Wolf killed near Ten Sleep
By BRODIE FARQUHAR
Star-Tribune staff writer
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
A Wyoming Wildlife Services trapper shot and killed a grey wolf on Sunday,
25 miles east of Ten Sleep — the farthest east a wolf has dispersed from
the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Mike Jimenez, Wyoming wolf recovery project leader with the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, said he’d been getting reports for several weeks of an
ongoing predation problem at a sheep camp in Babywagon Canyon, a few miles
north and east of Meadowlark Lake.
“We suspected it was a wolf,” Jimenez said.
A Wildlife Services trapper based in Washakie County waited where earlier
sheep had been killed and spotted the grey wolf feeding on a dead lamb,
Jimenez said.
The trapper shot and killed the wolf, which is estimated to be a
three-year-old male.
“We’ll send some tissue samples in for testing,” Jimenez said, which can
answer whether the male came from Montana or Yellowstone packs.
Jimenez said there had been earlier reports this winter of a black wolf
near Dayton and another farther north in the Big Horn Mountains.
“This is definitely the farthest east that we have a confirmed report,”
Jimenez said. There have been confirmed sightings of wolves farther south,
he said, down to Kemmerer and Cokeville.
Nina Fascione, Defender of Wildlife’s vice president of species
conservation, said from her Washington, D.C., office Tuesday that
compensation for the livestock kill would be available if verified.
Jimenez said that wouldn’t be a problem. The group pays for livestock
killed by wolves and grizzly bears.
Fascione said there was both good news and bad news regarding the Big Horn
wolf kill.
“On the one hand, dispersal of wolves is a good thing, reflecting a robust
population,” she said. “What’s bad is that he got in trouble and was
killed by the feds.”
Jimenez said the Big Horn wolf made a total of a dozen wolves killed this
year for preying on livestock in Wyoming.
“With more wolves in more places, we expected a lot more problems than
we’ve actually had,” he said, “but we have had to kill more wolves this
year.”