Idaho….Another Phantom Wolf Likely Killed

Sad to say Idaho Fish and Game believes a black male wolf killed near Gallena Summit, on Oct 20, was likely from the Phantom Hill Wolf Pack.  He would be the second member of the pack of all black wolves, lost to a hunter’s bullet.  The first member of the Phantom Hill Pack to be killed was Jewel, a young beta female.

81 wolves are now dead in Idaho.  I’m so outraged by this hunt, it’s totally senseless killing. 

Remembering Jewel…Phantom Hill Wolf Pack Female B445…Shot Dead

photo: courtesy Lynne Stone

http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com/?s=jewel

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Wolf killed likely a Phantom Hill member

http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005128586

Categories posted in:  Idaho wolf hunt, wolves under fire

Tags: wolves in the crossfire, Idaho wolf hunt

Wolves ARE The True Lords Of Nature

It’s important to remember why we need wolves.

October 29, 2009

Wolves effect their surroundings and bring life to the lands they inhabit. For sixty years elk browsed the meadows of the North Fork of the Flathead, in Montana. Their adversary, Canis Lupus, who had chased them through time, was gone, hunted to extinction in the West.

Then the wolf came home to it’s native habitat and dispersed the elk. This brought back the aspen and willow, young shoots no longer trampled under the complacent elk’s hooves. With the aspen came the songbirds and other wildlife.

Once more the circle was complete with the return of the great canine, the wolf.

 “Aspen ecosystems are considered some of the finest and richest songbird habitat on the continent, second only to river-bottom riparian zones. Remove the wolf, and you remove the songbirds. Remove the songbirds, and the bugs move in. Everything changes, top to bottom, right down to the dirt”…..Cristina Eisenberg,  Oregon State University researcher

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Wolves Increase Biodiversity And Greatly Benefit The Ecosystems They Inhabit

Matt Skoglund Wildlife Advocate, Livingston, Montana

Posted October 26, 2009 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places

Wolves matter.

They lead to more songbirds.  Better trout habitat.  More game birds.  Less insects.  Better soil.  Fewer coyotes.  Wilder elk.  More aspen trees.

Wolves, in essence, are key to a healthy landscape.

So says biologist Christina Eisenberg in a fascinating Missoulian article on the effect of wolves — and their absence — on an ecosystem.

Eisenberg has been studying the top-to-bottom effect of wolves — called a “trophic cascade” — in Glacier National Park for years.  She’s also been researching ecosystems near St. Mary’s, Montana, and in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada.

“Each study site is about the same size, and each has a similarly large elk population, native to an aspen-based winter range, and each has the same general density of cougars and bears.”  The difference between the sites is the number of resident wolves:  St. Mary’s has none, Waterton some, and Glacier many.

Her findings on the much heated debate over wolves and elk mirror what others have found:  there are plenty of elk in the Northern Rockies, but the return of wolves has made the elk behave again like wild elk:

The North Fork, Eisenberg said, is “full of wolves,” and has been for 20 years now.  It’s also full of elk – as many as 14 elk per square kilometer in this meadow, where the wolf den site is located.  Elk scat litters the ground not 20 yards from the den.

Clearly, the wolves aren’t eating all the elk.  But aside from the tracks and the scat and the bones and the antlers, there are no elk to be seen.

“They’ve totally changed their behavior,” Eisenberg said.  “For 60 years we’ve become used to complacent elk.  These elk aren’t complacent.  They’re on high alert.”

From a browse standpoint, that means elk eat a bit and move on, eat a bit and move on, never standing in one place long enough to eat a tree down to its roots.  And from a human standpoint, it means hunters see far fewer elk even as state wildlife officials insist Montana has more deer and elk than it’s had for years.

…

Hunters, of course, prefer elk that aren’t quite so wily, but trophic cascades work both ways in wildlife management.  Remove the wolves, and elk are easier to find.  But then coyote populations explode, eating their way through the local game-bird population.  Enhance one hunting opportunity, and you affect another.

And from a bigger viewpoint than just elk, Eisenberg has found that wolves increase biodiversity and greatly benefit the overall health of the areas they inhabit:

Remove the wolves, she said, and you lose the birds.

