Wolves belong in wild areas. They play an essential role in a healthy and functioning ecosystem. As an apex or keystone predator, grey wolves increase biodiversity and are crucial to the well being of everything, from flowering plants and trees, to insects and all the other mammals, including elk and deer.
Despite their inherent value, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are currently waging a war of extermination against these animals through hunting, trapping, snaring and aerial gunning.The extent of this war on wildlife is detailed in the following summary of the 2012 Idaho Wolf Monitoring Progress Report, as well as other sources, supplied by our Wolf Pack members.
Our immediate goal is to end the state-sanctioned hunting and trapping of wolves, and place them under the jurisdiction of the federal government and back on the road to recovery. We believe that all grey wolves should be protected under the Endangered Species Act until such time, that science, not politics, determines that the wolf population is sufficiently recovered, both biologically and genetically. It’s essential that wolves, and all predators alike, be permitted to fulfill their natural role in wildland ecosystems.
In Remembrance: The Idaho Wolf Holocaust of 2012-2013
Grey wolf pupIn May 2013, this Idaho wolf puppy was rescued by tourists who discovered him wandering hungry and alone alongside a road in a national forest. Found in the southern mountains near Ketchum, Idaho, he was about two months old and possibly a “war” orphan, since Idaho’s second annual wolf extermination project had just ended on June 30.
State-licensed “sporters” had spent ten glorious months shooting and trapping during a state-wide “harvest”, which culminated in the dislocation of numerous packs and the violent termination of 320 Idaho wolves. Victims of this holocaust were progeny of the federal government’s ultra-expensive Rocky Mountain wolf re-introduction project, which began in 1995.
Because Boise’s rescue hit the international wires, officials with Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) were obliged to let the puppy live. The little boy was soon rescued once again by the SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund. Today, Boise is nearly fully grown and living in beautiful surroundings at the Busch Gardens Park in Williamsburg, Virginia. He and several other young wolves have formed an inseparable family unit, to the delight of thousands of visitors awed by the beauty and agility of these creatures.
Only weeks after Boise escaped the land of the wolf-hater, those of his species left behind in Idaho entered yet another very dark night. On August 30, 2012, Idaho’s political apparatus, controlled exclusively by hunting and agricultural lobbies, launched its third annual assault against the several hundred remaining Idaho wolves.
It was on August 31, 2012, the second day of the new season, when a licensed Idaho bow hunter in the Nampa area used a predator call device to lure into the open a grey, four-month-old wolf puppy. Ain’t no moving target like a pup, some say. And so this intrepid bearer of the anti-wolf standard pulled back his mighty bow and shafted the tiny tike so young that he still had only his milk teeth. Medical literature and numerous eye-witness reports confirm that death by arrow, even for large animals, is an excruciating death.
In memory of the hundreds of Idaho wolves who have fallen this last season, we studied and condensed IDFG’s 2012 Wolf Progress Report, along with a mile-high stack of 2012-2013 mortality reports. This has helped us to understand what life is like for Idaho wolves, re-introduced to the state only 18 years ago. In order to put the numbers in context, it is useful to know these facts: Idaho has over 2-million cattle, 240,000 domestic sheep, 3,000 mountain lions, 20,000 black bears, 50,000 coyotes, at least 250,00 deer and 100,000 elk.
Yet, Idaho wolves have now been reduced to about 500, according to the latest tabulations. The state of Idaho has announced its intention to continue its aggressive purge until it reduces Idaho wolves to 150 (the current federally permissible minimum number). Idaho is a state with 83,557 square miles. Reducing wolves to the permissible minimum equates to just one wolf per each 5,570 square miles.
Wolves were re-listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2010, therefore cancelling the 2010-2011 hunting/trapping season
Since re-introduction in 1995-96, additional hundreds of Idaho wolves have been killed by government agents during “control operations” while an unknown number of others have died by “illegal take.” In preparation for the upcoming 2013-1014 wolf season, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission has turned up the “heat” by increasing harvest limits, adding additional trapping zones, legalizing wolf kill year-round on private property in the Idaho Panhandle and increasing the number of wolf tags available to individual hunters. In Idaho’s highly exploited wolf population, where packs are scattered and nursing females are killed right through denning season, pup and yearling mortality rates can be as high as 80 percent, according to federal data.
