Originally Posted By: Reuters News Article Michael Robinson, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, said the shooter violated the first rule of hunting by not identifying his target before firing.
"The Justice Department should resume prosecuting those who kill endangered wildlife, and the Interior Department should develop a national wolf recovery plan to ensure that the fate of wolves in an entire state cannot be determined by any number of negligent or rogue shooters," he said.
Robinson said "the word is out" among people who illegally kill wolves that they can avoid prosecution by claiming that they thought they were shooting a coyote.
http://news.yahoo.com/no-charges-colorado-hunter-mistakenly-killed-gray-wolf-034942945.html
I got to call BS on Michael Robinson, conservation advocate with The Center for Biological Perversity.
The conservation officers in Colorado had to send a DNA specimen to a lab to confirm the animal was a wolf and not some other canine. If conservation officers cannot tell the difference, hunters cannot be expected to know the difference either.
A national wolf recovery plan would not include the wolves that straddle the international borders with Canada and Mexico. The wolf population in Canada has never been protected and hunters there can shoot wolves with unlimited bag/possession limits. The Northern Rocky Mountain Gray Wolves have been documented to travel as far south as AZ questioning the need for Mexican Wolves to be recovered in AZ and NM. About 90% of the Mexican Wolves are found in Mexico and Central America, not the USA. For these and other reasons, a national wolf recovery plan would be inadequate to protect the overall wolf population. It would be ridiculous to do it based on a statewide level.