New recourse against wolves

There are at least 216 gray wolves in 37 packs in our state. Thirty-one of those gray wolf packs are in North-Central and Northeastern Washington.

Senate Bill 5939 – relating to protecting livestock from wolf predation – seeks to give affected livestock raisers a chance to mitigate the confirmed and probable predation deaths of their animals. The bill would allow owners of livestock to monitor a depredation and kill the first gray wolf that returns.

The bill lays out the livestock protection plan as a 3-year pilot with a report due to the Legislature by Dec. 1, 2027. The compromise offered by...