The Wolf Preservation Blog

This 2013 photo provided by Horsefeathers Photography shows a black wolf wearing a VHF radio collar that identifies it as Wolf  “831F,” a member of the Yellowstone National Park ’s Canyon pack, in Swan Lake, Mont. Big game outfitter William Hoppe shot and killed this female wolf near where 13 sheep were killed in April. Leaders of a wolf advocacy group said Hoppe is intentionally luring the animals by leaving dead sheep carcasses in a pile. Photo: Horsefeathers Photography, Brad Orsted

May 8, 2013

“BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — A big game outfitter who shot and killed a collared wolf from Yellowstone National Park is intentionally luring the animals by leaving dead sheep carcasses in a pile, leaders of a wolf advocacy group said.

“Make no mistake about that, it’s definitely intentional baiting,” Marc Cooke, president of Wolves of the Rockies, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

William Hoppe shot and killed a 2-year old, female wolf Sunday near where 13 sheep were killed in April. He notified Fish, Wildlife and Parks warden Chris Kerin that he killed the wolf using one of his two shoot-on-sight permits the agency issued after the sheep were killed, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle (http://bit.ly/17LAEJ5) reported Wednesday. The permits are valid for 45 days and only allow wolves to be shot on the property where the sheep were killed.

In mid-April, Hoppe, an outspoken opponent of wolves, bought about 30 sheep and started raising them on his property along the Yellowstone River near Gardiner.

On April 24, he awakened to find that two wolves had killed five ewes and eight lambs.

Hoppe “deliberately put the sheep on his property … knowing that the wolves would kill them,” Cooke charged.

Hoppe told the Chronicle he was going to move the rest of the sheep closer to his house and that he had disposed of the dead sheep in a bone pile in the area where they were killed.

“This man needs to be held accountable for baiting,” said Kim Beam, vice president of Wolves of the Rockies. She said the issue would be raised at Thursday’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks commission meeting in Helena, where commissioners will consider the 2013 wolf hunting season.

Animals such as wolves and grizzly bears can smell carcasses a mile away and sometimes further, said Doug Smith, a Yellowstone National Park wolf biologist. He said the wolf that was killed Sunday may have been attracted by the decaying meat.

Smith said information from the wolf’s radio collar indicated that she was not involved in killing Hoppe’s sheep.

Hoppe is a former president of the Friends of the Northern Yellowstone Elk Herd. In January, he opposed the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission’s decision to close wolf hunting around Yellowstone National Park. He argues wolves are driving down the elk population in the area.

He did not return a phone call seeking comment.”

Special thanks to http://www.chron.com/default/article/Activists-say-wolf-killer-is-baiting-the-animals-4498538.php for providing this information!

“ANCHORAGE,  Alaska (AP) — A second interior Alaska wolf has tested positive for rabies, the  Alaska  Department of Fish and Game announced Thursday.

A  trapper captured the wolf March 15 near Chandalar Lake near the foothills of the  Brooks range about 185 miles north of Fairbanks, the same general location as a  rabid wolf shot last month. The trapper killed the wolf, skinned it and fed raw  meat from the carcass to his dog team, said spokeswoman Cathie  Harms. The five dogs are in quarantine in Fairbanks.

The  dogs had been vaccinated for rabies but will be given booster shots, the  department said.

Rabies,  according to the Centers  for Disease Control and Prevention, is a viral disease that can infect  mammals, including humans. It’s usually transmitted through bites but can also  spread by coming into contact with infected nerve tissue such as brains or  spinal cords.

The  rabies virus infects the central nervous system and can cause death, according  to the CDC.

Rabies  is regularly detected in Arctic foxes along Alaska’s west and north coasts but  had not been found south of the Brooks Range since statehood in 1959, the  department said.

“We’re  still trying to get a clearer picture of the current situation, especially in  wolves in the Chandalar Lake area,” Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, a department  veterinarian, said in the announcement. “We’d really like to hear from the  people who have seen wolves or other wildlife acting abnormally in that area.  Abnormal behavior can also be caused by diseases other than rabies, such as  distemper, so a test of brain tissue is required for a definitive diagnosis of  the disease.”

Both  rabid wolves exhibited abnormal behavior when they were killed.

Wolves  normally are shy, but a trapper who shot the wolf last month said the animal had  closely approached him.

The  trapper, a man who lives near Palmer, took the animal home with him and cut  himself while skinning it. Worried that the animal may have been infected, he  sent the head in for testing and discarded the rest of the carcass in a  wooded area.

When  the department confirmed rabies, which can be spread to other animals that eat  nerve tissue such as brains or spinal cords, the carcass was retrieved. The  carcass had been scavenged, but the spinal cord had not been disturbed,  officials said.

The  wolf caught in a leg trap March 15 was alive when the trapper approached but  appeared dull and unaware, the department said.

The  trapper killed the animal, skinned it and fed the raw meat to his dogs.

