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Archive for the ‘Wolf Current Events’ Category

Standing Up for Wyoming’s Wolves in Federal Court

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on November 14, 2012| 1 Comment »


Posted November 13, 2012 in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places

“With wolf hunts underway in Idaho and Montana, we are headed back to court to challenge the latest removal of Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in the state of Wyoming. Wyoming and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service left us no choice, as Wyoming’s “wolf management” plan sanctions the complete eradication of wolves in approximately 85% of the state and requires Wyoming to maintain only 100 wolves and 10 breeding pairs in the entire state outside Yellowstone National Park and the Wind River Reservation. Only the northwest corner of Wyoming, in the area surrounding Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, will allow for wolves, but regulated wolf hunting will also take place there.

While it is true that most of the wolves in Wyoming currently reside in that northwestern corner of the state, the Wyoming plan ensures that wolves will never be allowed beyond that imposed boundary – a policy of absolute intolerance for a species that our country just spent the last several decades working to recover. Furthermore, by restricting wolves to the northwest corner and reducing the number of wolves surrounding Yellowstone, Wyoming’s plan compromises the ability of wolves to successfully travel (and exchange DNA) between the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the remaining wolf subpopulations in central Idaho and northwest Montana – a component that has been identified as critical to the survival of the entire Northern Rockies wolf population.

The Wyoming plan is almost identical to an earlier version that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service rejected as inadequate to protect wolves – and a federal judge found that it put the continued existence of the wolf in Wyoming “in serious jeopardy.” In fact, the Service spent years insisting that Wyoming needed to develop a credible statewide plan. But, repeatedly, Wyoming refused. And the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service? Well, instead of keeping Endangered Species Act protections in place for wolves in Wyoming until the state adopted an acceptable management plan, the Service caved in to political pressure and approved a plan that is almost identical to the one they (and a federal court) previously rejected.

Wyoming’s plan takes us back to the exact eradication practices that endangered the wolf in the first place. The Endangered Species Act was created to remedy these very practices, not to reinstate them.  And while we certainly don’t think that wolves will need the protections of the Endangered Species Act forever, we believe that those protections should be in place until states like Wyoming commit to responsible statewide management that will ensure the continued survival of what has been one of our country’s greatest conservation success stories.”

**Special thanks to Sylvia Fallon, NRDC,  http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/sfallon/standing_up_for_wyomings_wolve.html,   for providing this information!!

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As Wolves’ Numbers Rise, So Does Friction Between Guardians and Hunters

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on November 9, 2012| Leave a Comment »


Nancy Jo Dowler, the president of the Timber Wolf Preservation Society, with Comet.

By STEVEN YACCINO

Published: November 1, 2012

“GREENDALE, Wis. — When people like Nancy Jo Dowler started raising wolves here decades ago, the animals were rare in Wisconsin and nearly extinct across the country.

Now the president of the Timber Wolf Preservation Society, Ms. Dowler, 66, cares for five full-grown purebreds. She bottle-fed them as pups and howls with them at passing sirens. The other day she gave one breath mints through a hole in the fence, passing it directly from her lips to his.

Hers seems a fairy tale world compared with the legal dogfights occurring beyond these kennels. Out there, Wisconsin is three weeks into its first wolf-hunting season, sanctioned by the State Legislature in April. Minnesota is scheduled to begin its first registered wolf hunt this weekend.

The legalization of wolf hunting in both states was devised to manage a rebounding wolf population after the federal government stopped listing the species as endangered in the region last year. Both have drawn lawsuits from local and national animal rights groups that fear the undoing of nearly four decades of work to restore a healthy number of wolves.

“We’ve spent a lot as a nation to protect them,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, which in October announced a lawsuit against the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to restore protections for wolves. “These plans in Wisconsin and Minnesota are draconian, severe and unwarranted, and we think they may jeopardize the health and viability of this population.”

Since the wolf hunt began last month, at least 42 have been killed in Wisconsin. All told, officials expect 600 wolves will die at the hands of hunters and trappers in the two states before spring.

Wolves were once so numerous in the United States that ranchers and government agencies paid people to kill them. By the time the Endangered Species Act began protecting wolves in 1973, they were nearing extinction in the lower 48 states. Today, wolf numbers have grown to 4,000 and exceeded recovery goals in the western Great Lakes area, according to federal estimates.

But some of those packs have started to cause problems again for ranchers in northern Wisconsin and have cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars in livestock reimbursement payments, said officials at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “Without controls, what we’ve seen in the state is a feeling of needing to take it into their own hands for folks that are frustrated,” said Kurt Thiede, head of the wildlife management program for the agency.

