Wolves

On Jan. 13, Colorado’s Park and Wildlife Commission approved a resolution that prevents the reintroduction of grey wolves to Colorado, and Colorado Farm Bureau members attended the hearing to show support of the resolution. (more…)

When Idaho Fish and Game took over wolf management in 2011, the wolf population had grown unchecked for more than a decade after reaching federal recovery levels of 10 breeding pairs and 100 wolves eleven years earlier. This was due to repeated lawsuits that stalled delisting and delayed transfer of wolves to state management. As a result, wolf conflicts with livestock and elk populations were rampant in most parts of Idaho north of the Snake River and livestock producers and hunters grew increasingly frustrated. After five years of state management of wolves in Idaho, we’re seeing positive results: • In 2010, the year before wolves were delisted, there were 109 confirmed wolf depredations on livestock in Idaho. Now livestock depredations…

  Getting aggressive early with livestock-killing wolves works better than gradually ratcheting up the response, according to research published last November by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Liz Bradley. “Killing livestock is a learned behavior,” said Bradley, based at the Region 2 office in Missoula. “You might have a pack in an area for several years and not have a problem, and then, boom, you have a livestock kill, and then it happens again and again and again. There are many variables, but if you decide removing wolves is the best option, you’re better to take more earlier than picking away at them.” Ten years of data looking at how wolf-pack size and distribution predict livestock attacks has helped…

DENVER (AP) — Suspicion over federal plans to restore endangered Mexican gray wolves in the Southwest has spread to Colorado and Utah, where ranchers and officials are fiercely resisting any attempt to import the predators. About 110 Mexican gray wolves — a smaller subspecies of the gray wolf — now roam a portion of Arizona and New Mexico, nearly two decades after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released 11 wolves there to restart a population that had nearly vanished. The agency hopes to complete a comprehensive recovery plan for the Mexican wolf in 2017, and officials say they've made no decision about releasing them in Colorado or Utah. But neither state is waiting. Their governors joined Arizona and New…

http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/wolf-issue-back-in-wildlifes-crosshairs By Dennis Webb Sunday, November 22, 2015 Concern among the governors of the Four Corners states over federal recovery plans for the Mexican wolf has prompted the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to look at again weighing in on the issue of wolves more generally. The agency on Friday considered a draft resolution that would reaffirm positions taken in the 1980s in which it opposed the reintroduction of wolves — and for that matter, grizzly bears — into the state because of concerns about impacts to livestock, wildlife and human welfare. However, it put off any action until later, in part to consider ensuring that it’s also consistent with the recommendations made by a Wolf Working Group and adopted…

Thursday, November 19, 2015  http://thewesterner.blogspot.com/2015/11/scientists-want-wolves-removed-from.html A group of leading wolf scientists are urging the western Great Lakes population of gray wolves be removed from protections of the Endangered Species Act. The 26 scientists, including Dave Mech of the University of Minnesota and Adrian Wydeven of the Timber Wolf Alliance, argue the species has successfully recovered in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin and should be delisted. "It is in the best interests of gray wolf conservation and for the integrity of the Endangered Species Act for wolves to be delisted in the western Great Lakes states where biological recovery has occurred and where adequate regulatory mechanisms are in place to manage the species," wrote the scientists in a letter delivered Wednesday to…

PHOENIX -- The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) and the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) released a pair of Mexican wolves into the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests yesterday. The Mexican Wolf Interagency Field Team (IFT) conducted a "soft release" of wolves M1130 and F1305 (F indicates female and M indicates male), meaning the wolves will be held in an enclosure until the animals chew through the fencing and self-release. The female is the Rim Pack breeding female that was taken into captivity in January to be paired with M1130, a more genetically-diverse male. M1130 was whelped at the California Wolf Center in 2008 and eventually moved to the Service's Sevilleta Wolf Management Facility in New Mexico. The wolf pair…