Jewel, a young beta female, of the Phantom Hill Wolf Pack in Idaho, was shot dead yesterday in the Eagle Creek drainage, north of Ketchum. She was only two years old but had already made her mark upon the pack. When the alpha female took an extended vacation this year, Jewel assumed “nanny duties”, caring for the pups during the alpha’s absence.
Jewel died for nothing yesterday. Here is her story from Western Watersheds Project website: Courtesy to Lynne Stone for photos and content.
========================================== “Jewel” – Phantom Hill Wolf pack member B445
Over a week ago I was hiking north of Ketchum, when a young Phantom Hill Pack wolf trotted into view. From her appearance I knew she was B445, the most recently collared Phantom wolf. When my dog, Bo, noticed the wolf, he bounded after her, but when I called Bo back, the wolf stopped and turned around and continued to watch us with curiosity.
I had observed from afar, a few weeks before, when B445 was caught by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and collared. I watched through a spotting scope, as she woke up from being drugged, and staggered toward the rest of her pack.
B445 is often the nannie wolf to her younger brothers and sisters that make up this year’s pups, stepping into the role after Judith, B326 went on her adventure this year. At least three pups have been seen. There are probably more. I heard them howling recently at night and it sounded like three to four pups howling in response to the rest of the pack.
B445 was still shedding out her thick winter coat of fur when I saw her close-up. Now that weeks of rain (unusual for central Idaho!) has stopped, the weather is finally warm, and B445′s fur will soon be sleek.
During my recent eye-to-eye encounter with B445, I was never for a moment afraid. What I observed, was that B445 was very curious of us (my dog and self), as we were intruders into her pack’s territory. I thought of B445′s older sister, B326 – Judith, and how that this younger wolf, was certainly a jewel. Her beautiful silky movements, her intelligent, inquiring amber eyes — well, the name Jewel seemed to fit her.
(All Idaho wolves when caught and radio-collared are given a number with the letter B preceding it.)
Here are other numbers to call that may be more receptive, a big thanks to Louise K. for supplying them. And still continue to call Sally Jewell and the Interior, they need to hear from us.
It may seem the Interior and USFWS are turning a deaf ear to your calls and emails but believe me they’re listening. It’s our job to call and make noise, remember “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”, don’t be discouraged. Email, call and snail mail them. We cannot allow this to stand. Wolves need the protection of the ESA as Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan have firmly shown us. What did these states do as soon as wolves lost their protections? ORGANIZED WOLF HUNTS!! Their actions speak for themselves and are the best examples of why wolves MUST be protected from brutal state fish and game agency “management”!.
Chief, Division of Conservation and Classification Gina Shultz – 703-358-2171
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Chief, Division of Consultation, HCPs, Recovery, and State Grants Rick Sayers – 703-358-2171
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Chief, Office of Communication and Candidate Conservation Jim Serfis – 703-358-2171
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April 29, 2013
The USFWS is moving ahead with its wolf persecution plan. The agency has drafted a plan that endorses the delisting of wolves across the lower 48, basically saying they could care less wolves are being tortured, slaughtered and treated like vermin. It implies they don’t care about the science. It implies they don’t care wolves in North America have lost almost half their genetic diversity since the late 1800′s. It implies they aren’t concerned wolves are being isolated from one another due to increased hunting pressure, resulting in further loss of genetic connectivity. It implies they don’t care Yellowstone wolves now live on a virtual island, facing death if they set foot outside the park, as the iconic alpha female of the Lamar Canyon pack, 832f, sadly learned.
“Rockstar”…Lamar Canyon Pack Alpha Female, 832f, gunned down outside Yellowstone
President Obama and his now retired side kick, Salazar are tone-deaf concerning wolves. They pulled the plug on wolf recovery in 2009 by removing Endangered Species protections for the imperiled animals, first in the Northern Rockies and now the Great Lakes. While the Democratic party once again looks the other way, wolf enemies are pushing hard for across the board delisting. This is ugly politics, nothing more. Ranchers, hunters and the politicians who serve them, are chomping at the bit to drive a final stake into the heart of wolves. Once a success story, in just four short years the Obama administration has turned wolf recovery into a nightmare. Not only are wolves being slaughtered in the Northern Rockies but wolves in the Great Lakes are getting the same treatment. For the first time Minnesota and Wisconsin held wolf hunts in 2012, mere months after wolves lost their ESA protections. Wisconsin trophy hunters, want to use dogs to track and trail wolves to their deaths. Michigan, the only state in the Great Lakes that didn’t hold a wolf hunt last year, recently classified wolves as game animals, opening the door to wolf hunts. Michigan residents went to work and collected over 250,00 signatures to allow a 2014 ballot initiative that would give Michigan voters a voice on whether or not they want a wolf hunt but that tremendous grass-roots effort is being thwarted.
