Anti-wolf Idahoan charged with intent to poison them

BOISE – An anti-wolf activist in central Idaho whose Web site tells how to poison wolves has been charged with placing bait with intent to kill wolves and unauthorized use of a pesticide on U.S. Forest Service land.

Federal authorities filed the complaint Oct. 13 against Tim Sundles of Carmen. He is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court on Tuesday in Pocatello. Both charges are misdemeanors and each carries a maximum penalty of a $100,000 fine and six months in jail. The bait charge is a violation of the Endangered Species Act.

Sundles, an ammunition-maker critical of returning wolves to Idaho, said he views the charges as retribution for his anti-wolf activism.

“In this part of Idaho we have endured federal thugs, forcing wolves on us that hurt our businesses, lives and precious wildlife,” Sundles told The Idaho Statesman on Wednesday. “When we oppose those thugs, they file devastating criminal charges on us. Is this what we want in Idaho?”

Wolves were reintroduced to Idaho in 1995. Federal biologists say the state now has more than 525 of the threatened predators that had been wiped out of Idaho in the middle of the 1900s.

A wolf was found dead of poisoning near Clayton in 2004. A dog nearly died of poisoning near Wagonhammer Springs near Salmon in February 2004. More than a dozen dogs died of poisonings in Wyoming.

Idaho Fish and Game officers searched Sundles’ home in March 2004, seizing his computer and other items. The search warrant was issued in the investigation of the dog poisoning at Wagonhammer Springs.

In 2001, Sundles testified in a U.S. Senate hearing in Salmon that he had shot and killed a radio-collared wolf to protect his wife.