Crying wolf
When it comes to elk and CWD, wolves are our allies, not enemies

On Jan. 31, the 30th anniversary of wolves getting reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Tom Tiffany, R-Wisc., introduced their “Pet and Livestock Protection Act.” 

It would abolish Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and Michigan, among other states. 

“Protective listings,” wrote Boebert, are the work of “leftists (who) cower to radical environmentalists.”

As Boebert notes, populations of wolves have rebounded. But the constant slaughter of the animals in the Northern Rockies makes it likely that at some point, federal recovery actions will once more be necessary. That can’t happen if Boebert’s bill succeeds, because it contains a provision that blocks courts from again ordering protection under the Endangered Species Act.

Wolf recovery in the West – the biggest success in wildlife management history – took decades to achieve. I served on the advisory board of the Wolf Fund, which pushed for wolves coming back to Yellowstone, helped get grants for wolf recovery and urged recovery in national publications. As a lifelong hunter, I confronted wolf-haters publicly. 

But what does recovery look like?

In Montana, wolf quotas are increasingly liberal. In 2023 alone, a quarter of the state’s wolves were killed. The population is declining by about 100 animals per year, but that’s not fast enough for wolf-haters. Montana’s Legislature is considering a bill for nonstop hunting until a 600-wolf quota is reached. 

The sponsor, 19-year-old Rep. Lukas Schubert, R-Kalispell, said it’s needed “to drive the wolf population down faster.”

In Idaho and Wyoming, one may collect bounties by choking wolves to death with neck snares, gunning them down from helicopters, shooting them at night, attacking them with dogs, burning pups and nursing mothers in their dens, and trapping. In Wyoming, it is still legal to chase wolves from snowmobiles – a sport known as “wolf whacking.”

Wayne Pacelle, president and founder of Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy, said, “It’s astonishing to me that, last year, House Republican leaders brought up a bill to remove all federal protections for wolves on the heels of the gut-wrenching revelations about cruelty to wolves in Wyoming. In that state, a man ran down a wolf with a snowmobile and crushed the animal… Then he paraded her around a bar before finally killing her.”

That is why states can’t be trusted when they allow such practices and when they jeopardize wolf recovery.

Wolves also get unfairly blamed for fewer animals to hunt. Elk are being depleted by wolves, proclaim the Sportsmen’s Alliance, Safari Club International and Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, all of which sued to block ESA protections. 

But in most of their range, elk are dangerously above population objectives. The real issue for these litigants is that with wolves back in the ecosystem, elk are acting like wild animals again, becoming more wary and harder for hunters to kill.

Wolves do occasionally kill livestock, especially livestock unprotected by fences and guard dogs. Much of that loss is compensated, and sometimes wolves need to be moved out of an area. 

But wolves can be useful on the land, killing deer and elk that have contracted chronic wasting disease. Dan Ashe, former U.S. Fish and Wildlife director, said wolves and other predators cleanse CWD from the environment by removing infected ungulates. 

In a column for Writers on the Range, Ashe noted that the CWD pathogen is a self-replicating protein called a “prion” that is not alive. Humans can’t kill it by inoculating animals or even by cooking infected flesh. Wolves, however, are immune to the prions, deactivating them through digestion. 

Here’s the irony, as Princeton University biologist Andrew Dobson and University of Calgary biologist Valerius Geist said in a Denver Post opinion: “Killing off the wolf allowed chronic wasting disease to take hold in the first place.”

Because CWD may infect humans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns people not to handle or eat infected game. In 2022, two hunters died who ate venison from a CWD-ravaged deer herd. CWD seems the likely culprit in their deaths.

“We are quite unprepared,” warns Michael Osterholm, Center for Infectious Disease director at the University of Minnesota. “If we saw a spillover (to humans) right now, we would be in free fall.” In the words of Dan Ashe about wolves, “Emerging science tells us that these apex predators aren’t the enemy, they’re allies.”

Ted Williams is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a longtime environmental writer and author.