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← Wolf Delisting Challenges Demonstrate Need for an Improved Framework for Conserving Intraspecific Variation under the Endangered Species Act

By Nathan Lyle | Published November 29, 2020 | Full size is 1024 × 299 pixels

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Wolfwatcher

12 hours ago

Border killings: How shooters lured historic Colorado wolves to their deaths in Wyomingtinyurl.com/2jknur2xAn electronic call drew the canine in.The recorded sounds of a pronghorn in distress blared from a point some 600 yards north of the Colorado-Wyoming state line. It was a Saturday in May 2019, and the hunters at first thought they were looking at a coyote.Then the animal emerged further from the brush. They saw it had a “swooped down tail” and an “oversized head.”The men playing the distress call knew what this was.Wolf.When the gray lobo came within 243 yards, a rifle erupted. The shot from the 7 mm Shooting Times Westerner killed the lone male, a member of the first wolf pack documented in the state of Colorado since the 1940s.“It was no mistaken shooting,” the shooter told WyoFile. “We knew what it was. And when we saw it, we wanted it.”The following year three more wolves were shot and killed in Wyoming within two miles of the state line, where the pack set up a home range straddling Moffat and Sweetwater counties. One hunter killed an interstate wolf from that founding pack mere feet from the gate separating the two states.The trend continued in north-central Colorado, after the second modern-day wolf pack in the Centennial State was documented: At least four wolves from the North Park Pack would die at the hands of hunters after straying north across the state line. In the wake of the predictable public acrimony, Wyoming officials have shut down communications about wolf killings, citing state statute.Step up Wyoming and show your backward ways and your indecency and obscene standards.WyoFile acquired documents tied to the killings of three wolves from Colorado’s first modern-day wolf pack through a Freedom of Information Act request that netted U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement investigation reports.Through those partly redacted reports WyoFile was able to contact one man, a hunting outfitter, who pulled the trigger on the first wolf and was present when another hunter — his son — shot and killed two others.Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials, who did not respond to an interview request for this story, reminded the public in that 2020 press release that wolves are protected by the Endangered Species Act in the state. Killing one, the agency noted, can result in a $100,000 fine and a year in prison?One state to the north, the situation is much different. Although wolves are managed as “trophy game” and subject to rules and regulations in far northwestern Wyoming, the remainder of the state is part of the so-called “predator zone.” There, no license is necessary and virtually anything goes.Predator calls:After killing the first wolf in May 2019, the outfitter and two of his sons made a concerted effort to pursue wolves north of the state line for the remainder of the year. Five more times that year, he said, they ran electronic predator calls in the area, drawing in mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes and other species — but no more wolves, he said.By the way, I assume they killed those animals also.The outfitter, who’s opposed to wolf reintroduction, did not put some special emphasis on targeting the pack near the state line because of their historical significance to Colorado. Rather, his interest in wolf hunting the area was more pragmatic, he said.We’ve talked about getting a license up in the Yellowstone area and hunting them there,” the man told WyoFile. “When we found them close to home.Why do we do that. “We don’t make a lot of money”. I think that’s more common than not and coupled with a lack of education. “What do we have to lose”. Nada!The outfitter and his son had been trying to lure the wolves in with more electronic calling, but gave up. They were walking from Wyoming back to their side-by-side ATV, which was parked “several hundred yards” into Colorado. While passing through a gate marking the state line, they saw a wolf standing in the road about 200 yards behind them in Wyoming.The one ———- wolf was behind us, wondering what we were, walking up the road, so [I] turned around and dumped him,” one of the hunters told Fish and Wildlife Service special agents in a telephone interview.During the investigative interviews, a special agent asked one of the men, “How far on the north side of the gate (Wyoming side) were you?”According to an interview summary, the man hesitated for “eight seconds.” Then he replied: “Umm … shit, I wish I could remember how far down that road.”During an interview about the third wolf shooting, near the gate on May 6, 2020, one of the hunters became “agitated and argumentative.” He told agents he didn’t expect to be grilled over something like shooting across state lines.Game and Fish also obtained DNA samples from the animals, according to large carnivore supervisor Dan Thompson. The samples, however, were not analyzed in a way that provides any insight as to where the short-lived wolf pack in northwest Colorado and southwest Wyoming originated, he said. The outfitter told WyoFile that a special agent told him the investigation wasn’t going anywhere early on in 2020.The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, however, didn’t formally close the investigation until February 2023, which explains why the documents haven’t been made available through the Freedom of Information Act until recently.The public and media were left to speculate about what exactly happened.No. Need to speculate The outfitter told WyoFile that they were skinned and their hides were tanned. He’s held onto the trophies even though, having been killed in the spring, their thick winter coats were “slipping.”They hang in the corner of one of his sons’ old bedrooms, used now only for storage.That is repugnant” using animal skins is obscene.Now that you have had time to process who and what we are talking about I hope you understand the lack of standards that are exhibited by the state of Wyoming and those that live thereon caring for the welfare of wildlife.Outfitters are not the best in out society and I have seen in Montana the same behavior..My time with a FWP meeting withone of this type and conversation with he and I about the reason to kill and endangered Wolverine was he wanted to hang the fur on the outshine of the cabin.The argument was not pleasant, but please understand the problems in the Rocky states are large because of the attitudes and severe lack of wildlife education..This posting is an education in what gives wildlife personsmany nights of heartburn.I say our wildlife here and world wide are in peril and we are losing them rapidly. Time for you to consider stepping up!Photo: iStock.com ... See MoreSee Less