Beckman  said they should not have been fed the carcass.

“It’s  very dangerous to feed raw carcasses of wildlife, especially carnivores, to  pets,” Beckmen said. “Pets can not only become infected, they can then transmit  diseases and parasites to their owners, rabies, tularemia and echinococcus being  the most serious.”

Echinococcus  is a bacterial infection, Harms said.

Rabies  had not been diagnosed in the region in 54 years of statehood, but archived  territorial reports document cases of rabies in fox and dogs in interior Alaska,  the department said.

Beckmen  said she’s looking for more samples from the heads of wolves, wolverines, foxes  or coyotes killed near the Chandalar Lakes or Fortymile River areas.

Rabies  has been detected over the winter along the north and west coasts and more cases  are expected in the arctic fox and red fox populations. Village dogs, the  department said, are vulnerable to infection from foxes.

Alaska  health officials warn trappers and hunters to wear gloves when skinning animals,  wash wounds with soap and water, wash knives after cutting off heads and avoid  cutting into brains or spinal cords.”

Special thanks to DAN JOLING, Associated Press, for providing the information in this post! 

Takepart.com – Tue, Apr 23, 2013

“Of the top reasons tourists travel thousands of miles for a 12-hour round-trip bus ride into Denali National Park, wolves rank right up there with grizzly bears and the sight of 20,320-foot Mount McKinley on a rare bluebird day. To the few who know, members of Denali’s wolf population are also some of the longest, continuously studied animal groups in the world, besting even Jane Goodall’s chimps. But in recent years, wolf numbers in the 7,370-square-mile park have decreased even faster than the TV audience of Sarah Palin’s Alaska on TLC. In 2007, Denali Park biologists counted 147 wolves in nine groups that roamed the 93-year-old park. But in their most recent count, taken last autumn, numbers had declined to 54, the lowest since 1986.

Some, like the Alaska Board of Game, blame this die-off on natural causes—wolves killing wolves and low sheep populations. But others, including private citizens, park biologists, and members of the environmental advocacy group the Alaska Wildife Alliance (AWA), believe there are more sinister reasons. According to some AWA members, the recent, radical decline of the park’s most visible wolves—called the Grant Creek group—is the result of three main factors: the dissolution of Denali’s protective buffer zone, the Palin-appointed Alaska Board of Game, and the acute, ethically questionable actions of a small handful of local trappers, including a man named Coke Wallace.

 We’ll start with the protective buffer zone. Between 1966 and 2009, celebrated wolf biologist Gorden Haber studied wolves, on the ground, in Denali, hundreds of hours each year. During his extensive observation, Haber witnessed wolves wandering just outside the park and trappers laying their snares along the park’s boundary to kill these wolves. Thanks to his studies, Haber was able, in 2000, to convince the then-Board of Game to establish a protective buffer along the outside edge of the park, within a finger of state land, where wolf trapping was otherwise legal. Tragically, Haber died in a plane crash while observing wolves in late 2009. And the following March, the Board of Game rescinded the protective area.

Trappers once again position their snares along the park boundary, killing not only adult wolves, but pups. And last May, in an act that infuriated both wolf advocates and the usually detached Denali Park Service, the local trapper, Coke Wallace, hitched a dead horse to his four-wheeler, dragged it to the park boundary, and used it to lure and snare the pregnant alpha female of the park’s wolf group, Grant Creek.

AWA member Marybeth Holleman studied these ongoing events as she wrote her forthcoming book, Among Wolves, a profile of the late biologist Gordon Haber. She says that Denali Park biologist Tom Meier (also recently deceased) reported that he and other park biologists believed declining wolf populations weren’t the result of declining prey. Nor did they blame habitat, which is abundant in the 6.3 million-acre park. That, Meier said, left two causes: trapping on park borders and the vigorous predator-control program against bears and wolves currently under way in areas adjacent to the park. “What Tom told me is that when game officials do intensive predator control, it creates a vacuum,” says Holleman. “He believed that Denali wolves may have expanded their territory to fill it.”

Holleman, along with several wolf advocacy groups, have petitioned the Board of Game to “reinstate the protective buffer.” But in about six attempts, between 2010 and present, the Board refused and created a potentially illegal eight-year “moratorium” on even discussing the buffer zone. At its January meeting, the Board also discussed the petition “behind closed doors,” possibly violating the Alaska Open Meetings Act. The AWA has filed a lawsuit contesting the Board’s conduct with that meeting, results withstanding.

Another petition to reinstate the buffer will be discussed at the next meeting of the Board of Game, this May.”

*Special thanks to http://news.yahoo.com/secret-reasons-wolves-dying-denali-212011543.html?bcmt=1366763539830-6fe0d306-033a-4655-b7a9-42b6a9d169c4_00002s000000000000000000000000-82acbcc7-8567-4b35-ad73-3b7c4a4277d6&bcmt_s=e#mediacommentsugc_container, for providing this information!