The Colville and Idaho Panhandle national forests were among 13 national forests chosen for millions of dollars worth of restoration projects.

On the Colville, the money will be used to create open, parklike stands of ponderosa and lodgepole pine in dry areas of the forest through thinning and small, controlled fires. On the Idaho Panhandle, the focus is restoration of the Kootenai River watershed.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the awards last week, which include first-year funding of at least $1 million in new appropriations for the Colville National Forest and more than $300,000 for the Idaho Panhandle.

The funding is expected to continue in future years. It would include new appropriations as well as matching Forest Service dollars from existing national, regional and local budgets, said Jason Kirchner, a Forest Service spokesman.

Backing from community groups was essential to securing the restoration money, which went through a highly competitive selection process.

“It wasn’t just the Forest Service pushing this along. It was the whole community working on their issues,” Kirchner said.

The Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition worked on the Colville proposal, while the Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative was instrumental in the Idaho Panhandle’s proposal. The two groups seek to find common ground among the timber industry, environmental groups, tribes, local governments and other interests.

“Caring for the forest where we live and work and play is a shared responsibility,” said Patty Perry, administrator for the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, which is part of the Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative. “This will offer a great opportunity for our community.”

If the project receives full funding over the next decade, it would result in more than $20 million in restoration work in the Kootenai River watershed.

Projects to improve water quality would benefit the river’s struggling populations of white sturgeon and burbot, a freshwater cod. Replanting whitebark pine trees would help grizzly bears, who eat the trees’ calorie-laden seeds. Reducing the risk of large wildfires in the watershed that provides Bonners Ferry’s drinking water is also a priority.

The work is expected to create about 144 full- and part-time jobs. One local sawmill is evaluating whether it can add a second shift in the future, said Dan Dinning, a Boundary County commissioner.

On the Colville National Forest, treating overcrowded stands would also create new jobs in rural communities. If fully funded over the next decade, the projects would create more than $70 million worth of restoration work.

The goal is to return the Colville forest to more natural conditions, creating stands of trees that are better equipped to survive droughts and insect attacks. Trees logged during that process would be sent to local sawmills or turned into energy in Avista Corp.’s Kettle Falls biomass plant.

Over time, habitat would improve for animals such as Canada lynx, grizzly bears and pileated woodpeckers. Thinning dense thickets of trees will also increase deer and elk forage and winter habitat.

As overall Forest Service budgets have declined, money earmarked for restoration has also decreased, said Mary Farnsworth, supervisor of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests. “We would not be able to do this to this extent without this funding,” she said.

At the end of 10 years, the forest ecosystems should be healthier and more resilient, Kirchner said. The changes will benefit people who like to recreate in the woods, as well as plants and animals.

“If we have a healthy forest that’s functioning, then everyone gets to enjoy it,” Kirchner said.

Twenty-three projects nationwide will focus on improving forest health and hiring local workers to do it. Washington's winning project is on the Colville National Forest and nearby lands.

Getting the news was a big relief, says Mitch Friedman, executive director of Conservation Northwest, part of the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition, because the competition for this funding is tough.

"Together over the last eight years, our group has fostered more than two dozen successful, on-the-ground, quality forest restoration projects. That's what put us in good position to compete for this million-dollar grant."

The project is part of a multi-year plan that's expected to support more than 500 jobs in Ferry and Stephens counties. Friedman says this year's funding already has been appropriated by Congress, but it will take a little longer for the work to get under way.

"We do have to create the projects that allow the guys in yellow hats to get busy. So, I'd say by this fall, we should be putting that money to work on the ground."

Friedman says the priorities are decommissioning many miles of old logging roads and thinning small-diameter trees from overcrowded stands which have become fire hazards.

Vilsack announced a total of more than $44 million in accelerated forest-restoration funding in 13 states.

And now those efforts are netting nearly a million dollars in new federal funding.

At the same time, funding has been renewed for another project in Washington: the Tapash Sustainable Forest Collaborative, near Yakima.

