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Archive for the ‘Wolf Preservation Efforts’ Category

Tell Idaho Fish and Game That You Oppose Leg Hold Traps Now Being Used to Kill Wolves

Posted in Wolf Preservation Efforts on November 19, 2011| 7 Comments »


“TELL IDAHO FISH AND GAME THAT YOU OPPOSE LEG HOLD TRAPS NOW BEING USED TO KILL WOLVES. HERE’S HOW!

Statements expressing opposition to the leg hold trap need to be sent to Idaho Department of Fish and Game commissioners. Please allow me the honor of making your advocacy easy with these simple steps:

1. Copy and paste the text below onto a blank email page. …

2. Add or change text to suit your view or style.

3. Sign your name.

4. Copy and paste the email address to the send line.

5. Type “Leg hold trap” on the subject line.

6. Hit the send button. Chairman Tony McDermott Panhandle Region Commissioner Idaho Department of Fish and Game P.O. Box 25 Boise, ID 83707 mcmule@msn.com Dear Chairman McDermott: I am writing to express opposition to the employment of the leg hold trap in Idaho. This trap – – which requires no warning sign – – inflicts inescapable pain and suffering to any child, hiker, dog, wolf, cat or other creature whose foot lands upon it. Because leg hold traps can only be opened by bolt cutters, rendering aid to a trapped victim is almost impossible. I urge you to take action to restrict use of this trap as soon as possible. Thank-you for your time and attention in this important matter.

Sincerely…”

**Special thanks to “Wolf Watcher” (https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100000108981258) for providing this information!

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Advocates seek stop to Idaho, Montana wolf hunts

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on November 13, 2011| Leave a Comment »


PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — “Wildlife advocates appeared in federal court Tuesday seeking to stop gray wolf hunts that are already well under way in the Northern Rockies, arguing that Congress overstepped its authority in stripping federal protections from the canines.

Federal biologists say the wolf population is healthy enough to support the hunts in Idaho and Montana. The two states want to drive down the predators’ numbers to curb their attacks on livestock and big game herds.

But wildlife advocates say too many wolves are being shot too quickly, threatening to unravel the species’ decades-long recovery and killing animals closely followed by wolf watchers.

Almost 170 wolves have been shot since hunting began in late August.

“The longer the hunting season goes on, the more risk to the population in total,” said James “Jay” Tutchton, an attorney who spoke on behalf of WildEarth Guardians, one of the groups that sued Interior Secretary Ken Salazar after wolves lost their federal protections.

The hunts were allowed after Congress last spring took the unprecedented step of stripping endangered species protections from more than 1,300 wolves. That prompted a lawsuit from wildlife advocates who say Congress effectively reversed prior court rulings that favored protections for the animals.

Tuesday’s hearing was before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, Calif.

The 9th Circuit agreed to hear the case on an expedited basis. But several groups involved in the lawsuit requested an injunction to stop the killing of wolves while the case is pending. It is not clear when a decision will be issued, though two previous requests for injunctions were denied.

Anna M. Seidman, with Safari Club International, said hunters are being careful and do not want to see wolves returned to the endangered species list. Seidman’s group, along with the National Rifle Association and other sporting groups, have intervened in the case on the side of the federal government.

“Hunters are conservationists,” she said. “The whole idea behind hunting is sustainable use to make sure they’re here now and remain there for many generations.”

Tuesday’s hearing marks the latest in two decades of courtroom battles over wolves. Gray wolf advocates, including members of Shadowland Foundation, stood outside the courthouse carrying signs saying “We love wolves” and even brought two pet wolves.

Prior lawsuits resulted first in the animals’ reintroduction to the region and then later kept them on the endangered list for a decade after the species had reached the government’s original recovery goal.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is monitoring the hunts, but agency officials said they have no plans to intervene because wolves have recovered in the region and the states have promised to manage them responsibly.

Montana’s quota aims to reduce wolf numbers by 25 percent compared with last year, to 425 animals. Bob Lane, chief legal counsel for the state, said wildlife officials “fully intend to manage them as a viable species.”

