by Seattle Times staff
By JOHN MILLER
Associated Press
BOISE, Idaho — An Idaho outfitter is organizing a post-Christmas contest where two-person teams of hunters will be awarded $2,000 in cash prizes and trophies for shooting wolves and coyotes, angering animal advocates who brand it as a “wolf slaughter.”
Shane McAfee, who guides clients on hunts around Salmon, Idaho, downplays the bloodlust angle of this hunting derby, which encourages kids to participate. He expects relatively few predators to be shot during the event Dec. 28-29.
McAfee contends he’s mostly aiming to boost local business — 300 hunters might participate, he said — and raise awareness about a parasite he believes could be transmitted from wolf feces to domestic dogs and possibly humans.
By contrast, the Humane Society of the United States labels the derby as inhumane. Lisa Kauffman, its Idaho director, said the tapeworm angle is a red-herring, too, as foes “use every excuse they can come up with” as they seek to reduce predator numbers and turn public opinion against wolves reintroduced to the state in 1995.
“This is a wolf massacre,” wrote Wayne Pacelle, the Washington, D.C.-based animal-rights group’s president, in a letter to members Thursday. “Rewarding shooters (including young children) with prizes takes us back to an earlier era of wanton killing that so many of us thought was an ugly, ignorant and closed chapter in our history.”
McAfee counters that Pacelle’s group is blowing his event out of proportion to appeal to deep-pocketed donors. “We might harvest two or three wolves in the derby. It’s mainly for coyote control,” McAfee said.
He also hopes the derby succeeds in publicizing Echinococcus granulosis, a tapeworm whose hosts include elk, wolves and domesticated dogs. He worries dogs infected by sniffing or eating wolf feces could transmit the tapeworm to humans, where they could cause cysts.
“The people of our town are tired of the threat of the disease,” McAfee contends.
In fact, human infections are rarely reported in Idaho. A firm link between humans and wolves isn’t established.
A 2011 report produced by Mark Drew, a wildlife veterinarian with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, found just a few documented human cases that may have originated in Idaho. All were reported before wolves were re-introduced 18 years ago.
In 2011, state epidemiologist Dr. Christine Hahn issued a call to Idaho’s medical community for possible cases as concerns surfaced about the parasite being transmitted to humans.
In an interview Thursday, however, Hahn said that effort uncovered no evidence of such cases. People concerned about the parasite should take appropriate precautions, she said: Treat their dogs and cats for tapeworm, practice good hygiene, avoid harvesting sick animals, and wear rubber gloves when field dressing wild game, among other things.
“Echinococcus granulosis is one of many naturally occurring parasites that occur in wildlife,” she said. “Precautions for Echinococcus are really no different than for a host of other diseases that occur naturally in the environment and can infect humans.”
Wolves are game animals in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming after federal Endangered Species Act protections were lifted starting in 2011. There are annual hunting and trapping seasons.
Idaho has about 680 wolves, according to 2012 estimates.
The Department of Fish and Game isn’t promoting McAfee’s predator derby. But its wildlife managers also won’t intervene to stop it, provided participants follow state regulations and secure the requisite tags to hunt wolves. “That’s the key,” said spokesman Mike Keckler.
Contests where hunters target predators aren’t unusual in the West. In northeastern Washington last year, derby hunters shot nearly 300 coyotes over a two-month span in three counties. Similarly, an Idaho group held a “Predator Derby” coyote shoot in 2007.
But Keckler can’t recall the West’s last wolf derby.
“I’ve not heard of one — outside of this one,” he said.
Exposing the Big Game 
This is just sickening, I don’t know what is worse, the contest or the wolf sniper..
And that’s in addition to all the other wolf hunting and trapping they do there.
And the bounty hunter sent into the wilderness to kill 2 families of wolves. ..! 😦
Actually they are promoting blood sport ! So barbaric
Fuck Palin–how come she hasn’t experienced a hunting accident yet? She’s certainly stupid enough…
Because if there is a God, He doesn’t want her narrow ass, neither does Satan. Nobody wants that bitch, that’s why she is going to live forever.
😉
The human race is dividing. Someday, this barbaric, fear driven insanity will just be the sad history of the last gasp of manifest destiny. People are waking up! Every time these derby or wolf hounders or kids who shoot pets with arrows or guns or blow holes in teachers and classmates, it wake up the sleeping masses who love all animals and innocent children. Keep up the good work Jim, you are a force of positive change energy into the coming paradigm shift, along with all of us here who take the time and effort and financial drain it takes to make social evolutionary change happen again as it did in the 1960’s.
