As Washington state faces a controversial vote on whether to relax wolf protections on July 19, wildlife conservationists are warning that officials may be relying on inaccurate wolf population data from tribes in the state’s northeastern region.
Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission members have been told by agency officials that wolf numbers have recovered so well that the “threatened” designation is no longer necessary. The state’s most recent population report showed the wolf population grew by 44 wolves last year, the largest increase in the state’s history.
But skeptics worry that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s wolf counts are incredibly high and have lulled commissioners into an optimistic view of the animals’ situation.
“The numbers were questionable,” said David Linn, a longtime wolf advocate and treasurer of Washington Wildlife First.
At issue are the numbers reported to the state by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, which oversees wolf management on the reservation and the adjacent “northern half” of lands where it holds hunting rights.
This year, the tribe reported that the wolf population in its territory had exploded, despite a significant number of wolves being killed by tribal hunters during the same period. This big increase follows a 2022 report that showed a mere 5% increase statewide, well below what some conservation groups hope for in the wolf population’s recovery.
Washington state law prohibits hunting wolves, but the Colville and other tribes are sovereign nations and have the authority to set their own regulations on tribal lands and other areas where they hold hunting rights through treaty agreements.
The numbers provided by the Colville tribe account for most of the state’s wolf population growth last year. Carter Niemeyer, a retired biologist who spent more than 20 years as a wolf expert with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies, said the rapid increases the tribes are reporting are almost unprecedented.
“Those kinds of numbers would shock you,” said Niemeyer, who has worked with the Colville tribe in the past.
Wildlife advocates say the tribes have provided little information about how they collected the data and are skeptical of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s willingness to take the numbers at face value.
But agency officials say they have no reason to doubt Colville’s numbers and that the vote to downgrade was based on years of recovery trends, not a single population report.
The Colville Tribe reached out to Chairman Jared Michael Erickson, who declined an interview request.
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
At the end of 2022, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s documented wolves report counted 35 wolves on Colville land and 157 elsewhere. A year later, the tribe reported 23 more wolves, but the rest of the state saw an increase of just 16. The final statewide total increased slightly because the service increased its projections to account for lone wolves.
The Colville wolf increase comes despite the fact that tribal hunters killed 22 wolves last year, the largest cause of wolf deaths in the state. Taking into account the hunted wolves, the tribe’s wolf population has increased by more than 100 percent.
“When you kill 22 wolves, you have to replace them to get the same number,” Lin said. “It just doesn’t make sense that the wolf population would increase with that kind of mortality.”
The tribe also committed to providing up to 15 wolves to help reintroduce wolves to Colorado.
State wolf specialist Ben Maletzke acknowledged that tribes vary in the level of detail they provide when reporting wolf populations to the state, which shared this year’s numbers on a conference call, but said tribes are essential partners in wolf recovery and he trusts their numbers.
“Yes, we’ve used spreadsheets in the past,” he said. “It’s not the same methodology that we use, but it’s still a methodology.”
Wildlife advocates point out that reported wolf packs on tribal lands average more than seven wolves, while packs recorded by state biologists average five.
Niemeyer, the former federal wolf expert, said there could be room for five or six wolf packs on Colville’s territory, whereas in heavily hunted areas, pack size is typically around three or four wolves.
But Maretzke said it’s not uncommon to see rapid growth within certain wolf subpopulations, which have proven resistant to hunting.
Tribal Management
While no one disputes that the Colville Tribe has the right to hunt wolves, some have been surprised by a recent surge in tribal hunting. In 2019, the tribe expanded wolf hunting to a year-round season with no hunting restrictions. In the past three years, 46 wolves have been killed by Colville hunters, and an additional nine have been hunted by Spokane tribal members.
At a state legislative hearing in February, Erickson, of Colville, said tribal rules don’t allow hunting when wolves are in dens or with pups.
The hearing addressed a proposal, later signed into law by Gov. Jay Inslee, that would have required the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Colville Tribe to work together on wolf management.
During the hearing, Tom McBride, the department’s legislative affairs director, acknowledged the need to improve data sharing with tribes. It’s unclear whether the bill would affect how population numbers are shared or how hunting regulations are determined.
Approaching the vote
On July 19, members of the Washington State Fish and Wildlife Commission will vote to downgrade wolves from “threatened” to “sensitive,” a measure that would reduce penalties for illegally poaching wolves and make it easier for livestock owners to obtain permits to kill wolves that come into conflict with their packs.
The commission is made up of volunteers appointed by the governor, but the vote was prompted by professional Fish and Wildlife Service staff who recommended the reclassification, pointing to projections that wolves will continue to recover in the state.
But the committee also heard from wildlife conservationists who questioned the figures presented by the authorities and opposed the proposed delisting.
Barbara Baker, the committee’s chairwoman, acknowledged “questions about whether state and tribal biologists are comparing on the same basis and using the same data base.”
“Especially in Northeast Washington, people are questioning whether the numbers even make sense,” she said.
Baker added that it’s difficult to publicly question tribal numbers because tribes are valued partners in wolf recovery and officials have an interest in maintaining that relationship.
Fred Koontz, a former director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife who resigned in 2021 after being targeted by hunting groups, believes the agency’s long history of suppressing tribal fishing rights — now considered a stain on the state’s history — has made officials wary of challenging Colville’s figures.
“There is a lot of talk but nobody is addressing the tribal issue,” he said. “Shouldn’t the police have a more sophisticated joint cooperation system? [with the Colville tribes]?”
Baker said he would not indicate how he intended to vote and had not consulted with other commissioners about their intentions.
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