After the Wisconsin Legislature approved the wolf hunt, which ends Feb. 28, more than 20,000 people applied for the required license. The state awarded 1,160 permits and capped this year’s harvest at 201 kills, or roughly a quarter of its current wolf population.

In Minnesota, about 3,600 licenses were available to hunt up to 400 wolves, which would reduce the state’s numbers by about 15 percent.

“There ain’t too many people that have one hanging in their living room,” said Timothy Mueller, a hunter from Silver Cliff, Wis. He, like others with a wolf license, was waiting for winter because pelts will be thicker and the snow will make it easier to track the animals.

Yet some hunters who once proudly talked about the rare opportunity would now rather keep their adventures private. A number declined to speak about the controversy because of reported threats made against a hunter who was among the first to register his kill with the state.

“There are a lot of the claims about how easy this is and how this is senseless slaughter,” said Scott Meyer, a lobbyist for the United Sportsmen of Wisconsin. “When you see the terrain and the geographies of everything, you understand that the advantage is toward the wolf.”

Animal rights groups have little sympathy for the hunters. They argue that the state kill quotas do not properly account for other ways that wolves can die, like poaching and vehicular collisions and the killing of the animals by farmers and ranchers protecting their livestock. Those additional causes, they say, could put the animals at risk again.

On Oct. 15, the day Wisconsin’s wolf-hunting season began, two national groups — the Humane Society and the Fund for Animals — filed a 60-day notice of their intent to sue the federal government to restore wolf protections.

In addition, Wisconsin humane groups have filed a lawsuit to prohibit the use of dogs for hunting wolves, calling it cruel. Minnesota advocates also took legal action against their state in an attempt to stop its hunt, which lasts from Nov. 3 to Jan. 31. And Minnesota’s Chippewa tribes have banned wolf hunting and trapping on its reservation lands.

“The whole balance of nature, they don’t want to hear any of that,” said Ms. Dowler, criticizing hunters for killing the animals she has devoted years to protect. “People absolutely love them or they absolutely hate them. There are few people in the middle.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 3, 2012

A picture caption on Friday with an article about the friction between wolf hunters and those who want to protect the animals misidentified the city in Wisconsin where the Timber Wolf Preservation Society is located. As the article correctly noted, it is in Greendale, not in Glendale.”

*Special thanks to TheNew York Times for providing this information! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/02/us/friction-between-wolf-hunters-and-protectors-rises.html?_r=2&goback=.gde_2859887_member_181479466&

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Wildlife Services Trapper Allows Animal Torture

Posted in Wolf Current Events on November 2, 2012| 21 Comments »


“Federal employee allows dogs to savagely attack a trapped coyote and more …

Published on November 2, 2012 by Marc Bekoff, Ph.D. in Animal Emotions

Wildlife Services, a branch of the USDA, is constantly being criticized for the wanton slaughter and abuse of millions of animals every single year.

A summary of some of Wildlife Services egregious activities include, but is not limited to, the following:

With steel traps, wire snares and poison, agency employees have accidentally killed more than 50,000 animals since 2000 that were not problems, including federally protected golden and bald eagles; more than 1,100 dogs, including family pets; and several species considered rare or imperiled by wildlife biologists.

A growing body of science has found the agency’s war against predators, waged to protect livestock and big game, is altering ecosystems in ways that diminish biodiversity, degrade habitat and invite disease.

In all, more than 150 species have been killed by mistake by Wildlife Services traps, snares and cyanide poison since 2000, records show. A list could fill a field guide. Here are some examples: Armadillos, badgers, great-horned owls, hog-nosed skunks, javelina, pronghorn antelope, porcupines, great blue herons, ruddy ducks, snapping turtles, turkey vultures, long-tailed weasels, marmots, mourning doves, red-tailed hawks, sandhill cranes and ringtails.

The body count includes more than 25,000 red and gray foxes, 10,700 bobcats, 2,800 black bears, 2,300 timber wolves and 2,100 mountain lions. But the vast majority—about 512,500—were coyotes.

Aerial gunning is the agency’s most popular predator-killing tool. Since 2001, more than 340,000 coyotes have been gunned down from planes and helicopters across 16 Western states, including California—an average of 600 a week, agency records show.

Between 2004 and 2010, Wildlife Services killed over 22.5 million animals to protect agribusiness. The agency spends $100 million each year, and Wildlife Services’ job is to “eradicate” and “bring down” wolves, coyotes, mountain lions, bears, prairie dogs, and other wild animals.

In 2010, Wildlife Services killed 5 million animals (this number does not include the thousands birds the Service has since admitted to poisoning in 2010), including 112,781 mammalian carnivores such as coyotes, wolves, bobcats, cougars, badgers and bears.

