Taxpayer Funded Killings
Last week, Washington state ordered the killing of a wolf in the Aladdin Valley in Stevens County and I had questions.
Last Thursday I opened Instagram to see stories and posts saying “WDFW orders wolf killed” and it got me thinking about how wildlife conflict is handled in our state. What the policy says, what the ranchers and scientists are saying, and what are these calves and cows being raised for? Do they get sold to local butchers or are they trucked off to feedlots in the midwest, and if I want to change how our state views wildlife conflicts what can I do about it? Below is the answer to most of my questions.
Who Done It
Three overlapping wolf packs inhabit the Aladdin Valley. When one calf was killed and two others were injured over two days in mid-May, investigators confirmed the wounds were consistent with a wolf attack. That is where the certainty ended. WDFW Director Kelly Susewind authorized the removal of one wolf without knowing which pack was responsible, which animal within that pack caused the attacks, or whether the collared wolf they had just radio-tagged days earlier had anything to do with it.
Wildlife advocates have long warned about exactly this: killing a wolf from a multi-pack area does not address the behavior. It penalizes a family group at random. Research from Montana, Idaho and Wyoming found that when a specific wolf or wolves are not the confirmed culprit, removal may simply push surviving pack members into neighboring territory, potentially increasing conflict for other ranchers nearby.
Rancher Welfare
The cattle grazing in Aladdin Valley are on federal land managed by the Colville National Forest, a 1.1 million acre expanse covering Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties where grazing has been federal policy since Theodore Roosevelt signed the forest into existence in 1907. And the fee ranchers pay to graze one cow and her calf on that federal land for an entire month? $1.69 in 2026.
The market rate for the same grazing on comparable private land is $23.40.
That is a taxpayer subsidy of over 90% during every single grazing season, built into the structural foundation of the industry that is asking the state to kill a wolf it cannot identify to protect calves it is raising on public land the taxpayers are paying for. Taxpayers fund the below-market grazing. Taxpayers fund the range rider program. Taxpayers fund the compensation program that pays up to $30,000 per depredation claim. And now taxpayers fund the lethal removal operations, which cost WDFW $92,000 in 2025 alone.
Whether this specific attack happened on public or private land, that is the economic backdrop of the entire conflict and I saw none of this information in the coverage of the Aladdin Valley kill order. Side note: I will be talking about rancher welfare until the day I die.
The Narrative The Cattle Industry Wants You To Believe
As I was reading up on cattle populations in Ferry, Stevens and Pend Oreille counties, articles kept referencing that cattle populations fell 29% between 2017 and 2022. That statistic has been used repeatedly to argue wolves are destroying the ranching industry in eastern Washington.
However, reality is more complicated. Washington experienced severe wildfire seasons in 2015, 2018, 2020 and 2021. The 2021 heat dome was among the worst agricultural disasters in Pacific Northwest history. Hay prices hit record levels in 2022 following two years of drought that diminished production across the region. A USDA survey found that between 70 and 80% of drought-affected farmers and ranchers in 2021 and 2022 reported removing animals from rangeland due to insufficient forage, and 66% reported selling off or liquidating their herd.
Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington together lost 252,000 cattle over five years, averaging a 2.3% annual decline. That is a regional trend driven by climate, feed costs and wildfires, not a wolf-specific phenomenon.
Meanwhile, WDFW documented 19 cattle killed or injured by wolves in all of Washington in 2025. Nineteen, statewide. I understand that the ranching industry is navigating genuinely difficult conditions, but wolves are a marginal factor, not the primary one.
The Science on Lethal Removal
A major study analyzing nearly 1,000 depredation events across Montana, Idaho and Wyoming found that partial pack removal, the kind Washington typically authorizes, extends the time before the next attack from a median of 19 days to 64 days. That is substantial but not a solution. Full pack removal extended the gap to 730 days but directly undermines wolf recovery goals.
A Michigan study found something more troubling: killing wolves at one site was associated with increased depredation risk at neighboring sites within several miles. The wolves do not disappear. They move.
What the research more consistently supports is proactive nonlethal deterrence: range riders, fladry, foxlights, livestock management adjustments. Washington already funds these programs substantially through Conservation Northwest and WDFW matching grants. The least scientifically supported intervention is also the most politically visible one.
So Where Do These Calves End Up
Spoiler alert it ain’t Kansas. Well techincally it could be.
The cattle in eastern Washington are almost exclusively cow-calf operations. A calf born in Stevens County in spring grazes on open range through summer, is weaned from its mother at around six to eight months old, loaded onto a truck, and sold at a sale barn auction. That sale barn experience, the noise, the crowding, the separation, the handling, is itself a documented stressor that causes measurable cortisol spikes and temporary weight loss. Then the calf is transported, sometimes hundreds of miles, to a backgrounding operation in eastern Oregon or Idaho where it is transitioned onto a higher-grain diet. Then it moves again, to commercial feedlots in Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and other midwestern states.
The feedlot is where the herd stress argument collapses under its own weight.
A commercial feedlot, aka a factory farm, confines anywhere from thousands to hundreds of thousands of cattle in dirt pens where they stand, eat, and wait. The diet is corn, soybeans, distillers grains and growth promotants designed to push the animal to slaughter weight as fast as possible, typically in four to six months. Respiratory disease is endemic in feedlots, affecting an estimated 15 to 45% of feedlot cattle and accounting for the majority of feedlot deaths. Liver abscesses from high-grain diets affect roughly 12 to 32% of feedlot cattle depending on the operation. Lameness is common. The animals never graze. They rarely move more than a few dozen feet. They are in close contact with thousands of strangers in an environment that bears no resemblance to the open range where they spent their first months of life.
