“This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
- Winston Churchill
Alexander Archipelago wolf, courtesy of Alaska Department of Fish and Game
The wolf situation on Prince of Wales Island, southeast Alaska
On October 26th, Alaska Wildlife Alliance and Juneau resident Joel Bennett, represented by the Law Office of Joseph W. Geldhof, filed a lawsuit against the Commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game and the State of Alaska. We sought to prevent an unsustainable harvest of wolves on Prince of Wales Island in violation of Article VIII, Section 4 of the Constitution of the State of Alaska.
The old harvest quota system
Prince of Wales is home to the genetically distinct Alexander Archipelago wolves. Their numbers reached a historic low on the island in 2015, when the population estimates were a mere 89 wolves. Many groups petitioned that Alexander Archipelago wolves be listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2014, but the listing was later denied. More stringent trapping quotas were introduced, and by 2018 the wolf population on Prince of Wales had rebounded to an estimated 170 wolves. In 2020, wildlife organizations such as Defenders of Wildlife and Center for Biological Diversity filed another petition for these wolves to be listed under endangered species act designation. The findings of the most recent petition has not been published.
Alexander Archipelago wolf skull, courtesy of wikicommons
As part of the State’s efforts to restore wolf populations during this time, the Board of Game employed a harvest quote system. During the trapping season, trappers would trap wolves and seal the hides with the state within 14 days of killing each animal. With this up-to-date information, Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), would track how many wolves were killed and compare that number to their most recent population estimates. When the number of wolf kills reached a number that was deemed unsustainable, ADF&G would close the season. Thus, under this system, the season was limited by how many wolves were killed in a given year.
A big change
In 2019, things changed. Upon the recommendation of ADF&G, the Board of Game dropped this harvest quota system and replaced it with a management system based on season length. Under this new system, the Board tasked ADF&G with sustaining a wolf population between 150-200 wolves each year. If the agency believes there are between 0-100 wolves, there will be no trapping season. If population estimates are between 101-135 wolves the season can be up to six weeks; between 136-180 wolves can render a two month season; greater than 180 wolves can trigger up to a four month hunting and trapping season. The Board also dropped the 14-day sealing requirement, instead requiring trappers to seal their hides with the state within 30 days after the season has closed. In short, the system does not have any real-time tracking of how many wolves are being killed, and is monitored only by season length. The catch? Population estimates are a year behind, so when determining the 2020 season, ADF&G is working with an estimated number of wolves that lived on the island in fall 2019, before the most recent trapping season.
Overharvest
In the fall of 2019, ADF&G estimated that the 2018 wolf population was about 170 wolves, so they opened a two-month season. Per the management plan, there was no limit on the number of wolves a trapper could kill, no limit on the number of trappers who could trap that season, and no limit on the number of wolves that could be taken throughout the season. In local meetings before the season started, ADF&G asked that trappers “moderate their effort”.
The results of this hands-off approach were astounding.
In March, after the trapping season closed, the Division of Wildlife Conservation released a report announcing that 165 wolves were killed during the season, not including illegal and unreported kills or natural mortality. Remember, the last population estimate the agency had was from 2018, which estimated 170 wolves (within a range of 147-202 wolves). Killing 165 of the island’s estimated 170 wolves is a big problem.
Petition for emergency closure, denied
In August, Alaska Wildlife Alliance and Joel Bennett filed a petition with ADF&G’s Commissioner to close the state’s upcoming 2020-2021 trapping season on the grounds that the last season’s harvest was almost as high as the most recent population estimate. To avoid overharvest and significant damage to the population of wolves on Prince of Wales, we petitioned that no additional harvest of wolves should be permitted in this unit until the wolf population rebounded.
In September the Commissioner denied our petition, stating there was “no emergency at this time”. Later that month, we renewed our petition to close the upcoming season. In October, the Commissioner again rejected our petition, declining to make an emergency finding.
2020 hunting and trapping season
As reported by Jacob Resneck of CoastAlaska, around this time ADF&G testified before the Southeast Alaska Subsistence Regional Advisory Council. In an unexpected turn, the agency stated that they planned to open a wolf hunting and trapping season in 2020, but refused to share the most recent wolf population estimates with the subsistence board or the public.
Our lawsuit
No one outside ADF&G’s inner circle knew the latest population estimate, and no one except ADF&G (including the federal subsistence board!) had seen the data. Local news outlet, CoastAlaska, even filed a public records act request. With the proposed season opening in a matter of days, we filed a lawsuit.
