Rogue Wolf Pair to Be Destroyed
BY BRENT ISRAELSEN
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Federal wildlife agents plan to track down and kill two wild wolves that mortally wounded a pair of sheep east of Bear Lake on Tuesday morning.
The wolves, both black, invaded a pen owned by a sheep rancher about a mile east of the Utah-Wyoming border.
The rancher witnessed the attack and chased the wolves off, but not before the predators had inflicted serious injuries.
One of the sheep had been partially eaten and had to be euthanized by the rancher.
The other sheep probably will have to be put out of its misery as well.
“It was bleeding from the throat and in the back. [The rancher] is trying his best to save it, but if it makes it through the night, I’d be surprised,” said Mike Bodenchuk, Utah director of the federal predator-control agency known as Wildlife Services.
Bodenchuk said he is “as sure as you can be” that the sheep were killed by wild wolves, rather than wolf-dog hybrids, which are common in the region. The footprints left in the snow were “enormous,” which is indicative of wolves, not hybrids, whose feet are the size of large domestic dogs.
The wolves, most likely from packs in the Yellowstone National Park region, are fully protected under the Endangered Species Act, but Congress later granted the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) authority to employ lethal control of problem wolves.
On Tuesday, Ed Bangs, who runs the FWS’ wolf-recovery program for the Northern Rockies, authorized Wildlife Services to find and kill the wolves that attacked the sheep.
Southwestern Wyoming and extreme northern Utah — rich in livestock but poor in natural game animals — are not good places for wolves, he said.
Shooting the wolves, Bangs explained, will be more humane than returning them to Yellowstone, where well developed packs are killing one another over territory.
Wildlife Services plans to track and shoot the wolves by air as soon as the weather cooperates, said Bodenchuk.
The rancher, whose name was not released, probably will be reimbursed for his losses by a wolf depredation fund managed by Defenders of Wildlife.