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WORK TITLE: Wolf Land
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WEBSITE: http://www.carterniemeyer.com/
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http://www.carterniemeyer.com/bio * http://idahoptv.org/outdoors/shows/wolvesinidaho/niemeyer.cfm
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Received degrees from Iowa State University.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Biologist, conservationist, and writer. Wildlife Society certified biologist; government trapper in MT, 1980s and 1990s; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, ID, wolf recovery coordinator, 2000-06.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Carter Niemeyer, as stated on his home page, “has been a trapper, hunter, and wildlife proponent his entire life.” Before retiring in 2006, he was a trapper for the government in the 1980s and 1990s, in Montana, and then worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Idaho, managing wolf populations. In that capacity he “helped capture the wolves that were brought to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho in the 1990s,” explained the conductor of an interview with Niemeyer for the Idaho Public Television program Wolves in Idaho‘s Web site. “If you are into wolves, then you may or may not have heard of Niemeyer,” wrote a Wild Muse contributor. “He was one of the guys that checked on rancher’s livestock-damage complaints in wolf country through his job with Wildlife Services, and the guy who coordinated live-trapping gray wolves in Canada to reintroduce in Yellowstone. He’s also one of the guys who shot ‘problem’ gray wolves dead from a helicopter, and darted them with drugs to collar or relocate them.”
Niemeyer writes about his experience with wolves and the American outdoors in Wolfer: A Memoir and Wolf Land. In Wolfer, wrote a Publishers Weekly reviewer, Niemeyer “explores a life shaped by wolves, suspicious ranchers, intrepid trappers, [and] other extraordinary characters.” The author lost his father at an early age and turned to trapping as a way of supporting himself. Niemeyer chronicles his life, including working as a government wolf manager leading up to his retirement. “Niemeyer’s writing stands strong on its own. It’s action-packed and loaded with wit and hard-earned facts. His writing style contains a natural whiz-bang! action that sets a good pace,” said the Wild Muse reviewer. “If you are interested in the field work behind wolf recovery, and if you are interested in the true character of an ethical trapper and outdoorsman, then put Wolfer on your reading list.” “For trappers, hunters, outdoor enthusiasts, animal lovers and anyone with any interest in the process of gray wolf introduction in the Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho,” Tom Remington stated on his Web site, “I believe this book is a must read. I enjoyed it immensely and gained a different perspective.”
Wolf Land “is a more impressionistic–although informative–look at what followed after the wolves were reintroduced,” explained a Publishers Weekly reviewer. “Wherever Niemeyer takes us–Canada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, or Oregon–and whether he’s in his pickup, a helicopter over Yellowstone or warding off mice in a remote cabin in the Frank Church Wilderness,” said Beckie Elgin in a review for the Oregonian, “his tales are rich with wolf lore that is detailed, educational and free of bias. His style is amusing and straightforward.”
Wolves, Niemeyer explains, remain a polarizing issue for the American public. “Wolves mean so many different things to different people,” Niemeyer said in the Wolves in Idaho interview. “Early European settlers dealt with wolves trying to kill their livestock.” But “people have grown away from the land and become more urbanized, and most people don’t even understand what a wild wolf is all about. And so there’s just a lot of fear and misconception on the one hand, and on the other hand, they resemble someone’s pet dog; and so you elevate them to a status where they’re noble, majestic and man’s best friend, and the real answer is that it’s somewhere in the middle of all this.” Niemeyer continued for Wolves in Idaho: “I think until there’s dialogue, the issue of wolves is going to fester, and I think lately it seems like people are becoming more polarized than less. And the fact is, we’re going to have to learn to live with them. And I don’t know if coexistence is the best word to use, but the wolf is here and it’s going to be here for a long, long time to come. It’s been tested in court, the legalities have been challenged and so people are going to have to learn to live with the wolf.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Niemeyer, Carter, Wolfer: A Memoir, Bottlefly Press (Boise, ID), 2012.
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, March 28, 2011, review of Wolfer, p. 24; June 13, 2016, review of Wolf Land, p. 92.
ONLINE
Carter Niemeyer Home Page, http://www.carterniemeyer.com (March 22, 2017).
Idaho Public Television Web site, http://idahoptv.org/ (March 22, 2017), author interview.
Oregonian Online, http://www.oregonlive.com/ (October 4, 2016), Beckie Elgin, review of Wolf Land.
Tom Remington Web site, http://tomremington.com/ (May 3, 2013), Tom Remington, review of Wolfer.
Wild Muse, https://sciencetrio.wordpress.com/ (March 22, 2011), review of Wolfer.
Carter Niemeyer retired in 2006 from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service where he was the wolf recovery coordinator for Idaho. As an expert government trapper, he was a key member of the federal wolf reintroduction team in Canada in the mid-1990s. Carter is an Iowa native, but adopted the West as his home in the early 1970s. He has two degrees from Iowa State University and is a Wildlife Society certified biologist. In 2010 he wrote his first memoir, Wolfer. His second collection of stories, Wolf Land, published in March 2016.
Niemeyer has been a trapper, hunter, and wildlife proponent his entire life. Wolves, he believes, add to the outdoor experience, and people who see or hear them should consider the experience thrilling. Wolves do not, as many believe, kill everything in sight, destroy their own food supply, or lick their chops at kids waiting at bus stops. They are simply predators like lions and bears, and anyone who believes otherwise is, well, wrong.
