Opinion: California Needs Leadership, and a Wolf Management Plan
The below commentary was shared with the California Fish & Game Commission, during public comments (Agenda Item 2) of their 12/11/24 meeting in Sacramento CA. Mike Costello is a HOWL contributor who lives in California, and is intent on bringing stakeholders together for the uncomfortable but necessary process of getting ahead of an impending crisis, where wolf, bear and mountain lion population far exceed the available carrying capacity that current prey species populations support.
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"Wolves.
With breeding pairs approaching 10, and the populations likely exceeding 100 wolves, California currently sits where Idaho was in 2001. By 2003 Idaho had well over three hundred wolves. By 2006 that number exceeded 600. I believe California is on the precipice of a major problem. The problem will be one of ecosystem imbalance, detriment to wildlife, damage to California economically and myriad negative impacts to our fellow citizens.
Wolves may be delisted federally in the next 2 years. Along with the recovery of grizzly bears, wolf recovery is worthy of celebration! Also in the next 2 years the wolf population in California will probably exceed 300. The genie is out of the bottle and there is no reasonable argument to suggest that wolves could or would be extirpated from CA. Yet we do not have a plan which responds to the rapidly changing reality. We have not prepared stakeholder communities to grapple with this reality, and we are essentially investing taxpayer money to accommodate the habituation of wolves that depend on human-provided food sources. Meanwhile, prey species populations are woefully unsupported.
Wolves deserve a place in our wild landscapes. It is incorrect to assume that hunters or even ranchers want to see any large carnivore eliminated. The idea that a significant percentage of people hate predators is manufactured rhetoric, it is a barrier to conversations that could lead to sustainable adaptive management. As I stated a moment ago: wolves deserve a place on our wild landscapes. Humans, human food systems, and diverse & abundant populations of prey species also deserve a place on the landscape.
My request is that in 2025 the Department, the Commission, and our collective community come together regularly to proactively attend to the issues that will be on our doorstep very soon. We need to be ready for Federal Delisting of wolves. We need to address the California endangered listing of wolves, as they are not threatened, nor are they endangered. We need to have a management plan that does not literally invest in the habituation of wolves to human-provided food sources. We need a management plan that proactively values unique prey species such tule elk, antelope and mule deer. We need to be learning from the lessons learned in half a dozen other western states that have seen this script play out.
Adaptive management is messy and frequently the best solution leaves everybody a little bit dissatisfied. But nature is messy, and nature does not honor inflexible systems.
We need to be working together. And we need the leaders in this room (CDFW, Conservation Groups, and Commissioners) to start that process sooner rather than later."
/ Mike Costello, HOWL for Wildlife