Wolf Education in Idaho – No Water No Life

Interviewee

Jeremy Heft

Wolf Biologist, Wolf Education Research Center

Interviewers

Alison M Jones

NWNL Director and Photographer

Barbara Folger

NWNL Snake Basin Expedition Member, Photographer

Winchester, Idaho on May 17, 2014

Introductory Note

Jeremy was an outdoors kid who would eat all his meals outside. Boy Scouts exposed him to remote environments, camping and wilderness survival. He focused on wolves’ social character, and human atrocities pushing wolves near to extinction – people torturing wolves and burning wolf pups while wolf parents watched.

The part of wolf studies he didn’t like was the politics that are involved. “But I’m stuck in it now! In this field you can’t get away from it.” He interned 16 years ago at the Wolf Center and stayed, learning more every week. In the animal care business, wolves are seen as very complex to handle, being social, intelligent and individualistic, especially in captivity.

“At times they are comical or act out a soap opera. There’s much to learn about wolves, and we’re only on the tip of the iceberg, since they’re so complex. We can never get into their heads. There’s so much about wolves to tap into.” That keeps him going, despite the politics that drag him down.

Outline

WORKING WITH WOLVES
LEARNING ABOUT WOLF QUALITIES
ALPHA WOLF BEHAVIOR
TROPHIC CASCADE of WOLVES – ELK – BROWSE – FISH
COORDINATING WOLF STEWARDSHIP
FIGHTING WOLVES’ NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES
WOLF EDUCATION IN THE FUTURE
EDUCATION & COMPROMISES
WOLF BEHAVIOR
RAVENS & VULTURES
KEEPING WOLVES from LIVESTOCK
NEZ PERCE SUPPORT of WOLVES
JEREMY HEFT & WOLVES

Key Quotes [Regarding wolves’ trophic cascade] All species and their habitat are integrated and depend on each other. Wolves depend upon elk for food, and elk depend on wolves to cull the weak in their herds. Both depend on a healthy water system – and obviously trout are indicators of a healthy water system. Our ecosystem here is a cyclic balance in which wolves literally promote biodiversity within an ecosystem, because they keep other animals in checks and balances. – Jeremy Heft

If we isolate ourselves from our ecosystems we perish, because we are part of the system ourselves. We must obey Nature’s laws; and we must remedy the damage that we’ve already done to this earth. – Jeremy Heft

WORKING WITH WOLVES

JEREMY HEFT As biologist here at the Wolf Education and Research Center, my main duties are to care for the captive pack of wolves that reside on our property; and to lead education programs. The Wolf Center’s mission is to teach people about gray wolves in Idaho and to dispel today’s popular wolf myths.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER How did you get involved in wolf education?

JEREMY HEFT My first venture was as an intern here, beginning December 1997. In my 6 months here as intern, I was guided by two very good wolf biologists as we researched the captive Sawtooth Pack. I left for 2 months, and then returned to care for the Sawtooth Pack. I’ve now been here for over 16 years caring for the Sawtooth Pack, and now also for the new Owahi Pack.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Do you live nearby? Do you have assistants?

JEREMY HEFT I live here on the property to manage the wolves 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. My cabin has no electricity, running water or phone service. Now we get cell reception sometimes, so I have a bit of a contact with the outside world. Otherwise, I work here with an assistant, who lives in a tent year ‘round. We usually bring in 3 interns in summer to help with our education programs. They too live in tents here on the property.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Where do your interns come from?

JEREMY HEFT They literally come from around the world, since we promote our internships internationally. There are no foreign interns coming this year. We’ll have 3 students -from University of Idaho, Humboldt University (California) and Penn State University.

NWNL/ALISON JONES That’s very diverse. They must absorb great lessons from the wolves.

JEREMY HEFT Yes, there are many values in knowing wolves, including ecologically.

NWNL/ALISON JONES I understand there are many cultural and social values, including giving alerts ahead of time, and giving quick signs that “I’m not happy with you.”

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Just like parents now teaching their kids these days to “Use your words, not actions.”

