A brief introduction and an interesting cryptic telephone call
Like many people across Colorado and around the world, I’ve been eagerly waiting to learn more about Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s (CPW) operation to capture and relocate the individuals comprising what has come to be called the Copper Creek pack—a tight knit family group consisting of a mother, a father, and their four children.
On Friday August 23, 2024, before the CPW operation was announced, I received a cryptic phone call from someone out of state who asked me a number of questions including: Would I be okay if some wolves were killed to save others, to which I answered no, killing is off the table. I also was asked if I would support trapping and relocating wolves from where they were causing a problem and I said I’d prefer that they were left alone, but if that wasn’t an option and they had to be relocated the entire pack had to be kept intact and they could only be moved to another wild location.
Thinking back on this phone call, I felt like was being played, being tested, because the person who called well knew my position of leaving the lupine family alone and had to know what I’d say.
When the announcement of the trapping and relocating operation was made on August 27th, I once again thought about the surprising phone call and it felt as the caller knew something was coming down the turnpike and was warning me, offering a premonition of what was to come, and wanted to see if perhaps I’d change my views.
We now know the Copper Creek pack made their den on the property of a rancher who wanted them dead, but was denied a chronic depredation permit because they did little to deter the wolves from preying on their sheep, and perhaps even encouraged it by leaving unburied carcasses in an exposed ‘kill pit.’
Supporters of a ballot initiative that seeks to ban the hunting of mountain lions, bobcats and lynx are citing a recently-released report saying mountain lions play a critical role in reducing the spread of a fatal, incurable neurological disease affecting deer and elk.
According to the report “Big Cats as Nature’s Check Against Disease” by Dr. Jim Keen, a veterinarian and infectious disease expert, mountain lions prey on deer and elk afflicted with chronic wasting disease, an illness caused by proteins called prions and spread through urine, feces, saliva, or contact with a contaminated environment.
Symptoms of the disease include behavioral changes, weight loss, tremors, confusion, teeth grinding, and drooling. The disease has a 100% fatality rate.
The Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing federal funding for conservation and preserving access for hunters and fishermen, called chronic wasting disease “the biggest threat to the future of deer hunting.”
“With no vaccine or cure for Chronic Wasting disease, wildlife managers are struggling to find solutions,” Keen said.
“Perhaps the best policy response at the moment in Colorado is to stop killing 500 or so mountain lions a year that conduct population cleansing at no cost to the state and that protect the long-term health and viability of cervid populations.”
The report also references field studies conducted in Colorado suggesting that coyotes, mountain lions, and bobcats can inactivate the prions that cause chronic wasting disease during digestion, reducing environmental contamination. According to the report, if not ingested by a predator, prions can survive in an environment for years.
Banning the hunting of big cats will benefit the deer hunting industry by reducing the spread of chronic wasting disease, Keen also claimed.
“If you want to protect hunting and other forms of wildlife-associated recreation associated with deer and elk, then protect mountain lions and allow them to deliver their gratis predator-cleansing services,” said Keen. “Mountain lions are a deer and elk hunter’s best friend.”
Some wildlife experts, however, are unsure whether mountain lions significantly impact the spread of chronic wasting disease in deer and elk populations.
Larry Desjardin, president of the conservation nonprofit Keep Routt Wild, said he used to believe mountain lions “could be the key” to controlling the disease, but has since changed his position on the matter.
According to Desjardin, mountain lions tend to prey on CWD-positive deer in the later stages of the disease’s progression, when it has become strongly symptomatic. However, for most of the disease’s progression, which can take up to two years before becoming fatal, the infected deer or elk show no symptoms but continue to shed infectious prions, which can spread to other animals.
“There is no evidence that areas with large lion populations have significantly fewer CWD infected deer,” said Desjardin. “Thinking of the extreme case is a good thought experiment about this mechanism- imagine that lions selectively cull all CWD-positive deer one day before they were going to die anyway. Of course this would have no impact, as the vast majority of prions would already be shed.”
