Foundation for Wildlife Management schedules fundraising banquet April 4 at Kootenai County Fairgrounds

Gary Finney will tell you he likes wolves. "I think we all like wolves," said the Coeur d'Alene vice president of the Foundation for Wildlife Management. "We like the wildness they represent." What Finney and group president Robert Roman of Post Falls argue is that the wildness has become a problem for North Idaho's elk, a case they'll take to the Jacklin Building at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds on Sunday.

The Foundation for Wildlife Management's fundraising banquet runs from 3 to 10 p.m. April 4, with dinner served at 5 p.m. Auctions, raffles and games fill the evening, with prizes that include firearms and outdoor gear. Tickets are available at f4wm.org, and organizers say more than 100 remained as of this week, though the 2025 event sold out.

Both Roman and Finney work in the timber industry and describe themselves as lifelong outdoorsmen shaped by years watching game populations shift across the region. Roman, who lives in a timber frame house near a pond outside Post Falls, began trapping wolves after observing elk herds thin in areas he'd hunted for years. That personal stake helped drive him toward F4WM, an Idaho Fish and Game-endorsed nonprofit that reimburses wolf hunters and trappers for documented expenses, typically more than $3,000 per season in fuel and related costs, incurred during active management.

The organization claims to have helped remove more than 3,049 wolves using roughly $3.2 million in membership and sponsor funding. F4WM says it now funds 75 percent of Idaho's wolf harvest and 55 percent of Montana's each season. The group frames those figures in ecological terms: it estimates more than 426,000 elk, moose, deer and livestock have been saved, calculated on the basis that each wolf consumes roughly 20 big game animals annually over seven years.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has partnered with F4WM through its Community Challenge Grant program. Under that arrangement, Fish and Game and F4WM split the reimbursement cost for wolves harvested from specific game management units designated by the department. According to the organization's about page, 46 of Idaho's 78 big game management units are experiencing slowly deteriorating ungulate populations and chronic livestock depredation.

The banquet proceeds underwrite both that reimbursement program and the operational costs of running events like Sunday's gathering. The model draws support from hunters and ranchers who see wolf population management as necessary but draws criticism from wildlife advocates who dispute the group's accounting of predator impacts and question whether aggressive wolf harvest advances long-term ecosystem balance.

Sunday's event at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds is open to the public. Tickets and full event details are at f4wm.org.