Why Washington’s wolf count is under scrutiny

A gray wolf. A vote is set for next week on whether to loosen protections for wolves in Washington state. Getty Images

This story first appeared in the Washington State Standard.

With a controversial vote planned next week on whether to loosen protections for wolves in Washington, wildlife advocates are raising alarm that officials could be relying on flawed wolf count figures from a tribe in the northeast corner of the state.

Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission members have been told by agency staff that wolves have made an impressive recovery — to the point that their “endangered” status is no longer required. The state’s latest population report recorded an increase of 44 wolves last year, the largest in state history.

But skeptics say the wolf count produced by the Department of Fish and Wildlife is implausibly high, and fear commissioners are being fed a rosy picture of the wolves’ status as they’re asked to “downlist” the species.

“The numbers just didn’t pass the smell test,” said David Linn, a longtime wolf advocate and treasurer of Washington Wildlife First.

At issue are numbers reported to the state by the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation. The tribes oversee wolf management on the reservation and adjacent “North Half” lands on which they retain hunting rights.

This year, the tribes reported a population explosion among the wolves in their territory, despite a significant number of wolves killed by tribal hunters over the same period. The big surge followed a 2022 report that showed only a 5% increase statewide — well below what some conservation groups say is expected for a recovering wolf population.

While Washington law prohibits hunting of wolves, the Colville and other tribes are sovereign nations with the authority to set their own regulations on tribal lands and other areas on which they retain hunting rights via treaty agreements.

The numbers provided by the Colville account for most of the increase in the state’s wolf population last year. Carter Niemeyer, a retired biologist who spent more than 20 years as a wolf specialist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal agencies, said there’s little precedent for the kind of rapid growth the tribes have reported.

“I would be shocked at those kind of numbers,” said Niemeyer, who has worked with the Colville tribes in the past. “If I was in [WDFW’s] shoes, I would require a spreadsheet detailing how many flights, how many radio collars put out, how many trail cameras and the methodologies with coming up with those numbers, because they do sound exceptional for that area.”

Wildlife advocates say the tribes have provided little information on how they gathered their data, and they’re suspicious of the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s willingness to take the numbers at face value.

But agency staffers say they have no reason to doubt the Colville numbers. And they say the downlisting vote is based on yearslong recovery trends, not a single population report.

“It’s not out of the realm of possibility to have those numbers, even with harvest,” said Ben Maletzke, WDFW’s wolf specialist. He added that population modeling suggests that wolves are at low risk of disappearing in the state. “We’re doing incredibly well.”

The Colville tribes directed an inquiry to Chairman Jarred-Michael Erickson, who declined an interview request.

‘It doesn’t make sense’

At the end of 2022, the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s report of documented wolves counted 35 on Colville lands, with 157 elsewhere. A year later, the tribes reported an additional 23 wolves, while the entire rest of the state saw an increase of only 16. The final statewide totals are slightly higher, as the state increases its projections to account for lone wolves.

The Colville’s increase came despite the fact that tribal hunters killed 22 wolves last year, the largest source of wolf mortality in the state. Adding the harvested wolves back to the total, the tribe would have seen an increase of more than 100% in its wolf population.

“If you kill 22 wolves, you’ve got to replace those just to be even,” Linn said. “It just doesn’t make sense that they had that kind of increase with that kind of mortality.”

The tribes have also pledged to provide up to 15 wolves to Colorado to support reintroduction of the animals there. Some wildlife advocates think the tribes’ hunting and export of wolves could undermine recovery efforts — increasing their skepticism of the reported population boom.

Maletzke, the state wolf specialist, acknowledged that the tribes have used varying levels of detail when reporting their wolf counts to the state. While this year’s numbers were shared over a conference call, he said the tribes have been a crucial partner in wolf recovery and he trusts their count.

“Yeah, we’ve had spreadsheets in the past,” he said. “It’s not the identical methodology we use, but it’s still a methodology.”

Wildlife advocates note that the wolf packs reported on tribal lands average more than seven wolves each, while the packs documented by state biologists average five. Niemeyer, the former federal wolf specialist, said the Colville territory likely has room for five or six packs of wolves. In areas with extensive hunting, he said, pack sizes generally number about three or four wolves each.

