A wolf near Cache Valley, Utah?
5-9-2000, article added 5-12
The Salt Lake Tribune reported today that the "Utah Division of Wildlife Resources received four reports of wolf sightings in the last year. Three were deemed bogus, but one sounded realistic, although it has not been confirmed." The reports were near Cache Valley in northern Utah, in the Bear River Range, which is an extensive mountainous region to the east of the valley.
The number of livestock in the range has been in decline for years, and I think it would be great wolf country. My views were borne out by Department of Wildlife Resources regional biologist Dennis Austin who "said a pack of 10 to 12 wolves could find the space they need to run in Rich County, Logan Canyon and the Blacksmith Fork Canyon."
Cache Valley is a beautiful valley with a rapidly growing population, which has become one of the most affluent in Utah. On one side of the valley is Wellsville Mountain wilderness, which is too small for a wolf population; but on the east side is the Mt. Naomi Wilderness and much undesignated backcountry.
Bear River Range from Cache Valley near
Hyrum, Utah. Copyright © Ralph Maughan
Bear River Range at North Logan, Utah.
Copyright © Ralph Maughan
The number of livestock in the Bear River Range was once great. Hundreds of thousands of head of livestock were brought into the mountains in the years after settlement. The livestock so badly overgrazed the range that local people petitioned the federal government create the Cache National Forest in part to stop the devastating floods that rolled out of the overgrazed mountains. Wolves were extirpated in the early 1930s. The cows and sheep also wiped out the bighorn sheep, elk, and moose. A few deer and a large number of coyotes persisted.
I grew up in Cache Valley (in Logan), and I used to listen with wonderment as my grandfather (who was born in 1872 and lived to be almost 100) told me how there were once grizzly bears and wolves in Logan Canyon, including the legendary griz "Old Ephraim."
He even remembered the day Brigham Young died!
I hoped someday the big animals would return, and they have. First came the elk, then cougar, then moose and bighorn sheep. Now it may be time for wolves. There is a direct connection of relatively undeveloped land running from the Bear River Range into the Idaho/Wyoming border to the Tetons and Yellowstone.
Despite the fact that there are no ranchers left in Cache Valley, there are some on east side of the Bear River Range in Rich County, and the Utah Cattle Association is sounding the alarm. "We view them as detrimental to our industry for obvious reasons. We support the safe removal of the wolves if they cross the border," said Brent Tanner, the association's executive vice president.
Here is an interesting article from the Logan Herald Journal about what happened in 1974 when rumors of a wolf led to the killing of some dogs. "Utah Then: No point in crying wolf in Cache National Forest" by Malin Foster.
Here is an article in the May 12, 2000. Herald Journal (Logan, Utah). It looks like the same myths persist in Northern Utah. The article talks about how elk have reduced the Yellowstone elk herd that was "so large it was starving." As we know, the herd decreased from starvation in the starvation winter of 1996-7, but has increased by 10% since in spite of heavy wolf, grizzly, and cougar predation. A wolf pack of ten will kill about 100-120 elk a year. Of course, many them are elk that would have died anyway. This is called "compensatory" predation. Some hunters think all predation is "additive" -- every wolf-killed elk is exactly one less for the hunters. That would be true only if the elk herd was full of prime, healthy, uninjured elk and also there was no competition between wolves and other predations of elk such a cougar (of which there are plenty in the Utah mountains.).
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