Carter Niemeyer Interview
Carter Niemeyer helped capture the wolves that were brought to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho in the 1990’s. He had began his career as a government trapper in Montana in the mid 1980’s. In 2000 he became the Idaho wolf recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. He served in that capacity until his retirement in 2006. This interview was conducted in the spring of 2009.
Carter NiemeyerHow many wolves have you actually handled?
I’ve probably handled nearly 300 wolves through helicopter capture and foothold trapping, so I’ve spent an extensive amount of my career in the field handling live wolves.
There are those who say we brought the wrong wolves into Idaho in 1995 and 1996, that they’re bigger wolves than the ones that were here.
I have to support the science again, and specialists in morphology and genetics on wolves indicate that the wolf that was brought down from Canada is the same wolf that lived here previously. And I did some research into books on early wolves that were captured in the Northern Rockies, even as far south as Colorado during the days that wolves were being hunted down in the 1930s; and the body weights were very much the same.
So I feel that this wolf that was brought from Canada is the same species and genetics as the wolves that lived here once upon a time. I think people have to remember that the northern Rockies -- we call it the northern Rockies in Idaho and Montana, but actually we’re a southern extension of the northern Rockies out of Canada -- and all of those wolves in Canada have the potential and the ability to disperse. I believe what happened over the last 50-60 years is that individual wolves have come from Canada following the Rocky Mountain chain and ended up periodically in places like Montana and Idaho.
What is it about the wolf that causes people so much grief?
Well, principally, the grief is about people more than wolves, because people have so many different values and wolves mean so many different things to different people. And, of course, you go back to the myths and the fairytales. Early European settlers dealt with wolves trying to kill their livestock, when livestock was kind of displacing the wild ungulates. And so it’s always been a curse to the livestock industry and a competitor with them.
And then as we move forward, I think people have grown away from the land and become more urbanized, and most people don’t even understand what a wild wolf is all about. And so there’s just a lot of fear and misconception on the one hand, and on the other hand, they resemble someone’s pet dog; and so you elevate them to a status where they’re noble, majestic and man’s best friend, and the real answer is that it’s somewhere in the middle of all this.
There’s just a lot of fear and misconception on the one hand, and on the other hand, they resemble someone’s pet dog; and so you elevate them to a status where they’re noble, majestic and man’s best friend, and the real answer is that it’s somewhere in the middle of all this.
What do you say to people who want absolutely nothing to do with wolves?
Well, anyone who’s opposed to wolves in the northern Rockies, it’s a little late now. The wolf is here; I don’t see the wolf going away for a long, long time to come. I think people are going to have to adjust and recognize that this is another predator in our environment that we’re going to live with.
It’s reestablishing a position that it once had. And it has many benefits. I mean you can’t just look at wolves always in a negative, but they’re a culling factor. Predators like the wolf are what made elk and deer herds and ungulate populations healthy over the years, too. They cull them; they keep them sharp and healthy.
And, of course, smaller predators like coyotes are going to have to give them wide space, because they will kill coyotes and displace them. And I think ungulate herds behaviorally have had to change. They’ve had to get sharper now, because the predator that used to hunt them is back. And so, it absolutely is creating a new niche and other animals have to give it wide birth.
Hunters seem to have a problem with wolves taking what they, hunters, think is rightfully theirs.
Hunters look at the wolf from many angles and perspectives, too, and I have to emphasize that I’m a hunter. Certainly wolves compete, but I don’t think they’re any excuse for not being a successful hunter. There’s tremendous numbers of game animals available to sportsman and with a little effort and sleuth, you still have great potential to collect a wild animal from hunting. I don’t know what the excuse was before wolves, but it has become the main excuse now for unsuccessful hunters. I mean, there are just so many other issues involved in why hunters are not successful, but the wolf is a lame excuse.
Carter Niemeyer using radio control locator
If I worked for the Fish & Game Department, I’m not sure I’d want this issue dumped on my plate.
Being a state wolf manager has got to be very complicated, because you’re subject to a lot of politics. And I can certainly understand, from the legislature to the governor to the Fish and Game Commission and the sportsman groups, livestock industry people, guides and outfitters --there’s just a tremendous number of interest groups who are all expecting the Fish and Game agency to take the correct step in managing wolves, and that varies tremendously.
It’s a difficult financial position to be in, too, since wolves eat elk, and hunters buy hunting licenses to hunt elk.
Well, I can understand being the Fish and Game Department, that depends on revenue from licenses. You’re put between a rock and a hard spot when you’re trying to look out for a new animal under your responsibility, and still be responsible to maintain adequate ungulate herds so that sportsman have something to hunt.
It’s a little late now, but I wish that when the states assume management of wolves that there could have been some kind of a moratorium where the states took the responsibility and didn’t jump right into a wolf harvest, or a wolf culling, or whatever you want to call it. It would’ve been nice, I think, to establish some credibility with wolf advocates and conservationists, environmentalists and people who appreciate wolves for other values. And just sort of get a handle on things and get a feel for managing the wolf. Because there’s this perception that suddenly we’re going from a listed animal to a hunted animal and I think a lot of the public is having a struggle with coming along with that.