But Maletzke said it’s not unheard of to see rapid growth within certain sub-populations of wolves, and they’ve proven resilient to hunting.

Tribal management

Wolves in Washington were driven to extinction in the 1930s. By the time they began reentering the state in 2008, they had been classified as endangered under state law. In the western two-thirds of the state, wolves remain covered by the federal Endangered Species Act, but most of Washington’s wolf population resides east of the Cascades and falls under Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife management.

While no one disputes the Colvilles’ authority to hunt wolves, some have been surprised by a recent uptick in tribal hunting. In 2019, the tribes extended wolf hunting to a year-round season with no harvest limits. Forty-six wolves have been killed by Colville hunters over the past three years, with another nine harvested by Spokane Tribe members.

In a February hearing before state lawmakers, Erickson, the Colville chairman, said the tribes have not experienced conflicts with wolves. He said the tribes’ regulations do not allow for hunting when wolves are denning or with their pups.

That hearing covered a proposal, since passed and signed by Gov. Jay Inslee, requiring the Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Colville Tribes to work together on gray wolf management. The law requires the agency and the tribe to update their 1998 cooperative agreement, which determines how state and tribal governments manage fish and wildlife on Colville lands.

During the hearing, the department’s legislative affairs director, Tom McBride, conceded that the agency needed to improve its data sharing with the tribes. It’s unclear if the legislation would affect how population counts are shared or hunting regulations are determined.

Approaching a vote

On July 19, members of the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission will cast their votes on downlisting wolves from “endangered” to “sensitive.” The move would lower penalties for the illegal poaching of wolves and make it easier for livestock owners to access permits to kill wolves that come into conflict with their herds.

Agency staff have argued that downlisting wouldn’t have much of a practical effect on how the animals are protected or managed.

The commission is made up of volunteers appointed by the governor, but the upcoming vote was prompted by the Department of Fish and Wildlife’s professional staff under a process known as a periodic status review. In testimony before the commission, agency staff recommended the reclassification, pointing to projections that wolves will continue to recover in the state.

But commissioners also heard from wildlife advocates who raised doubts about the figures being provided by the agency and who opposed the proposed downlisting.

Barbara Baker, who chairs the commission, acknowledged “questions about whether the state and tribal biologists are comparing apples to apples and using the same foundations of data.”

“That’s especially true in northeast Washington, where there’s questions about whether the numbers make any sense or not,” she said.

Baker added that the tribes have been a valuable partner in wolf recovery, and the agency’s interest in retaining that relationship makes it difficult to publicly question their figures.

Fred Koontz, a former Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife commissioner who became a target of hunting groups and resigned in 2021, believes the agency’s long history of suppressing tribal fishing rights — now considered a black mark in the state’s history — has made agency staffers wary of challenging the Colville numbers.

“There’s a swirl of stories, but nobody’s willing to take on the tribal part of it,” he said. “Shouldn’t the department have a more sophisticated joint cooperation [with the Colville Tribes]?”

During the commission’s June meeting, other commissioners asked for more information on the Colville count. Maletzke expressed faith in the tribes’ work, and added that last year’s figures only made up a small portion of the 15-year growth rate the state has tracked.

Baker said there’s also confusion about the recovery criteria commissioners should use to cast their votes.

The 2011 wolf plan that has guided the agency’s work defines recovery as reaching four breeding pairs of wolves in each of three geographic regions. That objective has not yet been met in the region that spans the southern Cascades and northwest coast.

However, Washington law regarding endangered species is more narrowly focused on the threat of extinction.

“Washington’s wolf population currently occupies an area essential to their long-term survival and is not in danger of extinction or becoming endangered with their current distribution and population trend,” Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife staff wrote in their status review summary.

Agency lawyers, Baker said, have argued that the legal code, rather than the wolf recovery plan, should guide the commission’s vote — allowing staff to push for downlisting even though wolves have not yet repopulated some key areas of their habitat.

Baker said she would not hint at how she plans to vote, nor has she consulted other commission members on their intentions.

Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization.

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