The secretary announced a new round of grants on Thursday for collaboration in national forests – all aimed at taking better care of the nation's managed forests, with the ultimate goals of preventing expensive wildfires, promoting recreation and creating badly needed jobs in rural areas. 

Forest Service Associate Chief Mary Wagner was at Vilsack's side as he announced the grants during a conference call with reporters.  

She says keeping the national lands that border on Canada healthy has been challenging.

Some stands of pine in Washington have become beetle infested and vulnerable to wildfires. In order to promote more healthy, resilient forests,Wagner says, the US is funding these collaborative efforts.

“To address climate impacts and how they are changing forests,” she explained. 

How does it work?

The federal government is relying more and more on the help of non-profit groups to achieve these multiple outcomes - group such as Conservation Northwest, which is based in Bellingham. 

Its executive Director Mitch Friedman says they’ve formed a coalition of forestry people, carrying out the same goals as the work that's funded with matching money from the feds. 

“...timber companies and conservation groups and community interests that have worked together over the last decade to accomplish more than two dozen quality forestry projects," Friedman says, "where we thin out small trees to restore wildlife habitat, while generating timber and jobs.” 

The Washington grant is one of more than a dozen aimed at promoting cooperation of this kind. You can read the full list by clicking here.

The biggest winner is further south: Oregon’s Southern Blues Restoration Coalition is getting 2 and a half million dollars this year…to help bring back a healthy mix of ponderosa pine, doug firs and larch in the forests near Pendleton.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that over the next three years the 10 projects from Oregon to North Carolina will expand the number of acres thinned and restored on national forests by 20 percent and increase timber production by 25 percent. They will maintain or generate 1,550 jobs.

The projects were submitted by local organizations made up of timber, conservation and community groups that have been working for years to produce a reliable stream of timber from national forests while reducing fire danger, insect infestations and erosion. The 10 projects funded last year amounted to $24 million.

“This is about jobs. It’s about restoration. And making sure forests are in a position to preserve precious water resources,” Vilsack said in a teleconference call with reporters. “We continue to work on collaborative efforts to make sure we have left these forests in better shape.”

Mike Anderson of the Wilderness Society, a conservation group, said it represented the first time full funding has gone to the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program, enacted by Congress in 2009.

“Hopefully, this program will spread to more and more parts of the country,” he said. “This is going to allow us to really tackle the problem and get ahead of the problem for the first time.”

Ann Forest Burns of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said forest restoration has struggled for years to gain traction and that these projects focus the work on large areas in specific locations. She said regional offices of the Forest Service will match spending with in-kind work, such as monitoring ecological conditions and timber production.

The 10 projects include two each in Oregon, California and Idaho, one in North Carolina, one in Missouri and one in Arkansas and Oklahoma. The Forest Service also came up with $3.6 million to fund three projects in Washington, Arkansas and Mississippi.

The biggest grant was $3.5 million for the Lakeview Stewardship Project in Oregon, where Collins Pine will be seeing increased log supply for its Fremont Sawmill in Lakeview. A new plant that was supposed to burn small trees and branches from forest thinning has been shelved by lack of demand for green electricity.

Locally

The U.S. Forest Service has committed nearly $1.3 million for restoration work on the Colville and the Idaho Panhandle national forests, the agency announced Thursday.

The money is part of $40 million in national grants that will be used to thin dense forests, reduce the threat of forest fires near rural communities, decommission roads and improve the health of watersheds, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., applauded the $968,000 in funding that the Colville National Forest will receive. The Northeast Forestry Coalition, a cooperative effort among business, community and environmental groups, has been working with the Forest Service to identify high-priority projects on the forest, she noted.

A similar effort is under way through the Kootenai Valley Resource Initiative on the Idaho Panhandle National Forests, which will receive $324,000.

But is their behavior based in reality? To parse wolf fact from fiction, Pop Omnivore caught up with Daniel MacNulty, a wildlife-ecology professor at Utah State University whose research on Arctic wolves is funded in part by the National Geographic Society.