The other thing I wish could happen, too, is there’d be more dialogue between the broad term wolf advocates and the Fish and Game Department and talk about these issues more openly, because the conservation groups have been a close ally in getting wolf recovery moving forward and actually being partners, and now there seems to be this falling out and a relationship that’s deteriorating.
There are just so many other issues involved in why hunters are not successful, but the wolf is a lame excuse.
That’s an interesting point, because the conservation groups have almost always been in the same camp as Fish and Game.
They have all along; there’s been a partnership, and now there just seems to be this rush to judgment that the wolf brings all these negative connotations; and I think the public wants some confirmation that there’s some positive reasons to have wolves, too.
Can we manage wolves like we do bears and cougars?
I can understand the concept of just managing their numbers, but wolves run in packs, where bears and lions are solitary animals. So there’s a contradiction there to some degree. And another concern I know that a lot of people look at, too, is that you go from a protected listed species, 1,600 wolves, to proposals of killing several hundred just in a matter of the following hunting season. And, again, that seems to contradict “we’re going to manage like bear and lions,” because you don’t set harvest quotas that high for bear and lion populations. You have to look at numbers, because that’s your database that you’re working with, and verbal assurances are one thing, but those assurances can change due to politics.
How will hunters do, if and when a hunting season is permitted?
I think most wolves that get shot initially are going to be killed opportunistically. I don’t think a lot of hunters are going to go out and say, ‘I'm going to hunt a wolf’ and get one. They’re very elusive. Using radio telemetry as a biologist, it’s hard to locate wolves where you can actually see them. So it’s not going to be easy to go out and kill wolves, but if you have it running concurrently with ungulate seasons, hunters are going to opportunistically run into a wolf, and if they have a tag, they’re going to kill it.
Niemeyer holding radio collar
As a biologist, as part of the wolf recovery effort, it was always discussed, and the ultimate goal was to delist wolves and have a hunting season. That was just one of the ultimate outcomes.
Are the efforts to return the wolf to the west part of the so-called War on the West?
Well, the wolf once lived here, and we exterminated them. And I see, my personal opinion, and I’m a trained biologist too, I support reintroduction if that is what society wanted. I mean, that was the goal. It wasn’t a couple of biologists who dreamed this whole concept up. But the reintroduction was the way to get wolf numbers up quickly and to move recovery forward.
What do you suppose is the biggest misconception that folks have about the wolf?
I think there are a tremendous number of misconceptions by people on all sides of the issue. A wolf is a large canine predator that eats elk and deer and red meat. And beyond being a wild animal, doing its thing that it’s created to do, adding all these human qualities to the wolf is to me, the biggest misconception.
I mean, you can look at one and call it beautiful, but a wolf is a wolf, and it’s unfortunate that they have to be put on a pedestal or demonized, and this is all human-imposed perceptions of the wolf.
The wolf now is sort of this cultural shock that been imposed upon them, but they’re probably the least dangerous of all of the largest predators.
Are you optimistic that we can ever learn to live with the wolf?
I think until there’s dialogue, the issue of wolves is going to fester, and I think lately it seems like people are becoming more polarized than less. And the fact is, we’re going to have to learn to live with them. And I don’t know if coexistence is the best word to use, but the wolf is here and it’s going to be here for a long, long time to come. It’s been tested in court, the legalities have been challenged and so people are going to have to learn to live with the wolf.
Bears and mountain lions and grizzly bears were never totally extirpated or removed from the picture, and so people have evolved and grown up with their presence. But the wolf now is sort of this cultural shock that been imposed upon them, but they’re probably the least dangerous of all of the largest predators.
In modern times, there’s just been almost no record of any human attack by wolves. Mountain lions, black bears, and grizzly bears are attacking people annually, and some are being just mauled and others killed. But that’s not happening with the wolf right now. But the wolf absolutely has the capability of injuring and killing someone.
So, what’s your personal opinion about wolves?
I have no bone to pick with the wolf whatsoever. I see more positives in the wolf than negatives. I’m a hunter, but I’m not intimidated by the wolf as something that’s going to kill me or something that’s going to defeat me from being a successful hunter. I totally give the wolf space in my world, and I really appreciate them and enjoy them and I love watching them. So I don’t really have any real negative feelings toward wolves, but I have a lot of positive feelings.
I’ve been a predator specialist all my life, and I’ve worked with eagles, bears, lions, wolves. I enjoy all of them. I enjoy coyotes. I’ve hunted coyotes, but I’ve spent many more hours just watching them and enjoying them.
Weren’t you responsible for taking out the Whitehawk wolf pack?
Yeah, going back to 2002, it was my decision to eliminate a wolf pack in the east fork of the Salmon River. They were called the WhiteHawk pack. We spent over five years using a variety of non lethal techniques to discourage them from killing livestock, and all of those techniques worked for a short time, but ultimately, the wolves became more persistent and habituated to some of these ranches in the east fork.
We used all of the non-lethal techniques in our toolbox to try to discourage the wolves in the east fork from killing livestock. And it became clear at the end that we’d run out of tools. We’d run out of methods, and they persisted in killing livestock, and I can’t say I felt comfortable with the decision because I took a tremendous beating from the public for allowing this pack to be eliminated. But we ultimately killed all 10 wolves because we had no other choice left, in my opinion. And based upon my responsibilities as a wolf manager, I had to make a decision, and I did.
And how does one go about taking out a pack of wolves?
