Rosa: Population Count Shows Wolves Should Be Delisted

On Monday, April 8^th, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife released its latest Wolf Population Count, which indicated 137 wolves call Oregon Home.  That’s a 10% increase from last year, and well above the 124 reported in 2016.  Jerome Rosa, executive director of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association says shows the recovery effort has been extremely successful, much stronger than even the environmental community and wolf advocates expected.

"It seems many of them are now back pedaling saying we need bigger numbers and these numbers aren’t enough.   With the President working to get wolves delisted in the entire lower 48, we’re hopeful that movement will continue and we’ll be successful.”

Rosa said wolves have been very hard on the livestock industry, killing calves, steers and more across the entire state, but also very hard on the ungulate population.  For example, he said the rapid jump in wolves has pushed elk from the higher elevations down on to farm land, especially in Eastern Oregon.  He said the elk then damage high value property, high value farm land, irrigation equipment creating big problems for producers.

“We have an area there in the Hermiston area where there’s four thousand head of elk, and one of our ranchers, has experienced losses of $130,000 this past year, so it’s a significant problem, and one mismanagement of the situation lead to another mismanagement situation.”

Not only did the wolf population increase in Oregon, Washington saw a jump in its wolf population year-over-year.

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