Remove the wolves, she said, and the coyotes fill the niche.  The coyotes eat the ground squirrels, and so the meadows don’t get “plowed,” and soil productivity declines.

Remove the wolves, she said, and the deer eat the river-bottom willows, and the bull trout lose both their shade and their food, as insects no longer fall from overhanging brush.

Remove the wolves, she said, “and everything changes.”

Why is this so noteworthy?

[B]ecause the places with greatest biodiversity are the places most resilient, most able to adapt to, say, changing climate.

And Eisenberg wisely thinks her — and others’ — findings should guide wolf management.

Wolf populations aren’t recovered with 12 breeding pairs, or 15, or 20, Eisenberg said.  They’re recovered when there are enough wolves and other top-end predators to maximize biodiversity.  

Her findings are important, and they’re timely, as wolves are being gunned down all over Idaho and Montana right now.

In her research and in this article, Eisenberg simply and unequivocally points out a critical fact that’s been lost in the recent debate over the wolf hunts:

Wolves matter.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mskoglund/wolves_increase_biodiversity_a.html

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Tracking science: Biologist’s findings show forest diversity, health influenced by wolves

http://www.missoulian.com/lifestyles/territory/article_3ec9fc54-c01f-11de-bf16-001cc4c002e0.html

Photo: first people

Photo: wolf wallpaper

Categories posted in: biodiversity, wolf recovery, gray wolf,  Glacier National Park

Tags: wolf recovery, gray wolf,  biodiverstiy

Please Show Your Support and Help Wolves

NRDC

NRDC wants to run a full page forceful ad in the New York Times, to warn people of the killing of wolves in Montana and Idaho. 

If this slaughter continues into next year, fully 500 wolves could lose their lives.  Is this “wolf management based on science”or catering to ranchers and elk hunters?

This compelling message will surely put pressure on Ken Salazar and the Obama administration to reverse their misguided decision to delist gray wolves in the Northern Rockies!!

NRDC: 

Matt Skoglund’s Blog

2009: The Year in Wolves

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/mskoglund/2009_the_year_in_wolves.html

The War On Wolves Escalates…Click Here:

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Defenders of Wildlife 

Please support Defenders and help with this campaign.  This is directly from their website:

“Help Us Reach Millions and Save Wolves

Wolf recovery is at a crossroads in the Greater Yellowstone and northern Rockies region. More than 60 80 wolves have already been killed so far in the area — including Yellowstone’s popular Cottonwood Pack whose only apparent survivors were a few pups, that are expected to die without their family.

Hundreds more wolves will be targeted in the coming weeks and months, threatening the very recovery of these amazing animals.

We’re embarking on one of our most ambitious public education efforts yet: an ad in Times Square — the very heart of New York City — to reach millions more Americans through the Thanksgiving Holiday December 15th!”

 Photo: Courtesy Defenders of Wildlife

http://www.defendersofwildlife.com/

Wolves have no voice, we have to speak for them.  Should a few groups dominate wolf policy in the West?  Let’s Howl For Justice for the gray wolf!!!

Categories posted in:  howling for justice, wolf wars

Tags: endangered species act, wolves in the crossfire

Key Alpha Wolves Killed In Montana

I discussed this issue in earlier posts concerning the deaths of Yellowstone’s famous Cottonwood  Alpha female, wolf 527 , her mate the Alpha  male and her daughter, who were killed early in Montana’s hunts outside Yellowstone.  The loss of alpha’s is always a negative for the pack but these particular wolves were part of ongoing research. 

Bad News on the Wolf Front – Key Alpha Wolves Killed in Montana

by Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California  10.27.09

Photo via Todd Ryburn

Three alpha wolves vital to a study tracking their pack’s patterns were killed earlier this month by hunters in Montana. The study effectively ended, but the controversy around the wolf hunts, which were allowed to start again this year, is sparked up.