So why am I talking about all of this? The industry argument that wolf harassment causes uncompensated stress that undermines the viability of the operation asks you to weigh the presence of a predator on a summer grazing allotment against the full arc of that animal’s life. The calf that glimpsed a wolf at the edge of a meadow in Stevens County is the same calf that will spend its final months in a feedlot pen in Greeley, Colorado. The industry does not describe the feedlot as a welfare crisis requiring public compensation. It describes the wolf as one.
There is also the claim that wolf harassment reduces weaning weights, costing ranchers money at the fall sale. This has certainly been documented, typically in the range of 20 to 50 pounds per calf. At current market prices that translates to roughly $50 to $100 per animal. While that loss is legitimate it is also part of what the state compensation framework is designed to address. But it exists on a spectrum of stressors that the same animal will experience throughout its life, most of which are accepted by the industry as the normal cost of doing business.
The wolf is not unique in causing stress. It is unique in being a political villain.
Who Is Shaping This Policy
The nine commissioners on the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission are appointed by the governor and are supposed to represent the public interest. In practice, the commission has become a battleground for organized interests on both sides of the wolf debate, and the conflict has grown serious enough to trigger a formal investigation ordered by Governor Ferguson.
On one side, commissioner Molly Linville is a Douglas County cattle rancher and member of the Washington Cattlemen’s Association. She was appointed in 2019, not retained by Governor Inslee when her term expired, and brought back by Governor Ferguson in April 2025 with a new term running to 2030. The Washington Cattlemen’s Association lobbyist publicly celebrated her return. She has opposed rules that would require ranchers to more fully document use of nonlethal deterrents before lethal removal can be authorized.
On the other side, four commissioners, Barbara Baker, Lorna Smith, Melanie Rowland and John Lehmkuhl, face a petition for removal filed by the Sportsmen’s Alliance (I will tell you right now, I am not a fan of their work), which alleges violations of state open meetings and public records laws. An internal WDFW memo concluded that the behavior of Smith and Rowland posed “serious risks” to the department, raising red flags concerning their close relationship with the president of Washington Wildlife First, a conservation advocacy group. WDFW Director Susewind found the conduct troubling enough that he took the extraordinary step of asking the governor to investigate the body that has the power to fire him.
The result is a commission where ranching advocates and conservation organizations have both cultivated relationships with specific commissioners, shaped appointments, and fought over the body’s ideological direction for years. The people with the least structural presence at that table are ordinary Washingtonians who care about this issue but are not affiliated with either organized camp.
To understand what this imbalance looks like on the ground, consider 2025. Washington’s wolf population hit its highest recorded level, a minimum of 270 wolves across 49 packs. In that same year, WDFW documented 19 cattle killed or injured by wolves statewide. The state’s response was to lethally remove 4 wolves through formal management orders, spending $92,410 on those removal operations, $90,419 compensating ranchers for losses, and $248,344 on range riders and nonlethal prevention, all while 90% of the state’s known packs were involved in zero livestock conflicts whatsoever.
How To Show Up For Wolves
On June 9th at 6:00 pm PST, Washington Wildlife First will be hosting a workshop on how to effectively advocate for wildlife during the Washington Fish & Wildlife Commission. Click here to register.
The Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission meets monthly (you can check the calendar here) and the next meeting is June 11-13, 2026. This is a public meeting. You can attend in person or join via Zoom. You have three minutes to speak.
The commission sets the policy framework that governs when wolves can be killed, how compensation is calculated, and how the state balances recovery goals against ranching interests. It is not a technical body making inscrutable decisions. It is a nine-member citizen panel appointed by the governor, and they answer to the public they serve.
You do not need to live in Stevens County. You need to care about how Washington manages one of its most contested wildlife recovery stories, and you need to show up.
To register for public comment, visit wdfw.wa.gov/about/commission/meetings/2026 for the agenda, Zoom link, and registration form. Virtual registration closes at 5pm the day before the meeting. In-person registration closes 15 minutes before public comment begins. You will have three minutes. Use them.
Four wolves killed. Nineteen cattle affected. Over $430,000 spent. And a commission currently under active investigation for how it got to those decisions.
Be in the room.
I want to be transparent. The workshop on June 9th is hosted by Washington Wildlife First, one of the organizations at the center of the commission controversy. I am sharing it because it is a useful resource for anyone who wants to participate, not because I am endorsing their broader agenda. You make the call.
Wildlife management data cited in this article is sourced from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife's 2025 Gray Wolf Conservation and Management Annual Report, WDFW's monthly wolf updates and lethal removal authorization press releases, and the WDFW budget FAQ. Federal grazing fee data is drawn from Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service annual fee announcements and a 2025 analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense. Livestock subsidy figures are sourced from the Environmental Working Group's Farm Subsidy Database and a 2024 GAO report on financial assistance to livestock feeding operations. Cattle mortality cause data is drawn from USDA National Animal Health Monitoring System reports. The 29% regional cattle decline figure is sourced from the USDA Census of Agriculture as reported by Capital Press. Drought and wildfire impact data is drawn from the USDA National Drought Mitigation Center, the American Farm Bureau Federation, and congressional correspondence from Pacific Northwest lawmakers to USDA Secretary Vilsack dated July 2021. Lethal removal effectiveness research is drawn from Bradley et al. (2015) in the Journal of Wildlife Management and a 2018 study published in PLOS One examining wolf depredation recurrence in Michigan. Commission membership and investigation details are sourced from WDFW newsroom releases, the Washington State Standard, the Spokesman-Review, and Capital Press. Range rider funding details are sourced from Conservation Northwest's Range Rider Pilot Project documentation and WDFW budget records.