Idaho officials have said only that they plan to maintain at least 150 wolves, out of a current population of at least 700 animals.

So far this year, wolves in Montana and Idaho have killed 152 cattle and calves, 108 sheep, 12 dogs and three horses, according to confirmed kill tallies provided by state and federal officials.

Even without hunting, wolves are shot regularly in the region in response to livestock attacks. At least 103 of the predators had been killed this year by government wildlife agents and ranchers.

Federal officials have pledged to step in to restore endangered species protections if wolf numbers drop below 100 animals in either state.

Attorneys for the federal government said that safety valve undercuts the plaintiffs’ contention that the hunts could cause irreparable harm.

In documents filed with the court in advance of Tuesday’s hearing, the government attorneys wrote that an injunction would be an extraordinary step for the court to take and that the plaintiffs “come nowhere close to meeting the test.”

They also argued that Congress was within its bounds to act on the issue, because lawmakers were told by government scientists that wolves were biologically recovered.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead recently struck a deal with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar that could allow wolf hunting in that state by sometime next year.

Legislation introduced by Wyoming’s congressional delegation could speed up that process, in the same way as the budget bill rider that lifted protections for wolves in Idaho and Montana.

But Noah Greenwald, the endangered species director for one of the litigants, the Center for Biological Diversity, called it a “terrible precedent” in which politicians instead of scientists make decisions about endangered animals.

“It sets this precedent where Congress shows they’re capable and willing to step in when a species becomes politically unpopular in a particular state,” he said.”

**Special thanks to By MATTHEW BROWN and NOAKI SCHWARTZ – Associated Press | AP – Tue, Nov 8, 2011 for providing this information (http://news.yahoo.com/advocates-seek-stop-idaho-montana-wolf-hunts-220628246.html)

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Colvilles worry that wolves will hurt hunting

Posted in Wolf Preservation Efforts on November 6, 2011| 2 Comments »


 Wolf Preservation wants to hear your feedback on the Colvilles comments below!

Updated 08:25 a.m., Friday, November 4, 2011

“AIRWAY HEIGHTS, Wash. (AP) — The Colville Indian Tribes are worried that the state’s proposed wolf management plan may hurt subsistence hunting by its members.

The tribes told members of the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission on Thursday that a plan to restore at least five breeding pairs of wolves in Eastern Washington has the potential to reduce herds of elk, deer and moose on its reservation.

Tribal members harvest up to 1,000 deer, 400 elk and 50 moose each year, and worry a large increase in the number of wolves will increase competition for the animals.

“We have 60 percent unemployment on our reservation,” Joe Peone of the Colville Tribes Fish and Wildlife Department told the commission. “To be able to rely on subsistence hunting is critical.”

The comments came as the commission held the final public meeting on its proposed plan in the Spokane suburb of Airway Heights. The commission is expected to take final action on the wolf plan at its December meeting.

Three of the state’s five known breeding packs are located in the northeast, where the tribe’s reservation is located, Peone said.

The tribe wants to ensure the state wolf management plan provides a balance between the needs of wolves and hunters, Peone said.

The state plan, released this summer after several years of work, calls for the return of 15 successful breeding pairs in the state for three consecutive years before removing endangered species protections from the animals.

Farmers and ranchers have criticized the plan in previous meetings as putting their livestock and livelihoods at risk. Conservations want more breeding pairs established before hunting is allowed.

Gray wolves were eliminated as a breeding species in Washington by the 1930s. They have never been reintroduced to Washington but numerous sightings over the years suggested that the animals had crossed into Washington from neighboring states and British Columbia.

Gray wolves are listed as an endangered species statewide under Washington law, and in the western two-thirds of the state under federal law. There currently are five confirmed resident wolf packs.

Under the agency’s original plan for delisting, five breeding pairs would be required in Eastern Washington, four in the North Cascades and six in the South Cascades or Northwest Coast. But the agency is also considering reducing that to four pairs in each region, plus three more anywhere in the state.

