BOISE, Idaho — Federal officials have killed 10 wolves in northern Idaho at the request of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game to boost elk numbers, and state officials say more might be killed this winter.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services said Wednesday that workers used a helicopter in the Clearwater National Forest in late February and early March to kill the wolves.
“At the request of Idaho, we did remove wolves in that region,” said agency spokeswoman Tanya Espinosa.
Idaho officials say the area’s elk population in what’s called the Lolo zone has plummeted in the last 25 years from about 16,000 to about 2,000, and that wolves are to blame along with black bears, mountain lions and a habitat transition to more forests.
Fish and Game has liberal harvest rules for bears and mountain lions, but wolves are more challenging to hunt. So in six of the last seven years, Fish and Game has sought to kill wolves to boost elk. Elk are a prominent big game species in Idaho and hunters have decried a scarcity of elk in the region. Elk are also a source of revenue through hunting license sales for Fish and Game.
“We’ve made an obligation to try to manage this elk herd at levels at maybe not peak levels, but at least bring it back to levels that we’ve seen in the past that were adequate for hunting,” said Jim Hayden, a biologist with Fish and Game.
Officials say Fish and Game license dollars paid for the federal agency to kill the wolves. State and federal officials didn’t have the cost immediately available.
Environmental groups blasted the killing of the wolves, focusing on the operation being made public only after it happened.
“Now more than ever, Wildlife Services and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game need to be up front with the public about their plans to kill wolves,” said Andrea Santarsiere, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.
