Wild Wolf in Kentucky, First in 150 Years, Killed by Hunter

by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News

According to a recent announcement by state wildlife officials, a 73-pound, federally endangered female gray wolf was shot dead by a hunter in Munfordville, Kentucky earlier this year. Were it Alaska or Idaho this wouldn’t be news, but Kentucky has not seen wild roaming wolves since the mid 1800s. The gray wolf was shot in March —but state officials were skeptical that it was even a wolf, believing that it was more likely someone’s German shepherd.  But following months of DNA analysis, scientists confirmed it was indeed Kentucky’s first wolf in over a century and also its last.

This photo posted on KentuckyHunting.net shows the first wolf to wander Kentucky in over 150 years, dead and exhibited as a trophy.

DNA from the wolf was analyzed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center in Colorado. According to the analysis, the Kentucky gray wolf had genetic traits akin to wolves in the Great Lakes Region. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory in Oregon carried out independent analysis and confirmed the USDA’s findings.

Manual for Sabotaging Wolf Hunts Released

“And in that case, we choose to be saboteurs for the wild.”

The following text is from a press release of the Earth First! Media office, which provides correspondence to news outlets around the world.

Download the Earth First! Wolf Hunt Sabotage Manual Here

by Earth First! News

Earth First! Media has released a manual which provides detailed information for disrupting wolf hunting in those states that allow it. Titled The Earth First! Wolf Hunting Sabotage Manual, the text, complete with step-by-step graphics, explains how to find and destroy wolf traps, handle live trapped wolves in order to release them, and various methods, including the use of air-compressed horns and smoke-bombs, for stopping wolf hunts.

The authors of the manual describe themselves as,  “hunters and proud of it,” adding, “But we aren’t proud of what passes for hunting these days and especially for what passes as ‘sportsman’ hunting. Somehow, the National Rifle Association, yuppie trophy hunters, cattle barons, and the Obama Administration are in cahoots in an effort that promises to wipe wolves clean off the planet. And in that case, we choose to be saboteurs for the wild.”   

Plan Would Expand Range in Arizona for Gray Wolves

from the AP

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.—The federal government is floating a plan that would let endangered Mexican gray wolves roam north toward Flagstaff and across Arizona for the first time in generations.
The Arizona Daily Sun reports (http://bit.ly/1bZONIg ) that the government’s wolf reintroduction program has limited the animals to a recovery area that straddles the Arizona-New Mexico state line, where they have struggled to gain a foothold. Currently, any wolf leaving the recovery area is captured and returned.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released a draft of proposed changes last month that, if put into effect, would let wolves roam from western Arizona to eastern New Mexico between Interstates 40 and 10.

The draft includes potential wolf reintroduction sites in northern Arizona on the Tonto National Forest, throughout the Sitgreaves National Forest and other public lands, as well as private lands where there’s a participating landowner. The Apache tribe has an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service that has allowed wolves to roam on their lands in eastern Arizona.

Bloodthirsty ‘Factual’ TV Shows Demonize Wildlife with Lies and Sensationalism

Major US TV channels are promoting hysterical and outdated ideas about wildlife in popular, blood-soaked shows

Wolves are depicted as “mean, ferocious animals and they can tear a man apart real easy” on TV, despite evidence to the contrary. Photograph: Alamy

by Adam Welz / The Guardian

Most people’s wild beasts live in the TV.

What I mean is that, in my experience, most people are highly unlikely to come eyeball-to-eyeball with a large wild animal in their everyday lives, and much of their knowledge of wildlife comes from a screen.

If you’re North American or get US-produced satellite TV, you’ve probably learned a lot about wildlife from outlets like the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and History. You might trust these channels because you’ve seen educational, factually accurate shows on them, unlike the ‘trashy’ material that dominates free-to-air network TV.

But not everything on on these ‘factual’ channels might be as ethical or even as accurate as you might think, and the implications for conservation could be profound.

Don’t Forsake the Gray Wolf

by Jim Dutcher, Jamie Dutcher and Garrick Dutcher / the New York Times

KETCHUM, Idaho — IT has been celebrated as one of the great victories of the Endangered Species Act of 1973. After several decades of federal protection, gray wolves — once nearly wiped out in the continental United States — have reached a population of roughly 6,100 across three Great Lakes states and seven Western states.

