Wyoming Vote Tracker

Not literally in my back yard, but close enough! I live on the east edge of Cody, just past Wyoming Hwy. 120, the line making the safe zone for wolves in this area. If they are west of the highway, they must be shot in season with a license, or under jurisdiction of the Game and Fish. If they are east of the highway, they’re free game as long as you report to Game and Fish that you shot it. Ironically, the Game and Fish office up here is located on the east side of the highway. If they are on the highway, I’m not sure what the status of the wolf is, other than roadkill. Wouldn’t that be fun to report?

Anyway, back to the wolf in my back yard:

Two wolves were killed last week outside Wyoming’s designated trophy game area for the animals, according to information released by the Game and Fish Department.

One male wolf was reported killed near Daniel on April 26 and one male wolf was reported killed on Dry Creek in Oregon Basin on April 28.

Hopefully, Daniel is OK. They didn’t give his status in the report. On the plus side, somebody gave my mom quite the birthday present and killed a wolf in Oregon Basin. No, they did not present the wolf to her, and I don’t even know who it was that shot the wolf. It may have been Daniel. I don’t know But I do know that I live on the outer edge of Oregon Basin, thus I can claim the wolf was shot in my back yard. Pretty cool if you ask me!

The report goes on and gets more interesting:

One male wolf was captured, fitted with a radio locator collar, and released in the Cody area on April 26.

Game and Fish workers are investigating a wolf found dead on the Upper South Fork of the Shoshone River in the trophy game area.

Suspect in the murdered Southfork Wolf is another wolf. I can’t imagine a wolf killing off one of their own though. I mean, we all know that wolves are such friendly creatures.

And then there’s the collared male wolf released in Cody area on April 26, two days prior to male wolf being shot in Oregon Basin. One has to wonder: where did this collared wolf come from? Was it outside the trophy game area and brought inside? Was it inside and taken out? Define “Cody area.” Why Cody? You would think the Game and Fish folks in the state would know by now that we’ve had it “up to here” with wolves. Whatever happened to the old adage “The wolves won’t leave the Park”? If the wolves were being “reintroduced” into Yellowstone, why are we so dog-goned concerned about their health and well-being when they leave Yellowstone? Little known fact about the invasion that was forced upon us is that the Canadian Grey Wolf was reintroduced as a “non-essential/experimental” species. It is that illustrious 10-J rule that we’ve heard alluded to many times in this debate

The amended ESA requires that, unless special enumerated exceptions apply, all experimental populations be treated as threatened species, and not as endangered species.58 Because the experimental populations are considered threatened as opposed to endangered, the rules regarding their protection and proliferation are not as strict as they otherwise would be. […] Thus, the FWS can, for example, establish a pack of protected wolves in a particular area but still allow ranchers to kill any of those experimental wolves caught in the act of attacking their livestock. If the experimental wolves were given full ESA protection as an endangered species, such killing would be illegal and would result in a criminal prosecution of the ranchers, effectively leaving them helpless to defend their livestock […]

Under this complex system of rules, for example, an experimental wolf population that is deemed nonessential to the continued survival of the species as a whole and is introduced in the northern Rocky Mountain area receives full ESA protection while inside the borders of Yellowstone National Park but only receives protection as a threatened species outside of the Park. That is, when they are outside the Park, ranchers can kill wolves that are caught in the act of attacking livestock, and wildlife officials have more discretion and leeway in managing their existence.

Of course, now we’re under state management, for the time being anyway. The people that think animals have more rights to this planet you and I do are at it again, with an anti-birthday present to Mom:

Environmental and animal-rights groups sued the federal government (April 28) to force it to restore endangered species status for gray wolves in the northern Rockies. Twelve groups filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lifted federal protections for the estimated 1,500 wolves in March, capping a reintroduction effort that began in 1995 after the animal was nearly exterminated from the region in the early 20th century.

