Wolves first started to recolonize the state in 2008 when the first successful breeding pair produced a litter. During the past seventeen years while we have seen an overall increase in numbers their rate of growth has slowed, poaching has increased, and the number of breeding pairs declined from 2022 to 2023.

 We still don’t have any packs or breeding pairs in the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast recovery zone the largest of the state’s three recovery zone.

During 2023 and 2024 the Endangered Species Coalition and our allies successfully helped defeat a proposal from the Department of Fish and Wildlife that would have down listed protections of wolves from endangered to sensitive under the state Endangered Species Act. This was especially important as the wolves in the eastern third of the state are not protected under the federal Endangered Species Act.

Last year the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission voted to deny the department’s request as it did not meet the State’s Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, was based on a scientifically disputed modeling study, and didn’t focus on the recovery of wolves throughout the state.

This year’s Washington House Bill 1311 would have overturned the commission’s decision.  Our staff lobbied and testified against the bill and our Washington State members inundated the legislature with comments against the bill which helped kill it.

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Endangered Species Coalition staff and our Washington State volunteers led the grassroots efforts in opposition to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s proposed downlisting of the wolf’s status from endangered to sensitive.  

State protection for wolves is important as wolves are only protected in the western two-thirds of the state under the Endangered Species Act.

Wolves returned to Washington in 2008 but still only number approximately 250 animals.

In 2011, Washington Developed a Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, a nearly 300-page document subjected to peer review and analyzed through an Environmental Impact Statement. 

The Plan sets standards before wolves can be delisted or downlisted, and Washington’s wolf population has not met these benchmarks.   

The Plan established three wolf recovery zones: Eastern Washington, Northern Cascades, and the Southern Cascades and Northwest Coast. To downlist to threatened, the Plan requires at least two successful breeding pairs in each of the three recovery regions. To downlist to sensitive, the Plan requires at least four successful breeding pairs in each of the three recovery regions. 

There are no successful breeding pairs in the South Cascades and Northwest Coast recovery zone, the largest recovery zone with the most wolf habitat. 

Under pressure from special interests, the department chose to ignore the conservation and management plan and proposed downlisting wolves to sensitive status. This would have decreased the penalties for poaching wolves from $5,000 and/or up to a year in jail to $1,000 and/or up to 90 days in jail when wolf poaching incidents are on the rise.   It would have also eliminated the requirement that foresters avoid tree harvesting and road construction within 1 mile of known wolf den sites, a rule that will become increasingly important as the wolf population moves west. 

When the department proposed the downlisting in February 2023, 681 of our Washington members commented opposing it. When the final draft proposal was released this year in March, ESC testified against it, and 423 Washington residents and 8,851 members from across the country submitted comments.

The commission decided to vote on the proposal at its July meeting. In response, the Endangered Species Coalition turned out over 40 of our members to testify at their June meeting.And on the weekend before the July vote we were able to get over 100 of our Washington State members to write personal letters to the commissioners opposing the proposal.Along with other environmental organizations, we intensely lobbied commissioners until the last moment. 

The outcome of the vote was unknown and only decided once the votes were cast. One commissioner switched his vote to keep wolves listed as endangered, giving wolves a 5 to 4 victory.

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The Endangered Species Coalition staff and our Washington State members helped defeat them this winter in what has become a yearly ritual.

Only 216 wolves reside in Washington and breeding pairs have yet to return to the South Cascades and Northwest regions. They are still listed as endangered under both the federal and state Endangered Species Acts. Yet, we continuously see bills that would allow their killing and block their recovery throughout the state.

Several anti-wolf bills were introduced in this year’s legislature with two being particularly egregious.

The first would have allowed ranchers, families or employees to kill the first wolf to return to a site of any type of predation of livestock. It would have allowed the baiting and killing of wolves. It also ignored the state protocol on preventing livestock and wolf conflict and the determination on how an animal died or what type animal it may have been killed by.

The second would have set up regional/county wolf management plans in lieu of the current state wolf conservation and management plan. The bill would have cut out citizen input, disregarded best available science, and ignored that wolf packs home ranges don’t follow county lines.

In my position as the Endangered Species Coalition Pacific Northwest representative, I testified against these bills and our Washington State members rallied and sent in over 1,300 comments in support of wolves to their legislators. 

Your support helped kill these anti-wolf bills and continue to give Washington wolves a chance to recover throughout the state.

