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attributable to predators, with wolves accountable for only 0.4% of sheep kills by predators. The data indicate that domestic dogs are responsible for nearly 20 times more sheep kills than wolves.
The same numbers hold true for cattle, where wolves are responsible for 0.6% of predator kills.
As far as the threat to humans, a 2002 study by Alaska wildlife officials found that there have been only a handful of documented wolf attacks on humans in North America since the 1800s. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police suspect wolves in a fatal attack on a man in Saskatchewan last month. If true, it would be the first such recorded death in 100 years, according to the Alaska study.
Fears about wolves aren't borne out by the facts, insists Suzanne Stone, of the group Defenders of Wildlife.
"It's almost impossible to discuss it rationally," Stone said. "It doesn't have anything to do with logic or reason, it's so steeped in myth. And this mythical wolf really doesn't exist."
Stone runs the Defenders' compensation program, which has paid more than a half-million dollars in the region since 1987, she said. In many cases, the compensation has not softened the attitudes of ranchers who have lost livestock.
Sheep and cattle rancher Mick Carlson said he has lost about 300 animals on his ranch on the Salmon River to wolves in the last two years and has been compensated for most of them by Defenders. Yet he said he would not hesitate to use lethal methods to stop one.
"I live in a small town of about 400 people," said Carlson, 70. "I guess you could talk to any man in town, and he'd shoot a wolf on sight."
Wolf biologists say that 90% of documented wolf kills are at the hands of humans.
Some of it is done legally, when, for example, a wolf pack habitually attacks livestock. But most wolf killing is not legal, and federal agents who investigate rarely find enough evidence to bring charges.
"These are, without a doubt, the most difficult cases I've ever worked on. It's been extremely frustrating at times," said Craig Tabor, the Fish and Wildlife Service's lead law enforcement agent in Idaho. He and his agents put together the Sundles case - the rare instance, the agents said, where evidence was available.
"The typical scenario is that we have a dead animal in a very remote area that, by that time we find out about it has already been there for weeks or months," Tabor said. "If there are witnesses, generally speaking, they tend to be unwilling" to cooperate.
A statewide tip line offering a $5,000 reward for assistance in wildlife cases has received one wolf tip call in four years. That came in an incident in which a hunter killed a wolf, cut off its tail and bragged about the conquest to so many people that authorities required little help to make a case.
Assistant US Attorney George Bretsameter, the prosecutor in the Sundles case, said that in his 19 years in the Boise office, he's taken four wildlife cases to trial.
Officials hope that once wolves are removed from the endangered species list and legally hunted, some of the anger here will dissipate. But there is also a fear that delisting could lead to the sort of unregulated hunting that all but erased wolves from the West.
"I have spent a career presenting facts on deaf ears," said Carter Niemeyer, Fish and Wildlife's wolf coordinator based in Boise, who spends much of his time trying to debunk myths about wolves.
"It's like Groundhog Day: You get up in the morning and start all over again. That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to retiring. I'm spinning my wheels."
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