Two of the state’s confirmed wolf packs reside in north-central Washington’s Methow Valley and the Teanaway Valley of Kittitas County, with the other three in the northeast corner.

Efforts to save wolves have been controversial throughout western states in recent years. Earlier this year, Congress stripped federal endangered species protections from wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming and the eastern one-third of Washington and Oregon. Wolves are still under federal endangered species protections in the western two-thirds of those two states.

The goal of the management plan is to eventually make wolves a game animal, said Nate Pamplin of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Phil Anderson, director of the department, acknowledged that the effort to create a wolf management plan has been filled with conflict.

“Thousands of hours have been devoted to this in the last four years,” he said. “This is one of the biggest challenges we’ve faced as an agency.”

**Special thanks to NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS, Associated Press, for providing this information! Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Colvilles-worry-that-wolves-will-hurt-hunting-2250962.php#ixzz1cw7oGCXM

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After Years of Conflict, a New Dynamic in Wolf Country

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on November 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »


 Photo provided by

Rich Addicks for The New York Times, pro wolf rally in Montana.

“JACKSON, Mont. —  As a fourth-generation rancher, Dean B. Peterson has a complicated relationship with wolves.

In the 1880s, they preyed on his family’s livestock after his great-grandparents arrived as homesteaders along the Big Hole River. By the 1930s, wolves were nearly extinct as a result of traps and poisons. By the time Mr. Peterson was born in the 1960s, the traps had given way to nostalgic tales about how clever the wolves had been.

Growing up, he thrilled to the sight of any wolf and to the sound of an occasional nighttime howl. But as an adult, witnessing a rebound in the gray wolf population, he did not hesitate to shoot one when it passed behind his sons’ jungle gym and headed for the cattle pen.

“I do not dislike or hate the animal,” said Mr. Peterson, who calls wolves “an unreal species that God created.”

Instead, he resents the conservationists who pressed the federal government to reintroduce the gray wolf to the Northern Rockies in the mid-1990s. That decision was shoved “down our throat with a plunger,” he said.

Yet the dynamic between ranchers and conservationists has begun to change, and Mr. Peterson is surprised to find himself acting as a grudging mediator.

The turning point came early this year as lawmakers from some Western states were demanding that the government remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list, and cede control of the animal in Montana and Idaho to state governments. In April, they succeeded by attaching a rider to a budget bill.

Aghast, some environmental groups had a moment of reckoning. Had they gone too far in using the Endangered Species Act as a cudgel instead of forging compromises with ranchers?

So a handful began reaching out to ranchers, offering them money and tools to fend off wolves without killing them. And some ranchers, mindful that tough federal restrictions could be reimposed if wolf numbers dwindle again, have been listening. Tentative partnerships are cropping up, and a few that already existed are looking to expand.

Working through Mr. Peterson, People and Carnivores, a new nonprofit group that promotes “co-existence,” has built a five-mile, $15,000 electric fence adorned with flags to protect calves on a neighbor’s property. This summer, it helped pay for a mounted rider to patrol 20 square miles of grazing land shared by three ranches near Mr. Peterson’s as a deterrent.

“A lot of my neighbors think I am wet behind the ears to take money from these people,” said Mr. Peterson, who has not yet accepted aid for himself. “But the wolf is here to stay now, and my feeling is that those people who want it here should share the costs.”

The conflict dates back generations, but tensions soared in 1995 and 1996, when the government reintroduced 66 gray wolves in Idaho and in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. The goal was to restore balance to the regional ecosystem: after the wolves died out, elk and coyote populations had increased alarmingly. Elk herds were destroying large tracts of vegetation, and coyotes had reduced second-tier predators like badgers.

The federal Fish and Wildlife Service set a minimum population goal of some 150 wolves, plus 15 breeding pairs, in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. To their surprise, the wolves hit those targets in just seven years and spread beyond the wilderness areas.

Livestock kills began to climb, and the ranchers grew angry. They even blamed the wolves for cows’ weight loss. “They come off the pasture on average about 100 pounds lighter than before there were wolves in the area,” Mr. Peterson said. “They spend so much time looking around, they don’t have time to eat.”

