Field reports: Montana group offers $100 for wolf kills

PREDATORS – While Idaho is using trappers and helicopter gunners to reduce wolf numbers, a Montana sportsmen’s group is essentially offering a bounty.

The Montana Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife is offering $100 and an annual membership for photographs of wolves killed in any open wolf hunting district between Dec. 19 and the Feb. 15 end of the season, or until a quota is filled.

“This contest is one way to encourage folks to get out and harvest wolves,” said the organization’s president, Keith Kubista of Stevensville.

So far, hunters have killed 113 wolves of the 220 quota set for the state’s second wolf hunting season.

Kubista said the group is worried that the quota won’t be met this year because hunters aren’t focusing their efforts on wolves. Wolves do not have the cultural and resource values that elk, deer and moose have for hunters, he said, noting that people don’t eat wolves.

Ravalli Republic

Winter drawdown starts at Lake Spokane

RIVERS – The annual winter drawdown started Friday at Lake Spokane (Long Lake).

Avista expects to lower the reservoir up to a foot a day for two or three weeks to the winter elevation of 13 to 14 feet below maximum summer elevation of 1,536 feet.

The drawdown helps control invasive aquatic weeds and allows permitted shoreline projects.

Updates: (509) 495-8043.

Rich Landers

Groups challenge BLM mustang castration plan

PUBLIC LANDS – A coalition of environmentalists and wild-horse activists is suing the government to block a precedent-setting plan to castrate hundreds of wild stallions in eastern Nevada.

The lawsuit, filed by the Western Watersheds Project and Cloud Foundation, follows the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s decision in July to back off a similar plan to castrate hundreds of wild stallions in Wyoming.

The suit challenges the BLM’s plans to remove 1,800 wild horses from the sprawling Pancake Complex near Ely over the next six to 10 years, and to castrate 200 stallions before releasing them back to the complex as geldings.

The agency defends the castration plan as another way to reduce growing horse herds it says are damaging rangelands.

Associated Press

North Idaho man sues over poaching charge

HUNTING – A veterinarian accused of poaching an elk in northern Idaho has filed a federal lawsuit against state wildlife officials.

The Bonner County Daily Bee reports Roland Hall is accusing the Idaho Department of Fish and Game of civil rights violations, negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, malicious prosecution and slander.

He filed a lawsuit earlier this week in U.S. District Court seeking an unspecified amount of damages. Hall previously filed a tort claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, indicating he would seek $500,000 in damages.

Hall claims the state agency pressed to prosecute him on a felony poaching charge, which stemmed from a 2009 hunting trip.

Although the charges were dropped, Hall claims the case was filed because of a vendetta against him over a long-standing dispute involving a lead and silver mine he co-owns.

Associated Press