The Billings Gazette
A young collared female gray wolf was shot by a Jardine-area resident on Saturday after the wolf had recently come in close proximity to a number of homes, killed a cat as well as several chickens, according to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
“It had shown up at a number of properties since April,” said Andrea Jones, FWP information officer.
Over the last few months the wolf displayed unusually bold behavior as attempts were made by FWP and residents to haze the animal. It was shot while eating a chicken. There will be no charges filed, Jones said, since the wolf was becoming increasingly more bold.
“It has not shown normal wolf behavior when confronted,” Jones said.
Until this spring, the wolf lived primarily in the northeast corner of Yellowstone National Park as a member of the Lamar Canyon pack. Young wolves often disperse to start their own packs. After leaving the pack it moved into the Jardine area. Jardine is located northeast of Gardiner and just north of the park boundary.
FWP investigated the wolf mortality in consultation with USDA-Wildlife Services. An FWP veterinarian will examine the wolf’s general condition but a necropsy is not planned at this time, Jones said.
Wolf shootings to protect livestock as well as wolf hunting are divisive issues that have prompted death threats in the past to those involved. Consequently, FWP was not releasing the name of the individual who shot the wolf.
Two other members of the Lamar Pack were shot last fall during Wyoming’s hunting season, one of which was the pack’s alpha female. All together, hunters in surrounding states shot 12 wolves last year that spent part of their time inside Yellowstone’s boundaries. Six of the 12 were collared wolves that park staff use to study wolf movements and interactions.
Exposing the Big Game 
bastard had to shoot the wolf
Any excuse they can come up with
Reblogged this on Sherlockian's Blog.
Yup. Keep disrupting the pack’s social structure and this is what you get. How unfortunate for the animals and us that there are such assholes in the world.
Gail, you are correct. It is all about social order of the pack! Or what is left after their mom got shot by some slob hunter before she could teach her babies how to hunt and how to be a normal wolf. The lack of this education and the emotional devistation that followed, usually causes a break up of the siblings. In this case, one slob hunter, trolling for radio collar signals, started the domino effect of loss of one of the most beautiful and intelligent female alphas, leader of the Lamar pack, if memory serves me right? You know her as a number, they knew her as Mom, wise teacher and protector.
Another tragic man-made loss to the wolves. Young, uneducated, emotionally stressed wolves tend to think of cats and chickens as “fast-food”. If her family elders, especially her Mom, had not been murdered, by humans, she and her siblings, would still be studying tactics needed to hunt normal wolf prey and playing joyfully with the new pups that should have been born in the Spring.
These scumbag trolls, hunting alpha female wolves have destroyed a wolf family forever and 40 or so years of research.
To be clear, the most recent wolf was not an alpha, she was a lost child of an alpha. She carried great genes and had fantastic potential. All taken away forever.
It is time to stop the slaughter! It is well past time to educate the community, put in place laws banning the hunting of research wolves ( all wolves would be better!), and give the laws real teeth, heavy fines and jail time. Lastly, keep the research wolves in the park by fencing in wolf packs into their established range. Using gov’t surplus chain link fences from old closed military facilities. Until human opinions in the area change, I see this as the only rational solution to save the wolves of Yellowstone and avoid the heartbreak caused by psychos killing famous wolves followed online by children and wolf lovers around the world. Our current wolf policy may well cause a loss of tourism to our national parks with wolves? I know I will not be bringing my family to see wolves that may be displayed on the internet, upside down and bloody, held by some grinning asshat hunter. As previously mentioned in another post, the local librarian discarded the “The Wolves of Yellowstone” children’s book for fear children in her town would get attached to these wolves, only to be shocked and heartbroken when they are shot. That is an act that sums up “wolf management” by the states involved and the USFWS. To borrow from a 60s quote… War (on Wolves) is unhealthy for children and other living things!