First Depredation of 2017 Pt 2
I'm Bob Larson. The first confirmed report of an attack by wolves on cattle in northeast Washington starts the tally for 2017. The June 12th attack on a calf is the first this year and the first by a pack other than the Profanity Peak pack ...
DONNY MORTARELLO ... "We're pretty confident that this was the Sherman pack. We're very fortunate in this case where we have a collar in both the Profanity Peak pack and we have a collar on the Sherman pack. And, of course, anytime we have depredations, we look at the collar activity if we have collars in the pack to glean what we can from that information. We went back and looked at the travel patterns of both collared wolves. They continued to be separate packs. Their territories are, you know it's not a bright line on the ground, so it's a very dynamic in terms of territory and that kind of stuff, but we were able to look at the cluster of GPS points of the Sherman male and tie him to that site."
Fish and Wildlife'a wolf coordinator, Donny Mortarello says the attack starts the clock for the Sherman pack under policy that calls for culling a pack after three attacks within 30 days or four over ten months ... rules laid out by the department's Wolf Advisory Group ...
DONNY MORTARELLO ... "And they all work together to develop our protocol for how we deal with wolf-livestock interactions. They revised that this last year and the new protocol was completed and took effect on the first of June."
The WAG is made up of people from the Livestock industry, wolf advocates, hunting advocates, and departmental staff.
