![]() ![]() “First,” she said, “There is no scientific basis or justification for limiting wolf numbers to only 500 statewide. She recently weighed in on the proposed Idaho Fish and Game plan. Suzanne Asha Stone, executive director of the International Wildlife Coexistence Network, has spent most of her life working on wolves and wolf projects. By self-regulating – they also help keep their ecosystems in balance. Cooperative living gives wolf families several benefits, including limiting their own populations-for example, they control the numbers within their group by only letting certain members breed. Wolves are highly social animals that live in well-organized family units called packs. Īnother important study shows that there is no need to control wolf populations because as apex predators, wolves keep their own numbers in check. New research shows that when wolf packs lose key family members, the packs cannot perform their ecological role and often disband, which can increase conflicts with livestock as young animals become desperate in their effort to survive without their parents. Songbirds returned as did beavers, eagles, foxes, and badgers. The end to overgrazing stabilized riverbanks and rivers recovered allowing fish and other aquatic life to thrive. They help balance and protect elk and deer populations by culling disease from herds, in turn allowing willows and aspen to return to the landscape. Since 1995 when wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park, scientists have been able to study wolves and the dramatic improvements in the ecosystem they have caused. They also form emotional bonds between pack members, the foundation for cooperative living. They live and work as a family unit called a pack to raise and feed pups, hunt, and defend their territory. It’s “to preserve, protect and perpetuate wildlife…” And now there is 25 years of scientific research available that says killing wolves is neither productive for the ecosystem or wise management.Īs demonstrated by local filmmakers and founders of Living with Wolves Jim and Jamie Dutcher, wolves are highly intelligent, complex animals who are caring, playful and above all, devoted to family. Yet, that’s not the mission of Idaho Fish & Game. They promote trapping, year-round killing without limits, and bounties for dead wolves including pups in the den,” said Suzanne Stone, executive director of the International Wildlife Coexistence Network and co-founder of the local Wood River Wolf Project. “Their new proposed plan is a return to the eradication tactics employed in the early 1900s. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game proposed 5-year plan has the wolf community in Idaho and around the nation feeling anger and frustration. Fish and Wildlife Service plan under the Endangered Species Act to restore wolves in the Northern Rocky Mountain states. They were reintroduced in Idaho in 1995 as part of a U.S. The wolf is the only species in America deliberately driven to the brink of eradication. Wolves were decimated in the 1900s because of the growth of agriculture. ![]() To view and comment on the plan, use this link: It would also continue providing bounty funding and paying private contractors to kill wolves.Ĭomments are due by March 6, 2023, at 8:00 am MST. Under the new plan, the agency would continue emphasizing hunting and trapping as its primary management tool. The plan also proposes to increase the hunting of wolves and to increase trapping seasons, using a variety of equipment including leghold traps, snares and body gripping traps. It proposes to kill 60% of the Idaho wolf population to bring the total number down to 500 wolves. The Idaho Fish & Game draft Gray Wolf Management Plan for 2023-2028 is now available for comment.
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