“An estimated 10 wolves from Yellowstone National Park have been killed by hunters this month, adversely affecting the park’s wolf research program, one of the longest studies of its kind.
“Losing the wolves has been a big hit to us scientifically,” says wildlife biologist Douglas Smith, leader of Yellowstone’s wolf project, which has tracked the wolves since their reintroduction in 1995. The killings came just as researchers, who are partly funded by a 5-year U.S. National Science Foundation grant, were set to begin the wolf project’s annual winter survey of the canids’ predatory habits.
The wolves were shot by licensed hunters outside the national park during the legal wolf hunting season that opened this fall in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Seven of the wolves were wearing radio-collars that help scientists track the wolves. Two “were the only collared members of their packs,” Smith says. “So, now we can’t track those packs.” In addition, two of the wolves had specialized GPS collars that collect data every 30 minutes, which has helped researchers better understand wolves’ movements and predatory behaviors. Only one wolf in the study program is now left with such a collar.
Smith says that all seven radio-collared wolves were within 1 to 3 miles of the park’s unmarked boundary when killed. “We don’t know why they left; one had never gone outside before, and three of the others did so only infrequently,” he says. The wolves may have been in pursuit of prey, since the park’s elk also migrate out of the park at this time of year; or they may have been enticed by the gut piles hunters leave behind after shooting and dressing out an elk. Many professional hunting camps are set up around the park’s boundaries close to known elk migration routes. The wolves, too, are used to humans, “which could make them more vulnerable to hunting,” Smith says.
The wolves’ deaths mark the second time in 3 years that collared Yellowstone research wolves have been shot by hunters. Some worry that hunters are targeting the radio-collared animals. The hunters returned the collars to the park’s wolf project.
Although Yellowstone’s wolves are protected while they roam inside the park, they now can be legally shot as soon as they set foot outside. Wolves in Montana and Idaho were removed from the federal endangered species list in May 2011; those in Wyoming were downlisted on 30 September. The Wyoming wolf hunting season opened the next day.
While lamenting the loss of the wolves, some of whom were well-known to park visitors, park officials stressed that Yellowstone’s wolf population remains healthy, with approximately 88 individuals. “These were loved, iconic wolves,” says Dan Hottle, a park spokesperson, but their loss does not “adversely affect our ecosystem.” But the wolves’ social structure and stability may be affected, Smith says. There could also be an impact on tourism, observers say: A 2006 University of Montana study estimated that the wolves draw in $35 million a year in tourist dollars to the park and surrounding areas.
Scientists predict that the loss of the collared wolves will have a big impact on both the park’s research project and numerous other independent studies investigating a variety of issues, such as elk management and ecology. The collars collect data intended to help wildlife managers better understand wolf behavior, particularly the canids’ effect on elk. And unless a wolf is wearing a collar, researchers say they can’t be sure that it is an animal that uses the park. The killings are “very unfortunate, because of the harm it does to the research,” says Bob Ream, a retired wolf biologist from the University of Montana, and chair of the state’s Fish, Wildlife & Parks Commission, which oversees the hunts. “I would like to think this was not done intentionally.” Intentional or not, Smith notes that of the killed wolves that were known to have used the park, an estimated 70% were wearing collars.
Smith and others, including park officials and conservationists, have lobbied officials in the three states to establish buffer zones around the park to protect the wolves from hunting. Only Montana, however, has made an effort to do so. It has reduced the quota in one hunting district north of the park from 15 wolves to three.
Smith has teams out now in search of the two packs that no longer have collared individuals. “Scientifically, our goal was to study a population of wolves that was not exploited by people,” he says. “Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.”
**Special thanks to Science Insider, http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/11/yellowstone-park-research-wolves.html?ref=hp, for providing this information!
The Wolf Preservation Blog 
This is just shocking! I am absolutely appalled, and had hoped Yellowstone’s wolves would stay out of the rest of Wyoming. I blogged about Wyoming at the start of the hunting season (mind you, some people were not very happy I did but others had my post published in newspapers) but to hell with it, I am going to start over and email whomever wants to read it because this is just absolutely shocking. I stopped posting about the wolf hunts on FB because I felt sick to my stomach about it and because I couldn’t take it anymore but right… starting over on FB again also. When will those hunters realize that they’re killing a vital part of the circle of life, of animals that need to be there to sustain the food chain? Of course, those hunters only have one brain cell so you can’t really expect much intelligence from them. Sorry about my wording here but I am sick to death of the killing of wolves by people who only want to brag that “they, I killed a wolf, how terrific am I?!” Ggggrrrrr….
Hi Billie, Wolf Preservation is behind you 100%! You’re a critical part of the education factor for readers and please share your published product here with all of us!
Thank you…thank god for people like you who tirelessly works for the safety and need for wolves in the US… I will reblog one of your posts to my blog also. Thanks again!!!
Here is the email I just sent to senators and Fish & Wildlife:
Dear All,
As a lover of all wildlife, I would like to stand up against the inhumane and needless slaughter of wolves in the west of the US. Word spread quickly that 10 wolves – vital to Yellowstone’s research projects – have been killed. How is it possible that a research project, partly funded by a 5-year U.S. National Science Foundation grant, set to begin the wolf project’s annual winter survey of the canids’ predatory habits, has lost 10 wolves in a “legal” hunt?
