From Yahoo News:
Nearly two months ago, John Faulkner and members of the Peavey family, which owns Flat Top Ranch in the Wood River Valley, learned that an application with their names attached for state dollars to kill wolves would move ahead. But they never knew about the application and had no interest in the program.
The proposal was brought to Idaho’s Wolf Depredation Control Board by a predator control company without the ranchers’ knowledge. Last week, the board announced it will not move forward with the application or two others it received from Predator Control Corp. owner Trevor Walch.
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Montana wildlife officials enact changes to wolf and grizzly management
From Montana Public Radio:
Montana’s Fish and Wildlife Commission passed several changes to wolf and grizzly management in their recent end of year meeting.
Montana Public Radio’s Austin Amestoy sat down with Ellis Juhlin to discuss how the state is managing one large mammal species and what that can tell us about how it plans to manage another.
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10 wolves released so far in Colorado reintroduction effort
From Western Slope Now:
DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado has released 10 gray wolves so far in its ongoing effort to reintroduce the animals into the state.
State wildlife officials have been capturing the wolves in Oregon to release in Colorado as part of the mandate voters approved in 2020. The capture work finished on Friday, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
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Five Gray Wolves Released in Colorado
From Drovers:
Five gray wolves were released into a remote area of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains on Monday, marking the start of the most ambitious wolf reintroduction effort in the U.S. in almost three decades.
The wolf release was the result of a voter-approved reintroduction program embraced by the state’s urban Democratic voters but opposed in conservative rural areas. The wolves were set free from crates in a Grand County location that state officials kept undisclosed to protect the predators.
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Green campaigners slam von der Leyen’s wolf-hunting mission
From Politico:
Brussels is on a mission to make wolves fair game for hunters. Campaigners and legal experts say it’s making a huge mistake.
The European Commission on Wednesday said it wants to change the conservation status of wolves from “strictly protected” to “protected.” If it get its way, wolf-hunting will be authorized in the EU.
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State sees pushback against changes to remove references to wolf plan
From Bozeman Daily Chronicle:
Among the moves made by the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission during its last meeting of the year was removing reference to the 2003 Grey Wolf Conservation and Management Plan from the guidelines for managing the species.
This change to the administrative rules for wolf management by the commission is tied the larger context of the state’s currently-in-progress new Wolf Plan and its usage of the controversial iPOM method to measure the state’s wolf population, which some say overestimates wolf numbers.
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Idaho board drops wolf-killing proposals submitted by trapper without ranchers’ knowledge
From Yahoo News:
Nearly two months ago, John Faulkner and members of the Peavey family, which owns Flat Top Ranch in the Wood River Valley, learned that an application with their names attached for state dollars to kill wolves would move ahead. But they never knew about the application and had no interest in the program.
The proposal was brought to Idaho’s Wolf Depredation Control Board by a predator control company without the ranchers’ knowledge. Last week, the board announced it will not move forward with the application or two others it received from Predator Control Corp. owner Trevor Walch.
Click here for the full story.
$10M spent on B.C. wolf cull, FOI documents reveal alongside details of shootings
From CBC:
The British Columbia government has spent more than $10 million on a controversial wolf cull launched in 2015, according to documents obtained through a freedom of information request filed by CBC News.
The province’s “aerial wolf reduction program” involves shooting wild animals from a helicopter, which the province describes as the most effective and humane way of reducing the wolf population in areas with endangered or at-risk caribou.
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Oregon wolves expected to spread west and south
From Oregon Capital Chronicle:
State biologists say Oregon’s gray wolf population may have reached its ecological limit in the eastern third of the state and that packs will probably spread out to the west and south in greater numbers.
Those comments, made at a meeting of the state Fish and Wildlife Commission, came as Colorado released five wolves trapped from Oregon as part of a historic reintroduction program.
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Commission proposes to change international status of wolves from ‘strictly protected’ to ‘protected’ based on new data on increased populations and impacts
From The Delegation of European Union to Montenegro:
The Commission is tabling a proposal for a Council Decision to adapt the protection status of the wolf under the international Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, to which the EU and its Member States are parties. The wolf’s protection status under the Convention was established based on the available scientific data at the time of negotiation of the Convention in 1979. On the basis of an in-depth analysis on the status of the wolf in the EU also published, the Commission proposes to make the wolf ‘protected’ as opposed to ‘strictly protected’. It follows the Commission’s announcement in September 2023 that on the basis of the data collected, it would decide on a proposal to modify, where appropriate, the status of protection of the wolf and to update the legal framework, to introduce, where necessary, further flexibility.
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10 wolves make history as they’re released into the Western wild
From The Washington Post:
BOULDER — Colorado’s most highly anticipated new residents, two groups of lushly furred gray wolves, arrived this week on private planes from Oregon and within hours had disappeared into Rocky Mountain woods abundant with elk and other prey.
How the 10 wolves’ lives unfold is likely to be the subject of political sparring and scientific research for years to come.
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