NEWS
Blue Mountain Eagle
A10
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Wolves
Continued from Page A1
Anderson said it’s hard to
fathom that now, west of 395,
where federal rules apply, it
would be a felony for him to
shoot a wolf that was killing
his cattle.
Anderson said livestock
owners now have no recourse
when a wolf essentially steals
their animals, something he
fi nds antithetical to the coun-
try’s founding principles.
“That’s not how it works
in America,” Anderson said.
“That’s not how it is supposed
to work.”
Even before last month’s
court decision returned some
wolf populations to federal
control, many Oregon ranch-
ers were already suspicious
of the state’s wolf plan, part
of a policy structure that they
believe is rigged against them
by a hyper-liberal majority in
Salem.
Vardanega said he does not
trust ODFW and believes the
agency has made wolf depre-
dation too hard to prove.
The reason, he said, is
because the agency has to toe
a left-leaning political line.
Thus, the process of establish-
ing wolf depredation is funda-
mentally skewed to favor an
environmentalist agenda.
Not only that, he said ranch-
ers suff er in ways that the cur-
rent system doesn’t even touch.
In addition to above-average
losses in circumstances where
they can’t prove wolf kills,
non-lethal measures mean a lot
of additional work for ranch-
ers that involves extra vigi-
lance and the cost of paying a
range rider upwards of $1,500
a month.
Along with paying the
range rider, Vardanega said he
is often anxiously awake at
2 a.m., casting spotlights into
the dark to defend his herds.
Why were wolves
relisted?
Environmental groups sued
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Ser-
vice and former Interior Secre-
tary David Bernhardt in 2021,
after the Trump administra-
tion removed wolves from the
endangered species in the wan-
ing days of his term. The con-
servation groups argued the
delisting was premature.
In last month’s ruling,
Judge Jeff rey S. White of the
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of Highway 395 under federal
jurisdiction as well.
Adkins said the agency
would respond sometime this
year.
The Blue Mountain Eagle
attempted to interview rep-
resentatives of the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service for this
story, but an agency spokesper-
son declined the newspaper’s
request.
A question of trust
Ranchers who lose livestock
to wolf depredation are sup-
posed to be compensated for the
value of the animals, but getting
paid is not as simple as fi ling a
claim.
First, the cattleman’s associ-
ation’s Williams said, the live-
stock producer has to fi nd the
carcass — and they need to
fi nd it quickly, before decom-
position makes it impossible
to identify as a wolf kill. Then,
he said, an investigation has
to prove beyond a reasonable
doubt that it was wolves that
killed the animal.
If a wolf kill is confi rmed,
Williams said, the rancher
can submit a request for com-
pensation through their coun-
ty’s compensation committee.
That’s assuming the rancher’s
county has a committee — not
all counties do.
Finally, he said, there has to
be money available in the coun-
ty’s compensation fund. Those
funds can be depleted by prior
claims, and counties must apply
to the state for more money on
an annual basis.
The cattlemen’s association
supported House Bill 4127, a
measure in the 2022 Legisla-
ture to provide an additional $1
million for the state’s wolf com-
pensation fund to reimburse
ranchers for dead and missing
livestock and the cost of non-le-
thal methods for preventing
wolf attacks.
After a public hearing last
month, the bill died in com-
mittee without ever getting the
chance for a fl oor vote.
Oregon Wild, which joined
the Center for Biological Diver-
sity and four other environmen-
tal groups in the lawsuit that
restored federal endangered
status for wolves, opposed HB
4127.
Danielle Moser, coordinator
of Oregon Wild’s wildlife pro-
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United States District Court for
the Northern District of Cali-
fornia said U.S. Fish and Wild-
life did not take into account
wolves outside the Great Lakes
and Northern Rocky Moun-
tain regions when the agency
proclaimed wolf conserva-
tion a success and removed
the apex predators’ federal
protections.
Ironically, removing wolves
from the endangered species
list is one goal that conserva-
tive and liberal administrations
have long had in common.
Even though the decision
to delist wolves came down
during the Trump administra-
tion, attorneys for the Biden
administration defended the
rule that removed protections,
arguing wolves were resilient
enough to bounce back even if
their numbers dropped sharply
due to intensive hunting.
