Posted on 09/25/2012 10:00:06 PM PDT by dennisw
Two gray wolves in Washington state were killed from a state helicopter Tuesday afternoon after officials decided the entire pack -- believed to be at least eight wolves -- needed to be killed because of repeated attacks on cattle, officials said.
An airborne marksman with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife killed the two wolves about seven miles from the Canadian border -- a week after marksmen and wildlife biologists spent days looking for the pack.
A major conservation group working with Washington state to manage its gray wolves agreed that the pack should be culled but also blamed a rancher in the area for not doing more to protect his cattle.
Gray wolves are listed as endangered under state law because they were nearly wiped out a century ago by settlers.
In the last decade, however, gray wolves have started to re-establish themselves in Washington due to recovery efforts in nearby states and dispersal from Canada.
At least eight packs are now established in the eastern half of Washington, which also has a conservation plan in place — one that aims to restore wolves in the wild without those same wolves preying on livestock. The state compensates ranchers who lose livestock to wolves, but that hasn't ended the tension.
"Wolves are recolonizing our state relatively quickly," Dave Ware, a Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman, told NBC News. "Managing conflicts is one of the most important objectives for recovery so that people don’t take things into their own hands."
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.nbcnews.com ...
That was a good post. When wolves kill cattle they are just doing what is instinctive.
The real issue is, Can wolves and cattle coexist in the same geographical area? The answer is they can not.
The sane policy is to have areas where the wolves are protected and at the same time it would be permissible to kill them if they are out of the protected area.
I’ll take the pelts off their hands brushed and tanned with the head intact they could bring a small fortune !
.308 or .338 Lapua....Cure for the common cold and wolves...
In 1996, the state legislature outlawed the use of dogs in hunting bears and cougars. As a result, small prey animals have been virtually eliminated, and led to a significant reduction in the number of deer and elk in areas occupied by cougars.
The fact that wolves are going after domesticated animals should come as no surprise.
I think Idaho’s got the right idea for wolves in another way: fund their management by selling wolf tags to hunters, who can also manage them in a very direct way.
They’ll have to since the animals that hunters really like to hunt will have severely falling populations.
Wolf packs will attack and eat cattle? No way!
Who knew? Who could have imagined such a thing?
Wolves were all be eliminated before and it can/might happen again. It may take some time of “shoot-shovel-shutup” control including other means as well.
Wolves were introduced here in central Wisconsin as well but thus far, no “control” has been experienced thus far. A hunting season has been established and results are minimal at best with established kill numbers very small.
More “SSS” type control will go on for some time to come as the deer herds a being reduced significantly and hunters certainly don’t like that happening.
I think wolf packs should be reintroduced to their native habitats in Seattle, San Francisco, Manhattan etc.
How it could ever be a news? In Eastern Europe people are paid for killing wolves.
It must be noted that the Wolf Pack savaged the citadel last Saturday 51-14
In the real world - not the one the left lives in - wolves are “shoot on sight”. Period. No exceptions.
Ouch!
Ping.
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