Yale 360 reports, “Among those killed was an alpha female, known as wolf 527, who was born into Yellowstone’s Druid Peak pack, featured in a PBS documentary entitled “In the Valley of the Wolves.” Before she, her mate — the pack’s alpha male — and her daughter were shot this month, wolf 527 was wearing a radio collar that enabled researchers to track and study her and her pack.”

The Los Angeles Times has an excellent article that gives a short tribute to 527 along with outlining the controversy behind the wolf hunts. According to the LA Times, “‘Whether the pack exists anymore or not, to us the pack is gone,” said Doug Smith, the biologist in charge of the Yellowstone reintroduction program that helped bring wolves back from the brink of extinction in the Northern Rockies. Cottonwood “was a key pack on the northern range,” he said, giving researchers a window into the existence of animals that had little or no interaction with humans.”

State wildlife officials were surprised at how easily the wolves were being killed, and so called off the special back-country hunt along a section of Yellowstone’s northern boundary for the rest of the year, even though the hunting of wolves is still going on elsewhere in Montana and Idaho.

Montana’s wolf program coordinator, Carolyn Sime points out that should the wolf hunt end and the wolves be put back on the endangered species list, that pressing people’s willingness to live with the animals would be futile and locals would take matters into their own hands. Others say that big game hunters do appreciate the wolves’ presence in the ecosystem, it just takes understanding that their population is fragile to help find balance.

Either way, the wolves are again in danger of being hunted right back on to the endangered species list, and possibly to extinction. And having key alpha wolves cut from the gene pool – let alone a scientific study – is a terrible tragedy.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/10/bad-news-on-the-wolf-front-key-alpha-wolves-killed-in-montana.php

Categories posted in: Montana wolf hunt, Yellowstone wolves, wolf wars

Tag: Montana wolf hunt, Yellowstone wolves, wolf intolerance

IN WOLVES SAD HOUR WE REMEMBER AND CELEBRATE THE RETURN OF A LEGEND TO YELLOWSTONE

As we sit sadly by, wolves are being killed in Montana and Idaho. But on this day I want to remember their home coming to Yellowstone, fourteen years ago.

Watch the reintroduction, as National Geographic and Doug Smith, tell the story of Yellowstone’s Wolves and the formation of the Druid Peak Pack.

A LEGEND RETURNS TO YELLOWSTONE: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Videos: Courtesy to National Geographic

 

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Bringing Wolves Home: Ed Bangs
Wolf Recovery Coordinator
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

  

 

 

“Wolves are a top-line predator. They have a major influence…”

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wolves/bangs.html

 

 

 

Categories posted in: Yellowstone wolves, biodiversity, wolf recovery

 

 Tags: wolf recovery, Yellowstone wolves, Druid Peak Pack

 

 photo: Wikimedia Commons

Update On Wolf Hunts….October 26, 2009

Here’s the latest on the wolf hunts and controversy.  Defenders of Wildlife has a petition going to send to Ken Salazar asking him to reconsider his decision to delist the animals.  Their goal is 100,000 signatures, they’ve already reached 90,406.  Wolf advocates, it’s a good idea to sign it no matter how small the chance he will reconsider.

https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=1586&JServSessionIdr003=a4y26rs692.app23a

Friends of Animals also has a petition, with a goal of 1000 signatures, they have 574 signatures so far.  They’re asking people to write to the Gov. of Montana and Idaho, stating they will boycott both states and anything they sell until the wolf killing stops.

http://www.change.org/friendsofanimals/actions/view/stop_the_montana_idaho_wolf_killings

Read more:

Wolf Pelts Piling Up

The Wolf Hunts By the Numbers

The spuds boycott has been a dud. Pro-wolf petitions are rolling. Hunters are having a blast.

By Amy Linn, 10-26-09

As Montana’s wolf hunt wags on, and so does the one in neighboring Idaho, it’s interesting to note what’s come to pass—and what hasn’t. Here are a few factoids to chew on:

–More than 70 wolves have been killed in Idaho, where hunters are allowed to bag 220 wolves total.

 –Twenty three wolves have been shot during Montana’s wolf hunting season, 11 of them this past weekend alone, according to the Great Falls Tribune. The state quota is 75.

