Rancher issued permit to kill wolves

First kill order in Oregon history out on two wolves in Eagle Cap Wilderness.

A pair of wolves that killed 19 sheep at Curt Jacobs’ Keating Valley ranch this spring returned last week, killing four more sheep and one Nubian goat in attacks Thursday and Friday.

“That brings the total to 29 domestic animals in five separate incidents, so we have given the USDA Wildlife Management Services a permit to kill the wolves, and we have given the landowner (Jacobs) a permit to kill if (the wolves are) caught in the act,” said Michelle Dennehy, spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Counting the sheep and goat killed last week, Jacobs said his tally of livestock killed by wolves is 30 animals in Keating Valley since the initial attacks in April.   

“Under the Oregon (Wolf Management) Plan, when we get wolves killing livestock, we use non-lethal methods. Then if those don’t work, we move to lethal action,” Dennehy said Tuesday.

“In this case the landowner has implemented every step we have recommended. He has done everything he should do to keep the wolves from his livestock. He’s double-penned his livestock, he’s kept them near his home, he’s got guard dogs and he has buried carcass piles. He has also used flaggery and a rag box previously.”

In addition to those efforts, Dennehy said ODFW personnel have fired guns near the wolves and harassed them with loud cracker shells, and even attempted to herd them away from Keating Valley ranches with airplanes.

 When all those efforts failed, Dennehy said the ODFW responded by issuing a kill permit to the Wildlife Management Services and one to Jacobs.

Although the Wildlife Management Services workers can shoot the wolves on sight, Dennehy said Jacobs’ permit allows him to kill the wolves only if he sees them biting, wounding or killing his livestock.

“I understand the ODFW got the green light from the governor, a Senator and from Suzanne Stone of the Defenders of Wildlife before they issued the kill permit,” Jacobs said

“We did let Suzanne Stone, the governor’s office, the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association and the Farm Bureau and other groups that helped us draft the Oregon Plan, know. We did notify them that this is the decision we made,” Dennehy said.

A call was also made to Sen. Ron Wyden, R-Ore., she said.

“From everything we’ve been told, this is not normal wolf behavior,” Jacobs said. “Everyone who has been involved in this case agrees these are rogue wolves.”

He said last week’s attacks included separate incidents Thursday and Friday, but the sheep and goat most likely were killed early Friday morning.

“We think it happened around 3:45 on Friday morning. That’s when my dogs and my neighbors’ dogs up and down the river were going nuts,” Jacobs said.

“We went down and found a dead white-faced lamb. Then we saw the big wolf tracks in the mud. The ground was still wet from the storm. It was a lot closer to the house this time.”

 Annie Jacobs, Curt’s wife, said it’s one thing for wolves and other wild animals to kill because they’re hungry, but from all the evidence at their ranch, it looked like these wolves chased and killed the sheep for sport, biting their necks and mauling them, but not eating the carcasses.

While the wolves appeared to have no interest in eating the sheep, Annie Jacobs said they devoured her registered Nubian goat right down to the skeleton.

 “I was going to milk her and feed the milk to the bummer lambs,” Annie said as she looked on her computer monitor at photos of the goat taken prior to the attack.

“She was a beautiful goat. This is what she looked like before the wolves killed her,” Annie said. “Maybe people can make the connection to what we’re experiencing if it was their schnauzer and a wolf came up on the porch and killed it.

“I can’t talk about it anymore. If I do, I’ll cry, and I don’t want to cry,” she said.

Jacobs said Defenders of Wildlife reimbursed his family for the cost of the 19 sheep killed by wolves in April, and the organization also helped pay to put up flags and electric fencing around sheep pens last spring.

Those efforts seemed to divert that pair of wolves to a neighboring ranch, where they are suspected in several attacks this spring that left three calves dead and several cows and horses with bite scars and one with a broken leg from being chased into a barbed wire fence.

 At that time, when the wolf pair were initially caught on camera attacking and killing sheep at the Jacobs ranch, wolves were still protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. Federal wildlife trackers were brought in and worked with ODFW staff to trap one of the wolves, on May 3, and attach a radio-tracking collar to it.

The next day, May 4, wolves in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and much of Northeastern Oregon, including Baker and Wallowa counties, were removed from federal ESA protection, so the primary responsibility for wolf management within the state fell to ODFW, Dennehy said.

Monitoring of the radio-collared wolf’s movements confirmed it was at the scene of the last week’s attacks, but Jacobs said the wolf has since moved from the Keating Valley back to the Minam River area in the Eagle Cap Wilderness about 20 miles to the north, where trackers with the Wildlife Management Services hunted the wolves on Monday and Tuesday.

Jacobs said he was asked by ODFW staff to go around to his neighbors and ask permission for the Wildlife Management Services to shoot the wolves from an airplane, if they’re  spotted on ranch land.

“I had to go around to neighbors here in the valley to sign release forms,” Jacobs said.

He said the wolf trackers are looking for an opportunity to kill both of the rogue wolves at the same time.

The goal is to prevent the un-collared wolf from pairing up with another wolf and possibly teaching a new mate, or even a pack of wolves, to kill livestock, Jacobs said.

“They’re concerned that if they leave one, it will pick up with another partner and trail back here to our ranches,” Jacobs said.

While the ODFW and ODA Wildlife Services team was tracking the wolf pair Monday and Tuesday, Jacobs went back to work driving a combine harvesting a 60-acre field of barley, overseeing a hired hand running a hay-baler and keeping irrigation water flowing to a field of silage corn — all crops grown to feed cattle and sheep on his ranch.

This time of year, the Jacobses and many other ranchers run their cattle and sheep on grazing allotments leased on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, as well as private lands.

While he’s quick to spot animals killed in pens near his shop, barns and home, Jacobs said he and other Keating Valley ranchers won’t know the full extent of wolf depredation until fall, when they round up their livestock from summer pastures and grazing allotments.