JEREMY HEFT Yes, we can learn much from wolves by watching their socialization. Although, wolves are often seen as vicious because they tend to bite each other and throw their teeth at each other in displays of communication towards each other. Yet, that is just part of their communication. As we’ve studied wolves, we’ve learned they don’t hurt each other. When they bite each other, they are simply displaying authority.

LEARNING ABOUT WOLF QUALITIES

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER They are very thick-coated.

JEREMY HEFT Well, she’s got full winter coat on still right now.

NWNL/ALISON JONES It seems she hasn’t shed at all.

JEREMY HEFT She won’t begin shedding for another couple of weeks, especially because she’s a white wolf. Interestingly, black wolves shed earlier than white wolves.

NWNL/ALISON JONES Because of the heat from their coat?

JEREMY HEFT She will shed in about 3 weeks. This whole week has been relatively warm, so imagine being in the sun out here today with winter gear for 40º below zero: that’s what she has on her right now. Plus, her belly’s full right now, since we received a very, very fresh roadkill yesterday. I fed it to them right away, so she’s just absorbed fresh protein now, and she’s quite engorged. Her belly’s full.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Is roadkill their predominant food? Do you ever feed them live animals?

JEREMY HEFT We do not feed any live animals to the pack. We give them as much wild game as possible, through roadkill. We pick up roadkill across 3 counties. If there’s not enough roadkill, we feed domestic stock to these wolves.

These wolves are not releasable, and they will never be in the wild. So, we can feed them cattle, horse, sheep, goat and chickens. You name it, pretty much they’ve had it. We try to keep their menu as varied as possible. We do not feed anything live to them for several different reasons. First off, from what we know of wolf hunting strategy, about half is instinctual, which we see these animals certainly have. The other half would be learned behavior from their parents, but these wolves do not have parents.

These wolves might be able to kill an animal, but it would take them a very long time and be agonizing for the prey animal. Plus, because they’re in an enclosure, the prey animals would not be able to escape, so it’s ethically incorrect to do that to a prey animal. We care for all animals here, not just wolves.

ALPHA WOLF BEHAVIOR

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER What happens to an alpha animal when it’s displaced?

JEREMY HEFT Good question. We have kind of an idea, close but not exact. It’s extremely difficult to see that happen in wolf society in the wild. We might see that there’s been a change in rank, but we don’t get to see behaviors that happen with an outcast animal. We see it in captivity, but don’t know if it occurs in the wild.

Typically, in captivity, there’s a violent overthrow when an alpha is overthrown and removed from rank. Sometimes that animal ends up on the bottom of the rank system. Although, through time, it can work itself back into the hierarchy and up into mid-ranks – but probably not back to an alpha status, unless it’s extremely strong. For example, if an alpha has an isolated injury, it may lose rank temporarily and then quickly regain that rank as it heals. But usually once an alpha is out, it’s out. In the wild, we believe they most likely disperse from the pack and move on. They then become a lone wolf; look for another mate; and begin another pack.

In captivity, it seems wolves tend to do that. However, the fence is impeding them, so then we make that decision, and we remove them if certain behaviors indicate that this animal no longer wants to be with this pack, or the pack is longer tolerating them in the hierarchy.

If a pack prevents a wolf from eating and injures it, that animal is removed for its safety. We think alphas in the wild either leave the pack or are accepted within the pack at a lower rank. They then may work themselves back up. They may become semi-retired from the pack, meaning the pack will tolerate them being around, but not in a leadership role. They’d be at a lower rank, but still able to eat with the pack, hunt with the pack and so on. But that’s more speculation than fact, because we just haven’t seen enough.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER What happens if a person looks a wolf eye to eye?

JEREMY HEFT Eye contact among wolves is very important. Wolves want eye contact with each pack member. But it’s a matter of how that eye contact happens. When we communicate as humans, we typically look at each other in our eyes. It’s just simply communication, and this is what wolves do.

When wolves interact with us as handlers inside their enclosure, they want to look in our eyes and expect us to look back in their eyes. We can use a submissive “avert gaze” – looking down, away, or at the body of the animal, but not the eyes. In a wolf society, if one wolf uses an “avert gaze” with another, it means, “I submit to you, I bow down to you.”.

