The wolves of central Idaho are preparing to give birth to this year’s litters of baby pups. But these pups -- and their families -- may not live to see winter.
Idaho’s Department of Fish and Game has announced that they will target the Buffalo Ridge pack -- and 25 more packs -- for extermination once U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s decision to eliminate life-saving federal protections goes into effect on May 4th.
Defenders of Wildlife has launched emergency legal action and has been involved with on-the-ground efforts in an attempt to save the lives of these and other wolves in the Northern Rockies, but we need your compassionate support to win this fight.
Unless we prevail in court -- something we’ve done before -- most of Idaho’s wolves could be killed. Entire packs will be removed from Idaho -- some with newborn pups that won’t have a chance for survival once the killing starts.
The Buffalo Ridge pack in central Idaho is just one of the 26 packs targeted for removal under Idaho’s new proposal. Eight members of this pack have already been killed after ranchers reported livestock losses -- and more will die under the department’s new proposal.
These deaths could be prevented with the use of nonlethal methods to prevent livestock losses -- methods whose effectiveness has been proven with Defenders of Wildlife’s proactive wildlife management programs in the Northern Rockies.
But using these methods means that wolves must be managed for their conservation, not their elimination -- an approach made nearly impossible under Idaho’s overly aggressive wolf killing plan.
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