Eliminating wolves, especially in the northern Rockies, can be very easy. You put radio collars on the pack, you put up a spotter plane and you bring in a helicopter, and you can surgically remove a pack of wolves very quickly. More so in the winter than in the summer, but we have the ability to kill them very effectively.
I see them very vulnerable, especially in winter conditions with aircraft telemetry. I think you could set their numbers back very quickly. And that’s in contrast to the Midwest where the brush and the habitat is so much denser and thicker, where aircraft may not be effective back there; but it’s certainly effective out west.
I have to support the science again, and specialists in morphology and genetics on wolves indicate that the wolf that was brought down from Canada is the same wolf that lived here previously.
Speaking of the Midwest, what lessons do Idahoans have to learn from Minnesota?
Well, the lesson I think is easily learned from the Midwest is the number of years it’s taken to try to get wolves delisted. They were probably 20 years ahead of us, and they’re still trying to get their wolves delisted at the same time we are. And so this takes a lot of time, and a lot of discussion and a lot of anguish between human beings trying to come to the proper management scheme that everybody can live with.
One of the problems I see very clearly is that I wish that politics could step back from the wolf picture. One of the problems that persists is that western politicians cannot stay out of the wolf question and the wolf issue. And as long as these cheap-shot bills are introduced into legislatures, trying to take wolves totally under state management and tell the government to go away and to just make these severe polarized decisions about how to manage wolves, that’s what prolongs the agony and keeps this whole thing in court.
We talk about biological carrying capacity, but with the wolf we’re also introducing the term social carrying capacity. How much will the public support the wolf, and how much will the wolf be tolerated? And so, each time people agitate and stir up the issue and lead the public to believe that politicians are going to determine the outcome, this is exactly what shouldn’t be happening right now.
Explain the alpha male and the pack structure of wolves.
Wolves work out of a pack structure. There’s a designated alpha female and an alpha male, and that’s normally the breeding pair. And they have from four to 11 pups, probably somewhere in the middle, more like six pup average. And the adults do the hunting. The pups normally watch and learn. Adult wolves normally do the hunting in the pack.
The pups are generally useless for probably most of the first year. So, one of the misnomers is that the wolves are out teaching their pups to kill. Well, the pups are learning to kill during that first year of life. A pack gradually grows; they usually have a litter of pups every year. Some of those pups, when they reach two to three years old, they tend to disperse. Some stay with the pack and help take care of the new siblings that they have each year. But these packs normally can build up to a dozen animals. Again, the numbers vary. They’ve had a pack in Yellowstone that’s gotten up to 35 animals, I believe at one time.
And so the pack dynamics are that the alpha pair probably would stay together for life unless one or the other is killed. They take care of several generations of pups throughout their life. Some of the siblings stay and remain with the pack while others disperse, often hundreds of miles.
And they just keep pumping wolves into the environment, and gradually an adult male and an adult female usually 2,3, or 4 years of age find each other, and if they can find an empty territory somewhere where other wolves aren’t living, they’ll mate and form a pair bond, and then they’ll have pups. And they’ll hunt and defend that territory and that’s gradually how wolf recovery occurred in the northern Rockies. We brought 66 wolves in here in 1995 and 1996 and they’ve expanded to 1,600 animals. Probably that’s a minimum estimate, and you’re seeing some dispersal into Oregon, Washington, Utah, Colorado, and states around us now.
What’s the biggest limitation on wolves?
The biggest limitation on wolves are other wolves, first of all. They set up territories as long as there’s space, and when there’s no space left, then those that want to establish a new pack have to find an available territory. And so they may either fight for that territory, or enter it and be killed.
And then of course, one of the biggest factors of all is ungulate food base, like having enough deer and elk to eat, to feed, and sustain the pack. It’s often misunderstood, but biologically, prey control predators; predators don’t control prey. And so these predator populations are very dependent on their prey base, and if that prey based declines or disappears, those predators are going to follow suit also.
How can one expect a wolf not to eat a sheep?
Well, sheep have to be tended very closely. They need close shepherding and they need guard dogs, and if they’re not protected closely, predators will get into the sheep, I guarantee you.
It’s a double whammy because you’ve got the conflict with wolves eating elk and deer that hunters like to hunt, and/or getting into domestic livestock and then getting crossways with the ranching industry; and so those are two of the biggest, hottest issues that keep this thing so contentious. Seasonally they eat rodents, but there’s just so much energy output for what little reward they get that they have to kill something bigger and more sustaining.
This notion that wolves always kill the weakest, that’s not exactly true, is it?
Well, wolves, like all predators, are opportunistic. Commonly they do kill the sick and the weak and the infirm because they’re the easiest ones to catch. But there’s times of the year where it becomes advantageous, especially in deep snow conditions, and in the winter, and during stressful periods of cold weather, deep snow, or even a bull elk who spent all his energy breeding and mating all fall. Healthy animals do become vulnerable.
And what about these killing sprees like Bonnie and Clyde that wolves tend to go on?
I think it’s very selfish and self centered of someone to accuse a wolf of being inhumane in wounding its prey, because a human animal does the same thing in many respects. Hunters don’t always make clean shots, whether they’re shooting a bullet or an arrow. And so to point fingers and say one species is more cruel than the other, I think, is kind of misplaced judgment really.
