Wolves - Managing Breeding Pairs

[KillBilly]

Ok, I would also use all that fed money for this crap to track the wolves instead of pour it into the general fund. There's a chunk of money to start with.

WDFW has already admitted that they don't know where the funding is going to come from.

[seth30]

Idaho, and Montana didnt have King county to worry about either

[wraithen]

I'm still gonna try and figure out a way to make it sooner. The quicker we get the court battle started the better off the herds. We can't stop this and complaining to our government hasn't helped. I see this as a good exercise to figure out what the state can't. If they take what we give them maybe they'll listen enough to slow the depredation.

[KillBilly]

I think Killbilly is pointing out that the WDFW has no plan on how to do this, let alone how they are going to fund it.  Consider that they have "Identified" 5 BP's/packs.  There are probably easily 3-5 more, that even the WDFW knows about but have not met the 3 year timeline of successfully breeding.  If this is close, then we will have our 15 BP's within 2 to 3 years, however we then will have to wait for 1-2 years for them to be identified... then 3 years for them to be "Successful BP's.  By then we will actually have (Going from memory here as I can't find the papwerwork) gone from 15 BP's in 5 years to over 20 BP's...... then throw in court injunctions for 2-3 more years... and we make Idaho look like a paradise.

Not to nit pick... but to clarify. The official definition of a pack is at least 2 wolves that travel together. They can be 2 males or 2 females and be considered a pack. In effect you could have several hundred wolves and only have 5BP... just an example.

[wraithen]

So rfid chips then. Pull some of civil air patrol off highway ticket writing and get them used in tracking wolves. Every batch of pups that appears and survives each year confirms a BP no?

My turn to ask a Q. Is more than one female in a pack allowed to breed?

[Ridgeratt]

Ramblings from the Ratt

 I have sat and watched/ Read/Listened to all the Wolf postings and read all the threads as to what everyone thinks needs to be done.

First there is no one who has an accurate guess as to just how many wolves that we have in this State. Be it the WDFG or the Do-Gooders who are promoting them,  the USFWS, or the members of this forum.

They don't count the transit wolves who cross borders either from Idaho to Washington or From Canada to the US. Even though the animals in question are preying on the resources here.

If the season was opened tomorrow morning in this State to a Tag that could be used 365 days we would not effect the outcome one instance. We will never as sportsman do significant damage to the resident numbers. For every wolf reported how many are never seen?

When the wolves were eliminated from the lower 48 it was due to Aerial gunners and a product call 1080 which had a tremendous side effect on what it also killed.

I can say a prime example of the ineffectiveness would be to look at the coyotes we have with all the hunting pressure they get how bad have we decimated their number's?

[wraithen]

Way to bum me out rat. I like pretending that you're wrong. Whether I pretend or not has no difference to the outcome so why not pretend?

[CedarPants]

Is there any legal grounds for an organization to demand the WDFW provide detailed information on how they plan to locate, monitor, confirm, then track these BP's ... let alone fund all of this?  I can't for the life of me understand how they can just shove this plan down our throats without having to show how they intend to make sure the plan works.  I would think legally, they would be required to show this type of information if asked to by a court of law.

As to ideas on how to track a breeding pair and their pups for 3 years .... this is honestly constructive and not meant to be anything but.  Have they been able to do this in Idaho, Montana, or Wyoming?  It seems if they have been successful in doing so elsewhere it is only because there are so many wolves that they simply just have to pick the easiest 15 packs to locate and go from there.  I honestly don't know how to track 15 BP's until there are WAY more than that present

[CAMPMEAT]

I think nobody knows sheet from shinola about wolves in this state. As usual, everybody is a day late and a dollar short. You can't control something if you don't have the facts and even then you can't control it. It's all conjecture. We've had 119 + sightings, stories about wolves on this website and the WDFW has had how many ? It's all hype in my mind. Sure we have wolves here, I've seen them, but the state didn't beleive me when I sent them pictures of tracks. Oh well !!!!!

[wraithen]

What was the topic again?

[Special T]

KillBilly, the way to document wolves and thier travels is with a GPS data logger collar. they are made by several companies. Radio collars like the old school Hound collars require too much time to document travel, GPS tracking collars tracked by sat-alights  cost too much, but data loggers get gps coordinates  daily weekly etc save's the data and then  transmits once a month. This reduces costs, increases batterie life, and provides more complete data. they cost about 3k ea and cost a bit for the monitoring... usually done by NOAA sat-alights... in order to determine  BPs you would have to find them put a collar on, determine a area during denning season then collar the BP's. Now collars only last about every 6-9 months so in order to get 3 yrs in a row is difficult. getting general loation during denning will only get you close so you can take photos and do a better job of documentation. The real question that should be asked is what has other states required info wise to establish BP... that is likely a  GOV  definition.

[rebal69972]

we make thing way to difacult poising them working in the past. do the samething now but instead of killing them use sleeping med's and put collars on all of them but then the problem becomes tracking them. they did just find 1 in OR and it started in MT

[jager]

Some excerpts I found on a pro wolf website...

Wolves can and do suffer from PTSD,  just like people.
Wolves have no place to hide, they’re being monitored as if they were common criminals.  Wearing a radio collar is like being under house arrest. The authorities know where you are at all times.
Collaring wolves is out of control. Wolves have enough problems, they don’t need to be hounded by biologists or Wildlife Services to further some nebulous agenda.
What right do we have to chase wild wolves around for collaring? Wolves don’t belong to us. Let them live in peace for godsakes!!

I sure hope these morons don't try to sue on behalf of the wolves. 

[high country]

Start even simpler. Monitor pack size. I was told of wolves on mica 3 years ago. The pack that was seen lost two of its members to who knows what....shot, split off, poison....who knows. My pard and several of his neighbors saw a single red wolf recently in the same area as the pack. I at the same time heard 3 wolves about 5 miles away. How does the pack have two members killed, and one run off yet still grow? My guess is by breeding. So again, monitor pack size.

[KillBilly]

KillBilly, the way to document wolves and thier travels is with a GPS data logger collar. they are made by several companies. Radio collars like the old school Hound collars require too much time to document travel, GPS tracking collars tracked by sat-alights  cost too much, but data loggers get gps coordinates  daily weekly etc save's the data and then  transmits once a month. This reduces costs, increases batterie life, and provides more complete data. they cost about 3k ea and cost a bit for the monitoring... usually done by NOAA sat-alights... in order to determine  BPs you would have to find them put a collar on, determine a area during denning season then collar the BP's. Now collars only last about every 6-9 months so in order to get 3 yrs in a row is difficult. getting general loation during denning will only get you close so you can take photos and do a better job of documentation. The real question that should be asked is what has other states required info wise to establish BP... that is likely a  GOV  definition.

There are still lots of small details added to your scenario that must be addressed. the pups must be collared also and somehow identified to the parents to prevent confusion or it will become a guessing game. after dec. 31st the collars need to be removed from the pups and made ready for the parents next years pups... mind boggling to me. maybe I am overthinking it but a job worth doing is worth doing right.