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Proposed rules would require Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to meet certain standards before using taxpayer funds to kill state endangered wolves

OLYMPIA, WA Eleven conservation groups petitioned the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission this week to adopt rules requiring the state to meet certain standards before it uses taxpayer money to kill state endangered wolves.

Washington taxpayers have footed the bill to kill 41 endangered wolves over 10 years, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for sharpshooters to kill wolves from helicopters. The Department killed about 80% of these wolves due to predations on cattle belonging to a single family, repeatedly eliminating entire packs in the same areas.

The rulemaking petition comes after Gov. Jay Inslee directed the commission three years ago to initiate rulemaking to regulate the management of wolves. Despite this directive, the commission voted in 2022 against adopting a wolf management rule. Similar to past proposals, the proposed rules would require the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to document that livestock operations have taken steps to protect their cattle before killing wolves due to livestock conflicts.

“Killing wolves does not solve conflicts with livestock, which is why we see conflicts develop in the same areas year after year. The rules we propose would require the Department to address the conditions that give rise to such conflicts before it can consider killing wolves,” says Claire Loebs Davis, board president of Washington Wildlife First. “We hope the Fish and Wildlife Commission will take this opportunity to establish Washington as a leader in managing wolves in accordance with science rather than emotion.”

The proposed rules would also prevent the state from killing wolves due to conflicts with livestock in public-owned forests, a practice supported by only 25% of Washington voters according to a poll commissioned last year by Washington Wildlife First. Yet nearly 90% of the wolves the state has killed were targeted, at least in part, due to predations of cattle grazing on public lands, including within the rugged territory of the Colville National Forest.

“The Colville National Forest is prime wolf country, not a cattle pasture,” Davis says. “As people continue to encroach on wildlife habitat, it is increasingly important that we preserve some areas for our wildlife. Instead, we have a few livestock owners who turn their cattle out into the Colville Forest year after year with no supervision or protection, and when some of those cattle are killed by predators, the state kills the predators. That needs to end.”

Currently, Washington wildlife officials decide when to kill wolves after considering a non-binding protocol that has proven ineffective in protecting both wolves and livestock. The Department has frequently killed wolves after conflicts with cattle that were grazing in public forests directly on top of wolf dens or rendezvous sites, when the livestock owners have not taken any meaningful steps to protect their cattle, and even when dead cattle had been left nearby to attract predators. In some cases, the Department has killed wolf pups too young to hunt. Typically, wolves are killed at random by helicopter sharpshooters, often many days or weeks after the predations have occurred.

“The Department insists that randomly shooting some members of a pack weeks after a cattle predation will somehow teach the rest of the wolf pack a lesson. Everybody who owns a dog knows this is preposterous, and not surprisingly, there is no scientific support for this approach,” Davis says. “The Department knows better, and it needs to focus its efforts on helping people to prevent these conflicts before they occur, rather than on ‘punishing’ wolves for being wolves.”

Both livestock owners and wildlife advocates have complained about the uncertainty and inconsistency in the state’s wolf management decisions and the Department’s lack of transparency. For example, Washington Wildlife First filed a public disclosure request more than 10 months ago for information about a Department decision to kill wolves from the Smackout pack, but is still waiting to receive documents showing the rationale for that decision.

“It is a drastic and unusual step for the state to kill a state endangered species,” Davis says. “The Department manages the state’s wildlife in trust for all people in the state, and it is unacceptable that it makes these momentous decisions without any accountability or transparency.”

In recent years, Washington has also seen a rise in the number of wolves killed by the public. In the past six years, livestock owners have killed 10 wolves claiming they were “caught in the act” of attacking livestock, with 5 of these shootings occurring during the past two years. In many cases, there is no evidence to support these claims, with some investigations showing that the wolf was not even near livestock at the time. The proposed rules would close this loophole by implementing standards for when a livestock owner can kill a wolf “caught in the act.”

Meanwhile, nine wolves were illegally killed in 2022, including six that were poisoned. The Department has not made any arrests in connection with these incidents, despite a reward of more than $50,000 posted by wildlife advocacy groups for information leading to a conviction.

“Since the Department continues to perpetuate the myth that killing wolves is the ultimate solution to conflict, the increase in wolves killed by members of the public sadly comes as no surprise,” says Davis. “We are asking the Department to show leadership and clearly communicate the message that killing wolves is not the answer and prioritize its work with livestock owners to find solutions to better protect both cattle and livestock.”

The rulemaking petition was filed by Washington Wildlife First, the Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Northwest Animal Rights Network, Coexisting with Cougars in Klickitat County, Cascadia Wildlands, Animal Wellness Action, Center for a Humane Economy, Kettle Range Conservation Group, and the Endangered Species Coalition. The commission has 60 days to respond.

