BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Patrick F. McManus, a prolific writer best known for his humor columns in fishing and hunting magazines who also wrote mystery novels and one-man comedy plays, has died. He was 84.

McManus died Wednesday evening at a nursing facility where he lived in Spokane, Washington, where he had been in declining health, Tim Behrens, who performed the one-man plays, said Friday.

“He was a warm man, he was a good man, he was a funny man,” Behrens said. “I look at him right up there with Mark Twain.”

McManus wrote monthly humor columns for more than three decades for the popular magazines Field & Stream and Outdoor Life, the columns later appeared in books. He also wrote other books, more than two dozen in all that included a guide for humor writers, and a series of mystery novels with a darker form of humor involving fictional Blight County, Idaho, and Sheriff Bo Tully. Altogether, he sold more than 5 million copies and appeared on the New York Times best-seller list.

Many of his characters are drawn from real people from his childhood in Sandpoint, Idaho, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) northeast of Spokane, said Bill Stimson, a journalism professor at Eastern Washington University and former writing student of McManus at the same school. The two became lifelong friends.

The fictional Rancid Crabtree, for example, is a loner living in the woods who only cares about fishing and hunting and has no one telling him to go to school. Stimson said McManus told him that Crabtree is based on a real person that he found in the hills around Sandpoint as a child.

While many of his characters involve country bumpkins, McManus himself loved reading.

“He had a very scholarly interest in writing and literature,” Stimson said. “He read everything.”

He said McManus quit teaching in 1983 to write full time. He had been writing traditional journalism pieces until on a fluke he wrote a humorous piece about satellites tracking wildlife, Stimson said, that a magazine immediately bought.

“He was a very accomplished journalist to begin with, and then he found out he could make a lot more money as a humorist,” Stimson said. “He’s really the Mark Twain of the Northwest.”

McManus was also an accomplished painter, favoring watercolor landscapes, his wife Darlene McManus said in a prepared statement.

“Pat was a great observer of people. I think this was because he was an artist at heart,” Darlene said. “His stories were paintings with words.”

Patrick Francis McManus was born in Sandpoint on Aug. 25, 1933. His father died when McManus was 6.

“I can remember the isolation of living out on a little farm and everything being extremely hard and miserable,” he told Sandpoint Magazine in 1995. “But I don’t tend to think of it that way, and I think it’s because of the writing and transforming my early situation.”

Behrens said being poor during childhood was reflected in McManus’ writing.

“The lack of any kind of extravagance led to the ability to create entire imaginary worlds out of his walks in the mountains,” he said.

McManus, Stimson said, nearly flunked out of Washington State University but then got serious about writing, and remained so for the rest of his life, dedicating a certain part of each day to writing and telling his students to do the same.

Behrens has performed the six one-man plays McManus wrote for more than two decades. He said McManus would attend the early plays and listen to the audience reaction, then make changes to the play until he was satisfied.

“He would walk in the back of the theater, never sitting down,” Behrens said. “He would listen, and he would pace, and he would think. It took about 50 shows before one was set.”

McManus is survived by his wife, Darlene, four daughters, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

A private service is tentatively planned for next week at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Sandpoint.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes are seeking to intervene in a utility’s attempt to negate an Oregon law requiring fish passage as part of relicensing for a hydroelectric project on the Snake River.

The Tribes on Tuesday filed documents with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit seeking to intervene in support of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Idaho Power in February petitioned the court to review a 2017 decision by the commission dismissing the Boise-based utility’s request that it exempt the three-dam Hells Canyon Complex from an Oregon law requiring fish passage as part of relicensing.

The tribes cite their 1868 Treaty of Fort Bridger with the U.S. government.

The tribes said they could be adversely affected because the treaty gives them rights to fish off-reservation in the waters of the Snake River and its tributaries.

Brad Bowlin, Idaho Power spokesman, said the company was reviewing the document.

“Idaho Power is still actively working with the states to resolve the fish passage issue, and we remain hopeful that further litigation of this issue will be unnecessary,” he said in an email to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Idaho Power’s 50-year license to operate the complex on the Idaho-Oregon border expired in 2005, and the company has since been operating on annually issued licenses.

Oregon wants salmon and steelhead to be able to access four Oregon tributaries that feed into the Hells Canyon Complex. But Idaho lawmakers have prohibited moving salmon and steelhead upstream of the three dams.

At issue before the appeals court is Idaho Power’s argument that the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution that has to do with federal authority over states pre-empts the Oregon law. The commission said it found no reason why Oregon couldn’t require fish passage and reintroduction as part of relicensing.

Biologists have said the Snake River above the dams is so degraded it couldn’t support salmon and steelhead without significant rehabilitation work, which would require cooperation from landowners.

