We would all love to see someone come forward after seeing the reward at 20,000 now for information regarding the two wolves recently poached in Washington state. But will someone actually come forward? Has this worked in the past? Wildlife Enforcement Captain Dan Rahn with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife said convictions in cases like this rarely happen. These wolves were being monitored by WDFW and we were told one was collared but it stopped working. Really? When did it stop working? I don’t see anything in the reports. If fact, there is not much being reported nor do we see recent updates about our wolves. Take a look at the WDFW website and you will find very little that is up to date. For example, look at the survey for wolves in Washington. It’s from 2015 so I guess we only have 8 members in the Smackout pack. http://wdfw.wa.gov/conservation/gray_wolf/packs/annual_survey
The first poached wolf was found dead on November 12 near Colville in Stevens County, Washington. The second was found after the signal from her radio-collar stopped working. Biologists found her dead in Ferry County, south of Republic December 5. Both so happened to be female and one was from the Smackout pack. The other was from the Dirtyshirt pack. According to the latest survey provided to the public, there are only 8 members in the Dirtyshirt pack. Isn’t interesting that one was poached in Colville? The other in Ferry County? Maybe it was bloodthirsty trophy hunters. Then why were the bodies of these beautiful wolves just left there? We don’t know who did it and all are welcome to come to their own conclusions. It is not out of the question to remember who hates wolves so much that they have demanded entire packs be killed. We have already seen entire packs wiped out! Who lets their cows wander all over our public lands on rugged terrain? Where is the list of deterrents being used by livestock producers in these areas? We know that one or two range riders is just not cutting it. We applaud and respect the few ranchers that are responsible, ethical and smart about the way they run their businesses. Do the rest of them really want the rest of the world to despise all of them? To see the beef industry in particular, detestable and repugnant? If they don’t want the public thinking the absolute worst in them then it’s time to change a few things. We don’t ask for much and it’s time that WDFW stop allowing them to run the show. It has been extremely unfair and the Wolf Advisory Group has done nothing except make sure that we end up with more dead wolves. It is time for a serious change! Why are we paying people we have entrusted our wildlife with and where is the transparency? Wildlife managers need to manage our wildlife in the best interest of the public and most importantly, our wildlife.
Photo of wolf from the Smakout pack taken by
Protect the Wolves Volunteer
http://knkx.org/post/20000-reward-offered-eastern-washington-wolf-poaching-cases
Comments
I can only comment a little on one aspect of the pretty comprehensive implications of Washington’s “management” of wolves ,that Lynda has written above.
The tools and social milieu in which wolf poachers exist, are pretty sophisticated,, moreso than it would appear to those who may believe that killing for pleasure, spite, fear, social status (however hidden from outgroups!), and profit are aberrations in the human animal.
In fact, these practices are social norms, taught by example, inadvertent modeling, as well as signaled as acceptable, conscientious, and even principled or to be honored.
PtW, being involved with native traditional relationship with ALL life, already knows that the larger controlling culture now ascendant, has little or no reverence for life; and that is the basis of why it’s unlikely that any group that regards wolves or any living being as unworthy of life, will produce many defectors. (I am one, having learned the ill of the present as well as the traditions only given lip service – consider the Coleville or White Mt Apaches, who raise cattle preferring to stamp out wolves, or desire to “guide” paying sport hunters, for insight into the loss and social fragmentation of traditions)
So, that cultural loss and disintegration is like a plague emanating from the intrusion of the amoral culture. But we want to explore the particular manifestation of poaching. By sophisticated, I mean that the practices and technology allow poaching to occur, the combined local and highly mobile culture that wants to once again extinguish all wolf lives from the world, first by doing so in locales the poachers and enablers pretend to “own.”
Most research on poaching occurs in Africa, where its done to protect local human interests, profit and fund groups that can’t come by money as easily – due to laws.
But it does give us some insights:
1. The two wolves left dead and visible were likely intended as a social statement, defiance toward law.
2. Other poaching, done in secret, either ends up with buried , hidden, or animals stuffed by taxidermists or skins on the walls of those who kill for the hormonal jolt. The latter want to brag, to appear valorous or esteemed by those they regard as their peers.
More taxidermists than you imagine, are less interested in upholding or following law or morality toward other animals.
I think that modern society has become more insular, every group less trusting and communicative with those not part of it.
A city like Klamath Falls, is composed of such different groups that they only come into contact at a superficial level – strangers buying and selling, passing and regraded only as members of an economic community, NOT one of shared values or care. As human populations grew so big as to be anonymous, I suppose this had to happen, and that there may be no cure: even if law demands respect of nonhuman life, it will be the law that is violated rather than any internal feeling of community created.
3. The African antipoaching models educate the children and adults as to the value of the wild animals, creates nonconsumptive markets to create economic value, and both recruits caring community members to make a living and introduces finally, necessary violent military methods of capturing, expelling and removing poachers and their incentives. Most of this has not worked in the USA, in great part because of the highly psychopathic and antisocial culture here.
4. But there is law, and both poaching and antipoaching have access to technologies; This tech, from offroad vehicles to trail cameras with GPS, to signal interception of radio collars, night vision, the use of firearm suppressors, poisons, and many other evasion & discovery techs, are toys to the kill hobbyists. Just as you have avocations and social contacts, many of these pretty much spend discretionary income on the latest tech, as well as their local information networks – even legal hunters are often in contact even while hunting or observing wildlife now.
It’s rare that murdering a wolf or illegally killing an elk will be betrayed by family members or others who share a perpetrator’s antilaw (expressed as antigovernment, but few are totally antigovernment, just wanting the same complete control they would have were there none, while dependent upon law and regulations beneficial to themselves).
I found long ago, that one should not tell of wolf tracks or sounds. Such information completely disseminates among those who would kill them or any other being. A good practice, especially in winter, is to drive as do the wolf-haters, and instead of reporting wolf tracks, effacing them. I haven’t been mobile at this personally for a couple years, but if you live in wolf country , please do so. I’ve had arguments with wildlife lovers who feel that sightings of new populations should be reported to authorities, but, as you now know, AKWAs and maps of pack territories are magnets for the killers.
It now seems that politics have allowed new and complex legal attack on wolves. Still, something between 2/3 and over four out of five citizens polled nationally are in favor of wolves at least existing (this may be changing in the climate of fear that media, politics, and selfishness is creating), so working on changing the mandate for ALL public lands to preservation of native species, thus removing the roading and gun-totin’ humans introduced by mineral extraction, motor transportation, livestock grazing leasing, and other uses not compatible with the safety and restoration of life to the land.
One more thing – Protect the Wolves site here is monitored by a Reddit tracker. Reddit is not a site that you want observing you, although it is composed of many different groups, some innocuous.
Poaching is only one part of antiwolf people’s efforts. By easily collecting information from your site and from anyone who posts on it, you are giving them advantage. Reddit is particularly bad, although I regard facebook’s tracking and collection of personal private and activity on everyone as equally wrong. So, you see, poaching also has elements of spying, and such is what I meant by sophisticated. If you do not understand the nature of many skilled users of Reddit, you are like a wolf unable to test food laced with 1080 – you can’t smell, taste or detect the poison, but it is lethal. Internet tracking tech is both sophisticated and easy, but it does require an understanding tat few have.
For example, simple-seeming pictures might contain a very small piece of code, reporting who clicks on the site were the picture exists to an information gatherer.
I do not love the internet or tech toys like phones, and don’t even have the latter, precisely because of the info-gathering done since over ten years ago. I would leave it all completely, if wolves were not under lethal attack by humans.
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