Feds kill gray wolf after pack kills cow

LEWISTON – Federal trappers killed one gray wolf and were hunting another from the Chesimia Pack that roams an area of Idaho between the Dworshak Reservoir and Elk River. The pack killed a cow earlier this month, the third cow death blamed on the wolves this summer.

The pack also is blamed for killing several hunting dogs on its home range over the past year. Officials at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is charged with protecting gray wolves, authorized the trappers to kill two adult members of the pack.

Wolves in most of Idaho are protected under the Endangered Species Act as a nonessential experimental population. The special designation allows wolves that prey on livestock to be killed.

The wolf was killed Friday.

“Our intention was to kill two (wolves) so we are going to stick to it for the 45-day window we’ve got to do the control action,” said Todd Grimm, Western district supervisor of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services Agency in Boise.

Federal trappers also killed a wolf earlier this summer after a cow was believed killed by the pack in July. Agents had planned to kill two wolves then, but the order was rescinded by Carter Niemeyer, of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Boise. Niemeyer said pictures of the dead cow did not adequately demonstrate wolves were responsible.

“I require good, defensible documentation,” he said. “If I sense I’m not getting that, I will quickly deny control until I have the information.”

More documentation was included in the investigation of the cow killed this month.

“It was very clear evidence,” Niemeyer said. He issued a 45-day order allowing federal trappers to kill two wolves there.

In 1995, 35 wolves were reintroduced to the Frank Church and Selway Bitterroot wilderness areas. There are now believed to be more than 500 wolves in Idaho, and federal biologists have said wolves in the Northern Rockies – Idaho, Montana and Wyoming – are biologically recovered.

But bureaucratic and legal hurdles still have to be cleared before wolf management can be handed back to the states.

The Fish and Wildlife Service requires the states to have approved wolf management plans in place before wolves come off the list. Idaho and Montana have such plans.

Wyoming’s plan, which allows wolves to be shot in vast areas of the state, was rejected. State officials there are suing the wildlife service over the rejection of the state’s wolf plan.

Niemeyer said removing wolves from Endangered Species Act protection would allow Idaho to reduce wolf packs through hunting.