BAKER CITY HERALD • TUESDAY, JULY 5, 2022 A5
THE WEST
Conservationists call for action on wolf poaching
BY NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS
The Associated Press
SPOKANE, Wash. —
Wildlife advocates say there
has been a distressing uptick
in wolf poaching cases in the
Northwest in the past year
and a half.
Four dead wolves were dis-
covered in the northeastern
corner of Washington state
in February. That followed
the poisoning of eight wolves
in Eastern Oregon in 2021,
along with the poaching of a
total of eight wolves in Idaho
last year.
While the numbers are
small, they are a big jump
over previous years. Oregon
had a total of 10 confirmed
wolf poachings between
2017-2020. Washington had
no confirmed wolf poachings
from 2017-2021. Data for
2017-2019 was not available
for Idaho, but the state had
three confirmed wolf poach-
ings in 2020.
Wolf experts say the actual
number of poaching inci-
dents is likely much higher.
The cases are difficult to
solve because they occur in
remote, rural areas where a
perpetrator can kill a wolf
and bury the body.
“The term ‘shoot, shovel
and shut up’ is what gets
thrown around a lot and
from my conversations it
seems to be pretty engrained
in these communities,” said
Sophia Ressler of the Cen-
ter for Biological Diversity,
which compiled the num-
bers.
“There is actually science
that shows for every con-
firmed poaching there are
likely several additional,”
Ressler said.
In the Washington case,
deputies from the Stevens
County Sheriff ’s Office dis-
covered four dead wolves on
Feb. 18.
The incident report did
not find any evidence of bul-
let holes or physical trauma
to the wolves, which sug-
gested their deaths may have
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife/Contributed Photo
Three wolves from the Walla Walla pack in Umatilla County, photographed by remote camera in 2017.
been the result of poisoning.
No arrests have been made
in the case, despite conser-
vation groups offering a
$30,000 reward for informa-
tion leading to a conviction.
The dead wolves were all
in the territory of the Wedge
Pack, which has been exter-
minated twice for preying on
cattle. But new packs keep
forming in what is prime
wolf habitat.
Wolves were exterminated
in Washington early in the
last century at the behest
of the cattle industry. Since
wolves returned to the state
in 2008, there have been nu-
merous conflicts with ranch-
ers.
There were a minimum of
206 wolves and 33 packs in
Washington state in 2021, ac-
cording to an annual survey
conducted by state and tribal
biologists. Idaho has about
1,500 wolves, while Oregon
has about 173.
The Washington case is
“pretty distressing and alarm-
ing,” said Julia Smith, wolf
policy lead for the Washing-
ton Department of Fish and
Wildlife. But the number of
wolf poaching incidents is
still small, she said.
The agency knows that
there are a number of unde-
tected wolf poachings, but
the numbers must be small
because the total number
of wolves keep increasing,
Smith said.
Conservationists are out-
raged about the poisoning of
wolves.
“Putting poison out on the
landscape for any unsuspect-
ing creature to feed on is one
of the most loathsome things
a person can do,” said Brooks
Fahy, executive director of
Predator Defense, a national
nonprofit advocacy group.
“It’s not just about killing
wolves. It’s also about want-
ing them to suffer.”
Steph Taylor, president of
Speak for Wolves, said Wash-
ington has a poaching problem
and wildlife managers “need
to step up their game in hold-
ing these disturbed poachers
accountable. Otherwise, this
shoot, shovel, shut up culture
will continue to thrive.”
Meanwhile, Oregon wild-
life troopers found eight dead
wolves between February and
July of 2021 in the northeast-
ern part of the state. The an-
imals were poisoned, but the
deaths remain unsolved.
Last December, Oregon
State Police announced they
had exhausted all leads in the
case and pleaded with the
public for help. A $36,000
reward has been posted for
information that leads to an
arrest.
The Oregon deaths last
year included all five wolves
from the Catherine Creek
Pack, found southeast of
Mount Harris, plus three
wolves from other packs.
In late 2020, the Trump ad-
ministration removed gray
wolves from the endangered
list and stripped their legal
protections, citing “the suc-
cessful recovery of the gray
wolf.” But in February 2022,
the Biden administration re-
stored federal protection for
gray wolves in most of the
lower 48 states. The decision
to re-list gray wolves was
hailed as a major conserva-
tion victory for the species.
Ressler, an attorney at the
Center for Biological Diver-
sity, said the poaching cases
must be solved.
“If poachers are allowed to
get off scot-free, it only en-
courages them to kill again,”
she said.
U.S. testing new fire retardant, critics push other methods
BY KEITH RIDLER
Associated Press
BOISE — U.S. officials
are testing a new wildfire re-
tardant after two decades of
buying millions of gallons an-
nually from one supplier, but
watchdogs say the expensive
strategy is overly fixated on
aerial attacks at the expense of
hiring more fire-line digging
ground crews.
