Communication, the first casualty of wolf reintroduction

SALMON, Idaho--Dave McFarland has lived cattle ranching since he was a small boy on his father's 1,400-acre spread. Now a 46-year-old eastern Idaho rancher himself, McFarland is convinced reintroduced wolves will kill many of the calves he works so hard to raise.

Ted Koch, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife official dedicated to restoring ecological balance to the northern Rockies, is equally convinced the wolves will stay away from vulnerable and valuable livestock, feeding instead on abundant wild game in the Salmon River Mountains near McFarland's ranch.

The two men, sober and thoughtful, illustrate the divide that separates proponents of the wolf reintroduction program--both government officials and environmentalists--from its critics, the family ranchers whose livelihoods depend on the safety of their herds.

The scope of the disagreement extends far beyond conflicting assumptions on how many calves the wolves will actually kill. The two sides dispute everything from the competence with which officials staged the wolves' release to the very motives driving local opposition.

Fish and Wildlife officials are optimistic that few cattle will be killed. Koch says there have been only 23 cases of wolves taking livestock in the last 10 years in Idaho--hardly a significant financial blow to the state's thousands of cattle ranchers. He also doubts the new wolves will change the numbers much.

But McFarland doesn't buy the official estimates. "Ask them how many were reported," he says. The burden of proof is too high, he says; if there's doubt about the cause of a calf's death, it isn't considered wolf depredation. He suspects many calves pronounced stillborn or killed by dogs were actually attacked by wolves.

Ranchers and locals wave a frustrated hand at the steep terrain around their valley and say the wolves will have difficulty hunting in the steeper canyons. As a result, they'll raid vulnerable calves that graze on ranches nestled in the foothills. McFarland concedes that wolves currently in Idaho have learned to stay away from livestock, but he insists the newly introduced wolves will not.

Koch and his government colleagues say those fears are unfounded. Wolves are not habitat-sensitive and animals relocated from the Jasper and Banff areas of Alberta will adapt quickly to central Idaho, which certainly was part of their historical range. The new wolves will have no more reason than do existing wolves to venture into the valleys for the easy prey.

Even if that's true, McFarland doesn't like the idea of wolves preying on the deer and elk that his family has traditionally hunted. He and other hunters have been diligent in their efforts to abide by hunting regulations that have helped restore deer and elk herds over the years, he says. "You don't want to see them killed by wolves."

Koch, an avid hunter himself, shakes his head at that analysis. "Each year in Idaho, poachers kill at least five times as many elk and deer as would a recovered wolf population," Koch says. "Prey populations drive predator populations."

Most gloomy, perhaps, for the future of consensus on wolves in the West, is the lack of agreement about the motives of local opponents.

Koch says he believes people oppose the wolf introduction primarily on symbolic grounds, that it's "an ideological disagreement with that kind of approach to government." While he concedes some perception of threat among ranchers, he believes the fervor of his opponents is mostly political.

Like almost all rural residents, McFarland has no love of government agencies or the increasing role he thinks they play in his life. But that's not why he opposes the wolf program. Instead, he says, his feelings are based on the fear of losing livestock and the depletion of game populations.

And the two sides don't simply disagree on what will happen in the future. They are even miles apart in their recollection of key events in the past.

The reintroduction debate was brought to center stage in Congress after one of the wolves was shot dead on rancher Gene Hussey's property in Lemhi County. That wolf and one of Hussey's calves are both dead. That's certain. Beyond that, what happened to the calf depends on who you ask.

McFarland says the local veterinarian--who helps him birth his own cows each year--examined Hussey's dead calf and announced it killed by a wolf. He says it had mud on its hooves, indicating it was not stillborn, and neck trauma, indicating the wolf attacked it rather than merely eating it.

The government's official position is that the calf died naturally and the wolf was simply feeding on it.

The two sides also have starkly contrasting views of the second of two wolf releases in that area. Locals call it an example of government bungling. Fish and Wildlife calls it a hard job made difficult by local interference and freak weather.

The release, which took place at Corn Creek, was delayed for two days, first by a court injunction, then by a snowstorm that made flying the wolves into the forest (as originally planned) impossible. The wolves sat in their crates for two days while first the courts then the weather held up their release.

Koch says the storm was an unexpected, freak occurrence--and one that wouldn't have interfered anyway if the injunction hadn't held them up. Locals like Phil Nisbet claim the weather in those mountains can always turn ugly and officials should have had a better backup plan.

Though people like Koch and McFarland share no common ground when it comes to wolves, they do share a hope for reason that bodes well.

McFarland expresses a willingness "to listen to a different perspective." If somebody shows him a better way to do something, he says, he's happy to follow.

Koch wants to see the wolf recover without hurting the ranchers' livelihood. He believes the ranchers genuinely love their land. "They don't hate wildlife. They wouldn't live there if they did," he says. "I believe that 99 percent of all disagreements are caused by miscommunication, and it takes two to miscommunicate."