Someone should tell these wackos that the wolf was never listed as endangered, but rather as threatened. There were some that migrated of their own will from Canada to the northern Rockies of Montana that were classified as endangered, but that is only because they came in on their own and were thus not part of the Yellowstone reintroduction efforts. And why is the case being filed in Montana? Isn’t it Wyoming’s program that they have more against than Montana’s? Please, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not inviting the criticism of the law, just wondering why it is that three separate state management programs can all be tried in one state, and it happens to be out of state for the loosest regulations.

And this article gets a little more entertaining too:

As Montana, Idaho and Wyoming move forward with plans for public hunts in the fall, the environmentalists worry wolf populations could suffer further if they lose the ability to connect to other populations, which could lead to a decline in genetic diversity.

Franz Camenzind — executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, one of the 12 groups are part of the lawsuit — said his primary objection to Wyoming’s plan is that wolves are considered “varmints” in roughly 88 percent of the state.

“We just want to make sure that we have a management plan that will ensure the long-term survivalship of wolves in Wyoming and the northern Rockies,” he said. “To achieve that, one of the criteria is connectivity with central Idaho, northern Montana and Greater Yellowstone. We can’t have free fire zones or wolves will never be able to successfully cross.”

Genetic diversity in wolves? I think I just found our new pro-life argument. Aborting babies certainly takes away from the genetic diversity of the human population, but that’s for another post entirely. Mr. Camenzind, perhaps you could educate Gary Trauner on what a wolf is. He had some trouble with that in 2006, and he might be a bit more to your liking than any of the Republican  candidates. And if you’re concerned about “free fire” zones, have you looked at the map? Montana and Idaho, both of which boarder Wyoming and each other, have no “free fire zones.” If a wolf wants to go west to Montana or Idaho without being threatened by legal gun fire, it just has to leave Wyoming through Yellowstone Park or even Teton County, and a fair portion of Park County if the wolf desires to leave for Montana to the north. Seems to me the wolf can connect just fine.

Continuing on the Feds and the State agree for once:

“We believe we made the right decision — that the wolf had recovered and the regulatory mechanisms are there” to ensure its continued survival, she said.

In a statement, Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials said wolves in the state “are doing extremely well.”

“Wolf recovery in Wyoming has been a tremendous conservation success,” the statement said. “Wyoming’s wolf plan provides protections for wolves in northwest Wyoming, where there is adequate habitat to maintain wolves into perpetuity. The department is fully committed to maintaining a population of wolves in this part of Wyoming, ensuring that they will never again need to be placed on the endangered species list.”

The animal’s population has grown by about 25 percent annually in the region since the mid-1990s, when 66 wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho.

When they came off the endangered species list, the wolves’ rapid reproductive rate would allow them to withstand increased hunting, federal biologists argued. The Fish and Wildlife Service has said it will put them back on the endangered list only if the population dips below 300 animals.

Yes, 300 is the magic number, and about 15 from 1,500 is 1,485. So, with about 1,186 more wolves killed, we can talk about relisting the wolves. Of course, the pesky things keep on breeding too.

The groups said the increased killings also threaten to block the spread of wolves to other states in their historical range, including Colorado, Utah and Oregon.

I’m sure that Colorado, Utah, and Oregon are doing just fine without wolves and the humans there are thankful that we are managing them. I don’t recall them ever making a big stink about how the feds discriminated against them in the wolf reintroduction program and I haven’t heard them clamoring for wolves since ours have been delisted. And one last gem from this report:

Besides Defenders of Wildfire and the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, the plaintiffs include Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, The Humane Society of the United States and seven other local and national groups.

Do you realize how easy it would be to throw in a line about a certain Republican congressional candidate right here? I haven’t said anything about him for so long, and knowing that the Sierra Club is in on this lawsuit just nearly begs the question, What do you think about the lawsuit against the state wolf management program….man alive, I wish I could say his name! OK, I’ll be good for now….

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