Desjardin says hunting is the only tool shown to impact CWD levels in mule deer, because the disease occurs at a much higher rate in males, and a study where hunters were issued more tags for bucks than does showed a subsequent drop in CWD.
“I once advocated for a reduction of lion tags in a local game unit to grow the lion population and therefore reduce CWD,” said Desjardin. “In retrospect, I was wrong. I learned about the timing of lion culls by studying more literature. It’s up to all of us to follow the science and look for realistic methods that could control this terrible disease.”
Surprising quartet of four southern state congressional representatives unite to sponsor a bill pushed by former Humane Society of the United States’ leader Wayne Pacelle.
A coyote runs from people chasing it on snowmobiles. Videos that show people running down wildlife while riding snowmobiles can be found online with relative ease. (YouTube screenshot)
The fallout from the infamous incident involving a Wyoming wolf that was run down by Daniel man on a snowmobile, badly injured and paraded into a bar now includes federal legislation aimed at banning the practice.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) was the lead author of a bill that’s been dubbed the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act, which would prohibit running over and killing wildlife with motorized vehicles on some classes of federal land. The bipartisan measure was introduced on Thursday, according to Gabrielle Lipsky, a staffer for the South Carolinian congresswoman, who shared a statement on behalf of her boss.
“Our federal lands are not battlegrounds for reckless and belligerent behavior,” Mace said. “This bill will preserve the safety and beauty of our natural spaces and ensure wildlife can thrive without the threat of harm from motor vehicles.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) in 2017. (Wikimedia Commons)
Co-sponsors include three congressmen from southern states that aren’t exactly known for their snowmobiling: Reps. Don Davis (D-North Carolina), Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Troy Carter (D-Louisiana). The bill materialized after months of lobbying from animal rights and environmental organizations, and it was shepherded chiefly by Wayne Pacelle, a former president of the Humane Society of the United States who now leads a group called Animal Wellness Action.
“We have allowed state authorities plenty of time to handle the situation on their own,” Pacelle told five members of the Wyoming media in a press call on Thursday. “That’s why we’re turning here.”
Simultaneous to the bill that will be considered by Congress, the Wyoming Legislature will have a shot at enacting legislation in response to the February torture of a wolf in Sublette County. In its current form, the state-level legislation would explicitly maintain the legality of running over species classified as predators with motorized vehicles, with the caveat that they must be swiftly killed after being struck.
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Allegations that a Wyoming man captured, tortured and killed a wolf have sparked outrage across the world and prompted a wave of social media posts. (collage by Tennessee Watson/WyoFile)
Pacelle also shopped the bill to one member of Wyoming’s congressional delegation: U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who was not on board.
“With all due respect to my southern colleagues, we do not need members from districts that do not even drive snowmobiles trying to regulate our western way of life,” Lummis told WyoFile in a statement.
Efforts to regulate running over animals with snowmobiles have been contested by the livestock industry.
“I’ve talked with a number of livestock producers across the state — in particular, sheep producers — who have said that they view it as one of their most effective tools” for predator management, Wyoming Stock Growers Association Executive Vice President Jim Magagna told WyoFile in July.
Lobbying nationally, Pacelle also ran into resistance from industry groups. Early in the summer he was working with Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) on sponsoring the legislation, who was “poised” to bring it, but it died while being vetted.
“I do believe it was the Texas Farm Bureau and perhaps the Safari Club International,” Pacelle said.
Although Safari Club International is a hunting organization, hook-and-bullet conservation groups have generally advocated for a prohibition on running over animals with snowmobiles, which is a recreational activity in some portions of Wyoming.
In Pacelle’s view, broad support for addressing animal cruelty helps explain why what could be considered strange congressional bedfellows have united to sponsor the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act.
