Some outfitters in northwest Wyoming say they have endured the burden of wolf reintroduction and it’s time for state legislators and federal officials to agree on a plan to start hunting the species.

The outfitters will rally Saturday on Town Square to protest wolves, a predator they say has impacted their livelihood and their heritage by reducing elk populations in some segments of the Jackson Elk Herd.

Conservation groups counter by saying that the Jackson Elk Herd, and the majority of elk herds around the state, are over the population objectives set by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Further, they say that wolves have restored perhaps the only intact ecosystem in the lower 48 states and their presence benefits numerous other species by keeping elk in check.

The anti-wolf rally comes as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials and Wyoming state lawmakers continue their standoff over removing the wolf from the federal endangered species list. Wyoming wolves remain under federal protection because Wyoming law allows wolves to be killed as predators at any time without a permit in all but the northwest corner of the state.

Organizers of the rally say it’s time for the federal government and Wyoming to work together to delist wolves.

“We have a recovered population,” said B.J. Hill, a Kelly resident and owner of Swift Creek Outfitters. “The wolves are starting to drain the elk numbers. Instead of suing to keep them on the endangered species list [conservation groups] should be trying to figure out how to help us get them off.”

Lynn Madsen, an Afton resident and owner of Yellowstone Outfitters operating in the Teton Wilderness of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, said outfitters have resigned themselves to the fact that wolves will remain part of the landscape.

“We know we’re stuck with them,” he said. “We just need to be managing the damn things.”

Wyoming Game and Fish wildlife managers say the Jackson Elk Herd is over the 11,000 elk population objective by nearly 6 percent.

For the entire state, Wyoming’s elk population appears healthy; the last compilation in early 2009 put the annual census at 93,383 – 12 percent above the 83,000 objective – without counting 10 of the state’s 35 herd units.

Hunter success, in the region and the state, also remains relatively high. For the Jackson Elk Herd, hunter success was 39 percent last year compared with the 37 percent average from 2000 to 2009.

Still, wildlife managers agree that the local elk population is in trouble, despite the overall herd count.

“This population is not doing well,” Game and Fish north Jackson biologist Doug Brimeyer said. “This all started 10 years ago. The total population has been trending downward for 10 years.”

The Jackson Elk Herd’s southern migratory segment – those elk that summer in southern Grand Teton National Park and in subdivisions south of the park – is flourishing, Brimeyer said. This is a segment that is difficult to hunt because it lives and migrates largely in protected areas.

The Upper Gros Ventre herd unit that winters in the Gros Ventre River drainage, is well below the population target wildlife managers have set for the area. Game and Fish has an objective of 3,500 elk for that group. The most recent surveys counted an estimated 2,405 elk, Game and Fish said.



Sub-herd below objective

The latest census figure is 31 percent below objective. The sub-herd is supposed to make up just under a quarter of the overall Jackson Elk Herd, which comprises animals that winter in Jackson Hole north of Jackson.

Another part of the Jackson Elk Herd is difficult to calculate because the animals mingle with others on wintering grounds where they are counted every year. Nevertheless, Brimeyer says those populations are down, too.

More important are declines in calf/cow ratios, Brimeyer says. In the Upper Gros Ventre drainage, for example, calf/cow ratios were 13 calves for every 100 cows compared to more than 41 calves for every 100 cows in the Lower Gros Ventre.

What that lower calf/cow ratio means is fewer young elk survive to become adults. Game and Fish says it likes to have a ratio of 25 calves to 100 cows in the Upper Gros Ventre.

The counts, which wildlife managers gather with the aid of airplanes in February, might not tell the whole story. Brimeyer said there’s evidence that more young elk die during the late winter. Game and Fish officials are starting to conduct additional surveys later in the year to determine if the survival rate is lower than the February numbers suggest.

“We have some pretty serious concerns with some of the herd segments,” Brimeyer said. “We’re having reduced recruitment in those two herd segments.”

Game and Fish has cut back on hunting opportunities in the two areas. In the Gros Ventre, managers have reduced the hunting season by six days and have gone to a “spikes excluded” season. Last year, however, the holder of a general license – one that can be purchased over the counter by any Wyoming resident – could still kill a cow elk there.

Hill, who runs his business out of the Gros Ventre, said the decline in the elk population is noticeable.

“I’ve spend 47 years on the Gros Ventre,” he said. “There’s fewer elk wintering out right now than ever.”

Brian Taylor, who runs Gros Ventre Wilderness Outfitters and the Taylor Ranch, said he has noticed a decline.

“We never saw a spike elk at our camp last fall, and that’s never happened before,” he said. “There’s potentially 40-plus wolves in the Gros Ventre right now.”

In the north migratory segment of the Teton Wilderness, wildlife managers have prohibited the killing of cow elk altogether. Last year the holder of a general license could kill only antlered elk in hunt areas 70 and 71.

State wildlife managers said they have stopped targeting cow elk in northern Jackson Hole and in the last 10 years have gone from issuing 1,500 any-elk permits to 75, and from 1,000 antlerless permits to 75.