Claire Loebs Davis
Washington Wildlife First
+1 206-601-8476
email us here
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Contact: 

Samantha Bruegger, Executive Director (970) 531-6720 sbruegger@wawildlifefirst.org ;

Claire Loebs Davis, Board President (206) 601-8476 claire@animalearthlaw.com 

 

For Immediate Release: May 26, 2022 

Washington Wildlife First Calls on State to Disclose Wolf Poaching Incidents 

Nonprofit offers $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of wolf killers 

Seattle, WA – Washington Wildlife First is calling upon the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to be honest with the public about the extent of wolf poaching in the state. The nonprofit also announced that it is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone responsible for illegally killing wolves in Washington. 

Julia Smith, the Department’s wolf policy lead, confirmed for the first time Wednesday afternoon that the agency is aware of and actively investigating dead wolves in Stevens County, Washington. 

Smith’s statement appeared in an article posted Wednesday night in the Northwest Sportsman, which indicated the Department was refusing to provide any further details, because the incident is still under investigation. 

An incident report from the Stevens County Sheriff’s Office confirms that two deputies discovered four dead wolves while on snowmobile patrol in the county on February 18, 2022, and immediately reported them to the Department. The report indicates that the deputies never heard back from the Department about the incident. 

Rumors have circulated for weeks about widespread poaching in Stevens and Ferry counties, but the Department has either denied any knowledge of the incidents or refused to answer questions about them. These denials have come as the Department proclaims the success of its wolf recovery efforts and tries to fight back any meaningful limits on its authority to use taxpayer funds to kill wolves, under a rule being considered by the state Fish and Wildlife Commission.

 

“The Department should be honest with the Washington public about what is happening to wolves in our state,” says Washington Wildlife First Executive Director Samantha Bruegger. “The Department has been dodging questions on poaching for months, and sometimes lying outright to the public. The Department continually asks the members of the public to ‘trust’ it, but how can we trust an agency that has been so consistently dishonest with us?” 

In contrast to Washington’s attempt to hide these crimes, Oregon authorities have been transparent about wolf poaching incidents in that state, where an entire pack of eight wolves was poisoned in the eastern part of the state in 2021. As a result, nonprofit organizations have offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone responsible. 

Washington Wildlife First announced on Thursday that it would offer a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or people responsible for any wolf poaching in Washington. 

“If the Department was transparent about the fact that poaching was also happening in our state, I have no doubt that other organizations would immediately contribute to this reward,” Bruegger said. “We hope that this poaching is being investigated aggressively, and certainly do not want the Department to disclose details that would compromise that investigation. But these wolf deaths were discovered more than three months ago, and state authorities cannot continue to hide the fact that these crimes were committed.” 

At a meeting of the Fish and Wildlife Commission earlier this month, Commissioner Melanie Rowland tried to ask Department staff if it was aware of any poaching incidents this year, because she said that information could be significant to the Commission’s consideration of a rule to limit further killing of state endangered wolves. In a sharp exchange, Commission Vice Chairman Molly Linville told Rowland that her questions were “not fair” to Department staff, ordering her to take them “offline,” so that staff would not have to answer them in public. 

A member of the state’s Wolf Advisory Group also asked about the rumors of poaching at an April meeting, but Department staff told her that they were not aware of any poaching incidents. On March 14, 2022, the Department published a monthly wolf report falsely claiming that it had documented no wolf mortalities in 2022. In its April 11, 2022, monthly report, the Department reported that it had found a wolf from the Snookum Pack who had died of natural causes, and the report said this was the only wolf mortality the Department was aware of in 2022. The Department’s May wolf report echoed that claim. These claims directly conflict with the report from the Stevens County Sheriff, which indicates the Department was made aware of at least four additional wolf deaths back in February. 

Samantha Bruegger Executive Director Mobile (970) 531-6720  Email sbruegger@wawildlifefirst.org Web www.wawildlifefirst.org Address 2226 Eastlake Ave E, #101 Seattle, WA 98102

2022.05.26-Press-Release-WA-Wildlife-First-Calls-on-State-to-Disclose-Wolf-Poaching.pdf

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I am the President of Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment (NPtE). I along with Julian Matthews are the co-founders of NPtE. We got our start principally during the rolling blockade of Megaloads traversing the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in North Central Idaho. Megaloads are pieces of equipment too large for ordinary traffic and must receive special attention to travel over highways because of their size. Tribal members, members of the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee (NPTEC), and the public objected to the megaloads going to Canada to the tar sands, and we objected to the callousness of the owners and transport company who subject dangerous extractive industries onto vulnerable communities, and we objected to the lack of consultation when the Reservation Community may have been impacted and the impact to the environment. The Reservation Community wants environmentally sound practices as more fitting of Community values.