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Wolfwatcher

18 hours ago

Will reintroduced Colorado wolves head into Wyoming and be killed there? What experts saytinyurl.com/ycx6bk39biggest unknown as Colorado prepares to reintroduce wolves to the West Slope as early as December is where the wolves will wander once they're released.There is a growing concern some may head north into Wyoming and face the same fate as wolves that migrated into the state and were shot just across the state line in Wyoming.That concern has heightened after a recent WyoFile story depicted how hunters lured into Wyoming and legally shot four wolves from the six-member pack that formed in Moffat County in northwest Colorado. Another three, possibly four, from the original eight-member North Park pack faced a similar fate.Wolves are known to wander far and wide whether released or through natural dispersal, which is why Colorado's wolf recovery plan calls for releasing wolves no closer than 60 miles from state lines and tribal boundaries.The distance came from studies that showed on average that's how far reintroduced wolves into Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s dispersed after release, though some wandered hundreds of miles.Matt Barnes, a wolf advocate and rangeland and wildlife conservationist with the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative who sat on the state-appointed wolf recovery Stakeholders Advisory Group, shares those concerns saying eventually some wolves released in Colorado will cross state lines, including Wyoming.“So far, all evidence indicates when wolves leave Colorado and step foot in Wyoming they risk their lives.''The situation on the Colorado-Wyoming state line is unprecedented in modern wildlife policy,'' said Barnes, who lives in southwest Colorado and has explored potential wolf corridors across southwestern Wyoming into Colorado.A species is protected by state and federal law on one side of an arbitrary line and can be shot on sight, for no reason, on the other side.How a wolf expert says wolves typically disperse after being released:Ed Bangs, who oversaw the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's gray wolf recovery program in the Northern Rocky Mountains before retiring in 2011, said wolf movement after a release is unpredictable but that some patterns emerged from the mid-1990s reintroductions in Idaho and Yellowstone.The nature of wolves- Wolves are terrified and nervous and don't know where they are when released,'' he said. "Initially, they tend to want to head in the direction from where they were captured, but they won't make it back to Oregon (nearly 700 miles away). Once they figure out they don't know where they are, they act like normal dispersal wolves looking for the best place to settle and for other wolves because they are very social animals.Wolves in general real are very nervous about everything. There is no big bad wolf, but a”scardy -cat” who runs and tucks-their tail at a moments notice. They are not vicious as some non thinkers would like to portray. You know the images of open mouth and teeth. In every day languagethat is “baloney.”None of us who work in wildlife are appreciative of Wyoming and their backward ways..Those ways are from an earlier timeof cowboys and shoot the wildlife because they are everywhere. They are still that way and listen to a conversation with a person from Wyoming and you might roll your eyes. We live in another world of progressive thought they do not. They are still killing wildlife who are responsible for the money that comes into their coffers. The state of Wyoming is on the poorer side except for Jackson and they are into the money,but not the government who only offer thinking from the 1800s. Why kill the wildlife who people want to see and spend money doing so?Photo: Pinterest ... See MoreSee Less

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