The Idaho Fish and Game Commission has decided to allow hunters to kill 220 of the state’s 1,000 wolves.
In the first-ever state regulated hunt of gray wolves in the continental United States, Idaho residents can purchase a hunting tag for $11.75 and out-of-state hunters will pay $186 for the opportunity to kill a wolf.
The hunt is set to begin on September 1, and Montana has planned to begin its wolf hunt in October.
In a Defenders of Wildlife press release, Suzanne Stone, Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife, made the following statement:
Idaho hosts the core of the Northern Rockies wolf population, with approximately 1,000 wolves. By wiping out 220 wolves, the state will cripple the regional wolf population by isolating wolves into disconnected subgroups incapable of genetic or ecological sustainability. It’s only a matter of time before Idaho’s state legislature enforces their demand that all wolves be removed ‘by whatever means necessary,’ which is still the state’s official policy on wolves. Today’s announcement underscores the key problem with the federal delisting rule: it only requires maintaining 150 wolves per state. That’s a completely inadequate population goal if you hope to maintain any semblance of connectivity and genetic viability.
No other endangered species has ever been delisted at such a low population level and then immediately hunted to even lower unsustainable levels. This isn’t wolf recovery; it’s a rejection of responsible wildlife conservation principles.
Fortunately, Defenders of Wildlife and other conservation groups are likely to file a request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily restore federal protections to the regional wolf population, until the court reaches a final decision in the plaintiffs’ pending legal challenge to the delisting.
This decision by the Idaho Fish and Game Commission is appalling, disturbing, and obviously short-sighted.
Hopefully, the rightful protections will be restored to U.S. wolf populations.
Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pss/ / CC BY 2.0
About Rhishja Cota-Larson
what the heck! it’ll be like putting 12 bucks to kill a human being. Wolves are like humans. How can their lives be soo cheap. Why are they doing this! the dumb people who decided this should try to be hunted not hunting. How would they feel!
Rhishja,
It’s great to see people spreading the word about this critical issue. Now that the hunt is almost upon the wolves I can only hope that folks sit up, start to pay attention and most importantly act!
We recently finished a short film called ‘Return To The Wild, A Modern Tale of Wolf & Man’ that is available to watch for FREE from our website, http://www.mofilms.org
‘Return To The Wild’ takes a fair and open-minded look at the re-introduction of the gray wolf to the Northern Rockies, the friction it has caused, and the passionate debate it has stirred. The goal of the documentary is to address the issue of how man and predator can co-exist, in the hope of finding a balanced solution that addresses the needs of the ranchers, wildlife supporters, hunters, and most importantly, the wolves themselves.
I hope you enjoy the film!
I knew this would happen the minute they started taking them off the endangered list! Lets one tear roll down my cheek.
I have been informing and continuing to educate the public on the wolf for many years now on all types of wolves thru creating human Wolf Packs to educate the public on the ways of the wild wolf.
Keep up the work to all of you who do this! Come visit our site, join our cause to save the wolf if you wish. Tuesdays starting September 8, 2009 at 7:00 pm for Fact N Story Nite at The Wolf Den at http://members.vpchat.com/red_wolf/
You can come in as a guest thru halsoft at no cost.
No matter what …..get in touch with your public authorities and tell them this is not what the public want for the wolf!
There are alot of biologists working with the wolf recovery and part of their job is looking at the whole ecosystem and its complex relationships. They are scientist making scientific decisions, which means not just relying on emotion to make decisions, such as the organizations involved in the lawsuit to put wolves back on the ESA.
Like it or not humans are part of this ecosystem and always will be. That means there will always need to be a balance between predators and prey and that involves humans.
Because of this wolves will be managed by humans one way or another so that there is an acceptable balance.
I support a hunting season because it’s a proven method of management. There is huge oversight from USFWS and I can guarantee that none of the states or their wildlife agencies want the wolf to go back on the endangered species list.
Protesters to the current wolf management decision need to remember that the people involved in the management of the wolf usually put their careers ahead of their livlehood. In other words they love their job. It’s not for the money. It’s important to remember scientists use science to make decisions, not emotions, the emotion organizations like Defenders of Wildlife uses to raise money to pay their fat cat lawyers. Don’t be fooled by where they claim their interests lie.
Why are Idaho and Montana allowing hunters to kill “our” wolves? I am a Canadian who lives near the Rocky Mountains. It wasn’t very long ago that the US imported wolves from Canada and now wolves can be killed for $11.75? What a sick joke? I am contacting the Idaho and Montana Fish and Game Commission.
In response to Tiege’s Comments: Idaho on August 24, 2009 starting giving out 70,000 permits for those 220 wolves to be killed in Idaho….someone needs to do the math there at the Idaho Fish and Game Commission.
Poaching and killing of wolves is already happening on … even in endangered areas where the wolf is still listed.
If there are to be 220 killed give out 220 permits and no more. And then there is the question of how are they going to stop any one of these people with the rest of the permits once the limit is reached? It is obvious no thought went in to this process at all…emmmmmm except many Fish and Game Commission making money????
I cuuld see a hunting season if they were taking over like the rabbit and rat populations in the animal world but at current population of 1,000 wolves in Idaho even the layperson can see there is no problem with that wolf population per land available in the state.
I have not seen one biologist’s report mentioning or supporting this or involved in this decision…show me this evidence Tiege….
What I do know is the rancher or farmer losing livetock is reimbursed for any livestock killed by wolves with proper proof.
We must remember wolves prey on the diseased and weak animal which keeps the rest of the animal world in strong genetic mode. Wolves only catch 1 out of 9 prey hunted.