 –Wolf hunting has already been shut down in the southern section of the Montana outside Yellowstone National Park, because the 12-wolf quota there has been met.

 –Before the start of the hunts this fall, wildlife officials in both Montana and Idaho predicted that shooting a wolf or even seeing one would be tough. Some chin scratching has now ensued.

—Defenders of Wildlife has launched an online petition urging Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to undo his action this spring, when he took wolves in the Rockies off the Endangered Species list and stripped them of federal protections. The group hopes to get 100,000 signatures. It has 90,347 so far.

—Friends of Animals has a similar petition drive. The group is asking wolf fans to send letters to Idaho Gov. C.L. Otter and Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and is urging them to boycott the two states and everything they produce, from Idaho spuds to huckleberry syrup. FOA aims to hunt down 1,000 signatures for its petition. It has just 574 so far.

 –The wolf hunt in Montana has raised some $245,000 for the state in license fees alone, according to the 

to the Helena Independent Record. It will continue to raise hackles, as well.

 http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/wolves_by_the_numbers/C559/L559/

Categories posted in: Montana wolf hunt, Idaho wolf hunt, wolf wars

Tags: Idaho wolf hunt, Montana wolf hunt, wolves in the crossfire

Wolf Hunt Re-Opens Today in Montana

Cowboys take in a gray wolf on “Round Up” in Wyoming. 1887 photograph by John Grabill.

Is it the wild west all over again?  Wolf hating fever seems to be on the rise, AGAIN.  Over 25,000 wolf tags were sold in Montana and Idaho  for a chance to kill 295 wolves in the two states.  Those are scary numbers.  Call it trophy hunting, blood lust, a political statement or sticking it to the conservationists,  the wolf has become a political football.  It’s all about who’s in charge in the West, it’s all about control. 

“Approximately 100,000 hunters are expected to spread across public and private lands in the state to go after elk, deer, and the new addition of wolves. As a result local hunting supply stores saw some big lines over the weekend.

Officials say the elk and deer populations in the area remain strong, and there will be plenty of game available to go around.”

http://www.kfbb.com/news/local/65916472.html

Yet hunters continue to repeat the same tired old line, “wolves are killing all the elk”  when that claim has been de-bunked, by none other then the Rocky Mountain Elk foundation, certainly no friend to the wolf. According to the RMEF, elk numbers are higher then they were twenty five years ago, yet you wouldn’t know it by all the complaining.

Likewise rancher’s are  ” crying wolf” stating wolves are killing all their livestock but 2006 figures, from the USDA themselves,  state wolves killed a total of only 4400 cattle nationally compared to DOMESTIC DOGS, which  killed over 21,900 cows and coyotes 97,000.  Even so, that’s  only a tiny percentage of cattle deaths, 0.18%.

“In comparison, livestock producers lost 3.9 million head of cattle (3.69%) to all sorts of maladies, weather, or theft, respiratory problems, digestive problems, calving, unknown, other, disease, lameness, metabolic problems, poison (USDA, 2006)”

http://www.goagro.org/index.html

But the same tired rhetoric is repeated over and over.  Also not taken into consideration is the tremendous pressure wolves are under from Wildlife Services, who kill hundreds of gray wolves annually for livestock depredation, even though  wolves kill very few livestock compared to other factors.

It’s time for new voices to be heard.  You would think only ranchers, outfitters and hunters live in the West. They seem to be the only voices that are  listened to, maybe because they’re making the most noise.  It’s time wolf advocates voices are heard.  This statement can’t be repeated enough.

“If the wolf is to survive, the wolf haters must be outnumbered. They must be outshouted, out financed, and out voted. Their narrow and biased attitude must be outweighed by an attitude based on an understanding of natural processes.” -L. David Mech

WAKE UP WOLF SUPPORTERS!!

