Free Republic

Two wolves released on Dec. 19, 2023, in Grand County, Colorado, 2302-OR, a juvenile female, black color, 68 pounds, and 2303-OR, a juvenile male, gray color, 76 pounds, come from the Five Points Pack. According to Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife Livestock Depredation Investigations, Five Points pack wolves injured one calf and killed another in separate depredations in July of 2023; killed a cow on Dec. 5, 2022; and injured a 900-pound yearling heifer on July 17, 2022. ... On July 21, OFW authorized the killing of up to four wolves from the Five Points Pack after two attacks...

Attacks on cattle and dogs by wolves that migrated into northwest Colorado from Wyoming have stoked a rancher-wolf controversy sooner than expected. Don Gittleson woke up Wednesday morning to a sight that’s starting to feel common on his North Park ranch: a cow torn up by wolves, the third attack on his livestock since a few days before Christmas. If this were Montana, Wyoming or Idaho, Gittleson could pull out a gun and shoot the predator dead. But this is Colorado. Wolves in Colorado are protected under state law. Killing them – no matter how many cows or sheep or...

Recordings and summaries of emergency calls show Washington wildlife officials at first objected to an air rescue of a woman treed by wolves, or help from the Okanogan County sheriff. Washington wildlife managers initially opposed sending a helicopter or a search-and-rescue team to save a woman treed by wolves in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, according to recordings and summaries of emergency calls. ... Notes from a call between DNR dispatcher Jill Jones and a wildlife officer summarized WDFW’s position, and her position, shortly before the helicopter launched. “No helicopter. Federally listed species. 3 WDFW personnel saying so,” according to DNR’s...

When voters were asked to decide whether to forcibly introduce wolves into Colorado, the result margins were the narrowest on the ballot, with only four counties west of the Continental Divide, the area primarily affected, voting yes. Now, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has urged the Colorado Wildlife Commission to ignore the process prescribed in Prop 114 and get wolves on the ground by the middle of next year. Polis joined the commission meeting Wednesday, Jan. 13 and said he has a strong desire to carry out the will of the voters and introduce wolves to Colorado in a timely fashion....

A confirmed wolf kill was discovered near Walden, Colo., the home of one of Colorado’s wolf packs. An approximately 500 pound purebred replacement heifer was found dead after being attacked and eaten by this pack of wolves. This is the first confirmed wolf kill of livestock in Colorado in over 70 years. In early 2021, Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed the existence of this pack in north central Colorado; however, individual wolves have been sited in the area previous to the pack confirmation. Colorado Parks and Wildlife officials are working closely with the livestock producer to learn as much from...

SAN MATEO — A woman woke up to a mountain lion snatching her dog off of her bed at a Pescadero home early Monday morning, according to deputies. At around 3 a.m., a woman called 911 reporting that her dog was taken by a mountain lion from her home in the area of 800 Native Sons Road. The woman told deputies she and a child were sleeping in a bedroom with their 15-pound Portuguese Podengo at the foot of the bed. ... The animal took the small dog from the bed and walked out, she told deputies. The woman then...

Mauling was in Gates of the Arctic National Park. A grizzly bear dragged a woman out of her tent Thursday and mauled her ... according to the National Park Service. The woman was saved by companions camped with her ... An Alyeska Pipeline Services Co. helicopter, normally used to monitor the oil pipeline, was expected to pick her up there and ferry her to a hospital in Fairbanks... They were camped and asleep when the bear arrived in camp. It apparently first entered a "food tent," Quinley said. "It destroyed a water jug," he said, and tried to get into...

The family of a Utah boy killed by a black bear can move forward with its lawsuit that contends the state didn't do enough to warn them to steer clear of the area where the bear had been seen earlier, the Utah Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The court's ruling held that the state isn't immune from a lawsuit in the death of 11-year-old Samuel Ives, who was pulled from his tent and mauled by bear in American Fork Canyon on Father's Day in 2007. A state judge last year dismissed a negligence suit against the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources,...

Conservation Experts: This Size Cat Hasn't Been Seen Here In 100 Years. There has been a wild animal alert issued in the northern suburbs. A mountain lion, yes, a mountain lion, is on the loose. ... We’re not looking for your Aunt Mildred’s kitty here, either. This is a big cat, a 160-pound predator that hunts and eats things. ... Ironically the Eastern mountain lion was officially declared extinct only a few months ago — in March.