The Tribe and others sued and won in federal district court to require such megaioads to consult with the Tribe. The federal government has a duty under the trust doctrine to consult with the Tribe.

Our next endeavor was to advocate for the removal of the Four Lower Snake River Dams (LSRD) to free up the Snake and to give the salmon and steelhead populations a fighting chance at survival. NPtE fully realizes that with the ever declining fish runs, marks the Nimiipuu culture decline as well. When the River suffers, the Nimiipuu suffer as well. We consider the Snake River and the fish populations to be sacred. Mother Earth has taken care of the Nimiipuu for at least, according to an archaeological site on the Salmon River, 16,000. Years.

The Nimiipuu during this period has developed a relationship with this part of North America, which included witnessing last ice age floods. The mission of NPtE includes to educate the public about the contributions made to North America, in particular about the Nimiipuu way of “managing” Mother Earth. It was this management regime that provided the bounty to Nimiipuu and later to the fledgling U. s.

The Nimiipuu because of this 16,000 year involvement and relationship know sustainability. The Nimiipuu system of management sustained a population and way of life for millennia. And, now after a few hundred years we find those populations of salmon and steelhead once numbering in the millions now threatened with extinction.

Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment questions the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), and the Biological Opinion’s (BiOp) rationality. The FEIS is court-ordered, a four-year project, and looked at six (6) recovery alternatives, and selected preferred alternative which is the flexible spill, which is already agreed to. the Biological Opinion is based and drawn from the FEIS, and represents the FEIS preferred alternative. The FEIS is released by three agencies; ACOE, BPA, & USBR. The BiOp is released by the NOAA.

The Facebook page for the Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment has the position of the NPtE. I won’t reiterate them here, but to refer individuals to that page. But, we are investigating options. Primarily, Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment is very concerned about the fate of the River and all of its inhabitants and those that live along and depend on the River. We are, too, very concerned about Treaty rights and responsibilities that go along with fishing for salmon and steelhead.

Historically, salmon consisted of a large portion of the culture and lives of the Nimiipuu. Not only did we consume fish, but as a part o the culture, the salmon provided many cultural aspects, including dance, ceremony, seasonal gatherings,’etc. Not only are the fish threatened with extinction, but the culture of the Nimiipuu is also threatened, if fish cannot survive the ordeal of the dams.

Now is the late summer months when the LSRD reservoirs are thermal pollutants and cess-pools of death for fish that require fast, clean, cold water to survive. The FEIS and BiOp are condemning salmon and steelhead to extinction for industries and livelihoods that can survive and thrive the breaching of LSRD. Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment finds the justifications for maintaining these dams to be deficient from a number of aspects.

The first deficiency to be noted is that the Tribal membership of Nez Perce do not benefit from the operations and maintenance of these impoundments. Grain is shipped for export generally and does not benefit tribal members at home. Hydropower is not clean energy, when spills of lubricant are dumped into dam waters. Energy replacement is affordable and feasible. Organizations are in place to provide the education about such issues, whether they be scientific, economics, or energy.

The conclusion remains: the LSRD have to be breached. The cost of breaching will be more than paid for by a recovered River and River population that predated the building of the dams. Urgency is needed as salmon and steelhead populations cannot wait for more studying the situation which has not appreciably changed as reflected by Treaty Rights and Responsibility practices and uses.

The FEIS and BiOp reflect the federal government’s mismanagement of Trust Resources under the Treaties. Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment stands ready with other Tribal Members, Tribal supporters and non-Tribal supporters to advocate for the rights of Mother Earth and her plants and animals to exist and thrive. The best alternative to accomplish such an agenda is to get rid of these deadbeat dams.

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Margie Van Cleve is a resident of Yakima, Washington and is active in environmental and wildlife conservation through leadership roles with organizations including the Sierra Club.

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Jeff Friedman is the U.S. president of the Pacific Whale Watch Association and owner of Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching in Friday Harbor. Jeff’s clear and evident love of whales and educating others, brought him to join the Maya’s-Legacy vision. Maya’s Legacy Whale Watching carries on the tradition of responsible whale watching and wildlife viewing, personalized private charters and photography tours.

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