http://ecowatch.com/2014/03/21/idaho-bill-to-kill-hundreds-of-wolves/
The Idaho Legislature yesterday passed House Bill 470, a bill to create a new lethal “Wolf Depredation Control Board” to administer a fund for widespread killing of wolves in the state. The bill, expected to be signed into law by Gov. Otter (R-ID), sets aside $400,000 in state funds to kill roughly 500 wolves, leaving just 150 in the entire state.
The new board will consist of members appointed and overseen by Gov. Otter, who said in 2007 that he wanted to be the first to kill an Idaho wolf after federal protections were taken away. The board will be made up of representatives of the agricultural, livestock and hunting communities. The bill does not require any members of the board to represent the wolf conservation community.
“Political leaders in Idaho would love nothing more than to eradicate Idaho’s wolves and return to a century-old mindset where big predators are viewed as evil and expendable,” said Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf organizer at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The new state wolf board, sadly, reflects that attitude. The legislature couldn’t even bring itself to put a single conservationist on the board, so the outcome is predictable: many more wolves will die.”
Congress in 2011 stripped Endangered Species Act protection from wolves in Idaho and Montana. Since then, 1,592 wolves have been killed in those states.
The bill is the latest in a series of anti-wolf actions in Idaho that could ultimately backfire and force the return Endangered Species Act protections for gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains. Other commitments made by Idaho, including promises to maintain refugia for wolves in remote areas and wilderness, have been rolled back. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game sent a hunter-trapper into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness this winter to eliminate two wolf packs. It recently announced a new predator-management plan designed to kill 60 percent of the wolf population in the Middle Fork area over the next several years, and contracted with USDA’s Wildlife Services to gun down 23 wolves in the Lolo management zone in February.
“Yet again, Idaho has put a black eye on decades of tireless work to return wolves to the American landscape,” said Weiss. “This bill sets aside $400,000 in state funds to wipe out as many wolves as legally possible in Idaho. Reducing these wolf populations to below even the absolute bare minimum sets a dangerous precedent and ensures that true wolf recovery will be little more than a pipedream in Idaho.”
In combination with mortality from annual hunting and trapping seasons, the wolf population in Idaho is under serious threat of dropping near—or even below—minimal recovery levels that Idaho promised to maintain when wolves in the northern Rockies lost federal protections in 2011. The sponsor of H.B. 470, Rep. Marc Gibbs (R-Dist. 32), says the intent of the bill is to reduce Idaho’s wolf population to as few as 10 packs.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is required by its own delisting criteria to review the population if changes in Idaho law or management objectives significantly increase the threat to the population. It must then decide whether to reinstate federal Endangered Species Act protections or extend the post-delisting period for federal oversight.
Exposing the Big Game 
Just kill em all..nothing will ever change..corruption to the highest levels..23 wolves illegally killed..NOTHING done about it..This country’s legal system is the biggest joke in the world and the wildlife services bureaus are no better..ROTTEN TO THE CORE..THE WHOLE LOT OF THEM..
How is this even possible ?
We were better off when Nixon was president
Our country has failed out wolves and our environment … These people are ignorant flat earthers ! Why are the laws!
Come on pres Obama/ Sally Jewell you are supposed to be protecting out beautiful wildlife … Please stand up for once for these Native carnivores that deserve their place in the environment this is a genocide!
This is just like some racist supremacy group taking out the “others ” !
These native carnivores have rights we must stop this.
This is a grievous crime against nature and I’m sick to death of the stupidity that got them to this sad conclusion
This is against our laws of the land
This is still America where we love our land and wildlife. … Get this out in front of the general public … We want a say as non consumptive users of our heritage of our beautiful wildlife .. A more egregious situation resulting from Sen Tester rider attached to the 2011 budget bill I can’t imagine!
Stand up for our Wolves!
Joseph Sax, the famous environmental legal scholar who established a doctrine that natural resources are held in the public trust, as these wolves are indeed, died Sunday in San Francisco. In his memory and honor we need to fight this Idaho ruling. This bill allocates monies to eradicate a wild being that is a natural resource (they keep ecosystems in balance and healthy) and are held in the public trust doctrine. So this is against that public trust doctrine. We cannot let them do this to a natural resource that is both necessary and vital to the health of our planet.
FIGHT!
This is the result of compromise, collaboration, education etc., advocated by so many “conservation” groups that have made millions off the backs of wolves…they haven’t won a single battle…IT’S DISGRACEFUL!!…The boards of these “conservation” groups don’t have the courage to appoint leaders with the guts to confront the politicians, livestock industry or hunting groups that are responsible for the ongoing wolf slaughter….but, hey…they continually ask for your donations…..what do you get in return?…a made in China stuffed wolf or a water bottle…..well fuck them..tell them you want some activism and strong leadership, not another toy.
Well said and could no be more to the truth…
Nicely put!
Don’t say nothing will ever change. It won’t if we don’t get involved, but if we DO and we let them hear from the vast majority of us who want wolves protected, it will change. Lose the cynicism or at least work despite it. We’re all needed in this effort.
First, of course, we need to get money out of politics, so please support amending the US Constitution to overturn Citizens Unite.
Ugly horrible Idaho! What a disgrace this is Jim!
It sure is Claudine.
This state is nuts – I hope their appalling behaviours come back to bite them in the ass.
Nobody to blame but Obama and Ken Salazar for delisting wolves in 2009 and turning them over to hostile wolf states like Idaho and Montana. Then we can blame all the Senators who voted for the wolf delisting rider in 2011, that politically delisted wolves without judicial review. This has been a railroad job from the start and the irony is it all happened under a Democrat president.
I truly believe that the environment, except for a warped view of energy usage, isn’t on the President’s radar, or that it isn’t important to him. Many people today only have a simplistic understanding of the term ‘green’, which means anyone can put a green label on something and that’s all people think we need to do. Marketers and charlatans are having a field day with that term.
Sally Jewell reflects the President’s view of the environment, IMO. She likes to climb mountains, so that makes her an environmentalist. She’s got a background in energy. She puts a nice veneer of wanting to get children disconnect from nature out in the national parks, says she’s concerned about wildlife because she nixed a road project in Alaska, huffs and puffs a little about climate change deniers – but her real purpose is drill, baby, drill lite. And what in God’s name is she doing collaborating with Jon Tester and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation!
Whatever credibility the RMEF once had for conservation was gone the moment the Murie family pulled their family-named conservation award because of RMEF’s stand on killing wolves – completely opposite to theirs. And the RMEF now is just a money-making operation only concerned with membership. Conserving the green, all right.
“And the RMEF now is just a money-making operation only concerned with membership. Conserving the green, all right.”
We can add quite a few “conservation” groups to that. Their pollyanna, let’s break bread together approach to solving the wolf issue has done quite a bit of damage to conservation by diverting us from hard-ball strategies that work to collaborationist strategies that protect the status quo. Who benefits from this misguided strategy? Certainly not the wildlife.
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