Jeremy Berlin: First off, would wolves see men as prey and stalk them in the wild? I’d think that in a remote area like this one, wolves might fear or avoid humans

Daniel MacNulty: In my 16 years of studying wolves in Yellowstone National Park, I have never been approached by a wolf or wolf pack. On the contrary, when I’ve inadvertently bumped into wolves they turn and run away—which is a problem when my objective is to observe them!

JB: One of the characters in the movie says these wolves a) have a 300-mile hunting radius, b) will attack anything that comes near their den, and c) “are the only animal that will seek revenge.” Is any of that that true?

DM: No. Nonsense, all of it.

JB: Would a wolf attack a man standing next to a fire, with other men nearby, as happens in The Grey?

DM: Not a chance.

JB: At one point two men are running alongside a riverbank in the middle of the day. Two wolves race out of the trees and charge them. Possible?

DM: No.

JB: Some of the wolves in the movie are huge—not Twilight size, but larger than I’d expect. How big can a gray wolf get?

DM: In Yellowstone, the average weight of adult male wolves ranges between 100 and 120 pounds. The average weight of adult female wolves ranges between 84 and 93 pounds.

JB: Do wolf eyes really glow in the dark, as they do in this movie?

DM: The eyes of wolves and many other wildlife appear to “glow in the dark” because of a layer of tissue in the eye called the tapetum lucidum. It reflects visible light back through the retina, which improves vision in low-light conditions. So when light shines into the eye of an animal [with] a tapetum lucidum, the pupil appears to glow.

JB: The cooperative hunting nature of the pack is played up a lot in this film. Is that accurate?

DM: The extent to which wolves cooperate while hunting in a pack is greatly exaggerated. In a recent study, I showed that wolves are often freeloaders. That is, most wolves keep up with a hunt simply to be on hand when a kill is made. Imagine tackling a moose or bison with only your teeth, and you can start to appreciate the incentive a wolf has to hold back during a group hunt.

JB: Speaking of cooperation, in one scene a lone wolf enters the men’s nighttime camp. The protagonist says it’s an omega wolf “sent in” by the alpha wolf to test the humans’ defenses. Does anything like that ever happen with wolf packs?

DM: No. This is pure fiction.

JB: At the end of the movie, the hero finds himself in the wolves’ den. It’s littered with bones and carcasses. Is that a realistic depiction?

DM: In the dens I’ve examined, most of the bones and carcass remains are on the outside of the den rather than in the inside.

JB: In the final scene, the protagonist prepares to fight the alpha wolf. He tapes broken mini liquor bottles to his hands. Would that give him a chance against a large male gray wolf?

DM: If I was lucky enough to encounter a large male gray wolf in the wild, he would turn and run before I could tape the first bottle to my hand. Most people don’t realize this, but wolves are wimps.

Watch the whole video here. 

Also, check out this other video about the snowy owl's return to Washington.

A longtime conservationist and Omak resident, Kehne was named to fill a vacant Eastern Washington seat on the Fish and Wildlife Commission by gubernatorial appointment on Dec. 6.

"I talked to her about this appointment back in December," said the House deputy minority leader. "You would think when they're making an appointment that's critical for rural parts of the state there would be some communication. She's got a person advising her on natural resource issues. Evidently he's more in tune with Eastern Washington than I am."

Kretz said he is frustrated with the appointment because there are only three positions on the commission — of nine total — that are guaranteed to represent the region east of the Cascades and he wants someone whose personal values line up more directly with those of Eastern Washington.

Kehne, said Kretz, is not that guy.

The current process

While there is an oversight process for the governor's Fish and Wildlife Commission appointments, Kretz said it's hardly an effective one.

In accordance with the Revised Code of Washington 77.04.030, appointments to the Fish and Wildlife Commission are made by the governor with the advice and consent of the Senate.

But confirmation is frequently bypassed. An appointee can legally serve on the commission while undergoing Senatorial review under RCW 43.06.092, which states, "Any gubernatorial appointee subject to senate confirmation shall continue to serve unless rejected by a vote of the Senate."