Brimeyer said the elk decline is probably a combination of factors, including environmental conditions and predators – grizzly bears, black bears and wolves. The environmental conditions, drought and cold wet springs, likely don’t have as much of an impact, because elk feedgrounds in the region limit the amount of winter mortality, he said.

The outfitters say there’s an economic impact to declining elk populations. Outfitter and manager of the Heart Six Ranch Jesse Rodenbough said he’s had to cut the number of guests at his camp by more than half.

“We used to take 28 hunters,” he said. “I’ve had to drop to 12 hunters to keep a 98 percent [hunter] success rate.”

Madsen blames wolves.

“They have put people, literally, out of business,” he said. “The only thing that keeps Wyoming in the running is the feedgrounds.”



Finding common ground

Conservation groups acknowledge some impacts to elk from wolves, but say those impacts have helped restore the landscape for other species.

“We’ve seen riparian areas and aspen groves regenerate that have been suppressed for decades,” said Chris Colligan, Wyoming wildlife advocate for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. “Predation is only one part of the equation. We know that wolves eat elk and they affect elk behavior, and that’s part of their ecological benefit. It benefits the entire trophic cascade of species from songbirds to beavers, and ultimately it benefits elk.”

“It keeps populations in check with habitat,” Colligan continued. “We have a carrying capacity on the landscape. [Elk] are seeking cover, spending less time browsing and grazing in those lush areas and spending more time being vigilant to predation. I certainly am not trying to discount [the concerns of outfitters]. Certainly, it makes [elk] more difficult to hunt.”

The state-federal standoff leaves one way out. “Until Wyoming has an acceptable plan that ensures a viable population of wolves, the only tool that Game and Fish has is changing hunter opportunity,” Colligan said.

Other elk herds with wolves have fared well, he said. The territory of the Fall Creek Herd south of Jackson, for instance, is home to several wolf packs. That herd’s population is 5,123 animals, or roughly 16 percent over objective, and the herd’s calf/cow ratio is 24 calves per 100 cows.

“Wolves are fairly well-distributed around Jackson Hole currently,” he said.

One area of agreement between conservation groups and the outfitters who organized the anti-wolf rally is that Wyoming lawmakers need to allow wolves to expand beyond just the northern corner of the state.

The outfitters say that by allowing wolves to live in more places, Wyoming could keep the minimum 150 wolves and 15 breeding pairs required by the federal government while decreasing the density of wolf packs in the Jackson Hole area.

“I, personally, believe that this wolf is not going to get delisted unless we go to trophy game statewide,” Madsen said.

Hill called outfitters and ranchers in northwest Wyoming the “sacrificial lamb” of the wolf reintroduction.

“The easiest way to fix this is to drop them [south] to the state line [between Utah and Wyoming],” he said. Wolves could then take advantage of the Wind River and the Wyoming Range.

“I don’t want to stick this on [hunters and ranchers in the rest of the state], but we cannot hold half of these wolves in the valley,” he said.

Colligan agreed that wolves need more habitat.

“We’ve been working to come up with a science-based plan that would classify wolves as trophy game throughout Wyoming, he said. “There’s places where I think [conservation groups and outfitters] have common ground. Our door is open to people who want to solve some of these issues.”

“We certainly want wolves to maintain their ecological function in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem,” Colligan continued. “We don’t think wolves or any species should be maintained by artificial political boundaries. I agree that we should have wolves in other places in Wyoming. We as stakeholders should be coming together to address the on-the-ground conflicts with wolves.”

Wolves likely have a localized effect on elk populations said Mike Jimenez, Wyoming wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “If you have more wolves in particular areas, that may mean you have fewer elk in that particular area,” he said. “That’s different than looking at region-wide impacts of wolves on elk. Region-wide you might not pick that [effect] up. It all kind of averages out.”

Wolves and prey have evolved together to live in balance, Jimenez said.

“If you look at a natural system without people, wolves and prey have worked things out,” he said. “When you bring people into that it adds another layer. What you leave for other predators changes a little bit.”

Add feedgrounds to that equation, and the issues multiply, Jimenez said.

“In other states, they kill things, but a lot of those animals are animals that are in a poor state,” he said. “In Wyoming we feed elk because of a loss of winter range. That introduces some far more complicated issues. You can have a lot of elk concentrated in some places. That means you can have some wolves or other predators concentrated in an area as well.”

“If you have x number of wolves in a small area, that x number of wolves impacts that small area much more than if you had that same number of wolves spread out over a larger area,” Jimenez said.

Protecting wolves through the Endangered Species Act limits tools for wildlife managers, he agreed. Hunting is lost as an option.

“That limits what you can do,” he said. “You can look at Montana and Idaho ... [they] showed very clearly that wolf populations did very well,” even through a hunting season. Hunting achieved many goals.

“Again, perspective comes into it,” he said, “but that’s up for the states to decide, not the Endangered Species Act.”

“States manage those populations much better than the [Endangered Species Act],” he continued. “It’s meant to recover those populations.”

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department is holding a season setting meeting March 29 at 7:00 p.m. at the Jackson Wyoming Game and Fish office. The anti-wolf rally will take place Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Town Square.



– Angus Thuermer contributed to this report.