FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 2, 2021
Contacts:
Bethany Cotton, Conservation Director, Cascadia Wildlands, bethany@cascwild.org, 503.327.4923
Samantha Bruegger, Wildlife Coexistence Campaigner, WildEarth Guardians, sbruegger@wildearthguardians.org, 970.531.6720
Outrage: Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife Kills Wolf Puppies
Agency Guns Down Two 3.5 Month Old Wolf Pups from Helicopter Using Public Tax Dollars
Baker County, OR — The Oregon Wildlife Coalition, an alliance of nine wildlife conservation organizations, has learned that the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) needlessly slaughtered two 3 ½ month-old wolf pups from the Lookout Mountain pack by helicopter over the weekend. As allowed by ODFW’s weakened wolf conservation and management plan, the pups were killed to appease the livestock industry, making it clear that Oregon aligns its wolf management with states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Alaska. The killing of defenseless pups underscores how the removal of federal wolf protections allows state agencies hostile to wolf recovery to undermine the decades long species’ recovery efforts. Pups this age are entirely dependent on the older wolves in their packs to bring back food: they do not participate in hunts.
Killing baby wolves, that are far too young to hunt, is as inhumane and as it is unscientific. ODFW has not notified the public of this decision, however the agency did provide comments on the killing to the agricultural publication The Capital Press.
The Oregon Fish & Wildlife Commission is the managing body for the Department, and accountable for the department’s decision, as is Oregon Governor Kate Brown. Commissioners are appointed by the Governor, and future Commission appointments are critical to determining the future of wildlife management decisions. It is also clear, that the state continues to allocate a substantial amount of public funding under “predator control” in its budget; this needs to change.
The Oregon Wildlife Coalition, representing hundreds of thousands of Oregonians, calls on ODFW to immediately cancel the kill permit for the Lookout Mountain pack and on Governor Brown and her Commission to initiate an investigation into how authorization was granted to kill baby wolves incapable of livestock predation.
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The Oregon Wildlife Coalition is a coalition of wildlife conservation groups working proactively and collaboratively to advocate for policies that are science-based and humane, and reflect the state’s conservation values.