Confirmations often don't even make it past the Senate Energy, Natural Resources and Marine Waters Committee to be heard on the floor, and historically, many commission members have spent their entire six-year terms unconfirmed, according to Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Phil Anderson.

Bradley Smith, who was confirmed in April last year, is the only current member of the Fish and Wildlife Commission whose appointment has been affirmed by the Senate. Commission chairwoman Miranda Wecker and Vice Chairman Gary Douvia, along with Chuck Perry, have served unconfirmed since January 2007.

Sen. Kevin Ranker (D-40th District, Orcas Island), chairman of the Senate ENRM committee, which handles not just the Fish and Wildlife Commission, but a majority of gubernatorial appointments, said he has a consistent policy when it comes to hearing and recommending appointees for confirmation.

According to Ranker, he sends out information on each appointee to his committee members and gives them time to do personal research. After a few days, he sends a note of his intent to confirm them all without a hearing. If any member of the committee has questions about a specific person, then Ranker pulls that person off of the confirmation list and holds a separate hearing.

Importantly though, he said he does not call a hearing if he thinks that an appointee would be denied confirmation.

"If I don't have the votes," he said, "I don't believe it's respectful to bring somebody before my committee just so we can turn them down. These are individual people and you've got to be respectful."

One of Gregoire's December appointees to the Fish and Wildlife Commission, Larry Carpenter of Mount Vernon, was recommended for confirmation out of the ENRM committee Jan. 24.

It is up to the Senate Rules Committee to determine if there will be a floor vote.

"There are other conflicts with members on and off of my committee," said Ranker of Kehne, adding that he intends to set a hearing date for Kehne, though it has not yet been scheduled.

Ranker responded to why the more tenured members have yet to move past committee, saying: "The other [unconfirmed] members of the Fish and Wildlife Commission don't have support."

"Broken government"

"If you think about it from voters' [perspective], if you're not going to approve them or you're not going to have a process, then just let the governor appoint them and they'll live with it," said Sen. Jerome Delvin (R-8th District, Richland), ENRM ranking minority member. "I think it's broken government. I don't know what more to say. It's not working."

Kretz echoed Delvin's statement.

"I think that the Senate confirmation process shouldn't be the joke that it is currently," he said.

"It's becoming more and more of an issue and I think it's something that the legislature needs to look at," said Delvin. "I think more and more people are starting to look at those and say, 'Okay, they're not being confirmed, but they're still holding [positions] so then what's the value of the process?'"

Anderson agrees, saying it would be beneficial for everyone if all the commissioners received public hearings and confirmation.

"It adds a point at which the public can provide their perspectives on the governor's appointments leading up to a vote by the Senate," said Anderson, who was promoted from deputy director at the Fish and Wildlife Department three years ago. "It also provides an oversight from the Senate, which has members across all 39 counties and can bring a higher level of recognition of those individuals in putting them in that office."

The current confirmation process "gives a chance for some posturing and people arguing about the appointee, but there's really no teeth in it," said Kretz.

Delvin said that could be changed either by legislation or by a shift in the behavior of the ENRM committee chairman, who alone controls whether or not appointees receive hearings.

"It's usually left to the chair how those appointments go," said Delvin. "I hear more and more legislators talking about needing to look at the process and maybe doing something different."

So what of Jay Kehne?

Kretz is not the only person who opposes Kehne.

Delvin said he has received many emails and calls from folks opposing his appointment and the Okanogan County Commissioners wrote a letter to Olympia in opposition.

"It's not a personal attack on Jay Kehne, it's just a conflict of interest in Conservation Northwest," said Jim DeTro, Okanogan County commissioner.

Conservation Northwest is an environmentalist agency based in Bellingham. It has worked on preserving grey wolves in the state as well as helping the state to buy conservation easements in Okanogan County, both of which don't sit well with DeTro.

"He gets a check from them and they're definitely, definitely not Eastern Washington values that they represent," said DeTro.

