Idaho Wolf Shooting Gets Capitol Hill Audience Subcommittee Testimony Highlights Tensions Between States, Feds

The victim is known as Wolf No. 13, shot to death on an Idaho rancher’s property. The circumstances surrounding the animal’s death and the subsequent federal investigation got an airing Thursday on Capitol Hill.

The testimony had less to do with “whodunit” than with strained relations between states and the federal government over the Endangered Species Act and between federal officers trying to enforce the law and a community where that means the risk of imported wolves feasting on cattle.

The strains could cause bloodshed, said Lemhi County Sheriff Brett Barsalou, one of several Idaho witnesses who say the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service mishandled a search of Eugene Hussey’s property March 8, more than a month after the timber wolf had been shot. “Unless somebody learns some manners, somebody’s going to get hurt out West dealing with these people,” Barsalou told a joint hearing by two House subcommittees representing wildlife, conservation and forestry issues.

Witnesses included Idaho Attorney General Alan G. Lance, who presented an eight-page critique that likened the federal agency to “the secret police or the Keystone Kops.”

Tensions already were high in the county of 7,000 residents, where 92 percent of its 4,571 square miles are federally owned timber and grazing lands, Lance and others noted. A decision to protect endangered salmon already was threatening jobs.

The way Barsalou told it, federal agents went to search the 74-year-old Hussey’s property for bullet fragments or other evidence March 8 without first telling him. Barsalou said in an affidavit that dealing with Hussey would be a “challenge.”

Hussey and Barsalou did find out, and the result was a confrontation in which the very vigorous-looking Hussey, a decorated World War II veteran, said he chucked a large rock at one of the agents and tried to tip the hat off another.

On the other side, Hussey and Barsalou made it sound as if the agents ruined a fence and were going to go for their weapons.

Not so, said Fish and Wildlife Service Director Molly Beattie. State and local officials had already said they were unwilling to cooperate with enforcement of an unpopular law. Once agents saw the confrontation heating up, they left. They haven’t returned since.

“Law enforcement agents of the Fish and Wildlife Service are often called upon to undertake duties that are unpleasant, controversial and hazardous,” Beattie said, noting that “they were able to prevent an explosive situation from erupting into violence.

“I believe our agents handled an extremely difficult and potentially explosive situation with great aplomb,” Beattie testified. “The agents wisely chose to lessen tensions by leaving the vicinity when it became apparent that the warrant could not peacefully be executed.”

The Canadian gray wolf, commonly known as a timber wolf, was one of 15 released in January into the Idaho wilderness as part of a plan that the American Farm Bureau Federation and others have challenged.

Fourteen other wolves have been brought to Yellowstone National Park.

Hussey, wearing dungarees and an orange lumberjack’s shirt, said he found the ill-starred No. 13, so named for its ear tag, dead on his property Jan. 29 and reported it to the sheriff. A dead calf was found nearby, and investigators showed up the following day.

“When I came across that wolf I asked myself whether I really wanted to get into this mess,” he told the subcommittee, speaking without notes. “What I could have decided to do, rather than deal with the federal government, was to get a shovel and bury it. But I didn’t.”

Hussey says he has no idea how the wolf was killed. A preliminary examination determined that the wolf had killed the calf.

However, subsequent tests found that the calf had already died before the wolf began eating it, and that the wolf could not have dragged the carcass. Agents tried the March 8 search to look for evidence that the shooting occurred where the carcass was found.

The killing could have been excused even if the animal had been dead and the rancher just saw the wolf eating it. On the other hand, an illegal shooting carries a penalty of up to one year in prison and $100,000 in fines.

Beattie could not estimate the cost of the investigation, which includes DNA testing of muscle tissue found in the wolf’s stomach.

Idaho’s Rep. Helen Chenoweth told Hussey “You’ve served your country well and I’m proud to know you.”“I hope you know the peace you have so valiantly fought for,” Chenoweth said.

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Robert Greene Associated Press Staff writer Christine Bedell contributed to this report.