In eastern Washington a modern-day ‘range rider’ is bridging the gap between traditional adversaries: ranchers and wolves
Thriving: According to a 2019 population survey, the Teanaway wolf pack in central Washington had a minimum count of six wolves and was considered a successful breeding pair. Photo by WDFW
By Eli Francovich, April 22, 2021. Slopping through cow dung and snow, on his way back to his truck, Daniel Curry stops to talk. It’s January, warm and wet and Curry has already spent several hours checking game cameras and searching for wolf tracks in northeast Washington, within spitting distance of the Canadian border.
On the best of days this is not glamorous work.
And this is not the best of days. His back hurts. Although not yet 40, he’s spent much of his life working outside. Just this morning, in an effort to counteract some of the wear and tear of manual labor, he did yoga.
Unfortunately, he pulled something. It’s hard to walk.
But the man he’s working for today is out feeding his livestock and while much of Curry’s work is about keeping wolves from killing cattle, it’s also about building relationships with ranchers.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]“All the people who don’t want wolves have them in their backyard. All the people who want wolves don’t have wolves.”[/perfectpullquote]
So, they chat. About the weather, about individual calves, the fences. Who left the gate open onto the right pasture last week? What animals—wolves, coyotes, cougars, deer, bear—the rancher (who asked to remain anonymous) has seen in the past month.
It’s a short, but telling, interaction between the two men.
Telling because Daniel Curry loves wolves. He wears a ring with the silhouette of a wolf on his left hand and spent a decade working at a wolf sanctuary on the west side of Washington. He moved into the heart of Washington’s wolf country in 2012 hoping, as he said, to force a glitch in the system and show ranchers and environmentalists that cows and wolves can live together.
Now, he’s a range rider. He spends his days and nights trying to keep wolves from cattle and cattle out of the jaws of wolves.
Success story
Since the natural return of gray wolves to Washington State in 2008, Curry and others have worked to try to bridge the cultural and social divide between those who cheer the return of Canis lupus and those who fear it.
The effort hasn’t always been successful.
Environmentalists and wolf lovers have protested and filed lawsuits, noting that cows are a nonnative species and ranchers are grazing their cattle on public land for a nominal fee.
Handy reminder: Curry’s wolf ring. Courtesy of Daniel Curry
Activists and ranchers have been threatened.
In 2019, wolf meetings were canceled due to threats of violence. Wolves have been poached. Pelts have been shipped to Canada, a bloody FedEx package the fateful clue. A state lawmaker suggested sending an environmental activist a severed wolf tail and testicles.
But for each high-profile failure, there are stories of cooperation and success. Some hope these examples may provide a road map for other states and regions as gray wolves return to the western United States.
“I think really Washington is very much a success story,” says Kim Thorburn, a WDFW commissioner from Spokane. “It was natural repopulation. And the population has continued to grow since wolves were first seen in this population. Recovery. That seems to me to be a success.”
State biologists documented a minimum of 108 wolves in 21 packs and 10 breeding pairs in 2019. The state’s annual wolf survey is published in late April.
Since 2011, wolves in eastern Washington have been under state management and protected under state endangered species rules, while wolves in western Washington were governed by federal endangered species rules. In 2021, however, wolves nationwide were delisted by the federal government.
Nonetheless, per the state’s own recovery plan, wolves can be delisted at the state level only after 15 successful breeding pairs are documented for three consecutive years or after officials document 18 breeding pairs in one year.
Under either scenario, the pairs have to be distributed evenly throughout the state’s three wolf management areas.
And this is where problems still arise.
Washington unique in conservation world
The vast majority of Washington’s wolves live in the northeast corner of the state, adjacent to larger populations of wolves in Canada and Idaho. This is rural Washington, far removed from rain-soaked, tech-employed, latte-drinking Seattle for which most know the Evergreen State.
It’s good wolf habitat—mountainous and relatively empty of people and full of prey. Whitetail and mule deer, mostly.
But also cattle.
In many ways Washington is unique in the conservation world. The second largest western state by population, the Evergreen State is the smallest geographically and has the least public land.
And yet, Washington is home to nearly a full suite of native carnivores. Black bears. Cougars. Lynx. And, since 2008, gray wolves.
Weather or not: Daniel Curry spends much of his time scouting remote trouble spots between cattle and wolves. Photo by Eli Francovich
Meanwhile, more than 7 million people live and work in the state.
And, Washington, like many coastal states, is a house sundered along largely geographic lines. West of the Cascade Range it’s humid, urban, liberal and increasingly wealthy. East of the divide, it’s dry, rural and increasingly poor.
“All the people who don’t want wolves have them in their backyard affecting their culture,” Curry said. “All the people who want wolves don’t have wolves.”
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That cultural and political divide is most obvious when considering the impact wolves have had on ranching.
Although not a large industry, ranching is still a way of life for some in northeast Washington and wolves pose a very real threat, says Jay Shepherd, a co-founder of the Northeast Washington Wolf-Cattle Collaborative and the wolf program lead for Conservation Northwest.
Wolves killed 14 cattle and injured 11 more in 2019, according to WDFW.
In response, WDFW employees shot and killed nine wolves. These small numbers have an outsized impact. Each death represents the larger political and cultural tension.
Shepherd has worked on the wolf issue, in one way or another, since 2008. He calls the early years the “Wild West.” After all, Washington was pioneering, in many ways, modern wolf coexistence.
“We weren’t as educated as we are now,” he says.
People problems
In an effort to bridge ideological divides, Washington established the Wolf Advisory Group. Members of this 18-member group represent the concerns of environmentalists, hunters and livestock ranchers and advise WDFW on wolf management. They provide advice to the agency and developed the Wolf-Livestock Interaction Protocol.
“The real challenges are on the people side,” says Donny Martorello, the wolf policy lead for WDFW. “What does it mean for ranching communities or rural communities? I think we went into it thinking that we were prepared. And we weren’t.”
Still embattled: In January, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service formally removed gray wolves in the Lower 48 states from the Endangered Species List. Photo by Tracy Brooks/Mission Wolf/USFWS
The state has learned and adapted, Martorello says. Now, WDFW puts a greater emphasis on collaboration and consensus building. He points to efforts, like range riding, as proof of this success.
“It’s not perfect but it’s a lot better than it used to be,” he says.
Amaroq Weiss doesn’t fully agree. Weiss is the Center for Biological Diversity’s West Coast wolf advocate. Her name, Amaroq, means “wolf” in some Inuit languages.
Of the western states, she says, Washington has been “the most problematic” when it comes to wolf recovery. The state’s wolf advisory group doesn’t accurately represent the will of Washingtonians, she says, instead skewing toward agricultural and ranching interests.
Additionally, the group has no real authority, offering only recommendations to WDFW. That’s in stark contrast to Oregon, for instance, which has codified rules governing wolf management and distinct geographic recovery zones.
She believes if Washington had clearer rules, it would ease the concerns of both wolf advocates and ranchers.
“In Oregon just having rules in place brought the political temperature down so much,” she says. “Because everybody knew what to expect.”
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Which brings us back to Daniel Curry chatting with a rancher on a wet January day. Politics and ideology aside, this rancher trusts Curry. Trusts him to close the gates and take care of his cattle.
It’s a small success. But one Curry hopes will make a difference.
“I do believe if you teach by example that’s the best way to be the leader on a subject,” Curry says. “I moved up here, and I started raising sheep. So, when I lose sheep, I’d be like, ‘Ah, that’s what it’s like.’”
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