Kehne has hit back against these criticisms, saying that he has lived in Eastern Washington for 44 years and cites his 31 years of experience with U.S. Department of Agriculture natural resources conservation service "listening to ranchers and farmers and helping them with conservation on their properties," he said.

"I'm a life long hunter and I know what worries hunters have about wolves returning to our state, I talk with them everyday," he said. "I may not be anti-wolf like some people in Okanogan County, but then again, there are a lot of people all over Eastern Washington who have mixed views of whether wolves are good or bad."

Teri Mitschelen, Okanogan County Republican Party chairman, recently wrote in an editorial letter sent to the Omak Chronicle and the Wenatchee World that Kehne would have been a good choice for the commission as an at-large candidate, but as a representative of Eastern Washington, "his personal philosophies of land management and protection of species do not give adequate consideration to the needs of the people who live in Eastern Washington," he wrote.

Anderson, who knows Kehne from the testimony Kehne gave regarding the recently adopted Wolf Conservation and Management Plan, said he thinks Kehne is a good addition to the commission.

"I thought he took a really pragmatic approach in his perspectives and positions in the various aspects and elements of the plan," said Anderson. "While he has a very strong conservation ethic, he also recognized the challenges that wolves in our state are presenting to people, particularly in his part of the state, and was willing and ready to look for ways to find solutions for the problems that were created for that segment of our constituency."

Despite the criticism, Kehne maintained, "my values are very much Eastern Washington."

"I think there would be a tremendous turnout," said Kretz of potential testifiers should Kehne be granted a confirmation hearing. "Just about every day I'm hearing of a new group or organization or county commissioners that are coming out in opposition."

He said he believes there would be people there to support the candidate, too.

Jay has brought value to the area through his work with the North central Washington Resource Conservation and Development council.

He and his family have worked with the Rotary and other educational exchange organizations for years to bring foreign students to Omak. He's been a tireless advocate for the Loup Loup Ski Education Foundation.

He is a biologist and hunter who brings a deep understanding for natural and political wilderness issues to his work.

One of the many virtues of a small population is it's possible to know the folks laboring to keep the community's various wheels greased and the machinery running. Jay's one of those people and he's approachable and intelligent.

It's been appalling to watch the politicians and commentators on these pages and other forums, in a shrill style seemingly borrowed form the national media, as they haves distilled one of our neighbors into a caricature.

As a father, a husband, a professional and a part-time cattle rancher, far from representing my interests, I feel poorly served by the forces allied against Jay. They are presenting over-simplified and incomplete information.

They might do well to follow Jay's example of integrity and generosity: It's my observation that he loves this region with a verve that crosses political borders.

To paint him as extreme or under the sway of west-side interests is laughably inaccurate, a low calculation to score political points.

Elected individuals are wasting our time and money to stir up a self-serving with-hunt.

They do a disservice to the public they supposedly serve while grievously undervaluing an energetic and genuinely dedicated man.

T. Lewis
Omak

MALO - Residents have reported seeing several wolves in the Empire Creek Road area.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, Jan. 18, Llois Copelan and Dennis Wuerth saw two wolves cross Kompan Road while a third veered north on the road and ran ahead of them for approximately 150 yards before turning off and rejoining the others, Copelan said.

Weurth said neighbors along Empire Creek and Kompan Roads have identified wolf activity for some time.

An acquaintance and two neighbors have observed a black wolf.

Copelan said she and Wuerth have seen animals in the neighborhood too big to be coyotes, but didn't consider they might be wolves. A photograph taken June 12 may be one of the same wolves. The photo was taken south of Franson Peak with a trail camera belonging to local property owner Randy Kuchenreuther, Copelan said.

However, the wolves sighted last week were much darker than the one in the photo, she said. This might be due to winter coats.

Madonna Luers, spokesman for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Spokane, said wildlife biologists will contact Copelan about the sighting.

"They do want to talk to her," Luers said.

