Here are the totals of wolves murdered in the tri-state area, not including those who were victims of our taxpayer-funded assassins—the hit men from the federal “Wildlife Services” agency. (Note: all three of these states share a border with Yellowstone National Park)…
Latest Posted Idaho Wolf Hunt Kill total (current season): 169
Latest Posted Idaho Wolf Trapping Kill total (current season): 76
Final Posted Montana Wolf Hunt Kill Total (most recent season) 128
Final Posted Montana Wolf Trapping Kill total (most recent season): 97
Wyoming Wolf Kill Total (current season): 74 (Note: as of March 1st Wyoming’s season has been extended indefinitely)
Regional Total Reported Killed This Season: 544
Regional Total Reported Killed Since Delisting: 1,089
Meanwhile, a new National Park Service report for 2011 shows that the 3,394,326 visitors to Yellowstone spent $332,975,000 in communities surrounding the park. This spending supported 5,041 jobs in the local area.
(Michigan State University conducted this visitors’ spending analysis for the NPS. The report includes information for visitor spending at individual parks and by state. It can be downloaded at http://www.nature.nps.gov/socialscience/products.cfm#MGM click on Economic Benefits to Local Communities from National Park Visitation 2011.)
Needless to say, most people who visit national parks want to see the wildlife unmolested. They are not there to hunt; the money they spend reflects their strong interest in the quiet enjoyment of nature. Pro-hunting factions like to boast about the money their bloodsport brings to local communities. I don’t know if anyone has taken a survey on how much those kill-happy cowboys add to the communities around Yellowstone, but you can bet your boots it’s nowhere near $332,975,000.
One thing I know for sure is that the number of dollars spent by Yellowstone visitors is going to drop as the wildlife they went there to see continues to disappear.
Yellowstone wolf photo ©Jim Robertson. All Rights Reserved
Exposing the Big Game 
Reblogged this on bearspawprint.
I keep hoping that some day with the help of people like us who rule against this terrible crimes, that one day those grey braincells that keep the people who ingage in these crimes will turn into color and they will finaly see the light and the error of there ways. Hopefully before it’s to late!!
So many of us….and yet we can’t stop this?
Jim, for some reason I couldn’t find the fb page to post this. I hope you will address this. The contests are becoming rampant. This goes far beyond. http://www.newsreview.com/chico/coyote-hunt/content?oid=9154522
Thanks Gail, I’m passing this on and will blog on it soon!
Wolf Jihad: Montana legislature has a bill to allow landowners to shoot a “threatening wolf”. I thought ranchers/landowners already had this protection? Now asking the right to shoot a wolf on the next mountain or on their ranch or land? It no doubt means that any wolf seen can be seen as threatening and shot on sight, so it is a bill to treat wolves as varmints across the state and shoot on sight. It is hard for wolf haters on most sites to deal with facts, but wolves usually ignore mans’ domestic animals and stock, killing only .0029 percent of cattle, 74 of 2,500,000 in MT 2011. Even mountain lions usually do the same. Of course most wolf haters have trouble with statistics, facts and science and will deal only with absolute numbers and anecdotal opinion rather than percentages and probabilities, more folklore. I had geese, chickens, sheep, horses, and often a litter of Dalmatian pups on my place, and I had a resident mountain lion and a pack of coyotes that left me alone. It is another yokel-rancher-wildlife hater myth that predators need to be killed on sight. So, is this more hysterical nonsense coming out of this right wing anti-wildlife legislature? This is more among mounting evidence that wolves need to be re-listed in hostile western, if not all states, especially MT, WY and ID with state legislature attitudes of treating them like varmints to be shot on sight, extended hunt seasons with an extended trapping season.