Not only that, but other
Democratic and Republican
administrations have tried to
delist wolves over the years,
failing every time. The last
attempt to take wolves off the
endangered list came during
the Obama years.
According to John Wil-
liams, who chairs the wolf
committee of the Oregon Cat-
tlemen’s Association, the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service has
60 days to decide whether to
appeal the U.S. District Court
ruling. So far, Williams said,
the cattlemen’s association has
not heard if the agency intends
to contest the decision.
Williams said the judge
denied the livestock indus-
try’s request for intervenor sta-
tus, which would have given
groups like his the ability to
appeal.
Meanwhile, the Center for
Biological Diversity, one of the
environmental groups behind
the lawsuit that overturned the
Trump administration’s delist-
ing decision, is trying to extend
federal wolf protections still
further.
Collette Adkins, carnivore
conservation director and senior
attorney for the center, said the
organization fi led a petition
with the U.S. Fish and Wild-
life Service last year to restore
protections for wolves through-
out the Northern Rocky Moun-
tains — including Eastern Ore-
gon, thus putting wolves east
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Steven Mitchell/Blue Mountain Eagle
Izee rancher M.T. Anderson moves his cattle last month. A state investigator could not determine whether a pair of wolves seen feed-
ing on the carcass of one of Anderson’s cows in February caused the animal’s death.
RD
Even then, before ranchers
could use deadly force in a wolf
attack, they had to have been
using non-lethal deterrents such
as electric fencing or hazing and
had to show those methods had
not worked to stop the attacks.
Those options are now off the
table, with federal protections
back in place on Oregon’s west
side.
Meanwhile, ranchers east
of Highway 395, where wolves
are under state management,
can still shoot wolves caught
biting, chasing or killing live-
stock or working dogs.
In many cases, ranchers are
likely to have one herd of cat-
tle on both sides of the highway.
And with areas of known wolf
activity in both the East and
West Murderers Creek Wild-
life Units on either side of the
road, Grant County fi nds itself
at the center of the long-running
culture war fl ashpoint around
wolves returning to the West.
Gray wolves were among
the fi rst animals protected after
the passage of the Endangered
Species Act in 1973, and the
decision has remained a hot-but-
ton issue ever since. Predators
have a long and controversial
history in the West. The debate
over protecting endangered spe-
cies, especially wolves, has pit-
ted urban liberals against rural
ranchers concerned about los-
ing their livestock to predators.
Roy Vardanega, a third-gen-
eration Oregon rancher, became
Grant County’s fi rst confi rmed
victim of wolf depredation last
May, when fi ve cattle on his
Fox Valley ranch were attacked
and killed — although only one
of the deaths was determined
by investigators to be a defi nite
wolf kill.
He said the liberal elites who
supported restoring the fed-
eral protections of wolves do
not understand that the liveli-
hood of independent ranchers
like him is at stake — especially
now that one of the few tools
ranchers had to take out wolves
that habitually prey on livestock
has been taken away.
Vardanega said it is easy
for city dwellers to romanti-
cize wolves because they do not
have to live with them.
M.T. Anderson, a rancher in
Izee, lost a cow last month to a
suspected wolf attack, although
state investigators were not able
to confi rm wolves caused the
animal’s death.
Anderson said he followed
all of the protocols when wolves
were delisted, adding that it was
hardly “open season” on wolves
before last month’s court ruling
to put the predators back on the
federal endangered list. All the
state rules did, he said, was give
him the legal right to protect his
livestock and working dogs.
“And they just take that
away,” Anderson said. “It’s the
people that make these deci-
sions, such as the judge who
ruled to overturn the delist-
ing. They’ve never had to deal
with this kind of situation. It’s
easy to sit in a courtroom and
(make that decision). It’s not so
easy when you’re the guy on the
ground.”
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Who makes the call?
There were 49 confi rmed
wolf depredations across the
state last year, according to
Ryan Torland, a district biolo-
gist with the Oregon Depart-
ment of Fish and Wildlife.
ODFW will continue to be
the agency conducting depre-
dation investigations, Torland
said, even in parts of Oregon
where wolves are now under
federal jurisdiction. However,
he added, only the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service will be able to
authorize lethal take of wolves
in those areas.
“As far as I know ... they
have not approved the take of
any wolves while the wolves
have been on the endangered
species list,” he said. “They
possess that authority while
listed, and ODFW does not.”
