Wolves in the Wallowas: wildlife terrorists, or climate-change warriors?

Whitman College students, through an innovative program mixing environmental and political studies, camp out in northeastern Oregon for an up-close look at wolf packs.

By Anthony B. Robinson

Whitman College professor Phil Brick was in town the other day to talk about wolves in the Wallowas. The Wallowas are a rugged mountain range in an isolated but stunningly beautiful region of northeastern Oregon, Wallowa County.   Brick and his Whitman colleagues are the creators of an innovative experience for about 20 Whitman students each year. Known as “Semester in the West,” the course is a term-long field study sited in the Wallowas or northern Nevada, but including study of other western lands from the Canadian Rockies to Mexico.

SITW, as the venture is known, takes an interdisciplinary approach, with students gaining credit in environmental studies, writing and politics. The idea, as Brick put it, is “to see landscape whole,” as a complex and integrated system of land and watersheds, animals wild and domestic, as well as people and their history and culture.

First, an aside. I tracked down the author of Joe & Amanda’s great article Saturday and wrote him a thank you note. He wrote back that he’d like me to be on his radio program and talk about beavers someday. Joe whispered to keep my wits about me because he’s kinda ‘political’! I of course assured him that beavers are always very political and I’d be prepared for that. It turns out, in order to save some animals you have to be fairly adept in the sausage-making of at least local government. Which brings me to this new article on this fantastic wildness program at Whitman. Wildlife – Politics – Environment – and Writing. Wow. What a combination! Do your students need to intern any where? We could definitely find work for them!

Brick and his students understand the ire of cattle ranchers and other local residents. They have spent a good deal of time sitting down with them to hear their concerns, which not only include the costly loss of stock, but the general mental duress of wondering what’s happening to your herd as the nights wear on and the wolves howl. Of course, not all Wallowa County residents are down on the wolves. Some imagine a small town like Joseph, Oregon, becoming a center of eco-tourism, a jumping-off place for people who want to catch a glimpse or hear the howl of the wolf in the wild.

But Brick also developed another perspective, that of the wolf as a crucial link in the chain that might help us to withstand and adapt to seemingly inevitable climate change and warming.

Barren arroyos and streambeds that may flow full and fast with water in the spring are dry as a bone by early summer (Brick’s photos captured this familiar sight). Climate warming has exacerbated this problem because it means that runoff from snowpacks happens more rapidly in most parts of the West. Snow melts earlier and faster and runs off quicker. With each rushing flow the channels are cut deeper and the water moves off the land faster.  

Areas that once were a combination of lakes and ponds or boggy meadows are now cut by these deepening channels and left dry.  Enter the wolf. In Yellowstone the presence of wolves has regulated the once uncontrolled elk and deer populations. With elk in check something happens along streams and rivers — namely willows and cottonwoods begin to reassert themselves where they had been chomped into oblivion by the elk and deer.

You know how this story ends right? Regular readers of this blog should be miles ahead by now. We could easily skip to the end but its fun to hear it all again. Ooh look, goose pimples!

Turns out willow and cottonwoods are the raw materials needed by the best dam builders in the world: beaver. Beaver had themselves been trapped to the edge of extinction in many parts of the American West in the 19th Century. But when the stream-side growth of trees returned to Yellowstone so did the beaver. The beaver quickly began the process of restoring the ponds and lakes and boggy meadows that function as natural water-holding facilities. With the water staying on the land longer, vegetation is renewed and erosion arrested; as a result, water needed for agriculture in late summer is more plentiful.

So let the wolves scare the cattle away and allow the riparian border to grow stronger and the beavers will come do their magic on your stream beds and perennialize your creeks.  That’s a morality play every rancher could grow to love.  You are definitely on to something, and have created an excellent forum for teaching how it all comes together. We here in Martinez had to learn by the skin of our teeth, but we got it eventually. We saw our creeks and their population change with the arrival of the beavers. Keep in mind that beavers in arid regions now have a much harder job than God intended, and watch the NOAA video on the left to show you how judicious posting can assist them in their restorative job.  Send us some interns, we’d be happy to share!

(Mind you, freshly back from the State of the beaver conference and Yosemite State Parks conference I have become a woman familiar with terms like ‘perennialize’ and ‘ungulates’, which may be nothing to be proud of, but is an achievement all the same.)