This is a glaring reason why groups who call themselves “animal groups” or wildlife groups” should never capitulate, cooperate, compromise or collaborate with hunters. The hunting industry has one agenda: to kill animals for sport. When they talk about “hunting for food,” etc, that is just an excuse to justify their addiction. There should be No Compromise with them, but may groups who purport to be working for animals, are now aligning themselves with hunters, on projects. I will never join any group again that does this. It is time to draw the line, and get off the fence.
Rosemary, you and I agree. The FWS biologists are still debating compromise! Thery should know better by now. We still have to be a part of the convetsation, even if each of the parties thinks the other one is nuts. But no more ground can be given up. Just remember all the Tribes who thought they were bargaining in good faith. Now what do they have left! Same with wolves.
Show evidence, based on best available science and backed by the word of law… I say to them.
If they are smooth talkers, I remind myself what I am dealing with, here’s how: I go on craigslist and under for sale, I type in ‘wolf’. Be prepared to be sickened and feel ee to report the listings. Beside all the various non-wolf items, there will be: wolf rugs, wolf fur coats by companies like Eddie Bauer and maybe stuff that doesn’t make you want to puke like beautiful artwork and crafts people have made. But seeing the artwork is necessary after seeing the evil. Those who demand compromise of us are the same ones selling our friend’s fur coat for a few bucks, her life is traded for human vanity. No more compromise. FWS is a confused beaurocracy. They have forgotten who they are to protect. You see, if wolves were rich, or we all were, this, the slaughter, couldn’t happen. Because it could be properly exposed, people could publish their books, articles, etc. The issues would get much needed exposure with animal lovers around the world. Right now, it is a mostly secret war on wolves and other wildlife. Lawyers and judges make arguments and decisions in cases the media won’t cover. Politicians don’t fear us, they fear sportsmen’s groups. Even though the sportsmen who hunt large animals for their tropgy rooms, are a tiny number, they have the money to give to politicians and we don’t because we are too busy supporting sanctuaries and paying for lawyers one pledge drive at a time! So I love it when these anti-wolf sub-human asshats and wildlife terrorists f**k up. It’s free press coverage into their sick world! Then we pull out our pro wolf poll numbers and we might get some traction, finally?
Such a hunt is not only inhumane, it brutalizes humanity, adults and children and teens to do this, witness this, allow it and do nothing, a realization of man’s inhumanity.
Yes Roger, that is exactly the message we need the judges and FWS to understand! Let the asshats hang themselves with their own ropes! I couldn’t think of a better time for them to decide to do this derby, while Wyoming is being sued in federal district court in DC over wolf hunting. While USFWS is debating those million plus signatures against the wolf delisting.
Sorry about the typos, my hands shake and I have a touch screen tablet for now. After Christmas, I will be moving up from a $50 tablet to a $75 tablet with a little keyboard. My son Fred is busy setting it up with lots of apps and just made a voip call over it, so I am excited!
I hope it will enable faster communications and more accurate spelling. Certainly it will help with activist and advocate work! Baby steps! My husband will be getting a really nice HP tablet to totally replace his computer. Out with the energy vampires in my house! If we want to save animals endangered by the Tar Sands ( wolves are being poisoned in Canada, too) and fracking and the whole damn sucking need for energy, we have to cut back, reduce the drain on the planet, use as little as possible. Otherwise, the wolves will only be a sad memory and the first domino to fall in the destruction of the ESA. As an odd aside, I started my life of activism fighting the Seabrook Nuclear Power plant in NH in the mid 1970’s. Now I have heard part of the plant is being shutdown, not for anything the Clamshell Alliance did, but because natural gas from fracking is cheaper than nuclear power! That is a no win situation for the environment. Until we cripple demand for things they have to dig and suck out of the Earth, nothing will change for the better. Until we name and shame the vile energy pirates, water miners and crush the second wave of manifest destiny, expose the ultra right wing phony Christians for who and what they really are (WINDEGO!) the wolves and their wisdom and pure hearts will continue to be silenced. These hearts beat in syncopated time with Earth Mother, within the hearts ofthose on the path of enlightenment, those within the drum circle, the ancients in the stones, the lifeforce that rises up through the Earth that you can feel in nature that is earned and can’t be explained by mortal humans… the very life that springs from the natural world, complex yet simple and pure in a spritual way that touched so many like John Muir, Aldo Leopold and every human who felt peace for the first time in the wilderness. That is what is at risk. Wolves are the gate keepers. The wilderness and wildlife managers that put back all things in balance, in keeping with the heart beat of Earth Mother in this dance of life. This is one battle we must win. To sit back and watch wolves be slaughtered, some of us twice in our own lifetimes, the final judgement will be harsh for the human race. The poverty, lack of pure nature, is the worst poverty there is for the soul.