Wolves' Effect On Other Wildlife (Study)

[nwwanderer]

Quite a blend of financing.  What is the source of the $400,000 from 2015 budgets?  Does the NSF money have performance requirements?  It seems unlikely this is even close to enough money for the plan as outlined.

[Sitka_Blacktail]

I may not have a great scientific mind but I know numbers and know we were sold a rotten bill of goods by the USFWS and the WDFW. And, that's without even discussing echinococcus granulosus. Maybe your great scientific mind can enlighten us on the benefits of bringing in that disease.

Bringing in what? We've always had tapeworms here. They are spread by canines such as dogs and coyotes. That argument is such a red herring.

[Practical Approach]

How could an effective study of wolves' effect on other wildlife not include predation of infant and immature ungulates?

Word on the street is that it was too expensive to try to catch and collar the young ones.  But your right it won't be very effective if it is indeed true. 

[WAcoyotehunter]

How could an effective study of wolves' effect on other wildlife not include predation of infant and immature ungulates?

That's a pretty tough piece of information to capture.  Collaring infants is never going to work, they are collaring subadults if they are big enough to hold the collar.  Vaginal implants could potentially work, but getting eyes on a WT deer with fawn in this area is damn near impossible. 

I get what you're saying, but it's very hard to do in big country.  Collared elk can be surveyed for calf survival during the winter.

[Practical Approach]

How could an effective study of wolves' effect on other wildlife not include predation of infant and immature ungulates?

That's a pretty tough piece of information to capture.  Collaring infants is never going to work, they are collaring subadults if they are big enough to hold the collar.  Vaginal implants could potentially work, but getting eyes on a WT deer with fawn in this area is damn near impossible. 

I get what you're saying, but it's very hard to do in big country.  Collared elk can be surveyed for calf survival during the winter.

I agree it is more difficult and costly, but I think it is important.  You can collar infants using collars for infants that expand as they grow.  You could use vaginal implants on all of the mature females you caught, but you would have to spend additional money to go back in in a timely manner and find the fawns and calves to get the collar on them before they are too big to get away.  If you can get to them fairly soon after the implant is expelled the fawn/calf will not be far from the implant or the collared mother. 
I am not discounting the added layer of difficulty and expense, but on a project of this magnitude and the questions you are trying to answer, it seems pretty important. 

[JimmyHoffa]

They can't find volunteer groups to help out?  Every few years it seems like a few groups on the westside have big groups to go do fawn counts in June.

[KFhunter]

Wolves tend to have a different hunting style than the other predators mentioned.  Occasionally yotes can run deer/elk, but usually they are just sniffing around for the bedded fawn like black bears.  Deer probably aren't used to being chased long distances on a regular basis.

In a lot of areas a person can run down a deer this time of year, wouldn't take much for a wolf.  They're on super low reserves right now and gas out quickly.

[garrett89]

I think they need to produce 50 wolf tags per year for a drawing. $25 for a chance to get drawn. It will manage out because there's 19 packs that have breeding pairs. 4-6 pups per pack will be born per season = 76-114 average or more per year.

[wolfbait]

This is just another joke study with $$$$ in the pockets of WDF&Wolves etc..


Study after study has already been done in other states where wolves were dump, and the outcome has always been the same, it's wolves stupid!

My guess is WDFW have already predetermined what the study will say and I would imagine it will favor either more habitat is needed or poor habitat.

Remember when WDFW claimed they would have enough bps to delist in 6 years? And yet we know that wolf populations double in size each year.

[Practical Approach]

http://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2015-16/Pdf/Bills/House%20Bills/1676-S.pdf

If this is the link to the bill for the study, then I am not sure why WDFW is so heavily involved?  Does anyone know if this is the legislation linked to the predator prey study? 

[pianoman9701]

How could an effective study of wolves' effect on other wildlife not include predation of infant and immature ungulates?

That's a pretty tough piece of information to capture.  Collaring infants is never going to work, they are collaring subadults if they are big enough to hold the collar.  Vaginal implants could potentially work, but getting eyes on a WT deer with fawn in this area is damn near impossible. 

I get what you're saying, but it's very hard to do in big country.  Collared elk can be surveyed for calf survival during the winter.

I'd be fine with checking the wolves' stomach contents.

[garrett89]

This is just another joke study with $$$$ in the pockets of WDF&Wolves etc..


Study after study has already been done in other states where wolves were dump, and the outcome has always been the same, it's wolves stupid!

My guess is WDFW have already predetermined what the study will say and I would imagine it will favor either more habitat is needed or poor habitat.

Remember when WDFW claimed they would have enough bps to delist in 6 years? And yet we know that wolf populations double in size each year.

Probably got paid off by a bunch of hippies to start the project in the first place.

[idaho guy]

What a waste of damn money, look at wyomings moose population, looks at idaho for god's sake.  Can't they pull some valuable info from the states that have already suffered from the wolf populations, how tough and expensive would that be?

 :yeah:I would say the "study" has already been done in wy,mt,and Id. Total waste of money 

[DOUBLELUNG]

Looks like 1.9 million dollars is what they have to spend. I wonder, is it really worth it? Wouldn't it be better to spend that money on wildlife habitat restoration?

$150k of WDFW funds to leverage $1.85M is a pretty efficient use.  That $1.85M isn't available for other purposes.

[Special T]

Except that they use 400k worth of Pitman Robert's funds that could go to improving something we can hunt