Free Republic

We recently looked at the growing threat posed by the presence of violent drug gangs on pubplic land, such as national parks, and the wisdom of no longer mandating that park visitors be rendered unable to defend themselves from that danger. While the greatest threat of violence is undoubtedly posed by rogue humans, a recent tragedy reminds us that sometimes, lethal danger walks on four legs. we were constantly told that wild places like national parks are "oases of peace in a violent society," and thus having a means of self-defense in such places is unnecessary. Some of our national...

North Park rancher Greg Sykes said he has tried to do things the right way since wolves migrated across the boarder from Wyoming into the area near Walden. He has kept an eye on the predators as they could be seen in the distance around the ranch he manages and got guardian dogs to watch over his cattle. “I was that one rancher that said, ‘OK, they’re here. Let’s figure out how to get along,'” Sykes said. “That’s what I intended to do.” Early on Monday, March 13, wolves killed one of his cattle dogs named Cisco, according to Colorado...

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Kelly Susewind has authorized the killing of one wolf because of cattle attacks in northeast Washington. The Smackout wolf pack has attacked cattle on private and public land in Stevens and Pend Oreille counties, the Capital Press reported. The agency said non-lethal deterrents employed by several ranchers have not stopped the predations. The wolf pack crossed the line for the department to consider lethal control when it killed two calves and injured two others during the last two weeks in August.

WARNING: PICTURES ARE GRAPHIC. Wolves have killed another cow in Jackson County. Here’s Travis Duncan with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. ... Steamboat Radio was told of the most recent wolf depredation incident today by Adam VanValkenburg, President of the North Park Stockgrowers Association. He said the wolf kill happened sometime Monday night, as confirmed by CPW. He says another suspected kill from the pack was of six elk on another neighboring property in Jackson County. Here’s his opinion on the recent incident in Jackson County. ... “In my opinion and in consulting with other experts, they are teaching their pups...

Six suspects are still being sought after the robbery in the Bronx, police said. A 60-year-old man who was brutally attacked and robbed for $1 on Christmas Eve has died from his injuries, the NYPD said Saturday. Juan Fresnada was with his husband in the Bronx early Tuesday when six individuals approached them and demanded money, police said. When the victims refused, they were attacked, according to the NYPD. Surveillance video released by police Friday shows one of them repeatedly punching and kicking Fresnada as he's on the ground. One of them hits Fresnada with a metal garbage can, the...

The men, dubbed the Wolf Pack, were found guilty of a lesser charge -- sexual abuse -- which protesters considered too lenient. They are accused of gang raping an 18-year-old woman in 2016 at a bull-running festival. The sentencing also requires the men, who have been in custody since 2016, to pay the woman a total of $61,000 in compensation. One of the men, a police officer for the Spanish Civil Guard, was fined an extra $1,000 for stealing the woman's phone. According to a police report, the gang surrounded the woman in a small alcove, took off her clothes...

Pack lives about 90 miles east of Seattle . This makes the fourth resident wolf pack in the state, and the second known pack of wolves in the Cascade Mountains ... ... The gray wolf is protected throughout Washington as a state endangered species. In the western two-thirds of Washington, the species is also federally protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Thanks to U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy's ruling (PDF file of preliminary injunction order) that the Endangered Species Act protections must be reinstated for wolves in both Montana and Idaho, be prepared to hear of more reports about large packs of wolves roaming the countryside in neighboring states like the one that was filmed in Oregon.  Even though neither state, Washington or Oregon, were part of the Fish and Wildlife Service's wolf reintroduction program, they are definitely a recipient of the outcome. It was the late "90"s when the first wolves made it to Oregon, now they are beginning...

When Bill Clinton's administration acted in 1995 and 1996 to deliberately reintroduce wolves into the 2.2-million-acre Yellowstone National Park, there were the predictable jokes about Clinton's wolf-whistling in the Oval Office. How could you get sympathy from Clinton, ranchers and Western cattlemen groused -- he's a wolf himself! In 2005, Kenton Carnegie, 22, an Ontario university student, was killed in remote Points North Landing, Saskatchewan... The jury ruled it a death by wolf attack. Even if the wolves do not kill the ranchers' herds, they can infect them. If you're tempted to romanticize a wolf pack, think of how romantic...

SEOUL — Col. Robert Givens assumed command Tuesday of Kunsan Air Base’s 8th Fighter Wing, which includes 15 squadrons and 2,600 airmen. Givens is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and served as commander of Kunsan’s 35th Fighter Squadron from 2003 to 2004. An F-16 command pilot, he has flown more than 100 combat sorties in operations Desert Storm, Southern Watch and Iraqi Freedom. He has been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with one oak leaf cluster and valor device for his service in Iraq. He takes over for Col. Jerry Harris, who became commander in November 2008....