New evidence of reprehensible animal abuse: What follows is not easy reading

And, just this week, we’ve learned that an employee of Wildlife Services, Jamie Olson, who works as a trapper in Wyoming, has been caught, and is being held responsible for, promoting extreme acts of cruelty and torture. A summary of these heinous acts can be found here. The photos on Mr. Olson’s Facebook page and elsewhere include: ” …two dogs savagely attacking a coyote in a leg-hold trap and the employee posing with the tattered carcass of a coyote. They also show other trapped animals – dead and alive. … [another] shows the trapper’s brownish-black Airedale approaching a coyote in a leg-hold trap, unable to defend itself. The coyote is snarling and trying to pull away. A caption says: ‘My Airedale Bear with a sheep killing female.’ … Another photo on Twitter showed a partly disemboweled coyote on a log. The caption reads: ‘Eagles got to this adult female before I did.'”

This sort of abuse is “very common”

Is this sort of abuse rare? No, according to a former Wildlife Services trapper. “Gary Strader, a former Wildlife Services trapper in Nevada, was not surprised to learn about the controversial photos. ‘That is very common,’ Strader wrote in an email. ‘It always was and always will be controversial. It has never been addressed by the higher-ups. They know it happens on a regular basis.'”

I’m sorry to post this story but it’s essential to get the word out about these sorts of heinous activities. And, more important, you can do something about these thoroughly repugnant and unacceptable behaviors that uses our tax dollars.

Please contact Mr. Rod Krischke, State Director, Wyoming Wildlife Services, P.O. Box 67, Casper, Wyoming 82602; Rodney.F.Krischke@aphis.usda.gov; William Clay, Deputy Administrator for Wildlife Services; Bill.Clay@aphis.usda.gov; Jeffrey S. Green, Western Regional Director for Wildlife Services; jeffrey.s.green@usda.gov; and Congressman Peter DeFazio at https://forms.house.gov/defazio/IMA/contact.html and Congressman John Campbell at http://campbell.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1023&Itemid=35.

Cruelty can’t stand the spotlight and these heinous activities must be stopped now.”

*Special thanks to “Psychology Today,”  http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animal-emotions/201211/wildlife-services-trapper-allows-animal-torture for providing this information!

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Washington state wrestles with how to prevent more wolf kills

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on October 21, 2012| 1 Comment »


“Taking aim from a helicopter flying over northeastern Washington state, a marksman last month killed the alpha male of a wolf pack that had repeatedly attacked a rancher’s cattle. The shooting put an end to the so-called Wedge pack, but it did little to quell the controversy over wolves in the state.

The issue has been so explosive that state wildlife officials received death threats and the head of the Fish and Wildlife Commission warned the public at a recent hearing in Olympia on wolves that uniformed and undercover officers were in the room ready to act.

More conflicts between wolves and livestock are inevitable, officials say, as wolves in Washington recover, growing in number more quickly than expected. The animals numbered a handful in 2008, and are now estimated at 80 to 100.

“What are we going to do so we don’t have this again?” asked Steve Pozzanghera, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife regional director.

He said officials are trying to be proactive to prevent the need to kill wolves. They plan to collar more wolves this winter to keep better track of them. They plan to ask the Legislature to beef up money to compensate livestock owners whose animals are killed by wolves. And they’re urging livestock operators to sign agreements with the state to share the cost of using a broad range of nonlethal measures to prevent livestock-wolf conflicts.

So far, only one livestock owner has signed an agreement, with four to six others in the hopper, underscoring the challenges the agency faces as it tries to recover the endangered native species while encouraging social tolerance of the wolves by minimizing livestock losses.

“We understand there is some resistance out there,” said Pozzanghera, but the agency is committed to working with ranchers and cattlemen.

“The whole situation is really tragic, most of all because it could have been avoided,” said Jasmine Minbashian, of the nonprofit Conservation Northwest, which supported the decision in the end to kill the wolf pack because the animals had become reliant on livestock.

“If you remove the pack without changing something on the ground, this situation is bound to repeat itself,” she said.

The Stevens County Cattlemen’s Association is urging its roughly 50 members not to sign those agreements. It wants the commission to remove gray wolves from the state endangered list in eastern Washington in the near future.

“Our guys are willing to use these nonlethal methods … The problem is these methods are not always effective,” said the group’s spokeswoman, Jamie Henneman, noting the agreements address only symptoms. “The illness happens to be that we’re oversaturated with wolves.”

Grey wolves are protected as an endangered species throughout Washington state. The animals are federally listed as endangered only in the western two-thirds of the state. Removing the animals from the state endangered list could open the way to future wolf hunting.

While Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have been grappling with wolves in the past decade, Washington has dealt with wolves only in recent years. In 2008, a wolf pack was documented for the first time in 70 years. Now, there are eight confirmed packs, with four others suspected.