The US Fish and Wildlife Service mentioned on August 31st, 2012 that “Wyoming’s thriving population of gray wolves no longer requires the protection of the Endangered Species Act, allowing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to return management to the State of Wyoming and write the final chapter in the remarkable comeback story of wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountains (NRM). Beginning September 30th, wolves in Wyoming will be managed by the State under an approved management plan, as they are in the states of Idaho and Montana. Wyoming’s regulatory framework will maintain the State’s share of a recovered NRM gray wolf population in the absence of the Act’s protections. The Service will continue to monitor the delisted wolf populations in all three states for a minimum of five years to ensure that they continue to sustain their recovery. Although we do not expect it will ever be necessary, as with all recovered and delisted species, we may consider relisting, and even emergency relisting, if the available data ever demonstrates such an action is needed. Our primary goal, and that of the states, is to ensure that gray wolf populations in the Northern Rocky Mountains remain healthy, giving future generations of Americans the chance to hear its howl echo across the area,” added Ashe. “No one, least of all Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, wants to see wolves back on the endangered species list. But that’s what will happen if recovery targets are not sustained.” (http://us.vocuspr.com/Newsroom/Query.aspx?SiteName=fws&Entity=PRAsset&SF_PRAsset_PRAssetID_EQ=130903&XSL=PressRelease&Cache=True)
So if there is finally a proper balance and if they want to keep up the recovery of their previous endangered status, why, bloody why do they need to be killed in horrendous ways? Why make an emergency relisting possible?
Remember a WHOLE wolf pack (8 wolves in total including pups) was slaughtered in Washington State. Why? Because 1 (yes: ONE) rancher called Bill McIrvin had his cattle grazing on PUBLIC land and some of his cattle were attacked by wolves because he refused to follow simple rules that other ranchers implemented to discourage wolves from targeting their cattle. “Since this rancher refused, the state had no business killing the wolves and instead should have evicted this rancher and his cattle off public grounds permanently for refusing to comply. The way these crazy wolf haters are going at it, we will be lucky to have any wolves by the middle of next year. A forty year program to bring wolves back from the brink of extinction only to see all those decades of work destroyed in less than 2 years. Absolutely sickening.” (http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/wedge-pack-slaughter-hangs-like-a-pall-over-washington-state/)
I am no person to attack others in public, but I am willing to name and shame for wolves because the madness of killing them is picking up and people in favor of conservation like me are struggling to convince governmental agencies to review their decisions regarding the delisting. We need to get word out there about what is happening and that this is against everything nature stands for.
A poisonous string of words has been brewing in my head for the last few weeks regarding wolf preservation, if not months. Or years even. Ever since I was a teenager I’ve been captivated by wolves, and even adopted one in Spain. Because that’s all we can do from Europe: we can email decision makers in the US asking them to review their stance on wolves so foreign people can visit the US to see wolves in the wild so we can adopt and help the world see that wolves are needed to keep the circle of life turning even when it’s happening far from our our warm beds at night. I am living in Ireland, but US wolves need support from all over the world if politicians want to feel wrong for the massacres they have provided on a silver platter. Thank god my friends in the USA strongly oppose wolf hunts, and they are doing their utmost to make people see how wrong the delisting is. I can only follow their stance with vigor and with the hope that even my voice will be heard.
Some people call wolf hunting a ‘sport’… how about we turn around the roles of the participants and make mankind the hunted instead of the hunter… yes indeed, that would be utterly, utterly horrible, right? I see scenarios like the film ‘The Hunger Games’ in my mind now… not so nice a sport anymore, isn’t it?
Once again governments and farmers/ranchers get their wish and choose cattle ranchers’ sides over Mother Nature… the almighty dollar at work. I am a big fan of President Barack Obama but I will never forgive him for taking wolves off the Endangered Species List, opening doors for US states to allow killers to attack wolves. “Yes we can” is “no you are so wrong” in regards to the future of wolves President Obama.
So why does mankind (lots of ‘men’… very little ‘kind’) have to keep on proving its worth over Mother Nature? Why wolves? Ever since the bible they’ve been persecuted and killed just for the sake of killing something mankind does not understand, or even tries to understand. Why do people want to prove they are better, stronger, smarter and more humane than animals when animals are more often the better link in the chain of life? Killing wolves is based on many misconceptions. Too many, and all this because of mankind’s preoccupation with being the hunter. Is it because men/women want to show that they are the only ones who should control nature? Why are wolves being denied to walk free in their own natural territory? Why is it that the cattle industry always wins? What have wolves done to earn this totally unjust behaviour?
In fact, because of a huge colony of cattle living in the US and the enormous consumption of meat, our air is being polluted by methane gasses and cattle should be the ones making space for animals who only kill weaker and older animals in order to survive and thus keep the balance in nature the way it should.
We need to keep informing the United States House of Representatives, the Senate and President Obama to undo their delisting of wolves and push them to relist wolves as an endangered species. To show them that mankind should be able to live next to nature and in agreement which each other’s roles in our universe.
Somewhere in the US, someone is picking up their gun, their traps, poison and god only knows what else to kill and hurt wolves. I foresee many more pictures in newspapers and social media of hunters showing their stupidity and their utter arrogance. Somewhere wolves are about to be hurt badly, pups falling without their parents, alpha wolves being separated from their pups and howling out for people to understand they did not do anything wrong. Right now they are still living free as a bird, but not for much longer. With Americans being so religious, where is their God to show hunters they’re wrong? Where is He when Mother Nature is being maimed? Where is He when His worldly creations are about to be killed in the most painful ways one can think of?
Where is the Spirit of the Native Americans, where is He who looks out for his species?
What would people do if they were to be killed in this way? Would they still want to play God over Mother Nature when wolves are part of the circle of life… all life, trying to maintain a balanced world?
How many brain cells does one need to understand that killing part of the circle of life, of the food chain will damage that circle and chain for a very long time to come?
Please undo the carnage taking place right now, we beg you to look into this and take a stand.
Yours sincerely,
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