I recently did a story on wolves and the number of elk on the Yellowstone northern range, but the same alarm about wolves "decimating" elk herds has been a rallying cry for anti-wolf legislation in Wyoming.

A look at official numbers in Wyoming shows a similar situation—elk are on the decline whenever "wolf" is mentioned by wildlife politicians, but there is elk abundance or "overabundance" otherwise.

Every year the Wyoming Game and Fish Department make an annual report elk hunt report. In the most recent publicly-released report (2001), WGFD reports an estimated Wyoming elk population of 105,868, the large majority in Western Wyoming where all of the wolves are. At the same time the WFG commission, which makes policy for the Department, has set a population objective of 78,235 elk. So the total number of Wyoming elk is 35% OVER their objective.

2001 marked the 7th year in row there were more than 100,000 elk in Wyoming. Wolves were reintroduced in 1995, with the first packs outside Yellowstone in Wyoming forming in 1997. It should be noted that grizzly bear numbers too were growing outside of Yellowstone in Wyoming at the same time. Cougar numbers might have increased as well.

From 2001 Annual Report: 22,772 elk were legally taken. Total hunter success rate was 40%, which is about twice that in other states and provinces. Elk harvest for the previous 6 years was 1994:24,534, 1995: 17,695, 1996: 20,612, 1997: 23,175, 1998: 22,586 ,1999:21,830, 2000:23,727

Here are the 2001 elk hunter success rate in "hunt areas" where wolves are: Beartooth, 27%, Crandall, 38%, Clark's Fork, 45%, Sunlight, 11%, Dead Indian, 31%; Grinnell, 43%; Ishawooa, 49%; Boulder Basin, 46%, Elk Fork, 56%, Thorofare, 55%, South Greybull River, 57%, Wiggins Fork, 48%, Buffalo Fork, 37%, Blacktail, 69%, National Elk Refuge, 59%, Spread Creek, 34%, Crystal Peak, 40%, Raspberry Ridge, 35%. It should be noted that some of the loudest complaints about wolves come from the Thorofare hunt area in the Teton Wilderness adjacent to Yellowstone Park where the success rate was 55%. This is also where unethical outfitters bait elk out of the Park by creating artificial salt licks.

The failure of elk hunt success numbers to decline is amazing because there has been a 4 year drought and NW Wyoming elk herds full of brucellosis, which cause a 5-7% miscarriage rate.

Of course "harvest numbers" are not the same as herd size. There is evidence that the WFG commission has deliberately reduced the elk herd sizes near Dubois and Cody by special late hunts in response to ranchers' complaints of too many elk.

When it comes to wolves and Wyoming politics, there is too little media discussion of the dance done by the WFG commission, ranchers who don't like elk, wolves, and especially sharing the land, and those outfitters who opt to blame wolves while they promote Wyoming's feedlot elk policy because it takes less courage than confronting the ranch, and oil and gas interests.