Ranchers Paid For Livestock Killed By Wolves

Supporters of wolf recovery in Idaho have paid two Leadore-area ranchers for livestock killed by a transplanted wolf in July.

Defenders of Wildlife, which has used members’ contributions to pay for losses to wolves over the last decade, agreed to pay full value for one rancher’s calf and another’s lamb after lab tests proved the wolf killed them.

Defenders paid $540 for the calf and $110 for the lamb, said Hank Fischer, the group’s Northern Rockies regional representative.

One of the ranchers, Allen Purcell, shot the wolf while it was killing his lamb. The killing of wolves caught in the act are legal under an exemption to the Endangered Species Act that went in place when the wolves were reintroduced in Idaho and Yellowstone National Park in 1995.

That wolf came out of Yellowstone.

Defenders has paid market value for every stock animal reported killed by wolves so far in Idaho, Fischer said. That includes three calves valued at $1,117 near Cascade last summer, and 28 lambs and two ewes valued at $2,660 last fall near Weiser.

The only claim that has gone unpaid was the first, for a calf that Salmon-area rancher Gene Hussey said was killed by a wolf in 1995. Fischer said lab tests proved the calf was born dead, not killed by the wolf, which was found shot to death next to the animal.

“It’s a relatively small price to pay,” Fischer said. “The idea is to shift economic burden for wolf restoration away from the livestock industry.”