Oh and about Money…I do my research and work for free volunteering many hours to educating the public and there are many of us out here who dedicate our lives to causes without pay. If I choose to donate to the cause of this mammal who is the closest thing to a Human Social Family Unit there is in the wild . . . so be it.
Nobody is talking about killing all these wolves. However I believe we should continue to manage the population BEFORE it has a chance to be a bigger problem. Also let’s keep in mind here the hunter are reporting the kills and then once the limit is reached the season closes and the others who didn’t get a wolf basically paid for a tag and got nothing. Yes the vast majority of hunter follow the laws and respect the closing of a season.
Sept 3, 2009 3 wolves down 217 to go. Don’t stop till they are all gone..
There are a lot of skeptics who believe that the wolf should be completely protected. The fact is that the original program was designed to have 170 wolves in Idaho, and now we are over one thousand. Game management has worked for a long time in every state and will continue to work. If you want to go have a picnic at the lake with your family, which I love to do, but now carry my .357 on my hip because wolves are howling as my 2 year old is playing by the water. The loss of other big game in our state has put a financial burden on outfitters in the area, not to mention the out of state hunters that pay a lot of money to hunt here. I believe that wolves do have the right to exist, but INTRODUCING (not reintroducing) the Gray wolf which was not the native wolf, and letting the numbers get out of control was a mistake. The original wolf to Idaho was a smaller mexican red wolf and not a 210 lb. hunting machine. Hunting wolves in Alaska and Canada has been a proven method of game managemen. If I were to fly to Alaska and shoot a wolf nobody would say a word, but because it is my back yard people a throwing a fit. Live with them and see the impact before you judge the game management system. The reimbursement policy set forth by the feds. was a great idea, but the terms the ranchers have to follow is ridiculous. 1. Prove that it was wolves. It can take an official up to 3 days to get to the site and snow is damaging to the evidence. 2. Prove that the wolves were never kept in captivity. How the hell do you prove this.
I am a hunter and will be buying my wolf tag for $11.75 and if I see a wolf duging my time in the field I will shoot it. Wolves donot just kill for sick and old. I have seen pictures of elk killed and onl a very small part of it eaten. Wolfs are better hunts than you may think. They have been know to kill almost a whole herd of sheep in one night and not eat any if it. I the area that I us to hunt they have closed it to hunting because the wolves have killed so many of the herd amminals that there are no long enough elk for the the hunters the hunt. That takes money out of the Fish and Games budget because there are not as many people buting tag. If the F&G does not have the money to manage the game then we all lost. I do not know how you can say that killing 220 wolves will cause the wolves not to be able to reproduce. We only started with 35 and look where we are today. Wolves reproduce at a rate of about 20% per year. That this rate 220 will just keep us even.
this is obscene.
Who decided there should be 170 wolves in Idaho?
If that is some arbitrary number decidd so humans can hunt anythign – elk, deer, mountain lion, wolf, coyote, snake, human, dog, cat, pigeon, eagle…..
Shouldn’t the human population be regulated to 170, too?
Fair’s fair. The wolves were there first.
what is wrong with you liberals wolves have no predators they need to be hunted. whats wrong with that, if you love animals so much think about how to many wolves will destroy the balance of oregons deer and elk heards.
Humans have no predators either.
are you on drugs they are killers I say HUNT HUNT HUNT!!!
Wolf hunters have small penises.
WHAT THE HELL. wolves have the right to live. how would it be if wolves paid to kill us. wolves are a very important thing in life. i have a pack and yes i have license for them, they howl and it is so graceful. why should they die????? its not no right. damn it pisses me off. if they come extinct imma kill the government and get my ass killed after. i hope you guys realize this.
thee hunting of thee wolves should leglized. but to an exsant.
ok ok…we need to keep the population down, they are killing too many moose or whatever. What I don’t understand is why there is no limit to human reproduction…I mean aren’t we like using up all the water and causing this global warming stuff…I heard that’s pretty harmful…also i’ve seen that many hunters are smokers…that’s pretty funny: killing wolves and killing themselves at the same time. Didn’t China do something like that…babies in the garbage n stuff. I would love to see how much people cared about hunting if that ever happened here.
hunters arnt paying 12 buck to hunt them they are paying 186 dollars the money that goes from that gose into the salary of the people trying to repopulate the wolfs and it is kinda easy to say that we are killers when wolfs kill our cows and sheep that we raise to sell to feed our familys when it makes it so that our kids cant go out side to play because there are wolf around and they have killed children in our comunity they should be repopulated but be controlled
Sorry Col, but if children were killed in your community it musta been a looooooong long LONG time ago. Like more than 100 years. The last human killed by a wolf in the US and/or Canada was in Alaska in 2010—it was a woman jogging— and they cannot prove that it was actually wolves that killed her (yes, they did apparently feed on her body at some point, but may have been a bear that killed her). In 2005 a man in Saskatchewan died but they couldn’t tell for sure that wolves had killed him either. In 1996, a woman in Ontario was killed by CAPTIVE wolves (she was a caretaker). Between 1978 and 1989, 3 children were killed by wolves in the US… in all 3 incidents, they were attacked by someone’s PET wolf. In 1922, three people in Ontario were reportedly killed by wolves in a single incident and another man killed by wolves (but not before he had successfully killed 11 of them first). Iowa- 1910- one man killed by a pack of wild wolves (reportedly). So if you are saying wolves killed kids in your community, I sure hope you have something to back your claim. Wolves simply do not attack humans with any sort of regularity. If or when wolves attack humans, it often involves them being rabid or otherwise diseased. The “because they attack humans” excuse for killing wolves is bunk. Know your facts before you go out killing animals or before defending their slaughter. Wolves play an invaluable role in ecosystem balance. It is simply destructive to kill these animals.