Four new packs identified; Methow numbers decrease
Washington’s gray wolf population continued to grow last year, but at a slower rate than in recent years, and the number of wolves documented in or near the Methow Valley dropped from 11 in 2016 to five at the end of 2017.
An annual survey of wolves conducted by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) found the state was home to a minimum of 122 wolves in 22 packs at the end of 2017, compared to 115 wolves in 20 packs at the end of 2016. The overall number of wolves increased about 6 percent last year, compared to an average annual increase of about 30 percent over the past decade.
The survey identified four new wolf packs last year, all located in the eastern part of the state. It also found that the number of successful breeding pairs of wolves increased from 10 in 2016 to 14 pairs in 2017. The report also noted the first wolf documented in western Washington — a wolf in Skagit County that has been collared and is being tracked by wildlife officials.
Two of the state’s 22 wolf packs have territory in the Methow Valley — the Lookout and Loup Loup packs. Based on aerial surveys, WDFW found only two wolves last year in the Loup Loup Pack, which was estimated to have eight animals in 2016. The two wolves, a male and a female, have radio collars that allow biologists to track them.
“When we flew this winter, there were only two wolves on the three flights we flew,” said Trent Roussin, statewide wolf biologist for WDFW. Researchers on the ground “weren’t reporting any more signs to us that would lead us to believe there were more.”
The survey documented one death among Loup Loup wolves last year that was human-caused and is under investigation. Because gray wolves are protected as a federally listed endangered species in the western two-thirds of the state, which includes the Methow Valley, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the Loup Loup wolf death. Gray wolves are protected as endangered throughout Washington under state law.
Looking after Lookout
Biologists know that another Loup Loup pack wolf, a yearling female with a radio collar, left the pack and traveled at least 542 miles into south-central British Columbia before contact with the collar was lost in July 2017.
The Lookout pack, named for Lookout Mountain, had three wolves in 2017, the same number as the previous two years. “We put a considerable effort in ground tacking … and consistently got a group of three,” Roussin said.
First documented in 2008, the Lookout Pack was the first known wolf pack in Washington in 70 years, and had as many as 10 members before the pack was decimated by poaching. The WDFW survey found that neither the Lookout nor Loup Loup packs had a successful breeding pair at the end of 2017. A successful breeding pair is defined as a male and female wolf raising at least two pups that survive through December.
Report raises concern
The survey, conducted annually since wolves began re-establishing in Washington in 2008, represents “minimum counts” of wolves in the state, due to the difficulty of accounting for every animal, especially lone wolves without a pack, said Ben Maletzke, WDFW wolf specialist. The actual number of wolves in Washington is likely higher than the 122 documented animals, he said.
However, the slower annual growth in the statewide wolf population compared to past years was cause for concern by a conservation group that has sued WDFW over lethal removal of wolves. The 6 percent increase in 2017 is a “sharp contrast” to the average 30 percent annual increase of previous three years, said Amaroq Weiss of the Center for Biological Diversity.
“While population growth hasn’t stopped entirely, these modest numbers clearly indicate the state should not kill any more wolves,” Weiss said.
She noted that WDFW killed three wolves in the summer of 2017 due to conflicts with livestock — one in the Sherman pack and two in the Smackout pack, both located in northeastern Washington. The state’s Wolf Conservation and Management Plan allows WDFW to kill wolves after repeated predation on livestock, but only in the eastern third of the state where wolves are not federally protected.
Lawsuit challenge
The state’s lethal removal protocols have been challenged in a lawsuit filed last September by the Center for Biological Diversity and Cascadia Wildlands. The lawsuit asserts that WDFW should be required to conduct environmental impact assessments of its lethal removal actions.
“Wolf recovery in Washington is still in its infancy and the population should be continuing to grow, not stagnating,” Weiss said. “The new report validates our lawsuit’s contention that the department’s killing of wolves must be scientifically evaluated for how it impacts wolves alongside other sources of wolf mortality and the overall population status.”
Roussin said the slower growth rate indicated by the 2017 survey “is something we’re looking at and paying attention to,” but is not out of line with normal shifts in wolf populations.
“It’s a big change from the previous year, but it’s not completely uncommon to see our packs fluctuate from one year to the next,” he said. “I see it as pack building, and then the following year those packs will typically fall apart, mostly through dispersal. It’s probably related to resources available in the territory.”
WDFW documented nine wolves that dispersed, meaning they left the territory where they had been born or previously lived. The number of dispersing wolves is probably considerably more than the nine that are known, Roussin said.
Some of the documented dispersing wolves roamed into Canada or neighboring states and one was shot in Idaho. “A lot of the time they will get killed by other packs in other territories, or get hit by cars,” he said.
Conservation Northwest, a conservation organization that has advocated for wolf recovery, said the survey indicates a “notable increase in the number of successful breeding pairs compared to past years.”
Mitch Friedman, executive director, said the report also shows that “social tolerance for wolves continues to grow as well, evidenced in part by growing uptake of deterrence measures by livestock operators and reduced acrimony in the state Legislature.”
Conflict prevention
As the state’s wolf population has continued to grow, WDFW has collaborated with livestock producers, conservation groups and local residents to prevent conflict between wolves and domestic animals, Maletzke said.
WDFW had cost-sharing agreements in 2017 worth more than $306,000 with 37 ranchers who took steps to protect livestock from depredation by wolves, the agency reported. State assistance included range riders to check on livestock, the most common conflict prevention measure, as well as guard dogs, lighting, flagging for fences, and data on some wolf pack movements.
Wolf mortalities
WDFW confirmed wolves killed at least eight cattle and injured five others last year, and WDFW paid two claims totaling $3,700 to compensate livestock producers for losses.
“We know that some level of conflict is inevitable between wolves and livestock sharing the landscape,” Maletzke said. “Our goal is to minimize that conflict as the gray wolf population continues to recover.”
WDFW documented 14 wolf mortalities in 2017. Three wolves — one in the Sherman pack and two in the Smackout pack — were killed by WDFW due to repeated livestock predation. Three wolves were killed through legal harvest by tribal members on Colville Confederated Tribe lands, two were killed in “caught-in-the-act” shootings and two were killed by vehicles.
Four other human-caused wolf deaths are under investigation. Those include the Loup Loup wolf, which was protected as an endangered species under federal and state law, and three wolves in the eastern part of the state that were protected as endangered under state law.
The dead Loup Loup wolf was found by biologists with the Washington Department of Natural Resources, who considered the death “suspicious” and reported it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Gregg Kurz in Fish and Wildlife’s Wenatchee office.
The WDFW annual survey estimated that at least 33 wolf pups survived to the end of 2017, compared to 35 pups in 2016. Biologists captured 12 wolves last year and placed radio collars on them, making a total of 22 wolves from 15 different packs that have collars and are monitored by wildlife officials.
The survey is a cooperative effort of state, federal and tribal agencies, and information is based on aerial surveys, remote cameras, wolf tracks, and signals from radio-collared wolves.
