EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the final installment of Howl, a five-part written series and podcast season produced in partnership between the Idaho Capital Sun, States Newsroom and Boise State Public Radio.
Thirty years after wolves were brought back from near extinction in the U.S. Rocky Mountains, the state of Idaho is back in the wolf-killing business.
Based on direction from the Idaho Fish and Game Commission, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game is working to reduce the state’s wolf population by more than 60% over six years.
According to the Idaho Gray Wolf Management Plan 2023-2028, the state’s goal is to reduce the wolf population down from the estimated average of 1,270 wolves to a new average of about 500 wolves, with a low of about 350 wolves.
Based on the population dynamics in Idaho’s wolf population, the state estimates humans would need to kill about 37% of Idaho’s estimated wolf population each year for six years to reach the goal of an average population of 500 wolves
While nearly everyone in the wolf debate says it’s extremely difficult to get an accurate count of the animals within the state’s borders, some wolf advocates don’t agree with Idaho officials on how many wolves are actually in the state due to the research methods used until recently.
And some worry that if the state doesn’t have an accurate wolf population count, it doesn’t know how many wolves should be killed under the management plan.
Current wolf hunting, trapping policies a grim reminder of eradication campaign from the past, early wolf member of wolf management team says
Idaho legislators are driving the policy by responding to concerns from farmers and ranchers who have had animals like sheep and cattle killed by wolves.
Between 2014 and 2023, wolves in Idaho killed a minimum of 1,291 domestic livestock animals, according to state records. The losses affected 299 different ranchers and farmers.
But for Marcie Carter, one of the early members of the Nez Perce Tribe’s program that managed wolves in Idaho, the expansion of wolf hunting and trapping and the government-sponsored killing of wolves in Idaho is a grim reminder of the eradication campaign that nearly killed off all wolves in the U.S. Rocky Mountains by the 1940s.
Wolves are a native species in Idaho and all across the U.S. But as setters moved West, the U.S. government passed wolf-killing bounties meant to encourage westward expansion. By 1926, rangers had killed the last wolves in Yellowstone National Park. The last wolf in Idaho was killed in the 1930s, according to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
In one of the most successful and controversial wildlife comeback stories in American history, the U.S. government reintroduced wolves to Yellowstone and Idaho in 1995.
“We did all this great work, and we spent hours and hours out in the woods and then to come to this point where they’re treated like vermin, it’s really disorienting,” said Carter, who now works as the watershed coordinator for the Nez Perce Tribe’s Department of Fisheries Resource Management.
The impact of wolves on livestock in Idaho
Having livestock killed is a big deal to the rancher who owns that animal.
But some wolf advocates say that, big picture, the number of livestock killed by wolves is pretty low every year.
From 2018 to 2022, there were an average of 259 livestock deaths each year in Idaho that were deemed “confirmed” or “probable” wolf kills, according to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. (Depredation is the term officials use when a predator like a wolf kills or maims livestock like cattle. Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials said “confirmed” or “probable” determinations are dependent on sufficient evidence remaining, which is dependent on very rapid detection and investigation of the carcass and minimal disturbance by scavengers. Those criteria often aren’t met in remote environments, therefore the documented “confirmed” and “probable” depredations should be considered a minimum number, Fish and Game officials said.)
That’s in a state with about 2.5 million head of cattle and 235,000 sheep – including on feedlots and dairies where wolves and other predators are not present.
That means wolves kill an average of about 0.01% of Idaho’s combined cattle and sheep population each year.
How does Idaho estimate its wolf population?
All sides in the wolf debate agree it is extremely difficult to produce an exact population count of wolves in Idaho.
The state is too big, the terrain is too rugged and wolves are too elusive for that to happen.
Instead, officials use multiple different techniques to estimate that wolf population.
Until recently, Idaho Fish and Game officials used wildlife trail cameras and a statistical model to estimate the state’s wolf population.
Some outside researchers expressed concern with the accuracy of using wildlife cameras to estimate wolf populations.
Scott Creel, an ecologist and conservation biologist who works for Montana State University, has studied carnivores since 1987 and studied wolf-elk interactions since the 1990s.
Creel has been critical of wolf population methods used in Montana and Idaho.
“I was frustrated with seeing methods being used to estimate wolf numbers that were very indirect and, in my opinion, were unlikely to produce accurate estimates,” Creel said. “I was particularly worried that the methods I was seeing used would produce estimates that wouldn’t change, even if the wolf numbers were really changing. So the wolf population would appear to be constant, even though the policy changed just because of the way we were counting them, which is extremely oblique in both of the two methods that I was reviewing.”
The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks declined an interview request for this story.