It’s my experience that wolves do utilize their kills. In my training, looking at dead livestock, people will say, why did they kill the calf and just leave it? It’s because the humans discovered the dead calf and we disturbed the calf, and we had to skin it out and determine that a predator killed it. But if you left that carcass lay, and let time progress, the wolves very commonly came back and ate the entire carcass the next night.
How does a radio collar work?
Each collar has its own frequency and own identity so we’re capable of tracking multiple animals using these collars. There’s a battery pack inside that gives them a longevity of three to five years. Most wolves probably have a neck size of 18 inches, roughly; that's what we put on a female. Some of the collars may be are as large as a 22-inch diameter on a male.
These collars give off a signal; if you’re in an aircraft, I know you can pick them up for 50 or 60 miles. There’s actually a line of sight kind of function in these. On the ground, if we’re tracking them, we use the handheld antenna. But if we’re tracking a wolf on the ground with a handheld antenna, and it’s on the backside of a hill, or there’s some other obstruction or landmark that cuts off that signal, it could be a half a mile away, and you may not hear it.
Often, pup wolves will lay around on a summer day, and they’ll just chew on these collars on the adults and actually chew through them and they fall off.
What are the sizes of the wolves in the West?
Wolves, when they grow to their adult size within a year or two, probably average around 100 pounds. I’ve handled female wolves that were as small as 65 pounds, probably in the neighborhood of 75 to 80 pounds. Then you get into the males. They’ll range from 100 to 135 pounds.
The largest male wolf that I ever handled was in Yellowstone and it weighed 141 pounds and probably a lot of that weight was from eating. And often these animals that weigh 135 to 140, if they went a day or two without food and their system cleaned out, they were probably closer to 115 to 120 pounds. But anytime you hear someone talking about wolves in excess of 135, 140 pounds, there could be a tendency to be exaggerating, although I suppose there are exceptions.
And what about their age?
We know from experience with some of the wolves reintroduced from Canada, that we had longevity in neighborhood of 12 to 14 years of age, so they can live to be quite old. I think in nature or in the wild, their lifespan is much shorter. We commonly handled wolves 4 to 5 to 6 years old. I predict that the majority of wolves harvested by hunters are going to be young animals. Mostly pups of the year, 1- or 2-year-olds.
How far can they travel?
A wolf can probably trot at a sustained speed of three, four, five miles an hour. So in a matter of hours they can travel 15 to 20 miles. And then, based on our radio telemetry and collar recoveries, we know we’ve had wolves that have gone 300, 400, 500 miles. And a wolf recently has been tracked from north of Yellowstone Park to Colorado, using a satellite radio collar which is different from some of the ones we’re using. So they have tremendous dispersal abilities.
How do wolves kill an animal?
Wolves can kill as a pack, or they can kill as an individual. An individual 100 pound wolf is very capable of killing an elk, a deer, or a sheep or a calf. I’ve noticed there’s a couple different styles of killing. I’ve dealt mostly with livestock depredation issues over the years, and with wolves killing cattle, most of the time – I would say 99 percent of the time – they will kill calves and kill yearlings more so than killing an adult cow or a bull.
When killing cattle, wolves attack the loose skin under the front legs, the loose skin in front of the hind legs, and then they bite the rear of the legs, and it’s often referred to as hamstringing, where they literally break the leg muscles down until the animal collapses, and then they can kill it and eat it.
Hunting similarities are the same with deer and elk, except I’ve noticed that they do more frontal attacks, too. They run the elk down, and then they grab them by the face or by the neck or throat also, as well as biting them behind the front legs and in front of the hind legs. So there’s a little bit different attack scheme for livestock versus wild ungulates.
But generally wolves run down deer and elk by grabbing their legs, slowing them down, and then, if there’s a pack of them, some of the other wolves will grab them by the face, neck, throat, nose and hold onto them, and as a group they bring the animal down. I’ve chased wolves in a helicopter, so I’m guessing they can run close to 35- 40 miles an hour.
What happens when wolves meet other predators?
There’s been a fair amount of documentation where wolves and lions and bears have interacted, and some biologists have actually watched the interaction. We know that wolves have killed mountain lions, both adult and young. And we also know that mountain lions have killed some wolves.
And with bears, I’ve heard of some young bears, more like cubs, that have been killed. And in Yellowstone, I know that there’s lot of video documentation where grizzly bears and wolves dispute a kill, but sometimes a bear just lays on the kill, and dominates it, refuses to give it up, and the wolves will generally back off. With more submissive bears, I’ve seen where wolves run them off and actually take their kill away from them.