The killing of seven members of the Wedge Pack, named for the area they inhabit along the Canadian border near Laurier, has prompted an outcry from some wolf advocates. Some have criticized the owners of the Diamond M ranch for not taking enough nonlethal measures.

“As far as I know, we’ve done everything that they suggested might be effective,” Bill McIrvin said during a recent Olympia hearing. McIrvin is one of the owners of the ranch, where wolves killed or injured at least 17 animals on both private and public land. The ranch employed cowboys, delayed the turnout of their cow-calf pairs until the animals were bigger and quickly removed injured cattle, state officials said.

Wildlife officials say they’re working on new rules to compensate ranchers for losses, including for reduced weight gain or reduced pregnancy rates.

Ranchers who sign onto nonlethal agreements with Fish and Wildlife would have priority for livestock compensation.

Sam Kayser, an Ellensburg cattle rancher, said he signed an agreement with the state because he knows wolves will eventually target his cattle and he wanted help.

“What are the wolves going to eat? They’re going to eat elk. If the elk numbers go short, they’re going to eat my cattle,” said Kayser, whose cattle graze on thousands of acres of private land that he leases in central Washington.

“Fish and Wildlife (department) was trying to be proactive and I was trying to be a little proactive myself,” he added.

The state is sharing the cost of a range rider who stays with the cattle to make sure they don’t become prey to wolves.

Range riders have been used in other states to prevent wolf-livestock conflicts. A pilot project in Stevens County over the summer is testing the concept in this state. Officials have been working with a rancher there and will review the success of that project in coming months to see whether and how it can be duplicated elsewhere.

Kayser says he and other cattlemen saw the conflicts coming.

“If they’re willing to try, I’m willing to try,” Kayser said. “(But) I think it’s putting off the eventuality of what’s going to be.”

**Special thanks to By Nancy Todd, The OregonianThe Oregonian
on October 20, 2012 at  1:32 PM for providing this information!

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Killing entire wolf pack is in nobody’s best interests

Posted in Wolf Current Events on October 21, 2012| Leave a Comment »


Published October 12, 2012

“The state Department of Fish and Wildlife failed to protect a pack of gray wolves in northeast Washington, less than a year after adopting a statewide wolf conservation management plan.
        <a href=”http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/mi.oly00/News/Opinion/Editorial;atf=N;dcove=d;pl=story;sect=Editorials;pos=1;sz=300×250;tile=5;!c=news;pub=Olympian;ord=336672503167893;gender=;year=;income=?” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/mi.oly00/News/Opinion/Editorial;atf=N;dcove=d;pl=story;sect=Editorials;pos=1;sz=300×250;tile=5;!c=news;pub=Olympian;ord=336672503167893;gender=;year=;income=?” border=”0″ alt=”Advertisement”></aBy killing the entire pack, just one of 12 in the state, the department is admitting it failed to effectively implement the nonlethal measures required by the wolf plan and is bending to the pressure of large cattle ranchers.

 Wolves are considered an endangered species under Washington state law, and by federal law for the western two-thirds of the state. Wolves are just starting to make a comeback after being effectively eliminated by hunters in the 1930s.

The state’s wolf plan is designed to recover wolf populations to the point that they can be taken off the endangered species list, while keeping losses to grazing livestock at tolerable levels.

But something is wrong when a rancher, who is well-known for favoring the elimination of troublesome wolves, and who has refused to cooperate with nonlethal provisions of the plan, can pressure the department into abandoning it so quickly.

By doing so, Fish and Wildlife personnel may find themselves in trouble with lawmakers.

Sen. Kevin Ranker, D–Orcas Island, who chairs the Senate committee that oversees the DFW, said, “I find it inexcusable that we allowed ourselves to get to a place where killing the entire pack was the necessary decision when other nonlethal options – within the department and with ranchers – were not totally exhausted first.”

Diane Gallegos, executive director of Wolfhaven International, located in Thurston County, says wiping out the Wedge Pack, named for the wilderness area near the Canadian border where they roamed, represents a failure on everyone’s part.

She’s calling for the state to add enforceable standards and accountability to the wolf plan before lethal force is used again.

And she makes the excellent suggestion of adding a stakeholders review board to ensure the department and ranchers are implementing the plan before allowing future wolf kills.

It is in the best interests of conservationist for ranchers to be successful, so bringing wolf advocates, hunters, ranchers and fish and wildlife together could produce collaborative solutions.

Killing off wolves for just doing what wolves do is no solution if ranchers aren’t managing their livestock properly, according to the wolf plan, and if Fish and Wildlife officials aren’t accountable for enforcing the deployment of all non-lethal options.

