And the killing keeps on going - 8th calf killed by wolves

ODFW confirms first wolf kill in

Wallowa County

 By Kathleen Ellyn, Wallowa County Chieftain

Wallowa County rancher Bob Lathrop has become the first to suffer a

confirmed wolf kill of livestock in Wallowa County. The Oregon

Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) has confirmed that the calf

killed May 5 on the Lewis  Road/Dorrance Grade 17 miles northeast of

Enterprise was killed by wolves.

The calf was in a pasture of young cows and calves recently moved from

a home pasture to grazing near Zumwalt Prairie. ODFW employee Jason

Moncrief, who was hired to haze elk back from Zumwalt Prairie into the

forest, saw four wolves in the cow/calf pasture the morning of

Wednesday, May 5, and later in the day saw carrion birds fly from the

same pasture. 

He investigated, discovered the partially eaten remains of the

approximately two-month-old calf scattered across the field, and

reported the find.

Oregon Department of Fish and Game (ODFW) District Biologist Vic

Coggins and rancher Tom Birkmeier happened to be in the area and

responded immediately. U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife

Services wolf hunter Marlyn Riggs and Rod Childers, wolf committee

chairman for the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association (OCA) arrived shortly

thereafter. Coggins and Riggs confirmed the kill. ODFW Wolf Program

Coordinator Russ Morgan was out of town but returned immediately,

arriving on Thursday to second the confirmation.  The wolves are

believed to be part of the 10-wolf Imnaha pack.

"It was sheer luck we got that confirmation," said Childers. "If Jason

hadn't been passing by, seen those wolves and then checked it out, and

if Tom and Vic hadn't been in the area right then, this would be

another unconfirmed kill."

Wallowa County ranchers have been complaining for months that young

calves are being entirely eaten, and that since they can only report

mother cows with no calves, the predation of dozens of calves has not

been confirmed by ODFW.

Childers said that the Association had requested that the wolves be

permanently removed from the area or killed. However, a press release

from ODFW said that the agency planned to use non-lethal measures to

avoid future incidents as the first response to wolf depredation.

“It’s ludicrous,” said Childers. “ODFW says that all of the non-lethal

actions we’ve been taking in this county are ‘preventative.’ I asked

what the difference was between non-lethal and preventative and there

is no difference. If there was more that we could do we would do it,

but basically we have to wait until there are more dead livestock

confirmed as wolf kills before ODFW can possibly take an action. If

these four wolves get back into the pack before there is another

depredation, we can’t identify the specific wolves and the whole

process starts over again. This could go on all summer.”

Lathrop told ranchers he would be sleeping with his cattle for the

next few days, but has three pastures of cattle. “What’s he going to

do,” Childers asked, "flip a coin as to which pasture he should be

sleeping in?”

Several other cattle carcasses have been photographed and reported as

suspected wolf kills in Wallowa County, but were too well-eaten to

show the distinctive bite marks of wolves and gain confirmation by

ODFW biologists. Ranchers are also reporting changes in behavior by

cattle consistent with harassment by wolves. One serious consequence

of wolf harassment reported by ranchers in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana

is that stock dogs can no longer work cattle because fear of dogs

causes cattle to bunch up protectively instead of herd, Childers said.

Childers said the OCA is asking ranchers to document any and all

interactions with wolves, behavior of cattle, and preventative actions

taken. “We need to get this Wolf Plan and the state Endangered Species

Laws changed,” said Childers.

There are two known wolf packs wolves in Oregon, both in Wallowa

County. ODFW confirms a pack of 10 in the Imnaha area and another pack

estimated to be of four in the Wenaha area. Other single wolves are

believed to be dispersed throughout the state. Approximately 30 head

of livestock have been confirmed killed by the wolves in the last 12

months; 29 in five attacks in Baker County and one in Wallowa County.

Rancher encounters wolves

Written by Katy Nesbitt, The Observer March 30, 2010 03:43 pm

Wolves at the door: Wallowa County ranchers face their worst fears

By Kathleen Ellyn
Wallowa County Chieftain

It was 3:30 a.m. Friday, March 26, when Karl Patton, a Joseph cattle rancher, knew the wolves were among his newborn calves. Outside the window he kept open as he slept, he heard his three border collies "creating a commotion" and then heard their barking change from aggressive to "getting-away barking."

" I knew at the time it was probably wolves," he said. "I jumped in my coveralls and grabbed my cell phone and pistol and ran out. I could hear the cows calling for their calves in the pasture right next to the house."

Oregon Department of Fish and Game (ODFW) District Biologist Vic Coggins had warned Patton's neighbor, Rod Childers, on the March 18 that radio telemetry showed the wolf pack was in the area - four miles east of Joseph on the south end of Zumwalt Prairie. Then, on March 19, some squirrel hunters saw six wolves in the open, in the middle of the day, just up the canyon from Patton's house.

Now, Patton ran through the dark, across the skiff of new-fallen snow, with only his "youngest and dumbest" dog willing to go with him. He was headed toward the sound of his 60 head of distressed mother cows. He'd gone about 100 yards from the house when he saw the wolves.

"The wolves came and they were coming hard," he said.