Wolf Land
Publishers Weekly. 263.24 (June 13, 2016): p92.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Wolf Land
Carter Niemeyer. Butterfly, $18 trade paper (236p) ISBN 978-0-9848113-2-8
Niemeyer was one of the key people involved with the reintroduction of wolves into the Northern Rockies--most notably Yellowstone in the mid-1990s. This engaging memoir of his experiences as a head wolf manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service picks up where his first memoir, Wolfer, left off. That earlier work was a more straightforward narrative of his development from a young trapper and wildlife manager to a wolf preservationist; this title is a more impressionistic--although informative--look at what followed after the wolves were reintroduced, as each chapter recounts a specific event during his time working with the government and local farmers in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. A chapter on the Rose Creek Wolves is a fascinating look at the beginnings of the wolf-trapping program in Alberta and the daring of Wolf #9 in seeking her mate and pups while avoiding capture. Another chapter on the Phantom Hill wolves is a hard look at the misconceptions that still exist about wolves and how "people seemed to be at least fifty percent of any problem a wolf encounters." (BookLife)
Wolfer: A Memoir
Publishers Weekly. 258.13 (Mar. 28, 2011): pS24.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Wolfer: A Memoir
Carter Niemeyer. Bottle Fly Press, $17.99 trade paper (374p) ISBN 978-0-615-40948-1
In this colorful memoir, Niemeyer explores a life shaped by wolves, suspicious ranchers, intrepid trappers, other extraordinary characters, and convoluted politics. "Wolves had a way of working their way into my life," Niemeyer writes, "like a worm through an apple. They are just animals, of course, but they have a way of making people nuts, and for that matter, attracting nutty people." A government expert who reintroduced endangered gray wolves to the West, Niemeyer works day and night to become a revered wildlife expert and develop a real understanding of the often unjustly maligned wolf. Among the book's many engaging anecdotes are stories about grinding up prairie clogs for bait, flea treatments for trappers, and capturing a dart-gunned grizzly. Niemeyer's cogent tale is full of empathy, and his adventures and the mind-boggling challenges he faces will rivet readers.
Wolf advocate's new memoir filled with insight, respect and awe (review)
1 / 11
This March 13, 2014 file photo provided by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife shows a female wolf from the Minam pack outside La Grande, Ore., after it was fitted with a tracking collar. (The Associated Press)
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By BECKIE ELGIN
Years ago, biologist and trapper Carter Niemeyer's job was to kill problem wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains. Since then, he's become a supporter of wolves, a consultant when wolf and livestock issues arise, as well as an interpreter to a curious public of what goes on behind the scenes in the controversial world of wolf management.
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Carter Niemeyer has followed wolves - and captured many - since he helped reintroduce them in the Northern Rockies in the mid-1990s.
In his recently released memoir, "Wolf Land" (Bottlefly Press, 183 pages, $15.57), Niemeyer shares recollections from his thirty-some years of wolf work, including his capture of wolf B-300, mother of the famous OR-7, also known as Journey. While Niemeyer clearly views wolves as animals capable of causing a bevy of problems, he doesn't hide his respect and awe for his four-legged subjects. "And in that first light of day when I know where the wolves are, I feel excited like I'm still a little kid." But a wolf biologist's work isn't always pleasant, and Niemeyer's insightful book reveals that the lives of wild wolves, as well as those responsible for them, invariably hardens as the day wears on.
"Wolf Land" (a follow-up to "Wolfer," Bottlefly Press, 2010), first takes us behind the scenes of the capture of the Canadian wolves that were relocated to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996. Niemeyer, at the time a federal trapper, was enlisted to help procure the wolves. In order to get the animals, he had to "find the guys who could find us wolves." These were the Canadian fur trappers who had agreed to live-trap and turn over wolves (for $2,000 each) to the Rocky Mountain reintroduction program.
In a book filled with stories, one of the most memorable in "Wolf Land" is Niemeyer's telling of an excursion in December 1994 in the wilderness near Hinton, Alberta. A call from a local trapper sends Niemeyer and his team traveling over 60 miles of snow-packed roads until they finally reach the scene long after dark. Flashlights show that three of the trapped wolves are already dead, "their eyes fixed on nothing, like tiny, still mirrors." But ahead a fourth gray wolf is "chomping small trees, and spitting out mouthfuls of bark" as she struggles to escape the snare around her neck. This female, along with another black one, is tranquilized and taken in to be radio collared.
Niemeyer's technique for transferring sedated wolves involves laying them in the cab of his truck, right next to him, so he can monitor their breathing and keep them warm. If the wolf begins to stir, Niemeyer quickly injects a boost of the sedative Ketamine, and the animal returns to a peaceful slumber.
Wherever Niemeyer takes us - Canada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming or Oregon - and whether he's in his pickup, a helicopter over Yellowstone or warding off mice in a remote cabin in the Frank Church Wilderness, his tales are rich with wolf lore that is detailed, educational and free of bias. His style is amusing and straightforward, speaking to his Iowa roots. This is a book to be enjoyed by a wide audience, and despite the inevitable bad ending to several of the stories, it's hopeful too.
Although Niemeyer admits that some (as in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services) still believe in the old adage: "The only good wolf is a dead wolf," "Wolf Land" is optimistic in its efforts to shed fresh light on old fears and falsehoods and ensure a more equitable future for Canis lupus.
--Beckie Elgin, for The Oregonian/OregonLive
***
Carter Niemeyer
Nature Night: Oregon, Decidedly Wolf Land
When: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 11
Where: Montgomery Park, 2701 N.W. Vaughn St.
Tickets: $5 suggested donation
Information: audubonportland.org
(Review) Wolfer, by Carter Niemeyer
Posted at 11:00 pm by DeLene
Mar 22nd
COVER OF WOLFER
If there is one thing you will take away from reading Wolfer: A Memoir, it’s that Carter Niemeyer is a genuinely funny guy who did some improbably dirty work over his lifetime. A strong dose of good humor was likely a pre-requisite for his career of restoring gray wolves to the lower-48 states. His new memoir gives an unprecedented look not only into the life and work of a modern-day government trapper, but also into the behind-the-scenes activities that made recovery of gray wolves possible in the first place.
