Wolf Crossing

End of the trail

Jimenez would eventually become Wyoming’s wolf recovery project leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, after the canines were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s.

Because wolves are set to lose their protection under the federal Endangered Species Act Friday, Wyoming will take over management of the animals. Jimenez’s job will be phased out in September, after almost a decade in the state.

In the mid-1980s, Jimenez got his start with wolves when he spent three summers and two winters in the remote mountain woods of British Columbia, tracking the animals and trying to catalog their interactions with livestock, deer and other wildlife.

Now, after nine years of “wearing out trucks,” traveling all over Wyoming’s wolf country — tracking and trapping them in the summer, darting them from helicopters in the winter, investigating livestock conflicts and doing research into wolves’ eating habits — Jimenez’s job has a definite expiration date.

Twenty-two years after his first winter with the wolves, the canines have been successfully reintroduced to the Northern Rockies. Their population has grown from just a handful in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho to more than 1,500 now roaming in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Although the return of wolves was undesirable for most ranchers in Wyoming, livestock producers have largely been gracious to Jimenez, he said, and important collaborators in the management of wolves throughout reintroduction and recovery.

“You know, it’s not in the interest of the agricultural community here to have wolves running around, but for the most part they’ve been very cordial, and very nice,” he said. “They just don’t want to be left holding the bag for themselves.”

Truman Julian, a rancher near Kemmerer, said Jimenez has been flexible in his dealings with ranchers and has worked to understand their concerns.

“I think Mike has done an excellent job,” Julian said. “… He’s been very cooperative. If you can verify kills (of livestock by wolves), he’ll issue a kill permit. He also believes that wolves shouldn’t be everywhere.”

Sweetwater County rancher Bill Taliaferro said although some of the federal employees higher up the management chain from Jimenez are “goofy,” Jimenez, himself, has at least tried to work with ranchers….