Ranker is right to ask what steps the department took before shooting the wolves, some from helicopters, what the kill cost and how they are going to avoid getting forced into another similar situation.

As Wolfhaven’s Gallegos says, “The problem is with people, not the wolves.”

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The Humane Society of the United States Files Notice of Suit to Restore Federal Protection for Great Lakes Wolves

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Legislation, Wolf Organizations, Wolf Preservation Efforts on October 18, 2012| 1 Comment »


October 15, 2012

“On the day of the first public wolf hunting and trapping season in the Great Lakes region in more than 40 years, The Humane Society of the United States and The Fund for Animals served notice that they will file suit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to restore federal protections for Great Lakes wolves under the Endangered Species Act. The groups are also asking the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota to postpone wolf hunting and trapping until the case can be decided on the merits.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s most recent decision to delist wolves became effective earlier this year, after multiple previous attempts to delist wolves were struck down by the courts over the course of the last decade.

“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service put faith in the state wildlife agencies to responsibly manage wolf populations, but their overzealous and extreme plans to allow for trophy hunting and recreational trapping immediately after de-listing demonstrate that such confidence was unwarranted,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO for The HSUS. “Between Minnesota’s broken promise to wait five years before hunting wolves, and Wisconsin’s reckless plan to trap and shoot hundreds of wolves in the first year, it is painfully clear that federal protection must be reasserted. The states have allowed the most extreme voices to grab hold of wolf management, and the result could be devastating for this species.”

In Minnesota, hunters and trappers can kill as many as 400 of the estimated 3,000 wolves in the state. That is additive to the damage control killing, poaching, and other forms of human-caused mortality.

In Wisconsin, the quota for killing wolves in the state is roughly 24 percent of the estimated wolf population in the state. Including depredations, illegal kills, and vehicle collisions, the human-caused death toll could be more than 50 percent of the wolf population – nearly double the level of human-caused mortality the best available science indicates the population can withstand.

Some lawmakers in Michigan, where livestock owners are already allowed to use lethal means as a first resort when a gray wolf preys upon livestock, are pushing for legislation that would create an open sport hunting season on wolves.

The groups have filed today a 60-day notice of their intent to sue over the rule – as required under the Endangered Species Act. If the agency does not reconsider the delisting rule over the next 60 days, The HSUS and The Fund for Animals will ask a federal court to reinstate federal ESA protection for gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region. Both organizations had hoped that sensible policies would prevail in the states, and also took note of the legal claims filed by other organizations seeking to avert reckless killing of wolves.  Those cases have not resolved several of our concerns favorably for the wolves, leading us to file notice to sue.”

**Special thanks to The Humane Society of the United States for providing this information!  (http://www.humanesociety.org/news/press_releases/2012/10/great-lakes-wolves-suit-101512.html)

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California agrees to study protections for gray wolf

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on October 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »


FILE – This May 8, 2012 file photo provided by the California Department of Fish  and Game shows OR-7, the Oregon wolf that has trekked across two states looking  for a mate, on a sagebrush hillside in Modoc County, Calif. State wildlife  officials could move a step closer to listing the gray wolf as an endangered  species in California. The gray wolf has been considered extinct in the state  for decades, but a wolf born in Oregon that crossed the border has rejuvenated  efforts to protect the species in the Golden State. That wolf, OR-7, is thought  to be an indication that revitalized wolf populations in other Western states  are making an expected push into California’s wildlands. Photo: California  Department Of Fish And Game / AP

“SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — As  California’s lone gray wolf continues roaming the state’s far northern wilds,  officials Wednesday decided to launch a one-year study to see whether the  species should be given state endangered species protections.

The California  Fish and Game Commission voted unanimously in Sacramento that a “status  review” study — spurred by a petition from the Center  for Biological Diversity and other groups — is warranted.

“Wolves, like grizzly bears,  white sharks and mountain lions, have always been controversial,” said Michael  Sutton, the commission’s vice president. “The status review we launched  today will give us the information we need to make an informed decision on  whether or not to protect the wolf in California.”

Ranchers and at least three  rural counties in the state’s rugged, sparsely populated north opposed the plan,  saying it was an unnecessary use of public money for a species that already has  federal protection. While the actual cost of the state’s one-year study is  unknown, it will be at least partially funded by a $300,000  federal grant.

Endangered species protections  for the gray wolf in California have been debated since December, when the  Oregon-born wolf called OR-7 left his pack and wandered across the border  seeking a mate.

It was the first hard evidence  of a wolf in the state in more than 80 years, according to the California  Department of Fish and Game. The wolf was hunted to extinction in California  in the early 20th century.

