OPA Wolf Position
June 10, 2023
Olympic Park Advocates strongly supports returning wolves to Olympic National Park and the Olympic ecosystem where they once thrived. The national park offers some of the best protected habitat as well as the largest unmanaged Roosevelt elk population (as potential prey base) and the lowest chances for wolf-human conflicts in Washington state. Returning wolves, formerly the park’s keystone predator and the only mammal species missing from Olympic, would benefit the entire ecosystem from endemic Olympic marmots to Roosevelt elk.
The return of wolves will strengthen the resident elk populations by culling sick or weak animals and likely reducing the spread of diseases, such as treponeme-associated hoof disease (TAHD). Additionally, the presence of wolves could bring lasting economic benefits to surrounding Olympic Peninsula communities as is demonstrated by the increased number of visitors to Yellowstone National Park following wolf relocation in the 1990s. Due to the accelerating effects of climate change, the importance of returning ONP’s ecosystem to wholeness has new urgency.
OPA supports the return of wolves to Olympic National Park and the Olympic ecosystem by any or all of the following:
- Supporting efforts to expand Washington state’s wildlife connectivity corridors in order to increase the likelihood of natural recolonization;
- Translocation by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife from other parts of the state that have healthy wolf populations;
- Reintroduction by National Park Service/U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service into the national park.
OPA supports predator coexistence education, outreach and communication with both urban and rural Peninsula communities—essential to the long-term reintegration of wolves on the Olympic Peninsula ecosystem.
Wolf Recovery in Olympic National Park
Apr. 19, 2022
Returning wolves to the Olympic ecosystem is one of OPA’s top priorities. Here is an update on the current status of wolf recovery in Olympic National Park (ONP).
ONP Planning History
Beginning in 1974 ONP planning documents recommended habitat and prey-base studies for restoring wolves to the park. A 1981 National Park Service (NPS) Advisory Board task force on wolf recovery chaired by Dr. Durward L. Allen (Purdue University) recommended planning and public information programs be started for “early experimental reintroductions” of wolves to two national parks: Yellowstone and Olympic. A 1991 ONP resource management plan stated: “It is timely for Olympic to initiate studies of the feasibility of wolf reintroduction … [and to] participate in interagency programs to increase public awareness of wolf ecology and recovery.” Most recently, the Park’s current General Management Plan (2008) identified a wolf recovery and management plan as a future need for Park managers.
USFWS Feasibility Study
In 1999 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a Feasibility Study on the Reintroduction of Gray Wolves to the Olympic Peninsula. The study found
- Reintroduction was biologically feasible to restore wolves to ONP.
- The Park and surrounding roadless areas could support a population of about 56 wolves in six to seven packs in the Park’s western and northern river valleys.
- Primary habitat used by wolves would be almost entirely (98%) in public ownership.
- Impacts to deer and elk populations in the area would be minimal, reducing populations by about 17%, well within population viability (with some concern expressed for recovering eastside elk populations).
- The likelihood of wolves coming into contact with humans, pets and livestock would be insignificant.
Current Planning Efforts
Fishers (the only other wildlife species extirpated from ONP) were successfully reintroduced to the Park in 2008–2010. In 2021–22 supplemental individuals from a different population were introduced. A study on the status of marten in ONP is currently underway.
NPS managers participated in the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Wolf Conservation and Management Plan for Washington (2011), advocating for wolf recovery in Washington’s three national parks. The plan confirmed that ONP offers the best habitat, largest unmanaged elk population, and lowest chances for wolf-human conflicts in the state. But it requires further analysis and public hearings for wolves to be translocated to ONP from other parts of the state (that have reached recovery goals) and allows delisting in Washington without wolves in ONP.
Currently, ONP is in the final stages of implementing an ONP Mountain Goat Management Plan (2018) and is initiating a Wilderness Stewardship Plan. A wolf recovery plan is the next logical wildlife management plan for the Park, but there are no current plans or funding for planning to begin—and little-to-no wolf education and outreach being conducted by the Park.
Benefits Specific to ONP
Benefits of wolf recovery specific to ONP include: Wolves would complete the ecological restoration of the Elwha River ecosystem, a $325 million public investment and largest salmon restoration effort in the PNW. Wolf predation on coyotes would also have a beneficial effect on the endemic Olympic marmot, which is suffering a population decline due to coyote predation. And wolf predation on elk could address the problem of elk hoof disease beginning to affect Peninsula populations.
Feb. 11, 2020 – Presentation “Wolves in Washington” – by Julia Smith, Wolf Coordinator, Washington Dept. of Fish & Wildlife recorded by John Gussman
Historically, Roosevelt elk and blacktail deer in the Olympics were preyed upon by a remarkable predator, the wolf. Before settlement, gray wolves coexisted with elk herds in most valleys of the Olympics. In 1861 ethnologist James Swan found “innumerable quantities of wolves” on Sequim Prairie. Wolves remained common in the Olympics as late as 1894. But by the time the park was established in 1938, government-sponsored trapping and poisoning had extirpated wolves from the peninsula.
The gray wolf was listed as “Threatened” in Western Washington under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Federal agencies are required to ensure the preservation and recovery of federally listed species where feasible. In 1981 a National Park Service advisory board nominated Olympic as one of the two best sites for wolf reintroduction in the national park system. The other site, Yellowstone National Park, conducted a successful wolf reintroduction in 1996. The return of this keystone species has sent waves of renewal rippling throughout the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
In 1999, in the wake of the success at Yellowstone, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conducted a feasibility study for returning wolves to Olympic National Park. The study found that it was biologically feasible to restore wolves to the Olympics. It concluded that the park and surrounding Forest Service wilderness areas could support a healthy population of six to seven packs in river valleys. The primary habitat wolves would use is 98 percent in public ownership, and the likelihood of wolves coming into contact with humans, pets and livestock would be insignificant. Wolf predation on elk and deer would reduce populations, at most, about 17 percent, well within population viability.
A 1998 public opinion poll showed that more than six out of ten Puget Sound area residents favored introduction. On the Olympic Peninsula a majority supported the idea. Olympic Park’s 2008 general management plan lists a wolf recovery plan as a priority for future management, but there is no current planning schedule or funding for such, and little wolf education or outreach being conducted by the park.
In 2011 the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Gray Wolf Conservation and Management Plan for Washington confirmed that ONP offers the best habitat, largest unmanaged elk population, and lowest chances for wolf–human conflicts in the state. Unfortunately, it stopped short of recommending reintroduction. OPA considers translocation from other areas, where state recovery goals have been met, to be a sound and practical approach that state and federal wildlife managers should embrace.
Wolves remain the only wildlife species now missing from Olympic National Park. How wonderful it would be for visitors to have the haunting music of wolves returned to these forest valleys, and what a major step toward restoring this remarkable and dynamic ecosystem to wholeness.
To read OPA’s comment letter on the Gray Wolf Conservation and Management Plan for Washington, click here. To read the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department’s Olympic wolf feasibility executive summary, click here. To read Tim McNulty’s article “Olympic Park’s Missing Predator” in Defenders Magazine, click here.