Tag Archives: Idaho

Stop the exterminat​ion of Idaho wolf packs!

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A hit man sent by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game may be the last thing the Monumental and Golden Creek wolf packs will see before they die.

Yes, you read that correctly.

The U.S Forest Service (USFS) has ignored their own wilderness management policy and allowed the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) to send a trapper out to exterminate two wolf packs deep within the vast Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

This is a massive betrayal of the public trust. Tell the USFS, the agency in charge of protecting this Wilderness Area, to immediately stop the wolf eradication program in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness area.

The future of wolves in Idaho is grim if we don’t act against their brutal anti-wolf agenda. In 2012, IDFG funded the aerial killing of 14 wolves, paying a bounty of $1600 per dead wolf. And now the Forest Service is letting it happen – against their own policies.

Enough is enough. Tell the USFS that their reckless decision to allow entire wolf packs to be exterminated in a protected wilderness area is unconscionable.

There isn’t any time to lose – as you read this, the state’s hit man is out laying his traps which by Idaho law can be left unchecked for up to 72 hours – leaving anything caught to bleed to death or succumb to exposure while waiting to be shot by the returning trapper.

This is going on as we speak – time is of the essence.

Please, take action immediately! Tell the USFS that it’s their duty to protect the wild in Wilderness Areas – and they must stop this reckless wolf extermination!

Thank you for all that you do.

https://secure.defenders.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2679

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Salmon Idaho Derby “Winners” Announced

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The photo is one sent by someone that was at the Derby. It is not from the Salmon Recorder-Herald weekly newspaper, which is not on line, and which has ranted against wolves since 1995. A friend summarized what the article said in today’s paper.
 from left to right (according to the Recorder-Herald)
Jeremiah Jones, Terry Cummings, Cody Morgan, Casey Thompson, Chip Johnson, Ray Whittier
Caption in paper reads:
“WINNERS IN THE coyote and wolf derby stand together with their winnings and trophies.  Left to right are Jeremiah Jones, Terry Cummings, Cody Morgan, Casey Thompson, Chip Johnson and Ray Whittier.  The pots were divided between the winners and trophies awarded.”
according to the article – $1,000 and trophies for most coyotes (5) went to Ray and Chip.
Largest female pot of cash went to Cody Morgan – 26.5 lbs
Largest male pot of cash went to Terry Cummings – 31 lbs
Chip Johnson had the most females
Mark Anderson won a camo suit (door prize??)
film crew from Montana Public TV shot video and Eric Stuart of London, England shot still photos for “Shooting Times”
billi jo beck quoted in article saying that the $1,000 wolf prize would carry over until the second annual derby.
Also see:

Advertising for videos of “coyote dogs”
 And:
Upcoming JMK Coyote Hunt this weekend out of Crane Oregon. $100 fee for 2-man teams.

Controversial Idaho hunting contest ends with no wolves killed

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/31/us-usa-hunt-idaho-idUSBRE9BU02J20131231

By Laura Zuckerman

SALMON, Idaho Tue Dec 31, 2013

(Reuters) – A controversial hunting contest in Idaho targeting wolves and coyotes has ended with nearly two dozen coyotes killed but no wolves shot, though rancor over the event remains undiminished.

The coyote and wolf derby was promoted by ranchers and hunting enthusiasts as a form of family recreation aimed at reducing the number of predators threatening livestock and big-game animals like elk prized by hunters. It was condemned by conservationists as cruel and unsportsmanlike.

The weekend hunt on national forest land ringing the Idaho mountain town of Salmon drew 250 contestants seeking cash and trophies in categories ranging from bagging the largest wolf to shooting the most female coyotes. Children as young as 10 were invited to compete in a youth division.

The event was sponsored by Idaho for Wildlife, which fights “all radical anti-hunting and anti-gun environmentalists,” according to its executive3b. Fur buyer dumps coyote in rig director Steve Alder.

Adler said none of the teams managed to kill a wolf, but 23 coyotes were killed, making it a far cry from the “wolf killing spree” predicted by opponents.

“It shows hunting is not an effective tool to eliminate wolves. We’re going to have to take more aggressive action,” Alder said.

Hunters brought coyote carcasses to Salmon to be measured and counted and potentially sold to fur buyers. Several carcasses were piled in the back of pickup trucks.

Some contestants said they were disappointed at not bagging any wolves, and expressed frustration with opponents of the event.

“We’ll only have agreement with environmentalists when we kill all the wolves here,” said Jeremiah Martin, a hunter from Salmon.

Jim Robertson-wolf-copyrightOnline petitions criticizing the contest garnered tens of thousands of signatures and opponents have threatened a boycott of Idaho’s famous potatoes.