“The outcomes of last year’s season leave everyone with a lot of questions, namely how many wolves remain on Prince of Wales. Now, ADF&G says they will open another season, but won’t share the data that led them to conclude that such an opening would be sustainable, or even legal under the state’s sustained yield provisions,” said Nicole Schmitt, Director of Alaska Wildlife Alliance. “We’ve filed a lawsuit to delay the state’s season until there is proof that the wolf population is within the Board of Game’s population objective, and that the season is managed in a way that won’t lead to such a catastrophic loss again. Our organization is not anti-hunting –many of our Board of Directors, members and staff hunt. We advocate for ecosystem-based management, and wolves are a key part of this ecosystem. We also support subsistence rights on the island – if a limited season is sustainably opened, it must prioritize federal subsistence users.”
Joe Geldhof, a Juneau-based attorney representing us in the case noted:
“The failure of Commissioner Vincent-Lang to responsibly manage the wolf population in GMU 2 undercuts Governor Dunleavy’s contention that Alaska is a responsible steward of our state’s natural resources. The Alaska Constitution requires management according to sustained yield principles. Why Vincent-Lang is incapable of following mandated constitutional requirements is an interesting question but more interesting to me is why Governor Dunleavy puts up with this kind of renegade conduct that makes him look like his administration is out of control.”
Our co-Plaintiff, Joel Bennett, is an active hunter for over 50 years in Alaska who served for 13 years on the Alaska Board of Game.
“Wolf management on Prince of Wales is a scorched earth crusade to reduce a threatened, valuable resource to unacceptable levels. If the wolf on the island went the way of the passenger pigeon, the present leadership at the Department of Fish and Game wouldn’t shed a tear.”
Latest population estimate
Hours after we filed our lawsuit, ADF&G and the Forest Service released a press release stating that the estimated population in 2019 was ~316 wolves. The press release did not include any other specifics. The following chart demonstrates how unusual this population boom is, considering past wolf population levels.
During a public forum, AWA and Joel Bennett testified before the Forest Service and State of Alaska vocalizing our questions and concerns about the data. During her time, AWA Director Nicole Schmitt asked when the public could see the wolf data, and whether it included unreported harvest estimates. The State of Alaska declined to answer any specific questions about the population estimates.
Our expert witness affidavit
At our hearing for a preliminary injunction on the season, Dr. Dave Persons, the former ADF&G biologist for Prince of Wales Island submitted an affidavit in support of our claims. Dr. Persons designed research and instigated the work to develop the methods for estimating wolf populations currently used by ADF&G on Prince of Wales, was the principle investigator assigned to study wolves and predator-prey dynamics in GMU 2 for 22 years, and published peer-reviewed papers on predator-prey dynamics in Game units 1 and 2. His affidavit is summarized below:
Questions about the data
- “These population estimates are simply not credible,” Dr. Persons wrote. “ ADF&G figures suggest the wolf population basically doubles. The upper CI for 2019 is 490 wolves of a density of 54.4 wolves/1000 km2, a value higher than any density of wolves ever recorded other that the isolated wolf populations on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, which should be regarded as a special situation… It is certainly possible that over 300 wolves exist in GMU2, but not the population jump from 170 to 316 that included a reported harvest of 25% of the population in between. My conclusion from a scientific analytical perspective is that the population estimate numbers are not credible.”
- “Look at the increased wolf population numbers used by ADF&G between 2015 and 2016 with a reported harvest of just 7 wolves (7%). Look at 2017 and 2018. Killing 61 out of 225 wolves (27%) and the next year the population declines to 170, but a kill of 44 from 170 (25%) doesn’t prevent the population from almost doubling? Again, a review of the data used by ADF&G illustrates that the wolf population estimates are questionable” “…. The extremely high reported harvest in 2019, which is a record for the unit, is 52% of the mean population estimate for autumn 2019 and is unsustainable.”
- “The record kill of 165 in 2019 clearly shows that current ADF&G harvest monitoring in not sufficient to prevent egregiously high and damaging harvests from slipping through the crack in monitoring. A 30% harvest guideline limit should have been 95 wolves based on the autumn population estimate of 316. Even if the upper confidence limit of 490 wolves is used instead of the mean, the reported harvest is still 34%, a level considered unsustainable. Moreover, the reported harvest does not account for illegal and unreported take. It is possible the actual kill was over 200 wolves. That is wolf control, not sustained yield management.”
Unreported and illegal wolf take and a need for different management
“ADF&G no longer adjusts reported harvest with unreported and illegal kill, which I estimated from radio collared wolves to be as high as 50% of the reported take (Persons and Russell 2008).”
