UPDATED 5:30 P.M. FEB 22, 2019 WITH COMMENTS FROM WDFW NEAR BOTTOM
Colville wildlife managers posted a rule change this afternoon that removes the annual limit on wolves for tribal hunters as well as switched the season to open year round both on the reservation and what’s known as the “North Half.”
ONE OF TWO YOUNG WOLVES CAPTURED AND COLLARED ON THE COLVILLE RESERVATION SEVERAL YEARS AGO. (COLVILLE CONFEDERATED TRIBES)
Last September, the Business Council had dropped the three-wolf limit on the “South Half” — the 2,100-square-mile reservation in North-central Washington’s southeast Okanogan and southern Ferry Counties — but yesterday members approved extending that to both zones in a 12-0 vote.
Wolf hunting in the North Half, which is comprised of federal, state and private lands comanaged with WDFW, was otherwise slated to end at the end of this month.
“Tags are still…
View original post 367 more words
Exposing the Big Game 
Strange. You just have to wonder what is going on here. I love it (not) when I read that ‘this change in law shouldn’t markedly have any affect on things’. Then why change it? Because it will. It really is devious.
There was something about Washington ranchers being allowed to kill or to have killed more wolves for depredation – and the rationale was the same – ‘historically, the state has only killed x number of wolves’, supposedly to assuage any fears wildlife advocates might have. If the law is being changed, it is for a reason, to allow more wolves to be killed. Why change it otherwise? A chpping away at the laws, especially when the general public doesn’t really even know what is going on. Disingenuous statements. Shame on Martorelli for saying this in both cases – the tribal and general state ‘management’, so called.
Wolf advocates should have known that this would happen. Wolf hatred is too irrational wherever it occurs and too ingrained in this part of the country to fight or change. Wolves may be part of a well-functioning ecosystem, they may be apex predators, and they may be drivers of the trophic cascade, but bringing them back to a constant killing spree was not the right or fair thing to do.
There’s something rotten here – it smells like a combined ganging up on wolves.
I wish I knew how outside ranchers insinuated themselves into tribal politics, that’s what it smells like. Any devious method possible is what humans are capable of.