“Senate Bill 288, approved this week in that chamber and now headed to House, would allow the Natural Resources Commission to designate an animal — such as the wolf — as a game species and authorize a hunt regardless of what voters might decide in 2014″…….joosting@mlive.com
This is not success, this smells of dirty pool, backroom deals and backdoor politics.
I remember the Spring of 2009 very clearly. A new President after eight years of George Bush, what a relief. Finally we’d have someone in the White House who cared about wildlife. But the Obama administration did the unthinkable and appointed a rancher to oversee the nations treasured wild places and just like that wolves were stripped of their endangered species protections. When the news broke of the wolf delisting, I was stunned. Wolves had been facing the wrath of Wildlife Services for almost a decade. Entire packs in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming were routinely gunned down for miniscule livestock depredations. We had no way of knowing it would get much, much worse for wolves in the next four years.
Before we knew it Montana and Idaho were planning wolf hunts to commence in the fall. In mere months wolves went from endangered to hunted.
The killing has only escalated way beyond anything we could have imagined. Not only are wolves facing hunts that grow more gruesome every year but the USFWS wants to finish wolves off by effectively removing their protections across the lower 48. The refrain that wolf recovery is a “success story” is absolute BS. A SUCCESS STORY? Idaho is holding year round wolf hunts, trapping and snaring wolves by the hundreds. Montana initiated wolf trapping for the first time and eliminated quotas. It’s a success story if you think success is defined by Wyoming’s “predator zone”, which encompasses over 80 % of the state, where wolves can be shot on sight. Some success story. Scum trophy hunters were luring Yellowstone wolves out of the park with puppy distress calls. That’s a success story? Just head over to Facebook and read a few of the sick anti-wolf sites, it will turn your stomach. There’s a certain wolf hating page where members admit they get off on torturing wolves.
“The members of this Facebook page come right out and publicly admit (brag is more like it) to ‘getting wood’ when seeing wolves trapped, tortured and killed, whether in images or in real life. They feel ‘orgasmic’ hunting, trapping, killing, butchering, and even eating their victims.
It doesn’t take a great leap of imagination to know what else they are doing when torturing wolves to death”…..Examiner.com
What’s happening to wolves mimics the extermination of the 1900′s. Not only were wolves trapped, shot, arrowed and poisoned with strychnine but they were also set on fire, had they lower jaws removed, then let loose to suffer and die. The atrocities being perpetrated against wolves in 2013 are every bit as evil and sick. And who put the rubber stamp on this slaughter? Who weakened the ESA? The Democratic controlled Senate, who stuffed a wolf delisting rider into a must pass budget bill and stripped wolves in the Northern Rockies of their protections, WITHOUT JUDICIAL REVIEW! There was no science involved in that. It was a ploy to get Jon Tester re-elected, by playing to the wolf hating crowd in Montana and every single Democrat Senator voted for it except three and Obama signed the bill into law. How shameful is that? What’s even more pitiful is how clueless the MSM is. Jon Stewart was praising Jon Tester for speaking out about another rider, recently slipped into an appropriations bill, that would give biotech companies like Monsanto immunity from the courts. Maybe Jon Stewart missed the memo that it was Jon Tester who inserted the wolf delisting rider into the 2011 budget bill, to help get himself re-elected. Wake up Jon S!!
Now is the time to stand up and say no to wolf persecution. Sally Jewell is the boss at Interior now and it’s our job to convince her to turn away from this “plan”. Wolves inhabit less than 5% of their former habitat. If the USFWS has their way hostile state governments will draft “wolf management” plans effectively keeping wolves from dispersing outside the “kill zones” of the wolf states, stopping wolf recovery in its tracks.
Please contact the Interior Secretary and let her know Americans love wolves and want them protected. We can’t continue to allow a handful of wolf hating zealots to drive policy.
Please speak out for wolves, we are their voice!
