BOISE, Idaho—The Biden administration defended the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services’ actions in Idaho in a letter Tuesday after the agency preemptively killed eight wolf pups from Idaho’s Timberline pack in response to complaints from a rancher grazing livestock on public lands.

“We are shocked that the Biden administration condones the slaughter of weeks-old wolf pups on public lands at the behest of private livestock interests,” said Talasi Brooks of Western Watersheds Project. “Wolves — especially wolf pups — pose no significant threat to livestock.”

Conservation groups learned that Wildlife Services started pursuing the pack in May when an agent killed the first three pups at the den site. The agency killed five more pups over the next two months. The groups urged USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to stop Wildlife Services from slaughtering weeks-old wolves on public lands.

In his Oct. 5 response letter, Secretary Vilsack rejected the request, stating that killing wolf pups is a “humane management option.”

“The mission of Wildlife Services is ‘to improve the coexistence of people and wildlife’, not killing defenseless puppies in their den, especially when there are so many effective nonlethal alternatives,” said Suzanne Asha Stone, director of the International Wildlife Coexistence Network based in Idaho. “We are deeply disappointed in this administration’s response.”

High school students at Timberline High School in Boise were devastated when they learned that Wildlife Services killed the Timberline pack’s pups. The school adopted the pack as its mascot when the school was founded in 1998.

“It’s disheartening to see the USDA justifying killing our pack’s innocent pups as ‘humane management.’ The data from Idaho’s Wood River Wolf Project study should’ve been enough to persuade politicians of the efficacy of nonlethal methods, yet the USDA and Biden administration continue to practice inaction,” said Michel Liao, a Timberline High School student. “It’s this very passivity that’s allowing people to eradicate all the pups from Timberline High School’s wolf pack this year on our public lands. It must stop.”

“We tell our students that science is key in wildlife management, yet scientific evidence tells us that killing or disturbing stable wolf packs leads to more livestock conflicts, not less, and it undermines our native ecosystems,” said Dick Jordan, Timberline High School science advisor. “We expect more from the Biden administration and our Department of Agriculture. Killing wolf pups is not humane by any sense of the word. And doing so while Idaho is working to eradicate its wolf population is supporting the state’s new war on wolves.”

Secretary Vilsack’s letter yesterday confirms that Wildlife Services will continue these unscientific and inhumane activities.

“All wolf killing is predicated on a lie that wolves cause significant livestock deaths,” said Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense. “They don’t. Wolves cause only a fraction of a percent of livestock deaths. And here Secretary Vilsack is compounding the travesty of this misnamed USDA program called ‘Wildlife Services’ by defending the killing of even pups. It is painfully obvious that Wildlife Services has fully embraced the cruel and self-serving demands of ranchers in Idaho. Americans should be outraged.”

“It’s disturbing to see state and federal officials openly supporting the killing of wolf pups. There is no scientific rationale for such barbaric measures,” said Andrea Zaccardi, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “With new laws clearly intended to decimate our wolf population, Idaho has launched a war against wolves that seems to have no limits to its cruelty.”

“The Biden administration’s response to our groups’ concerns was alarming, and the action that the administration stands behind is hideous,” said Katie Bilodeau with Friends of the Clearwater. “There are nonlethal wolf-predation deterrents that scientific testing has shown to be effective. Instead, federal and state officials chose the extreme and dubious alternative of killing pups in hopes that the parents would leave. We are grieved at the inhumane violence that federal and state officials dealt towards a social, family-based species like the wolf.”

“Killing these wolf pups was inhumane, unscientific and indefensible,” said Joe Bushyhead with WildEarth Guardians. “Wolves face enough persecution in Idaho already at the hands of the state. The Biden administration should not be using federal resources to make a bad situation even worse.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

Incident follows March 15 shooting of wolf by federal authorities

By Max Levy | mlevy@denverpost.com | The Denver Post

UPDATED: April 12, 2025 at 11:58 AM MDT

A male gray wolf collared by Colorado Parks and Wildlife was reported dead in Wyoming this week, according to the agency, which did not comment on the circumstances of the animal’s death.

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The wolf was one of 15 relocated from Canada to Colorado in January and is the second of that group to die recently in Wyoming. Four weeks ago, federal authorities shot and killed a wolf that was suspected to have preyed on five sheep in north-central Wyoming.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife wrote in a news release Friday that it became aware of the latest death Wednesday and worked with Wyoming Game and Fish to retrieve the wolf’s tracking collar.

CPW spokesperson Travis Duncan referred questions about the incident to Wyoming Game and Fish, which could not be reached for comment Saturday. In its news release, the Colorado agency wrote that “Wyoming state law prevents further detail from being shared.”

“Wolves are known to travel long distances to find food or mates, including into other states,” the agency wrote. “CPW does not comment on wildlife movements, operations or regulations in other states.”

By 

Brooke Steinberg

Published April 11, 2025, 2:51 p.m. ET142 Comments

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People seem to always have beef with vegans — and scientists say they’ve figured out why.

A new study published in the journal Food Quality and Preference found that your typical carnivore’s hatred of vegans might simply be due to envy.

Researchers from University of Vaasa in Finland wanted to understand why a plant-based diet and the use of meat substitutes are still so frowned upon in Europe.

“The consumption of meat and meat substitutes is a highly charged social phenomenon,” Roosa-Maaria Malila, an author of the study, said in a statement. “According to our research, consumers who prefer plant-based alternatives are perceived as socially different — and not in a good way.”

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The team asked 3,600 participants from Finland, the United Kingdom, Germany and Sweden to give their opinions of a fictional consumer, based on their grocery shopping habits.

Participants were shown three different shopping lists. All lists included the same five staple foods: pasta, bread, apple juice, carrots and bananas — but they varied based on the inclusion or exclusion of animal and plant-based protein products.

One list was for a meat eater, including items such as minced meat, cold cuts and sausages. The “flexible” list had a mix of meat and plant-based items, such as chicken rolls and vegetable sausages. The third list was heavy in meat substitutes, such as vegetable-based dumplings and vegetarian sausages.

The research found that the imaginary shoppers that preferred vegetarian foods were seen as environmentally friendly people who are competent, health-conscious and moral.

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However, participants also resented the faux fake meat eaters — bringing up feelings of fear, envy, contempt and anger.

“In our research, we found that people even wanted to act aggressively towards vegetarians or exclude them from social circles,” Malila shared.

The researchers explained that these mixed feelings reflect the “prevailing climate” of understanding the need to minimize meat consumption for environmental reasons.

“Understandably, changing one’s own consumption habits is not so simple. This can be reflected in frustration and channeled through those who are already driving change,” they wrote.

“Of course, the fear of giving up the benefits gained also causes similar feelings, even though a vegetarian diet need not really be a compromise, but the image around it may be perceived as such.”

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There’s a range of reasons why people choose not to reach for meat substitutes while grocery shopping, such as price or taste — but according to the study, the main reason seems to be a lack of social acceptability.

“Food is quite a strong part of our social identity. If and when vegetarian food evokes negative feelings, not many people want to risk being associated with it,” Malila explained.

“Belonging to a group is an evolutionary motive. We need acceptance from our fellow human beings.”