Students at Timberline High School in Boise, Idaho, have been studying a group of wolves -- known as the Timberline wolf pack -- in a nearby national forest since 2003. But sometime in the spring, biologists who track the pack noticed its den was empty, which was unusual, said wolf conservationist Suzanne Asha Stone.
After conservationists obtained a wolf "mortality list" from the state's Department of Fish and Game, they realized that pups in the Boise National Forest's Timberline pack were killed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services branch, Stone told The Washington Post.
Michel Liao, a student at Timberline High, was shocked.
"I understand a lot of people think wolves are dangerous animals," said Liao, a member of the school's environmental club. "But it was so shocking to see that federal agents were the ones to come into a pups' den to kill them, even though the pups didn't do anything."
The incident came as Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, in May signed a law allowing private contractors to kill 90% of the state's wolf population, which officials estimate is about 1,500.
In August, wolf conservationist groups called on the Agriculture Department to "immediately suspend the killing of wolf pups on all public lands."
But officials this month denied that request. In an Oct. 1 letter to the groups, Jenny Lester Moffitt, the USDA's undersecretary of marketing and regulatory programs, confirmed that the department killed eight "juvenile wolves" because they were attacking livestock. The pup killings, Moffitt said, encouraged adult wolves to relocate, "thereby reducing the total number of wolves requiring removal."
Proponents of the law signed by Little argued that the wolf population is too large, leading to attacks on livestock that harm the ranching industry, The Associated Press reported. In addition to allowing the state to hire private contractors to kill wolves, the law allows for the use of all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles and helicopters in hunting wolves, and pups can be killed on private land.
The passage of laws in Montana and Idaho followed a Trump administration decision to strip gray wolves of Endangered Species Act protections in the Lower 48 states days before the 2020 election, leaving individual states to decide how to manage their wolf populations. The Biden administration is considering whether to reinstate the protections.
But for now, it is "open season on wolves," said Stone, a conservationist who has worked with the canines in Idaho for three decades.
Stone was especially dismayed when she and other conservationists discovered the young wolves had been killed earlier this year. "The mission of Wildlife Services is 'to improve the coexistence of people and wildlife,' not killing defenseless puppies in their den, especially when there are so many effective nonlethal alternatives," she said in a news release.
Liao said he and his classmates are writing a letter to President Joe Biden, urging him to place gray wolves back on the endangered list. He said they want the animals to stay on the list until "Idaho's politicians can prove they're able to manage wolves without killing them off."