In the past 10 days, I have seen numerous photos, videos, and articles about a young female wolf that had been allegedly run down by a snowmobile driver on Feb. 29. According to numerous reports, the wolf was injured and captured by the driver, who then wrapped tape tightly around its muzzle, took it to his home, and allegedly let his neighbor’s dogs torment her while he took a long nap, ate dinner, and only then checked to see if the suffering wolf was still alive.
It would be a month before Wyoming and the rest of the world knew what happened that day. The news got out when a patron released photos and eyewitnesses reported what happened in the bar that late February night to the Cowboy State Daily and WyoFile.
Cody Roberts called his friends and family to tell them he was taking the wolf to the Green River Bar that his aunt owns in Daniel, a small town 65 miles south of Jackson.
According to eyewitnesses, Roberts posed with the wolf as the other two-dozen patrons and family members took photos and videos of the critically injured animal, fitted with a shock collar and paraded around in the bar for hours. One video shows Roberts pulling the wolf’s muzzle back, obviously to show her teeth and how vicious a near-dead wolf is, then faux kissed her, as a child could be heard giggling and saying “Daddy” in the background. The wolf was allegedly then taken outside the bar, beaten and killed.
This behavior shows just how depraved, cruel and inhumane some humans can be. It is unconscionable and pathetic. Although I was saddened and angry at such behavior, I’ve been around this mentality for many years in Wyoming and elsewhere.
Unfortunately, it is not an isolated incident. Nearly every day coyotes and wolves are tortured by sledders who run their “prey” in deep snow until the animals’ lungs and hearts give out, then run them numerous times until they are dead.
Gray wolf from the Druid pack runs thru sagebrush in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. For several reasons, I feel more emotionally disturbed by this display of cruelty and the hate in Cody Roberts’ heart for torturing a non-human animal whose sentience, awareness and feelings are just like ours. Wolves are very intelligent, smarter than many animals, including our own dogs, whose ancestors were all wolves. Wolves have personalities, feelings and emotions just like us. They experience joy, pain and fear and feel the sense of loss when members of their pack, mates and siblings are lost or killed.
Only humans have the intellect to wreak pain and kill “for fun.”
And no, wolves do not kill just for fun as we do. Occasionally, it may seem as if wolves don’t eat all their kill and just move on, but they are teaching their young to hunt and most of the time return to their kill. Wolves are integral to a healthy ecosystem, controlling overpopulation and providing a host of animals—like coyotes, foxes, eagles, ravens, magpies and many others, including grizzlies—with much needed food.
The Daniel incident went beyond chasing a wolf down and running over it. Wounding a wolf, taping its jaws shut, parading it around like a hostage, then killing it out back, is particularly heinous. A Wyoming Game and Fish Department spokesperson said Cody Roberts, a known houndsman, was out hunting when he ran across the wolf in the open, pursued it and in the end “harvested” the wolf and “euthanized it.” What?
Druid wolf pack travel through Yellowstone National Park on a frosty winter morning. The bar owner and its patrons are culpable for letting this incident occur in the bar. Why didn’t someone have the courage to stand up for the wolf and stop the physical and emotional pain it was enduring? Such cowardice is hard to fathom. What if one of their dogs were treated that way?
Should the Daniel wolf incident be blamed only on the hunter, bar owner or patrons? Or is Wyoming’s politics and “good ole boy” game management driving such cruelty toward our state’s wildlife? The state claims ownership and says that wildlife are singularly “managed” by the state and that it is “mandated to provide hunting opportunity for their constituents, hunters and fishers.” Why doesn’t the state have cruelty or abuse of animal laws for other than domestic animals?
Only in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks are wolves relatively protected. Outside, near the national park boundaries, is a “trophy” zone where one needs to have a license. Many of Yellowstone’s wolves, not knowing the boundaries, have traveled outside the safety of the park and have been killed in the “trophy” zone. Most of the state, a whopping 85%, is the predator zone, some 53 million acres, where it is legal to kill wolves by any means: guns, traps, snares, explosives and snow machines.
Wolves in the Druid pack howl from a ridge on an early winter morning in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. I believe the real responsibility lies with those in charge of Wyoming’s “game management,” beginning with Gov. Mark Gordon, our state legislators, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the outfitters and hunters who lobby to kill predators for fun.
Wolves are listed as an endangered species in all the lower 48 states except Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. The Fish and Wildlife Service decided to give those states the authority to manage wolves. They have failed miserably.
Wolves should be relisted, and grizzly bears should stay on the Endangered Species list. Should the Fish and Wildlife Service remove federal protection for grizzly bears and turn their management over to Wyoming Game and Fish to be killed as a trophy game species is not only absurd but unconscionable.
Contact the Wyoming Game and Fish Commissioners today and urge them to initiate crucial conversations with the Legislature and collaborate with the Governor to implement lasting changes.
Tell them it’s time to update Wyoming’s wildlife management to include predators and non-game species. Your polite yet firm voice can be the catalyst for reform. Let’s work together to ensure a future where all creatures are respected and safeguarded.
Also call (307) 777-4600 and email Brian Nesvik ([email protected]), Director at the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and email the Governor’s office ([email protected]).
Originally published in the Jackson Hole News&Guide. Guest Shots are solely the opinion of the author.
