FILE - A gray wolf is seen, July 16, 2004, at the Wildlife Science Center in Forest Lake, Minn. The U.S. House moved Tuesday, April 30, 2024, toward ending federal protections for gray wolves.
Dawn Villella / AP
There were at least 11 wolf poachings last year in Oregon and Washington, and state agencies and nonprofits are offering almost $200,000 in total for information leading to arrests in these incidents.
The killings took place across both states, including in Klamath and Morrow counties in Oregon, and Klickitat and Okanogan counties in Washington.
Amaroq Weiss, the senior wolf advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said rewards for wolf poachings have not been very successful.
“My colleagues and I were conferring about this the other day,” she said. ”And really, across the years, going back to 1995, we were able to come up with three instances that we knew of where prosecutions for wolf poaching resulted as a result of somebody coming forward with tips after a reward was offered.”
Weiss said she believes illegal wolf killings go unreported because a large number of people don’t like wolves, and some think that killing wolves is doing ranchers a favor.
Wolves will sometimes attack livestock. Almost 60 cattle were killed by wolves in Oregon in 2023, and 10 were killed in Washington, according to annual state reports.
Wildlife officials will authorize the killing of wolves after continued livestock attacks. But that typically happens after a rancher has tried non-lethal methods of keeping wolves away first.
Weiss said killing wolves to prevent livestock deaths isn’t very effective.
“If you kill wolves, you have not created any kind of solution over the long haul. You just go into a cycle of killing wolves over and over.”
Weiss said that wolves play an important role in the ecosystem, keeping grazing animals like deer and elk from staying in the same place for too long. That allows the vegetation to regrow and provide food and habitat for animals. She said wolves aren’t actually very effective predators, only successfully killing their prey around 5-10% of the time they go hunting in the summer months.
The number of poaching incidents has increased since efforts to strip gray wolf protections by the Trump administration in 2020. The Department of the Interior took the gray wolf off the endangered species list, claiming that wolf populations had recovered enough.
But that decision was overturned by a federal judge in 2022, from a lawsuit that included Weiss' group. Weiss said the federal and state departments of fish and wildlife are under constant pressure to strip protections from wolves. The Biden Administration filed an appeal last September over that 2022 ruling.
The Oregon State Police and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife are seeking information about the poaching incidents. Reports can be made anonymously.
Information about Oregon poachings:
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at (503) 682-6131
Oregon State Police Dispatch at (800) 452-7888
or the Turn In Poachers TIP Line at *OSP (*677)
Information about Washington poachings:
The USFWS tip line at 1-844-FWS-TIPS (1-844-397-8477)
or the WDFW at 1-877-933-9487 or reportpoaching@dfw.wa.govunreported
Roman Battaglia is a reporter with Jefferson Public Radio. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.
It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.