Two big wolf stories this week, one from California and another from Colorado, spotlight the fears and thrills of wolf re-introductions. A lone wolf who traveled from Oregon into northeast California was shot and killed (by ranchers?). In northwest Colorado, a wolf family was spotted and video’d last October. Although individual wolves have been reported now and then, this is the first evidence of a wolf pack in Colorado since the 1940s. Wolves had been killed aggressively by radical ranchers who thought they were in charge of everything because they’d lived there for a few decades.
In 2018, a wandering wolf from Oregon was shot and killed with a 22-caliber weapon in Modoc County California. This week, the USFWS announced that the dead wolf was found on December 5, 2018, less than a week after the tracking collar showed him entering California. Also on Dec 5, a rancher reported seeing a wolf feeding on the carcass of a 3½ month old calf. While OR59’s tracking collar documented him in the northern Lassen County area where the calf was found, CDFW’s review did not find evidence of wolf depredation.
The Center For Biological Diversity, this week, increased the reward for information about the killing (that leads to a conviction) to $7500. Initially, USFWS, who decided to ask the public’s help, had offered a $2500 reward after a year-long investigation into the wolf’s killing ran low on leads.
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The Livestock Loss Determination investigation of the calf found no sign of depredation.
On the morning of December 5, a livestock producer observed a wolf feeding on a calf carcass and notified CDFW. CDFW and USDA Wildlife Services staff investigated the carcass that day. The calf was approximately 3.5 months old.
There was no evidence of predator attack. The carcass had no antemortem bite marks, and no chase or kill scene was observed.
Investigators saw a wolf about 250 yards away on a hill overlooking the valley, as well as tracks of a single wolf on nearby roads. GPS locations indicated OR-59, a radio-collared wolf that dispersed from northeastern Oregon, was in the immediate area on December 5.
Summary: The young calf had died early on December 5. The carcass was only about 10% consumed, leaving most of the carcass available for thorough investigation. There were no external marks, scrapes, punctures nor internal hemorrhaging found anywhere on the carcass. Much of the lungs were filled with fluid indicating that the calf may have died from pneumonia.
Fluffy wolf boi was innocent.
I suspect anti-wolf terrorists (radical ranchers) and hope they are found and punished beyond the full extent of the law. We need to make a strong statement about the consequences of killing endangered wolves. After all, the Shasta Pack (10 wolves comprising 2 parents and their 2 litters) vanished in the same region in 2016. Wolves in California are federally protected under the ESA. Penalties for wolf persecution include fines of at least $100,000 and imprisonment. Beyond that, I propose any rancher who kills a wolf (or who enables someone who does so) should be banned forevermore from running cattle on public land.
In other wolves, the day after officials placed a measure on this year’s ballot proposing to re-introduce wolves to the state, Colorado Parks and Wildlife announced they found evidence of wolves living in northwestern Colorado. The wolves, who likely wandered in from Wyoming, said they didn’t need no stinking votes.
Northwest Colorado hunters in October reported six large canids traveling together in the far northwest corner of the state, and last week residents found a scavenged elk carcass near Irish Canyon, in the same area. State wildlife officials said this strongly suggests a pack of gray wolves may now be residing in Colorado.
This is just what wolves want to do — travel around wild areas together and eat elk at intervals (not cattle) — and also what humans should do when they see wolves — admire from a distance.
“We have no doubt that they are here, and the most recent sighting of what appears to be wolves traveling together in what can be best described as a pack is further evidence of the presence of wolves in Colorado,” CPW Northwest Regional Manager J.T. Romatzke said in a statement issued Wednesday morning.
“We will not take direct action and we want to remind the public that wolves are federally endangered species and fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As wolves move into the state on their own, we will work with our federal partners to manage the species,” Romatzke said.
Video taken predawn on Oct. 2, 2019 in Colorado with five individuals witnessing. The sage brush stands to my knees, I am 6 foot tall. This video shows clearly an adult and adolescent wolf together. Preceding the video there were numerous deep, low howls from different sources, but all within 100 yards of each other. The howls were distinctly different from the yips, barks, and howls from coyotes which sounded off shortly in areas completely separate after the wolves sighting. As you can see, this is not professional photography with animals in perfectly lit conditions where they stand and look at you for several minutes while you snap photos.
But not all humans are pleased the wolves are returning. In Paradise CA (RIP), I saw bumperstickers claiming environmentalists are the real terrorists because we want to re-introduce wolves to suitable habitat. Northern Rockies gray wolves have been delisted from the ESA and Wyoming’s anti-environmentalist mismanagement plan was approved that blames wolves for elk and deer populations falling below state Fish and Game targets. (The paradigm behind this plan is inherent in the agency’s name).
In much of Wyoming, the gray wolf is considered a “predatory animal,” including land bordering Colorado. According to the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, “predatory animals and predacious birds may be taken without a license” in non-protected areas of the state, making it easier for hunters to kill the species. This has traditionally made it difficult for the animal’s range to expand southward.
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Here’s the Colorado radical anti-wolf club’s position.
Stop the Wolf campaign chairman Denny Behrens issued a statement Wednesday saying the wolf sighting shows that wolves already are present in Colorado, contrary to assertions by “out-of-state radical environmental groups pushing forced wolf introduction.”
The only innocents in these stories are the fluffy bois and grrls.
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