By 2007, the total number of wolves in the three states was 1,513. Surveying the evidence, the Fish and Wildlife Service sought that year to have the animal “delisted” under the Endangered Species Act. But conservationists sued to block that move, saying Wyoming lacked an adequate management plan. A federal court in Missoula, Mont., agreed.

In 2009, the Fish and Wildlife Service tried again to remove wolves from federal protection in all areas except in Wyoming. The court would not allow it, setting the stage for a revolt by lawmakers and this year’s unusual Congressional vote. The Interior Department then brokered a similar compromise in Wyoming.

Wolf hunts began in Idaho and Montana at the end of the summer. Montana set a quota of 220 wolves to be killed, or 25 percent of the state’s total population; the hunting tags sold swiftly, which some attributed to pent-up rage among the ranchers.

The backlash led some environmentalists to question their approach. “I personally look back and say there were a number of things that conservationists did that were not effective and which blew up on us,” said Lisa Upson, executive director of Keystone Conservation, a Montana-based nonprofit group that offers ranchers help with nonlethal control measures. “Now we have to live with this horrible precedent.”

So her group and others are pouring energy into training mounted riders to fend off wolves. They are promoting husbandry techniques that allow calves to grow stronger in penned areas before grazing on the range. Drawing on a folk wisdom that dates from medieval times, they have hung lines of red flags along pastures to deter wolves from approaching.

Most acknowledge that such measures are not a panacea. Michael D. Jimenez, the wolf recovery coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service outside Jackson, Wyo., says federal and state agencies have tried guard dogs, noise aversion (cannons or sirens set off by motion detectors) and “scent aversion,” or placing wolf urine and scat on trees, for years. “Each works in some circumstances,” Mr. Jimenez said, “but are not necessarily a match for a robust wolf population.”

And ranchers may not embrace such tactics. Once, after Ms. Upson thought she had talked some ranchers in the Upper Ruby Valley in Montana into sharing half the cost of a mounted summer rider, she found that they had used the money to pay for fuel for helicopters dispatched for wolf shootings.

Tensions between conservationists and ranchers in the Big Hole area have run especially high. Two summers ago, wolves took about a dozen calves from Mr. Peterson’s herd as it grazed in the mountains. He complained to the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services agency, which responded by shooting only one wolf.

In Mr. Peterson’s view, that was hardly a solution. He says the government’s response has been hampered by too many rules and too little money. Ranchers are often asked by wolf hunters to pay up to $350 an hour for the helicopter fuel, he said.

If wolves are going to be part of the landscape,Mr. Peterson decided, he wants ranchers to get their share of the money “the people in Los Angeles and New York send” to conservationists to find solutions.

So he will continue to work with environmentalists and try to persuade his neighbors to do the same.“I think I should be able to shoot on sight on my land, no questions asked,” he said, but “I am willing to do my part to try and adapt.”

**Special thanks to “The New York Times” for providing this information!  (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/science/earth/conflict-over-wolves-yields-new-dynamic-between-ranchers-and-conservationists.html?_r=2)

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Wolves killed on behalf of John Peavey and Diane Josephy Peavey

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on October 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »


You should be angry.  You should write and petition your local politicians, newspapers, print and hand out flyers to everyone at your local libraries:  include Montana and Idaho Governor’s name and contact information so people can flood their office with outrage!  These leaders of wolf ASSASINATIONS are Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer (http://governor.mt.gov/contact/commentsform.asp) and Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter (http://gov.idaho.gov/ourgov/contact.html).  The following article is one example of such a brutal slaying, a wolf gunned down from an airplane:

“John Peavey, a former Idaho politician, and Diane Josephy Peavey, a former commentator on Boise State Public Radio, who’s Flat Top Ranch near Carey, Idaho has reportedly received payments totaling $970,139 from 1995 through 2010 according to the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database, has received another subsidy in the form of 3 dead wolves.