OR-7 is still believed to be the  only wolf in the state. The male wolf is outfitted with a tracking tag so he can  be studied by government scientists.

Noah  Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity’s endangered species  director, said the vote moves the wolves closer to recovery  in California.

“Protection of wolves under the  California Endangered Species Act will help these beautiful animals return to  extensive habitat in northern California and the Sierra Nevada, where scientists  estimate there is plenty of room for them,” he said.

Since December, California’s  lone wolf has become a celebrity, with its own Twitter account and frequent  state updates on his whereabouts.

Gray wolves in California are  already protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. But populations in  some Western states have been increasing, meaning they could qualify for  delisting. Wildlife advocates want the state to ensure future protections in  California if federal ones are dropped.

In some states where wolf  populations have thrived, officials have implemented hunting programs to  control growth.

“(Hunting) may affect future  expansion,” said Eric  Loft, chief of the Fish  and Game Department‘s wildlife branch.

Officials in several counties in  the far north said the department’s resources should be used to develop a  management plan for the wolf, not on a study for protections they see  as redundant.

“The people promulgating this  affair have shown no evidence of caring about the (financial) burden this places  on the people of California,” said Ric  Costales, a natural resources policy specialist for Siskiyou County. “Added  to this is the insult that this is occurring at a time when the state and  counties are struggling financially.””

**Special thanks to JASON DEAREN, Associated Press for providing this information!

 

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Wyoming elk herds have grown too large

Posted in Wolf Current Events on September 5, 2012| 3 Comments »


 

“Now that Wyoming has gained the authority to manage wolves and will soon have a wolf hunt, the much lamented lack of elk due to those “insatiable packs of killing machines” — wolves — has suddenly turned around and there are said to be too many elk . . . just like that.

Brian Nesvik, chief of the wildlife division for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department says “in many areas of the state, those herds have simply grown too large.” Therefore, the state has made an emergency order providing for an extra, reduced-price cow elk and elk calf license in some of the areas with too many elk. In fact, Game and Fish is trying so hard to get more hunting in the larger elk herds that they are offering special elk hunts on private lands. They are even encouraging elk hunters to buy three elk tags in some parts of the state.

It seems more than passing strange that there have been too many wolves, and then start talking of too many elk; all this quick as you can snap your fingers.

It seems like a contradiction, but you can tease out a sensible explanation of this seeming contradiction by reading this story, Wyoming Game and Fish Department offers extra elk licenses. By Christine Peterson. Casper Star-Tribune.

The Wyoming Legislature is dominated by ranchers who have always lorded it over the Department of Game and Fish. Elk eat grass and forbs that cattle could eat. While cattle are always allowed the lion’s share of the range, sometimes elk herds grow big enough there are some ranchers who are short of feed. As a result ranchers don’t like the elk, except for maybe those ranchers who do a bit of hunt outfitting in the fall.

Of course, wolves do kill and eat elk, and sometimes they even appear to hold elk numbers in check. Sometimes wolves even reduce elk numbers. But ranchers don’t like wolves either. This is because their tradition is to hate wolves, and they don’t like the people who support the wolf restoration any better. The desired policy is to kill both of them — wolves and elk both.

The only thing that remains to be explained is why some hunters can’t figure this out.”

*Special thanks to Dr. Ralph Maughan for providing this information! (http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2012/09/04/wyoming-elk-herds-have-grown-too-large/)

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Lady Gaga Goes from Mother Monster to Wolf Mother in ‘Machete Kills’

Posted in Wolf Current Events on July 28, 2012| 1 Comment »


Bad move Lady Gaga…in a shocking image that represents the massacre of wolves, visit the link provided below and share your thoughts about this image for her new movie!  (http://www.hollywood.com/news/Lady_Gaga_Robert_Rodriguez_Machete_Kills_Wolf_Mother/35149897)

“In a movie that was already looking like one of the most interestingly-casted films we’d heard of in awhile, Robert Rodriguez added yet another outlandish name to his Machete Kills cast list: Lady Gaga. Now, if having a cameo role in one of Rodriguez’s exploitation films isn’t a natural progression for her image and general aesthetic, we’re not sure what is, really. Playing a character named La Chameleón, Gaga joins fellow attractive ladies Sofía Vergara and Jessica Alba, as well as a couple scandalebrities like Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson, and Michelle Rodriguez. Eyebrows, they are a-raisin’. And how does her character look? Well, see for yourself:

Dang, Gaga! They certainly can’t call this yellow mellow. Not when you’re packing heat like that. PETA are probably minutes away from a s**t fit, but it certainly leaves us wondering what sort of woman has the, well, balls to waltz around with a head-on wolf fur in life. We’re sure some of you will be howling (can’t help myself, sorry) over this image for awhile. Though we now have more questions then answers about her character’s role within the film. According to productions notes, there is another similarly-named character listed in the film: La Camaleon, and he (yes, HE!) is played by Cuba Gooding, Jr. What is going on here? Color us very intrigued, Rodriguez.

