Blame "Two-Legged Wolves": Poachers Responsible For Idaho's Wildlife Decline
Idaho hasn't reneged on its recently legalized war on wolves, but state wildlife officials have offered one concession: poachers are likely responsible for much of the decline in populations of elk, moose and deer. The announcement by a Fish and Game Officer that "two-legged wolves" cause hundreds and hundreds of large animal deaths annually undercuts the state's argument for a "Wolf Depredation Control Board," as reported by the Associated Press:
Officials say a realistic detection rate is 5 percent, meaning poachers are likely killing about 600 elk, 80 moose, 260 mule deer and 1,000 whitetail annually.
"It's real easy for people to blow a gasket about wolf predation," said Idaho Fish and Game District Conservation Officer George Fischer. "They are very passionate about it, they are very irate about it and they are livid about it. Yet there is a two-legged wolf out there that is probably killing as many or more than wolves. Wolves are causing an impact, there is no doubt about it; I don't want to downplay that at all, but two-legged wolves are probably killing more or stealing more game than wolves. That is the shock-and-awe message."
Barry Cummings, also an Idaho Fish and Game conservation officer, said many people don't report wildlife crimes because they don't consider it a crime against them.
According to Cummings, it's significantly easier for people to blame predators for wildlife degradation than themselves; in his view, the response to population decline would be different if wolves -- not poachers -- were the cause. "Holy buckets, we would be setting budgets aside," Cummings said. "We would develop a group to figure out what it was and we would develop a plan to deal with it, but we won't even talk about what impact this has on wildlife."
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