On Wednesday , USDA Wildlife Services swooped in with their airplane, which was formerly decorated with stickers commemorating each wolf it killed, and shot down 3 wolves accused of killing a calf on John and Diane’s property. The scene was witnessed by wolf activist Natalie Ertz who related the story to the Idaho Mountain Express.

The alpha female has survived three kill orders and coyote traps over the last several years and six pups from her pack were found dead in 2009.  Their cause of death was never determined but a poison such as compound 1080, which may not have been detectable after a certain period of decomposition, remains a possible cause.”

**Special thanks to “The Wildlife News,” (http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2011/09/02/wolves-killed-on-behalf-of-john-peavey-and-diane-josephy-peavey/) for providing this information!

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You Can Be A Champion for Conservation!

Posted in Wolf Organizations, Wolf Preservation Efforts, Wolves and educational activities on October 26, 2011| 1 Comment »


“Public opinion research and polling (NM, AZ) shows consistently that lobo supporters are in the majority in the southwestern United States. By translating the passion that we feel for wolves into action, we can make a real difference in turning Mexican wolf management around towards real success.

Remember, it is only because so many of us took action in the first place that Mexican wolves were brought back from extinction in the wilds of the Southwest and reintroduced in Arizona and New Mexico.

In recent years, the Mexican gray wolf’s supporters brought about significant changes using tools like those below. These include ending a destructive policy of killing or permanently removing from the wild wolves that depredated on three or more livestock a year, a ban on trapping in the wolf recovery area, and movement toward the lobo’s own listing for stronger Endangered Species Act protections!

Top predators, like Mexican gray wolves, are beautiful animals that play a vital role in keeping the balance of nature. They are also one of North America’s most imperiled creatures.

LORDS OF NATURE is the story of how science is now discovering top predators as revitalizing forces of nature, and of a society now learning tolerance for these animals.

Help protect wolves and other top predators by hosting a home screening of Lords of Nature: Life in a Land of Great Predators.” 

For more information about how to host a screening of Lords of Nature:  Life in a Land of Great Predators, please visit “Lobos of the Southwest” at http://www.mexicanwolves.org/index.php/news/493/51/You-Can-Be-A-Champion-for-Conservation/d,News2 to find out how to download your toolkit.  THIS IS A GREAT WAY TO GET INVOLVED AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE FOR WOLVES AND OTHER PREDATORS!    Please also send Lobos of the Southwest a message, thank them for providing this information!

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In the Press: Wolves released in Mexico mountains near Arizona

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on October 23, 2011| 1 Comment »


Arizona Daily Star, October 18, 2011 (posted 10/19/11) Show support with a letter to the editor!

Tim Steller

“Mexican officials have released five wolves in the Sierra San Luis mountains of northeastern Sonora, a Mexican environmental group said in a news release.

The wolf release occurred Oct. 11, the group Naturalia said. It gave no specific information about where the release occurred, but that mountain range abuts the New Mexico and Arizona borders with Sonora and ends about 80 miles south of the international border at Douglas.

The release came after years of planning by Mexican officials and opposition by U.S. ranchers, who are worried the wolves will cross into the United States and be completely protected from capture or killing.

Environmental groups have said they hope the wolves cross into the U.S. and mix with wolves living in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona.

Please write a letter to the editor celebrating this historic accomplishment!!  
Letters can be submitted to: letters@azstarnet.com.

Tips for your letter:
* Keep it short, no more than two or three paragraphs.
* Start by thanking the paper for their story and tie your letter to the article.
* Write from your own experience, in your own words. Talk about why Mexican wolves are important to you.

* Some talking points you could include are:
* With only around 50 Mexican gray wolves in the wild, new releases are critically important to increase the size and genetic health of the wild population.
* Mexico, along with Arizona, New Mexico, and western Texas, is part of the Mexican wolf’s historic range.
* True recovery of these highly endangered wolves requires several populations that have connectivity; this release in Mexico is a critical step towards making this happen.
* The wolves reintroduced in Mexico should receive full endangered species protections and not be restricted in their movements by arbitrary boundaries.”

