First Published Sep 10 2015
Conservationists say safeguards are badly needed to protect wolves from cases of mistaken identity.
On a fall morning last year, two men driving
along State Route 14 on Utah's Cedar Mountain saw a large canine saunter
onto the road. At first they thought the animal was their dog,
but soon they realized it could be a gray wolf, the inconvenient
predator that hasn't been seen much in Utah for decades. Around its neck they saw what appeared to be a
black collar holding a silver box. They stopped to watch the animal,
which seemed indifferent to their presence as they snapped a photo. It
left the road from the direction it came and walked up a hill as if
watching for something, according to a report taken five days later by a
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources officer.
Although the men reported the wolf sighting and
posted photos of the animal and its tracks, DWR did nothing to alert
the hunting community to take precautions to avoid shooting a wolf, a
federally protected animal.
(Motorists driving on Cedar Mountain photographed what appears to be
collared wolf crossing State Route 14 east of Cedar City on Nov. 20,
2014. Conservationists believe this is the same animal shot by hunters
Dec. 28 near Beaver 65 miles away. The man who pulled the trigger says
he mistook the wolf, which is federally protected, for a coyote, which
are subject to a $50 state bounty. Utah wildlife officials have come
under fire for not taking steps to protect this wolf from coyote
hunters. Courtesy photo) .
Hardly a month later, on Dec. 28, the
3-year-old female wolf — the same one observed on the Grand Canyon's
North Rim last October and dubbed Echo — was shot. A .223- caliber round
tore though her chest while she wandered east of Beaver. The man who
pulled the trigger had been stalking cougar that day and mistook the
animal for a coyote, a species subject to no hunting restrictions.
Conservationists are using the Nov. 20 sighting
to renew criticism of Utah's controversial bounty on coyotes, which
they believe serves no legitimate biological purpose and could undermine
the re- establishment of wolf populations in Utah.
"Utah officials helped kill this female wolf
who could have contributed to recovery of her kind and the health of
ecosystems in Utah," said Michael Robinson, the Center for Biological
Diversity's wolf advocate. Robinson's colleague Robin Silver obtained
documents about the Nov. 20 sighting through a government record
request. "Despite a clear photo of the wolf taken 65
miles from where she died, and online threats to kill her, state
officials continued to offer $50 for every dead coyote," Robinson said.
"Echo's unnecessary death underscores the importance of retaining and
enforcing federal protection for wolves. And given the primacy of
federal law, we strongly recommend that Utah reconsider its repugnant,
antediluvian practice of bounty hunting altogether."
Courtesy of Arizona Game and Fish Department
File photo of the gray wolf known as 914F and later dubbed "Echo." The
wolf was shot and killed outside Beaver, Utah, by a hunter who mistook
the collared female wolf for a coyote.
On Monday, Robinson sent DWR director Greg
Sheehan a request to suspend the bounty program within 200 miles of
documented wolf sightings and to make other adjustments to minimize
dangers to wolves from unregulated coyote hunting.
Agency officials, however, said such a
suspension policy would be nearly impossible to implement and wouldn't
accomplish much because dispersing wolves, like those roaming through
Utah, cover huge distances. They also noted that the men who shot Echo
were not enrolled in Utah's coyote program, so Robinson's
recommendations would not have saved the wolf. "Their choice to harvest what they thought was a
coyote was not motivated by the bounty program," said Leslie McFarlane,
DWR's game mammal coordinator.
Under the Mule Deer Protection Act, bounty
collectors have killed more than 7,000 coyotes each year since the
program started in 2012, while contract hunters have killed a few
hundred more in areas where mule deer are struggling. Over the most
recent year, ending June 30, the bounty program yielded 8,192 sets of
ears, surpassing the previous year by more than 1,000, according to
McFarlane.
She added that it would be very hard to advise
coyote hunters because they don't need to interact with DWR unless they
are collecting bounties. "Coyotes are a nonprotected species; you don't even need a hunting license," she said.
Kim Hersey, DWR's mammal conservation
coordinator, has conceded the animal in the photograph in question was
most likely Echo, but contends the grainy photo did not conclusively
depict a wolf. So, she said, officials at the time could not be certain
the animal seen Nov. 20 was a wolf, and it was not from any lack of
trying. Officials visited the site of the sighting near the Zion
Overlook pullout in search of scat to analyze and checked frequencies
used by known wolf radio collars, but found nothing. "You expect to get repeated sightings over time, and we didn't get any other reports on this animal," Hersey said.
Courtesy | Arizona Game and Fish Department
File photo of the gray wolf known as 914F and later dubbed "Echo." The
wolf was shot and killed outside Beaver, Utah, by a hunter who mistook
the collared female wolf for a coyote.
Managing wildlife is a state prerogative, but
conservationists believe Utah's coyote program could run afoul of the
federal Endangered Species Act if safeguards are not in place to protect
wolves from such instances of mistaken identity.
Robinson wants the state to educate all
enrollees in the bounty program on how to distinguish the two predators,
reminding them that wolves could be present in Utah and that killing
them violates the law; request all hunters report wolf sightings;
provide a $1,000 reward to those who provide evidence of a live wolf in
Utah; and create a system to notify bounty hunters of the presence of
wolves when a credible report arises.
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