TROPHIC CASCADE of WOLVES - ELK - BROWSE - FISH

NWNL/ALISON JONES Let’s discuss the “trophic cascade” involving wolves, flora and fauna in riverine ecosystems.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER In that vein, your Governor’s State of the State included a couple paragraphs on keeping wolves as a bounty animal and keeping elk for hunters. He also recommended keeping streams for trout fisherman. How would these policies impact local trophic species, or habitats and species?

JEREMY HEFT Any person who is savvy about the outdoors or studies ecology understands that all species and their habitat are integrated and depend on each other. Wolves depend upon elk for food, and elk depend on wolves to cull the weak in their herds. Both depend on a healthy water system – and obviously trout are indicators of a healthy water system.

It is well-known that wolves hunt the sick, injured, young, weak and old in an elk herd. They do not take animals in their prime. By eliminating elk with maladies, wolves allow an elk herd to become healthier over time. It’s interesting to compare human hunters reducing the elk population. Typically, the healthiest animals are those with the largest racks or the most meat on their bodies. Between humans and wolves, we hunt elk from two different ends of the spectrum.

In Yellowstone National Park we see how elk help the the watershed system. If elk herds are left unchecked, they will overpopulate. Then they overgraze, and in so doing they cause sedimentation within the water system, and stream banks degrade, particularly because the elk will overgraze the willows around the stream banks. That in turn destabilizes the stream system, and thus causes sedimentation. All this causes the water to warm up, because there’s no shade left to cool the water. All these actions are part of the trophic cascade that decreases fish populations. Fish don’t do well in warm, muddy water that typically is low in dissolved oxygen. The aquatic animals become very stressed when over-grazing happens. In Yellowstone we see this plain as day now that we’ve reintroduced wolves back into Yellowstone, which has decreased the elk population.

But, more importantly, it has changed the behavior of the elk, whereas elk before used to just congregate along the stream banks and be able to eat as much as they wanted to. Nowadays wolves are creating this what we call “predatory pressure” on the elk, which means the elk need to disperse into smaller groups. They need to go up into higher elevations where they can see predators approaching them easier, and they can’t just sit and have a heyday by the streamside anymore. Therefore, these interactions have created a much more stabilized aquatic system within Yellowstone in particular. That happens in other systems where vegetation has been able to regrow without overgrazing, since roots stabilize river banks and thus decrease sedimentation. The vegetation – often willows – creates shade which cools the river’s water, which thus can hold more oxygen. Thus, the fish are better off.

We see this trophic cascade as plain as day. The biodiversity in Yellowstone is increasing rapidly due to the wolves’ predatory pressure on elk herds. So essentially, yes, wolves are interacting with the aquatic system, trout and elk herds. It’s an interesting interplay between all three.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER There was a recent study by Washington State biologists who collared deer with video cams. In an area with wolves and deer, they tracked how many times deer looked up to check for wolves, which kept them moving along as well.

JEREMY HEFT That is great. We are seeing a behavior change among prey populations – of elk and deer especially. Moose are not under as much pressure. They have a different kind of defense strategy against wolves, because of their size.

But with elk and deer, we’re seeing a behavioral change within their population, and this is causing conflict with some human hunters, it seems. Here at the Wolf Center, we often hear folk worrying that the wolves are killing all the elk – but they’re not really. When you look at the numbers, elk are doing okay. There are certain geographic areas in the state where elk are not doing okay, but a lot of that is a habitat and browse issue. They don’t have as much food, largely due to logging practices having changed. It’s not necessarily predatory pressure that is causing this elk decline, but hunting is a very traditional family event here in the Northwest.

Families typically go to a particular meadow where they’ve seen 100 head of elk since anyone can ever remember in the family. Grandad would say, “Oh, back in the ’30s there was 100 head of elk here, and before wolves were released into the system there were 100 elk in this meadow.” When today’s hunters go to that meadow, there are no elk, just wolf tracks. That leads to an assumption that wolves killed all those elk. Often hunters return very frustrated from their trip saying, “Wolves killed all the elk,” and people believe that. But those elk aren’t dead. They moved on to other areas. They’ve probably fragmented and in smaller herds, less detectable by predators. It’s not a population decline. It’s a behavior change.

