More money lost

Finally we can put some dollar figures on what Oregon ranchers stand to lose because their Legislature keeps failing to do something about wolves.

Or perhaps our lawmakers don’t follow the news and so aren’t aware that lobos, some with a taste for lambs, have returned to the state after being absent, at least officially, for more than half a century.

But then again the Legislature did accomplish some vital business when it convened for a special session in February.

For instance, specifying that foreign exchange students who live in a dorm run by the school district are residents of that district.

Nice of them to clear that up.

It’s commonly called a compensation program, and several states with wolf populations already have such a program.

As a result, those states will be able to use their share of $900,000 in grants which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently awarded to help compensate ranchers for livestock killed by wolves.

That money, which must be matched in at least an equal amount by non-federal sources, can also be used to install fencing or take other actions designed to protect domestic animals from wolves.

In Oregon, though, the state’s $15,000 share can be used only for the latter purpose.

Not a penny of that money can reimburse ranchers in this state for livestock losses, and the reason for the discrepancy is simple: Oregon lacks a compensation program.

But not because nobody ever thought to set one up.

In both 2005 and 2007, the Legislature failed to pass bills that would have created a compensation program.

That record is indefensible.

Although the first confirmed wolf attacks on livestock happened in April 2009 — in Baker County’s Keating Valley, by the way —  it was known years before that at least three wolves had come to Oregon.

Not coincidentally, in 2005 the state Fish and Wildlife Commission adopted Oregon’s wolf management plan, a document that acknowledges the near certainty that wolf packs would eventually roam the state.

Today there are at least two wolf packs in Oregon — one in the Imnaha area, the other in the Wenaha River area north of La Grande.

Fortunately, a private pro-wolf group, Defenders of Wildlife, paid Baker County ranchers Curt and Annie Jacobs $3,150 for the lambs they lost to wolves last spring.

But we would prefer that the federal government — which after all reintroduced wolves to Idaho, the source for the wolves now in Oregon — make good the ranchers’ losses.

Sadly, when the feds tried to do so, albeit in a token fashion, the recalcitrance of Oregon’s lawmakers made even that feeble gesture less meaningful than it could, and should, have been.