Foundation for Wildlife Management's banquet slated April 4 at Kootenai County Fairgrounds

Like a modern-day Henry David Thoreau, Robert Roman lives in a timber frame house next to a pond under a stand of pines.

It’s a small structure, two stories high and just far enough away from town for birdsong to overcome the sound of traffic. Nuthatches, robins and finches twitter overhead as geese noisily gabble in the pond outside his front door.

“Those are wild Canada geese,” Roman says over the din of honking and splashing goose noises. “People always ask me if they are pets.”

Roman is the president of the Foundation for Wildlife Management, an Idaho Fish and Game endorsed program that for more than a decade has pressed state and federal agencies for sound management of the region’s burgeoning wolf population.

His friend, Gary Finney, who sawed some of the logs that make up Roman’s house, is the foundation’s VP. Both men work in the timber industry and both are avid outdoorsmen and longtime North Idaho elk hunters.

They have come together to discuss the foundation’s upcoming fundraising banquet slated from 3 to 10 p.m. April 4 in the Jacklin Building of the Kootenai County Fairgrounds in Coeur d’Alene.

The banquet includes dinner at 5 p.m., auctions, raffles and games. Prizes, include firearms and outdoor gear, with tickets available at f4wm.org.

Last year’s event was sold out, but the foundation still has more than 100 tickets available for next weekend’s get-together.

“We often sell a bunch the week before the banquet,” Finney said.

He’s hoping for the same outcome this year. Ticket sales help pay for banquets — including raffle items and prizes — and help to reimburse wolf hunters and trappers who commonly spend more than $3,000 per season on fuel to check their traplines. Idaho requires trappers to check their sets at least every 72 hours.

Roman, who grew up outside St. Maries, started trapping wolves after seeing once flourishing elk herds dwindle. The Idaho wolf season opened in 2009, almost 15 years after wolves were introduced into the state’s southeast corner. His reputation as an expert wolf trapper is well-known.

Finney grew up along Lake Coeur d’Alene and made his mark in the state’s hunting history books as a 24-year-old by shooting one of the largest mule deer ever harvested in the Gem State.

Wolves brought the two men together.

“I think we all like wolves,” Finney said. “We like the wildness they represent.”

The wildness though, has gotten out of hand, he said. When wolves were introduced in the 1990s, the goal set by the federal government was to have 15 breeding pairs and 150 wolves in the Gem State. That goal was soon met, but it took another decade before Idaho wolves were removed from the Endangered Species List. 

Removal allowed Idaho Fish and Game to take over the management of the species, listing wolves as game animals and opening hunting and trapping seasons. 

Today more than 1,100 wolves roam the state, according to Idaho Fish and Game, and the state’s elk herds in many hunting units have greatly diminished — whether by predators, habitat change, or both, is a debate.

Like Thoreau, Roman lives deliberately in his hewn log house along a pond at the edge of town and seeks to return a balance to the elk-wolf dynamic. 

“I always say I started chasing wolves because the elk needed our help,” Roman said. “I would like to see the balance restored.”

Finney agrees.

“The goal is to get more elk on the mountain,” he said.

Sidebar:

F4WM’s spring banquet is from 3 to 10 p.m. April 4 in the Jacklin Building of the Kootenai County Fairgrounds in Coeur d’Alene.

The banquet includes dinner at 5 p.m., raffles, games, silent and live auctions.

Auction items include custom guns, a mounted buffalo head, a guided bear hunt, guided fishing trips, artwork, a wolf mount and a lot of outdoor gear with tickets available at https://f4wm.org.