Yellowstone Park Research Wolves Killed by Hunters. 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. Smith has teams out now in search of the two packs that no longer have collared individuals. Guest Column: After YNP wolf deaths, will Montana make needed changes to hunt laws? - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle: Guest Columnists. Posted: Guest Column: After YNP wolf deaths, will Montana make needed changes to hunt laws?
JEFF WELSCH, Guest Columnist The Bozeman Daily Chronicle | 0 Comments It started with a Facebook message from a friend: “What is all this (BS) I hear about 7 YNP wolves shot outside the park?” Joe hadn’t ever reacted like this over wolves — not when they were removed from Endangered Species Act protections in Idaho and Montana, not when hunting seasons began in both states, not even when Wyoming was handed management reins despite a biologically flawed road map that allows wolves to be killed like varmints any time, anywhere and in almost any manner across more than 80 percent of the state.
An online service is needed to view this article in its entirety. Login Or, use your facebook account: Choose an online service. Need an account? Now he was incensed, like many others who’d spent memorable outings watching some of the very wolves he now feared dead. I checked for confirmation. They would starve. The long life of one wolf embodies the story of wolf recovery in Idaho | Environment.
A silver-tipped gray wolf found dead along a highway north of Salmon in January was likely the last of the 34 original wolves brought to Idaho from Canada in 1995 and 1996. His life spanned Idaho's modern experience with wolves. The story of the wolf known to scientists as B7 is the story of wolf recovery in Idaho. His 12 years in Idaho's high country make him perhaps the longest-lived wild wolf known to scientists. Thanks to management, plenty of prey and a vast roadless heart in the middle of the state, Idaho is the place where wolves grow old — and plentiful.
The state now has at least 650 wolves, as many as Montana and Wyoming combined. "I think B7 would have been dead many years before had he not lived in Idaho," said Isaac Babcock, the Nez Perce biologist who knew the wolf best. As an adolescent, B7 and his longtime mate B11 created chaos among ranches in Montana's Big Hole Valley.
Like thousands of wolves across Canada's hinterlands, he lived a hazardous life. At first. W. The U.S. The Politics of the Montana Wolf Hunt. 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. Wildlife Services' methods leave a trail of animal death. The day began with a drive across the desert, checking the snares he had placed in the sagebrush to catch coyotes. Gary Strader, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stepped out of his truck near a ravine in Nevada and found something he hadn't intended to kill.
There, strangled in a neck snare, was one of the most majestic birds in America, a federally protected golden eagle. "I called my supervisor and said, 'I just caught a golden eagle and it's dead,' " said Strader. "He said, 'Did anybody see it? ' I said, 'Geez, I don't think so.' "He said, 'If you think nobody saw it, go get a shovel and bury it and don't say nothing to anybody "That bothered me," said Strader, whose job was terminated in 2009. Strader's employer, a branch of the federal Department of Agriculture called Wildlife Services, has long specialized in killing animals that are deemed a threat to agriculture, the public and – more recently – the environment.
The Bee's findings include: The program's origins.
Forbid Animal Cruelty | ForbidAnimalCruelty.com. Searching for Gordon Haber… And the wolves he loved - A writer’s journey to know an enigmatic activist who died in late 2009 - Anchorage Press: News. October 14. My thoughts drift north toward Denali National Park. Can a year already have passed since researcher and activist Gordon Haber died in a plane crash, while tracking the wolves he so deeply loved? The passage of time can be a tricky thing. One moment it seems that Haber died only yesterday; the next it seems a lifetime ago. Perhaps for me his death has both immediacy and distance because I’ve spent much of the past year digging into Haber’s life and work, moving back and forth through his decades at Denali.
Though I knew Gordon for more than 20 years, I never knew him well. Few people did. Sometimes we’d say “hello,” other times not. I always hoped I might someday join Gordon “in the field,” together watching the wolves he loved so much. My sense of Gordon and the reach of his work expanded greatly in the days after his death, especially while listening to friends and colleagues share stories at a memorial service. Bankrolled by FOA, Gordon expanded his studies. January 2010. Guest column: With elk and wolves, someone is fibbing - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle: Opinion. Posted: | Updated: Guest column: With elk and wolves, someone is fibbing By Todd Wilkinson, Guest Columnist The Bozeman Daily Chronicle | 0 Comments Nearly a decade ago, I wrote a column about the doomsday predictions of Robert T. Fanning, Jr., then chairman of a wolf-loathing group called Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd.