As with similar extermination operations underway in Montana and Wyoming, Idaho’s ongoing wolf massacre indicates appalling human social and cultural pathology. Idaho’s breathtaking overkill, it’s media pictures of bloodied wolf carcasses, its glorification of praise-seeking hunters who unleash incomprehensible suffering have taught us much about the prevailing values of our regional society. We see in Idaho’s atrocities the same mindless savagery and blood lust demonstrated by the clubbing of Canadian baby seals, the massacre of Australian kangaroos, the butchery of African lions and elephants, the wholesale slaughter of Japanese dolphins
Despite their inherent value, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming are currently waging a war of extermination against these animals through hunting, trapping, snaring and aerial gunning.The extent of this war on wildlife is detailed in the following summary of the 2012 Idaho Wolf Monitoring Progress Report, as well as other sources, supplied by our Wolf Pack members.
Our immediate goal is to end the state-sanctioned hunting and trapping of wolves, and place them under the jurisdiction of the federal government and back on the road to recovery. We believe that all grey wolves should be protected under the Endangered Species Act until such time, that science, not politics, determines that the wolf population is sufficiently recovered, both biologically and genetically. It’s essential that wolves, and all predators alike, be permitted to fulfill their natural role in wildland ecosystems.
In Remembrance: The Idaho Wolf Holocaust of 2012-2013
Grey wolf pupIn May 2013, this Idaho wolf puppy was rescued by tourists who discovered him wandering hungry and alone alongside a road in a national forest. Found in the southern mountains near Ketchum, Idaho, he was about two months old and possibly a “war” orphan, since Idaho’s second annual wolf extermination project had just ended on June 30.
State-licensed “sporters” had spent ten glorious months shooting and trapping during a state-wide “harvest”, which culminated in the dislocation of numerous packs and the violent termination of 320 Idaho wolves. Victims of this holocaust were progeny of the federal government’s ultra-expensive Rocky Mountain wolf re-introduction project, which began in 1995.
Because Boise’s rescue hit the international wires, officials with Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) were obliged to let the puppy live. The little boy was soon rescued once again by the SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund. Today, Boise is nearly fully grown and living in beautiful surroundings at the Busch Gardens Park in Williamsburg, Virginia. He and several other young wolves have formed an inseparable family unit, to the delight of thousands of visitors awed by the beauty and agility of these creatures.
Only weeks after Boise escaped the land of the wolf-hater, those of his species left behind in Idaho entered yet another very dark night. On August 30, 2012, Idaho’s political apparatus, controlled exclusively by hunting and agricultural lobbies, launched its third annual assault against the several hundred remaining Idaho wolves.
It was on August 31, 2012, the second day of the new season, when a licensed Idaho bow hunter in the Nampa area used a predator call device to lure into the open a grey, four-month-old wolf puppy. Ain’t no moving target like a pup, some say. And so this intrepid bearer of the anti-wolf standard pulled back his mighty bow and shafted the tiny tike so young that he still had only his milk teeth. Medical literature and numerous eye-witness reports confirm that death by arrow, even for large animals, is an excruciating death.
In memory of the hundreds of Idaho wolves who have fallen this last season, we studied and condensed IDFG’s 2012 Wolf Progress Report, along with a mile-high stack of 2012-2013 mortality reports. This has helped us to understand what life is like for Idaho wolves, re-introduced to the state only 18 years ago. In order to put the numbers in context, it is useful to know these facts: Idaho has over 2-million cattle, 240,000 domestic sheep, 3,000 mountain lions, 20,000 black bears, 50,000 coyotes, at least 250,00 deer and 100,000 elk.
Yet, Idaho wolves have now been reduced to about 500, according to the latest tabulations. The state of Idaho has announced its intention to continue its aggressive purge until it reduces Idaho wolves to 150 (the current federally permissible minimum number). Idaho is a state with 83,557 square miles. Reducing wolves to the permissible minimum equates to just one wolf per each 5,570 square miles.
