Gray wolves are protected in Washington. So why does the state keep killing them?
From the Los Angeles Times:
ANATONE, Wash. — Somewhere near this tiny farming town last month, a Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife hunter conducted what officials call a lethal removal, killing a gray wolf, a member of a species that the state considers endangered.
Most likely the agency employee or contractor fired a 12-gauge shotgun from a helicopter after following signals from a radio collar on a member of the Grouse Flats pack. Citing “safety reasons,” officials won’t say how or where the wolf — which they now believe to have been a breeding female — was exterminated Sept. 25.