Less than a year after Flat Top Ranch was awarded $600,000 for a conservation easement – half of which was paid for by a Blaine County levy assessed to protect wildlife – Flat Top Ranch has run into more conflicts with wolves:
Jerome Hansen, supervisor of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s Magic Valley Region, said wolves belonging to the Little Wood Pack near Carey had reportedly killed seven ewes on private land. Though Hansen declined to name the property owner, Peavey later confirmed that the sheep were his, some of many roaming on his Flat Top Ranch.
The lambing sheep were reportedly spread buckshot across the landscape, largely unattended. A kill order on the wolves has been issued and is being pursued by Wildlife Services in the area despite efforts to ensure livestock/wolf conflict preventative-measures would be incorporated into management practices.
You may remember the controversy prompted by the Flat Top Ranch’s application for a $300,000 match from Blaine County Land, Water & Wildlife Program‘s funds levied by Blaine County citizens “to protect natural resources and the quality of life valued by area residents.”
The controversy started when the Flat Top Ranch’s application sought to fund a private conservation easement on its property with levy dollars immediately after three wolves were killed on the ranch by Wildlife Services in response to less-than solid evidence that wolves were responsible for a single dead cow.
Efforts to leverage those county dollars to protect wolves in the area were initially thought to be successful, but last November, we at The Wildlife News were critical of the language in the easement extended to Flat Top Ranch:
As is so often the case with stipulations directing management, the devil is in the details. Vaguely conditional language kills the enforceability of a document – and in this case it is likely to kill wolves on Flat Top Ranch.
The language included in that conservation easement:
Grantor shall comply with all applicable laws and use selective and humane control techniques, including, where practicable, non-lethal deterrents and management practices.
Vaguely conditional language gave Flat Top Ranch the opportunity to collect county dollars and kill wolves too.
Video of the Wildlife Service’s kill action on Flat Top Ranch last August:
Comments
where practicable
a death warrant for the wolves
This reeks of cronyism: uncertain results causing wolf kills, huge sums for county money from ‘elite’ groups. So much taxpayer waste on private livestock through compensations for their monetary value in exorbitant sums. It’s a fine scam and it seems Idaho is a strange irrational place… perhaps a bit crazy from the selinium poisoning from eating all those two-headed mutant trout and GMO crops. Tragedy
for the wolves is ongoing. Of course, the wolves are not really an issue but it keeps the smoke blowing: an emotional smokescreen for a the thievery and deception in Idaho government.
“an emotional smokescreen for the thievery and deception in Idaho government”
Bingo, direct hit! In the first place, domestic sheep are the absolute worst kind of livestock in terms of their impact on both the range and the health of any wild sheep within 100 miles. In the second place, given the property value, even in this economy, and the way this operation is being run, this is sure no revenue maker regardless of whether there are or are not predator depredations; this is a fake ranch clearly being “tooled” as a Courtney White-style political gimmick and a corruption magnet. In the third place, even if those f**king sheep were making money, the whole operation wouldn’t be worth the amount of graft sucked in through the easement and the predator control crap. This operation is a racket, plain and simple.
You know what it keeps tax dollars to pay for the jobs of the BLM or whoever the state agency is to keep hunters with government jobs. All this with our tax dollars,why don’t they get a real job, I will bet they can’t only thing they know. I rather pay to keep a lazy family on welfare ,at least they hurt themselves most of the time.
Again the Wolf will be shot into extinction in some States SOON.