The Wolf Preservation Blog

This was Alpha Fe, the mother of the late Basin Butte Pack. This is where she …fell.

“Two of us and Lynne Stone of the Boulder White Cloud Council went out early one frigid winter morning in search of what we feared had happened.  What we found was a trail of blood that led us to a tragic scene.  In the meadow next to Alpha Fe’s lifeless body, was the place the Wildlife Service’s helicopter had touched down just long enough for the gunner to walk over to her body and remove her radio collar.  Her collar, attached in the name of science, was also the homing tool used to betray her location, giving her no chance to elude the aerial pursuit.  This is the little-known dark side of radio collars, and their unfortunate dual purpose.

It has been three years since The Thanksgiving Day Massacre of Idaho’s most known and most viewed pack of wolves.  People traveled great distances to come see them.  In November of 2009, the Basin Butte Pack was destroyed for allegedly preying on a few calves early in the summer, many months before Wildlife Services killed them off with semi-automatic shotguns from a helicopter and an airplane in a two day aerial assault.  We all paid for it, but not just with our tax dollars. She and her pack mates lived in the Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA), Idaho’s spectacular scenic and outdoor recreation centerpiece and home of the majestic Sawtooth Mountains where the Sawtooth Pack once lived. They inhabited the same land, the Basin Butte Pack and the Sawtooth Pack.

What we set out to achieve with our documentaries of the Sawtooth Pack was that they would act as ambassadors for the wolves that would follow in there footsteps.  Killing this pack was unnecessary. Should Idaho’s leading tourism and recreation attraction be a place utilized to graze some of Idaho’s 2,200,000 million cows?  If so, should the wildlife that inhabits the SNRA be annihilated if no effort is made to implement non-lethal methods to protect livestock from predation?  Wildlife Services still operates in this manner and wolves are killed for preying on livestock that are left without any protective measures unattended on the open range, very often on your public lands. Clearly there is much more work to be done, as this story continues to repeat itself.  Cooperation and good will are essential if man and wolf are to coexist.   Solutions have been proven to work by those who are willing to try.

This is a reminder of the need to demand the reform of the USDA’s Wildlife Services, the government agency that spends taxpayer money to kill “problem” wildlife.  Their practices are currently in question and being challenged.  Please read the article in the link written by Tom Knudson of the Sacramento Bee.  Two Congressmen, Peter Defazio, a democrat from Oregon and John Campbell, a republican from California, have been pushing the House Oversight Committee to investigate Wildlife Services and their current practices.  Please support them in their efforts to reform Wildlife Services.”

**Special thanks to “Living With Wolves” for providing this information!  For more on this story,  please visit http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs021/1102459385062/archive/1102886320092.html