But this success has been only partial. The centuries-old war against wolves continues to rage, particularly in states where the species has lost federal protection in recent years, as management of wolf populations was turned over to the states.

On Friday, the federal Fish and Wildlife Service put forward a proposal that would make matters even worse. It proposed stripping the remaining federal protections for the gray wolf in the rest of the United States (with the exception of the extremely rare Mexican gray wolf in Arizona and New Mexico). Removing gray wolves from the national endangered species list in the areas where they are still protected would be a mistake. The protections should remain, so that the species can continue its recovery and expand its range, just as the bald eagle and the alligator were allowed to do.

Wolves Lose Protection in Northeast Under Proposed US Rule

by AP

This 2008 photo released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows a gray wolf. The Obama administration on Friday, June 7, 2013 proposed lifting most of the remaining federal protections for gray wolves across the mainland states, a move that would end four decades of recovery efforts but has been criticized by some scientists as premature. Photo courtesy of USFWS

Wolves that wander into Upstate New York or northern New England from Canada or elsewhere would lose federal protection after most of the animal’s species are removed from the federal endangered species list, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed Friday.

Wolves, which have been persecuted to near-extermination, have rebounded, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

There are no breeding populations of wolves in the Northeast, but there are populations of wolves in Canada not far from the U.S. and wolves from other regions are occasionally found in the region, said Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Specialist Mark McCollough, based in Orono, Maine. Eventually, they will no longer have federal protection, he said.

“They will no longer be protected under the federal act, but the states will be responsible for managing wolves,” he said.

Wolves, Obama and the Hunter S. Thompsonian Apocalypse You Smelled Coming

by Eldridge Hambone / Earth First! News

Today the Obama Administration yanked Endangered Species Act protections from wolves in the lower 48. Add this to his government’s increased use of domestic surveillance, killer drones, his support of fracking, his connections to the financial elite, attacks on journalists, the near improbability that he will do anything about the Keystone XL pipeline and his stupid shit eating grin all-the-while and you’ve got a real classy electoral tyrant up there with Andrew Jackson, Nixon and good ole GW.

Ever find yourself wondering what Hunter S. Thompson, were he still alive, might say about Obama in his own eloquent way? Perhaps this:

“He is a foul caricature of himself, a man with little soul, no inner convictions, with the integrity of a real estate agent and the style of a poison toad. The ugly fallout from the American Dream has been coming down on us at a pretty consistent rate since Sitting Bull’s time-and the only real difference now that Obama is president is that we seem to be on the verge of ratifying the fallout and forgetting the Dream itself.  How much more of this cheap-jack bullshit can we be expected to take? Richard Nixon looks like a flaming fractivist today, compared to a golem like Obama. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?

And so who now believes in that rash inducing figure of hope and change? The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.”

Breaking News: Obama Administration Strips Wolf Protections Across Most of Lower 48 States

Photograph by Joel Sartore/NGS

by the Center for Biological Diversity

In a move questioned by some of the world’s leading wolf researchers, the Obama administration announced plans today to prematurely strip Endangered Species Act protections from gray wolves across most of the lower 48 states, abruptly ending one of America’s most important species recovery programs. The proposal concludes that wolf protection in the continental United States, in place since 1978, is no longer needed, even though there are fledgling populations in places like the Pacific Northwest whose survival hinges on continued federal protection.

Ruling Puts Minnesota’s Wolf Seasons Beyond Public Challenge — By Anyone

by Ron Meador / the Minnesota Post

The court’s logic would seem to mean that nobody can have standing to challenge the wolf hunt in court, for any reason whatsoever. (photo: CC/Flickr/Todd Ryburn)

Whether you’re for or against the killing of wolves for sport, you might think the public has a right to be heard on a matter so enduringly contentious and emotional.

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) thinks otherwise and so, apparently, does the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

News reports on Tuesday’s perfunctory dismissal of a challenge to the new trapping and hunting seasons have cited the court’s conclusion that the plaintiffs lacked “standing” to raise objections, but didn’t explain the legal reasoning behind it.

And I was frankly scratching my head, because questions of standing usually seem to turn on such factors as having a demonstrable stake in the issues (no injury, no standing) or whether a lawsuit was filed in the correct jurisdiction, etc.