Free Republic

Gov. Jan Brewer will not give ranchers and their employees permission to kill endangered Mexican gray wolves on federal lands. The measure vetoed Tuesday was crafted by Sen. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford. She has been a vocal foe of the program by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reintroduce the wolves into sections of Arizona and New Mexico, saying they are endangering not only cattle but also pets and children. SB1211 would have spelled out that ranchers could “take” a wolf — legalese for killing — that was killing, wounding or biting livestock. It also would have legalized a guard...

The Arizona House of Representatives has approved a Senate bill allowing ranchers to kill endangered wolves in self-defense. Senate Bill 1211 would allow livestock owners to kill a Mexican gray wolf if one was caught attacking livestock or a person. Wildlife activists say the bill violates the federal Endangered Species Act. But a staff attorney says the bill has been watered down and now meets constitutional requirements.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has backed off plans to remove gray wolves from the endangered species list. ... The government plan would have allowed gray wolves in the lower 48 United States to be hunted or killed. They have been under federal protection since 1967. The Mexican gray wolf, found only in the Southwest, retains protection.

Wolves have killed one horse and badly injured another in an attack on the outskirts of a ski village close to the French Riviera, officials said Thursday. The attack, at Auron in the Alpes-Maritimes region inland from Nice, was the latest incident to trigger anger among farmers in southeastern France over the protected status of wolves and their growing numbers. The owner of the horses, Jacques Riguccini, said a pack of wolves had chased around 30 of his animals one night last week and one of them had been ripped apart after getting tangled up in safety netting by the...

Wolves "losing a fear of humans" have people in Anchorage, Alaska, fearfully asking officials for action, authorities say. Although many people are lured to Alaska for its wilderness and many choose to reside either in a wilderness setting or close to it, when the wild things come into their back yards, they get jittery as one resident became when a pet beagle was allegedly dragged into the woods by wolves, the Anchorage Daily News reported. "I really hope that an action plan to eliminate this problem will be acted upon before another pet -- or God forbid, a child --...

Lewis said the 100-pound Great Pyrenees was no match for the wolf, which injured a second guard dog in the same attack. The other dog was missing for several days but turned up Wednesday nursing injuries from the attack.. Officials say wolves are becoming a problem in northern Utah for the first time since the 1930s. Among other recent attacks was a wolf that killed two calves, and a wolf that attacked livestock in northern Utah's Cache County in July.

CHIGNIK: Police unsure whether death happened before, after bite. Authorities were in an Alaska Peninsula village Tuesday investigating whether a 32-year-old schoolteacher, found dead off a road leading out of town, was killed in a wolf attack. The body of Candice Berner of Slippery Rock, Pa., was discovered Monday evening off a roughly 7-mile gravel road leading to the Chignik Lake airstrip. Berner's father, Bob Berner, reached in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, said Alaska State Troopers told the family their daughter had been killed in an "animal attack, possibly a wolf attack." Local residents have been concerned about recent wolf...

Kathy Konen has lost guard dogs to wolves in the past, but nothing prepared the Dillon rancher for the killing of 120 buck sheep last week. "They were in the sagebrush, on the creek bottom - just all over the pasture," Konen said Thursday. "It's a terrible loss to our livestock program." Konen said they discovered the attack Aug. 16 while checking their sheep in the Rock Creek drainage of the Blacktail Mountains south of Dillon, where they pasture buck sheep in summer. She said they check their sheep every two or three days, so the attack was recent. She...

Montana’s wolf population increased 34 percent over the past year, to an estimated 422 wolves in 73 packs... The wolves are nearly equally distributed between northern and southern Montana...although the bulk of the population growth was in northwestern and far western Montana... Wolves are still listed under the Endangered Species Act. Delisting was set for late March, but lawsuits are expected to delay that. As for conflicts with ranchers, the FWP reported an increase in the number of confirmed cattle deaths due to wolves, from 32 to 75, and an increase in the number of sheep deaths, from four to...

A sled dog tour operator in the Interior village of Bettles said wolves have killed and eaten two of his sled dogs in the past two weeks, continuing what has been a statewide trend this winter. “They drug them right out of their collars,” Max Hanst said by phone Tuesday from the village 180 miles north of Fairbanks. “The most recent one was three nights ago. I lost another one six days before that.” Three days prior to the first attack, Hanst said he shot and killed an old, emaciated wolf trying to dig its way into a puppy pen....

Day of tobogganing almost ends in tragedy as wolves stalk children. In the dusky northern light three days before Christmas, two Fort Nelson families came dangerously close to two hungry wolves, until the family dog, Shadow, narrowly averted disaster. The wolves appeared quietly at about 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 22, as darkness was creeping in on the winter wonderland 100 kilometres east of Fort Nelson, where the families were tobogganing. About 30 metres away, a sleighful of three children -- one aged four and the others aged three -- were being happily towed along the base of a hill by...