"It doesn't surprise anyone there are wolves in the Curlew area," she said. "But confirming a pack or a breeding pair is another matter."

According to the state's recently adopted wolf management plan, there must be 15 confirmed breeding wolf pairs in the state before wolves are removed from the endangered species list.

Copelan said they lost a llama in September and attributed it to a cougar kill. Two other llamas didn't return from their summer pasture in October, and she is now wondering if they were taken by a pack of wolves.

We take these wolf sightings very seriously, Luers said. Most wolf confirmation work is done in the spring and summer, Lures said, when WDFW personnel can find wolves more easily. They also capture wolves and fit them with radio collars for monitoring.

The radio collars use Global Positioning Systems and Very High Frequency technology.

Luers said wildlife biologists were aware of a wolf sighting in the Empire Creek Road area last summer, but were interested to learn there had been multiple wolves seen.

An annual survey confirms 27 wolves including three breeding pairs in the state.

Wolf sightings should be reported to the WDFW cougars, bears and wolves hotline at 877-933-9847, Luers said.

Sure, we have lost a few calves to coyotes over the decades. Not many. We do not expect a government bail-out for running cattle in open space. Perhaps if Little Red Riding Hood found a coyote in her grandmother’s bed, coyotes, not wolves would be the focus of so much irrational, high-pitched controversy. EEEK, a wolf.

There are bigger challenges to us, as ranchers, than predation by wolves. Increased residential growth in land that has historically been in grazing creates all kinds of headaches. For instance, we are losing cattle to poachers. 

Last spring, after spending two weeks fixing fence, the cattle were moved to summer pasture. Why bother? New people do not close gates. We used to move cattle between pastures by running them down the road. That is no longer an option. Too many cars driving too fast. It is crying wolf for County Commisisoners to claim they care about threats to ranchers and then designate urban densities of one and five acres throughout the entire County.  Sprawling residential land-use and the loss of grazing land, are much bigger threats to ranchers, than a few wolves.

There are many more humans moving into the County than wolves. More attention is needed to plan for the impact of of THOSE new residents.

Nancy Soriano
Tunk Valley

“There he was, minding his own business, sitting on a couple of stacked telephone poles,” said Odorizzi. “I drove back to the house to grab my camera, and he was still there when I returned. Unexpected and really beautiful.”

Odorizzi said he’s lived at the property for 31 years and has never been visited before by a snowy owl. But he knew that, through fall and winter, the Arctic bird has been spotted at various locations around the state — Skagit County, Grays Harbor and other Pacific Coast locations.

The birds are circumpolar — meaning they fly around extreme northern regions — and usually live in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other sites north of Alaska’s Brooks Range. In their spare time, they visit Scandinavia, Russia and Greenland.

But occasionally they head south, most likely in search of food (lemmings and other rodents). The Seattle Times reported two weeks ago that in past years the bird has been spotted at various points around eastern Washington, including Bridgeport, Moses Lake and the Waterville Plateau.

Since fall, snowies have spread across much of the northern U.S. in great numbers, says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Many of the birds stand nearly 2 feet tall, so they’re hard to miss.

“I sure couldn’t have missed it,” said Odorizzi. “It flew from the telephone poles over to a neighbor’s fence and landed on a post. Then it just sat there, looking around, taking it easy.”

This wasn’t the only odd bird sighting this year for Odorizzi. Last summer, he spotted a turkey vulture, the first he’s seen in the area. “That was a real surprise, too,” he said.

Speaking of wildlife: Okanogan County Commissioners last week sent a letter to state Sen. Brian Hatfield expressing their opposition to the appointment of Omak’s Jay Kehne to the state’s Fish and Wildlife Commission. Kehne works for Conservation Northwest, and that’s a conflict of interest, county commissioners say.

Only problem is, they sent their letter to the wrong committee chair, according to Hatfield.

He’s chairman of the Senate’s Agriculture, Water and Rural Development Committee. They should have sent it to Sen. Kevin Ranker, chair of the Energy, Natural Resources and Marine Waters Committee, on which Sen. Bob Morton — who represents much of Okanogan County — is ranking minority member.

