Wolves And Elk Revisited...

[luckycraft]

Not a Montana native, but have lived there half the year for several years now, and have lots of friends there who are "on the ground", so to speak, including hunting guides. I know wolves get most of the blame for the decline of elk in parts of the state, but the point of the article is that the most recent studies show wolves are only a part of the problem, and perhaps not a huge part of it. No doubt that adding a top predator has to have an effect on the elk herd, but in some ways the re-introduction of wolves came coincidentally with the rise of the other problems facing the elk.

I have no problem with regulated hunting and trapping of wolves where their numbers warrant, and Montana has been fairly conscientious about regulating the numbers of wolves taken, while Wyoming seems to have been dragged kicking and screaming into managing wolves instead of trying to wipe them out outside the parks.

In my opinion, the wolf/elk interaction is a fluid situation that will eventually settle into an equilibrium in the wilder areas of the West, with a slightly reduced elk population and a more or less stable wolf population, but the wild cards of drought and overgrazing might keep things out of balance and bad for the elk.

I should send you the article on the wolve population and exponential growth in the Montana outdoor magazine. If you don't get this magizine I encourage you do so. It is very cheap but very educational, and they have an outstanding pictorial edition that is breath taking every year. I am interested in "drought since 2000" I relize that the early 2000s were dry years in montana, but recent years there has been ample rain. Most recent publication "Peck is Back" in Montana outdoor magaizine illustrating the revitalizing of Fort Peck resivoir and the flooding in the confluence of the Missouri river. I believe it was the first time they opened the spill way at Fort peck resvoir since 1950s. Again elk numbers declined in this year. I am not a wolve hater, but have watched many documentaries on them and their re introduction into yellowstone park. Wolves are prolific hunters, and some have called them killing machines. Interesting enough studys are suggesting that some Cows will miscarrage their calf when run to exhaustion escaping predation. Montanan's don't care about numbers in the park, however care about numbers that are in there favorite hunting spots.

This is topic is much similar to the reintroduction of the otter in Missouri and their predation of small mouth bass. Very contraversial

[Tim Smith]

It's not hard to get exponential growth upward from "0".

I'm not from Montana either but I've lived in the west for a while now and I've made several trips back to Yellowstone over the last 35 years, hopefully including this summer. Even in Gardner where most of the economy comes from tourism you'll find plenty of people with nothing good to say about wolves and plenty of hatred for the people who reintroduced them. I don't get the impression it's really "wolf management" they have in mind. "Extermination" is probably a more accurate word.

[Al Agnew]

Maybe it depends upon what part of Montana you're talking about, because in the area of Montana where our house is (Livingston), most of the years since 2000 have been drier than normal, and several have been real drought years. In the last 10 years, the Yellowstone has only been at normal levels or above two of them...though it should be well above normal this year. And since Livingston isn't all that far from the park (50 miles) and is the northern end of the Absaroka/Beartooth ecosystem, it's close to ground zero in the wolf/elk situation.

I have gotten the Montana outdoor magazine in the past, but haven't gotten it in the last couple of years. I don't know when the article you mentioned was written, but the research I talked about in the original post is very recent. As far as exponential growth, as Tim said, it's easy to get exponential growth from zero, and much of the growth of the wolf population in Montana seems to me to be because of the spread of wolves into areas with no wolves previously, and not more and more wolves in a given area. In and around Yellowstone, I believe the wolf population has declined considerably from what it was a few years ago. I can remember watching the Lamar Valley pack about 15 years ago, and one day the whole pack was in sight across the valley, with 28 wolves in it. Right now I doubt if there are more than a half dozen adult wolves in Lamar Valley...at least that's what the wolf watchers tell me. (The wolf watchers are amateur and semi-amateur naturalist wolf lovers that spend nearly every free day in Yellowstone watching wolves...you'll know the ones on the roads because they're the group all clustered together with expensive spotting scopes.)

Anytime you have a predator moving into a vacant niche with plenty of prey, you'll have explosive growth of the predator and decline of the prey (exactly like otters in MO), but eventually, and usually not very long, predator and prey reach some kind of equilibrium. It doesn't really take long for the elk to figure out how to co-exist with the wolves (or else there wouldn't be any elk left after all the eons of wolves preying upon them). Sure, it's possible that cows can miscarry after being run to exhaustion, but if it happened all the time no cows would have been able to calve and again, the elk would have disappeared long ago. And yes, wolves can be killing machines...they're designed to be killing machines. But in the wild with wild prey, they simply don't have the chance, because it ain't easy killing one elk, let alone a pile of them at once. Some wolves might go nuts in a sheep pasture, but it's doubtful they could do the same thing with elk.