Creel stressed that accurately estimating wolf populations is extremely difficult.
Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials disagree with Creel’s criticism, but acknowledged trail cam population estimation methods become less reliable when the number of images of wolves from the trail cameras declines.
In July 2024, Idaho Fish and Game announced a new wolf population estimation procedure.
Instead of using trail cams, officials are using new methods involving combination of genetic and information taken from a tooth of every wolf mortality documented by the state, information on the biological range of wolf population dynamics, a statistical model, and actual wolf hunting and mortality data.
It’s called the ABC method, short for Approximate Bayesian Computation, which Idaho Fish and Game officials said has been used widely in other scientific fields like epidemiology and population genetics. Biometricians use that method to estimate the total number of new litters of wolf pups each year and the average estimated wolf population.
When he introduced the new wolf population estimate in July 2024, Idaho Fish and Game Wildlife Bureau Chief Shane Roberts said the new population estimation method independently produced similar population estimates to the trail cam method’s population estimates from 2019 to 2022 using different data.
Roberts said that gives him confidence the new method produces consistent and reasonable population estimates. He also said it backs up the old trail cam method that outside researchers have publicly criticized.
“Although no population estimation technique is perfect, we now have an independent source of information that validates the camera-based estimates that we’ve been using to guide wolf management since 2019 and refutes the idea that those estimates are wildly erroneous, as some have claimed,” Roberts said during the July 2024 Idaho Fish and Game Commission meeting.
But for 2023, the trail cam method and the new method produced different population estimates.
The new method estimated 1,150 wolves, while the trail cam method estimated 840 wolves, Roberts said.
Even though it has been a year since Idaho Fish and Game officials announced their new estimation methods, the methods do not appear on the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s website for public review.
Howl reporters Clark Corbin and Heath Druzin asked Idaho Fish and Game officials for a copy of the state’s new methods for estimating the wolf population.
In March, Fish and Game officials said the only available information is a YouTube video of officials announcing their wolf population presentation. The relevant discussion takes place more than four hours into a six-hour Idaho Fish and Game Commission meeting on July 24, 2024.
Officials said they are working to publish their methods.
“We are in the process of preparing a manuscript for peer-reviewed publication on the method, which we hope to have submitted for publication later this spring or early summer,” Roberts said in March.
As of June 24, the department had not yet published its new wolf population estimation methods in a peer-reviewed publication. Roberts said June 24 that officials are close to submitting it and hope to have it submitted for peer-reviewed publication before the upcoming July 17 Idaho Fish and Game Commission meeting.
Despite questions and criticisms of past methods, Roberts said he is confident in using the new population estimation to drive wolf management decisions in Idaho.
“Because we were able to produce five years of virtually identical estimates between (the new methods) and the camera-based methods we’ve used before, we are confident this transition will result in consistent information to inform wolf management in the state,” Roberts said during the July 2024 Idaho Fish and Game Commission meeting.
Why Idaho’s wolf population estimate is important
Bob Crabtree, who founded the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center, said accuracy in wolf population estimates is extremely important.
“It’s like asking a business owner to try to make a profit or try to avoid losing money by not knowing what items they have on the shelves that they stock in their store,” Crabtree said. “Population size, or abundance, is the No. 1 criteria used to successfully manage and conserve and restore wolves. And without it, you just can’t.”
Many wolf laws and policies rely on wolf population estimates.
State Sen. Van Burtenshaw, a Republican rancher from the town of Terreton, Idaho, sponsored Senate Bill 1211, which Gov. Brad Little signed into law in 2021.
The law removed the limit on the number of wolf tags hunters could buy each year, legalized wolf trapping year round on private property and allowed the state of Idaho to contract with federal agencies and other third parties to kill wolves.
Burtenshaw said he pushed for the law because his constituents told him there are too many wolves eating too much livestock.
“The big thing was the amount of farmers and ranchers that were dealing with significant losses because of the wolf population,” Burtenshaw said. “Originally when the wolf was reintroduced, they were talking about 150 or something in the Idaho region. And we had well over 1,500, almost 1,600, for a long time. So the depredation cost was huge to those that had livestock and other animals as well.”
“That population has kind of got out of balance, and that’s what we’re trying to figure out is where that balance is,” Burtenshaw said.
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The impact of wolf hunting in Idaho
Idaho sold more than 53,000 wolf tags to hunters in 2023 even though there are only an estimated 1,150 wolves in the state, according to documents provided by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.
More than half of those wolf tags were sold in the popular “sportsman’s package,” which includes a hunting/fishing combo license and tags for deer, elk, bear, wolf, mountain lion, turkey, salmon and steelhead. (State officials said they do not know the percentage of hunters who bought a wolf tag because wolves are the primary animal they are hunting vs. the percentage of hunters who primarily hunted other animal species but still bought a wolf tag.)