The Associated Press didn’t bother checking either, reporting last weekend that Hatfield’s committee “has the power to remove Kehne from his new position.”

The issue is likely moot anyway, Hatfield says. What the committee actually has the power to do is ask the full Senate to confirm Fish and Wildlife Commissioners.

But according to Gov. Chris Gregoire’s office, eight of the nine sitting commissioners haven’t been confirmed.

“Every Fish and Wildlife Commissioner is contentious from one side or another,” Hatfield says.

If they’re not confirmed, it just means they serve at the pleasure of the governor. Which also means come next January, Washington’s new governor — whether it’s Jay Inslee or Rob McKenna — can almost completely replace the current Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Fish or ferrous: Old car parts turn into art for a cause in Twisp Jan. 27 at the Fish Car Art exhibit and silent auction. The program by Methow Arts and the Methow Salmon Recovery Foundation stage this event, with cars salvaged from the rivers, repurposed into fish-oriented sculpture and sold to the highest bidder.

Proceeds from the sales go toward the Community Trails and Public Art project, an effort to develop pathways through the Twisp Pond public area. Get in on the auction action at Confluence Gallery and Art Center, starting at 6 p.m.

Remember www.hen?: The Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center boils down the town’s legacy into a YouTube video, “Wenatchee’s History in 2 Minutes” — which is actually more like two minutes and 15 seconds, but when it comes to 120-plus years, who’s counting? View it at the museum’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/wenatcheemuseum.

Kehne, a 44-year Eastern Washington resident, is employed by the once-hated environmental group Conservation Northwest. He supports the conservation of wolves as an endangered species. He might have voted in favor of the wolf preservation plan the Wildlife Commission approved unanimously before he was appointed. All that makes him anathema to a large share of the Okanogan population, and out of the mainstream. They are within their rights to oppose his appointment.

But, the Okanogan County Republicans demanding that County Commissioner Andy Lampe resign because he sent a letter recommending Kehne? That’s a form of intolerance more common in the 1950s. The Republicans demanded of Lampe an apology and a letter opposing Kehne, all because he once might have made a favorable mention of an appointment he has since opposed.

It looks to outsiders like a new blacklist. Are you now or have you ever sympathized with wolves or environmentalists? This overreaction and intolerance does Okanogan County’s cause little good.

The central issue ought not to be Kehne’s affiliations, but his character, and he is regarded by many as a capable, thoughtful and collaborative leader with a long history in Okanogan County.

This is the opinion of The Wenatchee World and its Editorial Board: Publisher Rufus Woods, Editor Cal FitzSimmons, and Editorial Page Editor Tracy Warner.

Reports of wolf tracks, wolf kills and howling on the reservation — all the way from Omak to Inchelium — have become more and more frequent since 2007, said Randy Friedlander, manager of the wildlife program for Colville Tribes Fish and Wildlife.

Now that it’s certain, the tribal agency wants to study the wolves, and find out what tribal members want to do about them.

Last winter, the tribe confirmed with a DNA test of scat that they are not hybrids or dogs. Remote camera images since then show there’s more than one.

“They’re here. So — What are we going to do with them now? — is the next question,” Friedlander said.

This winter, they’ve invited tribal members to fill out a questionnaire asking how they feel about gray wolves returning to the reservation, whether they’re culturally or spiritually significant, and if the wolves should be hunted or trapped if there are too many.

Based on the more than 90 questionnaires returned so far, wolves appear to be just as controversial among tribal members as they are in other parts of Washington, Friedlander said.

Officials now think there are at least three wolves, and as many as nine now living on the reservation, said Joe Peone, the tribes’ director of Fish and Wildlife. There’s no evidence yet that there’s an active pack, defined by the state as a breeding male and female with pups, he said. Mostly, reports have been of lone tracks.

Except for a small strip of land between the Okanogan River and Highway 97, wolves are not considered endangered by the federal government on the reservation.