Torland said an ODFW
investigation of a possible
wolf depredation is similar to
a detective’s evaluation of a
crime scene. He told the Eagle
that biologists gather informa-
tion and send it to the agency’s
wolf experts in La Grande, who
make the call whether a wolf
was responsible for the death of
an animal.
He said ODFW investiga-
tors operate much like sher-
iff ’s deputies, who would sub-
mit evidence from a crime
scene to the district attorney to
decide whether there is enough
to prove someone committed a
crime.
Grant County Sheriff Todd
McKinley agreed with that
assessment.
“It is not much diff erent than
a fairly major crime scene,”
McKinley said. “You’ve got
something that’s been killed or
attacked, and you’ve got to fi nd
the facts. And if you’re going to
do it, you better put the eff ort
into it and do it right.”
McKinley had something
like that in mind when he
invited Baker County Sheriff
Travis Ash to speak to the Grant
County Stockgrowers Associ-
ation about how Baker County
handles wolf depredations
An emotional issue
For Vardanega, wolves are a
personal issue.
Many of those who sup-
port putting wolves back on the
endangered species list do not
realize how hard ranchers work
and how protecting their cattle
against predators brings a high
cost in both money and time.
“This is real life,” he said.
“This is how we make a living.”
Vardanega said people who
are adamant about protecting
wolves would have a diff erent
view of the predators if they had
to live next to them.
Vardanega’s wife, Sherri,
put a fi ner point on the matter.
“They should let a wolf run
loose at Central Park in New
York,” she said. “They might
feel diff erently about it.”
Oregon Wild’s Danielle
Moser takes wolves personally,
too.
To Moser, wolves are an
iconic species that deserve
protection.
“I think (wolves) are the
essential American animal in
many ways,” Moser said.
However, she said, the spe-
cies has long been vilifi ed with
frightening stories like “Little
Red Riding Hood.”
In the more recent meet-
ings she has had with live-
stock producers and ranchers,
Moser said, she’s noticed that
their historical timeline picks up
when wolves were not on the
landscape.
Taking a longer view of
history, she said, the spe-
cies has been here since “time
immemorial.”
Moser said the reason why
wolves have not been on the
landscape for much of the last
century is because of human
action.
For Williams, the wolf com-
mittee chair for the cattlemen’s
association, the wolf debate
boils down to two competing
sets of values: one that priori-
tizes animals, and one that pri-
oritizes people.
“(Environmentalists) have
diff erent priorities,” Williams
said. “They’re more interested
in hearing a wolf howl than
they are (a rancher) being able
to have their way of life.”
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gram, said she wanted to see
more transparency in the com-
pensation program. Other critics
argued that the wolf compensa-
tion fund is prone to misuse,
and putting more money into it
would encourage ranchers not
to look for missing animals but
instead simply default to blam-
ing wolves.
Rep. Mark Owens, R-Crane,
was one of the bill’s chief spon-
sors. He contends environmen-
tal groups targeted the bill not
on its merits but simply because
killing it would make their sup-
porters feel good about protect-
ing wolves.
“Bumper-sticker
poli-
tics won the day without sub-
stance,” Owens said.
during the group’s meeting at
the Grant County Fairgrounds
on Thursday, March 17.
Ash said he has heard the
complaints, concerns and argu-
ments from livestock produc-
ers regarding wolf depredations
and how ODFW investigates
them. However, he said, Baker
County is about fi ve or six years
down the road from where
Grant County is when it comes
to wolf depredations.
The sheriff said his offi ce
runs parallel investigations of
wolf killings along with ODFW
and documents everything it
fi nds so there is an independent
record.
Ash encouraged the ranch-
ers at the meeting to forge good
relationships with the state
wildlife biologists in their dis-
trict. While he has butted heads
with the top offi cials at ODFW,
Ash said he is on good terms
with the district biologists in his
county.
“Build those relationships
with those guys that have to
do the work,” Ash said. “And
understand, though, that if the
evidence isn’t there, they have
to say that the evidence is not
there.”
McKinley’s staff is gearing
up to do depredation investiga-
tions in Grant County. McKin-
ley told the stockgrowers that
Undersheriff Zach Mobley and
Sgt. Danny Komning have been
through ODFW’s wolf training
and that he could get other dep-
uties trained as well.
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