From The Spokesman-Review in Spokane:
DANVILLE, WASH – One night in late September 2018, Daniel Curry, a man who has devoted much of his 37 years to protecting wolves, and Jake Nelson, a rancher who’d shot one of the polarizing canines in self defense a month earlier, sat by a campfire in the heart of the Colville National Forest and got blazingly drunk.
Around midnight, as rounds of ponderosa pine burst into flames and Curry, Nelson and two others passed the bottle beneath a nearly full moon, someone pulled out a drum. The beat started manic and crescendoed with the quartet howling at the sky, hoping to hear wolves in the hills above.
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Red wolf experiment left lasting legacy in Smokies
From WBIR.com:
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — If you count every red wolf in the world, you’ll find almost four percent of the entire population in one fenced enclosure at Zoo Knoxville.
“Unfortunately, the outlook is pretty grim at this point. We’ve only got around 25 left in the wild right now. There are around 250 in managed care and we have 10 of them at Zoo Knoxville. The zoos are keeping this population alive,” said Kelly Cox, assistant director of animal care at Zoo Knoxville.
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Fewer Yellowstone wolves equals no wolf-on-wolf deaths
From East Idaho News and the Billings Gazette:
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK – For the first time in 24 years Yellowstone National Park’s wolf project staff found no evidence in 2018 of wolves killing each other.
That’s unusual since such wolf-on-wolf deaths are the leading cause of natural mortality for the park’s big canines. There was also no evidence of wolves dying from any major diseases, even though mange was found in several coyotes and foxes in or near the park boundary.
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Livestock producers in Colorado push back on wolves
From the Montrose Daily Press:
Three major livestock producing organizations in Colorado announced on Monday they have formed Coloradans Protecting Wildlife. The coalition is in the early staging of the pushback against the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project’s petitioning for the reintroduction of wolves into Colorado, specifically in the San Juan Mountains.
The three groups are the Colorado Farm Bureau (CFB), Colorado Cattlemen’s Association (CCA), and Colorado Wool Growers’ Association (CWGA). They announced the formation of an “Issue Committee” against the proposed 2020 ballot measure that would require the introduction of wolves into Colorado.
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Garfield County, Colorado, Commissioners Vote To Oppose Wolf Reintroduction
From Aspen Public Radio:
On Monday, the Garfield County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to oppose “any efforts to introduce or expand the population of wolves in Colorado.”
A wildlife advocacy group is collecting signatures to put wolf reintroduction on statewide ballots in 2020. Proponents of reintroduction say they would help restore a natural order that was lost when they were hunted to near extinction in the 1940s.
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EU ruling on wolf hunting a setback for Finland, views Leppä
From The Helsinki Times in Finland:
THE POSITION TAKEN by the European Court of Justice on hunting as a tool to manage wolf populations is a setback for Finland, views Jari Leppä (Centre), the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry.
“The stricter-than-expected ruling on wolf hunting for population management purposes was a major setback,” he wrote on Facebook on Monday.
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Wolves on the ballot: Will a ‘keystone predator’ be restored to western Colorado?
From the Telluride Daily Planet in Colorado:
For millions of years, gray wolves roamed this continent.
Thousands of them once lived in Colorado, but by 1935, wolves were effectively extinct here — scientists call it “extirpated” — from gunshots, poisoning and trapping. No one knows for sure where the last wolf died in this state. One writer believes it was in the South San Juans in 1938 (the South San Juans are where Colorado’s last grizzly bear died in 1979). Another speculates the year was 1945, and the wolf’s place of death was Conejos County, on the border of New Mexico.
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Oregon ‘wolf encounters’ are on the rise. Here’s what to do if you see a wolf
From the Salem Statesman Journal:
The number of people coming across wolves in Oregon’s outdoors is gradually increasing as the carnivores continue to spread across the state.
Reports of seeing or hearing wolves have increased 54 percent since 2011, including 434 reports statewide in 2018, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
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Wolf pack kills eight llamas near Butte, Montana
From The Lewiston Tribune:
BUTTE, Mont. — A pack of wolves killed eight llamas in the Basin Creek area southeast of Butte last month.
John Steuber, state director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, said three llamas were confirmed wolf kills. The other five are considered probable.
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The Cowboy Whisperer: Ferry County range rider works to build understanding in Washington wolf country
From The Spokesman-Review in Spokane:
DANVILLE, WASH – One night in late September 2018, Daniel Curry, a man who has devoted much of his 37 years to protecting wolves, and Jake Nelson, a rancher who’d shot one of the polarizing canines in self defense a month earlier, sat by a campfire in the heart of the Colville National Forest and got blazingly drunk.
Around midnight, as rounds of ponderosa pine burst into flames and Curry, Nelson and two others passed the bottle beneath a nearly full moon, someone pulled out a drum. The beat started manic and crescendoed with the quartet howling at the sky, hoping to hear wolves in the hills above.
Click here for the full story.
Idaho’s ‘wolf wars’ pit ranchers against environmentalists
From UPI.com:
Oct. 30 (UPI) — A battle is raging in Idaho over whether gray wolves, rescued from the edge of extinction, now are dangerous livestock-threatening predators or a vital part of the natural ecosystem.
In Idaho’s “wolf wars,” livestock producers say the state’s wolf reintroduction program has exploded out of control, but wildlife ecologists say a thriving wolf population is improving wilderness areas.
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