Sheriff Brad Manke

A northeast Washington sheriff said that he still wants to help the state Department of Fish and Wildlife trap and collar wolves, though talks so far have failed to produce an agreement.

Stevens County Sheriff Brad Manke said Jan. 8 a wildlife deputy shared by Stevens and Ferry counties could supplement state efforts. Fish and Wildlife has three wolf trappers for the entire state.

“I have full confidence in their abilities to trap wolves. What I don’t have confidence in is the amount of time they have available for our county,” Manke said. “I still feel we don’t have enough collars out there.”

Manke broached trapping and collaring wolves a year ago. Wolfpacks saturate northeast Washington, and Manke said fitting more wolves with radio collars would help protect people and property.

Manke said talks with Fish and Wildlife “kind of fell apart.”

The department agreed to let Deputy Jeff Flood trap wolves, but only under direct state supervision and only during lethal-control operations, Manke said. “Our point is to get more collars on wolves,” he said.

Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Staci Lehman said the department is interested in working with the counties and that the department’s Eastern Region director, Steve Pozzanghera, plans to meet with Stevens County commissioners.

The counties must be incorporated into an agreement the state has with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, she said.

Manke said he thinks his office could create its own agreement with federal authorities. He said the inability to reach agreement with the state was also “a territorial issue.”

“We’re absolutely still interested in it. I think the department is still probably open to it,” he said. Wolves are a “constant topic in our community. More and more people are seeing wolves on a weekly basis up here.”

At a meeting Jan. 7 of the department’s Wolf Advisory Group, Fish and Wildlife wolf policy leader Donny Martorello opposed recruiting help to trap wolves.

“I don’t believe that we need outside trappers. We have the capacity. We have the expertise,” he said. “I’ll put our folks up against anybody.”

Southeast Washington rancher Samee Charriere suggested Fish and Wildlife call upon outside trappers to help collar at least two wolves in packs that have a history of attacking livestock.

Using outside trappers will show ranchers that the department wants to collar wolves, she said.

“That trust in the (state) trappers and making that effort is absolutely broken in the northeast as well as the southeast,” Charriere said.

“You need to understand the producers don’t feel there’s a good faith effort, and this is one thing we’re tying to put in a document to hold the department’s feet to the fire,” she said.

Martorello said the department places top priority on collaring wolves in packs that attack livestock, but can’t guarantee results.

“I just want you to know they bust their ass doing this stuff,” he said. “The reality is we’re talking about one of the most elusive critters on the globe.”

To preserve battery life, collars only periodically transmit a wolf’s location, maybe once every 12 hours. Over time, however, Fish and Wildlife and ranchers gain a picture of a pack’s movements.

The collars help ranchers find cattle that have been attacked and also help the department locate wolves for lethal removal.

The advisory group’s meeting was inconclusive. The panel may meet again this month to discuss a policy that would obligate ranchers in areas where lethal removal has been authorized in two of three years to do more to prevent attacks on their livestock.