The Idaho Wolf Depredation Control Board on Oct. 26 voted to contract with five ranch groups to help control wolves in priority areas.

Contract applications were approved with Davis Cattle; the Siddoway, Hunsaker and Faulkner family ranches; and a group in the Salmon area. Each must report its progress halfway through the contract’s term.

The contracts, in various locations, will start when agreements are signed. Some will end in early spring, some in June.

A 2021 state law, which environmental groups opposed, substantially increased the number of wolves that can be taken and allowed additional control-related contracting.

The wolf board in late June approved a pilot program to contract with ranch groups on private property where depredation is a problem. Allowed actions include hunting, trapping and aerial control.

The livestock industry, the state Department of Fish and Game and the legislature fund the board. Directors of Fish and Game and the state Department of Agriculture co-chair it.

The wolf board also contracts with USDA Wildlife Services to investigate livestock depredations and control wolves. Wildlife Services must have approval from Fish and Game to kill wolves.

The new contracts aim to complement what Wildlife Services does while providing more information about livestock and wildlife depredation.

Ranchers have reported that depredations can occur in addition to those that Wildlife Services investigations confirm to be caused by wolves, Fish and Game Director Jim Fredericks said.

Ideally, the rancher-led work will have the most impact in high-depredation areas.

“We all recognize we don’t want to pay to harvest wolves that really are not causing the problems,” Fredericks said. Funding the contracts and seeing how the ranchers’ work unfolds is valuable, although “we will need to pay close attention to where the wolves are harvested, and other things.”

Measuring and tracking results will be important, said board member Jon Goode.

The five proposals totaled $156,250, more than three times the amount the board envisioned when it approved the pilot program. The board approved all proposals at 90%, or $140,625 combined.

First-year priorities include spreading projects across a wide area to maximize potential impact, learning as much as possible and remaining conservative, board members said. Contracting parameters and processes could be refined in subsequent years.

“If you go out and talk to producers, you begin to know that there’s a lot more money than this being lost every year,” said board member and rancher Richard Savage.

The Idaho wolf population remains well above U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service minimums that allow state management as a game animal. The population held steady in 2020 and 2021, and dropped by just over 13% in 2022, according to Fish and Game studies.

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission in recent years has focused harvests where wolf-livestock conflicts were chronic or where elk populations were below management objectives.

Confirmed and probable wolf-caused depredations have been down recently.