Please click on the link below to Defenders of Wildlife’s website, which states:

“Please sign our petition to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, urging him to withdraw his flawed delisting rule that prematurely removed vital protections for wolves in the northern Rockies region — before a lasting wolf recovery slips from our grasp.”

https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=1586

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Wolves in hunters’ sights as Montana big-game season opens

The general big-game season opens in Montana on Sunday and wolves across the state will be one of the species targeted. This adult male is from the Superior pack along the lower Clark Fork River west of Missoula. Photo by Fish, Wildlife and Parks

http://www.missoulian.com/news/local/article_17a6cb1c-c127-11de-8549-001cc4c03286.html

Categories posted in:  Montana wolf hunt, Idaho wolf hunt, wolf myths, wolf wars, wolves under fire

Tags: Montana wolf hunt, wolf myths, wolf intolerance, ken salazar delists wolves

Yellowstone’s Cottonwood Alpha Female, 527, Falls To Hunter’s Bullet

Photo: Wolf 527, killed on Buffalo Plateau on Oct. 3. Credit: Dan Stahler / National Parks Service

October 25, 2009

Yellowstone’s famous Cottonwood pack Alpha female, 527, fell to  a hunter’s bullet outside the park at the beginning of Montana’s wolf hunt, which re-opens today.

Montana wolf hunt is stalked by controversy

The demise of a much-studied pack raises questions about lifting the hunting ban in areas bordering Yellowstone park.

October 25, 2009|Kim Murphy

GARDINER, MONT. — Wolf 527 was a survivor. She lived through a rival pack’s crippling 12-day siege of her den. When another pair of wolves laid down stakes in her territory, she killed the mother and picked off the pups while the invader’s mate howled nearby in frustration and fury.

She was not a charmer. But successful wolves are not known for their geniality. She was large and black and wary — and cruel when she needed to be. As the alpha female of the Cottonwood Creek pack, she also was equipped with a radio collar so wildlife biologists could track her movements, making her one of Yellowstone National Park’s best-known wolves.

 Then she ventured outside the park boundaries.

Wolf 527 was killed Oct. 3 by a hunter on Buffalo Plateau north of Yellowstone, less than three weeks into Montana’s backcountry elk season. Wolves often stalk elk outside the park and are attracted by entrails the hunters leave behind. But this year, the elk season coincided with the opening of the state’s first wolf hunt in modern times.

“She was a genius wolf in her tactics,” said Laurie Lyman, a former San Diego County teacher who has spent the last five years tracking the recovery of the endangered gray wolves that were reintroduced into Yellowstone in 1995. “Her strategies were just unbelievable. She knew how to survive anything, but she didn’t know how to survive a man with a gun.”

Park officials believe four of the Cottonwood pack’s 10 wolves — including 527’s mate, the alpha male, and her daughter — died during those first weeks, in effect ending research into one of the park’s most important study groups.

“Whether the pack exists anymore or not, to us the pack is gone,” said Doug Smith, the biologist in charge of the Yellowstone reintroduction program that helped bring wolves back from the brink of extinction in the Northern Rockies. Cottonwood “was a key pack on the northern range,” he said, giving researchers a window into the existence of animals that had little or no interaction with humans.

State wildlife officials, caught off guard by the ease with which the wolves were cut down, called off the backcountry hunt along a section of Yellowstone’s northern boundary for the rest of the year.

But the general wolf hunting season opens today throughout much of the rest of Montana, including other areas bordering the 3,468-square-mile park. Wildlife advocates have sought, so far unsuccessfully, a buffer zone to protect Yellowstone’s storied wolf packs.

With more than 1,600 wolves now in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, state officials are allowing hunters this year to take up to 75 in Montana and 220 in Idaho. Federal protections remain in Wyoming.

“We’ve got quite a number of other border packs. So people need to decide how hunting’s going to occur on the park boundaries,” Smith said. “Whose wolves are they? Are they national wolves? Montana wolves? And we have to decide what is the value of our research on wolf populations that are not affected by people.”

Read more: http://articles.latimes.com/2009/oct/25/nation/na-wolf-hunt25

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Montana’s wolf hunt re-opens today, with 65 more wolves in danger of losing their lives before the 75 wolf quota is reached. 

Yellowstone’s Cottonwood Pack is all but obliterated. Two members of the famed Phantom Hill pack in Idaho’s Sun Valley have been killed.  All the work, time, effort put in by wolf advocates, biologists and researchers,  is going up in smoke because of the  wrong-headed “management” policies by Montana and Idaho.  SHAME!!!