CHATSWORTH Authorities Thursday were investigating a beating and possible sexual assault involving three women and as many as ten suspects in a Chatsworth park, according to police. Detectives were sent to Mason Park, at Mason Avenue and Devonshire Street, about 10:40 a.m., said Los Angeles police Officer Kate Lopez of the Media Relations Section. Police say there were three victims who were transported to an area hospital. At the time police found the victims they were reportedly unconscious. Witnesses said at least one of the women was sexually assaulted as well. Investigators also say they have two suspects in custody...

Montana’s wolf population increased 34 percent over the past year, to an estimated 422 wolves in 73 packs... The wolves are nearly equally distributed between northern and southern Montana...although the bulk of the population growth was in northwestern and far western Montana... Wolves are still listed under the Endangered Species Act. Delisting was set for late March, but lawsuits are expected to delay that. As for conflicts with ranchers, the FWP reported an increase in the number of confirmed cattle deaths due to wolves, from 32 to 75, and an increase in the number of sheep deaths, from four to...

A sled dog tour operator in the Interior village of Bettles said wolves have killed and eaten two of his sled dogs in the past two weeks, continuing what has been a statewide trend this winter. “They drug them right out of their collars,” Max Hanst said by phone Tuesday from the village 180 miles north of Fairbanks. “The most recent one was three nights ago. I lost another one six days before that.” Three days prior to the first attack, Hanst said he shot and killed an old, emaciated wolf trying to dig its way into a puppy pen....

Day of tobogganing almost ends in tragedy as wolves stalk children. In the dusky northern light three days before Christmas, two Fort Nelson families came dangerously close to two hungry wolves, until the family dog, Shadow, narrowly averted disaster. The wolves appeared quietly at about 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 22, as darkness was creeping in on the winter wonderland 100 kilometres east of Fort Nelson, where the families were tobogganing. About 30 metres away, a sleighful of three children -- one aged four and the others aged three -- were being happily towed along the base of a hill by...

Residents Warned To Watch Their Pets Coyotes have been spotted in and around the Fallsgrove community in Rockville, Md... Adcock said despite its docile appearance, it's part of a pack made up of some of the largest and most aggressive such animals he's every dealt with. "The pack is too big," Adcock said. "I mean any place else in Maryland you get two or three animals from a job and its pretty much over with." So far he's trapped 12 animals and his job is not yet finished. The trapper told News4 he took a picture of a large male...

confirmed killed by wolves... the confirmed kills varied from the reported animal deaths and values, which came to 40 animals valued at roughly $40,000. He cautioned people not to draw conclusions about the confirmed numbers, because unconfirmed kills are often those in which the livestock is discovered too late to actually identify, by tracks, tooth marks or other means, the actual cause of death. Their agency is part of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, though they often are mistaken for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is part of the...

Some ranchers say the wolves in the Madison Valley have grown increasingly brazen and are apparently unafraid of people. State wildlife officials say such behavior is to be expected, given the federal protection the predators have had in the decade since being reintroduced in the Yellowstone National Park. Jack Atcheson Jr. said he was spooked on a recent hunting trip, when three men and three mules got within 47 yards of a wolf that was staring right at them. The Butte hunting outfitter, who books international trips, said he had never seen wolves in Alaska, Asia or other places act...

Wolves, wolf-hybrids suspected culprits in bloody predations... his herd of 700 sheep. But something had gotten there before him. Everywhere he looked, it seemed, there was a sheep that had been attacked and bloodied. "It was terrible," he said. "Some of them just had a chunk of flesh tore out, in some cases clear to the bone, the size of an orange. A few were bit in the neck." A few of the sheep could be doctored, but many of them died... of the 60 that were attacked, 21 died and 39 were injured. On top of that, the percentage...

Sheep don't mix well with grizzly bears and wolves. Now they won't mix at all on more than 70,000 acres in the Absaroka-Beartooth wilderness. A 74,000-acre sheep grazing allotment south of Big Timber in the Gallatin National Forest has been permanently closed and the ranchers who used it for generations have been paid to move their sheep elsewhere... The agreement is the eighth -- and second-largest -- in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem in recent years that has led to the retirement of about 300,000 acres from grazing. The latest involves the Ash Mountain and Iron Mountain allotments used for generations...

killed by her pet hybrid wolves that she kept in a pen in her back yard. The county coroner said 50-year-old Sandra Piovesan, of Salem Township, Ore., was alive when she was attacked and she bled to death. Officials said most of the animals weighed 70 to 100 pounds and some were 7 to 8 years old. Humane agents said they had warned Piovesan about the animals.