PREDATORS -- A plan announced Monday to kill two Oregon wolves from a pack that killed livestock near Joseph, Ore., was quickly challenged in court Tuesday by conservation groups.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife authorities want to capture and kill two young wolves from the Imnaha pack in northeastern Oregon after the latest in a series of livestock kills. The federal biologists say killing two wolves might preclude the need to kill more of the pack and disrupt their breeding and social network.
However, the conservation groups filed a lawsuit in in U.S. District Court in Portland to block the killings, saying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had not done the formal environmental review called for by law before making the decision.
Read on for more of the story from the Associated Press.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlfie Service announced late Monday that an investigation determined a calf carcass found Saturday 10 miles east of Joseph was the result of a wolf kill. Wolf tracks were found about 1,000 feet away, and GPS tracking of one of the wolves in the pack showed it was within a half-mile of the site on Friday, when the attack was believed to have happened.
The agency said in a statement that nonlethal measures such as electric fences have not kept the pack from livestock, so lethal controls are in order.
The plan is to capture and kill two sub-adults from the pack, which numbers 10 to 14 wolves, to discourage the pack from attacking livestock without affecting breeding.
Two wolves from the same pack were under a state kill order last summer, but that was lifted after conservation groups challenged it in a similar lawsuit.
"Oregon's struggling wolf population cannot sustain these killings," Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement. "Oregon wolves are nowhere near recovered and continue to need protection."
Greenwald said a provision of the Endangered Species Act that allowed wildlife agents to kill problem wolves in Idaho does not apply in Oregon, where they are still a federally threatened species.
Authorities have said wolves that began moving into Oregon from Idaho in the 1990s are responsible for some 40 livestock kills since 2009. About 25 wolves are believed to be in Oregon. Two packs are known to exist in the northeastern corner of the state and a third is believed to be roaming an area between Pendleton and the Washington border.
The lawsuit said federal agents killed two wolves in Oregon in 2009 and five others have been killed by poachers or died in accidents.
Rich Landers joined The Spokesman-Review in 1977. He is the Outdoors editor for the Sports Department writing and photographing stories about hiking, hunting, fishing, boating, conservation, nature and wildlife and related topics.