"Four or more and they were circling us. I just yelled and went to shooting my pistol to scare them off and they turned and ran. My adrenaline was pumping. I don't know if I was scared - I know I wanted the wolves gone. All my cows and calves were in the far corner of the field, bunched tighter than tight, like musk ox do when they face a predator. I was sure we'd find a dead calf."

Patton dialed 911 and then neighboring rancher Rod Childers.

"I wanted confirmation," he said. "I wanted all the official confirmation I could get. I was worried that if I waited and the snow melted so we couldn't see the tracks, ODFW would come out and say we couldn't prove it was wolves."

By morning, Wallowa County Sheriff Fred Steen, USFWS wolf hunter Marlin Riggs, and Childers who is also wolf committee chairman for the Oregon Cattleman's Association and vice chair for the Wallowa County Natural Resources Advisory Committee (NRAC) had all seen and documented the wolf tracks. Soon thereafter, ODFW Wolf Program Coordinator Russ Morgan arrived. There were plenty of wolf tracks in the snow. Some measured six-and-a-half inches long.

Riggs and Steen also discovered that the wolves had dug up a dead cow Patton had buried about a half mile east of the ranch.

Patton has since moved his burial pit, is digging it deeper and is now armed with tools that will let him know when the wolves come again.

These tools are intended to help him drive off wolves.

He has a "RAG box," a device that sets off an earsplitting alarm that sounds like helicopter blades and gunshots and activates a strobe light when a radio-collared wolf comes within range. He also has a radio that pulses when a collared wolf is within line-of-sight.

It's not as comforting a defense as a loaded rifle, the preferred wolf deterrent of many ranchers.

If the wolves ignore or skirt the RAG box, or if a non-collared wolf arrives, Patton's newborn calves could be torn to pieces before he got close enough to wave his arms and shout.

Furthermore, Patton said, he is already courting disease by keeping his new calves together in the eight-acre pasture near the house. Ideally, calves should be out on broad pastures with plenty of room between them - broad pastures like the one he intends to move his cattle to soon, where wolves have been repeatedly recorded present - too far out for him to hear any commotion outside his bedroom window.

Not 30 hours previous to Patton's experience with wolves, approximately 60 people had gathered at Enterprise's OK Theatre for a special showing of the documentary film, "Lords of Nature: Life in a Land of Great Predators" and hear a panel of wildlife experts and cattlemen discuss the wolf issue. At that showing and discussion, the audience was told that the issue was more one of fear than actual danger, the killing of 30 sheep in Keating Valley near Baker City last April was a rare case that had been blown out of proportion by the media, and that only a negligible percentage of cattlemen had any trouble with wolves - just one percent of cattle ranchers according to Idaho statistics.

That last statistic is useless, said Oregon Rep. Greg Smith, R-Heppner, who has been "struggling to educate" west side legislators about the true cost of wolves. "That one percent counts every cow in the state, including cattle in feedlots and every dairy cow, it just doesn't make sense," he said.

"Many west side legislators are not having to deal with wolves on a day-to-day basis and their attitude is, 'we'll just have to deal with it.' But they don't understand the livestock industry and the impact this is having on these real business owners," he said.

A more useful statistic would be the percentage of cattlemen in areas where wolves range who have lost calves to wolves, Childers said.

Wolves may be new in Wallowa County, he said, but he has approximately 1,000 pictures of wolf attacks on livestock and wildlife sent to him by ranchers, hunters and others from nearby states.

Even the wolf's best defender, the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, reports verified kills of more than 3,800 cattle, sheep or other domestic stock from 1987 to 2009 - nearly 300 in 2009.

Ranchers say that number is a fraction of the actual kills.

"Twenty to 25 percent of what we believe are wolf kills are verified in Idaho," said Childers. Keating Valley rancher Tic Moore lost five calves during the time when two wolves were on a killing rampage in his immediate vicinity. Only one calf was a "verified" wolf kill.

The impact of wolves is sufficient that if Wallowa County cattle ranchers suffer what Idaho ranchers or even Oregon ranchers like Tic Moore have suffered, many will go out of business, Childers said.

Moore told the audience at the OK Theatre that he had suffered a 2.5 percent loss with the loss of his five calves. He was not compensated for the full value of even one calf, he said. Furthermore, his 2.5 percent loss estimate did not include the cost of veterinary bills, the loss of a year of planning and management, the loss of production on the mother cows that he fed for a year, the cost of his bull and the cost of the normal care of the animals for that year.

To put that 2.5 percent loss in perspective, one must understand the very narrow margins by which small cattle operations survive, Childers said.

"The profit margin for small ranchers like Karl Patton and me is 4.5 percent," he said. Childers and Patton each run about 400 cows. "If we lose 2.5 percent consistently, some of us will go out of business. And we're ranchers whose wives have outside jobs to help pay the bills."

No one seems to want the ranchers to go out of business. ODFW has twice attempted to have the Oregon Wolf Plan amended to allow ranchers to take a wolf attacking their livestock and to compensate them for loss. The Oregon Cattleman's Association attempted to lobby for these same changes last legislative session. Defenders of Wildlife states that its goal is to "shift the economic responsibility for wolf recovery from the individual rancher to the millions of people who want to see the wolf population restored."

Ranchers themselves say the same thing.

"Just give us the tools to deal with this," said Tic Moore at the OK Theatre presentation.

"I just want to be able to defend my own property," said Patton.