“The wolf trapping season changes proposed by ADF&G rely on the same harvest monitoring procedures that failed in 2019 and strike me as unworkable and ineffective. If wolf hide sealing requirements allow trappers and hunters 30 days to report their take, ADF&G won't have any way to monitor take during the proposed 2-week season. Essentially, a 30-day time requirement for reporting creates a 6-week season because a trapper can leave their gear in the field for 30 days after the end of the season and claim any wolves caught were taken on the last day of the season. Unless sparse law enforcement discovers a trapper's gear after the season closes there is little risk he will be prosecuted. Even if the sealing requirement was reduced to 14 days it would still not work as a means of in season monitoring. ADF&G does not impose a requirement for trappers to check their sets within a specified time period, like 48 hours, so legally, a trapper could set his traps and snares on day one of the season and not check them until the season closes. Consequently, there is no practical way ADF&G can monitor the proposed season by keeping an accurate running tally of harvest and promptly closing the season if their harvest cap is reached. The only reliable way they have to assure harvest doesn't further damage the wolf population is to close the season completely or require trappers and hunters to report harvest immediately after the kill and trappers must check their gear frequently, perhaps every 72 hours.”
The cost of inaction
“Alaska Constitutional authority requires the state to manage all wildlife using long-term sustained yield principles. ADF&G has a long history of applying those principles selectively, favoring ungulate species such as deer, moose, and caribou and ignoring other such as wolves. Nonetheless, sustained yield management for wolves in GMU2 requires a conservative and cautious approach because the population is isolated and would not be rescued naturally by dispersal if brought to the brink of extinction or subjected to severe inbreeding”
“I recommended a decade ago that a 30% kill from all human causes including report, unreported harvest, and illegal kill, likely was the limit of sustainability based on mortality data from radio collared wolf packs…This may cause irreparable harm to wolves in the unit because they are an isolated population and have genomic characterizes of inbreeding similar to wolves on Isle Royale in Michigan (Zarn, 2019). Overharvesting that reduces population substantially, even for just one year, may force it through a genetic bottleneck further reducing genetic diversity and increasing risks of inbreeding.”
“The genetic diversity and population resilience of wolves in GMU 2 is at risk from over harvest and ineffective population and harvest management. That risk and the factors contributing to it increase the likelihood that wolf population in GMU 2 may eventually go extinct.”
The ruling
After hearing testimony and considering the affidavit, the judge ruled that we could not prove irrevocable harm, and thus dismissed our request for injunctive relief. In short, the 2019 season was viewed as an anomaly, and the State was confident that the shorter season would not lead to overharvest. The only mechanism the State employs to regulate the trapping season is time. The 21-day season, with no limit on the number of wolves trappers can take, will continue until December 5.
What now?
While the hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction did not go in our favor, there are some silver linings.
We applied pressure for increased transparency and accountability in managing this wolf population. Alaska Wildlife Alliance works everyday to ensure that wildlife managers are sustainably regulating hunting seasons and considering the health of ecosystems, not single species. The spotlight is on Prince of Wales and we will continue to keep it there.
We have asked the agency multiple times about their methods for estimating illegal or unreported wolf harvest. Last week, eleven law enforcement officers from the Forest Service and Alaska Wildlife Troopers increased their patrols of the Ketchikan and Prince of Wales Island area. While most the the area’s hunters were acting legally, Alaska Native News and KINY Radio reported the following citations in the 12 day investigation:
Seven hunters were cited for taking game with artificial light
Three hunters were cited for illuminating deer in Southeast
Five hunters were charged with Misconduct involving a Weapon in the Fourth Degree
11 were cited for shooting from a roadway
One hunter was cited for having no deer tags
Nine hunting rifles were also seized during the operation
With increased attention on GMU 2, we are optimistic that wildlife enforcement will be matched during the wolf season.
3) On November 10, ADF&G released the 2019 wolf data memorandum outlining their population estimate for Prince of Wales. Missing from the data was any mention of estimating unreported or illegal wolf harvest, which according to Persons studies has been as high as 50% of the reported harvest. We will continue to seek information on human-caused mortality as a means of finding more accurate wolf population estimates on the island.
4) The Constitutional case against the State of Alaska continues. The state has until December 6, 2020 to answer our basic Complaint. A full trial on the issues is likely in 2021.
We would like to thank the legal team who poured hours into this suit, especially Joe, Nathaniel and Tom. We also thank our co-plaintiff, Joel Bennett, and the AWA members whose support makes this work possible. Thank you!
You can read more about this story, as reported in: CoastAlaska , Associated Press , Seattle Times