Either way, the choice of project falls very much in line with Gaga’s world. Who could forget her Tarantino-homage-tinged Telephone video (Quentin Tarantino and Rodriguez are notorious buddies, plus Gaga featured the “Pussy Wagon” from Kill Bill in the video)? Homegirl is certainly known for her over-the-top drama and performances: both things that work very well in the exploitation scene.”

Special thanks to  Alicia Lutes, Hollywood.com Staff for providing this information.

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The Politics of the Montana Wolf Hunt

Posted in Wolf Current Events on July 22, 2012| 1 Comment »


George Wuerthner is an ecologist with among others, a degree in wildlife biology, and is a former Montana hunting guide. He has published 35 books and reports the following:

“On July 12, 2012, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (MDFWP) Commissioners voted 4-0 to increase wolf hunting in the state, expanding the hunting season and permitting the trapping of wolves for the first time as well. The goal is to reduce wolf numbers across the state in hopes that it will calm the hysteria that presently surrounds wolf management.

The commission’s decision to boost wolf hunting and trapping will likely lead to greater conflicts between humans and wolves because MDFWP’s management ignores the social ecology of predators.

Hunting predators tends to skew populations towards younger animals. Younger animals are inexperienced hunters and thus are more likely to attack livestock. Predator hunting disrupts pack cohesion, reduces the “cultural” knowledge of pack members about things like where elk might migrate or where deer spend the winter.

In addition, just as occurs with coyotes, under heavy persecution, wolves respond by producing more pups. More pups means greater mouths to feed, and a need to kill even more game—thus hunting and trapping may actually lead to greater predator kill of game animals like elk and deer.

Thus a vicious self-reinforcing feedback mechanism is set up whereby more predators are killed, leading to greater conflicts, and more demand for even greater predator control.

So why has MDFWP and the commission ignored the social ecology of predators? The answer lies in politics.

Montana’s hunters have been driven to frenzy by various interest groups. Some are just plain ignorant predator ecology and truly believe that the best way to reduce conflicts is to kill more wolves. Less wolves, some believe, means hunter nirvana. But others have a sinister motive which I believe the MDFWP Commission was in part responding to.

Right-wing conservative groups have seized upon the wolf issue as a way to generate support among ecologically ignorant hunters. They have used the media and hunting advocacy groups (like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation) to sell the idea that wolves were a major threat to big game hunting– despite the fact there are more elk now in Montana than when wolves were first restored.

Others spread stories about wolves carrying off babies and children or spreading infectious disease.

Some of the most conspiracy-minded survivalist types even believe the restoration of wolves is a UN Plot—part of Agenda 21. Agenda 21 is a plan for sustainable living but many conservatives believe is a blue print for a new world order.

And of course against this backdrop we had the livestock industry screaming that wolves were destined to destroy the industry despite an annual loss of less than 100 animals to the predators last year out of a total population of 2.5 million cattle and sheep.

These conservative organizations and individuals successfully made killing wolves a litmus test for politicians and even the MDFWP. If you were not supportive of more wolf persecution, you were, at the very least against rural America and in the minds of some individuals perhaps even against hunters.

At the worse, a decision to lessen the persecution of wolves meant you were sympathetic to animal rights organizations and gun control advocates. What Fish and Game Commissioner wants to be branded as siding with animal rights organizations or the gun control crowd? Of course that is all irrational. But you must remember this issue is not based on rational thought.

It is within this kind of madness that the MDFWP Commissioners were required to make a decision. If the commission did anything but increase the killing of wolves, it would have certified in many people’s mind, including many hunters that the MDFWP was anti hunter.

The Commission vote demonstrates that Fish and Game agencies are incapable of managing predators based on science or ethics.

One must remember that hunter and angler license sales are the primary funding mechanism for state wildlife agencies. Even if the vast majority of the public were against killing predators, the state agencies are likely to ignore those concerns if there is the perception that the majority of hunters were in favor of more predator control.

The commission, for instance, recently increased the quota for mountain lion in western Montana despite the direct opposition of some its own biologists who argued that such hunting was ineffective and even detrimental to mountain lion populations.

In Montana, as with the rest of the country, I have no doubts that the majority of hunters favor fewer wolves. And the commissioners have to dance with the one that “brung ya.”

Beyond this political background that the commissioners faced, there was an even larger context.

