The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) will present its revised Wolf Conservation and Management Plan to the Commission on March 15, 2019, in Salem.
While stakeholders representing ranching, hunting and wolf conservation came to agreement on some topics, there was no consensus on several of the most controversial issues including the number of livestock depredations that leads to consideration of lethal removal of wolves when nonlethal deterrents have not worked. Environmental groups recently announced that they would not attend the final meeting.
“We were disappointed these groups left the discussion and we did not have the full stakeholder group present at the final meeting,” said Derek Broman, ODFW carnivore coordinator. “Since the drafting of the original 2005 plan, stakeholders remain very passionate so consensus is challenging to achieve.”
Since approval of the first plan in 2005, the hunting of wolves was included as a potential tool to manage wolf populations. Throughout the current review of the revised plan, ODFW made no proposals to begin hunting wolves. If hunting of wolves were to be proposed by staff in the future, it would have to be approved by the Commission in a public rule-making process.
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(Photo source: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife)