(view with pictures as displayed in email)
Friends,
On Wednesday, August 31 USDA Wildlife Services swooped in with an airplane and killed 3 wolves accused of killing a single calf on the Flat Top Ranch in the Little Wood River Watershed near Carey, Idaho.
The details of the kill order are confusing. Wildlife Services' only evidence that any of these wolves might have killed the calf is the observation of the wolf near the calf-carcass days later.
Wolf activists in Blaine County have been following members of this wolf pack for years and were able to video document Wildlife Services' airplane in the act of killing the wolves and other predators on the Flat Top Ranch.
Unfortunately, use of government dollars to graze livestock and slaughter predators isn't anything new on the Little Wood River Watershed. The Flat Top Ranch has been relying on tax-payers in a lot of ways for a long time. Recently, Ken Cole noted in The Wildlife News:
John Peavey, a former Idaho politician, and Diane Josephy Peavey, a former commentator on Boise State Public Radio, who’s Flat Top Ranch near Carey, Idaho has reportedly received payments totaling $970,139 from 1995 through 2010 according to the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database, has received another subsidy in the form of 3 dead wolves.
Last Wednesday, September 14th at 2 p.m. the Blaine County Commission conditionally approved the Flat Top Ranch request seeking $300,000 in tax-dollars from the Blaine County Land Water and Wildlife Program, a program passed by voter-initiative "to protect natural resources and the quality of life valued by area residents"; However, after receiving a groundswell of public comments prompted by Western Watersheds Project and local wolf advocates' tireless effort the Blaine County Commission voted to require the Flat Top Ranch and The Nature Conservancy to provide a predator management plan emphasizing non-lethal protection of livestock prior to the Commission's final approval of the ranch's conservation easement application.
The pressure worked ! The Flat Top Ranch is now working with wolf advocates to develop non-lethal livestock husbandry practices on the ranch.
With your help, we ensured that tax-payer dollars raised to conserve wildlife and wildlife habitat, water quality and open space are being used to create a lasting positive impact for all of Central Idaho's incredible natural resource values - including wolves and other predators.
Jon Marvel
Western Watersheds Project