**Special thanks to “Lobos of the Southwest” for providing this information! Check them out at:  http://www.mexicanwolves.org/index.php/news/553/51/In-the-Press-Wolves-released-in-Mexico-mountains-near-Arizona

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Wolf Kill Update Week 3: State Fights Court Ordered Stay

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Legislation, Wolf Organizations, Wolf Preservation Efforts on October 18, 2011| Leave a Comment »


Rob Klavins, Oregon Wild, has a message for you:

‘Wolf news has once again faded from the headlines of the states major papers. But we’re still working hard to protect the Imnaha Pack. Unfortunately anti-wolf interests are hard at work too. Worse yet – the state is listening.

Make sure your elected leaders hear from you!

In news that left us shaking our heads, we learned that the state is going to actively fight the temporary stay of execution for the alpha male and young Imnaha wolf. Despite thousands of calls, letters, and e-mails, ODFW seems hell-bent on killing wolves and doesn’t want to wait for a judge to tell them whether it’s legal or not.

If ODFW is determined to appease anti-wolf interests and Governor Kitzhaber won’t listen to the thousands of Oregonians (and people around the world) who have weighed in over the past few weeks, perhaps he’ll listen to the state legislature.

Please take a moment and contact your state legislators. Let them know that you support wolf recovery. Tell them you don’t want more of your money wasted on fighting to kill endangered wolves.

With anti-wildlife interests expected to continue their attacks on Oregon’s already weak wolf protections in the next legislative session, it’s important that your representatives know that this issue is important to you.

Wolf opponents are well-funded, vocal, and politically powerful. But one thing they don’t have is the support of the majority of Oregonians who value native wildlife. The extermination of Oregon’s wolves in the last century was one or our greatest environmental tragedies. Their recovery has the potential to be one of our greatest success stories. But it’s not going to happen if the state continues to bend to special interests with no interest in meaningful wolf recovery.

Tell your state legislator that it’s time to stop the killing.

For Wolves,

Rob Klavins
Oregon Wild

PS – Wolf opponents know the last kill order catalyzed the Oregon public and hope  they’ll forget about the kill order issued at their request. Kudos to those of you who wrote and had published letters to the editor. Don’t forget to take a moment to contact your state legislator today, but if your letter wasn’t accepted, I hope you’ll try again.”

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Wolf Rally Demands End to Wolf Slaughter

Posted in Wolf Current Events, Wolf Preservation Efforts on October 15, 2011| 5 Comments »


“Wolf advocates headed to the state capitol today, demanding an end to wolf slaughtering.

Members of Friends of Animals, Predator Defense, and Howl Across America held a rally outside of the state capitol to tell Governor Schweitzer to stop the assault on gray wolves.

They say Montana does not know how many wolves live in the state, and it should not allow Montanans to hunt the animals.

They are encouraging supporters to boycott Montana and the states that persecute wolves.

Dr. Catherine Feher-Elston, Author of the Naturesong book series, pleads, “Stop killing wolves because wolves are an essential part of a strong ecological system and they contribute many millions of dollars to the state of Montana just in tourism alone.”

Advocates claim that there is no evidence that wolves negatively affect cattle or elk.

There were speakers on hand, posters, and loud chants to try to get the government’s attention.”

 
**Special thanks to KFBB.com for providing this information!

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Limpy: The Story of Wolf 253

Posted in Wolf Preservation Efforts on October 14, 2011| 4 Comments »


“He was known by the nicknames of “Limpy” or “Hoppy,” depending on who you talk to; the name comes from an old injury that left him crippled for life. His official designation was Wolf 253, part of the wolf population brought back from the verge of extinction in the northern Rockies, and one of 1,500 gray wolves that lost federal protections in March when the federal government “delisted” wolves from the Endangered Species Act.

And on March 28, 2008, he was shot dead.

Limpy wasn’t just any old wolf. His distinctive gait, walking on three legs, made him one of the more easily recognized wolves in Yellowstone. Among his pack, too, he was unique: he was taller than Wolf 21, his father and the alpha male of the Druid pack that roamed the open fields in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley.

