Feds suspect foul play in wolf killing
By Chris Hunt - Assistant Managing Editor
POCATELLO - The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suspects foul play in a wolf's death this week near Weston, according to Craig Tabor, the agency's chief law enforcement officer.
Tabor said Thursday an agent will investigate.
"He will talk to folks down there and hopefully see what happened," Tabor said.
Tabor confirmed the wolf, discovered Tuesday by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game after it received a phone call from the Weston area, was shot to death.
It's illegal to kill wild wolves - the predator is protected under the Endangered Species Act.
"If someone shot the wolf because they were protecting livestock, that hasn't been reported," Tabor said. Ranchers are allowed to protect stock from wolves that are harassing them, he said, but the law forbids shooting a wolf on sight. "Foul play is certainly a possibility."
Most likely, according to Ed Bangs, federal wolf recovery coordinator based in Helena, Mont., the wolf is from a Yellowstone National Park pack - wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone and central Idaho in 1995.
The journey from the park to the Weston area would be relatively easy for a wolf to make because the terrain is wolf friendly, Bangs said. A journey from central Idaho to Weston would require crossing two interstate highways and the Snake River Plain.
"But it's certainly possible the wolf is from central Idaho," Bangs said. "If you draw a straight line from Weston to central Idaho and one from Weston to Yellowstone, it's about the same distance."
Weston is just north of the Utah line, about 75 miles southeast of Pocatello.
There's also a chance the animal isn't wild at all, but a wolf hybrid that got loose from its human owner, Bangs said.
"They look exactly the same," he said. "We'll know for sure once a necropsy is done and we can see what it was eating and we get some blood samples."
Local wolf expert Ralph Maughan, who operates a Web site detailing wolf expansion near Yellowstone (http://www.forwolves.org/ralph/wolfrpt.html), thinks the wolf is likely a roaming Yellowstone wolf, too.
Maughan thinks wolves will continue coming into the area, but he doubts any will persist for the long haul.