The derby is thought to have been the first statewide competitive wolf shoot in the continental United States since 1974, when gray wolves in the Lower 48 came under the federal Endangered Species Act protections after being hunted, trapped and poisoned to near extinction.

Wolves in the Northern Rockies, including Idaho, and in the western Great Lakes, lost the protection of the act in recent years as states pushed for hunting and trapping rights. The Obama administration is now proposing to strip wolves of federal safeguards nationwide.

Coyotes are considered pests and are allowed to be shot on sight in much of the U.S. West.

On Friday, a U.S. judge rejected a request by conservation groups to block the Idaho hunt, which was staged on a national forest near where federal wildlife managers reintroduced wolves to the Rocky Mountain West in the mid-1990s.

WildEarth Guardians and others had argued that the U.S. Forest Service did not issue proper permits for the event, but the judge said the contest was similar to activities like picnicking that do not require such special permits.

Bethany Cotton, wildlife program manager for WildEarth Guardians, said the legal battle will go on.

“A killing contest has no place on public lands,” she said.

(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Steve Gorman and David Brunnstrom)

Aftermath of Idaho Wolf Derby For Residents

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http://www.kmvt.com/news/latest/Two-Day-Idaho-Wolf-Derby-Concludes-237916091.html

By Rachel Holt

Dec 29, 2013

Salmon, Idaho ( KMVT-TV / KTWT-TV )

The town of Salmon is a quiet community.

However, that seemingly changed overnight as the Idaho Wolf Derby thrust the area into the national spotlight.

Protesters angered by the killing of wolves, using drastic measures to try to stop the event.

Resident Theresa Butt states, “my friend got threatened. When we are getting people threatening to come into town and kill people, there is a problem. My friend Jen Larson, someone called and said they would like to hang their entire family up by a noose. Because they own the Savage Grill and sponsored a legal hunt. What’s wrong with that?”

Dave Larson, Jen’s husband, adds, “some extremists can say some things… do we have our guard up? Absolutely. They threatened my family, our business, our employees, our way of life. A guy stands up to that. You keep your guard up and you’re aware of it.”

Jen adds, “we’re just here to make a living and support the community. We don’t want all the wolf lovers to hate us. It’s just crazy– in the last two weeks we have found out there are some crazy people out there, on both sides of it.”

At the conclusion of the two day event, no wolves were actually killed but 21 coyotes were harvested.

Tom Curet, regional supervisor at Idaho Fish and Game, says, “people raised their concerns and from a biological perspective this derby is very closely managed and it’s something that can be supported by the wolves and coyotes and it will have minimal impact.”

While the impact on the wildlife was minimal, some residents feel for the town of Salmon, the damage has been done.

Butt says, “one of the things we’re really concerned about is how we’re being represented in the press. We’re not a bunch of hillbillies running around shooting guns for fun. We are concerned that our animals that we live on, that we have to eat to survive, are being killed by these wolves. We have a legal right to hunt them.”

[So do the wolves. It seems to me that if there were so many wolves out there taking elk, one of them would have been shot during their contest hunt.]

Idaho Wolf Hunting Contest Highlights Ongoing Divide Between Hunters And Advocates

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coyote contest kill

By

A group of hunters in Salmon, Idaho is being criticized for a two-day “coyote and wolf derby” its sponsoring next week.

Idaho for Wildlife’s organized hunt is December 28 and 29. The event is focused on young hunters. Sponsors have put up two $1,000 prizes for teams that kill the biggest wolf and the most coyotes.

The contest has once again highlighted the divide between wolf hunters and wolf advocates.

Christine Gertschen is a wildlife advocate in Sun Valley. She says she’s been a critic of hunting derbies in the past.

“Then when this one came up, I just kind of lost it,” she says. “I started writing Fish and Game, and the commissioners. It sends such a poor message of how we feel about wildlife. That we just throw their carcasses in a pile and count them?”

The event has drawn sharp criticism from all across the country. A Change.org petition to stop the derby had 12,500 signatures as of Friday morning.

The statewide director of Idaho for Wildlife, Steve Alder, says the hunt won’t yield stacks of dead wolves. He says he’s not sure hunters will kill any of the animals. But he does regret the way his group has marketed the derby.

Hear our conversation with Steve Alder of Idaho for Wildlife.

“I would have removed the wolf’s name out of it and just called it a ‘predator youth derby’,” he says. “That would have hopefully circumvented some of the radical [environmentalists’] emotional rubbish about the killing of all these wolves that [they claim] we’re gonna do.”

On Thursday, the Humane Society of the United States issued one of the strongest rebukes of the event so far. It called the contest a “wolf massacre” and labeled organizers as “ruthless”. It urged those who feel the same to write Idaho’s Fish and Game commissioners.