Today’s hunters must go find their animal. We can’t just know exactly where elk are anymore and hunt them easily. It’s time to use more traditional hunting methods. Fortunately, we are seeing some more traditional hunters appreciating this now and saying, “No, this is the way it’s supposed to be. This is true hunting when you must find your animal. No more roadside shooting anymore.”

COORDINATING WOLF STEWARDSHIP

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER So that raises two issues: 1) the enlightenment of the hunting population; what hunting was, until there were no elk, and now should be and 2) encouraging hunters to hunt. That traditional approach is called “hunting.”

JEREMY HEFT True. In my definition, a hunter must first detect his prey, then kill it, and then remove it. That’s the basis of hunting and how other predators must hunt. Knowing where the prey is decreases the sport value of hunting.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Do you think getting rid of deer stands would help along your hunting lines? Are there any agencies informing hunters of the change in wolf/prey population movement so they understand how hunting should be conducted these days?

JEREMY HEFT We attempt to educate the hunting community by explaining what’s happening and why the elk are moving. We explain that they’re not in decline because of wolf predation, and we try to promote that among the hunting community. As for other organizations, I haven’t heard of any hunting groups sharing that education. I think it comes more from conservation groups saying, “Hey, this is the reality of what’s happening on the ground.”

I guess we don’t communicate as much as we could with the pro-hunting groups. We should discuss these things more widely. We’ve done it with the livestock community. In media controversies over wolves, we hear more about elk declines than depredations. The wolf community completely understands the livestock community’s stresses caused when depredation occurs. As a pro-wolf organization, we don’t want depredation to occur. We want to keep the wolves away from livestock, because we want coexistence. So, we’re working on how to do that. There’s a lot of research in this state on how to keep wolves away from livestock. However, we don’t want to keep wolves away from elk because that’s their natural prey. It’s more difficult to talk to the hunting groups, because we’re after the same animal.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER There’s a large recreational fishing population in Idaho. Might they be a good partner since they want to keep the waters clean? They need to keep all the willows on riverbanks for thermal conditions and less sediment in streams. Have you talked with them?

JEREMY HEFT We enjoy talking with other conservation groups, regardless of their agendas. We are allied with Idaho Rivers United and promote them. Unfortunately, as small nonprofit groups, we don’t have much time to work with other groups. We’re all doing the best we can for our own agendas, but our resources are stressed in conversation agendas. If we had more time and more resources, we would absolutely court and cooperate with each other – thus working in each other’s favor. We support that, but, unfortunately, we don’t have enough time.

FIGHTING WOLVES’ NEGATIVE STEREOTYPES

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER In that regard, what 3 things would you like to have seen done in the last 16 years that didn’t get done?

JEREMY HEFT I wish people of Idaho – and all people – would try to better understand wolves. Some people don’t want to know about wolves. They’d rather hold the historical hatred of these animals than understand who they really are. It’s disheartening for a group such as us.

We try hard to promote facts about wolves, but many won’t even listen. For example, we find wolf-population counts done scientifically that are altered for political reasons. That makes it extremely difficult for us to stay on mission when government agencies don’t want to learn. They are set in their ways – and that’s very difficult. I wish Idahoans and other northwestern people would become more open-minded towards wolves. That’s my #1 wish.

Our goal is to promote tolerance of wolves. Like most wolf groups, we are not radical. Wolves belong on the landscape. However, they don’t belong near livestock, and they don’t belong near humans. But also they don’t belong extinct because they are supposedly hunting all the elk.

NWNL/ALISON JONES It is so hard for many to get over that green-eyed, angry, snarly wolf depicted in Little Red Riding Hood, or that popular movie this year titled, The Wolf of Wall Street. Is there a way to get away from that imagery?

JEREMY HEFT Traditionally, wolves have elicited fear among humans. This goes back to a very, very early time in old legends about werewolves, and even children’s stories like Little Red Riding Hood and Three Little Pigs.

And it goes all the way to modern-day animated films, without any companies mentioned, that promote wolves as the bad guy. Wolves have always been known as the bad guy. They elicit fear among humans. Psychologists and anthropologists have studied this. As biologists, we know wolves better than we know people, why is that?