TELL KEN SALAZAR TO  PUT WOLVES BACK ON THE ENDANGERED SPECIES LIST.  WE DON’T WANT TO LOSE ANY  MORE WOLVES TO HUNTERS.  IDAHO’S WOLF HUNT GOES ON UNTIL MARCH 31, 2010!!

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Categories posted in: Yellowstone wolves, Montana wolf hunt, wolf recovery

Tags: Montana wolf hunt, Yellowstone wolves, wolf myths

Remembering The Hog Heaven Wolf Pack…

UPDATE: October 23, 2009

It will be one year this December that Wildlife Services gunned down one of the largest wolf packs to roam Montana in recent memory, in all, twenty-seven wolves.

Here’s a look back at the doomed wolf pack. Read it and please vow to work harder than ever to stop the slaughter of wolves by Wildlife Services.

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Hog Hell: The Demise of the Hog Heaven Wolf Pack

October 23, 2009

In 2008, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming killed 245 gray wolves in the name of ”livestock depredation”.

Twenty seven of those wolves were members of the Hog Heaven Wolf Pack, residing southwest of Kalispell, Montana, in the Browns Meadow/Hog Heaven area. They had been accused of preying on a few calves, some llamas and a bull.  The decision was made in November 08 to take out the entire pack.  Eight members of the pack had already been shot from the air by Wildlife Services.

In a three-day period, December 3rd, 4th and 5th of 2008,  the remaining 19 members of the Hog Heaven pack were gunned down, an almost unprecedented event, causing public outrage. Many articles were written  and opinions voiced, opposing the action. FIFTEEN PUPPIES AND TWO BREEDING FEMALES were among the slain.  The Hog Heaven pack was “the seventh entire wolf pack to be killed by Montana in 2008.”

The zero tolerance wolf management plan is just plain wrong and senseless, especially since cattle deaths by wolves are minimal.  Domestic dogs killed five times the number of cows than wolves in 2005.  I don’t see Wildlife Services taking out Labs and Huskies from the air?

“The average number of cattle losses specific to wolf predation in these States is less than 0.7%.  This compares to an average of 1.6% of cattle losses due to predation by coyotes and an average of 90% of losses due to non-predator related causes such as health problems and disease.”

*The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), reports on cattle losses in the lower 48 States every five years.  Nationally, health issues such as respiratory problems, digestive problems, calving complications and disease were overwhelmingly the most significant causes of cattle death in 2005.  (The year for which we have the most recent detailed data.)”

“Only 0.11% (about 1/10 of 1%) of all cattle losses were due to wolf predation in 2005. Coyotes killed 22 times more cattle than wolves killed that year.  Domestic dogs killed almost 5 times as many cattle, and vultures killed almost twice as many cattle as wolves did in 2005.  Theft was responsible for almost 5 times as many cattle losses as were lost by wolf predation.”

http://www.everythingwolf.com/news/readarticle.aspx?article=234

The Hog Heaven pack was special, one of the largest wolf packs ever recorded in Montana, (the once mighty Yellowstone Druid’s had 37 members at their peak).

Instead of trying non-lethal methods to preserve the pack, the state  eliminated them!  AND this all happened while wolves still had ESA protection!!

The anti-wolf crowd wants you to believe wolves are hanging around ranches waiting to prey on livestock, when in reality most of the miniscule depredations take place on our vast public lands, where cattle and sheep are left unprotected.

George Wuerthner, the famed ecologist, calls cows, “walking picnic baskets”. What would you do if you were a predator surrounded by an ocean of cattle and sheep?  Would you munch on them or go after more difficult prey? We already know the answer. Yet the wolf pays the ultimate price for lazy, sloppy ranching practices and the federal government’s refusal to pull public land grazing permits, even though cattle pollute streams, trample riparian zones and over graze the land.

Wolf supporters realize the unfairness of what’s happening.

