BY GEORGE PRENTICE
A unique memorial service is scheduled for this Thursday, Aug. 30, to honor the memories of 379 wolves killed during Idaho’s 2011-2012 hunting season. Thursday also marks the beginning of the 2012-2013 wolf hunting season on public lands.
This morning’s Coeur d’Alene Press reports that Thursday’s evening in a Coeur d’Alene city park will also include a trap-release workshop “aimed at educating citizens how to identify traps and snares,” and how to release the animal.
“It’s time to end fairy tale fantasies,” Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense told the Press. “Science clearly shows that healthy populations of wolves and other predator species are critical for a healthy environment.”
Fahy’s organization is sponsoring Thursday’s event, along with Friends of the Clearwater, Northern Idaho Wolf Alliance, Kootenai Environmental Alliance, Footloose Montana and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Fahy called Idaho’s wolf hunts “fanatical blood lust that has no place in modern wildlife management.”