We have been struck by the differences that have developed in how wolves are managed in Idaho compared to the rest of the Pacific Northwest.

In Idaho, the state trusts ranchers. In Oregon and Washington, the states don’t trust ranchers and, worse yet, treat them like children.

For example, the Idaho Wolf Depredation Control Board has contracted with five ranch groups to help manage the predators. The state will pay a total of $140,625 to supplement what the USDA Wildlife Services agency does to keep wolves under control.

Just keeping up with investigations into wolf attacks is a burden in some areas of the state where the number of attacks is high. The ranchers will be able to help keep an eye on the wolves that are causing problems.

In Oregon and Washington, ranchers must ask state wildlife managers before they do anything. This game of “Mother May I” takes place as managers add up the damage caused by wolf attacks on livestock.

The result is an ineffective, top-down style that leaves ranchers at the mercy of the state even as their valuable livestock is killed or wounded.

From the time the first wolves showed up in Washington and Oregon, ranchers have asked wildlife managers to trust them. In return for what passed as trust, the managers have required the ranchers to use non-lethal “tools” such as fladry, which are strips of cloth or plastic that hang from fences.

If the ranchers had been allowed to help manage the wolves — and immediately remove those that caused problems — both of the states would be farther along. Problem wolves represent only a small percentage of the overall population.

The federal Endangered Species Act is in large part to blame for the problems. It ties the hands of wildlife managers and ignores the people who are directly impacted. The law, signed by President Richard Nixon, was an attempt to curry favor with some members of Congress who were investigating his Watergate indiscretions.

In the end, Nixon failed, but the nation was stuck with a poorly conceived law that doesn’t work. It treats apex predators like wolves the same as it treats butterflies.

We are yet to see a butterfly kill a 600-pound steer worth nearly $2,000.

Congress has made modification of the ESA a third rail of politics. Any attempts to meaningfully amend it have been rejected.

That’s too bad. The only way Idaho was able to get out from under the ESA was through an act of Congress, which simply declared that wolves were recovered. That opened the doors to better management.

Meanwhile, Oregon and Washington are stuck with the requirements of the ESA, even as wolves continue to spread across the states without help.

Congress needs to rewrite the ESA, and the politicians in Washington and Oregon need to take a leadership role in pushing for that to happen.

Only then can ranchers effectively work in partnership with wildlife managers to assure the success of wolf recovery — and the survival of ranching.