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Interior Secretary Sally Jewell
202-208-3100
Department of the Interior
1849 C Street, N.W.
Washington DC 20240
I’ve always loved Montana, especially Western Montana. The Rocky Mountain Front, Bob Marshall Wilderness, The Great Bear Wilderness, Glacier National Park, The North Fork, The Swan Range, Jewel Basin, Flathead Lake, Logan’s Pass, Going to the Sun Road, Spotted Bear, The Bitterroot Mountains and so many other wonderful places too numerous to mention. Even its name reflects its majesty, Montana, land of mountains. Louis and Clark journeyed there on their epic exploration.
I can still remember sifting through the shale rock looking for a perfect two-sided fossil, it was great adventure. My childhood memories were filled with Montana, a magnificent place where the sky never ends.
Montana is blessed with abundant wildlife and certainly plenty of room for wolves. Montanans’ should be proud to live in a state that supports all top predators in vast intact ecosystems, the grizzly, the mountain lion, the gray wolf. But sadly the state has been hijacked by people who care nothing for trophic cascades or apex predators. They want to turn Montana into a giant elk farm for their pleasure, as if elk or any of the wildlife belong to them.
I still love Montana’s beauty but there is an ugliness that hovers there now, an intolerance that holds Montana in its grasp. Montana is killing wolves, just as they did decades ago.
“In the United States, large-scale predator control programs were carried out, with wolves hunted and killed nearly to extinction. By the middle of the 20th century, few wolves existed in the Lower 48 states. Only several hundred gray wolves in Minnesota remained, with a few Red wolves and an occasional Mexican gray wolf reported. Both the Mexican gray wolf and the red wolf were eventually completely eliminated in the wild and prior to recent reintroduction efforts, existed only in captivity”..National Wolf Fact Sheet
The Endangered Species Act was signed by President Nixon in 1973 and by the late seventies wolves started to return home to Northwestern Montana, forming packs, some large, like the Magic Pack.
“Reports of wolves near Glacier National Park began to trickle in during the late 1970s. In 1979 a wolf was captured just north of the U.S. border in British Columbia. She was released with a radio collar. Three years later this same wolf had mated and produced a litter of eight pups. According to Hank Fischer in his book “Wolf Wars,” this pack was named the “Magic Pack” due to its tendency to appear and disappear for long periods.The Magic Pack became the first pack of wolves to inhabit the western United States in 50 years.”..Wolf Report 8/18/96
They weren’t reintroduced, they reintroduced themselves. They belong there and no hysterical elk hunter is going to tell me any different. Montana is prime wolf country and it’s their home. It’s been their home for thousands of years, before European settlers ever set foot on the continent, where Native Americans lived peacefully among them, where gray wolves co-existed with Dire wolves.
Now with wolf hysteria reaching a fever pitch, Montana has declared war on wolves once again. Ready to do the bidding of the ranching and hunting lobbies, Montana legislators aren’t satisfied that hundreds of wolves have died in the state since wolves lost their ESA protections in 2009. They want to make life even harder for wolves. Science be damned, let politics reign. A particularly nasty piece of legislation, HB 73, sailed through the Montana Senate last week and is waiting newly elected Governor Bullock’s signature. Will he veto it? I don’t hold out much hope for that. Again politics before science.
Take note Montana legislators, you’ve turned a once beloved state into wolf killing fields, becoming a smaller version of Alaska, a state who kills wolves without mercy or an Idaho clone, where it’s now legal to use wolf carcasses to bait wolves to their deaths.
Montana is a place where wolves howl but those howls could be silenced forever and the state I loved will never be the same again!
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Contact Governor Bullock and ask him to veto HB 73
Stalker of death, you have lost your way, and I raise my lips heavenward, my voice singing, loud and clear, setting free a song flowing in moonlight, echoing afar.
I cry for you who have forgotten… and fear remembering… your own wild beauty, blinded by wanton blood lust, killing what is most precious to you.
You have forgotten your greatest joy, born of all that is untamed.. wild.. free.. and this I have lived for you in all of my being, so that wild beauty may not die and cease to be alive in our world.
Will you remember too late, when the forests are deathly silent, when none remain to dance in the moonlight and frolic in virgin snow, when what was once wild with joy is dead… cold.. gone forever?
I set free my mournful cry into the night sky, knowing you will remember the wisdom now numbed with hatred, in a place where your buried soul weeps for shame with tears that will not cease, once it is too late.