….
“Hunting is the tool that Idaho Fish and Game uses to manage, and this is a tool for management,” he says.

Copyright 2013 Boise State Public Radio

Full Story: http://boisestatepublicradio.org/post/idaho-wolf-hunting-contest-highlights-ongoing-divide-between-hunters-and-advocates

21 Coyotes, No Wolves Killed in Idaho Death Derby

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copyrighted wolf in river

21 coyotes, no wolves shot in disputed Idaho derby

by Associated Press

KTVB.COM

December 30, 2013

BOISE — Organizers of a predator derby in Idaho say 21 coyotes but no wolves were shot by about 60 hunters.

Steve Alder of Idaho for Wildlife, the weekend event’s promoter, said the low tally helps prove sport hunting isn’t a very effective tool in managing Idaho’s wolves.

The derby near Salmon in Idaho’s mountains proceeded after a fight between its organizers and environmentalists in U.S. District Court.

A judge Friday ruled against event foes including WildEarth Guardians who wanted the derby scotched on grounds the U.S. Forest Service hadn’t issued a permit.

U.S. District Magistrate Judge Candy Wagahoff Dale decided no permit was needed.

Alder’s group offered two separate, $1,000 prizes — one for the hunter who killed the biggest wolf, the other for the hunter who bagged the most coyotes.

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No wolves shot on 1st day of Salmon, Idaho, hunting derby

December 29, 2013 7:45 am  •  Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho — Organizers of a wolf- and coyote-shooting derby in central Idaho say about 200 people signed up but only about 50 or 60 are hunters and the rest are just offering support for the event.

Steve Alder says no wolves had been reported shot late Saturday, the first day of the event that ends late Sunday afternoon.

He says one hunter’s vehicle was vandalized with paint and scraping, and that authorities are investigating.

A federal judge Friday allowed the derby to proceed on public land after ruling its organizers aren’t required to get a special permit from the U.S. Forest Service.

WildEarth Guardians and other environmental groups had sought to stop the derby, arguing the Forest Service was ignoring its own rules that require permits for competitive events.

Back to the Dark Ages: What’s Next, Bald Eagle Blasting?

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The New York Times’ editorial, “Wolf Haters” (December 29, 2013), brought up two prime examples of how anti-wolf fanatics in states like Idaho are trying to drag us back to the dark ages of centuries past, when predators were hunted and trapped to extinction by ignorant people claiming all of nature’s bounty for themselves.

Most Americans nowadays understand natural processes well enough to know that apex species, like wolves, will find equilibrium with their prey if given a chance. Perhaps the only ones who won’t accept that fact are trophy hunters who still claim the elk in Idaho’s wilderness areas as a commodity exclusively for them. It goes beyond the absurd that the US Forest Service would permit a state game department to bring in a bounty hunter because the land is too rugged for the average wolf hunter. To me that seems like the perfect kind of place for predator and prey to return to some semblance of the order that existed before the spread of Manifest Destiny.

I’m sure the enlightened lawmakers who crafted the Endangered Species Act (exactly 40 years ago) never imagined recovering species would be used as targets for some hair-brained “hunters’ rights” groups’ “derby hunt,” as is going on in Salmon, Idaho. Yet this brand of disregard is not without precedence—endangered prairie dogs are routinely targeted by “shooting sports” enthusiasts across the West. What’s next—contest hunts on Yellowstone Bison reminiscent of Buffalo Bill’s reckless era? Or, perhaps a Sunday afternoon of blasting bald eagles?

 

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

Text and Wildlife Photography ©Jim Robertson, 2013. All Rights Reserved

2013 Wolf Issues

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December 29, 2013 in Outdoors

2013 outdoors: Wolf issues
Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review

The gray wolf, reintroduced to the Rockies in the mid-1990s, continued to leave its mark across the Northwest in 2013 and into the legislatures. Here are some highlights.

• Idaho and Montana report significantly lower numbers of wolves for the first time since reintroduction, owing to hunting, trapping and wildlife control. But wildlife officials say wolf numbers are still too high.

• Washington estimates up to 100 wolves in the state, double the estimate in 2012.

• The cost of managing wolves in Washington, where they are still protected, is likely to increase by more than 200 percent from the past two years to about $2.3 million in 2013-14, wildlife managers say.

• Wolf hunting and trapping become issues of national attention as a wolf hunter shoots and kills a malamute romping with its owner while cross country skiing near Lolo Pass; a Sandpoint woman’s dog is caught in a snare set along a closed forest road, and a central Idaho predator hunting derby becomes the first modern contest to target wolves in the lower 48.

• Hunting authorized outside of Yellowstone Park results in the killing of wolves popular with tourists as well as radio-collared wolves vital to research.

• The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposes to drop endangered species protections for the gray wolf in most of the country.