That means the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation — a sovereign nation — will develop its own plan for managing them, Peone said.

“We’re going to be managing them. And when I say manage, I mean we’re going to be removing some,” he said. But just how many wolves tribal members want on the reservation, and how they’ll want them removed when the wolf population exceeds that number, is yet to be determined.

Peone said they will be asking for help from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, mostly with an effort this spring to trap and radio collar wolves to learn more about their ranges and habits.

They’re also planning to set out hair snares to add to information being gathered with remote cameras, which have taken pictures of three wolves — two of which could be the same wolf.

Friedlander noted that Colvilles haven’t lived with wolves on their reservation for between 80 and 90 years, so even elders aren’t likely to remember how wolves were dealt with in the past.

Peone said non-tribal members who live on the reservation and will also be affected by the wolf’s return are welcome to comment at the tribes’ district meetings, scheduled in January and February.

And, in addition to developing a plan for wolves living on the reservation, Peone said, the tribe hopes to work with state officials to develop understandings about wolves living on what’s known as the North Half — an area north of the existing reservation where tribal members have longstanding hunting rights. “We plan to sit down with the state and talk about what we can do relative to the North Half,” he said.

Jay Kehne: Well I can respect those concerns. You know, wolves as they come back into our state, they're a predator and they're going to be eating elk and deer and that's going to affect some populations but hopefully not drastically. That's been the history in other states where they've come back in: there are some small areas where elk and deer numbers go down but not the norm. Same with cattle - the statistics if, you look at them, show yes, there are going to be losses but they're not huge losses. The trick is to make sure that we do everything we can to make sure that [ranchers are] fairly compensated and that includes figuring out ways to actually make sure we know how many cattle are being lost and also to prevent that where possible. So there are legitimate concerns and i think the whole commission realizes that in its passing this wolf plan. They know that the work now is just beginning.    

Listen to the full conversation with Jay at KUOW's website.

"When trying to get people's attention to conservation, I realized with photographs that I got a lot more response when there was the reflection of light in the eyes of an important animal in that habitat, so then I was drawn more to the creatures, particularly the ones that are indicator species who told us that something was going right or something was going wrong in a particular habitat....

"The challenge becomes to get there before the animal gets there, to anticipate its arrival and behavior, so that I can capture a surprising moment that people might not expect, that makes people stop and wonder. And I'm hoping in that a moment of wonder, I instill in them a desire to learn more, and when they learn more, they appreciate the animal, and when they appreciate the animal, they come to love that animal and we always protect what we love....

"Conservation Northwest is this one organization with a focus on the issue most important and that is connecting broad landscapes. Animals have core areas, but if we only protect core areas eventually we're going to have little genetic diversity. We need populations to mix between core areas, so if we are able to connect core areas, animals can not only able to move to keep populations healthy but as habitats change - and all habitats do - if the landscapes are connected, wildlife can move to the new habitat. Every habitat is ephemeral - a wetland or woodland - it changes character. If we protect only that one place then the animals are doomed. But if we protect the bigger landscape then wildlife can find the appropriate home, especially important in a period of climate change, when animals will need to move north or to higher-elevation habitat.

"The second big issue for Conservation Northwest that ties into connectivity but is an issue getting a lot of attention lately, is we're looking at recovery of wolves. We're looking at wolf recovery not just because it is a beautiful and fascinating animal, but because wolves help add really important functionality to the ecosystem.

"One of the challenges that ecosystems in North America face is there is not proper tree regeneration because ungulates tend to stay in one place and eat down that emergent growth.  When wolves come back, suddenly the deer, elk, and moose are more alert on the land. They don't stay as long in one spot and we gain have a greater diversity of trees ages, which means animals needing regeneration of trees -like owls and woodpeckers and many other animals - have those trees coming up for future generations. The wolves change everything.

"We recognize that wolves are controversial, and people feel threatened. We don't discount that. We want to work with ranchers, farmers, and people who feel they have something at stake, so that we can recover wolves and we can help people learn to live with wolves."