Why do we not like wolves? It is a very difficult question. Some leading theories are that wolves may be just a little too much like us. They live in family groups, just like we do. They cooperate as a family, like we do. They have a hierarchy, just like our family groups do. We communicate a little differently about it, but there is a hierarchy within our family groups.

They take care of their young. They all participate in taking care of their young. They take care of their elderly. What other species is closer to humans than gray wolves are? Certainly, some primates are very close in that, but as far as the four-legged animals go, wolves are close to us. Some psychologists believe maybe that explains the ingrained fear that humans have of wolves in general. They’re almost competition for us, in a way.

Anatomical features likely play a role. The long nose of wolves elicit fear, the long rostrum, the muzzle of a wolf, and you can easily see this when looking at teddy bears. So, look at a bear. A real bear has a long rostrum or muzzle. Teddy bears have little, short noses like ours. That’s done intentionally, because something in our human psychology reacts with fear to faces with more teeth, longer muzzles. So. we shorten teddy bear noses for kids so they’re not afraid. As well, plush wolf dolls also have shortened muzzles, so they look more like dogs. Many dogs have been bred to have shorter muzzles than wolves. Psychologically, we’re afraid of a lot of teeth because teeth can do damage. We’re constantly fighting these long, very deeply ingrained fears of wolves that go back as far as the Bible.

The Bible quotes wolves as being Satan’s beast of waste and desolation. They have a bad rap from early religions and the dark side of myths and legends of werewolf-ism that scares many humans exposed to the culmination of human and wolf together doing bad things. In most werewolf legends, wolves are bad creatures. Then throw in vampires that can morph into wolves, to create a very deep, ingrained fear. We fight it every day here, and say, “No, wolves are just another animal in the forest. They’re here to do a job, just like every other species. Thus, we should treat them just as a wolf, not as some mythical creature.

NWNL/ALISON JONES Would a vocabulary change help as we talk about wolves?

JEREMY HEFT I wish we could find phrases to make a wolf more palatable to humans. I think the only way is to look at the animal objectively and biologically – not spiritually or emotionally. A wolf is just another species, filling its niche within the environment. Yet, our psychology is so ingrained to fear this animal, that it’s difficult to change the adjectives used for wolves. So, I don’t know if we can, but we try.

NWNL/ALISON JONES We’ve discussed the values of wolves in an ecosystem by defining the trophic cascade of their existence and role in maintaining a cyclical balance of flora and fauna. What succinct message does this Wolf Education Center share to convince those who are afraid of wolves that these animals’ role in Nature is a positive one.

JEREMY HEFT In just a couple sentences…. Wolves, as top predators in an ecosystem, kill and eat elk and other herbivore populations that browse down grasses. As wolves decrease elk herds, that decreases vegetation. Wolves also control their own birthrates according to food availability. As elk and wolf populations decrease, vegetative growth increases. Then elk or other ungulates rebound.

Our ecosystem here is a cyclic balance in which wolves literally promote biodiversity within an ecosystem, because they keep every other animal in checks and balances.

WOLF EDUCATION IN THE FUTURE

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER You’ve told us what you would like to have done so far. Now, what do you foresee for good wolf research in the future?

JEREMY HEFT Well, I think that for the Wolf Education Research Center and every other wolf education facility our goals for the future will remain pretty much the same as they are right now, which is just to educate people about the realities of wolves.

We’ve been operating here in north central Idaho for 17 years, and we still, have a long way to go to have people truly understand what a wolf is all about. This long battle will go on for the rest of my life – probably generations to come – before people truly understand wolves. It’s an uphill battle to fight the mythology, ingrained hatred and misconceptions of wolves we’ve discussed. It will take a long time until the population as a whole truly understands what a wolf is about, and possibly it may never happen. We face that every day; but, still, we still battle on. We will not rest until people truly understand what an animal is.

