A lot of the topics on here have gotten stale and we either rehash the same old arguments or rehash what is already known regardless of our respective beliefs on the matter of wolves.
So I thought I would ask a different question today. On Monday, Weyerhaeuser will start selling "recreational" permits that will allow people access to their land on the St Helens Tree farm between August and January. This is not the only area that they do this on and they are not the only timber company in the state to do this either and I have a gut feeling we can expect this trend to expand to other parts of the state as well. Looking at this logically, one can only conclude that this will effectively create wildlife sanctuaries in the months that people, particularly hunters, don't have access to the land and given the limited number of permits hunting pressure may well be lighter in those areas than it has historically been. On one hand I could see this as being beneficial since you'd inevitably have spillover of game animals into public lands. But as cougar populations grow, not to mention bear, and in particular wolves I could see another kind of spillover in the form of predators being a problem.
If what I think I see coming down the road comes to pass, how do we manage that? Further, if predator numbers actually increase in those areas as they become safe zones, what's to prevent most private timber land from becoming game animal deserts and further, wouldn't that actually be harmful to game on public land even if predators are held in check there? Just thinking out loud here. But my reference to lake states and wolf hunting there got me thinking, if you look at a state like Michigan for example, they have the most publicly owned timber land in the lower 48, their DNR can manage predators if they want and do it well because they have control over vast swaths of public land. But here in Washington we have huge tracts of privately owned timber and other than creating seasons the state can't do a lot about hunter access and predator management on those lands can they?
