Wildlife Authorities Kill Pair of Wolves in Oregon
One of only three wolf pairs in Oregon was killed by U.S.D.A. Wildlife Services with approval from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Center for Biological Diversity announced today that Oregon’s wolf recovery program suffered a serious setback when a pair of wolves residing in the Eagle Cap Wilderness in eastern Oregon were killed over the weekend by wildlife authorities.
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Earlier this year, the wolves had killed livestock, but livestock fencing and efforts by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife had deterred the wolves from any further attacks.
Despite three consecutive months of success, livestock owners and wildlife officials were still not satisfied, and the wolves were killed.
Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director at the Center, explained in the press release that losing wolves has far-reaching effects on the environment. The Center has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for removing wolves from the federal endangered species list.
Wolves are an incredibly important part of our environment, with research in Yellowstone National Park showing that reintroduction of wolves keeps elk and other ungulates on the move, leading to increased streamside vegetation, which in turn benefits numerous other species, such as beavers and songbirds.
We had hoped to gain an injunction in time to restore federal protections to wolves, including the two that were killed. It was a race against time, and these wolves lost.
Wolf hunting controversy continues
Unfortunately, the loss of federal protections has happy hunters gleefully snapping up wolf tags in the states where hunting the (still endangered) animals is now legal.
The wolf hunting season in Idaho opened on September 1, and is set to open in Montana on September 15, 2009. The states are allowing approximately a third of their respective wolf populations to be killed by eager hunters.
(If you wish to consider the issue of wolf hunting from the hunter’s perspective, there is a website called huntwolves.com “dedicated to the western United States newest game species - the Gray Wolf” featuring a photo of a hunter with his prize captioned “First Wolf in Idaho Harvested.”)
That’s right, harvested.
Image: flickr.com/tambako/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
Sigh…this makes me sick. People are using paranoia and insane, backward thinking modes in defense of their murder. When will it stop??
You would have thought that endangered species held more importance than livestock, crazy.
It’s authorities like this that drive people to take direct action.
I wonder why there isn’t a website/sport of Red Neck culling?
So merely being an “endangered species” has nothing to do with legal protection ? As “Fairtrade” suggested, this could create yet another “endangered species” - with no legal protection, of course. The English call it War.
What is wrong with these people? How do they get their ‘expert credentials’? Why is the only response they have is to kill wild animals rather than to respect the need to work with them toward a more equitable balance in biodiversity and a return to a more balanced eco-system? This is as unbelieveable as the story about the polar bear who swam hundreds of miles across the Arctic because his habitat melted only to land in Iceland and be killed. Where are we taking this planet?
If fencing and other measures prevented further attacks on livestock, why did the authorities find it necessary to kill wolves? And why are they considering removing wolves from the endangered species list? Stupid, stupid, stupid!
This is sick and the things that people do make me sick. When did people loose all respect for everything around them. This is an endangered species and we took ITS land. What right do we have to even try and stop them from surviving and getting the food that they need.
I am pro-wolf, but get the facts correct. These two wolves killed livestock again in August on private land. Both these wolves were young and it appears did not know how to successfully survive in the wild. The other two pairs of wolves in Oregon are in close proximity to livestock, but there have not been conflicts. I just want the facts to come forth as too often the loudest people on both sides of controversy don’t tell all the facts.