Wolf Plan

The Oregon department of fish and wildlife is a state government entity along with Washington and Idaho fish and game. The government has invested billions into the re-introduction of wolves, presumably from Tax payers dollars. The wolves are funded by the government along with the fish and game employees that investigate the depredations scenes. I assume that if wolves are removed then they would lose a large pool of funding to track them, monitor them, pay out claims etc... I was told by my local fish and game guy that one sophisticated tracking collar costs $9000 dollars. These are so technical that they track the speed of the wolf traveling and also if a wolf dies it transmits a fatality signal. Fish and game tries to collar three wolves in each pack.  Right now there are around 17 wolf packs in Oregon.  Just in collars alone that is $459,000 if 3 wolves in each pack gets a collar.

 

One question I have is Why are we letting employed government officials investigate their own wolf depredations? We need an outside party to be investigating these. That is no different than having Iranian officials investigating and inspecting their own nuclear plants to make sure they are not breaking the treaty rules."   

Perhaps we can find an answer from Mark Werner, owner of BCguideoutfitters up in British Columbia who talks about a team of private citizens banded together with government officials: " We teach them exactly how to measure the size of predation from grizzly bears and wolves. They verify the kills and when they turn in the verification there is now funding for these ranchers for compensation for the livestock that is gone. It also allows us to avail these predator permits that allow wolf trapping specialists to come along and take out those wolves that are targeting these cows. So we have really been working at getting a very successful program that are helping ranchers take out the packs that are killing the livestock."