CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — As Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park opens for peak summer season, wildlife advocates are leading a call for a boycott of the conservative ranching state over laws that people have great latitude to kill. gray wolves with little supervision.
Wyoming tourism agency’s social media accounts are flooded with comments urging people to avoid the Cowboy State, amid accusations that a man hit a wolf with a snowmobile, shut its mouth with duct tape and displayed the injured animal at a Sublette County bar before. To kill him.
While critics say Wyoming allowed such animal cruelty, a leader of the state’s livestock association said it was an isolated incident and unrelated to state laws. ‘State on wolf management. Laws in place for more than a decade are designed to keep predators out to proliferate out of the Yellowstone mountain region and into other areas where ranchers raise cattle and sheep.
“It was an abusive action. None of us condone it. It should never have been done,” said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and a Sublette County rancher who lost sheep to wolves. a lot of media attention, but it’s not exemplary of how we deal with wolves to deal with livestock issues or anything.
Wolves are federally protected as an endangered or threatened species in most of the United States, but not in the Northern Rockies. Wyoming, Idaho and Montana allow wolves to be present hunted and trapped, after their numbers rebounded following their reintroduction to Yellowstone and central Idaho nearly 30 years ago. Before their reintroduction, wolves had been wiped out in the lower 48 states through government-sponsored poisoning, trapping and bounty hunts until the mid-1900s.
Today, Wyoming has the least restrictive wolf culling policies. There are limits on hunting and trapping in the northwest corner of the state and killing them is prohibited. banned in Yellowstone and neighboring Grand Teton National Park, where they are a major attraction for millions of tourists. But outside the Yellowstone region, in the 85 percent of the state known as the “predator zone,” they can be killed freely.
The wolf was reportedly shot, exhibited and killed in the predator zone.
Wolves travel hundreds of miles and often kill cattle and sheep. Gray wolves attacked livestock hundreds of times in 2022 in 10 states, including Wyoming, according to a report. Associated press review of depredation data from state and federal agencies, the most recent data available. Other times, livestock succumb to other predators, disease or exposure, or simply disappear.
Losses caused by wolves can be devastating to individual ranchers, but the industry-wide impact of wolves is negligible: the number of cattle killed or injured in documented cases is equivalent to 0.002% of the herds in the States affected, based on a comparison of depredation data with state livestock. inventories.
The predator zone is the result of negotiations between US and Wyoming authorities, who exchanged federal compensation for livestock killed by wolves in exchange for permission to shoot wolves in this zone for free.
Saharai Salazar is among the foreigners changing their travel plans based on what allegedly happened Feb. 29 near Daniel, a western Wyoming town of about 150 people.
The dog trainer from Santa Rosa, California, posted on the state’s tourism Instagram account that she would not be getting married in Wyoming next year as planned. The post was among hundreds of similar comments, many with the hashtag #boycottwyoming on social media in recent weeks.
“We need to change the legislation, rewrite the laws so that we can provide more protection, so that they cannot be interpreted in a way that would allow such atrocities,” Salazar said in an interview.
Wyoming’s rules have long been controversial, but they are unlikely to harm the entire population because most of the state’s animals live in the Yellowstone region, said Ed Bangs, an expert in wildlife. wolves and former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf biologist.
Bangs said the incident of the wolf being brought into the bar was a “sideshow” to the successful recovery of the species. The predator zone is largely open landscapes that typically don’t support wolves, he said.
Wyoming’s rules, including the predator zone, have withstood multiple legal challenges that put wolves on and off the endangered species list since they were first delisted in 2008. Wolves have not been listed in the region since a 2017 court order, and their current population in Wyoming, which is more than 300, is similar to their number in 2010.
Although state law does not specify how to kill wolves in the predator zone and does not specifically prohibit crushing them, the Humane Society and others argue that the state’s animal cruelty law animals applies in this case.
Widely distributed photos show the man posing with the wolf, his mouth bandaged. Video clips show the same animal lying on the ground, alive but barely moving.
The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office said it was investigating anonymous reports of the man’s actions but was having difficulty getting witnesses to come forward.
“We’ve had the tip line open for two weeks hoping to get witnesses or something helpful,” said sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. » said Travis Bingham. “I know people are hesitant to come forward.”
The man’s only punishment so far is having to pay a $250 fine for illegal possession of wildlife.
The suspect has made no public comments and has not returned calls from his company. Calls to the bar went unanswered.
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Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, contributed to this report.