Idaho Power supplies electricity to nearly 550,000 customers in southern Idaho and eastern Oregon. The Hells Canyon Complex in a normal water year produces about 30 percent of the company’s total annual power generation.

BOISE — Idaho officials have started the process of opening a grizzly bear hunting season this fall that would allow the killing of one male grizzly.

The Fish and Game Commission in a 7-0 vote Thursday directed the Department of Fish and Game to gather public comments on the possible hunt.

The department will use those comments to draft a possible grizzly bear hunting season for the commission to consider in May.

“There would be a lot of interest in the possibility of a grizzly season,” Commissioner Derick Attebury said after the meeting. Attebury represents the portion of eastern Idaho where the hunt would occur

The process for making comments and possible public meetings haven’t been announced. About 700 grizzlies live in Yellowstone National Park and surrounding areas in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

Montana doesn’t plan to hunt grizzlies this year, while a proposal in Wyoming would allow the killing of up to 24.

Wildlife advocates and Native Americans have filed lawsuits to restore Endangered Species Act protections for the bears and prevent the hunts.

“It’s disappointing that another state is moving in the direction of hunting grizzly bears,” said Andrea Santarsiere, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. The group is a plaintiff in one of several lawsuits seeking to restore protections for Yellowstone grizzlies.

The formula for the number of bears that can be hunted in each state involves a region surrounding Yellowstone National Park called the Demographic Monitoring Area. The number of bears for each state is based on how much land area is in the monitoring area.

The number of bears allowed to be hunted in total is based on mortality studies of bears. The end result is that this year, officials say, Idaho can hunt one male bear, Montana six and Wyoming 10 within the monitoring area. Two female bears are also included, but not allotted to a state.

A much larger region includes additional bears not within the monitoring area. Wyoming’s proposal allows the killing of 14 bears in that additional area. Toby Boudreau, Idaho Fish and Game assistant wildlife chief, said Idaho wasn’t looking at hunting in that area this year.

Santarsiere questioned Idaho’s ability to hunt one male bear with no females allowed, noting hunters could mistakenly kill a female.

Boudreau said most hunters would be inclined to hunt male bears. He said any inadvertent killing of a female would be subtracted from the following year’s hunt allotted to the three states. Boudreau said the killing of multiple female bears could possibly shut down hunting seasons.

“Whatever your feeling about grizzly bears,” Boudreau said, “this is one of the West’s greatest conservation stories. It’s a pretty small timeline that we’ve actively managed grizzly bears to a point where (hunting) is even a possibility.”

If hunting seasons occur in Idaho and Wyoming this fall, they would be the first since grizzlies received federal protections under the Endangered Species Act in 1975. Federal officials lifted those protections last year.

BOISE, Idaho — Federal scientists are trying to decide if it’s time to let the big dogs out.

Nearly 120 dogs from three large breeds perfected over centuries in Europe and Asia to be gentle around sheep and children but vicious when confronting wolves recently underwent a study to see how they’d react to their old nemesis on a new continent.

The dogs were gathered as puppies in Portugal, Bulgaria and Turkey and sent to the American West, where they spent four years guarding sheep.

“When we were first looking at doing this, a lot of people wanted to know: What dog do I use in dealing with wolves and grizzly bears?” said Julie Young, a Utah-based research biologist with the U.S. Agriculture Department’s National Wildlife Research Center.

The department looked to areas where dog breeds developed to guard sheep against wolves and brown bears. Then scientists supplied Cao de Gado Transmontanos, a large though lean and agile dog developed in a mountainous region of Portugal; Karakachans, developed by nomadic sheepherders in a mountainous area of Bulgaria; and Kangals, another powerful breed with an instinct for guarding, this one originating in Turkey.

Dogs from all three breeds can weigh up to 140 pounds, about the size of a wolf. The dogs were sent to guard 65 herds in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Washington and Oregon.

Scientists are still analyzing information from notes, remote cameras and GPS collars, Young said, with four or five scientific papers expected in the next year. But overall, she said, the dogs did well keeping away wolves and better than traditional guard dogs at deterring coyotes.

One dog died during the study. It was hit by a vehicle as sheep crossed a road.

For decades, most U.S. sheep producers have used large white dogs such as Great Pyrenees, Akbash or Maremma Sheepdogs. Light brown Anatolian Shepherds are also used.

But the reintroduction of wolves in the American West in the 1990s has led to questions about whether those breeds are up to the task. Since wolves returned to Idaho in 1995, the Agriculture Department’s Wildlife Services says, wolves have killed 50 guard dogs through the end of last year and injured nearly 40 others in the state. Federal officials in 2017 killed 56 wolves in Idaho due to attacks on livestock.