From the 2019-20 wolf hunting season through the 2023-24 hunting season, hunters and trappers killed an average of more than 400 wolves a year in Idaho, according to Idaho Fish and Game.
In addition to expanding wolf hunting and trapping, Idaho also financially reimburses expenses for hunters who successfully kill a wolf.
Since 2019, the state of Idaho has paid out $849,750 in reimbursements to successful wolf hunters, according to data provided by the Idaho Fish and Game.
The money is Idaho Fish and Game funding that is transferred to the Wolf Depredation Control Board for the Foundation for Wildlife Management’s reimbursement program, Fish and Game officials said. Separately, the foundation has applied for and received Idaho Fish and Game Commission Challenge Grants.
“Our end (goal) in this originally was focused on trying to direct the harvest where we were seeing the greatest impacts – chronic livestock depredation, elk populations below objective, where predation was a factor – to try to focus that effort where harvest at that time was not sufficient to stabilize the wolf numbers,” said Idaho Fish and Game Deputy Director of Operations Jon Rachael, who was an original member of the wolf recovery team.
In the context of hunting, the word harvest means successfully killing a game animal such as a wolf.
The reimbursement money can be used for firearms, ammo, traps, trail cameras, gear, license fees, fuel and even ATV vehicles used to scout or hunt wolves, according to the foundation.
Rusty Kramer, the president of the Idaho Trappers Association, said he has used state reimbursement money to make payments on his truck, which he uses when he is tracking and trapping wolves.
The standard reimbursement in Idaho is capped at $750 per wolf.
But in areas where elk populations are below their objective, or livestock have been repeatedly killed by wolves, the reimbursement limit increases to $2,000 per wolf.
Some wolf supporters call the program a bounty system and scoff at the idea of the state sending checks to people who shot wolves to help pay off their trucks and ATVs.
But Idaho Fish and Game officials insist it is only a reimbursement program – not a bounty.
“Any of the funds that come from the state of Idaho, from the Wolf Depredation Control Board, or, in the past, from the Fish and Game Commission Challenge Grants did require that this money was not just a straight payment of a certain amount, but rather the individual claiming compensation present evidence of their expenses,” Rachael said. “And so in that regard, it was compensation for their investment of buying traps or fuel to run a trap line.”
U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed it killed juvenile wolves in Idaho
When the state kills wolves, it doesn’t just kill adult wolves that are confirmed to have attacked livestock.
The state, other government agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services and third party contractors can kill wolf pups in their dens and their nursing mother – even if those specific wolves never attacked a cow or sheep.
“You can kill wolf puppies,” said Carter Niemeyer, a former government trapper who helped bring wolves back to Idaho and Yellowstone National Park 30 years ago and opposes killing wolf pups and many of Idaho’s wolf policies. “They’re plum legal if you kill them at a day old. Stomp their head in with your boot if you want to.”
Students at Timberline High School in Boise spoke out a few years ago after the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services killed wolf pups from a pack that the school symbolically adopted, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported.
In an October 2021 letter to Suzanne Asha Stone, a prominent Idaho wolf expert and a member of the wolf reintroduction team, former U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary Jenny Lester Moffitt, confirmed the government killed eight juvenile wolves in Idaho in an attempt to relocate the larger pack and reduce the number of livestock killed.
Carter, who was on the Nez Perce Tribe’s wolf reintroduction team in the 1990s, is sickened that the state would authorize the killing of wolf pups that never disturbed livestock.
“I mean, it’s one thing to shoot an adult,” Carter said. “But to trap puppies in the den hole? It’s just so awful. And I don’t understand how people can be that hateful to one species of animal that has a right to be here. But for sure, the state has not done their due diligence.”
“I‘ll just stop there,” Carter added. “The state of Idaho is not taking care of this species.”
Since wolves were removed from the Endangered Species List in 2011, the USDA Wildlife Services and other agencies have killed 961 wolves in Idaho, according to Idaho Department of Fish and Game documents.
Since 2018, Idaho Fish and Game has spent $817,668 on lethal control actions to kill wolves in Idaho, according to documents the department provided. That total specifically refers to Idaho Fish and Game funding through the Wolf Depredation Control Board that was not spent on reimbursements made by the Foundation for Wildlife Management.
One of Idaho’s policies is that even when nonlethal tools are available to reduce conflicts between livestock and wolves, the state can kill wolves without first trying the nonlethal tools.
