Opinion: A Good Session for Wolves-What do you think?

A good session for wolves

Lawmakers approve bill compensating ranchers

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Gray wolves dodged some bullets in the Oregon Legislature this session, and lawmakers approved a bill that enhances prospects for wolf recovery in this state.

By passing a bill compensating ranchers for livestock lost to wolves, lawmakers filled a gaping hole in Oregon’s six-year-old wolf management plan. The legislation creates a $100,000 fund for counties to deal with attacks on livestock by wolves, which moved into Oregon from Idaho and have now formed two small packs that roam the far northeastern corner of the state. Part of the money will go to nonlethal measures to protect livestock, but most of it will pay ranchers for cattle and sheep losses.

Oregon’s wolf plan needed a tax-supported compensation fund that will protect ranchers from financial losses and require Oregonians, the majority of whom support the recovery of wolves in their state, to share the burden of the cost of restoring their population. Establishment of a fund was especially important since a private compensation program offered by the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife ends this fall.

Lawmakers prudently rejected several proposals for wolf controls that would have undermined the state’s wolf plan, which was the result of years of negotiations by a coalition of scientists, economists, conservationists, ranchers and hunters.

Critics of the wolf plan, including the Oregon Cattleman’s Association, pushed for bills that would have made it easier to kill wolves. Others would have eliminated state endangered species protections and halved the wolf plan’s population objective.

Wolves have staged a remarkable comeback since the mid-1990s, when officials seeded central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park with 66 wolves. Since then their population has rapidly grown throughout the Rocky Mountain states, where they have a vital balancing effect on the ecosystem, suppressing other predators such as cougars and coyotes, and strengthening deer and elk herds.

But wolf recovery has just begun in Oregon, where they were eradicated by bounty hunters in the early 20th century through a state-sponsored extermination program.

By creating a tax-supported compensation plan — and resisting the temptation to play politics with wildlife management — legislators have given the wolf recovery plan the time and resources it needs to work.

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