If you are into wolves, then you may or may not have heard of Niemeyer. He was one of the guys that checked on rancher’s livestock-damage complaints in wolf country through his job with Wildlife Services, and the guy who coordinated live-trapping gray wolves in Canada to reintroduce in Yellowstone. He’s also one of the guys who shot “problem” gray wolves dead from a helicopter, and darted them with drugs to collar or relocate them.
If you love wolves blindly, then you’ll probably be perplexed by Niemeyer’s loyalties. You may think, “How could someone who works for Wildlife Services — who kills animals deemed a nuisance to agriculturalists — possibly help wolves?” The truth is stranger than fiction, the saying goes, and Niemeyer may have been one of wolves best no-nonsense advocates.
You’ll learn in Wolfer that Niemeyer is a straight-talking outdoorsman who doesn’t believe in the myths pinned on any animal — and despite his favor among some ranchers, he steadfastly believes that wolves are not the demon people make them out to be. This belief put him at odds with his agency, and helped advance wolf recovery by leaps and bounds in terms of the on-the-ground relationships he forged with people affected by wolf recovery.
Wolfer is auto-biographical and recounts Niemeyer’s early upbringing and fascination with animals. Most of which he killed, starting with pocket gophers, for bounty money. It continues through his higher education in wildlife biology. His whole life, all he’d wanted was to be a government trapper. After his dad taught him to trap gophers, he gradually trapped larger and smarter quarry (skunks, foxes and coyotes). He taught himself to skin the animals, then stretch and dry their skins to sell their fur. Though you understand he is fascinated with wildlife, you never get the sense he questioned unlimited killing of wildlife that ranchers and farmers considered to be nuisance animals. That is, until he encountered wolves later in his life. (And Puckerpine, a porcupine he made into a pet after killing its mother and cutting her near-term fetus from her belly… but you’ll have to read the book to learn more about this story.)
As an employee of Animal Damage Control (now Wildlife Services), Niemeyer began answering calls from ranchers who believed their cattle and sheep were being harassed and killed by wolves in the early 80s. This was when wolves were naturally recolonizing parts of Montana, well before reintroduction took place. Niemeyer checked into every complaint, looking for the evidence. He never bought into flimsy stories and made decisions based on the evidence at hand. He checked for tracks around livestock carcasses, and matched the physical evidence of a scene to the rancher’s explanations. But what really made the difference between fact and fiction was when he skinned the carcasses. By skinning the dead livestock down to their hooves, Niemeyer could determine if a wolf’s bite or something else — like an infection, disease, poisonous plants, black bear or mountain lion — had killed the animal.
For me, things got incredibly interesting on page 156. Niemeyer had been called to investigate livestock deaths near Marion, Montana, so he checked out the ranch which looked to him “like they’d hit on hard times long before wolves showed up.” He found that hip wounds the rancher attributed to wolf bites were really infections from branding activities that flies then laid their eggs within. Still, the rancher was worked up over wolves chewing on his maggot-riddled calves, and Niemeyer’s agency pressured him to fix it. He soon discovered there were wolves around — just not on this guy’s ranch. He wrote:
I stood by my finding that no wolf pack was anywhere near the other ranch — because I knew exactly where they were living. But to cover myself, I set traps there anyway. I caught a few coyotes and shot another that came close when I blew on my predator call. The calves had some abrasions and minor wounds that could possibly be blamed on coyotes, and that was the justification. Something needed to die while Bangs was drawing up a plan. It was a shameful reality that this was the only way to get pressure off the wolves.
This anecdote was a turning point in Niemeyer’s life (at least the way he’s written it in his memoir). It was the beginning of his realizations that what he was tasked with doing — killing wolves blamed in livestock deaths and injuries, when they likely were not to blame — was unethical. The first half of the book establishes that ethics and logic make Niemeyer tick. In the second half of the book, Niemeyer traces the evolution of his own understanding of wolves and their relationship to people. He also outlines the conflicts he ran into with his agency when the inevitable difference between its culture clashed with his integrity. (By the book’s end on page 355, you definitely get the sense he has an axe to grind with his former employer.)
Niemeyer’s field-investigative methods allowed him to separate the real wolf problems from the imagined ones. He wrote: “In the short time I’d been looking at such situations, I’d found that wolves and coyotes were doing a lot more cleaning up than killing, when it came to cattle, anyway,” (pg. 222, referring to the predators scavenging upon already-dead livestock). His fact-based methods earned him the respect of Ed Bangs, who was (and is) tasked with Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf recovery. Bangs worked it out so that Niemeyer could work under the wolf-recovery project. Eventually Niemeyer came to be in charge of wolf recovery within the state of Idaho.
One element that shined through again and again in this book was Niemeyer’s use of language and anecdote. He has a folksy way of telling stories that I assume is similar to how he talks in real life. This narration brings the reader into his world of rural landscapes and small towns. You feel wrapped up in his life as he is re-telling it to you.
Another element that I appreciated was his use of detail. In the author’s note, Niemeyer tells us that he kept copious records and field reports from his career. While he may have written them as CYA documents, they proved to be a goldmine when it came to writing his book. His ability to name places, dates and people and describe scenes brings his anecdotes to life in a vivid sense. You feel like a silent observer, tucked in his back pocket, as he learns to dart and drug his first gray wolves, or when he’s hunched over a dead cow skinning it out at midnight with an angry rancher standing over him with a light.