Wolf-watchers in the northern Rockies say Limpy grew up charging after elk at the same speed as the rest of his pack, despite the injury that hobbled him as a pup. He played an important role in the Druid pack, tending to pups and defending the pack’s main den from bears.

As a young male, Limpy left the safety and security of the Druid pack and struck out on his own. He trotted south out of Yellowstone Park, and traveled across southern Wyoming until he crossed the Utah border. A trapper chasing coyotes in the mountains 20 miles from Salt Lake City caught Limpy in one of his traps. It was November, 2002, and the first confirmed wolf sighting in Utah in 70 years.

Once, hundreds of thousands of wolves roamed the great expanse of the northern Rockies. Decimated by decades of unregulated slaughter and persecution, gray wolves were pushed to the brink of extinction. In 1973, gray wolves became one of the first animals to appear on the Endangered Species list. With the help of legal protections afforded by the Endangered Species Act, wolves in the northern Rockies had begun making a comeback when Hoppy arrived.

The wolf trapper called the US Fish and Wildlife, who sent a man down from Wyoming to fetch Limpy. The injured wolf was loaded in the back of a truck and driven to the far northern stretches of Grand Teton National Park, where he was released back into the wild two days later.

“He was a hell of a wolf,” recalls one veteran wolf-watcher. “After he was released with a hurt foot from the coyote trap, he crossed the territories of probably four hostile wolf packs in order to rejoin his old pack in Yellowstone Park.”

No one witnessed Limpy’s reunion with the Druid pack; it happened under cover of darkness. But the next morning, when one avid wolf-watcher and local photographer spotted Limpy back with his former pack, he was stunned.

“He was in bad shape,” recalled the photographer. “Must’ve been down to two and a half legs.”

Survival is a strong instinct, and so is the natural inclination of wolves to live in close-knit families and packs. Limpy was welcomed back to the Druid pack, and resumed the life he’d known years before.

Eventually, Limpy left the safety of Yellowstone and headed south again. He spent a year near an elk refuge near Jackson, then moved on toward Pinedale, feeding on elk, an occasional deer, and probably a smattering of jackrabbits and mice.

Limpy must have known that elk could be found around man-made feeding grounds, where elk are concentrated and disease is easily transmitted. Limpy was one of many wolves who preyed on elk grazing the land, helping keep the populations in check and thinning the herds of the sick and weak.

Limpy had, however, crossed into Sublette County, where local grocery stores sell bumper stickers that read “Wolves — Government-sponsored terrorists!” Some ranchers and farmers don’t hold much love for wolves, which they see only as predator… despite the fact that many animals are, by their very nature, predators. It’s a brutal fact of nature. It’s how they survive.

In the end, Limpy’s venture outside the safety of Yellowstone Park’s official boundaries proved fatal. After eight years spent traveling over thousands of miles, he was shot — along with another male and a female wolf — near the elk feeding ground a few miles outside Daniel, Wyoming on March 28, 2008. He became one of the first casualties in a resurrected war against wolves that began the day the federal government stripped Endangered Species protections from gray wolves across the northern Rockies.

Limpy’s death was reported to the state, as required under new Wyoming wolf rules, and word of his killing quickly spread across the Internet. The Salt Lake City Tribune picked up the story, and talked with several people who were fans of the old wolf with the bum leg.

“He died for nothing,” lamented Salt Lake City resident Marlene Foard. “If there was a reason to kill him, I could live with that. But there wasn’t.”

Another reader wrote in an e-mail, “I think they have no idea what they have done by killing this particular wolf.”

And Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said people knew wolves had been hanging around the feeding ground, but none had been seen attacking cattle herds or destroying human property. As Camenzind told the Salt Lake City Tribune, Limpy was “a good wolf. He covered thousands of miles and didn’t cause any trouble.”
**Special thanks to “Earthjustice” for providing this information
http://earthjustice.org/features/campaigns/limpy-the-story-of-wolf-253

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