means one wolf is likely costing Idaho $159,375. If Idaho removes 500 wolves as the article mentions that could allow as many as 42,500 additional elk hunters which means nearly 80 million dollars per year could be spent by the additional elk hunters.

2 Million is a small price to pay. Praise governor Otter for his economic wisdom!

Math evidently isn't your strong suit. Why you ask? How about we reverse engineer your figures? First you infer that every elk supposedly saved by killing wolves is an elk that a hunter will kill. Not realistic. Those 8500 elk you think will be saved?  With the estimated population of about 117,000 elk in 2011 ( http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/public/wildlife/elkPlan/state.pdf) the statewide harvest was just over 15,000 elk for a exploitation rate of about 13% of the total herd. So if the herd gained 8500 elk, with an exploitation rate of 13%, that would mean hunters would actually take about 1105 more elk, except those 8500 elk you supposedly saved? A good percent of them will be cows and calves which may or may not even be legal to take depending on where they live.

So say only about 800 more elk are going to be killed by hunters from the elk that you may be saving. Idaho has 29 elk zones and 78 units. That means on average each Zone might have 25-30 more elk killed. I hardly think that will equate to 42,500 more hunters hunting in Idaho. At a 20% hunter success rate 800 extra elk killed would equate to about 4,000 more hunters, about 10% of your estimate.

My question to you though, is, even if your numbers were correct, is that what you really want for Idaho elk hunting? 42,500 more elk hunters? That's over 50% more elk hunters than in 2011. I'm sure local hunters would beg to differ with that. There were over 74,700 elk hunters in Idaho in 2011. Add your total of 42,500 new hunters and you'd get 117,200 elk hunters. That might be a good deal for a guy like you who makes money off of more hunters, but it would sure take away from the total experience for guys who don't like circus style hunting. Personally, I know I'd rather hunt in an area with less animals and less hunters than more animals and more hunters and all the negative things that go with crowding in the woods, from camping spots, to feeling like you're in a race to beat someone to where you want to hunt, to garbage in the woods, to more drawing hunts, etc etc.

Idaho only sells a maximum of 10.5k non resident elk tags.

Well that shoots down Bearpaw's theory too then, doesn't it?