photoThis billboard was recently posted aside Highway 82 near Island City by members of the Oregon Wolf Education Committee and Wallowa County Stockgrowers. The billboard will be up for one year.

JOSEPH – Every night for several weeks, Ramona Phillips has heard wolves howl from her house located near the eastern slope of the Wallowa Lake east moraine only around two miles from Joseph. Living with wolves has become a family affair with Phillips as she reflects upon the loss of another calf from her brother Todd Nash’s herd. Nash, president of the Wallowa County Stockgrowers Association, has lost several head of cattle to wolves in the Divide area during the past two years. The latest loss was confirmed as a wolf kill on Sept. 22 by Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife officials. The confirmation brings the total number of agency-confirmed kills to 14 by the Imnaha pack in the past year-and-a-half.

Tracking devices had located the Imnaha pack’s alpha male (OR 4) earlier in the morning of Sept. 22 near the site where the calf carcass was later found. ODFW had sent out text messages to area ranchers earlier that morning notifying of the presence of the wolf. What remained of Nash’s calf was located later that morning at the top of Rail Canyon.

Phillips’ close proximity to the predator and the challenges of running her ranch have encouraged her and four other women ranchers to take their message to as many as will listen and they’ve formed the Oregon Wolf Education Committee, an arm of the Wallowa County Stockgrowers Association. The members of the Wolf Education Committee are Connie Dunham, Lori Butterfield, Lori Schaafsma, Kerry Tienhaara and Phillips.

The committee has taken on several tasks to bring attention to the changes Wallowa County ranchers are experiencing raising livestock with wolves roaming their pastures. To Phillips and the other members of the committee, the issue comes down to private property rights.

“We feel like our private property rights are being violated. Seems to me like it is a Constitutional right to be able to protect our personal property on private property,” she said in a recent interview.

Phillips and her colleagues have taken their message to the media and it has already been broadcast to a wide audience.

The committee hired a videographer to spend several months filming the wolves and recording their impact on the livestock producers in the county. The video has been pared down to about 15 minutes, and Phillips hopes for a viewing at the OK Theatre followed by dialogue and a question-and-answer session, although nothing has been scheduled as yet. The 15-minute version of the film shows the difficulties experienced this past summer by Divide area rancher Denny Johnson, whose suspicions that several losses in his herd were cases of wolf attack were not confirmed by ODFW officials.

The Gary Lewis Outdoor Show recently broadcast an edited version of the video across four western states to an audience of millions, according to Phillips. Much of the video was shot in the agricultural lands east of Joseph and Enterprise during the wintertime and shows several partially consumed carcasses of livestock killed by wolves. The footage includes interviews of several local officials including Sheriff Fred Steen, who echoes the committee’s concern over private property rights when ranchers are not allowed to protect personal property on private property.

Besides producing a video, the committee has also tackled the airwaves. Currently, a weekly wolf report given by one of the members of the committee broadcasts from local radio station KWVR based in Enterprise.

In addition to local radio audiences, Phillips has appeared for interviews on the Lars Larson Show and on Aaron Kunz’s show on Idaho and Oregon’s National Public Radio stations. The committee’s message has also been delivered through AM talk radio in the Union and Baker county region through the locally broadcast Mac Davis Talk Show.

The committee has been instrumental in raising funds to erect a new billboard bringing awareness of the wolf’s presence to motorists on Highway 82 just outside of Island City. Private donations have paid for the billboard’s posting for one year at a cost of $400 a month. The new billboard replaces the old one at the site that was also paid for through private donations. The old billboard was given to president of the Oregon Cattleman’s Association Bill Hoyt, who plans to post the message on his property next to I-5 near Eugene, according to Phillips.

The committee also has a website (located at www.wolfeducation.org), which is still under development but already offers several options and displays the new billboard. The weekly KWVR radio reports are posted on the site.