But perhaps the strongest element of the book is Niemeyer’s own personality. His ability to write about his integrity and his relationships with people through the course of trying to recover gray wolves out West is the heart and soul of Wolfer. In true life, his character helped advance gray wolf recovery by working cooperatively with one person at a time. In the book, his character advances the story in a way that keeps you turning page after page.
Wolfer is self-published, and I have to admit I picked it up with a slight sense of trepidation. I feared the book would lack a certain sparkle and organization because it hadn’t passed through the labyrinths of professional editing. For the most part, my fear was proved wrong. (I did find the lack of discernible chapters hard to get past, structurally, but eventually I rode with it.) Overall, Niemeyer’s writing stands strong on its own. It’s action-packed and loaded with whit and hard-earned facts. His writing style contains a natural whiz-bang! action that sets a good pace. I’ve a feeling a professional publishing house would have slimmed the volume down by 75 to 100 pages, but the extra detail he provides is worth reading.
If you are interested in the field work behind wolf recovery, and if you are interested in the true character of an ethical trapper and outdoorsman, then put Wolfer on your reading list.
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Book Review: Wolfer – a Memoir
May 3, 2013 by Tom 7 Comments
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wolfer
Wolfer – A Memoir
By Carter Niemeyer
Published by BottleFly Press
Copyright 2010 by Carter Niemeyer
ISBN-13 978-0-984-8113-0-4
ISBN-10 0984811303
Second Paperback Edition
For trappers, hunters, outdoor enthusiasts, animal lovers and anyone with any interest in the process of gray wolf introduction in the Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho, I believe this book is a must read. I enjoyed it immensely and gained a different perspective about the author.
To be completely transparent about this book review, I have never met Mr. Niemeyer, the author, nor have I ever communicated with him, at least that I am aware of. I believe once I received an email from his wife suggesting I read this book. That was some time ago and it has taken me a couple of years to get around to reading it, mostly because of the recommendation of a friend.
When I first began reading the book, which sets the stage of a young boy growing up in rural Iowa, it didn’t take long to see that there were many similarities between Carter Niemeyer’s upbringing and young past in rural Iowa and mine in rural Maine, including the early deaths of our fathers.
Carter falls in love with trapping. It begins at an early age and his love for and knowledge of trapping grows with each turn of the page. His circumstances while growing up caused Carter to use trapping, the killing of animals, to pay his way in life. He never seemed to take much issue with killing most any animal for their resource, with the exception of the wild canines, excluding foxes.
In the book, I read where in his teen years, I believe it was, that Niemeyer shows his first unexplained affection toward coyotes and even displays hesitation in having to kill one; something that never is shown throughout the book, with the exception of the wild wolves.
After losing his father, Carter Niemeyer comes in contact with people who encourage him to go to college and through it all is presented with opportunities to work outdoors and especially take advantage of his trapping abilities, most of which he learned from people he grew up around.
Much of the author’s story of his trapping life isn’t all that much unlike many diehard trappers. Those around him, in this case his wife and children, have to put up with the long hours, hard work and rancid smells that get embedded into just about everything a trapper comes in contact with.
Eventually Niemeyer takes a job with the Federal Government in Montana and works for animal damage control (now Wildlife Services) through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. There he trapped and mostly killed predators that were killing and harassing privately owned livestock.
Things seem to change and Carter Niemeyer begins to morph into either someone different or into the man he really was inside, when he becomes involved in the Federal Government’s gray wolf introduction program. He teams up with Ed Bangs and the two of them travel into Canada, trap gray wolves, then release them in Yellowstone and central Idaho.
Carter Niemeyer comes across as a ballsy, stubborn and often arrogant man. From the book I gathered he was not afraid to stand up to anyone. A large chip grows and sticks firmly onto his shoulder. At times he doesn’t seem to understand that he is a turncoat; a man who willingly, nay, eagerly killed any animal threatening ranchers’ livestock, including the handful of wolves naturally re-habituating northwestern Montana, to one now bringing the most savage of predators, the gray wolf, into the lands surrounding some of the best ranching lands in the nation.
Niemeyer’s attitude toward these ranchers changes and throughout this book we find little good he has to say about any of them. His attitude becomes that of an elitist, self-taught authority on trapping and wolves. Pity the man who dared to stand up to him. He develops enemies.
The book is mostly well written and interesting enough to keep a reader’s attention. It’s a fascinating revelation of how one man can be transformed into a completely different person because of an animal.
From what I gleaned from the book, Carter Niemeyer, a good man, a great trapper, loses his way and forgets his past. His enthusiasm and learned dedication to whatever he attempts, makes him a prime target for being taken advantage of because of his skills as a trapper. But he prevails, always determined.
Pick up a copy, as I’m sure you will enjoy it. I hesitated because, to be honest, I’m tiring of the same old wolf wars and there’s little new that can be added to the debate. However, information I found in this book helps to show that the actual event of going to Canada to trap wolves and bring them back to the U.S. was extremely poorly planned and wrought with problems. I think, had it not been for Niemeyer’s determination for accomplishment, the wolf introduction may never have taken place. We can either thank him or blame him.
Out of five stars, I would give this book 4 stars.