Oregon gets taste of living with wolves

[depakid]

"You don't hate a bear or a mountain lion or a wolf," says Charley Phillips of Joseph. "They're doing what comes naturally. It's really a people problem and a political problem." Still, Phillips is keeping his cattle close in, using up valuable winter hay instead of grazing the herd on high pasture.
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JOSEPH -- Their deep, mournful howls sometimes drift along Tucker Down Road not far from Joseph, sliding across the open ranch country and timber-covered mountain foothills.

Wolves finally have returned to Oregon.

Two small permanent packs roam the far northeastern corner of the state -- giving Oregon its first real taste of what's ahead as Canadian gray wolves repopulate their historic haunts. "Wolves were a missing piece of that ecosystem," said Cat Lazroff, spokeswoman for the 530,000 member Defenders of Wildlife environmental group.

The powerful predators are good for the isolated landscape and its wildlife, she said. They keep elk and deer on the move, preventing them from overgrazing. That, in turn, improves the health of riverbanks and re-energizes foliage and grasses, she said. "One of the things that wolves can do is make their traditional prey species act more the way they used to," Lazroff said.

But Wallowa County ranchers beset by a rash of wolf attacks on calves this spring insist that cattle and canus lupis will never co-exist in their rugged county, where cows outnumber people almost 4-to-1. "You've got essentially a social experiment here," said Wallowa County Sheriff Fred Steen. "Wolves are a very efficient, four-legged piranha."

Wildlife managers fall in the middle of the debate -- they've sent government hunters to kill two wolves because of attacks on livestock and issued permits to several ranchers, allowing them to kill wolves if they catch the animals preying on their cattle.

This is likely the beginning of a culling cycle that should keep the wolf population down in Oregon, preventing dramatic declines in livestock and Rocky Mountain elk, said Ed Bangs of Helena, Mont., the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's gray wolf recovery coordinator.

"There will not be wolves wall-to-wall, that's for sure," Bangs said.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/06/oregon_gets_taste_of_living_wi.html

[rpannier]

1. 4 legged piranha

Hell of a sad description

[ProgressiveProfessor]

4. Accurate as well

[depakid]

5. That's about the dumbest comparison I've heard anyone make

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Face a pack in the wild and then offer an opinion

[depakid]

7. Been in the wild with wolves more than a few times

Unlike you, I don't find them in the slightest bit scary- and obviously nothing like a school of fish!

I guess some folks are frightened by animals- and hence, need to use hyperbole or otherwise make them out to be something that needs to be exterminated. As with California Mountain Lions- or Grizzly Bears.

[pscot]

8. You do this often?

Just asking.

[ZombieHorde]

2. The wolf situation is a tough one.

On one hand we want to protect the species, on the other hand we love eating animals.

[Cleita]

3. Cattle are not native to the Americas.

I love steak but maybe it's time to change our diet. DH and I camped in Montana in a really wild and fairly inaccessible place where there was still a pack of wolves that roamed before they even started to try to reintroduce them. We heard them in the night and we knew they were neither coyotes nor dogs. I asked one of the rangers if they were wolves and was told to keep quiet and not talk about it. Evidently, there was still a pack back then that had survived the wolf genocide that the locals and forest service were trying to keep the ranchers from killing. It's time to let the elk and bison reclaim their place in the ecosystem. People who keep cattle should do it in places that aren't so wild.

[YankeyMCC]

9. Like it or not

wolves are part of a sustainable healthy ecology which is necessary for the health and happiness of everyone including humans.

And wolves are wolves and will want to kill cows.

It's not easy it's life. The question 'can cows and wolves live together' misses the point. They do and people and cows and wolves must just find the way to keep on doing that as best they can.