Young said the study found wolves left areas when sheep bands, dogs and herders arrived, but their absence emboldened smaller predators such as coyotes.

Not all dogs in the study succeeded. Jill Swannack, president of the Washington State Sheep Producers, is a veterinarian who also has a ranch with about 800 sheep on private land in eastern Washington state. She received three Karakachans.

“When we came home, they preferred to be home with us,” she said. “They really didn’t bond to the sheep.”

She also said the dogs were only about 70 or 80 pounds. One went to a young family with sheep near their house, and now that dog plays with the children and has successfully guarded those sheep against coyotes.

The dogs that work best at her ranch are Anatolian Shepherds, though wolves killed one in 2014.

Wolves are a “phenomenal predator,” Swannack said. “I would be happy if we didn’t have them, but I’m also a realist, and we do have them. So we need the tools to deal with them and the support.”

The imported guard dogs cost about $500 apiece, including transportation to the U.S., Young said, and nearly all were just a few months old when they arrived.

She said the Karakachans tended to be more vigilant, the Kangals inclined to investigate, and the Cao de Gado Transmontanos better at assessing threats. Ultimately, she said, sheep producers might benefit from a mix of dogs that includes some that stick near the sheep and others that patrol the perimeter.

Another part of the study involved the relationship between dogs and herders, many Peruvians, which will be one of the scientific papers.

“There’s a bond there,” Young said. “Just from watching them and looking at data, the ones who were better bonded, the dogs just seemed to perform better.”

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho officials don’t have to immediately destroy information from tracking collars placed on wolves and by illegally landing a helicopter in a central Idaho wilderness area where engines are prohibited.

U.S. District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill earlier this week agreed to an Idaho Department of Fish and Game request to delay his order to destroy the information while the state appeals to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Fish and Game in January 2016 put collars on four wolves and 57 elk in the Frank Church Fire of No Return Wilderness.

Western Watersheds Project sued. Winmill then ruled that the U.S. Forest Service broke environmental laws by authorizing Fish and Game to land helicopters in the wilderness.

Fish and Game also collared wolves though it didn’t have authorization.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The U.S. government says it doesn’t have to release documents involving legal arguments for President Donald Trump’s decision to shrink national monuments because they’re protected presidential communications.

The Department of Justice made a more detailed request of a federal judge in Idaho last week to dismiss a lawsuit from an environmental law firm.

Advocates for the West sued for 12 documents withheld from a public records request related to Trump’s decision to reduce two sprawling monuments in Utah. He’s considering scaling back others.

The firm says documents written during the Barack Obama and George W. Bush administrations may justify why they made the monuments as large as they did and thus undercut Trump’s plans to shrink them.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to inquiries Tuesday from The Associated Press.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An environmental group says 23 water diversion projects in central Idaho’s Sawtooth Valley are harming federally protected salmon, steelhead and bull trout and has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Forest Service.

The Idaho Conservation League in the 20-page complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court says the federal agency is violating environmental laws by failing to do mandatory consulting on the projects with other federal agencies.

The group says the Forest Service instead continues approving the diversions in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

The group seeks a court order forcing the Forest Service to complete consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries.

Sawtooth National Forest spokeswoman Julie Thomas says the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

BOISE (AP) — An environmental group is asking Idaho officials to prosecute a trapper who killed a wolverine and ban lethal traps in areas inhabited by wolverines, but state officials say they will do neither.

The Center for Biological Diversity made the request Tuesday in a letter to Idaho Department of Fish and Game Director Virgil Moore.

The group also sent a copy to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is considering federal protections for wolverines.

The group says documents obtained through a public records request show Fish and Game investigators reported the snare that killed the wolverine in December lacked a required device intended to prevent the killing of non-targeted species.

Fish and Game spokesman Roger Phillips says wildlife officials have discretion when it comes to prosecuting possible violations.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A federal agency doesn’t need to do a new environmental study before being allowed to kill more wolves in Idaho, a federal court judge has ruled.

U.S. District Court Judge Edward Lodge on Thursday ruled in favor of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services of Idaho and against Western Watersheds Project and four other environmental groups.

Lodge said that even if Wildlife Services stopped killing wolves in Idaho, it wouldn’t matter because the Idaho Department of Fish and Game manages wolves in the state and has demonstrated it can kill wolves, hire third parties to kill wolves, or increase hunting and trapping for wolves. He said that meant the environmental groups lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.

“Plaintiffs have not shown that the relief they seek will redress their claimed injuries,” Lodge wrote.

Laird Lucas, an attorney at Advocates for the West representing the groups, said the ruling will be appealed.