We must make educated decisions on how to manage this animal, because it’s not happening right now. Wolves are being managed by politics, hype and misconceptions more than on biology. So our Wolf Center’s steadfast goal is to teach people the realities of gray wolves.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER In British Columbia, it seems a large urban population is well acclimatized to living with wolves. They will carry a can of bolts to shake if a wolf comes close to warn the wolves keep their distance; but still, they live with them. Wolves go around people’s back yards in BC. One lady said, “Oh, this wolf comes by every afternoon,” Folks in BC seem to be educated about wolves. How did that occur?

JEREMY HEFT For many people in Canada and in Minnesota, wolves aren’t a big deal because they’ve always lived with wolves. They are just another animal on the landscape. It’s like our seeing a deer. Seeing a wolf doesn’t elicit any emotional response in me. In most of Canada and Minnesota, residents don’t think wolves are a big deal at all. It’s just another animal out there. But controversy exists here in the Northwest and other parts of the US where wolves have been exterminated, brought back and recovered.

I’ve asked and video’ed ranchers in Minnesota how they feel about wolves. They shrug their shoulders, and ask, “What’s wrong with wolves? They’re there. If a wolf kills my livestock, I kill the wolf. That’s it. But otherwise, I won’t kill a wolf for no reason. It’s also how we treat coyotes here in the northwest.”

Coyotes prey upon cattle far more than wolves do. So when they come around, ranchers shoot them, and that’s it. No one’s upset about it. It’s just the way life is here. Eventually, I hope wolves will attain an aura or become commonplace within the system. I certainly don’t want wolves to die just because they kill livestock.

I don’t want people to worry about wolves or hear of wolf-control efforts based on fear. In Canada and Minnesota, the presence of wolves is no big deal. I hope Idaho eventually gets there, but fear it will be many, many generations down the road. So, we’re concentrating on younger generations that tend to be more open-minded. Hopefully when they take control of their ranch, they will have more objective viewpoints on wolves.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER This can also change in urban areas and cities. I live in San Francisco where we have many coyotes. There are cautionary signs everywhere. When we walk our dogs, coyotes can be yards away, but we just walk around them. Runners pass by them; and the coyotes maintain their own distance. They’re in our National Parks, so there’s nothing anybody can do about them, other than learning to live with them. Do you think this relaxed attitude could be transferred from city communities back to country communities – or must it move in the other direction.

JEREMY HEFT Well, Idaho’s ranching and rural communities don’t really like the urban community telling them how to live. I think it will have to originate in rural communities, since they tend to blame the urban community for pushing wolves into their area. So, we talk to ranchers and rural communities directly. The divide is not just about wolves. If the urban society said, “Look, ranchers, you need to operate your ranch this way,” it would be rejected.

As well wolf conservation from the federal government is resisted. There is a sense that the federal government placed them here. It’s not a hatred of wolves. It’s a hatred of Big Brother telling them what to do with their land. It’s a political battle, not a biological battle. The problem could exist with any species. Introducing elephants would still produce this animosity if it was felt the federal government placed them here. That attitude is very difficult to overcome, particularly here in the Northwest, where your private property is for doing whatever you want to do with it. I am not against that; but it is why it’s difficult to put a predator onto somebody’s land and have them accept it.

NWNL/ALISON JONES And, by the way, elephants aren’t so easily accountable either. They migrate along ancient corridors and in doing so, they trample relatively-recently arrived farmers’ gardens and fields. The farmers then shoot elephants. So, you should find another analogy.

JEREMY HEFT I didn’t think that they were that much of a nuisance, but, again, that’s just where you come from.

NWNL/ALISON JONES When there is so much ivory poaching, elephant protection becomes that much more critical.

EDUCATION & COMPROMISES

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER We’ve had an interesting time here in Idaho, as we learn how people use water and their land, how they view their right to use their land and view the right to shoot or not shoot any wildlife.

NWNL/ALISON JONES Our investigation centers on what creates a healthy watershed. And it turns out wolves have a role in that.

JEREMY HEFT All predators do.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER The challenge is how can everybody win? How can the trout fishermen still have their streams? How can the farmers still get their irrigation water? Where’s the win-win in this?

JEREMY HEFT Compromise, I think.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Maybe it’s education and compromise?