SWANTON ­­ Tim Kougias has a mystery on his hands, and he knows it may remain unsolved, but it has added a touch of excitement to his life nonetheless. On Tuesday, the Swanton resident and his wife, Maria, had just returned from a lengthy trip to Greece, Tim's homeland. As they settled back into their Country Club Estates home, Tim set his video camera on the kitchen counter. "What is that?" Maria asked suddenly, pointing to the edge of their backyard, which straddles a wooded area. Roaming along that border was a dog, or so Tim thought, until he noticed...

DES MOINES (DTN) -- When gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park during the mid-1990s, it started a heated debate between wildlife enthusiasts and ranchers that has never cooled down. The ongoing clash of opinions recently hit the airwaves. Residents in Bozeman, Mont., are the first in the nation to hear anti-wolf radio messages paid for by the Montana Stockgrowers Association. The messages, which will air for the next 60 days, were created to call urban attention to the economic impacts on ranchers caused by wolves, said Steve Pilcher, executive vice president of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. Bozeman was...

OROFINO, Idaho -- There are Idahoans who like hearing the howl of wolves in their state. There are Idahoans who are ambivalent about federal efforts to restore the predator. Those folks were scarce Saturday, when about 300 people gathered at Orofino High School for a fund-raiser aimed at making Idaho wolf-free. The money raised is for lobbying the state Legislature to sue federal agencies over wolf reintroductions that have led to a booming population. "Save State's Rights, Kill A Wolf!" read a bumper sticker available at the event. Of course, to kill a wolf without good cause is a federal...

BOISE - If the saying is true, that only the strong survive, some fear the Canadian Grey Wolf, will be the only one left standing in Idaho's backcountry. "We're headed for the worst wildlife disaster in the history of this state," says Ron Gillette. He's been an outfitter near Stanley for 34 years. Since wolves were reintroduced in Idaho in the mid 90's, Gillette believes the environment has changed. "Once you put these Canadian Grey Wolves into an Eco-system, they kill everything. They kill the prey first, then they kill the other predators, and when they get down to wolves...

Wolf Kill Has Ranchers Demanding Re-introduced Wolves Removed By Jon Hanian Burgdorf, ID - The aftermath of a wolf pack attack that occurred last month north of McCall near Burgdorf has left 55 sheep dead and more than dozen maimed. The attacked, which has been confirmed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, has also galvanized groups opposed to the federal government's efforts to re-establish grey wolves in the state. Ron Gillett heads up the Anti Wolf Coalition of Central Idaho. Gillett says a band of 100 sheep were attacked on September 18th by that wolf pack. "Where they...

GAMONAL, Spain (Reuters) - On a hill outside Gamonal in central Spain, a cross marks the spot where a young boy was believed to be eaten by wolves about 90 years ago. Folklore or not, hatred of the wolf and its status as vermin caused Spain's Iberian wolf population to plunge to about 400 by the late 1960s. But a 1970 hunting law, human exodus from the countryside and greater ecological awareness among Spaniards have helped boost the wolf population today to between 1,500 and 2,500 -- the biggest in Western Europe. "There were no signs of the wolf here...

Rancher accuses federal wolf agent of trespassing By the Associated Press with staff reports Saturday, February 28, 2004 CODY -- A western Wyoming ranch is accusing the federal government of trespassing earlier this month to collar four wolves. Larsen Ranch Co. owners are considering asking Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric to file criminal trespass charges against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over the alleged violation. "It's aggravating and upsetting," said Randy Kruger, a ranch stockholder and employee. "It's causing me loss of sleep. It's a matter of terrorism." He made his comments to the Cody Enterprise. Wolf biologist Mike...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. - A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Bush administration violated the Endangered Species Act when it relaxed protections on many of the nation's gray wolves. The decision by U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones in Portland rescinds a rule change that allowed ranchers to shoot wolves on sight if they were attacking livestock, said Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. In April 2003, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service divided the wolves' range into three areas and reclassified the Eastern and Western populations as threatened instead of endangered. The Eastern segment...

PRAY - For rancher Randy Petrich, the removal of gray wolves from the endangered-species list - a move that would open up the animals to hunting in the Northern Rockies for the first time in decades - couldn't come soon enough. Petrich has seen fresh wolf tracks almost every morning this fall - close enough to threaten his cattle. "I believe that any wolf on any given night, if there happens to be a calf there, they will kill it," ... Just 12 years since the wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park ... federal officials say the sharp rise...