“Livestock producers may use deterrents to aid in protecting their property; however, they are not a prerequisite for lethal removal,” the Idaho Gray Wolf Management Plan 2023-2028 states. “Regardless of use or success of nonlethal methods, landowners may request a special kill permit from IDFG for use on lawfully permitted public and private lands. IDFG will continue to employ lethal removal as needed to address both individual depredations and overall population goals.”
30 years after wolf reintroduction, some of the people who brought wolves back worry about their future
Longtime wolf advocates say the government-sponsored killing of wolves and expansions in hunting and trapping is reducing the number of wolves.
Now, 30 years after the first wolves were returned to Idaho and 14 years after they came off the Endangered Species List, several prominent members of the team that brought wolves back worry about the threats wolves face today.
Niemeyer is a longtime government trapper who has tracked wolves across Idaho and Montana since before reintroduction in 1995. Intimately familiar with wolves, he was a member of the team that traveled to Canada 30 years ago to capture wolves to reintroduce them to Idaho and Montana.
For years after reintroduction, Carter studied the packs and knew the location of many dens in central Idaho.
Niemeyer was so confident in his ability to find wolves that he regularly guided donors who supported conservation organizations into the wild to see wolves. He knew the landscape well enough he could set up camp just close enough for the donors to see and howl for wolves as Niemeyer cooked cowboy-style dinners for the group.
But those days are over.
Over the last few years, Niemeyer said he and his longtime contacts are no longer seeing wolves in the wild the same places they always used to.
“When they’re in there, they see virtually little or no sign of any wolf existence in the Frank,” Niemeyer said, referring to the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness. “If you put together what I’m seeing, or better yet, what I’m not seeing…. Nobody’s finding any wolf evidence. So where are these 1,300 or 1,500 wolves?”
Niemeyer’s luck isn’t any better than his friends.
During a Howl reporting trip in July 2024, Niemeyer found wolf scat and wolf tracks, but no wolves. And during another, separate expedition in 2024, he said he struck out entirely – he didn’t even see a wolf track.
“The Big Buck Pack, Steel Mountain Pack, Jackson Pack, Archie Pack, I can name all these packs up there, Thorn Creek – there’s no packs in those places anymore, mostly because of domestic sheep that came in there and Wildlife Services just went to hammering wolves,” Niemeyer said. “And then you’ve got the recreational hunting and trapping that started when (wolves) were delisted.”
“You’ll still find a wolf track up in that country,” Niemeyer said. “But to say there’s anything like the numbers there were, I don’t believe it. You wouldn’t convince me.”
Carter worries about new expanded wolf hunting, trapping and lethal control policies in the state of Idaho.
“The state of Idaho is going to – if they haven’t already – plunge wolves back towards extinction, at least in Idaho,” Carter said.
“How do you manage if you don’t know how many you have?” Carter added.
She isn’t alone in worrying about the state management of wolves and the removal of limits on hunting and trapping.
“Is it a violation of our treaty?” Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee Chairman Shannon Wheeler said. “Is it a violation of something that we were meant to protect? Of course it is. Of course it’s a violation of what was here in 1855 and before then. And that’s a part of tamáalwit, or the unwritten law, which we know that Article Three and the Treaty of 1855 with the Nez Perce represents.”
Some members of the wolf reintroduction teams say attitudes are even worse today than they were 30 years ago.
“Our country’s worse now than it was in terms of polarization, so those extreme divisions have only widened and become more cemented,” said Stone, executive director of the International Wildlife Coexistence Network and a co-founder of the Wood River Wolf Project. “ Back then, if I had told anyone from the opposition that didn’t want to have wolves back that they would be trapping and killing wolves 365 days of the year, using bounties to kill even pups in the den, they would have told me I was crazy and that would never happen – never happen. And we’re living it today. That is the reality on the ground today.”
Stone isn’t alone.
“Oh, I’m pretty worried,” said Doug Smith, who headed up the wolf program at Yellowstone National Park for nearly 30 years until he retired in 2022.
“Attitudes haven’t changed,” Smith said. “The fact is, they’re worse now. I’ve been studying wolves for over 40 years, and wolves have always been controversial. There’s always been people who like wolves and people who hate wolves. Now it’s like people are willing to do anything to get rid of wolves or anything to protect wolves, and they don’t want to talk to each other. I don’t think that’s progress, and right now the anti-wolf forces are winning in Idaho and Montana especially.”
Journalists Clark Corbin and Heath Druzin reported and wrote Howl over the course of 14 months, trekking deep into the backcountry in some of the most remote places in the Lower 48 chasing the story of America’s wildest and most controversial wildlife comeback story – wolf reintroduction.
This story first appeared on Idaho Capital Sun.