by RALPH MAUGHAN
Wolf 692f illegally shot outside Yellowstone Park-
While there is no evidence any Yellowstone Park wolves have been killed inside the Park, in November a dispersed member of the Blacktail pack was shot near Gardiner, MT outside the Park about 4 weeks after the legal hunting in that zone closed.
Wolf 692F, who wore a radio collar, was killed by Branson Mace, a 19-year-old resident of Gardiner. He pleaded guilty and was fined $135. Many people who discuss and visit Yellowstone Park and post on various on-line forums like Yellowstone.net are angry that Mace wasn’t fined a lot more, especially given the price of a radio collar. A number of the forums’ participants are residents of Montana in addition to being Park visitors. We have no information if a functional collar was retrieved. Collaring a wolf is usually costly in terms of labor and expenditure of resources.
Only the wolf-killing federal agency Wildlife Services generally has ample funds for radio collaring. In the 2009 Montana wolf hunt several Cottonwood Pack wolves who are usually instead the Park were legally killed just north the Park deep inside the roadless Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness. So far this year we have no information on the toll of Park wolves killed in Montana or Idaho legally while they were temporarily outside the Park.