JEREMY HEFT Yes, everyone must be educated, and everyone must compromise; but that’s a tall order today. Everyone can become educated, but compromise means giving up something that’s important to you for something else that’s important to someone else. That’s difficult – particularly in the Northwest.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Do you think there’s hope?

JEREMY HEFT I think that wolves will still be misconceived as an evil creature throughout my lifetime. Hopefully not through most of the population, but at least in some of the population. In my lifetime, I doubt all groups will come to the table and compromise to do what’s right for Mother Nature and, therefore, what’s right for our human society. This battle has been raging since the early 1970’s when we finally woke up to environmental awareness. And now in 2014, we’re still fighting this battle. It feels like an uphill, never-ending battle. I don’t think we’re close to resolution yet. I hope, eventually we will. For the sake of this planet and the human species, we’d better figure it out, or else none of us will survive.

NWNL/ALISON JONES I think we’re sort of in a deadline mentality now – or will be shortly. We must figure something out. Not everything’s going to get figured out. That’s part of the compromise you mentioned, Jeremy.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Some say the human species have already been here too long, and that we should have been eradicated as far as geological time goes. Our time is supposedly over.

NWNL/ALISON JONES So that is why education and compromise are so essential now.

WOLF BEHAVIOR

JEREMY HEFT Wolves can pack on 30 pounds in one meal. Just think about 30 pounds in your belly. You wouldn’t want to move very much! So, wolves get very sleepy and sack out for a couple of days. Certainly, they get up and move around, like you saw with our female wolf moving around in the meadow there, but I can tell just by looking at her that she’s very low energy.. She wasn’t running around, focusing on things or even looking around. She just went from Point A to Point B, sniffing a few things along the way, and eventually heading to her daybed to rest. Sunshine also lowers their energy level until they shed their coat out, because they get very warm in warm weather.

So, many factors keep them from being energetic right now: their low energy cycle midday, their being typically sleepier midday since they’re crepuscular in nature. Instead, they’re energized during twilight, sunrise and sunset. They’re not nocturnal despite that popular conception, in mid afternoon they take a little siesta, and they sleep for a while in the middle of the night too.

NWNL/ALISON JONES You have perfectly described the sleepy African lion.

JEREMY HEFT Many predators are crepuscular in nature, because most prey is also.

NWNL/ALISON JONES After a lion leaves its feast on a kill, its stomach practically drags on the ground. But they eat as much as they can because they know other predators will soon come in too.

JEREMY HEFT It’s either now or never.

NWNL/ALISON JONES Yes, feast or famine.

RAVENS & VULTURES

JEREMY HEFT We have a good population of raptors here too. We had baldies [bald eagles] here. We have a resident red-tailed hawk that nests here every year. They tend to push the vultures on a little bit. They can be a little more aggressive than the vultures are.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Where I hunt in California, there is a nice population of bald eagles, and a huge population of turkey vultures. They seem to coexist just fine.

JEREMY HEFT How about ravens? They are competitive with vultures.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER On this particular property, I don’t see any ravens.

JEREMY HEFT Ravens are very, very good at mobbing and pushing certain species away. They’ll even mob the red-tailed hawk. They don’t go after the baldies quite as much, because the baldies will take them out. But ravens will harass vultures, because there are so many of them here that they gang up on everything entering this area. It’s all food defense.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Ravens are smart; and they work as a family, don’t they?

JEREMY HEFT Incredibly smart. They’ll work even outside their family. When something else is flying, their alarm calls go off and spread through the forest. Squirrels will alarm off too, asking “Who’s coming? Who’s coming in?” Usually, it’s the baldie. It’s fun to watch when everyone gets super quiet. The only raptor they’re extremely afraid of is the goshawk. When the goshawk comes through, everything gets quiet. A goshawk will kill anything, anything in the air, and so that’s cool to see.

KEEPING WOLVES from LIVESTOCK

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER There is one other question. When we were talking with Idaho Fish and Game, I mentioned I’d read that one of Idaho’s four major packs had been completely eradicated – 100 wolves gone. And he put it off, explaining it was because they had started all doing depredation of livestock. Do you know anything about a whole huge community being eradicated?