The Forest Service used
more than 50 million gallons
of retardant for the first time
in 2020 as increasingly de-
structive wildfires plague the
West. It exceeded 50 million
gallons again last year to fight
some of the largest and lon-
gest-duration wildfires in his-
tory in California and other
states. The fire retardant cost
those two years reached nearly
$200 million.
Over the previous 10 years,
the agency used 30 million
gallons annually.
“No two wildfires are the
same, and thus it’s critical for
fire managers to have differ-
ent tools available to them for
different circumstances a fire
may present,” the Forest Ser-
vice said in an email. “Fire re-
tardant is simply one of those
tools.”
The Forest Service said tests
started last summer are con-
tinuing this summer with a
magnesium-chloride-based
retardant from Fortress.
Fortress contends its retar-
dants are effective and bet-
ter for the environment than
products offered by Perime-
ter Solutions. That company
says its ammonium-phos-
phate-based retardants are su-
perior.
Fortress started in 2014
with mainly former wild-
land firefighters who aimed
to create a more effective fire
retardant that’s better for the
environment. It has facilities
in California, Montana and
Wyoming, and describes itself
as the only alternative to fertil-
izer-based fire retardants.
The company is headed by
Chief Executive Officer Bob
Burnham, who started his ca-
reer as a hotshot crew mem-
ber fighting wildfires and ulti-
mately rose to become a Type
1 incident commander, direct-
ing hundreds of firefighters
against some of the nation’s
largest wildfires. He often
called in aircraft to disperse
plumes of red fire retardant,
Joe Kline/EO Media Group, File
A single-engine air tanker drops a load of retardant at the Prineville Airport during a demonstration in
2015.
a decision he said he wonders
about now after learning more
about fertilizer-based retar-
dants and developing a new
retardant.
“This new fire retardant is
better,” he said. “It’s going to be
a lot less damaging to our sen-
sitive planet resources, and it’s
going to be a lot better fire re-
tardant on the ground.”
The main ingredient in For-
tress products, magnesium
chloride, is extracted from
the Great Salt Lake in Utah,
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a method and process the
company says is more envi-
ronmentally friendly and less
greenhouse-gas producing
than mining and processing
phosphate. The Forest Service
last summer tested the compa-
ny’s FR-100, and this summer
said it will test a version called
FR-200.
Perimeter Solutions, which
has facilities and equipment
throughout the West, has had
a number of name and own-
ership changes over the years
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magnesium-chloride-based
retardant is essentially a salt
that will inhibit plant growth
where it falls, possibly harm-
ing threatened species.
Both are concerned about
direct hits to waterways with
either retardant and poten-
tial harm to aquatic species.
Aircraft are typically limited
to giving streams a 300-foot
buffer from retardant, but the
Forest Service allows drops
within the buffer under some
conditions, and they some-
times happen accidentally.
“Their theory is that it’s a
war, and when you’re in a war
you’re going to have collateral
damage,” Stahl said. “It’s the
fire-industrial complex, the
nexus between corporate and
government agencies com-
bined, with really no interest
in ending making warfare on
wildfires. It’s ever-increasing.”
Currently, much of the West
is in drought. The National In-
teragency Fire Center in Boise,
Idaho, is reporting that so far
this year there have been more
than 31,000 wildfires that have
burned about 5,000 square
miles. That’s well above the 10-
year average for the same pe-
riod of about 24,000 wildfires
and 2,000 square miles burned.
Wildfire seasons have be-
come increasingly longer as
climate change has made the
West much warmer and drier
in the past 30 years, and scien-
tists have long warned that the
weather will get wilder as the
world warms.
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but has dominated the market
for more than two decades.
The company’s Phos-Chek
LC-95A is the world’s most
used fire retardant. The com-
pany is transitioning to a new
retardant called Phos-Chek
LCE20-Fx, which the com-
pany said is made out of food-
grade ingredients, making it a
cleaner product.
“We’re certain that the
products that we make are the
safest, most effective, most
environmentally friendly
products available,” said Chief
Executive Officer Edward
Goldberg. “We’ve spent de-
cades in partnership with the
(Forest Service).”
Phosphate is mined in mul-
tiple places. Goldberg said
they get phosphate both do-
mestically, including from
Idaho, and internationally. He
declined to go into detail, but
said the company hasn’t relied
on China or Ukraine, and has
substituted other suppliers for
Russia and Belarus.
The Forest Service said that
tests this summer with FR-200
will be limited to single-en-
gine airtankers flying out of
an airtanker base in Ronan,
Montana. That appears to be
to prevent mixing the compa-
nies’ retardants.
Two Forest Service watch-
dog groups contend both
types of retardant harm the
environment, and that the
agency should be spending
less on retardant and more on
firefighters.
Andy Stahl, executive di-
rector of the Forest Service
Employees for Environmen-
tal Ethics, and Timothy In-
galsbee, executive director of
Firefighters United for Safety,
Ethics, and Ecology, both said
that the ammonium-phos-
phates-based retardant is es-
sentially a fertilizer that can
boost invasive plants and is
potentially responsible for
some algae blooms in lakes
or reservoirs when it washes
downstream. They said the
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