“These are lawmakers who are keenly interested in animal welfare,” he said. “Ultimately, their decision to introduce the bill today is an affirmation of their view that cruelty to animals is wrong.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) is the primary sponsor of a bill that’s been dubbed the Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act. She promoted her legislation on X.com. (Screenshot/X.com)
The framework of the SAW Act is based on a single-sentence state statute from Minnesota that dates to 1986: “A person may not use a motor vehicle to intentionally drive, chase, run over, kill, or take a wild animal.”
The SAW Act, however, has more layers. It would impose a fine of up to $5,000 and up to one year imprisonment for intentionally using a motor vehicle to “run over, strike, or kill a wild animal on public lands.”
There are also exceptions. A snowmobiler or motor vehicle user would not be liable if they struck wildlife to “avoid injury or death to themselves or another person” or to “avoid the destruction of personal property.” Wildlife officials who run over animals “pursuant to a preexisting wildlife management plan” would also not be in violation.
As it’s written, the SAW Act defines public land as those managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior. That provision would exclude U.S. Forest Service managed property — which is under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s purview. Federal land managers in Wyoming told the Jackson Hole News&Guide this spring they lack the jurisdictional authority to prohibit killing wildlife with snowmobiles. Absolute primacy over wildlife policy is debated, however, and there are federal laws that prohibit certain types of hunting, such as the Airborne Hunting Act.
Zimbabwe will cull 200 elephants as it faces an unprecedented drought that has led to food shortages, a move that tackle a ballooning population of the animals, the country’s wildlife authority has said.
Zimbabwe had “more elephants than it needed”, the environment minister said in parliament on Wednesday, adding that the government had instructed the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Authority (ZimParks) to begin the culling process.
The 200 elephants would be hunted in areas where they had clashed with humans, including Hwange, home of Zimbabwe’s largest natural reserve, said the director general of ZimParks, Fulton Mangwanya.
Zimbabwe’s environment minister, Sithembiso Nyoni, told Voice of America: “We are having a discussion with ZimParks and some communities to do like what Namibia has done, so that we can cull the elephants and mobilise the women to maybe dry the meat, package it, and ensure that it gets to some communities that need the protein.”
Zimbabwe is home to an estimated 100,000 elephants – the second-biggest population in the world after Botswana.
Due to conservation efforts, Hwange is home to 65,000 of the animals, more than four times its capacity, according to ZimParks. Zimbabwe last culled elephants in 1988.
Neighbouring Namibia said this month that it had already killed 160 wildlife animals in a planned cull of more than 700, including 83 elephants, to cope with its worst drought in decades.
Zimbabwe and Namibia are among a swathe of countries in southern Africa that have declared a state of emergency because of drought.
About 42% of Zimbabweans live in poverty, according to UN estimates, and authorities say about 6 million will require food assistance during the November to March lean season, when food is scarcest.
The move to hunt the elephants for food was criticised by some, not least because the animals are a major draw for tourists.
“Government must have more sustainable eco-friendly methods to dealing with drought without affecting tourism,” said Farai Maguwu, director of the nonprofit Centre for Natural Resource Governance.
“They risk turning away tourists on ethical grounds. The elephants are more profitable alive than dead,” he said.
“We have shown that we are poor custodians of natural resources and our appetite for ill-gotten wealth knows no bounds, so this must be stopped because it is unethical.”
But Chris Brown, a conservationist and CEO of the Namibian Chamber of Environment, said elephants had a “devastating effect on habitat if they are allowed to increase continually, exponentially”.
“They really damage ecosystems and habitats, and they have a huge impact on other species which are less iconic and therefore matter less in the eyes of the Eurocentric, urban armchair conservation people,” he said.
“Those species matter as much as elephants.”
Namibia’s cull of elephants has been condemned by conservationists and the animal rights group Peta as shortsighted, cruel and ineffective.
But the government said the 83 to be culled would be only a small fraction of the estimated 20,000 elephants in the arid country, and would relieve pressure on grazing and water supplies.
Exposing the Big Game 