Oh mankind, hear my voice, my cry, for it may vanish forever, yet my song shall not be silenced, and my tears… moon-bathed jewels… treasures will remain.
by Francene Stonebraker Copyright September 2012
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Thank you Francene, for allowing me to share your beautiful words.
Trophy hunting is nothing more than animal cruelty couched as a “sport”. There is nothing sporting about it.
Wolves are being subjected to trophy hunts in the Northern Rockies as I type this. The death toll continues to climb in Idaho, a state that’s declared war on its wolves, along with Montana andWyoming.
To understand the brutality of trophy hunting just peruse YouTube to see video after video of trophy hunters displaying their sad corpses, while they “lord over them”, grinning like Cheshire cats. It’s bone chilling.
Trophy hunting exists because it’s a billion dollar world wide industry, blood money generated off animal deaths. A macabre killing game, costing millions of innocent animals their lives. Game farms in South Africa raise tame lions to be killed in“canned hunts”, the most disgusting form of trophy hunting.
In his famous 1999 article, African lion advocate and wildlife researcher, Gareth Patterson, examines the connection between trophy hunting and serial killing.
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Is Trophy Hunting a Form of Serial Killing?
By Gareth Patterson
For me – and the many people who contact me to offer their support – killing innocent animals for self-gratification is no different from killing innocent people for self-gratification. By extension, then, trophy hunting – the repeated killing of wild animals – should surely be viewed as serial killing. And in the same moral light humanity’s thinking is, I feel, beginning to approach such a level of morality.
What are the comparisons between trophy hunting and serial killing?
To attempt to answer this question, I did some research into the gruesome subject of serial killing. I learnt firstly that serial murder is a grotesque habit which analysts regard as addictive. Serial murder, I learnt, is about power and control – both linked to the killers’ longing to “be important”.
It appears when the serial killer commits the first act of murder, he experiences feelings such as revulsion and remorse, but the killing – like a dose of highly addictive drug – leads to more and more murders until the person is stopped. Researchers have discovered that serial murderers experience a cooling-off period after a killing, but as with a drug craving, the compulsion – the need to kill – keeps building up until the killer heads out again in search of another victim.
Trophy hunters are mostly “repeat” killers. This is further fuelled by elite trophy hunting competitions. It has been calculated that in order for a hunter to win these competitions in all categories at the highest level, he would have to kill at least 322 animals.
Pornography is perceived by analysts as a factor that contributes toward serial killers’ violent fantasies – particularly “bondage-type” pornography portraying domination and control over a victim.
Hunting magazines contain page after page of (a) pictures of hunters, weapon in hand, posing in dominating positions over their lifeless victims, (b) advertisements offering a huge range of trophy hunts, and (c) stories of hunters’ “exciting” experience of “near misses” and danger.
These pages no doubt titillate the hunter, fuelling his own fantasies and encouraging him to plan more and more trophy hunts.
Trophy hunters often hire a cameraperson to film their entire hunt in the bush, including the actual moments when animals are shot and when they die. These films are made to be viewed later, presumably for self-gratification and to show to other people – again the need to feel “important”?
This could also be seen as a form of trophy which mirrors in some respect pornographic “snuff” videos known to be made by some serial killers. Other serial killers have tape-recorded the screams of their victims, which were kept for later self-gratification.
There is a strong urge to achieve perceived “heroism” in serial murderers. This is linked to the individual’s craving for “self-esteem”. Student Robert Smith, for example, who in November 1996 walked into a beauty parlour in Mesa, Arizona, and shot five women and two children in the back of the heads, said of his motivation to kill: “I wanted to become known, to get myself a name”.
Multiple killer Cari Panzram (among whose victims were six Africans he shot in the back “for fun” while working for an oil company in Africa) once stated of his actions: “I reform people”. When asked how, he replied: “By killing them”. Panzram also liked to describe himself as “the man who goes around doing good”.
The “Stockwell Strangler” of South London in the mid-1980s who told police he wanted to be famous is another example of how the serial killer clearly confuses notoriety for fame.
Are the trophy hunter’s killings linked to the serial killer’s addiction to murder, to achieve what is perceived to be heroism, to deep-rooted low self-esteem, to wanting to be famous – the “name in the trophy book”?
Certainly one could state that, like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans his killing with considerable care and deliberation. Like the serial killer he decides well in advance the “type” of victim – i.e. which species he intends to target. Also, like the serial killer, the trophy hunter plans with great care where and how the killing will take place – in what area, with what weapon.