The right wing conservative organizations, most of them friendly and supportive of Republican candidates for office, were hoping to lay a trap for Democratic politicians. If the Commissioners, who after all, were appointed by a Democratic governor, voted to maintain last year’s hunting quota or god forbid actually reduce or eliminate wolf hunting, it would have been exactly the issue needed to unseat every Democrat in the Montana legislature.

There was a further fear—and a not unwarranted one—that if the MDFWP Commission did not expand wolf hunting and trapping, it could ruin the chances for Democratic candidates for office. A new Republican governor and Republican dominated legislature it is reasoned, would quickly sweep the MDFWP Commission clear of anyone who didn’t actively promote even more aggressive wolf control.

There is also some who were willing to bet, and probably were correct, that all Democratic candidates would be hurt if the Commission did not expand wolf hunting, including Senator Jon Tester, who is seeking re election to the US Senate.

So it was within this context that the Commissioners had to make their decision.

I do know the MDFWP Commissioners are well educated, thoughtful, and very conscientious men. In my view the MDFWP commissioners are men of the highest integrity. Although I was not privy to any of their thoughts, I am certain they did not reach their decision, easily nor with any joy. For some, I am almost certain it was an agonizing and painful splitting of the baby. I would not have wanted to be in their shoes.

I suspect that if you asked them why they decided to expand wolf killing, they would tell you that they know that wolves won’t be eliminated from Montana—and that is a step forward compared to the situation of a few decades ago when there were few or no wolves in the state.

And some might even suggest that once the rhetoric and hysteria dies down, they could envision a more sensible and less vindictive approach to wolf management in the future. There might even be wolf management based on science, including the social ecology of predators, instead of politics.

I am also certain if you could speak to the Commissioners in private when they thought no one would hear, they might admit the wolf had to take the fall for a “greater good.” As they would suggest, and quite correctly I’m afraid, a Republican Governor in Montana would be even more likely to enact aggressive wolf hunting policies, and appoint Commissioners far less sympathetic to wolf supporters.

It may be difficult to believe that MDFWP Commissioners are sympathetic to wolf supporters given their votes, but I know after attending one of the hearings that the Commissioners are not personally hostile to wolves.

But I am sure that Commissioners were thinking even beyond Montana state politics when they voted to expand wolf persecution. If somehow right wing conservatives were able to paint Senator Tester as one of the “wolf loving” Democrats, it might hurt his re election bid. After all Tester only won in the last election by a mere 3000 votes.

Whether a correct assumption or not, many Democrats fear if Tester loses his re election, the US Senate could tip to the Republicans. In their worst nightmares, some Democrats see a situation whereby Republican Mitt Romney wins the Whitehouse, the rabid tea party activists manage to hold on to their stranglehold on the House, and the Senate is controlled by Republicans.

With all legislative bodies held by Republicans and a Supreme Court that sees Corporations as persons, and is generally sympathetic to tea party anti-government rhetoric and big business interests, there is no end to the bad outcomes that one could imagine might befall the country.

Within this political context, a few more dead wolves seems like a small, if not regrettable sacrifice necessary to prevent a far worse calamity for the country. The unfortunate thing for me is that it appears that despite all the scientific research, and “enlighten” environmental concern, predators are still being treated as unwanted and under-valued members of our wildlife heritage.

I might even go so far as to suggest pro wolf sympathizers made some strategic mistakes. They failed to hammer over and over again that predator control is unnecessary, ethically suspect, and only leads to greater conflict. By not taking the high moral ground, they lost the political debate.

Many were unwilling to argue against wolf hunting in general—afraid that such a position would be unacceptable to most hunters and ranchers. By passively and in some cases, even agreeing that wolf control was needed, it legitimized the idea that wolf control was necessary. At that point the discussion just degenerates to a debate about how many wolves should be killed, not whether wolves should be killed in the first place.

Environmentalists should stated categorically there is no legitimate reason to kill wolves or any other predators for that matter, except perhaps for the most unusual and special circumstances such as the surgical removal of an aggressive animal.

Instead of arguing that wolves are part of the Nation’s wildlife patrimony that deserve to be treated with respect, appreciation, and enlightened policies, pro wolf activists lost the rhetorical argument by allowing anti wolf forces to define the limits of discussion and successfully frame the issue.

In my view, many conservation organizations lost the debate with their weak and tepid stance. As many have suggested, boldness is rewarded—and in the case of wolves—boldness by those set on using wolves as a surrogate for conservative values won the political debate.

If environmentalists had made a more cogent argument, marshaled the latent and widespread support for predators, wolves in particular, they might have provided the political cover for the MDFWP commissioners to make a more wolf-friendly decision.”

George Wuerthner is an ecologist with among others, a degree in wildlife biology, and is a former Montana hunting guide. He has published 35 books.

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