The sad story of OR9 is a prime example of why wolves need to remain on the federal Endangered Species list…

Sibling of famous OR-7 wolf killed by hunter in Idaho

Published: Friday, February 10, 2012

JOSEPH — A sibling of Oregon’s world-famous wolf OR-7 has been shot and killed in Idaho by a hunter whose wolf tag was no longer valid.

“What an amazing difference between how this wolf’s story evolved compared to his brother, OR-7, who is now in California and is an international celebrity,” said Suzanne Stone of Boise, spokeswoman for the 530,000-member Defenders of Wildlife environmental group.

The radio-collared male wolf identified as OR-9 was killed Feb. 2 near a cattle feedlot and winter calving area north of Emmett, between Boise and the Snake River, said Mike Keckler, spokesman for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

Like his famous brother, OR-9 was born into the Imnaha pack near the northeastern Oregon town of Joseph. He was collared Feb. 26, 2011, in the Grouse Creek area east of Joseph when he was about 1 1/2 years old and weighed 90 pounds then.

OR-9 departed Oregon in July two months before OR-7 began his epic 730-mile trek to Crater Lake and south into California earlier this winter. OR-9 headed east, swam the Snake River into Idaho at Brownlee Reservoir and traveled south toward Emmett.

His travel destination turned out to be dangerous. Unlike the Joseph area, where gray wolves are protected under Oregon’s Endangered Species Act, Idaho’s wolves are classified as big game animals and subject to regulated hunting rules.
More…http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2012/02/sibling_of_famous_or-7_wolf_ki.html

From Defenders of Wildlife:
You didn’t support it. We didn’t support it. Now it’s been shown that the best available science doesn’t support the plan to delist nearly all gray wolves in the Lower 48 either.

ACT NOW: Demand that Secretary Jewell abandon this reckless delisting proposal and allow for the full recovery of gray wolves!

An independent peer review board, commissioned to assess the quality and adequacy of the science underlying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s (FWS) delisting plan for gray wolves, just released their unanimous decision: that the proposal to strip gray wolves of Endangered Species Act Protection is not based on the best available science and contains numerous omissions and errors.

This is a major development in our efforts to stop this irresponsible proposal from going through.

Please speak out! Urge Secretary Jewell to direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to withdraw this proposal immediately!

Now that it’s been confirmed that this proposed delisting is clearly not based on the best available science, we are left wondering why FWS wants to turn its back on wolves.

In states like Idaho, we continue to see what happens when wolves are prematurely stripped of federal protection and left to be managed by states with deadly anti-wolf agenda’s – just recently they announced a proposal to kill off as many as 450 wolves statewide!

Wolves now serve as a scapegoat for anti-government extremists with a political agenda – and these groups will spare no expense to try and derail wolf conservation in America. We simply can’t allow politics and private interests to trump science – it’s irresponsible and unacceptable.