“We believe the court’s holding that plaintiffs lacked standing, based on speculation that Idaho Department of Fish and Game could take over all of Wildlife Services’ wolf-killing activities in Idaho, is incorrect.”

Lodge didn’t rule on the main thrust of the environmental groups’ arguments, including one that contended Wildlife Services’ 2011 study that allowed it to kill wolves in the state is flawed because it relies on outdated information. The groups also say that the outdated information includes Idaho choosing to use a 2002 wolf management plan that requires 15 packs minimum in the state, which the groups contend is not enough for a viable population.

Todd Grimm, Idaho State Director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, said Lodge was right in that Idaho Fish and Game is capable of controlling wolves as well as the federal agency.

“We are pleased with the decision by the court, and we will continue working with our Idaho Fish and Game partners to manage wolf conflicts,” he said Friday.

Grimm said that his agency killed 56 wolves in Idaho in 2017, all due to attacks on livestock. He said the agency killed 70 wolves in Idaho in 2016 — 50 due to livestock attacks and 20 to relieve pressure on elk herds in northern Idaho.

The last intensive wolf count in Idaho was in 2015 when officials said the state had an estimated 786 wolves at the end of the year. That’s also the last year Idaho Fish and Game was required to do that type of count after wolves were removed from the Endangered Species List.

Roger Phillips, a spokesman for the agency, said biologists now get a general estimate of wolf populations using remote cameras, tracking wolf kills by hunters and trappers, and doing genetic studies. He said Friday that genetic studies give an estimate of 53 wolf packs in the state, while cameras and harvest tallies put the estimate at 90 packs.

He said the agency estimates the wolf population in Idaho is still about the same as at the end of 2015 — between 750 and 800 wolves.

“We have seen no dramatic increase or decrease in the last five years, which leads us to believe that it’s a stable population,” he said.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Federal officials have launched a two-pronged plan to stop a vicious cycle of rangeland wildfires in a wide swath of sagebrush country in the West that supports cattle ranching, recreation and is home to an imperiled bird.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Friday said it will create an Environmental Impact Statement concerning fuel breaks and another on fuels reduction and restoration for Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, California, Utah and Washington.

The agency said the documents when finished will help speed the process for future landscape-scale projects in the Great Basin by providing a blanket approval for similar areas that will likely just need minor additional environmental reviews to proceed.

“It saves teams from having to do the same kinds of analysis 10, 15, 20 times over the next 20 years,” BLM spokesman Ken Frederick said.

Giant rangeland wildfires in recent decades have destroyed vast areas of sagebrush steppe that support some 350 species of wildlife, including imperiled sage grouse. Experts say the wildfires have mainly been driven by cheatgrass, an invasive species that relies on fire to spread to new areas while killing the native plants, including sagebrush. Once cheatgrass takes over, the land is of little value.

“It’s not sustainable,” said Jonathan Beck, a project manager with the BLM working on the documents. “If we don’t take proactive measures to stop the fire cycle, we’re going to lose the sagebrush that we have out there right now.”

Details of the BLM plans have yet to be worked out. In general, the agency said projects in the plans “would reduce the threat of habitat loss from fires and restore habitat to maintain the rangeland’s productivity and support the western lifestyle.”

The agency is taking public comments through Feb. 20 as it sorts through uncertainties. For example, the agency notes that fuel breaks could become a barrier for small animals that would have no place to hide.

Matt Germino, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said fuel breaks are a paradox because it’s intentionally fragmenting the landscape to avoid the even worse fragmentation that occurs with wildfires.

“Fires, especially large fires, are so unambiguously damaging to wildlife habitat in general — that is the motivating factor for getting these fuel breaks out,” he said. “At this point, it’s really difficult to predict which animal species will benefit and which ones won’t. Sometimes you have to just act in light of the uncertainty.”

He said land managers adapting as they go with new information learned from the efforts will be important for success.

Success has been elusive for federal agencies trying to halt the advance of cheatgrass.

“We’re not winning,” said John Freemuth, a Boise State University environmental policy professor and public lands expert. “We’re holding it in check in some places. This is a long-term commitment. Decades, really.”

Millions of sage grouse, a chicken-sized bird that relies on sagebrush, once roamed the West, but development, livestock grazing and wildfires have reduced the bird’s population to fewer than 500,000. Most of the bird’s habitat — sagebrush steppe — is on land administered by the BLM.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declined to list the bird under the Endangered Species Act in 2014. But there’s concern that if wildfires destroy enough of the sagebrush steppe that remains, it could again be considered for listing.

“Some of those who want to gut the Endangered Species Act, they’re not always going to be in power,” said Freemuth. “So it’s in the long-term interest of everybody to make progress.”