Free Republic

Four Western Slope men, including two local U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees, have been sentenced in the poaching of a trophy bull elk on private land on the Roan Plateau, Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced Tuesday. State officials said Thad Bingham, 44, of Fruita, killed the elk, while Brian Scheer, 45, of Fruita, Josh Fitzsimmons, 45, of Rifle, and Barrett Rowles, 48, whose hometown wasn’t given, participated in the illegal hunt in October 2014, which the state agency took two years to investigate. Bingham and Scheer work at the service’s Horsethief Canyon Native Fish Facility Ponds near Fruita, where...

The US Fish and Wildlife Service says a pack of endangered Mexican gray wolves has killed a horse belonging to a Catron County family. Mark Miller and his family returned to their homestead on the Diamond Creek in southwestern New Mexico about three weeks ago to find the remains of their horse. Tracks show the wolves apparently chased the horse from a pasture into a corral and killed it. Miller says his family has tried yelling at the wolves, throwing rocks and installing noisemakers, but he says the pack continues to be a problem.

Suit says state at fault in grizzly mauling... The widow of a hunter mauled by a grizzly bear while he was gutting an elk has filed an appeal with the Montana Supreme Court after a district judge here dismissed her lawsuit against the state. Mary Ann Hilston contends negligent management practices led to the death of her husband...in the fall of 2001. She filed a lawsuit in federal court in September 2004, claiming the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks knew there was an aggressive grizzly bear with two cubs prowling the...