When US Person was not looking the state of Oregon killed two wolf pups, three and a half months old, of the Lookout Mountain pack Oregon employees killed the two from a helicopter pursuant to a lethal removal permit issued in response to rancher's complaints of livestock predation. The heartless removal once agains demostrates teh utter subservience of state wildlife officials to private agriculturalists. The kills were on public land as where the livestock. The permit allows the killing of five wloves and does not expire until August 21st. The breeding alpha pair, which are not covered by the permit, are wearing tracking collars, which only increases the perversity of the eradication operation. These wolves are attempting to feed a large litter of pups that is a difficult task even when natural prey is plentiful. The wolves killed two animals and injured two more according to ODWF personnel. Baker County Commissioner Mark Bennett requested the kill permit on Tuesday, July 27. Bennett, who is chairman of the county’s wolf committee, included with his request to ODFW a letter from the stock owners.
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Lookout Mt. pack member
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Sixty-six percent of the public support wolf reintroduction in Oregon, yet state authorities consistently bow to the demands of private livestock owners who subsidize their herds using public resources. In areas wolves inhabit, livestock owners should be required to corral their animals or routinely monitor their grazing activity. Culling wolves is not a viable long term solution in a state that has expressed a policy to allow wolf recovery. Two centuries of cattle grazing has degraded the western landscape. It is time to restore a more natural balance to the land; a cost for the privilege of public grazing should be the toleration of wild creatures inhabiting the same environment. The agency said in response to conservationist outrage over the lethal removal that it was reducing the caloric needs of the Lookout Mountain pack by eliminating the non-hunting pups. Conservationists called the cull, "unacceptable". The incident shows how
out of bounds wolf management is in the west. Federal protection must be reestablished if the wolf is to be saved from eventual extinction because of a sub-culture's irrational fear and loathing of an ecologically beneficial species. [photo: ODWF]