• Pro-wolf groups submit a million comments in December to the FWS favoring continued federal protection.

• Washington legislation makes it legal to kill wolves threatening pets and livestock, provides state wildlife managers more resources to prevent wolf-livestock conflict and expands criteria to compensate livestock owners for wolf-related losses.

• Idaho hires a hunter to eliminate two wolf packs in the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness to take the pressure off collapsing elk herds.

• Michigan becomes sixth state with a wolf hunting season.

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Wolf Haters

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First, please re-read this–it’s supposed to be a piece of satire–please read it carefully. It says Trophies for how many coyote-HUNTERS shot, etc.. People are confusing it with the original poster and saying things like, “this is terrible…” No, no, this is a good thing. Please read it again with that in mind: https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/1st-annual-coyote-and-wolf-hunter-derby/

Also, here’s a New York Times editorial about the “Wolf Haters”

by Lawrence Downes

The federal government removed the gray wolf from the endangered list in the Northern Rocky Mountains in 2011, essentially leaving wolves’ fates in the hands of state fish-and-game departments, hunters and ranchers. The predictable happened: hunting resumed, and the wolf population fell. In states like Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, an age-old antipathy to wolves flourishes, unchecked.

In Idaho, two recent developments have alarmed those who want to protect wolves and see them not as vermin, but as predators necessary for a healthy ecosystem.

First was the hiring, by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, of a hunter to travel into federal wilderness to eliminate two wolf packs. The reason: wolves kill elk, and humans want to hunt elk. Normally the agency would just rely on hunters to kill the wolves, but because the area where these packs roam — in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness — is remote, the agency decided it would be more efficient to bring in a hired gun. A photo last week in The Idaho Statesman showed the hunter, Gus Thoreson, astride a horse, with three pack mules, looking like a modern-day Jeremiah Johnson.

Advocates for wolves are angry at the United States Forest Service for giving a state agency free rein to practice predator eradication on protected federal land — meaning, of course, our land — without public comment or review and in apparent violation of well-established wilderness-management regulations and policies. They point out, too, that it’s not clear how many wolves are there for Mr. Thoreson to wipe out, and little evidence that wolves in that area have done any damage to elk herds or livestock.

The other example of wolf-animus will be on display this weekend outside Salmon, Idaho, at a Coyote and Wolf Derby sponsored by a group called Idaho for Wildlife. A not-too-subtle poster for the event shows a wolf with its head in the cross hairs of a rifle scope and announces $2,000 in prizes to defend “our hunting heritage” against “radical animal-rights groups.” Organizers say they want to raise awareness of the potential risk to humans from a tapeworm that wolves — as well as elks and dogs — can carry. State officials say there are no known cases of people contracting tapeworm from wolves.

Environmentalists sought a court order to block the event, saying the Forest Service violated federal law and failed to follow its own procedures in allowing the killing contest. But a judge on Friday said it could proceed. The derby’s ugly depiction of wolves as diseased predators is a throwback to the bad old days when wolves, like coyotes, were vilified and bounty-hunted nearly to extinction.

It’s a sad coincidence that this weekend is also the 40th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, which was signed into law on Dec. 28, 1973. That act sought to enshrine sound science and wise ecosystem management over heedless slaughter and vengeful predation. Idaho is showing what a mistake it was to lift the shield from wolves too soon.

copyrighted Hayden wolf in lodgepoles

1st Annual Coyote and Wolf-Hunter Derby!

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Whereas sport hunters in Idaho are currently holding a contest hunt on not only coyotes but also this year on an until-recently endangered species—gray wolves—with $1,000.00 cash prizes being awarded for the most coyotes and the largest wolf killed; Whereas a federal court judge denied an injunction by environmental groups to stop the killing and allowed the misguided atrocity to proceed; Whereas it seems anyone who wants to can declare a derby hunt on any species they see fit; Whereas turn-about is fair play and two can play at that game, we proudly announce the…

First Annual
2-Day Coyote and Wolf-Hunter Hunting Derby
Salmon Idaho
December 28th and 29th, 2013

Trophies and Prize Money to Winners
1st Place—$1,000. Wolf-Hunter Prize and Trophy (Largest male wolf-hunter, by weight/girth)
1st Place—$1,000. Coyote-Hunter Prize and Trophy (Most coyote-hunters bagged)
Door Prizes Plus
$10.00–$20.00 pots for Largest Male Coyote-Hunter, Largest Female Coyote-Hunter, Most Female Coyote-Hunters, PLUS Youth Prizes for 10-11 year olds and 12-14 year olds!
 Entry Fees
$20.00 per hunter-hunter
Brought to you by
Idaho for the Rights of Wildlife, true sportsmen against hunter’s “rights”

Jim Robertson-wolf-copyright