Quote Originally Posted by Irving View Post
As to Bailey's point, it really seems like all these issues are mostly social. There are always those who are for or against and usually the issues are made up. Idaho has under 1,000 wolves and people hate them? I'd have to say that those people are morons. The wolf to people interaction has got to be so infrequent.
I don't know that I'd say they're morons. Most of the wolves are in the panhandle...probably a third of the state. Most of the complaints come from ranchers and farmers that lose a significant amount of livestock to wolves or those in the hunting industry who say they've decimated ungulate herds in the area. Anecdotally, I'd say there is at least some evidence that's true. I live basically on the edge of two of the biggest wilderness areas in the state and I've spent a significant amount of time in the back country. I've not yet seen an elk in Idaho. I've seen them in SE Washington.

You're right about the number of wolves in the state. Estimates of 90 packs at 6 to 9 wolves per pack are common. Fish and Game has to wage a PR battle they don't wanna wage with the population. It's not so much that people are against wolves. It's that they were given a number and said that's where the population should roughly remain...150 to keep them off the endangered species list. But now there are 5 times that number and pro-wolf activists want even more. It's a big political thing here.

Personally, I think they're magnificent animals...just like elk. I wouldn't want to kill one. On the other hand, my livelihood isn't related to them.

In March 2015, Idaho Fish and Game reported that 19 wolves were culled along the Lolo range straddling the Idaho Montana border in an effort to improve elk survival. Elk numbers in the Lolo Zone dropped from 16,000 elk to about 2,100 animals in 2010, and wolves were deemed to be the biggest predator to elk cows and calves.
In some cases they're allowing the wolves to basically do to elk as what people did to wolves.

I don't have the answer.