This isn’t the first attack. This winter 75 elk were attacked and killed by wolves at the same location.
(Mirror Daily, United States) – A pack of Wyoming wolves killed elks for fun. According to the state officials, nineteen elks were found slaughtered on a field, and the predators didn’t even bother eating them. While this type of incidents happens in wildlife, it is the first time that the Wyoming wildlife officials witness a hunt of this magnitude.
The incident was used by the state as an example of why the federal government should stop interfering with the local wildlife control and give Wyoming the right of handling the wolves population as it sees fit.
The State Fish and Game Department can’t do anything to control the predator population as long as the wolves are under federal protection. The regional director of the Fish and Game Department, John Lund, said that federal authorities should reconsider their conservational policies because the wolves are starting to get out of control and seriously threat the elk herds.
But there are a lot of environmental groups who beg to differ. It seems that back in 2014, a number of such associations sued the state of Wyoming in order to force it to protect the endangered wolf species. The members of the groups thoroughly believe that if the Fish and Game Department regained total control of the predators, they would shoot them on sight.
The elk killing took place on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday at a feedground near the area of Bondurant. The location is one of twenty-two feedgrounds that Wyoming set up for the elks. The state laid out alfalfa and grass hay so that the herd would have access to food until spring.
The wolves probably saw the feedground as an open buffet and attacked the herd. Seventeen out of the whole nineteen animals that were butchered were calves, no more than a year old.
But this is not the first time that the McNeel feedground was attacked by predators. According to the Fish and Game Department officials, almost seventy-five elks were killed in the area this winter.
But the Department can’t do anything to prevent or stop the attacks because the lawsuit prevents it from harming any wolf specimen.
According to Mike Jimenez, the local wolf coordinator, they aren’t even allowed to relocate the predators. But even if they were, the packs would probably come back in a short time span.
The Wyoming wolves killed elks for fun, and that is upsetting the local authorities. The environmental groups that filed a lawsuit against that Fish and Game Department could not be reached for comment.
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