Hunter applied to receive Idaho funds to kill wolves. Ranchers say they never signed on

This fall, Idaho’s Wolf Depredation Control Board received a proposal to spend nearly $50,000 that would be used to kill wolves for two ranches. The proposal was attributed to John Faulkner, the owner of Faulkner Land and Livestock, and a member of the family that owns Flat Top Ranch.

Both ranches reside in Central Idaho’s Wood River Valley, near where wolves were reintroduced to the state in 1995. The proposal said the ranches would work with a predator control company to trap wolves and shoot them from a helicopter — part of a new effort to fund wolf control through contracts with agriculture producers.

The problem? Faulkner and other representatives from both ranches told the Idaho Statesman they were unaware of the proposal, did not want to contract with the board and had not agreed to partner with the predator control company.

Faulkner told the Statesman any proposal made in his name was “a bunch of bulls---.”

The person behind the application was a Nevada-based predator control contractor with a history of trapping violations. Wolf advocates said the company’s owner, Trevor Walch, stood to benefit from tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds.

State officials, meanwhile, said the proposals were just the start of the new program open to agriculture producers, not private predator-killing companies like Walch’s, and clarified that Walch has received no money from the board.

Board members approved the proposed scope of work on the application during an Oct. 26 meeting. Idaho State Department of Agriculture Director Chanel Tewalt and Fish and Game Director Jim Fredericks, the wolf board’s co-chairs, told the Idaho Statesman in an interview that the approval was a first step toward a more thorough process of creating a legal contract with ranchers.

But Suzanne Asha Stone, director of the Wood River Wolf Project which uses nonlethal wolf deterrents to reduce livestock depredations, told the Statesman that the preliminary approval of Walch’s proposal indicates a lack of necessary standards for ensuring funds are used appropriately.

“The wolf control board’s lack of accountability for taxpayer funding, lack of public review and utter absence of due diligence in documenting the validity of these applications or tying them to actual conflicts with wolves points to the very ‘witch hunt’ nature of this board,” Stone said.

Proposals submitted without ranches’ knowledge

The Wolf Depredation Control Board allocates state money for trapping, aerial hunting and other lethal wolf control measures as a means of reducing killings of livestock and other wildlife. The board’s budget this fiscal year is roughly $800,000.

The board began the process of involving ranchers earlier this year. The move came two years after the Idaho Legislature passed sweeping changes to wolf hunting and trapping laws, including allowing the board to enter agreements with private contractors for wolf control. Previously, the board could only contract with government agencies for wolf control.

Fredericks said the new program’s goal is “allowing producers the space to just make their case” to the board about their need for state funds. Since launching the program, the board received five proposals from ranchers across southern Idaho.

Three of the rancher submissions, including the one for the Wood River Valley ranches, were nearly identical and proposed working with Walch’s Predator Control Corp. on ground trapping and aerial hunting. The two other proposals totaling $68,000 were for ranch properties and public land leases in eastern Idaho.

Walch did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2020, Walch was one of several wolf hunters issued a warning by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies for violating the Airborne Hunting Act, a Wyofile investigation found. Prosecutors declined to press charges.

Walch was also convicted in several trapping-related crimes in Nevada in the 2010s, prompting the Nevada Board of Wildlife Commissioners to pursue revocation of his trapping license, according to 2019 board documents. Among his convictions were three counts of unlawful trapping in 2015, when officials said he neglected to check a trap line for 13 days, allowing multiple animals, including an elk calf, to die. Nevada law requires trappers to check their traps every four days. In Idaho, trappers must check lines every three days.

Tewalt said the board received the Wood River Valley proposal from Walch, who presented them at the Oct. 26 board meeting. But she and Fredericks pointed out that none of the applications they received came from the ranchers themselves but from someone who helped them complete the application.

“An application can get to us, but that doesn’t mean that person (who submitted it) is actually involved in the project,” Tewalt said. “Their name isn’t anywhere in the agreement. They’re not necessarily included.”

The board co-chairs said they’re still talking with the Flat Top and Faulkner ranch representatives to determine whether the ranches want to move forward with the funding proposals and where the confusion around the applications stemmed from.

Wolf advocates criticize lack of requirements

Stone told the Statesman she attended the October meeting where the proposal scopes were approved. She said she was shocked at Walch’s Faulkner and Flat Top proposal, since both ranches work with the Wood River Wolf Project for nonlethal wolf deterrents.

“I immediately reached out to those ranchers and asked if they were aware of the proposal and why they would do it if they had no (livestock depredation) problems this year,” Stone said.

When ranch officials told her they were unaware of the application, Stone said she left a message for Fish and Game urging them to contact the ranch owners. It’s unclear how wolf board members became aware of the issues — Fredericks told the Statesman someone may have called Fish and Game and questioned whether the ranches were involved in the proposal.

Stone said the lack of requirements allowed Walch to move forward and will let ranchers pursue unjustified lethal action against wolves.

Producers currently have no standard application to fill out if they hope to receive wolf control funds and no requirements to receive funding — such as a confirmed wolf attack on their livestock — through the new program, Fredericks and Tewalt told the Statesman. That’s by design to allow producers to tell the board what they need, Fredericks said, and those standards could change as the program develops further.

The two applications that were unaffiliated with Walch noted the ranches involved had no wolf depredations on livestock in the current year, though they had experienced wolf depredations in previous years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, which has been the Wolf Depredation Control Board’s main contractor, only received funds to kill wolves in response to livestock depredation investigations.

According to Wildlife Services, the number of wolf depredations on livestock has continued to decrease in the past several years. Stone said the Wood River Wolf Project’s 2023 grazing season included more than 24,000 sheep, and no sheep in the organization’s project area were lost to wolf depredation.

Stone told the Statesman she worried there would be little oversight of how the program’s funds are used once they’re approved. But Fredericks and Tewalt said contract funds are not disbursed to contractors as a lump sum. With the contract, ranchers can trap wolves themselves or hire a private contractor and will have to be reimbursed. They don’t get paid until they submit receipts, they said.

“The expectation would be that any producer that enters into a contract with someone and is using state funds to do it, that the operation would be legal,” Fredericks said when asked about concerns over Walch’s criminal record. “It would be obviously very important that producers know and have faith and trust in whoever they’re contracting.”

The board’s co-chairs told the Statesman they expected some criticism for the rancher-led program.

“Anytime you talk about expending additional funds for lethal control of wolves, I think there are people that are going to be concerned, so I certainly understand that,” Fredericks said. “It doesn’t surprise me that as the board contemplates a new program it’s going to come under scrutiny.”

Tewalt added that wolf issues are “emotional for people on all sides.”

“We also hear from ranchers who are at their wit’s end, struggling, exasperated, heartbroken,” she said. “And that is a hard balance to strike, which is why we’re trying to (take) a targeted approach and not a blanket approach to funding.”