In 2008, when the Hog Heaven pack was lethally removed, people spoke out:

“Gunning down an entire pack of wolves — a species that is supposed to be protected under the endangered species act — borders on criminal,” said Jerry Black of the Missoula group Wildlife Watchers.

“We are outraged by this senseless slaughter of one of nature’s most majestic animals.”

Added Whitefish resident Roger Sherman: “It seems to me the so-called ’scientific management’ of wolves boils down to simply killing them to conciliate the livestock industry.”

“Brian Vincent, communications director for the group Big Wildlife, insists that the elimination of the Hog Heaven Pack could have been avoided.”

“Why should an entire pack of wolves pay the fatal price for a situation that could probably have been avoided?” he said.

“Both agencies are acting like it’s the Wild West with all guns blazing.”

It’s too late for Hog Heaven, they’re not coming back. This unique pack, with two breeding females (which is very rare) and fifteen pups, numbering 27 total members, was wiped out by Wildlife Services. before Montanans could react. Is it any wonder wildlife advocates question the motives behind so many wolves losing their lives for so little reason? Why are the lives of predators held so cheaply?

If the failed policies of the states and feds to “manage wolves” continue, it’s certain they will never fully recover. We’ll be left with fragmented populations of wolves, genetically isolated, constantly under the gun.

What’s behind the intolerance of wolves?  It’s certainly not because they’re killing large numbers of livestock, wolf predation on livestock is minimal.  It’s not because wolves are decimating elk populations. Elk in Montana and Idaho are strong, with numbers way up.  Idaho has 105,000 elk and Montana numbers are even higher at 150,000 plus.

Yet the war on wolves continues. This year the Sage Creek Pack and Yellowstone’s Cottonwood pack were gunned down, one wiped out by Wildlife Services and the other shot in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness at the beginning of Montana’s wolf hunt.  They join the Hog Heaven Pack and many others in the ever-increasing death toll of gray wolves.

Will it be Hog Heaven or Hog Hell for wolves in the Northern Rockies?

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Wildlife managers are endangering wolves

Jerry George

Saturday, December 27, 2008

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/26/HORN14OJ9T.DTL#ixzz0VYOc9Gu4

Wolf photo: Wikimedia Commons

Categories posted in: Wolf Wars, Public Land Degradation by Livestock

Tags:  gray wolf, wolves or livestock, wolf intolerance, Wildlife Services, Hog Heaven Wolf Pack, National Agricultural Statistics Service

Idaho Nearing Closure of Three Wolf Hunting Zones

 

 

 

 

 

It seems the wolf killing is going so well in Idaho three zones are close to reaching their quota and will be closed soon.

  

Palouse-Hells Canyon…Wolves Killed 2 …Quota 5

 

Upper Snake…Wolves Killed 3…Quota 5

 

McCall-Weiser …Wolves Killed 13…Quota 15

 

I guess it’s semi good news for the wolves in those zones but I take no pleaure in reporting any of this.

 

 

===========================

 

 Idaho F&G prepares to shutter wolf hunt in 3 zones

 AP, October 20, 2009 1:48 p.m. PT,

BOISE, Idaho — Wolf hunters in some parts of Idaho are nearing their quotas, prompting state wildlife managers to prepare to shutter the season there once the legal harvest limit has been reached.

Department of Fish and Game officials are allowing for a total of 220 wolves to be killed across the state, but the kills are divided up into 12 hunting zones.

In three of the zones – the Upper Snake zone, the Palouse-Hells Canyon zone and the McCall-Weiser zone – kills are approaching the state’s limits.

In the Upper Snake zone, for instance, three of the five-wolf quota have been bagged. In the Palouse-Hells Canyon zone, the limit is five wolves and hunters have taken two.

And in the McCall-Weiser zone, 12 of the allowed 15 wolves have been shot, including one illegally.

Montana, which also has a wolf hunt, has already closed gray wolf hunting near Yellowstone National Park after nine of the predators were killed there, though the state is sticking with its 75-wolf season quota.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_id_wolf_harvest.html?source=mypi

 

 

Categories posted in: Idaho wolf hunt, wolves under fire

Tags: Idaho wolf hunt, wolf intolerance