State-sponsored Wolf Killing Ends in Idaho

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2014/wolf-01-27-2014.html

For Immediate Release, January 27, 2014
Contact: Tim Preso, Earthjustice, [phone]
Noah Greenwald, Center for Biological Diversity, [phone]
Ken Cole, Western Watersheds Project, [phone]
Suzanne Stone, Defenders of Wildlife, [phone]

State-sponsored Wolf Killing Ends in Idaho

Faced With Looming Court Challenge, Idaho Halts Unprecedented Program

POCATELLO, Idaho— Faced with a looming deadline to defend its actions before a federal appeals court, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) announced this afternoon that it is halting its wolf extermination program in the Middle Fork region of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness as of today.

The announcement represents a stay of execution for the remaining wolves that constitute the Golden Creek and Monumental Creek wolf packs, which inhabit the Middle Fork region. To date, nine wolves from the two packs have been killed by IDFG’s hired hunter-trapper, who entered the wilderness and began his wolf extermination program in mid-December. It is unknown how many wolves remain in the two packs.

“IDFG’s hunter-trapper killed nine wolves and we are happy to report that the rest no longer face the same threat,” said Earthjustice attorney Tim Preso. “We are sorry it took an emergency injunction request to the court of appeals to get Idaho to halt this illegal program, and we hope that the federal government in the future will take more seriously its public trust responsibility to protect the wilderness from state efforts to exterminate native wildlife.”

IDFG’s action comes in the midst of an emergency proceeding before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in which conservationists were seeking an injunction to halt the wolf extermination program. The conservationists, represented by Earthjustice, sued IDFG and the U.S. Forest Service earlier this month, arguing that the state wolf extermination program would degrade the largest forested wilderness in the lower-48 states. After a federal judge in Idaho rejected a request to stop the program on Jan. 17, the conservationists took their fight to the court of appeals, where they filed an emergency request for an injunction on Jan. 23.

FULL story at link.

[Scootaloo]

1. I can't bend my mind around the logic of such policies

i know I've been told what the reasoning supposedly is, but with my not being a blithering shithead who DOES actually know a thing or two about ecology, it's like they're speaking klingon at me, it's all Q's and Z's and asses and elbows.

[villager]

2. Since "wilderness" (in the full sense, not just "scenery") is fundamentally an anti-corporate...

...concept, no one in either of the "two" parties really goes to too much trouble to defend it.

Let alone expand or enhance it.

Another area where our "two" party system is in the grip of the death-lobby, in the profoundest, and saddest, sense.

[Eleanors38]

3. I hunt the same animals as wolves, and don't mind the competition.