What the serial killer and trophy hunter also share is a compulsion to collect “trophies” or “souvenirs” of their killings. The serial killer retains certain body parts or other “trophies … for much the same reason as the big game hunter mounts the head and antlers taken from his prey … as trophies of the chase,” according to Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman in The Serial Killers, a book on the psychology of violence.
In The Serial Killers, the authors wrote about Robert Hansen, an Alaska businessman and big-game enthusiast who hunted naked prostitutes through the snow as though they were wild animals, then shot them dead. Hansen would point a gun at his victim, order her to take off all her clothes, and then order her to run. He would give his victims a “start” before stalking them. The actual act of killing his victims, Hansen once said, was an “anti-climax” and that “the excitement was in the stalking”.
How many times have I heard trophy hunters describing their actions in similar terms? “No, hunting isn’t just about killing,” they say. “It’s also about the stalk, the build-up to the kill”.
Hansen was a trophy hunter, who, according to Wilson and Seaman, had achieved “celebrity by killing a Dall sheep with a crossbow”. He also trophy hunted women but, as a married man with a family, he couldn’t put his human trophies next to those elk antlers and bear skins in his den.
As an alternative, Hansen, it was revealed, took items of jewellery from his victims as “trophies” and hid these in his loft so that, as with his animal trophies, he, the hunter, could relive his fantasy-inspired killings whenever he wished to.
According to Wilson and Seaman, Jack the Ripper cut off one victim’s nose and breasts and “as if they were trophies, displayed them on a bedside table, together with strips of flesh carved from her thighs”.
Jewellery, body parts, clothing such as underwear and so on, are all known “trophies” of the serial killer. One serial killer flayed his victim and made a waistcoat from the skin as a “souvenir” or “trophy”.
What could the non-hunting wives, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and children reveal of the nature and behaviour of a hunter in the family? Could they reveal that the hunter had a very disturbed childhood?
Almost half the serial killers analysed during behavioural research were found to have been sexually abused in childhood. Environmental problems early in life manifest in many cases in violence such as cruelty to animals. Maybe they have a frustrated craving for “self-esteem”, a deep desire to be recognized, a resentment against society? All these factors are some of the known links to the profile of the serial killer.
Lastly, serial killing has been described as a “20th-Century phenomenon”. The same could be said of Western trophy hunting in Africa.
From The Authors Website:
“My name is Gareth Patterson, known to some as ‘ The Lion Man of Africa.’ I have dedicated the past 25 years of my life to the preservation of the African lion. Shockingly, in those past 25 years, Africa has lost 90% of its lion population. Today it is estimated that only 20,000 lions grace the entire African continent. The lion is now very endangered. Despite this, international trophy hunters come to Africa to kill lions for so-called “sport.” In South Africa lions are bred in captivity to be shot in enclosed spaces by these trophy hunters. This sordid practice is known as ”canned lion hunting.” This song is about the story of one lioness, the Dark Lioness, who was killed under these horrible circumstances. We must act now to save the African lion. Anouschka and I have collaborated to produce this song in an attempted to created new awareness to a new audience about the plight of the lion. Thank you very much for your support.”
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.
This blog is dedicated to the memory of Wolf 253, the beloved Yellowstone Druid wolf named Limpy, who was shot and killed in March 08, on the very day ESA protections were lifted for the gray wolf, by the then Bush Administration.
Jewel, a young beta female, of the Phantom Hill Wolf Pack in Idaho, was shot dead yesterday in the Eagle Creek drainage, north of Ketchum. She was only two years old but had already made her mark upon the pack. When the alpha female took an extended vacation this year, Jewel assumed “nanny duties”, caring for the pups during the alpha’s absence.
Boulder White Clouds Council
Exposing The Big Game
Footloose Montana
Friends of the Clearwater
Lockwood Animal Rescue Center
Louise du Toit
LUPUSLAETUS
Mercy For Animals
Northern Idaho Wolf Alliance (NIWA)
Predator Friendly®- Because Wildlife Matters
Project Coyote
Project: Wolf
The Nature Conservancy
The Ravensong Group
WildEarth Guardians
Wisconsin Wildlife Ethic-Vote Our Wildlife
Wolf And Wildlife Studies: Jay Mallonee (Independent Wolf Biologist)
Wolf Song of Alaska
Wolves in english ! Les loups en anglais !
WWP's Gray Wolf Page
Yellowstone To Yukon Conservation Initiative
