You could pay an outfitter in the Northern Rockies $3,600 or $2,900 for a guided hunt to kill one wolf, or you cou… Read more >
Come to Montana and Poach a Wolf!
By Matt Skoglund,
November 19, 2009
You could pay an outfitter in the Northern Rockies $3,600 or $2,900 for a guided hunt to kill one wolf, or you could come to Montana and illegally poach two wolves for $1,135. And you don't need to worry about losing your hunting privileges for the poaching.
$1,135 and no revocation of hunting privileges; that was the punishment imposed upon a wolf hunter in northwest Montana that illegally killed two wolves near Glacier National Park last month.
The State of Montana also failed to include those two wolves and another illegally poached wolf in its hunt harvest quota of 75 wolves.
With such a ridiculously light wrist slap, what kind of message is Montana sending about the value of wolves in the state?
For comparison, two men from Bozeman, Montana, poached one bull elk in Yellowstone National Park a few years ago. Their punishment? One of the hunters received 30 days in jail, a year of supervised probation and three years of unsupervised probation (he also pled guilty to a marijuana possession charge). The other was sentenced to five days in jail already served and three years unsupervised probation. Each was ordered to pay more than $8,000 in restitution, fines and other costs, and both were banned from hunting for four years and prohibited from visiting Yellowstone for four years. They were also ordered to forfeit the guns and ammunition they used during their illegal hunt.
And while that was a federal case, Montana has historically not been shy about dishing out some hefty punishments for poaching cases in big sky country.
But with a very public case of two illegally poached wolves during the state's inaugural wolf hunt, Montana let this wildlife thief off easy and missed a great opportunity to set a strong precedent that illegally killing wolves in Montana will not be tolerated.
What a shame.
When an animal is poached, that animal dies a needless death, and, more broadly, everyone is robbed.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Warden Sergeant John Obst nailed it when he said:
[E]very animal poached represents one less opportunity for real hunters, and for everyone, really, who values Montana's wildlife.
It's too bad Montana didn't heed Sergeant Obst's words and drop the hammer with a real punishment for this wolf poacher.
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Yes, you read that correctly. Wild bison are considered livestock in the State of Montana, and thus the Montana Department of Livestock is the lead agency for bison management.
(Such an absurd system reminds me of an exercise I did in grammar school: the teacher would list a group of objects together, and the student's job was to pick out the object on the list that didn't fit. So, for a throwback to the days of recess and naptime, pick out the object that doesn't fit here: (a) domesticated sheep, (b) domesticated chicken, (c) domesticated pig, (d) wild bison, (e) domesticated turkey. Time's up. The correct answer is (d) wild bison.)
I got to thinking about this paradox after reading Ralph Maughan's comment on his Wildlife News website: "For all those in Montana [Fish, Wildlife and Parks] who say they want the wolf treated like other animals, why can't they say the same about bison?"
That's a damned good point.
Throughout the significant media coverage of the Montana wolf hunt, you continually read Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) personnel claiming that the time has come for wolves to be managed like all other wildlife in Montana:
Tom Palmer, FWP spokesman: "It really gives us a chance to show Montana can manage wolves smartly and carefully, like it manages all other wildlife in the state."
Carolyn Sime, FWP's wolf program coordinator: "I think this hunting season is very important from a symbolic viewpoint. It's an important benchmark in the timeline of wolves on the Montana landscape. Here's our first opportunity to manage wolves like other wildlife."
Such comments beg the question, "What about wild bison?"
To be fair to FWP, this asinine system was established by Montana statute. As such, classifying wild bison as wildlife and transferring management to FWP from the Department of Livestock would have to happen legislatively (e.g., "The Restoration of Sanity to Wildlife Classifications in Montana Act of 2011").
In fact, such a bill was introduced this past legislative session in Montana. NRDC supported the bill, which was developed and championed by the Gallatin Wildlife Association and formally sponsored by Rep. Mike Phillips. Unfortunately, however, scare tactics carried the day, and the bill failed to get out of committee.
The stated justification for wild bison being nonsensically considered livestock is brucellosis -- a disease that causes pregnant animals to abort -- and fear that wild bison may transmit the disease to domestic cattle in Montana. Yet no documented case of brucellosis transmission from bison to cattle has occurred in the wild.
And elk, which can also have brucellosis, are (properly) considered wildlife and managed by FWP. As Rep. Phillips said, "If you argue for the continuation of the status quo, you can't argue against the notion the (livestock) department should have authority over elk." And that's something nobody wants.
The preposterous management scheme surrounding wild bison in Montana makes no sense and needs to change. Hopefully it will during the next Montana legislative session, which begins in January 2011.
In the meantime, the next time you read a quote from a FWP official celebrating the management of wolves like "all other wildlife in Montana," remember to translate that to:
This month’s news about wildlife and wildlife habitat that you can feel good about:
Scotland just announced an ambitious plan to create the Great Trossachs Forest by systematically restori… Read more >
Wildlife Roundup: the Good News
By Andrew Wetzler,
October 30, 2009
This month’s news about wildlife and wildlife habitat that you can feel good about:
Scotland just announced an ambitious plan to create the Great Trossachs Forest by systematically restoring over 24,000 acres of forest, grassland, and wetland habitat in western Scotland. The project will take two centuries to fully realize (they have to grow new forests in many places) and will encompass Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park.
As I previously mentioned, Canada is pursuing a reintroduction effort of black footed ferrets into the Grasslands National Park. The first ferrets in the program were just released.
The larvae of a rare English marsh moth has been recorded in record numbers at the Saltfleetby-Theddlethorpe Dunes National Nature Reserve in Lincolnshire, England. Farther south, an armature naturalist recently found a small Ranunculus moth in her Norfolk county garden. The species was believed to be extinct in county, having been last recorded in 1913. The article goes onto to quote Jim Wheeler, “Norfolk recorder of moths” (really? that’s a job?) as saying ““It's been a very good years for moths. Lots of species have appeared that we haven't seen for a while.”
Twenty thousand endangered cutthroat trout, the only species of trout native to the Colorado River, have been released in Utah. The release of the fingerlings into the Colorado is part of ongoing attempts to help recover the fish.
Nepal has expanded protected tiger habitat in its Bardia National Park by 900 square kilometers (about 350 square miles). Nepal also announced that it would beef up of its regulatory and law enforcement efforts aimed at conserving the country’s tiger population.
Scientific American’s John Platt reports that rare birds are doing well in Britain these days, which is consistent with some of the good news we’ve been reporting here for the last several months: “Of the 63 rarest U.K. bird species (those with fewer than 1,000 breeding pairs), nearly 60 percent have seen population increases. They include the osprey, corncrake, avocet, cirl bunting and stone-curlew, all of which have enjoyed the benefits of focused conservation programs.”
Gurney’s pitta, an endangered bird found in Thailand and Myanmar (and once thought to be extinct in the wild) is rebounding. Scientists now believe that there are probably 20,000 breeding pairs of Gourney’s pitta in Myanmar along—double the population previously assessed.
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