[LunkerB]

I have been reading many articles about Wolf numbers remaining steady in Montana and the Northern Rockies despite all the hunting and trapping. It seems as the hunting and trapping is what is dispersing wolves into new areas thus causing the remaining packs in the area to be smaller. In theory this will allow the wolf packs to still trade genetics and most likely disperse into new areas while still keeping numbers in check. Perhaps elk numbers will grow while wolf numbers stay around the same and more hunters and ranchers will start to appreciate the wolves. Sounds like a limited number of Grizzly hunts are on the horizon, if delisted so that obviously will also help elk herd numbers. I honestly do not really think it is that easy to connect the dots so to speak as is done by the Discover article simply because I have taken Environmental Science in college and have also done similiar studies and I have seen how these assumptions are reached.

I am confident wolves will continue to show up in new areas and elk will be fine and hopefully hunters and non-hunters will start to get along better.

http://mtstandard.com/lifestyles/recreation/in-bitterroot-wolf-numbers-remain-steady/article_ca01aae8-b547-11e3-8032-001a4bcf887a.html

[luckycraft]

Maybe it depends upon what part of Montana you're talking about, because in the area of Montana where our house is (Livingston), most of the years since 2000 have been drier than normal, and several have been real drought years. In the last 10 years, the Yellowstone has only been at normal levels or above two of them...though it should be well above normal this year. And since Livingston isn't all that far from the park (50 miles) and is the northern end of the Absaroka/Beartooth ecosystem, it's close to ground zero in the wolf/elk situation.

I have gotten the Montana outdoor magazine in the past, but haven't gotten it in the last couple of years. I don't know when the article you mentioned was written, but the research I talked about in the original post is very recent. As far as exponential growth, as Tim said, it's easy to get exponential growth from zero, and much of the growth of the wolf population in Montana seems to me to be because of the spread of wolves into areas with no wolves previously, and not more and more wolves in a given area. In and around Yellowstone, I believe the wolf population has declined considerably from what it was a few years ago. I can remember watching the Lamar Valley pack about 15 years ago, and one day the whole pack was in sight across the valley, with 28 wolves in it. Right now I doubt if there are more than a half dozen adult wolves in Lamar Valley...at least that's what the wolf watchers tell me. (The wolf watchers are amateur and semi-amateur naturalist wolf lovers that spend nearly every free day in Yellowstone watching wolves...you'll know the ones on the roads because they're the group all clustered together with expensive spotting scopes.)

Anytime you have a predator moving into a vacant niche with plenty of prey, you'll have explosive growth of the predator and decline of the prey (exactly like otters in MO), but eventually, and usually not very long, predator and prey reach some kind of equilibrium. It doesn't really take long for the elk to figure out how to co-exist with the wolves (or else there wouldn't be any elk left after all the eons of wolves preying upon them). Sure, it's possible that cows can miscarry after being run to exhaustion, but if it happened all the time no cows would have been able to calve and again, the elk would have disappeared long ago. And yes, wolves can be killing machines...they're designed to be killing machines. But in the wild with wild prey, they simply don't have the chance, because it ain't easy killing one elk, let alone a pile of them at once. Some wolves might go nuts in a sheep pasture, but it's doubtful they could do the same thing with elk.

The part of montana I was referring to was pretty global. The may-June 2012 issue of Montana outdoor illustrates the wide spread flooding that occurred to include the upper yellowstone, missouri and mussel shell. The yellowstone, and please correct me if I am wrong, begins in the absorka range forms yellowstone lake in yellowstone national park and is at the heart of the wolf and elk conflict. Like any issue that people are passionate about, there are radicals that want to protect the wolf and radical wolf haters. I hope I am somewhere in the middle and label myself as a conservationist. The wolf is a reason for elk decline, and we would be naive to think different. Here is the link to Montana wolf numbers and articles provided by the state FYI http://fwp.mt.gov/fishAndWildlife/management/wolf/default.html#aboutWolves

[Al Agnew]

In the latest article in the Montana Outdoors magazine notes that elk mortality in the Bitterroot valley has been shown in the latest studies to have been caused as much or more by mountain lion predation as wolf predation. It also points out that elk populations over most of the state districts, wolves or not, are near, at, or above what they consider to be the optimum level based upon habitat and conflicts with ranchers.

[Tim Smith]

In the latest article in the Montana Outdoors magazine notes that elk mortality in the Bitterroot valley has been shown in the latest studies to have been caused as much or more by mountain lion predation as wolf predation. It also points out that elk populations over most of the state districts, wolves or not, are near, at, or above what they consider to be the optimum level based upon habitat and conflicts with ranchers.

Another way to say that is "Everybody calm down because the elk are doing fine." ...and...

The wolves are doubling the amount of predation caused by established predators.