What began nearly 20 years ago as denial of the many bad things that would happen in the Greater Yellowstone area if gray wolves were brought in from Canada, continues to this day. It was predicted that the wolves would kill off their prey base and that is happening. Information was presented to Ed Bangs, USFWS head of wolf reintroduction that wolves carry more than 30 different infectious diseases, some harmful and/or deadly to humans, and that was ignored. Disease is now becoming a common occurrence across the Northern Rockies where wolves are prolific. The same deaf, dumb and blind...

In January, U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy issued an “Order to Show Cause” to parties in a lawsuit (CV-08-14-M-DWM, filed January 2008) by Defenders of Wildlife. Defenders sued, claiming that wolf-management regulations the government issued under Endangered Species Act Section 10(j) authority allow too many wolves to be killed via management actions. Case 14 was stayed in April 2009 while the larger wolf delisting issue was fought out in another lawsuit from Defenders ... So what, and how, is Judge Molloy thinking? Before becoming a judge in 1996, Molloy was working a case for Trial Lawyers for Public Justice,...

Wolves and grizzly bears are mostly to blame for a steep population decline in a signature elk herd in the northern range of Yellowstone National Park, government scientists said on Wednesday. The elk population in the northern section of the park is prized by sportsmen who hunt outside Yellowstone boundaries in Montana and by the millions who pour into the park each year to see wildlife. Annual counts of the northern Yellowstone elk population show it has plummeted by more than 70 percent since 1995, falling from 16,791 to fewer than 5,000 today. Biologists said wolves and grizzlies are the...

A federal judge has declined to throw out a lawsuit against the government filed by the family of an 11-year-old boy who was mauled to death by a black bear. U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball ruled against the government's claim that federal agencies had immunity from being sued for negligence in the case... a black bear pulled him from his tent and killed him.

The parents of the 11-year-old boy killed by a black bear last summer in American Fork Canyon are suing the U.S. Forest Service and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. They say more should have been done to prevent their son's death. Step-father Tim Mulvey, his wife Rebecca Ives and Sam’s father say they have lived with the horror of that father's day weekend every day since and now they want to make sure it never happens to anyone else's family. It is grief beyond comprehension for most of us; a child ripped away from his family in the middle of...

Bears that barge in on people in the forest have become enough of a nuisance that more of them should be hunted, state wildlife managers have decided. The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, responding to a spike in human-bear contacts and an 11-year-old boy's death in June, want to issue 296 black bear hunting permits for Utah's 2008 spring and fall hunts, a 20 percent increase from the 248 permits offered this year. DWR officials say the state's black bear population is high enough to warrant the permit increase. Wildlife managers also say bears and humans clashed too many times...

When Bill Clinton's administration acted in 1995 and 1996 to deliberately reintroduce wolves into the 2.2-million-acre Yellowstone National Park, there were the predictable jokes about Clinton's wolf-whistling in the Oval Office. How could you get sympathy from Clinton, ranchers and Western cattlemen groused -- he's a wolf himself! In 2005, Kenton Carnegie, 22, an Ontario university student, was killed in remote Points North Landing, Saskatchewan... The jury ruled it a death by wolf attack. Even if the wolves do not kill the ranchers' herds, they can infect them. If you're tempted to romanticize a wolf pack, think of how romantic...

Gray wolves killed livestock in Montana at the rate of an animal per day in 2009, stirring a backlash against the predators in rural areas and depleting a program that compensates ranchers for their losses. The sharp increase over 2008 livestock losses... Such attacks — plus elk herd declines blamed on wolves in parts of Montana and neighboring Idaho — have renewed calls by many ranchers and hunters to reduce the predator's population. "... They'll go out and hamstring a bunch of animals just for fun," wolves attract particular disdain because of their viciousness — many killed animals are left...

A Canadian man has been mauled to death by a 295-kilogram tiger after winning a lengthy legal battle for the right to keep exotic pets... Norman Buwalda, 66, was found dead in the tiger's pen on his property in rural Ontario ... "He had gone in to feed the tiger and possibly had been attacked," Mr Carlson said, indicating there were no witnesses. Mr Buwalda had also kept two lions and a cougar, police said. In 2004, a tiger attack on a 10-year-old boy visiting the property sparked a ban on keeping wild animals as pets.

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...

We recently looked at the growing threat posed by the presence of violent drug gangs on pubplic land, such as national parks, and the wisdom of no longer mandating that park visitors be rendered unable to defend themselves from that danger. While the greatest threat of violence is undoubtedly posed by rogue humans, a recent tragedy reminds us that sometimes, lethal danger walks on four legs. we were constantly told that wild places like national parks are "oases of peace in a violent society," and thus having a means of self-defense in such places is unnecessary. Some of our national...