In a key victory for wildlife, WildEarth Guardians and our partners have finalized an agreement that sets strict limits on how and where the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services can kill wolves in Idaho, bans the use of M-44 “cyanide bombs” statewide, and prohibits the use of snares to kill wolves on public lands. The new restrictions on wolf snares and the M-44 ban will remain in place until Wildlife Services completes a detailed analysis on the environmental impacts of killing wolves.
The settlement also blocks Wildlife Services from engaging in lethal activities targeting wolves in wilderness areas throughout Idaho, including the Boulder-White Cloud Complex, Big Jacks Creek, Little Jacks Creek, Bruneau-Jarbidge Rivers, Craters of the Moon, Frank Church-River of No Return, Gospel-Hump, Hells Canyon, North Fork Owyhee, Owyhee River, Pole Creek, Sawtooth and Selway-Bitterroot. The Sawtooth and Hells Canyon national recreation areas and specified public lands in the Sawtooth Valley and Wood River Valley are also off-limits.
“For far too long, Wildlife Services has pursued a program of indiscriminate wolf killing, in Idaho and elsewhere, even before there had actually been any confirmed wolf-livestock conflict,” said Lindsay Larris, wildlife program director with WildEarth Guardians. “Instead of killing wolves as a first resort, Wildlife Services should stop using our taxpayer dollars to kill native wildlife and instead focus its efforts on nonlethal methods, which evidence demonstrates work better to reduce livestock losses.”
Read the press release.