- Idaho 2009-2010 hunting/trapping/snaring season: 188 wolves killed
- Idaho 2011-2012 hunting/trapping/snaring season: 379 wolves killed
- Idaho 2012-2013 hunting/trapping/snaring season: 320 wolves killed
- In three years, that’s 887 wolves killed - just in Idaho
Wolves were re-listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2010, therefore cancelling the 2010-2011 hunting/trapping season
Since re-introduction in 1995-96, additional hundreds of Idaho wolves have been killed by government agents during “control operations” while an unknown number of others have died by “illegal take.” In preparation for the upcoming 2013-1014 wolf season, the Idaho Fish and Game Commission has turned up the “heat” by increasing harvest limits, adding additional trapping zones, legalizing wolf kill year-round on private property in the Idaho Panhandle and increasing the number of wolf tags available to individual hunters. In Idaho’s highly exploited wolf population, where packs are scattered and nursing females are killed right through denning season, pup and yearling mortality rates can be as high as 80 percent, according to federal data.
As with similar extermination operations underway in Montana and Wyoming, Idaho’s ongoing wolf massacre indicates appalling human social and cultural pathology. Idaho’s breathtaking overkill, it’s media pictures of bloodied wolf carcasses, its glorification of praise-seeking hunters who unleash incomprehensible suffering have taught us much about the prevailing values of our regional society. We see in Idaho’s atrocities the same mindless savagery and blood lust demonstrated by the clubbing of Canadian baby seals, the massacre of Australian kangaroos, the butchery of African lions and elephants, the wholesale slaughter of Japanese dolphins
A poem for wolves by Alexandra Delis-Abrams, PhD.
Open Lap
I am still
The only movement, an occasional flutter of eyelids.
I am present in every way.
I see - I feel - I listen - I amOne with Father Sky
One with Mother Earth
One with all of LifeAnd then…
the presence and power of Canis Lupus in all her glory trots towards me.
I am awed by her beauty
I am stunned by her radiance
I am touched to tears by her magnificence
My heart pounds like an aged African drum.She is at my side
She smells my body, my flesh
She glances away and back again
I stand in silence,
in open receptivity to intuit the wisdom of my new/old friend
who pulses with the same Life Force as me.I loose my mind in the moment
I am being
I allow it all
The magic continuesIn a playful nudge she purposely pushes her body next to mine.
I feel brave, reach down and stroke her course fur,
not yet connecting to those piercing yellow eyes.Before I know it, I am on the ground.
This beauteous creature - this powerful expression of Life is in my lap,
feeling as natural as a pup suckling at mama’s breast.I don’t want to disturb her
I long to hold on to the bliss I feel…
to the union I cherish, to the rapture exploding in me.I hear inside, “can you hold on to a sunset?”
I treasure our bonding
our connected hearts
our playful engaging
I treasure our beingness
My wolf sister transmits to me
“Let go and simply be love”
Open Lap
I am still
The only movement, an occasional flutter of eyelids.
I am present in every way.
I see - I feel - I listen - I amOne with Father Sky
One with Mother Earth
One with all of LifeAnd then…
the presence and power of Canis Lupus in all her glory trots towards me.
I am awed by her beauty
I am stunned by her radiance
I am touched to tears by her magnificence
My heart pounds like an aged African drum.She is at my side
She smells my body, my flesh
She glances away and back again
I stand in silence,
in open receptivity to intuit the wisdom of my new/old friend
who pulses with the same Life Force as me.I loose my mind in the moment
I am being
I allow it all
The magic continuesIn a playful nudge she purposely pushes her body next to mine.
I feel brave, reach down and stroke her course fur,
not yet connecting to those piercing yellow eyes.Before I know it, I am on the ground.
This beauteous creature - this powerful expression of Life is in my lap,
feeling as natural as a pup suckling at mama’s breast.I don’t want to disturb her
I long to hold on to the bliss I feel…
to the union I cherish, to the rapture exploding in me.I hear inside, “can you hold on to a sunset?”
I treasure our bonding
our connected hearts
our playful engaging
I treasure our beingness
My wolf sister transmits to me
“Let go and simply be love”