Shortly after the new millennium began, Mr. Fanning made several bold statements. “The Yellowstone ecosystem has become a biological desert ... a wasteland,” he said. An online service is needed to view this article in its entirety. Login Or, use your facebook account: Choose an online service. Need an account?
When three years passed and there were still elk in the Yellowstone region, millions of tourists still coming to spend money watching wildlife of all kinds in the national parks, and human settlements in Montana still intact, the absurdities didn’t go away. Wyoming Gov. I could go on, and on, and on with good news from hunting camps. Unlimited access. Breaking Down the House Budget Bill. Recently, the House of Representatives, led by the new Republican House Majority, debated and passed HR1, the Continuing Resolution for FY 11.
This legislation is one of the most harmful to our environment in American history ever to pass a single chamber of the US Congress. An assault is being made on air, water, lands and wildlife that will irrevocably harm our health, our quality of life, and our economic recovery. This spending bill guts environmental protections of our drinking water supply and takes away the authority to hold polluters accountable. HR 1: Meanwhile, the bill leaves untouched $4 billion in annual oil, gas and coal subsidies! On February 19 the House of Representatives passed this extreme bill on a party-line vote. Prior to final passage, individual votes were taken to amend HR 1. Here are some the amendments that The Wilderness Society was watching closely: ANTI-ENVIRONMENT AMENDMENTS TO HR 1 THAT PASSED: Attacks on EPA Clean Air Act Rep.
Rep. Rep. Rep. Rep. Rep. Rep. Who's afraid? Almost 40 years passed before anyone thought to miss the gray wolf. Wolves, along with grizzlies, had been deliberately eradicated in western states in the name of protecting people and their livestock. The last wolf in Colorado was killed in the 1930s. By the time they were added to the list of endangered species protected by the Endangered Species Act in 1974, they existed only in a small corner of northeastern Minnesota.
In the decades that followed, humans would undertake concentrated efforts to undo the damage of their ancestors, reintroducing gray wolves in Idaho and at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming in 1995 and 1996. But the move has been met with polarized responses: for every conservation group that would have howled in celebration, there was a hunter or a rancher loading a round into the chamber.
Wolves now occupy more than 110,000 square miles in the northern Rocky Mountains, most of it public land. So now Wyoming wants in on the action. “But it’s a long way,” Smith says.
To Kill A Mockingbird. I recently attended the wolf hearings held by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission in Helena. The commission is considering initiation of a trapping season, as well as eliminating quotas on the number of wolves that may be killed. The goal is to significantly reduce the state’s wolf population which currently numbers somewhere in the vicinity of 600 animals. The commission will make a final decision on the matter by July. At the hearing I felt like I was witnessing a modern day version of Harper Lee’s famous book To Kill a Mockingbird.
In that novel the mockingbird is symbolic of innocence animals and by extension, innocence citizens destroyed by thoughtless and ignorant people. In Lee’s novel the main character, lawyer Atticus Finch, is one of the few residents of the southern community of Maycomb committed to racial equality and fairness. Even the otherwise descent people of that community were unable to put aside the cultural biases they had grown up with. Cry, Wolf. How a Campaign of Fear and Intimidation Led to the Gray Wolf’s Removal from the Endangered Species List.
By James William Gibson “Nabeki” didn’t expect everyone to love her when, in September 2009, she founded the website “Howling for Justice” to celebrate the return of gray wolves to the Northern Rocky Mountains and to protest the then-pending wolf hunts in Montana and Idaho. She didn’t expect to fear for her life, either. But after she posted the names of Montana wolf hunters on her site, the threats began. On a single day in February 2010 the anti-wolf movement sent to her 3,000 messages. Some of the e-mails expressed their desire for her to leave the Rockies immediately. Some messages contained graphic descriptions of wolf killing clearly meant to cause her anguish. Courtesy Lynne Stone, Boulder White Clouds Council “Until that day I wasn’t thinking about the hatred,” Nabeki, a professional from California who moved to the Rockies 15 years ago, told me. Call of the Wild istockphoto.com.