JEREMY HEFT Several packs have been eradicated in Idaho and Montana, and probably Wyoming too. I don’t keep up with what goes on there. It’s too disheartening. Typically, Idaho’s policy is to go in and take 2-3 wolves out of a pack if depredation occurs. If it happens a 2nd time, they usually kill a whole pack. You can see that on the maps. The 2013 map was just released. We don’t have it for the Visitor Center quite yet, but it shows several packs terminated due to livestock control. That’s something that we battle against. We understand lethal control must happen in certain cases. However, we think it’s overused.

We think other methods could train and save those wolves. They’re very smart animals, so very simple techniques like the anti-depredation fluttery-rag boxes, guard dogs, and range riders have all been proven to work – or even giving a rancher rubber bullets or beanbag bullets; or training him or her to take a warning shot at them. Wolves will get it. Sometimes it only takes a couple of shots and a couple of days’ worth of persistence. Eventually they’ll understand. That’s why I’m a big proponent of nonlethal ammunitions. We shoot our own people with it during riots. Why can’t we shoot wolves with it?

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER What does the law say?

JEREMY HEFT The law allows use of rubber bullets. Their sting is very painful, but not lethal. Wolves and all canines are very good associative learners. So instead of being killed, they’ll associate getting stung by a bullet with being around that area; and they won’t return That’s what we’d rather see happen. If none of those measures work, then, okay, those wolves need to die, because they would give the rest of the wolf population a very bad name by doing that, so I’m all right with that.

NWNL/ALISON JONES How have the Nez Perce or other Northwest tribes dealt with the wolf? They love the wolf, and they have all these stories. How did they come to have a different appreciation than the white man?

NEZ PERCE SUPPORT of WOLVES

JEREMY HEFT The Nez Perce appreciate the wolf. They admire the wolves’ intelligence, hunting abilities and family values, but it is not their most admired animal. The coyote is the #1 admired animal among the Nez Perce. Biologically coyotes are competitors for wolves.

Additionally, the Nez Perce Nation is very environmentally minded. They truly appreciate the Creator’s very stable natural system. Hence, they were a very huge player in wolf reintroduction. That doesn’t get talked about as much as it should be. The Nez Perce tribe is the agency that put wolves on Idaho soil and monitored them for over ten years.

When people think of wolf reintroduction, they automatically think of Yellowstone – not Idaho, which is fine with the tribal administrators who didn’t want to deal with publicity. They just biologically put animals on the ground. But there were many more resources here in Idaho than in Yellowstone. I think the Nez Perce did an excellent job biologically – the best that could be done socially. They all did it pretty much undercover where it was off the radar. They did it out of their appreciation of the wolf in the ecosystem, not for the notoriety of protecting wolves.

JEREMY HEFT & WOLVES

NWNL/ALISON JONES If there were more like you, and more following the Nez Perce values, the wolves would be safer and in a better situation. So, how can caring about wolves, our watersheds and nature be a greater concern among our youth?

JEREMY HEFT Education can light a fire under our youth. We should teach them the realities about wolves, and how their bad rap does disservice to this animal. We should show youth how every plant and every animal depend on each other animal, We need to protect all species. The only way humans will survive on this planet is if we keep our ecosystems healthy. If we isolate ourselves from our ecosystems, we perish, because we are part of the system ourselves. We must obey Nature’s laws; and we must remedy the damage that we’ve already done to this earth.

NWNL/BARBARA FOLGER Your conclusion is great. Can we just put that in every classroom and have all the kids learn it? It should be repeated at every morning assembly from Kindergarten through 6th grade. Then maybe they’d all be inspired to protect wolves and their environment.

NWNL/ALISON JONES Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experiences. In 2008, NWNL’s second expedition was to Yellowstone National Park to document the Lamar and Yellowstone Rivers that each feed into the Missouri River. With high-power telescopes we watched the Lamar wolf pack devour an elk for a couple days. We knew about the trophic cascade relationship of wolves to healthy rivers, but we didn’t have a chance to talk to any biologists then, so this adds helpful background to that expedition’s experience.

Posted by NWNL on February 01, 2025.
Transcription edited and condensed for clarity by Alison M. Jones.

Wolf Education in Idaho Columbia River Basin