States Prove Why Wolves Need Endangered Species Protection…TAKE ACTION!!

Montana and Idaho are proving why wolves need ESA protection. The Endangered Species Act was specifically created for a species like wolves who are subject to such horrific persecution, that without the ESA umbrella, they may be headed for a second Western extermination.

The states just can’t be trusted with the welfare of wolves.They are apparently too vested in the wants and needs of two, small but vocal interest groups, hunters and ranchers. It’s economics really. Wolves don’t purchase hunting licenses, they don’t vote, they compete for the same prey that humans want to kill, so they lose all the way around. Hunters are blaming them for not being able to “get their elk”. They want elk to stand around, complacently, easy targets. I guess getting out of your truck and actually exerting energy to find the more elusive elk is too much for them.

Montana & Idaho are aggressively “managing” wolves, a euphemism for killing them.

Head of a slaughtered wolf

Barely a year off the Endangered Species List, wolves are being targeted by both states.

Montana has proposals waiting to be adopted that would push the wolf hunting quota from 75 to between 150 and 216. Montana also wants to introduce a wolf archery season. Is there anything more brutal then being shot full of arrows? The state has also given Wildlife  Services full responsibility to make decisions on the ground about which wolves to kill for depredation. 

Meanwhile, Idaho is being just as aggressive. IDFG just gave four outfitters and their guides the authority to kill up to five wolves each in the Lolo zone THIS SPRING!!  That’s 20 wolves between the outfitters alone. Are the unknown number of guides allowed to kill up to five wolves as well? And of course it’s all about elk. Apparently enough wolves weren’t killed by the Idaho hunt and Wildlife Services, now they want to kill more.

“A department news release described the authorization as a predator control action in response to concerns that wolves in the zone are preventing chronically low elk numbers there from rebounding. The wolf control measure was approved in the department’s predator management plan for the Lolo and Selway zones.“

Please tell me why the state game agencies should be in charge of wolves welfare?  This is absolutely egregious. The SEVEN MONTH LONG IDAHO WOLF HUNT just ended and now IDFG has given special authorization to these outfitters and their guides to kill wolves in the Lolo while wolf pups are just weeks old?  This is wolf “management” at it’s most disgusting.  What about public comment? It seems the only public comment the state is listening to is hunters and outfitters whining about the Lolo elk herd, which has been declining since the early nineties, long before wolves were reintroduced. Even so, IDFG has decided to target wolves for death in the Lolo. When is the slaughter of wolves going to end? Is it now going to be year round killing? Since when is an entire species managed for certain groups of people? What about wildlife watchers? We don’t shoot elk, we don’t pay hunting licensing fees but we are the majority. Is anyone listening to our concerns?

Plus Idaho wants to raise their already high wolf hunting quota of 220 to an even higher number and allow trapping. The Idaho wolf hunt is SEVEN MONTHS LONG, running right through wolf breeding and denning season. Could the situation be more vile?

What is being lost in all this is the wolves.They have been completely marginalized, reduced to numbers.They are counted, collared, chased, killed, their every move documented in media headlines but there is a complete vacuum on what effects all the killing has had or will have on them. Oh there are weekly wolf reports documenting which wolves or entire packs have been killed for livestock depredation but where oh where is the information from the wolf biologists concerning loss of alphas, loss of entire packs, wolves left without families, pups orphaned or killed?  Where is the information about a species freshly off the endangered species list that is being hunted on two fronts. Guess what? You won’t find the scientific studies because there aren’t any.

This is from Doug Smith, the Yellowstone wolf biologist, speaking about the decimated Yellowstone Cottonwood pack. He apparently doesn’t have a problem with all the wolf hunting, which I find disturbing.

“No one knows how the hunt will affect the survivors’ behavior and prospects. “You shoot four out of 10 in a pack, what will they do? Nobody knows,” says Smith. “We know that disperser wolves (those that pioneer new territory and start new packs) usually come from large, stable packs, and dispersers are the ones that provide genetic connectivity and eventually keep the animals off the endangered species list. The Cottonwood Pack probably won’t be pumping out any dispersers. They are going to stay home, regroup somehow.”

Wolves are now the enemy. Do any of these so called state game agency wolf managers care one whit about wolves and how they are suffering? In my opinion, ABSOLUTELY NOT!!  

We did get a breathless account from a  Montana wolf biologist & manager on the joys of killing a wolf. Maybe if they would spend more time actually studying a species they are responsible for instead of coming up with new and deadly ways to kill them, wolves might actually benefit. Isn’t it their job to look out for wolves welfare  or were they just hired to kill off the wolf population to please hunters and ranchers? They don’t seem to be worried about wolves one bit. Here’s an example of what they do seem to be worried about:  

“People are concerned about losing opportunity to hunt elk, especially antlerless elk.“ 

On killing wolves in the Lolo:

“So this an effort to improve on calf survival and cow elk survival and elk recruitment levels that will result in a population increase. It has been a downward decline for several years.”

There you have it folks. Please read Predatory Bureaucracy, The Extermination of Wolves and The Transformation of the West, by Michael Robinson. He lays out the first extermination pretty clearly. Is it a roadmap for the second one?

So wolf warriors, it’s time to wake up and start thinking about what you can do for wolves every single day because the people in charge of wolves fate only seem to care about increasing deer and elk populations and killing wolves for agribusiness. 

I beg you to start writing to the contacts I have listed below. Tell them you won’t do business with anyone in either state that supports the wolf slaughter. Please stand up for wolves before they are gone.

War has been declared on the Northern Rockies Gray Wolf.

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Take Action For Wolves, CLICK HERE  Start writing, faxing and phoning. Let your voices be heard!! 

Wolf advocates our message is being drowned out by the small groups of wolf haters that want to see wolves annihilated.  If we remain silent that only tells the states we approve of what they are doing, we have to make it clear to them that wolf advocates say enough wolf killing, this is outrageous!!

For the wolves, For the wild ones,

Nabeki

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Breaking News

Idaho Fish and Game authorizes wolf kills in Lolo Zone

May 14, 2010, 4:28 pm

http://www.lmtribune.com/breaking-news/1327/

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FWP decision: Montana to at least double ’09 wolf-hunt quota

By MATT VOLZ Associated Press | Posted: Friday, May 14, 2010 6:30 am

http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_0f2a18c2-5ec0-11df-a9b6-001cc4c03286.html

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Proposal more than doubles Bitterroot wolf harvest

PERRY BACKUS and The Associated Press –

Ravalli Republic | Posted: Friday, May 14, 2010 12:00 am |

http://www.ravallirepublic.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/article_e9487306-5efb-11df-9456-001cc4c002e0.html

 

Posted in: Montana wolves, Idaho Wolves

Tags: wolf persecution, Wolf Wars, IDFG, Montana FWP, second western wolf extermination?